The Death of County Cricket?

It has been a while since I made a post about cricket, but today the new editor of Wisden, Scyld Berry, had a piece in The Times regarding the effect that the new 20 over game may well have on the county game.

Now, I will admit that T20 cricket has been a good element in increasing the interest that people have in the game. As Berry pointed out, people want to see their game in a three hour package, and for the people there the atmosphere is truly amazing. Admittedly the price of a ticket is a bit steep, when compared to that of a ticket for a test match or even a one day match, however you do pay for that special feel of the place during the match. However should the effect be to reduce the county game to an ‘amateur’ level then this really is not a good sign.

Yes times are changing, the audience is very different now. People don’t want to sit and watch a test match for 5 days and possibly still not come out with a winner. County matches are now played out over just four days, which seems to have resulted in even more non-results, despite the fact that most games never really went into the fifth day.

The 50 over game attracted greater numbers than the test matches, and so T20 has done the same. Were these worries around in 1962 when One Day Matches came along? It’s possible, I’m a bit young to remember, however the main point made here is not simply the crowd pulling, it’s the timing of the matches, and the money.

Leading cricketers can now earn more by representing an Indian city, whether in Zee TV’s Indian Cricket League or the officially sanctioned Indian Premier League. City-based cricket has arrived and will surely spread, annulling the player’s traditional relationship with his county, state or province.

Now, we hope that players don’t do it just for the money. It has to be said that if the players didn’t like the game they wouldn’t be playing it. And hopefully with that great British sense of tradition the players won’t let the county game die out, purely for the money.

County Level cricket is that place where young players come into the game. Yes there can be more players should city lever Twenty 20 come to fruition, however this is Twenty 20 cricket, and no matter how much I like the game it isn’t real cricket.

I am not saying that we would all be better off without T20. Since it came around in 2003 it has definitely made its mark and has earned its own breed of fans. However should T20 teams start to take players from the county games then something must surely be done to ensure that the game that matters stays.

MTFBWY