posted May 24, 2007

how about the television coverage, or lack of it. it's a sad day in any sport when you can not support your national team without having to pay loads of money on satellite tv. we have a whole generation of youngsters not watching the game cos it isnt on free-to-view tv.

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posted May 24, 2007

I think everyone should stop looking for 'one' answer to why our cricket is in a mess. There are a whole number of factors as to why we are behind many countries in terms of participation and success at international level. A few examples of issues I feel contribute to the problem:

Australia and India etc.. are countries that enjoy hot weather for most of the year, therefore they have more opportunity to practise on real wickets instead of artifical or indoor surfaces.

I have played and spoke to Aussie's who play cricket and something seems to be apparent, which we lack, that is team spirit. Aussie teams, weather it be an indoor side or a club side, play for each other as a team. In England you find many players playing for them selves.

These issues are just bullet points and need to be discussed further, there are also many other issues, which need to be addressed if England and Wales want to turn the corner.

Get rid of the blazer and tie, pompus mcc toff culture and get the working classes playin again. The image of cricket as a 'public school boy' game in England really puts the majority of people off participating.

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posted May 24, 2007

the ONE answer for me is that not enough school kids play organised cricket from a yound age. Until we sort that out, you're just arguing how to make the best of a bad bunch. FACT.

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posted May 24, 2007

Schofield may find the answers, however there is no guranteee anyone will take a blind bit of notice.

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posted May 24, 2007

I coach and run a colts team at my local cricket club. Each Sunday morning we have about 160+ children aged 6 to 15 at our club we also organise summer schools during half term and the summer holidays. We are involved in the "chance to shine" programme with local schools. The club receives mony to do this but the amount of administrative work to obtain a few £,000 for paying coaches is massive. This all has to come from unpaid hardworking members.
Another issue is how schools and junior cricket is squeezed by other sports and the English climate.
The school summer term starts at the end of April. The loss of matches early season is huge as we try to play in the dark and damp of late spring. Football and Rugby continue until the end of May and then starts playing summer tournaments and festivals. In my county from U13 onwards all the leagues are geared towards getting a team from the County into a national competition, so all league games have to be completed by June 25th, so for most the competetive season is compressed into May and June. We continue into july with friendlies and then that is just about that. No wonder the Aussies are better than us as their season is from September to March with a few weeks off over Christmas. A genuine 6 months
Couple that with the points that Ben D has raised. The money that is squandered by Counties on overseas players who play a few matches. How the Minor Counties are starved of cash. Where do you stop

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posted May 24, 2007

Cricketlondon......I think that you will find that artificial wickets are far more prevalent in these "hot" countries than in England. Surely a good artificial is better than a bad grass wicket. In my County there is a huge argument about whether colts can play matches on artificial wickets or not. There is a significant voice insisting they use grass wickets. Surely this just goes another step further in making cricket unavailable to youngsters

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posted May 24, 2007

Clearjoe100:

It's not only that teachers are too busy now - with attempting to reach set targets - to supervise sports activities. In your second paragraph you mention competition; another area where not so much the schools, but the Education authorities have declared that it is not PC to be competitive; ie have winners and losers.

Throughout my whole time in education, I played regular fixtures (football and cricket) thoughout the respective season. This - at Grammar school - included both Wednesday and Saturday fixtures. Not only that, but we had regular coaching (in both sports) from local professionals, who gave of their time freely.

On the cricket side, the school First X1 (usually 5th and 6th form had an annual cricket tour to Somerset - quite a haul from Burnley - where we played 5 matches (one per day) - against schools in the area. I believe this has, sadly now ended more than likely as a result of the previously mentioned reasons.

Many of those who enjoyed this amount/level of sport went on to continue to play long after leaving the School, some at respectably high levels.

Perhaps the lack of some of the above may give one or two pointers to the reasons as to why cricket at the grass-roots level is not now the breeding ground it used to be for talent.

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posted May 24, 2007

When will county cricket ever be like the English Premier League?

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posted May 25, 2007

In response to Jenks1950, I am all for artificial wickets. I played on artificial wickets as a colt for my district side and I am playing 20/20 cricket on a monday night also on artificial wickets at the moment. I supose what I wanted to say was that not only do the hot countries benefit from more real grass wickets but like you say, they have longer seasons and therefore opportunity to play outdoor cricket on real wickets for more of the year

In response to happymac, I agree that there is not enough organized cricket at school boy level. I feel that this is the case for state schools more so than for comp schools. However we need to be carefull that we dont get our kids over competing or specializing in cricket at too young an age. Look up Dr Istvan Balyi's LTAD model on google or ECB website.

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posted May 28, 2007

Football is a more fun and exciting sport, and you dnt need good hand eye coordination/specialist batting training to play it.

Football is what we talk about with our mates, when England are playing in the football World Cup the whole nation comes to a stand still, wheras not many people are bothered about the Cricket World Cup.

You dnt have pictures of your fav cricketers on your wall, but you do of your favourite football players. So, Cricket will always play second fiddle to footy, but maybe if Cricketers were paid somewhere near the sallaries of Prem footballers and instead of long boring test matches, we had fast and furious Twenty Twenty's, then more kids would take the game up.

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