Cricket has always been seen as being quintessentially English. England has however evolved, and that belief, if it were ever true, is now more questionable than ever.
If cricket was seen as the sport that defined a country, the English were expected to uphold the perceived morals of a cricketer. These were to play fair, be honest, show respect, and be both a good winner and be a good loser. For the cricketer was seen as being the perfect gentleman.
So as the country’s leaders have floundered and lost the respect of a nation, some conducting their business with questionable morals and behaviour that is never likely to engender respect, is it any wonder that the England Cricket team is struggling so badly? For it appears that the age of the gentleman is over and English cricket is suffering.
This should come as no surprise as the writing has been on the wall for a while, even before the outstanding 2015 documentary “Death of a Gentleman.” For those who have not seen the film, it alleges that Cricket Australia (CA), England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), and Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) have taken over the running of cricket for their own financial gain, at the expense of other Test member countries. The regularity of fixtures between the “Big Three” in recent years is again all part of the plan to keep the money for themselves.
In Mr Punch’s Book of Sports published in 1923 there is a famous line, “The British ‘Sphere of Influence’ – the cricket ball.”
Sadly that is far from the case these days as the current Ashes Series in Australia has shown. England’s performances have been exceptionally poor. They lost the Ashes Series in just 12 days of cricket. The recent defeat in Melbourne was England’s 12th defeat in their last 13 Tests in Australia.
Many seem shocked that this is the case, yet should it really come as a surprise?
In 15 Test matches in 2021 England won four, drew two and lost nine. Eleven of those matches were played against India and Australia.
If captain Joe Root’s scores were removed from the England’s aggregate runs it would make even more depressing reading. He scored three times the amount of runs his next highest scoring team mate achieved in 2021.
Not surprisingly there has been much written about what needs to change, but surely first of all one has to look at what has gone wrong with English Cricket to see the national team become a laughing stock.
English cricket has gone through many peaks and troughs in more than a century, yet it has always managed to survive and it will most likely survive this period.
The mid to late 1980’s and early 1990’s were a torrid time for English Cricket. The highlight in this era was a World Cup Final appearance in 1987, when they lost to Australia. Players were walking away from playing for England and choosing instead to go on rebel tours. Loyalty to the cause was a big issue.
This era came hot on the tail of the Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket era. A moment in the game that changed it forever. Not only in the way it was played, under lights, with a white ball and players in coloured clothing, but in the way the game would be structured and the remuneration for players.
In 1997 a new governing body for the game in England was created. The England and Wales Cricket Board. This is a single governing body which combines the roles formerly fulfilled by the Test and County Cricket Board, the National Cricket Association and the Cricket Council. A year later the Women’s Cricket Association was integrated into the organisation.
The document published at the time promised a new era for English cricket, one in which the game would see a higher level of professionalism at all levels of the game.
Hindsight will tell any sports fan that once the word “professionalism” starts to be bandied about what will follow will be an expansion of staffing levels and an increase in operating costs.
With the merging of four administrative bodies one would have expected that there would have been more than enough staff with the required experience to run the game and carry it forward. The increase in staff over the next decade was remarkable. Yet was it producing the required results?
For many outside of the elite side of the sport, those playing at grassroots level they saw the existing league competitions scrapped and new more localised and often inferior competitions created. Some of the traditionally weaker club sides found benefactors who were prepared to pay players to play simply to boost their own egos. They rose to the top of the pile often on the back of a couple of mercenary imports. Only to fall back down when they went to another club who paid a few pounds more.
At the same time cricket grounds across the United Kingdom were being lost to housing developments. Many clubs nearing a century of existence were lost to communities. For some school children these clubs were where they played their cricket, as at school the standard was either poor, or the school was not prepared to give up the time the game took, and teachers to coach could not be found.
The whole fabric of the game was disintegrating at bottom while more and more money was sloshing around at the top.
In May 2000 a new era was born. For the first time, England players would not be borrowed from their county sides, they would be contracted to the ECB. Prior to this County players would wait to hear the Test team read out on the radio, if selected they would receive their UKL1200, play the game, and then return to their county side and wait to hear if they were playing in the next Test.
The centralised contracts were copied from Australia. They were supposed to alleviate the financial burden on the County sides. Once picked for England a player would demand more money from their county. However the county would lose the services of that player when they were selected for the country. So they were paying more for a player who played less. A player who could swell the gate for them, and if used correctly could help generate much needed income for the county.
ECB chairman Lord MacLaurin was the man who bowed to the pressure of the centralised contract system. However coming from a business background he wanted the team to look more professional and to be a team that projected a certain image. The MCC colours that were traditionally worn when England went on tour became a thing of the past, so too individual pieces of equipment, such as Alec Stewart’s white helmet.
Lord MacLaurin treated the players like key individuals in an organisation. He gave the players single rooms on tour, and they would now fly business-class. The trade off was he wanted results on the pitch. He predicted that England would be the number one cricket side within ten years. They were ranked number one in 2011!
Initially the ECB invested UKL750,000 in 12 players, and these wages were on top of their county salaries.
Over time this would change. In came sliding-scale salaries, dependent on seniority, and these are still a part of the contracts today. Today a player who plays multi-format cricket can earn a seven-figure sum when bonuses are taken into account. One-day specialists received a huge pay hike in 2016. Which may explain why England had such a strong focus on the shorter forms of the game in recent times.
Not only were the players now contracted to the national team, their careers were managed by those at the top. Bowlers would not bowl as much to ensure that they were fit for the national team. Time playing with their county sides became rare.
That is still the case, of the tourists in Australia at the moment Chris Woakes, who has had injury issues has played just six County Championship games in five years, Mark Wood only seven in the same time. Star All Rounder Ben Stokes who prior to the Ashes took some time away from the game has played only three County Championship games in the same time frame. How can that be good for the players, the Counties, or Cricket?
In the batting Jonny Bairstow and Jos Buttler have both played just five County Championship games in five years. Both have played no games in the County Championship since 2018. Ironically Australian stars Marnus Labuschagne played15 County Championship games, Travis Head 12 and Marcus Harris eight. These players also played in the Sheffield Shield for their State teams.
Initially this change paid dividends, as Alec Stewart’s career is testament. After the introduction of the centralised contract Stewart enjoyed victory in 17 of his final 38 Tests, having won just 22 of 95 between February 1990 and January 2000. IT may have been down to personnel or any number of other issues but the credit was given to the centralised contracts.
Lord MacLaurin was able to back this move thanks to the UKL103million joint TV deal between Sky Sports and Channel 4 between 1999-2002. Looking at English cricket now, clearly more needed to be spent at the grassroots level of the game, to ensure that the initial success continued.
On paper the centralised contract made sense, and when a team is winning it looks like the perfect structure, but in reality it has created a whole new set of problems. Not just for England but also Australia.
The centralised contract brings to mind an old-fashioned word, loyalty.
When you are placed on a centralised contract you sign up to more than just wearing your national colours. Along with the rewards come obligations, some which will not be what you want to do, but like every employee in almost every job there are times you have to do what you do not like.
Rome Olympic Games Decathlon gold medallist Rafer Johnston summed it up best when he said “I came to realise that being in the spotlight entails responsibility, not just glory. Because everything I did reflected on my entire family, I felt compelled to carry myself in an exemplary way.”
The centralised contract is only successful if a team is winning. Dean Headley was the player representative when these were put in place by England and was quoted as saying in the Daily Mail 20 years later that “It went from a team that you represented to a club that you joined.”
It has become ‘a club,’ and one that many are loathe to leave. Also one that the powers that be are loathe to expel players from. Herein lies a problem. Many players outside of ‘the club’ feel excluded and that there is no way in. They rarely get to play against, or alongside those in ‘the club’ as these players no longer go back to playing for their county or state. They cannot test themselves against those in ‘the club’ let alone upstage them.
Some will argue that since the forming of these ‘clubs’ at International level we have seen the standard of Test cricket rise. Based on the current Ashes series that argument would carry very little weight.
As many who follow the sport know the wickets prepared for Test cricket today are in the main a batsman’s paradise. That very few touring teams ever win away from home, which in turn says a great deal about the calibre of the current players. The boundaries have all been moved in from the fence, which regrettably distorts the records from years gone by.
Many of these players forget where they came from. That it was the county or state sides that developed them into the players that they became. Once in the national side we have seen players opt to take the period they are on leave from their national team to go and play in the lucrative Indian Premier League.
Or maybe it is not the players themselves but their managers who many find out far too late are acting in their own best interests rather than their clients.
What is astounding is that the National bodies who claim to be managing their players on centralised contracts, allow them to go and play in this competition yet fail to allow them to return and play for their county or state sides. Is this not a case of having double standards? Surely an ultimatum should be made to the players. Sure you can go and play, but if you do, you lose your centralised contract.
How much respect was shown for being a part of the Australian set up when seven Australian players withdrew from the limited overs tours of the West Indies and Bangladesh in order to play in the IPL?
Then there was the player who was injured in the IPL and expected the National medical team to treat and assist them with their rehabilitation. Why is the national body doing this? The player was injured playing in a competition outside of their contract so they should surely pay for their own treatment?
A central contract is an honour. As Sir Ian Botham stated recently, when he started out he wanted to play for his county and then he wanted to play for England. He went on to say that the key to the survival of English cricket is a competitive national team, without that you will not have television stations buying the rights to broadcast the matches. However to have a competitive team at national level it is essential that you have a strong County Championship competition. It does of course go further than that you also need a strong Minor Counties competition – now for some reason named National Counties – and in turn strong and meaningful club competitions.
While England was climbing the world rankings in the first decade of this century, the players were being financially rewarded and there was massive growth in cricket administration staffing levels, but what was being done to develop the next generation coming through? Clearly not a great deal.
One thing that is abundantly clear is that any focus on mastering basic technique has been ignored. Yet England is not alone in this. One of the reasons Pat Cummins is the great bowler that he is is that he knows what he is going to do with the ball when he bowls it. Many of his contemporaries have simply been coached to run and in bowl and try and hit the seam.
This is possibly why England’s Jimmy Anderson has not been forced out of the Test side and is still playing aged 39. Anderson made his Test debut back in 2003, but no one has threatened to take his spot in the past five to six years!
The messaqing coming out of the ECB for the past two years was all about the Ashes and winning them back in Australia. Yet you looked at the side selected, and the preparation and soon realised that this was purely and simply a lot of hot air.
England could almost field a team of coaches on this Ashes tour, but one has to ask what are they doing to earn their money? The batting techniques on display in England were never going to cut the mustard in Australia, and just as we have witnessed on previous tours to Australia the bowlers have persisted in bowling too short. Why have lessons not been learned? Why was the preparation so limited? If this was a business, and Lord MacLaurin insisted it was, heads would roll for the failure to perform or you would close up shop.
Once again was there too much focus on where the WAGs were going to be accommodated rather than on the job at hand?
Is it any wonder that the Ashes Test team was not really front and centre? Former Test Spinner Ashley Giles, who following his retirement went into coaching, was then appointed Managing Director of the ECB; a strange appointment considering his work experience. Then in August last year it was reported that CEO Tom Harrison and a group of senior executives at the England and Wales Cricket Board were to share a projected UKL2.1m bonus pot despite making 62 job cuts in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. This was for creating and promoting the much criticised “The Hundred,” but essentially these bonuses were received for people simply doing what they were paid to do. How well that money could have been spent in the lower echelons of the game!
However we must not forget that Harrison did deliver on one of his KPIs. England won the 2019 World Cup, but at what cost? With so much focus on finally claiming that prize it appears the rest of the game was ignored.
Maybe this is one of the key issues facing many sports today, having too many formats. It is going to be extremely hard to excel in all the different formats so, just as England did, the administration focussed on being the top dod in one.
Just as predicted in “Death of a Gentleman” has Test cricket now simply become about matches between India, Australia and England, and more important than the quality of the play or the result, is the money that can be made? This would appear to be very much the case.
As discussed on Podcast #99 it appeared England did not want to come to Australia, maybe because they saw the writing on the wall? Yet Australia and Channel Seven allegedly threatened legal action as both needed the money.
If one reads back through Wisden cricket has been faced with similar concerns over the past 140 years, and it will survive, but the key to that survival will be trimming that fat. There are too many people claiming a salary from the sport who are having little impact on its well being. The focus needs to shift, as has been written by many former players and experts, there has to be a re-set and the focus has to shift back onto the structure of the game, and the development of players who simply want to play socially or aspire to play for England. The County game needs help, and it needs its star players to play. The sport has to become more inclusive and migrants from other parts of the world must be welcomed into the sport and not shunned.
Pride in that blue cap with three lions on it has to be restored, and those who are given the honour of wearing it must be made aware of the responsibilities that come with the uniform. Their focus must be the national team first. If they wish to go and play IPL then they forfeit the central contract.
The England cricket team used to represent something, it has been painful and sad to seem them reduced to their current position. For as the great cricket writer and commentator John Arlott wrote about cricket, but could well have been writing about the England team, ” the curious thing is that it attracts the incompetents as well, those who never make a run and cannot bowl, and yet doomed only to dreary waiting in the pavilion and to fatiguing fielding, they turn up punctually on every occasion, hoping for the best , and even such is the human heart’s buoyancy , expecting it.” England fans currently tune in doing just that, hoping for the best.
