SUGGESTED CRICKET REFORMS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20722, 8 May 1937, Page 16 (Supplement)

SUGGESTED CRICKET REFORMS

JOHN BULL PUTS ON HIS THINKING CAP When Leicestershire dramatically announced that an accumulation of debt had made It necessary to close down the club no one acquainted with county cricket history believed for a moment that the team would disappear from the- championship (writes “The Watchman” in the London “Observer”). Financial difficulties after wet seasons have been frequent. I remember going to what was announced as the windingup of Essex in the remote past of 1903. The club’s coffers were empty; further overdrafts were impossible. But, fortunately, the inquest was held before all the life had left the body. Restoratives were produced from many pockets. Essex are still with us. Kind friends had come to the rescue.

They always do in such circumstances. But the SOS of Leicestershire has been seized upon by those who regard cricket merely as a part of the show world as a sign that the game as a whole is losing its appeal. The revolutionary party have hoisted the red flag again, although they pretend that they are showing only a precautionary red light. They declare, even as their disgruntled fathers declared, that the game must die unless it be revolutionarily changed into something unlike its true self.

Why is it that these people deliberately shut their eyes to the influence of a wet season, and shriek that a shortage of cash is due to the shortcomings of cricket’s appeal?. Is It that because they have not the mind to appreciate cricket as it stands they are eager to seize upon any excuse to "jazz ft up”—or, rather, down—to suit their own mentality?

The weather has inevitably controlled blank days in July, while in August there were also occasions when not a ball could be bowled in several parts of the country. And in addition there were far more numerous occasions When only a few minutes’ play took place before the clouds broke again. How could there be good “gates” in such circumstances?

Glamorganshire reported that 11 of their 15 home matches were “practically or totally ruined by rain”; and this was the verdict of Warwickshire upon their loss of £2000: “The weather was the sole cause, four consecutive Saturdays, Including one Bank Holiday week-end, being ruined.” Then the Derbyshire committee went so far cs to say “If we had had reasonable luck in the weather we should have made substantial profit, but, as it is, we shall be about £BOO down on the previous season.” Other counties could tell similar stories. The suggestions—most of them as ancient as the first bad balance-sheet —put forward as a magic means to make counties affluent, seem directly calculated to turn' any gold that remains with the clubs to dross. There is, for example, that moss-grown plan for the teams to be divided Into two divisions, as in League football, with the failures of the top group relegated and the successes of the lower group promoted. Consider what would happen to unhappy Leicestershire if such a scheme could come into operation next season. In order to confine the first division to fourteen teams, as proposed, Leicestershire, together with two others at the bottom end of last year’s championship table, would be cast into a second division. This would mean that Instead of being able to play Derbyshire, Middlesex Yorkshire, Gloucestershire, Kent, and other teams of gate-drawing personality, they would have to fill up their fixture list with matches against such dwellers in the outer-darkness as Hertfordshire, Berkshire, Norfolk and probably—the irony of it!—the second elevens of their old opponents. If anyone can suggest a scheme more directly calculated to reduce almost to vanishing point Leicestershire’s membership and to disgust that county’s most loyal “shilling public,” I should be delighted to hear of it. It is unlikely, too, that P. F. Warner’s well-meant proposal to curtail considerably the number of games played by the first-class courtties and to introduce more games of the presentative type—the North-South type—would help cricket finance. Even with a restricted programme the clubs would have to pay the same rent; they would have to pay the same rates; they would have to spend as much to keep the ground in order, and there would be little decrease in other expenses. A certain’’sum might be saved in professionals’ wages in cases where the players are paid so much per match, but the rate of remuneration is already so small that young men, no matter how promising, are reluctant to turn aside from their ordinary jobs for the precariousness of a cricketer’s life. Against this it Is certain that in some instances a reduced fixture list Would mean a reduced membership; nor is it probable that the counties’ Share of the “gates" of the additional representative matches would be of an appreciable amount. Experiences of the past show that people do not rush to such games unless they have come Test match connection, as with a Test trial. They prefer a competition.

A juggle with fixtures cannot lead far. Cricket must stand on its merits as a game. That is why much is to be said for Lord Hawke’s reminder that there is more in batsmanship than not getting out. Strokes still matter. Let the coaches and the county committees impress upon thenyoung men that it is not a cardinal sin to hit the ball in the air, that it Should be a point of honour not to allow a slow bowler to dispense with a man in the “deep,” and that it is a Slur on the family name to permit a fieldsman to remain alive In a position in front of the wicket less than half-a-dozen yards from the bat. But even If every batsman had the magic of a Hammond and a Woolley combined, and if a dozen teams were running Heck and neck for the championship, the game could not pay its way if a big proportion of the matches were Washed out by rain. That is eleipentary sense.