Fordyce Maxwell: 'We have never taken to a five-day game that can end in a draw'

Published on Saturday 11 April 2009 20:13

THIS year's edition of Wisden, the cricketers' bible, has just been published – I realise that is not the most riveting of starts, but keep taking the tablets and we'll get through this together – with its encyclopaedic mix of facts, figures and comment.

One fact in particular impressed me – that when 26,000 children were asked which sports they would like more access to cricket came 21st. Not only behind football, way ahead first, or badminton, which came eighth, or rugby which must have been in there somewhere, and presumably behind skate-boarding, marbles and ice-skating, but behind rounders.

Now I've played meanly competitive rounders, skills acquired at primary school coming good during the great Dol de Bretagne Keycamp match of summer 1990, approximately 20 a side, Britain v the Rest of Europe. A casualty count that included a broken nose, cracked collarbone and a few minor flesh wounds, and several confrontations as Britons tried to prove indubitably that shouting would help Johnny Foreigner understand the rules, can't dim the memory of a heroic win.

It's a tough game at the top level. But worrying to see it higher up a sports wish list than cricket. However, I'm not convinced by Wisden editor Scyld Berry's theory that cricket has lost its appeal because Test matches are no longer shown in five-day entirety on free-to-air television, which we used to call the BBC.

The loss of coverage to – pass the garlic and silver bullet – the Sky empire means, says Berry, that massive public interest generated when England beat Australia in 2005 in a gripping Test series has been lost.

He should have added that this massive interest was not universal and never has been. In Scotland, for instance, for all the intermittent heroics of the country's national team and several active leagues, cricket has never registered more than one on a scale of nought to 100. A public thirled to 90-minute football and the occasional penalty shoot-out has never taken to a five-day game that can end in a draw.

The fact that after beating the top side in the world, England's cricketers thought they had done it all and relaxed, some often as relaxed as newts, and lost the return series 5-0, probably had more to do with the loss of fleeting public interest.

Nor does lack of TV time explain badminton's appearance at number eight on the wish list. What does explain cricket's slide down the scale is that children playing any sport now want all the gear, and a lot is needed for cricket.

It wasn't always that way, when a knock-up game used a bat cut out of an old rail and whatever ball could be found. Or later, when most of us who played club cricket did so sharing bats, pads, gloves and – unhygienic, but necessary – the "box" used to protect what commentator Brian Johnston insisted on referring to as "the lower tummy".

These days cricket is a middle to high income sport and increasingly an old man's game – look at the average age of any side near you – and why Wisden, for all its magnificent coverage is an older man's book. Sad, Scyld, but not much to do with TV.