If ECB cannot protect traditional values, the MCC must fill the void
With the gradual decline of first-class cricket in the face of T20, it is time for Lord’s to take ‘heroic’ lead in saving the long form of the game
With Alex Hales and Adil Rashid having announced that they will not be playing first-class cricket for the foreseeable future, the progress towards the disintegration of professional cricket as we know it has taken another considerable step.
Twenty20 holds increasing attraction to cricketers with the skills to excel at it, because of the high earnings available for those selected for, and shining in, an Indian or Australian team. It would defy human nature, or require altruism of a rarefied sort, if players with relatively short shelf-lives were to pass up such an opportunity to fill their bank accounts. But it leaves the traditional game with a growing problem, and (not least to judge from ructions in the England and Wales Cricket Board this week) one neither the managers nor the custodians of cricket seem to have the wit, integrity or resolve to deal with. Hales and Rashid will not be the last to take this step. That Joe Root failed to be “bought” by any of the teams in overseas competitions because of his other commitments can only, eventually, accelerate the process.
Last month, MCC members received a communication from their chairman, Gerald Corbett, that began with a note of selfcongratulation at the ECB’S naming of Lord’s as one of the eight host grounds of the new city-based T20 tournament, beginning in 2020. Corbett was especially pleased that the involvement of Lord’s “will ensure the Club retains its relevance and influence across all formats of the game”.
Shortly afterwards, Andy Nash, an experienced businessman and former chairman of Somerset, resigned as a director of the ECB, saying its corporate governance in handling this issue, and the question of money paid to clubs, was not “acceptable”. Nash is committed to first-class cricket and to an 18-county structure; he has blown the whistle on the ECB’S failure to support that view.
MCC ran English cricket until half a century ago, when it handed responsibility for the professional game to the Test and County Cricket board – itself superseded by the ECB – and the amateur game to the National Cricket Association. History counts for something still in cricket, and the assumption by Corbett and others that MCC members retain an interest in the general welfare and future of the game is almost certainly right. If so, MCC should scrutinise what is going on in the ECB, not turn a blind eye to it.
Equally right, but largely unspoken, is that most MCC members value their membership most for their ability to attend Tests at Lord’s, to take guests to them and to turn up for the few Middlesex championship matches still played there: indeed, without the pavilion and its various bars hosting a decent turnout of members on a weekday afternoon of a championship match, hardly anyone would go. MCC members turn up in reasonable numbers for 50-over internationals but in embarrassingly small ones for T20 games.
Many members – I am one – fail to see T20 as embodying the values and skills that made cricket appealing. Indeed, it may be that