Let’s act now or we’ll lose game we love

THERE is always a fascinating diversity to the letters each week, but is it time that they become more centred on a single issue?

When I first watched Sussex there were 42 County Championship days in Sussex and 42 away days.

Now, in 2016, we are down to 32 home and away and by next year we will have 28 each and that is not to mention the loss of some great outgrounds as the overall number of first-class matches will have reduced from 16 to 7.

It will be little surprise if, in the near future, that becomes six as three divisions may be introduced, or, heaven forfend, five if no new teams are added to the existing 18.

Admittedly, I am somewhat antediluvian in my approach to cricket and even as an eight and nine-year-old Sussex supporter I could not conceive that a cricket match comprising a mere 130 overs was a serious contest, despite Ted Dexter’s mastery of the concept in the early seasons of the Gillette Cup.

I fear that we are sleepwalking to disaster.

While our attention is grabbed elsewhere by franchises and other nebulous arguments and discussions we are overlooking the threat to “real” cricket and the possibility that Colin Graves is masterminding a route to produce 18 graves for first-class cricket.

Do we want to be the generation who watches cricket die? It behoves all cricket lovers to arise from their post-prandial slumber.

We must become militant, to prove that we will not stand idly by as a game that produces grace, elegance, friendship, patience, understanding and an enduring power to heal pain and sorrow is reduced to a grubby parody of itself with men wielding ever larger bats with smaller boundaries mis-hitting “maximums” (a misnomer if they only just thought: run three and a boundary overthrow).

So, may I plead with the members of all county cricket clubs to unite and save the game.

Remember the 65-over game was once the panacea, and then the 40-over game.

But each, in its turn, was exposed as a fraud and when the 20-over variation with its lack of nuance and intrigue is also exposed as such what will then be left?

We need county cricket, which has been dying since its inception, according to the Press, to be still there so that there is something from which the next new, fatuous and short-lived version can be formed.

Inundate your county CEOs with emails, letters and phone calls and, as county members, let us unite and co-ordinate our protests and prove that we cannot be silenced and, certainly, not be taken for granted.