Flintoff discovers cricket’s lost youth
Ben Stokes is leading a revolution in the England Test team; meanwhile, his predecessor as talismanic all-rounder has taken on a task at least as difficult, and perhaps more important.
Andrew Flintoff is attempting to bring cricket to the unimpressed youth of his native Preston, and the resulting three-part documentary, Freddie Flintoff ’s Field of Dreams, should be required viewing for those in the England and Wales Cricket Board charged with getting people interested and involved in cricket beyond the walled garden of subscription TV and private education. As an alumnus of a state school, Stokes is in a minority in the current England set-up, where privately-educated players dominate.
Flintoff ’s market research with bored teenagers hanging around outside the chippy in the Lancashire town would suggest that the England team are not so much from different schools, but from a different planet.
The lads here believe cricket is “posh”, “slow” and “boring”; and the reality is that it will take more than jaunty hundreds from Jonny Bairstow to turn that tide.
Flintoff ’s scheme is to gather a squad of unlikely cricketers and fashion them into something like a team. A classic reality format, and nicely done. This viewer, at least, could empathise with Flintoff ’s apparent bewilderment and dismay that these boys could be, a) so uninterested in what we once called our national summer game, and b) so uncoordinated and lacking in sporting talent and athleticism.
If Flintoff was hoping to unearth a ruby in the dust then he must have been sorely disappointed. Be it poverty, lack of opportunity, too much Playstation, little interest in professional sports beyond football, the absence of suitable facilities, poor diet, the Government selling-off of playing fields, or any other reason, if this is the flower of young English manhood then God help us if the Germans try again. These kids, bless them, can barely throw or catch a ball, let alone bowl it.
Still, Flintoff reveals a genuinely kind, encouraging side, and deep wells of patience one might not expect. He correctly identifies that trying to get the boys involved and focusing on what they can do rather than what they cannot do is the way to keep them interested. They are a ragtag bunch, however Flintoff succeeds in keeping them coming to practice and eventually they manage to play something roughly resembling a match against a local club.
If the Preston Broadfield Estate is typical, and there is no reason to suppose it is not, then cricket has a serious marketing and outreach job to do. For whatever reason, almost all the boys on this show are white; it has been well documented that recreational cricketing interest around England is strong in Asian communities, although what should be a pipeline from that to the professional ranks is leaking.
That is another story, but the one here is about why state-educated children are not taking up the game and emulating Stokes and, indeed, Flintoff himself.
Flintoff sums up the frustration well: “The fact is that you have to be lucky or privileged to play cricket. Why? That is not a reflection of society. It shouldn’t be that way.”
The programme’s title, of course, references the 1989 Kevin Costner film whose famous line was, “If you build it, he will come”. England cricket – even including the posh lads – better start rolling up its sleeves and get to work.