County cricket - cornerstone or millstone?

Following England's ignominious exit from the World Cup, the public (at least, those who are still interested in cricket) and the media have been looking for someone or something to blame.

As usual, those first in the firing line are the faces of English cricket: the coach, the captain, the selector, the director, the chairman. Putting some of these people in the firing line is questionable, but it is easy to do.

Surely, though, the most attention should be paid to the structure that they exist within? After all, England has been poor at one day cricket for two decades now, and for most of that time has been poor at international cricket in general.

This is, surely, the result of domestic structures. Australian cricket was hailed for the strength of its six team Sheffield Shield for years. When moves were made to reduce the strength of the Shield 2nd XI competition, it was rightly derided for weakening the entire structure by throwing out older, experienced players. Now, Cricket Australia is trying to lure those players back.

This is in contrast to the ECB, who decided around the same time as CA was making that mistake to do a similar thing, restricting the amount of foreign players that could play in its not-so-strong eighteen team County Championship. They have since hailed this 

This alone is not the cause of all their problems, but it hints at some of the issues involved in a domestic structure almost as old as cricket itself. County cricket may not be so much the cornerstone of English cricket, as it is the millstone around cricket's neck.

History

The county championship started life as unofficial games played between join club sides from one county against a joint club side from another, beginning in the 18th century. Over time the county sides became increasingly important, and financially viable, and thus in 1889 was formed the County Championship, to begin the following year. It featured eight teams: Gloucestershire, Kent, Lancashire, Middlesex, Nottinghamshire, Surrey, Sussex and Yorkshire.

Regionally, this meant the south-east of England had as many teams as the rest of England, a theme that remains surprisingly constant throughout the Championship's history. In 1891, Somerset (south-east) joined. Of the next five to join in 1895, two more were from the south-east: Essex and Hampshire. The remaining two clubs to join before the First World War were from the Midlands. So, by 1905 there were sixteen teams, of which seven were from the south-east, and only two from the north. This, in many ways, reflects the place of the game within society at the time. England has been a remarkably class-driven society for a long time, and cricket was undoubtedly one of the favoured sports of the well off. The south-east was also the most common region in which to find these people - and still is.

There is also an interesting footnote to the use of historic counties as the basis for the cricket clubs in the CC. The year that the Championship began, 1890, was the same year that historic counties ceased to be used for administrative purposes. Two of the counties playing that year - Sussex and Yorkshire - had actually had their historic counties split into two and three region respectively. It was already outdated then. Over time, as society evolves, you would expect the sports they play will evolve with it. Cricket has managed to stubbornly resist such change from day dot.

Nonetheless, the system worked well. Up until the Second World War, the game retained its strong mix of amateurism and professionalism. Increasingly after the war, it became something of a finishing school. The little-by-little expansion of cricket into New Zealand, India, Pakistan and, most importantly, the West Indies meant that the most promising players from these countries often found their way into county cricket, which did two things: firstly, it improved the quality of the cricketers coming in. These international players would get to learn from players who had been on the county circuit for years, and had vast experience. This also provided South African players with a future. Would we truly comprehend the quality of players like Garth le Roux and Clive Rice without their county careers?

Secondly, it improved the quality of cricket in England. Having seventeen counties (Glamorgan joined in 1921) meant plenty of room for internationals and domestic players alike. Just as international players would learn from experienced domestic players, so domestic players could learn from experienced internationals. This meant that fringe players could be in a dressing room with Viv Richards one week, and trying out something they've learnt from him in a second XI match the next week. Their experience can then be disseminated to lower levels of the domestic competition.

So at a purely cricketing level, county cricket worked well, both for England and for the cricket world at large. There is, however, the other side of sport that has to be kept in mind - the business side. Low attendances aren't a new thing. The whole reason for the introduction of limited overs cricket, both List A and Twenty20, was to attract crowds that could help support the County Championship. Both of them did that job for a time. But today, county cricket does not appear to be doing its job on or off the field.

Today

When did county cricket stop doing its job on the field? The 2005 Ashes series seems to have been the beginning of the end. It was after this triumph that central contracts were brought in, as the ECB sought to take proper control of the national team and fully realise its business interests. The England Lions second team and the National Academy in Loughborough both came into prominence around this time as well. These three things had the combined effect of taking a large amount of county cricket's best players away from county cricket. Not merely the best fifteen or so playing Test cricket, but also the next fifteen playing for the Lions, and some promising young player at the academy. In a competition with such a large player base, taking the best away seriously damages the quality of the competition, as those taking their place are likely of lower ability than in smaller competitions.

In response the counties, in need of capable replacements, began increasing the number of Kolpak players they were bringing in. This reached its zenith in 2008, when the now-infamous match between Northants and Leics took place with thirteen foreign-born players. This became such a big issue within the press over the course of the season that the ECB managed to influence the Home Office to tighten the restrictions on overseas players for 2009. This appeased not only locals concerned about county cricket, but also Cricket South Africa, whose domestic competition was beginning feeling the pinch of the mass migration.

One other thing is striking about that scorecard. Can you tell which of Leicestershire's overseas players was their official overseas player, rather than a Kolpak player? If you said Boeta Dippenaar, congratulations! You must have a good memory, or cheated. Now, while I don't mean to sully Dippenaar as a player, there doesn't seem to be too much difference between him and the Kolpak players in terms of ability. He's certainly no Viv Richards, and this was true of international players across the board that year. Compare this to Leicestershire's overseas player twenty years earlier, Winston Benjamin. 

In fact, pick any match from 1988 and see which overseas players you can find. The quality of these players is substantial, and what is particularly striking is that players genuinely come from all over the world to play. What's also interesting is that, at the time, every club had two overseas players, but the two couldn't play in the same game. Generally this meant picking one well known, high quality overseas player, and one potential young gun. By 2008, this had turned into picking a decent overseas player who could hopefully play a full season, generally because they were either out of favour with their national selectors, or retired. The international schedule now works against county cricket, with both England and international players often unable to play county cricket.

The situation has become even worse since 2008. The limits on Kolpak players has meant that the players filling the void now are generally promising young players, the kind of players who would formerly have to work their way from the second XI to the top team through sheer weight of numbers. International schedules, meanwhile, have become so convoluted that clubs are left with two options - pick one of the aforementioned lesser internationals and hope they play the full season, or try to fill in the gaps with a bunch of different, better internationals. The latter sounds better in theory. For example, Surrey had Graeme Smith, Hashim Amla and Tillakaratne Dilshan for a month each in 2014. But when you keep in mind that the main benefit of such experienced internationals is in what they can teach the players, how much can they really do in a month? They don't really become embedded within the club, which is the kind of situation you want them to be in for them to teach well.

Off the field, things are not so clear. Some counties are in better financial health than others. Worcestershire, for example, have run at a profit for five years running, while Leicestershire relies on the ECB for two thirds of its turnover. Each county faces its own challenges. Surrey, for example, has a far easier time of it than Derbyshire, simply due to location. County cricket as a whole, though, faces a challenge in that the very nature of it being county cricket removes it from much of the population. In order to have good finances, you need decent crowds. In order to have decent crowds, you need to have a population that is both large enough to sustain the club, and connected enough to want to sustain the club by going and watching some cricket. 

Twenty20 was meant to be the way for county clubs to reconnect with the public, but overall attendances for the T20 Blast were greatly below what was hoped. County cricket is failing to connect with the people in the same way as it has in the Indian and Australian T20 leagues. In many ways this is the most important part of all. It's not as though any country has large attendances to domestic first-class or list A competitions. But T20 is the one the public comes to see...except in England. What's going on?

Fixturing and a lack of free-to-air television coverage has to share at least some of the blame, but these aren't basic parts of the structure of county cricket. If we're talking about a sport that wants to be seen by as many people live as possible, let's look at where these teams are based.

According to the UK's Office for National Statistics, there are eleven urban areas with a population of 500,000 or more within England and Wales. Ideally there would be at least one county team for each of these urban areas, spread out across the regions. Unfortunately, this is not the case. (Note: I have chosen to use the ONS urban areas rather than EPSON's metropolitan areas, as I think the former gives a better indication of what the public perceives as local).

Nine teams play in one of these urban areas, with a further two playing in areas with 450,000+. This means that there are seven teams playing in areas that could not reasonably be called large population centres.

Furthermore, three of the eleven urban areas (Liverpool, Tyneside and Sheffield) do not have a team. Durham may argue that Chester-le-Street serves Tyneside, but I believe it cannot reasonably be considered to do so (and the ONS agrees, removing Chester-le-Street from the Tyneside urban area at the last census).

Of the remaining seven clubs, four serve small urban areas (Derby, Essex, Northampton, Worcester) and three don't serve an urban area at all (Durham, Kent, Somerset). 

If a Twenty20 match happens in a place where no-one goes to see it, what's the point of playing it?

If a sport doesn't have a prominent ground in an urban area of 870,000, and a metro area of 2.3 million, does it even exist?

Unsurprisingly, given its predominance in places that aren't major urban areas, cricket has an image problem in England right now. And even when it is in a major urban area, it's as though that is the exception, rather than the norm. Even Leicestershire, one of the teams with a large urban area, and (even better) with a large Asian population, has mostly failed to connect with the local community, as new chief executive Wasim Khan has stated. Cricket is, perhaps more than it has been since before the Second World War, primarily the estate of the well-off. And, increasingly, the old.

Future 

None of this bodes well for the future, and the ECB knows it. The structure of county cricket is one of the things up for review under incoming chairman Colin Graves and chief executive Tom Harrison. Franchises specifically designed for a T20 cricket league have been mooted since the apparent success of the Big Bash League. (Whether the Big Bash needed to become a franchise league to become successful is for another time). But there seems to be a great deal of caution with doing too much to the counties themselves, even though the current situation is unsustainable. The ECB (or Cricket England and Wales, as it will soon be known - CEW?) must figure out a way

Just creating T20 franchises with eighteen teams contesting the other forms of the game won't work, for the simple reason that some clubs will miss out. Attempting to compensate these teams for not playing seems a very difficult thing to do, particularly as they wouldn't just be missing out financially. The primary aim of domestic cricket should be to ensure it is a breeding ground for the international team. Twenty20 tournaments and the like are simply designed to ensure that the breeding ground is sustainable. So, what does the ECB want county cricket to be? As far as I can see, there are three possible solutions.

Option one: Protectionism. Essentially, get the best England players back to playing county cricket. Lions tours and squads must never hurt county sides, and international players must be able to play for their county as often as possible. This reduces the pressure on county sides to find replacements, and also acts as a lure to get audience seeing England's best play for their local side.

Option two: Free market. Let the internationals roam free (to some degree at least). As long as they figure out a way to ensure that they aren't restricting international eligibility for those players, they could make county cricket the pinnacle of domestic cricket. It would genuinely be a finishing school for international players again, as it was when it was part of the reason the West Indies were so formidable.

Option three: Planned. Don't just make franchises for T20, make them for the whole competition. South Africa may yet again help out county cricket, this time by giving them a model to go from. CSA reformed their domestic competition with six franchises playing the four-day, major one day and T20 competitions, while the provincial teams played three-day and minor limited overs competitions. A similar model could well work in England, with one team for each region. This would also prevent the counties, especially the smaller ones, from disappearing, as the franchises are simply chosen from the best players in a particular region. This could also re-establish the role of minor counties, particularly in regions with less major county teams.

There is, of course, no reason why more than one of these can't be done. In any case, it is difficult to see how the county structure survives without some kind of change being made. As it stands today, the place of the sport itself in English society hangs in the balance, increasingly overtaken by other sports. An overhaul of the domestic competition may be just the kickstart English cricket needs.