Is Youth Cricket really dying?
Earlier this week, Colin Graves, Head of the England and Wales Cricket Board, made the depressing observation that, “the younger generation, whether you like it or not, are just not attracted to Cricket”. This is especially unfortunate from a man who is the custodian of the future of the game. It is also untrue.
Many clubs are currently turning kids away from oversubscribed junior programmes and some schools can't provide enough games for all the boys and girls who want to play. The game continues to have inherent appeal for a great many young children. The idea that Cricket ever appealed to all is deluded: enthusiasm should not be confused with an inflexible compulsion to take part.
What has changed is the capacity to retain young people in the game. There is probably a cocktail of factors which contribute to this, but one is certainly the experience of Cricket which young players have. The popular wisdom is that the game must be made ever shorter, so that it takes up less time. The assumption is that teenagers need instant entertainment that is quickly over. But that isn't how computer games work. They manage to engage the same teenagers for hours on end; they concentrate, strategise and focus.
It is a mistake to think that the only factor in the attractiveness of Cricket is the length of the game. Otherwise it would simply be a race to the bottom: 20 over games? 10 overs? 1 over? 1 ball? The issue is one of opportunity and democracy. What is unfashionable is the redundancy inherent in the game: not just the total amount of time the game occupies, but the proportion of that in which individual players do nothing. Compressing the game with the same number of players simply exacerbates this. An 11 a side game that is 40 overs long provides twice as much opportunity to bat and bowl than one which is 20 overs long. It is not batting and bowling that have become unfashionable, but sitting on the side or fielding in redundant positions. Seeking ever shorter formats does not address this fundamental issue.
To increase involvement in a shorter game, there needs to be fewer players in each team. 6, 7, 8 a side reduce the redundancy. Pairs Cricket is fine, but each pair needs to bat for a meaningful amount of time. Each bowler needs sufficient involvement. Fielders need to be active: running, stopping, diving, throwing - not standing round in a sedentary circle. Smaller sided games make all this possible. The only argument against reducing the number of players is that teams have been of 11 players since 1697. Varying the number of players is as logical as varying the number of overs, or the colour of the ball.
The shift has to be to a more democratic game, which better shares opportunities. And it has to be more active. Simply shortening the game does not achieve this. Neither does changing the colour of the trousers. There has to be more involvement, and less redundancy.
There is an irony that the girls’ game is growing in schools at an unprecedented rate, profiting from the demise of Rounders. This is accompanied by a similar level of decline of boys’ cricket in some schools. Maybe a difference is that those running the female school game are not mired in history, and consumed by the race to the 11 a side, hard ball version. They are free to adopt, and invent, more appropriate formats. And they work.
But it's not just about the instant game. The history of Cricket was based on the assumption that a longer game is a better game. This hasn't changed completely, but the long match just doesn't engage everyone. It never did. But it still engages some. Schools and clubs have to continue to promote the attractions of the longer game. The balance between bat and ball. Patience may not be fashionable, but it is not irrelevant. This may be a minority game, but it is an important one.
There is a difference between participation Cricket and the performance version. Some kids will always be driven to master complex skills of batting and bowling, and be driven by high performance. The game has always catered well for them, and this area of provision is in good shape. Cricket has, however, a poor record of engaging the less able, historically confining them to watching the best players accumulate huge scores, whilst dwelling at the bottom of the batting order and fielding on the boundary. The game has to do better than that to make itself attractive. Suspending its historic obsession with the technical, and unthinking acceptance of redundant roles in the game can help. All team games face the challenge of reinventing themselves to fit the 21st century. Adaptation is a feature of evolution.
The issue is not with Cricket. It is with its leaders, promoters and deliverers. If they believe that children are “just not attracted to Cricket”, then this will be a self fulfilling prophesy. Neither will there be any search for the creative solutions to leverage the fact that enormous numbers of young children participate enthusiastically in the game in schools and clubs every week. Retaining adolescents and young adults in the game is more difficult. But not impossible. Those schools and clubs that have attractive, varied and well-led programmes still have strong cultures of participation. It's not the game, it's the experience of it, that determines whether or not it is engaging.
The future is in a mixed economy. Cricket can be different things to different people. Instant forms of the game may make it more accessible, but longer formats have to grow out of that. Reading is the same: a minority of people love Shakespeare, but no one suggests that it should be abandoned. A successful cricket programme will pursue participation as well as high performance. But it will use different tools to do these different jobs. And maybe different team sizes.
The landscape of youth Cricket has changed. But thousands of kids still love it. The game still has inherent appeal, and a valuable place, though it might not be the same place as a generation ago.
It might help if the head of the game in the country believed in that as well.