Sir Andrew Strauss, who has temporarily stepped into the breach left by Giles’s departure and by the non-existence of a chairman, was an England captain and opening batsman of renown. He was also Giles’s predecessor, leaving his job for the terrible reason of the tragic illness and untimely death of his wife, Ruth, in whose name he has since raised a fortune for charity.
One can have no doubt about his character or capabilities, but it is perhaps as well if his remains a temporary appointment. It was he, after all, who when in post previously, directed the energies of the English game towards success in one-day cricket. That England won (by the skin of their teeth) the last World Cup was partly down to him. But in directing energies towards that aim, first-class cricket started to descend into irrelevance. That was obvious to me, to other cricket writers, and to hundreds of thousands who follow the game. It was apparently not obvious to the ECB, whose luminaries appeared to be taken by surprise when, as a direct consequence of this policy, the debacle occurred in Australia a few weeks ago.
The ECB need people of genuine vision and strategic ability to act as chairman and chief executive, and to support those officers. There ought to be a debate about whether, if a chief executive is on top of his job and does it properly, a managing director is actually necessary, or whether the aspect of Giles’s job that focused on selection should be highlighted.
The man who replaces him could be designated chief selector, with an appropriately in touch and qualified small committee to assist him; and he needs a mind of his own. However, while I am aware there is, with the temporary exception of Sir Andrew, virtually no leadership in the ECB, the board’s main stakeholders – the counties and MCC – seem to be addressing the current problems in a remarkably relaxed fashion.
The 2022 fixture list emphasises the fact that someone, somewhere, just doesn’t get it. Seven rounds of the Championship will be completed by May 22. While this will allow the selector(s) to have a decent look at players before the first Test series starts on June 2, they will mostly have been playing in conditions that do little to help our batsmen or to breed that other commodity of which the national side is short, slow bowlers. There are just two rounds in June and three in July; but no first-class cricket will be played in the county championship between July 28 and September 5, so that players may prostitute themselves in The Hundred.
Can the ECB not see how this preposterous spread of fixtures limits the opportunities to develop the very skills our national side desperately needs? If our Test team fails against New Zealand and South Africa during the summer (and stranger things have happened), how are replacement players going to show off their skills at the time, other than in forgettable and meretricious slogfests, and what chance are out-of-form players going to have for time in the middle to get themselves back into shape?
The days of touring teams playing counties throughout the summer have long gone – destroyed not just by the cramming-in of back-to-back Tests and one-day internationals, but by counties, in the days when there were such fixtures, using them to give the 2nd XI a day out and therefore not making them competitive. To cap it all, England are going on a short tour of the Netherlands in June to play some apparently important one-day internationals.
Hard decisions must be taken – if we want a decent Test team we must encourage county cricket
Yet again, first-class cricket is at the bottom of the heap while the ECB concentrates on making money from short-form cricket. We are promised another review of the structure of domestic cricket, but if it is embarked upon by people without vision, whose only thought is the cash register and who have no imagination about how the highest form of cricket could be encouraged and played, then it is an utter waste of time.
Hard decisions must be taken, starting with the realisation that if we want a decent Test team we must encourage county cricket and make something of it. It seems that must wait at least one more season. Having only one round of championship cricket during the state-school holidays is insane. How is that going to attract a following for the game? How will the appeal of Test cricket spread if it is not shown on free-to-air television? Don’t the ECB understand how international sides playing frequently on county grounds in former times generated a following for the game?
There should be more first-class cricket – 14 games a year is too few – and this means tackling the problem of too much short-form cricket. Either T20 or The Hundred has to go: this self-inflicted wound has become the ECB’s hardest decision of all. To chop T20 when the rest of the world plays it would be commercial suicide. To chop The Hundred would humiliate the ECB and those who staked their reputations on it. However, those reputations are already in shreds, so a little more disaster will make no difference. Freeing up the whole of August would revolutionise the way we play cricket, and ultimately how well we play it. Or, as I have argued here repeatedly, the ECB and indeed counties could develop two teams, one for serious cricket and one for the ephemeral short games. That would also give us a chance of breeding a decent Test team.
The counties must get a grip of the ECB for their own sake. They will soon become pointless if Test cricket collapses. One-day matches can, and would, be played as in India by manufactured teams. The Hundred has pointed the way. Is that what the counties want? I doubt it. But they are the main stakeholders and must act.
I fear that the goose that laid Test cricket’s golden egg has already been killed. It is up to the ECB whether it tries to breed another one, or whether we are nearing the end of Test history.
