CMJ

by Christopher Martin Jenkins

  It is all a question of balance. ‘Take but degree away’, the Bard warned, ‘and hark what discord follows.’ In India the launch of the IPL was novel because of the city franchise concept and the huge sums being paid to the players. Other countries have hastened to exploit the trend but, as with all sport (all entertainment indeed) created for television, it will be overdone. Some games will be exciting, some boring. People will truly need to care who wins if the concept is to succeed in the long term.

  Assuredly the IPL made a dramatic initial impact. Its very wealth and exposure demanded that it would. But one of the virtues of the World Twenty20 tournaments that are now a regular feature on the ICC’s agenda is their brevity: two weeks. By contrast the first franchised league tournament in India consisted of fifty-nine games in six weeks and by 2011 it had grown to seventy-four. Advertising on Indian television, measured in billions, was expected to raise even more revenue than in the six-week ICC World Cup on the subcontinent that preceded it, but soon even Indians may feel that the pudding has been over-egged.

  That, of course, has been true of professional cricket in England and Wales for too long. ECB officials encouraged the ambitions of the owners of extra grounds as international venues and challenged them to bid against each other for the right to stage games, with the consequence that by 2011 many of them had got into serious financial trouble. Worthy as the modern developments at Durham, Southampton and Cardiff have been, they have merely obliged the board to accept more and more international fixtures. It is easy to be wise in hindsight but the same officials made terrible fools of themselves when they got into bed with a Texan called Allen Stanford who turned out to be an international fraudster. Not one of them resigned and none, alas, seemed capable of putting principle before the pursuit of more and more cash.

  It would be a surprise if, despite these grave misjudgements, a City-based franchised competition is not attempted in Britain soon, either by the ECB or by a commercial group. With some courage and foresight, however, and a less obsessive belief that more income necessarily means a better game, it should be possible in the long term to preserve eighteen, or at least sixteen, first-class counties as the best bridge between the amateur and professional game in England. County cricket evolved and has proved flexible, despite seldom making sense as a business at any stage of its history. In a country where most of the population now lives in cities it is not the system that would best serve the game in Britain if you started with a clean sheet but with salary caps, still greater incentives for fielding a higher proportion of England qualified players, and profits from international cricket shared only on condition that significant money is spent on local clubs and schools, the county system can adapt to the latest seismic shifts in the game.

  The columnists who run down domestic cricket without watching it themselves are in most cases simply ignorant. They fail to recognise the work done by counties for young cricketers in their areas, or the fact that standards are high, especially in the intensely competitive four-day championship. They ignore the fact that players such as Alastair Cook, Ryan Sidebottom and the South African-bred Jonathan Trott have in recent years moved seamlessly into Test cricket because they are better prepared for the step up than they once were. They forget that the Championship is comfortably the best-watched domestic competition in the world, even allowing for the fact that most of it is played when the great majority are unable to watch it. Millions still follow it voraciously online, witness page hits for county cricket on Cricinfo and other specialist websites such as Thecricketer.com that exceed twenty-five million season after season.

  There are those who think Test cricket to be doomed as well as county cricket. But the two-innings version of cricket will always have more possibilities than a limited single innings; and games played for their country will always mean more to professionals, deep down, than those for cobbled-together franchise clubs, no matter how great the rewards.

  Crucial decisions by captains or umpires; changing pitch or weather conditions; sudden shifts of fortune; moments of individual inspiration: these are the things that decide Test matches and give them their fascinating complexity.

  One has to accept, of course, that professional players think deep into their pockets as well as to their hearts. They recognise that Test cricket is the supreme form of the game and the shop window that makes them famous and attractive but for these reasons it has to be the form of the game that pays them best. By the same token, if administrators say, as they all do, that Tests are what matter most, they have to market them better.

  It could only encourage the sometimes silent majority who follow the Test scene, without necessarily having the time or money to go to watch matches themselves, that India, economically the most powerful cricket nation, overtook Australia and South Africa in 2009 as, officially, the best at the five-day game. That was a profound consolation, surely, for their ‘failure’ to win the Twenty20 World Cup in England in that year. (Not many will remember who actually did win it.)

  In a restless world that thrives on change and novelty it may well be that the rolling World Test Championship to which the ICC is gradually feeling its way will give impetus and focus to some of those series that currently attract only local interest. A championship every third year, with fifty- and twenty-over World Cups in between, would have a symmetry that the international game currently lacks.

  When the ICC decided to experiment with a system that allowed players to refer umpiring decisions made on the field to a third umpire equipped with television replays and other gadgetry, they over-ruled a principle that applies to every cricketer in non-televised matches, namely that he or she should accept an umpire’s verdict without demur.

  I thought that Hawk-Eye, which goes by other names elsewhere, would shorten Test matches but although it has helped spinners it is often one of the batsman’s many friends. In cases where the fielding captain asks for a review of an umpire’s ‘not out’ lbw decision, for instance, bowlers are not even allowed the full nine inches’ width of the wicket if balls are predicted to be hitting only the side of the stumps; or the full height of the wicket if the prediction shows less than half of the ball touching the bails.

  Test cricket needs pitches that give the bowlers some help. That is not to say that it needs surfaces that make life impossible for batsmen but the fall of a wicket is the most dramatic moment in the game. The old convention that the benefit of doubt should go to the batsman was never part of the law. It reflected a time when umpiring was much more prone to error than it is now. The mantra of the ICC’s cricket director, David Richardson, was that his ‘Decision Review System’ would prevent umpiring howlers. Patently that is desirable but if technology is to be so widely used the first principle should be to see that justice is done.

  These are big problems but passing problems too. In the literal sense it could, indeed, be argued that cricket has entered another golden age. Only if it is viewed solely as a means of making gold will it cease to captivate the young. Enthusing the next generation is the prime responsibility of players and administrators alike and whether or not they are succeeding is the true test of the game’s health.

  33

  MCC PRESIDENT

  England v. India at Lord’s: the final day of the 100th Test between the two countries, by chance also the 2000th Test since it all became official in 1877. The sun is out, the air is warm and people have been queuing since three in the morning to get a prime place to watch a day’s cricket pregnant with possibilities. England’s players run round the outfield an hour before play starts. Ringing cheers echo round the stands as they pass each one: Allen, Tavern, Mound, Edrich, Compton, Grandstand, Warner. The trees at the Nursery End, shining like pearls in their mid-summer splendour, wave gently as if in supporting acclamation.

  When two Indian batsmen emerge from the nets at the Nursery End to cross the velvety turf towards the stately old pavilion, still more excited cheers arise. Anglo-Indians are here in force and the Teb
bit test has never worried them. There is Rahul Dravid and there . . . is it Sachin himself? Will he score his 100th international hundred today to save his country once again?

  My hope, like that of many, is that England will win but only after the phenomenal Tendulkar has reached his landmark. I watch, entranced, from the President’s box, preparing myself for a day entertaining no less expectant guests.

  Jim Swanton, who loved MCC, served on various committees and would love to have been asked to be the club’s President, used to instil in me that the announcement of the new incumbent every May was a matter of national significance and should be an important news story. These days it might attract a line or two in some daily newspapers but even to the majority of MCC’s 18,000 members, let alone the man on the Clapham omnibus, the presidency is not something that much concerns them. Because of the importance of Lord’s to English cricket, however, it is still a role with some influence.

  That I was in the Grandstand rather than the Media Centre in July 2011 stemmed from a telephone call soon after my retirement as The Times cricket correspondent, from Sir Michael Jenkins. I had only briefly met this charming and erudite fellow, a distinguished diplomat who had also written a beautifully crafted memoir of his childhood experiences in France long before he turned to a successful career in business. He became the first chairman of MCC, having been the chief architect of the subtle modernisation of the club’s governance towards the end of the 20th century. The spirit of sensible modernisation that the changes introduced encouraged many more commercial activities and led in 2006 to the appointment of the avant-garde Australian Keith Bradshaw as Secretary and Chief Executive of MCC. He succeeded my Cambridge contemporary, the respected, more conservative Roger Knight.

  MCC’s main committee is, and always has been, high-powered so I was flattered to be asked if I would consider putting myself forward for election. I requested a year to sort out my altered circumstances but said that I would stand in 2009. It is an illustration of the popularity of what I have done for a living that more members should have voted for me than for anyone else, including the man in second place, Sir John Major!

  I had only been on the MCC committee since the previous October when John Barclay, the 2009/10 President, rang me at home one March evening as I sat in my office contemplating the imminence of spring. At the time I was feeling my way, impressed by the wide range of the club’s business and the quality of the members around me, not least the recently departed chairman, Charles Fry and the shrewd, quietly efficient new one, Oliver Stocken.

  John himself was proving a popular and conscientious president, greatly helped by his no less ebullient wife, the artist Renira. I had shared a hundred partnership with him for MCC at Brighton years ago and we had got to know one another better in recent years, especially since I had become a trustee of the Arundel Foundation that he directs. I thought that he was probably calling on Arundel matters that evening. This being one Englishman talking to another he began by discussing the weather, before moving on to the recent cricket in Bangladesh. Then the bombshell. ‘I’ve got something much more important to ask you. How would you feel about becoming the next president?’

  I was dumbfounded and said so. I asked for a night to think about it and to discuss the implications with Judy. Whether or not I accepted, no one else on earth was to know about this, including my children. The name of the next president is always a tightly guarded secret until the club’s AGM in May.

  John encouraged me before I put the phone down. ‘You know everyone in the game’ (well, a lot of them). ‘You know everything there is to know about cricket’ (hardly). ‘You make brilliant speeches’ (a matter of opinion). ‘You’ll be brilliant, I know you will’ (typical Barclay: a prince of hyperbole). ‘And Judy will be brilliant too’ (true).

  So many others had given much more time to the affairs of the‘Premier Club’ than I had, not least, of course, because being a daily cricket correspondent had precluded any closer involvement on my part. I had ‘match-managed’ (captained and raised teams) in various MCC matches against schools throughout the 1970s, served for three years on the Bi-Centenary committee under the chairmanship of the dynamic Hubert Doggart, in the mid-1980s; and in 2007 I had been surprised and honoured to be asked to give the Cowdrey Lecture at Lord’s, the first time that it had been made by anyone other than a famous Test player.

  The lecture was a great opportunity to pontificate in a different forum and it was generously received. This was a recognition, perhaps, that journalists and broadcasters might have a useful overview of affairs in world cricket, but the presidency was a different kettle of fish. I felt just like Vic Marks, whose comment when he heard the news a few weeks later was a rather bemused ‘bloody hell’, followed by his usual chuckle.

  I knew when I took on the purple that it would be a very busy year. I was aware that bouts first of pneumonia then, from nowhere, of hepatitis, had aged me a bit over the previous twelve months. But this was an honour and I owed some return to the game that had paid my bills for so long. I would not welcome the extra travel and all the nights in London; I would miss the opportunities to play more golf as I had planned; and endless committee meetings are not really my cup of tea. Nor did I want to give up altogether writing and talking about the game. Weighed against the opportunity to represent the largest, most famous and influential cricket club in the world, however, these were small sacrifices. I accepted John’s offer the following day and sat on the secret with Judy for a month or more before my appointment was announced at the AGM in May.

  Within weeks I realised what a tremendous privilege it was. MCC, the ‘private club with the public function’, has been a club for more than 220 years. By 2014 it will have been based on the present ground at Lord’s for 200 years. It is both the conscience of the recreational game and, through its world cricket committee, the independent voice of the international one.

  It guards the laws of the game and reviews them when necessary.

  It has a fixture list against schools and clubs numbering more than 450 a year. During my year one of the most pleasant duties was to present mementos during tea intervals in the first of the two Tests at Lord’s to the schoolboys who had scored hundreds or taken five wickets in the previous season against MCC. Each of them had spent a memorable day being entertained by club officials and many of them will become new playing members before long.

  MCC also runs and pays for several overseas tours a year, encouraging the game in faraway places as it always has. In 2011/12 there were tours to Namibia, Greece, Hong Kong and China, and Bermuda.

  The club has 18,000 full members, 5000 associate members, a long waiting list that it currently takes about twenty-one years to climb unless anyone joins as a player; and a loyal staff of around 200 people. Some of them have the responsibility of maintaining a big and still beautiful ground in the middle of London. The estate costs about £2 million a year just to maintain. At my first appearance at one of the quarterly meetings of the Estates committee, to give one inkling of what this involves, it was reported that there had been 1402 work orders on the lifts alone, 1172 of them routine checks by staff, the remaining 230 carried out by subcontractors every month.

  The Lord’s ground staff, under Mick Hunt, seem to be ceaselessly at work, even in the winter. Their base, a group of low, single-storey sheds beside the Nursery Ground, is a little empire in itself, filled with mowers and rollers and smelling of oil and grass. Men and machines produce what are regularly rated amongst the best pitches in the country, catering at different times for Test players, Middlesex home matches, military cricketers (not all of them medium), University players, schoolboys, club and village cricketers. I presided over examples of all of them during my year and only left disappointed after one of them, when the semi-finals and final of the Schools Twenty20 tournament in July, scheduled for the Nursery Ground, were ruined by wet weather. This is a fast-growing competition, however, and I hope that in future the semi-finals may be foll
owed by a final on the main ground to be played before one of Middlesex’s floodlit T20 matches, thus ensuring a larger crowd and an even greater buzz for the teams that reach Lord’s.

  Playing there, after all, is the dream of every keen cricketer from every country in the world, which is one reason why so much of my year was spent debating whether the ECB’s original intention of denying the West Indies a chance to play there on their tour of 2012 made any sense from anyone’s point of view. By a mixture of gentle diplomacy and hard bargaining we got there in the end, thus guaranteeing a far bigger crowd than the first Test of 2012, originally scheduled to be played at Cardiff, would otherwise have attracted. That, of course, also ensured that there would be a much greater profit for the ECB to distribute.

  I must beware romantic allusions to the sun never setting on cricket at Lord’s but the fact is that, thanks to a superb indoor school, the game is being played in some way virtually every day of the year, whatever the weather. The Club spends more on cricket than on anything else, naturally. The lion’s share of the budget, £600,000 a year at present, goes towards the sponsoring of cricket at Oxford, Cambridge, Cardiff, Durham, Leeds/Bradford and Loughborough, all universities with the requisite coaching, facilities and strong fixture lists to allow bright young students the chance to carry on both with their higher education and their hopes of a career in the professional game. In 2011 just on 20 per cent of the 397 England-qualified county cricketers had played for the six MCC Universities.

  Everything about MCC and Lord’s is lovingly preserved. The whole place is presented on Test match days like a bride on her wedding day. The Long Room, with its lofty ceilings, beautifully lit pictures and elegant decorations, is as lovely a stage for a public lunch or dinner as almost any palace or stately home. The members, and English cricket itself, can feel pride on such occasions. Visitors pay substantial amounts for their tickets but they know that they are somewhere special.