Throughout the 2015 international season we’ve been researching the price of tickets for England matches. We approached each host county and asked them to tell us how many seats they were selling, for each match, in which price brackets. Only Durham, Glamorgan, and Warwickshire, were prepared to disclose the exact number of tickets available for specific prices. For those grounds we were able to calculate the average ticket price. For the others, the best remaining option was to work out...
Balancing the tightrope
Although team selection issues may divide opinion, it almost goes without saying that the vast majority of English cricket fans are appalled by the ECB’s institutional conduct over recent years. The carve-up of cricket the board agreed with Cricket Australia and the BCCI last year is in my view the most egregious of all of their misdemeanours, given its far-reaching implications for the entire game – but supporters are just as angry with the continued absence of cricket on free-to...
Why are we playing less cricket?
64,000 fewer of us have played cricket this year. The ECB’s 2014 National Cricket Playing Survey revealed a seven per cent fall in participation from 2013, down from 908,000 people to 844,000. The figures are based on responses from 37,500 individuals, although it’s not clear – so far as I can see – who was surveyed. Are these people league club players, or village/parks cricketers? The research also determined that, to quote the ECB: 247,000 were ‘Core’ players who play...
The Kevin Pietersen Sacking: The Silence Is Deafening
Ten days have now passed since the confidentiality agreement expired and still the ECB haven’t explained the Kevin Pietersen sacking. What are they waiting for? Huge significance was attached to the lifting of Pietersen’s gagging clause. What would he say? And now he’s said it, what does it mean? But amid all the heat and noise around his book (see our review by Tregaskis), it’s been slightly overlooked that the ECB themselves are now also free to speak. They can tell us...
Secrets and lies
It’s now only three weeks until Kevin Pietersen’s book is published. Across the crickosphere the air hums with the sound of knives being sharpened, loins being girt, hatches being battened down. It is the eve of the war. This won’t be pretty. During the next month or so, we will hear claims and counter claims, perceptions aplenty, and just maybe, some specific and genuine information which sheds light on the ugliest chapter in English cricket history since the rebel tours. On...
The turtle tank revisited
Over the last twenty four hours this blog has found itself at the eye of a Twitter storm. It began yesterday when Piers Morgan reTweeted a link to an article by Tregaskis we published in May – Inside The Turtle Tank. It examines the management culture of the ECB, and how its failings in regard to Kevin Pietersen led to his estrangement and ultimate sacking from the team. Jonathan Agnew took fierce exception to the article, describing it as “embarrassing garbage”, and a...
