Today John Bartholomew returns with a couple of ideas that might breathe new life into the County Championship…
Most often my cricket watching is at the Oval. There is no finer time to be there than at a test match against India, with the regular test match full house enhanced by a huge body of partisan Indian supporters creating a great atmosphere. I am quite happy to admit that I also greatly enjoy the similar ambience at Friday night T20 games when the ground is full and the cricket is only part of the pleasure.
It is a bit different at County Championship games. Although the pavilion is generally quite busy with members, the typical soporific crowd of a few hundred (on a good day) is completely lost on the concrete banks. Those who return are only the diehards like myself who are prepared to watch patiently while Derbyshire compiles a huge score on the Kennington featherbed, punctuated by occasional distant ripples of polite applause.
It wasn’t always like this. I remember regularly sitting on the grass there at the boundary edge, with the terraces crowded behind me. There was real immediacy about the cricket. There were other good things too. A hot metal print shop that updated the penny scorecard at the fall of each wicket (surely we have the technology to do this easily now…). A scoreboard with a row of numbered lights along the top identifying the fielder as the ball was thrown in – numbers 1 to 11 of course, the batting order as on the card, no confusion with squad numbers. Test match stars playing regularly for their county sides. That was all in the fifties, the days when I got hooked.
Twenty odd years ago I watched an ODI at Eden Park in Auckland, New Zealand against England. For a rugby international, Eden Park has a capacity of 50,000. Transformed with a drop-in wicket, a respectable enough cricket crowd of around 10,000 was similarly lost – just not enough people to bring the place to life. Even the Barmy Army had little impact. I was in New Zealand the next time England toured (my daughter lived there) and they never played at Auckland, preferring to stage the test match two and a half hours down the road at the little riverside town of Hamilton (March 2008). It was a good decision. The ground surrounded by grassy banks was a delightful place to pay five dollars at the gate, and settle down with my own folding chair for five days that included a Sidebottom hat-trick before England succumbed to its customary batting collapse in the fourth innings. Same number of spectators. Ground seemed full.
Back home, it is easy to see the difference when Surrey play at Guildford or at the now lamented Whitgift School, or when Kent entertain them at Beckenham for a real local derby. Cricket grounds, not stadia. Same number of spectators. Ground full. The small grounds and the local crowd create that immediacy that is so lacking on those Oval days. I know that the same applies when other counties stray away from their main ground to stage local annual cricket festivals whose relative rarity ensures a sense of occasion.
This was in my mind when a few years ago I suggested at a Surrey members’ forum that – perhaps as an experiment once a year at first – Surrey should declare a deckchair day at the Oval, with the option of sitting at the boundary edge like in the old days. (Sitting on the grass doesn’t work for me any more – I’d never manage to get up). It seemed that those present thought this a pleasant and creative idea, greeted with smiles all round – but of course after a bit of burbling about health and safety it never happened.
I am sure that if county teams went out and about across their counties more – bringing joy to the best club grounds and to outlying towns and even villages – there would be a much greater appetite for championship games. And the almost moribund championship certainly needs a boost.
John Bartholomew
Nice idea in principle. But Counties have been trying to get rid of outgrounds for years. Moving the circus around is costly and disruptive.
One place where the CC can still be watched from a deckchair is Hove – but for how much longer? The CC at Hove I mean, not the deckchairs.
I’ve never quite understood this English fetish about crowd sizes. If the play and the players can’t generate interest and intensity, are some drunks in fancy dress going to? It’s important plenty of people are paying attention to the game but they don’t have to be physically in the stadium to do that.
Good thinking. No 1: cricket isn’t football. Cricket is there to enjoy the ambiance and the occasion. All cricket grounds should have trees. To be able to sit outdoors in pleasant surroundings and be entertained by sportsmen/women doing great things is worth paying for. Yes the Oval and Lords for major events but the more accessible and pleasant cricket grounds are, the better for the supporters and the game.
…trees and only one scoreboard per county, which is a converted lorry you take to every outground…:-)
I don’t know about you guys, but I blame the ECB.
A nice piece, John : very evocative !
Yes. Enjoyable read!
Great. I love the out grounds. Being a Surrey supporter regularly go to Guildford and away grounds like Scarbrough, Hove ( deckchairs have gone), Taunton, Chesterfield (best of the lot) and even good old Northants. Yep the atmosphere is better, but the Oval does see crowds of 2000+ on some Championship days, which is more than Lords, Southampton or Edgbaston for example. Watching cricket at out grounds is so so different to the pissed up hit and giggle though isn’t it.
Lovely piece Mr Bartholemew,
I sense this is not your first attempt at cricket related writing.
Curiously, I actually read your piece much more slowly than many of the articles posted here.
More please sir.
Hear ! Hear !
The deckchair day brings back memories of when I used to watch Northants many years ago. I’ve moved to Scotland now and watch Scotland home games sitting on plastic chairs (but they could easily be deckchairs) around the boundary edge. It’s so much more sociable. Lets hope the idea takes off.
It’s not that counties don’t like outgrounds, they don’t own them and it’s expensive to make sure that the wicket and other facilities are up to scratch for the crowds. I believe Kent get support from Tunbridge Wells District Council to play there. It’s a lovely ground (when it doesn’t rain for four days on the trot), but it’s not easy to keep going. Canterbury has a lot of soul, and surely the possibility of taking your own deck chair, but doesn’t see much cricket in high summer any more.
Good cathedrals need their boundary deckchairs! Growing up watching Hants in the 70s the outfields were often a forest of games, on Sundays almost as much used by spectators as the players. Encouraging it more now might help.
The problem with going around the club grounds for county games is county grounds are little used enough as it is, the off season being longer than on, also if you’re a member you are paying for facilities these grounds often don’t have. Counties have to pay for their grounds all the year round so they need to make as much use of them as they can.
Nice article. Own chair at Scarborough is a good option. They will even let you store it overnight, under cover, with the barrels for the (outside) bar. No guarantee that someone won’t nick it, but I left my expensive camera and lens one time, on one of the benches near that bar, and it was handed in.
May I commend County 2nd XI cricket? For those who love the traditional game, in lovely surroundings, still a good standard, and no dick-heads – give it a try.
When I first went to Headingley in the 1960s it was unique in that most of the moving around was on a wide track between the main crowd and the pitch. Of course if you were sitting in the front rows at a test it was a bit of a pain in the backside because you were watching through moving spectators. However you could take a deck chair and sit between the walkway and the boundary, a wonderful way to attend matches. My earliest cricket memories include a slow walk up the hill to the ground with my grandfather, me carrying two deckchairs.
Very good article indeed