Cricket red ball or white

[DracoM]

Am hoping there will be Forumistas who want to react to the state of the game.

[muzzer]

I find it really depressing that despite the level of investment the professional game has seen in the past 15 years, we have now completely fallen down as a national Test side. There’s been massive failure in management and very poor leadership on the field, inter alia. I don’t see things getting better anytime soon, with the obsession in making the Hundred work etc etc. So, grumble but no solutions, sorry.

[DracoM]

Totally agree......which is rather why I am a bit chilly about the impact of Robert Key as major force on English cricket!!

[antongould]

I feel the game is not in a good state. For the first-class competitions to prosper you need a lot of interest and commitment at the grass roots. But I don’t think that is there - if you look at league cricket around here the average age of the teams is going up as the youngsters are not coming through. Teams are disappearing or clubs that had say three teams now only have one …….
I fear the worst …….

[Historian]

It's almost as if selling off the television rights to Sky (and then others) and therefore making it very costly to watch live cricket on the television has had some kind of an impact on interest among young people.

Cricket has to work harder to get young people involved: it can be a costly game to learn and time-consuming to play. Football dominates sports coverage and had done since the (great god) Premiership was set up (more TV money). I know that the Hundred is aimed at raising cricket's profile (and has certainly achieved that for women's cricket) but it will do very little for first-class cricket and that will, in turn, cause continuing English weakness in Test cricket.