Has non-competitive school sport killed cricket?

[E10 Rifle]

The ECB's top bod thinks so.

Reading Collier's quotes there, one can only speculate about the number of reactionary attitudes and positions hovering just beneath the surface, but is he right? How widespread is or was 'non-competitive sport' in schools? We didn't play cricket of any description at my school between 1983 and 1985, but that was because there was a teachers' strike, which is an entirely different loonyleft scapegoat, but I've never heard that widespread evidence of competitive games being prohibited.

Any thoughts or, more importantly, facts?

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Has non-competitive school sport killed cricket?

I'm not sure it's the "competitive" nature of cricket per se that's stopped it being played in schools, as much as the fact that it involves children hurling and hitting a rock hard ball at bone-crushing speeds towards one another, to play a game where even adult professional players have to get kitted out like bomb disposal experts to play. It's not surprising that most if not all comprehensive schools take one look at the health and safety risk assessments and conclude that a nice game of badminton would be better for all concerned.

Mind you, badminton isn't without its dangers.

[Etienne]

Has non-competitive school sport killed cricket?

We hardly played any cricket in the 80s, despite the fact that we had plenty of space to play in out in the countryside. I imagine lack of space/facilities is the major problem for urban schools rather than health and safety, I can't imagine that cricket injures more people than either football or rugby.

[Etienne]

Has non-competitive school sport killed cricket?

One fact that suggests Collier is talking bollocks is that England's u19 teams have generally been competitive, but they haven't kicked on.

[San Bernardhinault]

Has non-competitive school sport killed cricket?

Through the 80s we hardly played cricket at school. But we played competetive sports. The trouble was that the weather wasn't good for long enough during term time (the best cricket months being summer holidays). And it required equipment, and practise, and training - if you've never bowled before nobody wants to face a series of crooked armed deliveries passing 3 yards to the leg side. And because the groundsman at our school was deeply snotty about people using the square, so it was reserved only for games involving the school team - who all played in local clubs which is how they got into the school team.

Oh, and because games lessons lasted an hour, which is a meaningless time for cricket.

No, there are all kinds of reasons I never played cricket (even though I really wanted to, and always loved watching it). But never because there was no competetive sport in school (unless football, rugby, basketball, cross country running and the rest aren't competetive).

[Tubby Isaacs]

Has non-competitive school sport killed cricket?

Good question. I think it's bollocks as well. Beefy Botham is another bore on this subject because it's a competitive world. He does the "I was never that keen on lessons" lark too, which might seem to be of greater relevance to the competitiveness of the world. I dream that in the afterlife all the Beefy will be kept in a classroom and made to write prose to order by a teacher who will tut and tell him he'll have to do better than the crap he's writing.

Obviously my experience is untypical. But I think all the secondary moderns in Cheltenham played competitive sport.

[The Purple Cow]

Has non-competitive school sport killed cricket?

My kids play cricket at school every week, even through the winter. In fact Cheshire sends one of their best coaches to the school every Thursday throughout the winter. They play using cheap and cheerful 'Kwik Cricket' material. So this story is a load of bollocks, if you ask me.

Local cricket clubs are also over-run with kids. Our local club has 135 kids registered, of which some 37 are under 11's, and 34 are under 10's. At registration tonight I'm going to pressure for a second U11 team, otherwise my boys might just up-wickets and take their missed reverse sweeps elsewhere.

Despite all this there are just 40 places in the elite squad for the entire county of Cheshire (down from 68 last year, due to financial cutbacks) - for all age groups.

So whatever the myriad problems of English cricket are, they are nothing to do with a shortage of kids playing the game.

[Mr Beast]

Has non-competitive school sport killed cricket?

Etienne wrote:

One fact that suggests Collier is talking bollocks is that England's u19 teams have generally been competitive, but they haven't kicked on.

Or haven't been allowed to as they've been replaced in the England set up by South Africans. As long as the South African schools programme remains good England will be ok.

[N est à?]

Has non-competitive school sport killed cricket?

It certainly seems that non-competitive sub-editing has killed grammar.

[Fatter Hipper]

Has non-competitive school sport killed cricket?

I went to a state comprehensive school from 1996-2001 (so I'm about the age Collier is referring to) and played very competitive cricket against other state schools (and even more competitive cricket against the private schools, who we repeatedly beat. Unless they were Manchester Grammar, that is). We played in three cup competitions (Lancashire, Merseyside and Sefton); a mini-league and an indoor competition.

I was a good cricketer (on the fringes of county selection around 14/15) but the coaching I received was terrible, by and large. Not once was I offered the chance to try keeping wicket, and there was a basic flaw in my batting grip that went undetected by probably a dozen coaches before one realised why I was incapable of hitting a beachball travelling at 5mph if it was on the legside. Not that I'd be playing test match cricket if that'd been identified earlier, of course, but y'know...Collier's talking out of his arse.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Has non-competitive school sport killed cricket?

Good to hear all that. You sound like the exception though. Usually if a Martian with no class consciousness saw a state and public school play each other, he'd still tell them apart on the grounds that the public school were about 800-2. Not unlike Australia playing England until 2005. When you get test players coaching full-time at your school, it kind of helps.

[The Purple Cow]

Has non-competitive school sport killed cricket?

I was a good cricketer (on the fringes of county selection around 14/15) but the coaching I received was terrible, by and large.

Agreed. My Nephew played for Cheshire at about that time, and he had awful coaching back then. He was deemed to quick to bowl at players his own age, so he was parachuted in to Rolls Royce's works team against their will. They resented having him around, so consequently he didn't get much of a bowl, and he didn't much like them for a bunch of racist c*nts.

Eventually he jacked it in in favor of a short lived football career with Crewe Alex and Port Vale.

Shame, he could have been a contender.

[Fatter Hipper]

Has non-competitive school sport killed cricket?

I started playing senior cricket at about 14 (Southport & Birkdale 3rd team) and actually developed a lot: but I was in a very supportive team and my rather defensive batting style was always more suited to the longer form. On top of which, it helped my off spin playing in a team with some people who could actually catch. And in my second ever senior match (a Sunday friendly against Huyton) I hit West Indies opening bowler Marlon Black for four with a lovely off drive. He wasn't bowling full pace at that point, mind, but he bloodywell did the next ball.

Not my best cricketing claim to fame though: I bowled Andrew Flintoff in the nets when he was playing for Lancs second XI (though he was batting barefoot) and have been dismissed by another England international.....Joe Hart, who had me caught in the gully on my debut for Shifnal against Shrewsbury. He can only have been 14 but he was bloody quick. Steve Heighway and Paul Dalglish turned out for Southport & Birkdale 3rds on occasion too.

On the topic of dodgy coaching, though...the Lancashire U13s manager at the time I was around was a geography teacher at my school. In 1997 he took me out of an RE lesson and locked me in his office (with other cricketers) to watch an Ashes Test. He also took our team out of school without permission to watch Lancashire play a County Championship match against Hampshire at Liverpool and made us practice lofted drives on the field at lunch, despite our protests that we might hit someone playing football 50 yards away. Oh, and he regularly called people "cunt" in his lessons. And "Jew". He picked a lad a couple of years below me for his Lancashire team because he was having an affair with his mum.

Good to hear all that. You sound like the exception though. Usually if a Martian with no class consciousness saw a state and public school play each other, he'd still tell them apart on the grounds that the public school were about 800-2. Not unlike Australia playing England until 2005. When you get test players coaching full-time at your school, it kind of helps.

Aye. We'd always play home games at the local cricket club against other state schools, but when Merchant Taylors or one of the Lancashire grammar schools came knocking we'd play on our school field. Our quick bowlers would then bowl short and straight and wait for a pea shooter to rocket under their backwards defensive or pull. Though we beat them away a few times too, I hasten to add. I should also note that I went to an all boys' comp, which helped in regards to quality. And we once progressed through the cup after a game had been rained off twice when the teacher who took us tossed a coin over the phone. Bizarrely (or thankfully), Taffy had nothing to do with my year's cricket team: we were taken by a football mad PE teacher who let us sort ourselves out. Not sure who's idea playing on our crappy pitch against good schools was, though.

Class war's still being waged by the rich on the cricket field though. The school I occasionally work at now has a reasonable cricket team but last year I took them to play Nottingham Grammar on a freezing May afternoon. I was most displeased when our captain won the toss and put them into bat. It was only a 20-20 game but their innings took almost two hours on account of having to fetch numerous boundaries from the neighbouring pitches (which had games going on). They made 280-3; we soldiered to about 60-9 in reply.

[Etienne]

Has non-competitive school sport killed cricket?

More casual reactionary nonsense from George Dobell who takes time out from a critique of the proposals to change the county championship to offer this jewel:

Today's cricketers enjoy holidays the envy of teachers, salaries the envy of bankers and a team of support support staff the envy of a Roman emperor. Their demands for less cricket for no less money increasingly resemble those of union leader Bob Crow, a fellow who, it seems, will not rest until each of his members is kitted out with ermine and tiaras.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Has non-competitive school sport killed cricket?

That's quite a good bit of Juvenal satire there in that paragraph. Wouldn't take that too seriously, unlike Collier.

Fitter Happier, yeah, pitches are very important. When I wonder about my parents paying school fees when there was a grammar school about, I return to the twin ideas of the fast pitches and Latin. I was sad to hear from E10 (who was there watching Essex, not playing for I Zingari) that the pitch wasn't any good a few years ago.

Good on you for winning at their place.

Rogin's (presumably) half-serious remark about health and safety isn't silly. If the pitch is so bad that the batsman are lucky to make it to tea with teeth to eat it with, then I can see a few teachers thinking twice about it.

[Houdi Elbow]

Has non-competitive school sport killed cricket?

From my experience the big decline in youth cricket seemed to stem from teaching disputes in the 1980s as E10 pointed out. Before the government pissed the teachers off they were prepared to spend their own time organising school matches out of hours. At about that time there were deep local authority cuts and the maintenance of cricket pitches was an early victim of reduced budgets. I played cricket in Sheffield in the mid 80s when there were 2 leagues with about 14 divisions in total. Most of the games were in parks or on school/college pitches. Now the Sheffield League is the Sheffield and Doncaster Alliance and only has 5 divisions, the other league folded. As far as I know there are no park pitches anymore and our old ground (at a college) was destroyed when a footpath was built through it - my old school field is now a housing estate. The removal of this level of cricket might not seem to have a bearing on the England team at first sight, but two years before I joined the team in Sheffield a young lad had turned up and asked for a game. After a bit of practice it was found that he was a very fast but erratic bowler. A few weeks and wickets (and terrified batsmen) later he was signed by Sheffield Caribbean CC and eventually Devon Malcolm starred for England.

I still play cricket in London and there are still barriers for grassroots cricket. A lot of local authorities insist on prohibitively expensive personal liability insurance and the rest provide borderline dangerous pitches.

Good to hear that things are OKish in Cheshire at least.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Has non-competitive school sport killed cricket?

The new Wisden has something on inner City cricket. Angus Fraser seems to be doing some good work.

[axel]

Has non-competitive school sport killed cricket?

New telegraph fantasy cricket game has started today, for all those kids who can't be arsed to run about.