Robert Henderson

To Lords for the  fourth day of the Middlesex vs Yorkshire match to decide where the  County Championship went  with both these counties and Somerset all starting day as possible winners.,

The crowd grew throughout the day. The Grandstand, the lower tier of Compton Stand and the unfinished Warner stand were closed,   but the rest for the ground open for spectators.  By the end of the match the crowd must have been at least 10,000 and could well have been a few thousand more because the open stands and the pavilion were all heavily tenanted – Lords has a capacity of 28,000. The most heartening thing about the crowd was the large number of  people under the age of thirty.

Until lunch the game proceeded as a contest with Gubbins and Malan clearing the deficit and giving Middlesex a small lead. Only one wicket fell in the session, although Malan was dropped in the fifties. The first 40 minutes or so after Lunch produced less than 20 runs. All rather mystifying. Had Middlesex pressed the accelerator during that time and continued to press it for another hour or so they would have been able to set Yorkshire a reachable  but demanding total without any connivance between the sides. Instead  there was a  nasty bout of  joke bowling to set a target of 240 in 40 overs. Frankly, this left something of a bad taste in the mouth and Somerset have reason to feel aggrieved.

Notwithstanding the bad taste it left  it was interesting to see how intentional very poor and very slow bowling often produces wickets when a slog is on even where   professional batsmen are involved.  The scoring rate certain accelerated rapidly but three Middlesex wickets of competent batsmen went in a handful of overs.  Nonetheless it was an unedifying spectacle.

240 runs in 40 overs might sound highly gettable these days, but there is a huge difference between chasing such a total in a limited overs format where bowlers can only bowl 8 overs (in a 40 over match) and fielding restrictions exist and chasing 240 at six and over  in a first class match where no such restrictions  exist. Middlesex used just four bowlers – Finn, Murtagh, Roland-Jones and Rayner – an attack which be an improvement on  a number of Tests sides today.  (I have long been an advocate of removing the restriction on the number of overs a bowler can bowl in 50 over cricket because it makes for a much more natural game).

The Middlesex captain Franklin kept a fine balance between attack and containment. He  had two slips for the first 19 overs and kept one slip afterwards until the end of the match. He set a field which was one or two slips, a third man, a deep backward square leg and a ring of fielders in front of the wicket on both sides of the pitch  no more than 35 yards from the bat.  This worked  splendidly because batsmen had to worry about drives edging to the slips and even when they middled  drives they  very often   resulted in a dot ball or at most a single.

David Willey,  promoted to number 3, showed the difference between coming in in an ODI or T20 and smacking bowlers around and batting against a field with close catchers and bowlers allowed to bowl as many overs as they want. He left after 21 balls having scored only 11 despite a good deal very energetic attempted strokeplay.   He simply lacked the technique to force  the game against good bowlers  bowling with close catchers.

The one Yorkshire batsman who managed to come to terms with the demands of the run chase was Tim Bresnan. Wonder of wonders, he still has an absolutely orthodox stance, a great rarity these days when most players have adopted stances which involve one or more of these horrors: squatting, leaning forward, waving the bats around, holding  the bat high in the air and  standing nearly upright.  As a consequence he looked the most complete and secure player of any batsman on either side. Not only did he have an orthodox stance he made the highest Yorkshire score (55) playing entirely orthodox strokes yet had  by far the highest rate of scoring in the innings.

The Middlesex bowlers simply refused to let t Yorkshire get away. Roland-Jones bowled as he always does when I have seen him  (and I have seen him bowl dozens of times) at a lively pace and, most importantly, there were very few balls which the batsmen could leave.  That England have never given him a chance is bewildering.

At the end of the game – which Roland-Jones completed with a hat-trick spread over two overs – I felt that Yorkshire should in fairness to Somerset have tried to shut up shop for a draw when they were seven wickets down needing over sixty off six overs and with no batsman of any stature or indeed real hitting power left. They could have had no rational expectation of reaching the total and wickets 8 and 9 went to wild heaves. The 10th wicket – that of Sidebottom – was simply him being beaten by a ball too good for him.

Despite it being the fourth day the pitch was benign. Had the match been played out normally it would have been a draw. That would have made six draws from the seven CC games Middlesex have played at Lords this year. That is all down to placid pitches. Not good for the game

The County Championship has been a great advert for first class cricket this year and it makes the ECB’s seeming determination to greatly reduce its place in the English cricket calendar all the more infuriating.   No one in a powerful position within the ECB seems to value the Championship for itself.. The day after Middlesex had won the 2016 Championship the ECB’s director of cricket, the ex-England captain Andrew Strauss gave an interview to Radio 5 in which he described the value of County Cricket as being little if any more than a means of producing England cricketers.  This ignores the great history behind county cricket and the fact  that much very attractive and often gripping cricket is being played in the four-day game.  There is good reason to believe that the Championship  could really thrive if an attempt was made to promote it, something which has never been done with any intensity or for most of the time at all.   My detailed ideas for promoting the Championship  can be found here.

Robert Henderson

The most plausible explanation for the ECB’s systematic marginalisation of the County Championship is that it is a deliberate plan to reduce the competition to a state where it can either be abolished or at least left in a form that  would be unrecognisable as the County Championship, probably with either the abolition of counties and the creation of  teams based on regions  or city franchises or a Championship  with a severe reduction in the number of first class counties and a much reduced programme.  However, whether intentional or not the marginalisation is proceeding as follows:

First, the Championship was s divided into two divisions. This produced the idea in the public mind  that the standard of the divisions is vastly different even though there is solid evidence that as yet there is no great difference, for example, both Nottinghamshire  (2005/6) and Lancashire  (2011/12)have   won Division 1  one year and been relegated the next.

Second, the CC games were  concertinaed into the beginning and the end of the season leaving a swathe of weeks at the height of the summer with little or no first class cricket.

Third, the number of games has been  reduced over the past 25 years, from  17  in 1993 when all matches became four days  to 14 from the  2017 season.

Fourth, from  2017 the first division is to be  reduced to eight teams and the second division  increased to ten.  This makes the second division seem even less on a par with the first division  and continues to prepare the ground for a massive reduction in counties at the FC level or regional teams. That there are  eight teams in the first division may well be significant because eight is the oft  cited figure for a new  T20 competition.

Fifth, there is no settled pattern to the Championship season  anymore with games starting on Sunday, Monday,, Tuesday, Wednesday,  Saturday.

Sixth, many games could start of Saturday and finish on Tuesday. Having two out of four days outside the working week is surely a no-brainer. Yet at the end of this season we find that four out of the last five  CC groups of games are not scheduled to have any weekend play and the fifth only has scheduled play at the weekend only on the fourth day.

Seventh, no attempt is made to ensure that Bank Holidays have plenty of Championship  games.

Eight, next to no  ECB money is spent promoting the County Championship.

What should be done to promote the Championship?

1. Abolish the two divisions of the Championship and revert to one division with all the 18 first class counties playing 17 matches a year. Teams would play nine games at home one year and eight games the next. This would greatly simplify the fixture list and allow supporters of a county to see all counties playing at home every two years.
2. Make the T20 county competition a league. Each county would play 17 games (19 if they got to finals day). There could still be a finals day featuring the top four sides in the league.
3. Institute a predictable fixture list. This would  consist of seventeenth rounds of a four day county match preceded by a T20 league game played against the same opponents.  The T20 game would be played on Friday evening and the four day match Saturday to Tuesday.  This would greatly reduce the travelling which counties currently have to undertake.
4. In compiling the fixture list every attempt should be made to ensure that in any round of Championship and T20 League games the games are spread throughout the country so that if a county is not playing at home there is an opportunity for a supporter to either go to an away match of their county or watch another team close to home.
5. The Championship season should start during the first week in May and end in the middle of September. This would allow 140 days on which cricket could be played. That is 20 weeks . Only 17 of those would be needed for Championship and T20 League. Hence, a 50 Over  competition could be fitted in and a proper schedule for touring sides accommodated.  If necessary, a week could be added at the beginning and end of the season making 22 weeks  in which to play .  This distribution of matches  would  ensure Championship cricket was available throughout the season and   do away with having a disproportionate number of matches  played in April and May as is now the case. This would provide regular Championship cricket for the spectator and encourage the  playing of spinners.
6. Strive to have a minimum boundary of 70  yards. This will not always be possible but the bringing in of boundaries would end.  This will both encourage spinners and  minimise to some extent the  gross hitting advantage given by modern bats.
7. Allow counties to prepare pitches as they choose. The interference of inspectors armed with possible points deductions has resulted in bland pitches which particularly hinder spinners.  Before pitch inspectors county cricketers would face a very wide variety of pitches and became better players, both bowlers and batsmen, as they  greatly increased their technical competence.
8. Actively promote Championship cricket . They could do this variously , viz:

–  As a T20 match would  be attached to a 4 day match the two can be promoted as a package.

– Do more using digital media such as twitter.

–  Get a computer game featuring Championship cricket off the ground.

– Set up a website for schoolboy cricketers,  a feature of which would be provision to allow individual schoolboys to post details of their own school or club and their performances.

– Make a few experimental forays with television adverts to see if these are a paying proposition.

– Allow  spectators attending England matches of all sorts (Tests, ODIs and T20s) to enter  free of charge  any  Championship match for one day. Entry would be effected by presenting the stub of their England ticket  at the gate  (There would be minimal extra administrative cost.) As there were 784,000 paying spectators at home England matches in  the 2015 season it would not be  unreasonable to expect an increase in Championship spectators of 200,000, but the figures could well be considerably more. Although not paying to get in such spectators  would be likely to spend a significant amount ion food, drink and in  the county shop. Moreover  having seen a day’s cricket for free  quite a few might well come back as paying spectators.

Robert Henderson

I started watching English  first class  cricket in the mid-1950s. At the time  limited overs  games did not exist. There were three day matches for   teams below Test level and five day matches for Tests.  Players wore white (or cream) clothing with no numbers on their backs to identify them.  For  spectators unfamiliar with them, the players were identified from the scorecard number  shown on the scoreboards for both batsmen and fielders when they fielded the ball.  The combination of white-clad players and green cricket field gave a natural and elegant  look to the game recalling its origins in country fields.

Batsmen  wore a minimum of protective equipment. They had  pads , rudimentary gloves, a box and possibly a single thigh pad for the leading leg, the last often consisting of  no more than a towel thrust  down the trousers.  Despite  this meagre protection players were rarely hit seriously because they were not so encumbered  that their mobility was seriously restricted and the automatically developed skill in moving out of the way of balls which constituted a threat.   They batted bareheaded or with a cap. Batsmen were recognisable human beings

Today batsmen come to the crease looking like Michelin men  with their bumper bras, arm guards, massive thigh pads which go round each thigh plus helmets caging their faces with unsightly bars  which are worn regardless of the threat a bowler carries.   All  this gear makes batsmen look ugly at best and ridiculous at worst.  They are much less mobile and  because of the supposed safety provided by helmets  are frequently tempted to  play hooks and pulls recklessly and inexpertly.   This often ends up with them being hit on the head.  I also suspect that helmets restrict a batsman’s vision at worst and at best have a deleterious psychological effect. Generally, the considerable extra protective equipment worn today must make batsmen feel uncomfortable and be  liable to be a distraction.  The same objection applies to the growing fashion for wicket keepers to wear  helmets when standing up.

50 or 60 years ago pitches were prepared as individual counties  and other authorities such as Oxford and Cambridge  clubs wanted. There were no pitch inspectors. If a county side went to play Derbyshire away they knew they  would be playing on a pitch favourable to seam bowling; a visit to Gloucestershire would mean a spinning pitch. Batsmen had to master very varied and often demanding conditions.  In addition to whatever human design went into an individual pitch,  Nature was given her way by refusing to cover pitches and runups.  This meant that  anyone playing county cricket  regularly  could expect to encounter rain damaged pitches several times a season at least. This further improved the skills of serious batsmen. Bowlers also had to learn to bowl at their most effective in helpful conditions.

The consequence  of demanding pitches meant that batsmen had to develop a seriously good technique to survive.  This meant  having an orthodox  stance  with the bat not waving about (bar perhaps a thump or two of the bat as the bowler ran in)  and most importantly, keeping the head still. A good example of this stillness and neatness can be seen in this extended video of the 1963 Lords Test against the West Indies.  There  were few oddities like Jim Yardley of Worcestershire with awkward stances but they were very much the exception.

Demanding pitches also gave the bowler a much greater incentive to bowl straight and to bowl consistently, something bowlers of today routinely fail to do.   It is a common mistake to imagine that having pitches doing something means a bowler has to do little more than pitch a ball up and let the pitch do the rest. In fact, bowlers need to learn how to bowl in helpful conditions top make the most of them.   Taking 5-60 on a pitch where 5-20  could reasonably be expected is poor not good bowling.

Today batsmen  are increasingly at sea whenever they encounter conditions which allow the bowlers to swing, seam or spin the ball. This is partly because of the covering of pitches, the existence of pitch inspectors who take fright at pitches which help the bowler resulting in points being deducted  and the fact that much less first class cricket  (where good technique is developed)  is played today., But it is  also because batsmen are increasingly adjusting their techniques  to  play  T20 cricket where the real money is to be made.

Batsmen, almost universally amongst the young players,  are  adopting one a  stance which has the bat raised , either  locked in an awkward  stillness or waving about with the head moving as well as the body. Some add to this ungainly position by leaning forward with their weight on the front foot and the bat slanted forward. This cannot be the optimum method of waiting for the bowler because the batsman will be concentrating on holding the bat up or moving about the  crease. In the case of the bat slanted forward that virtually commits the batsman to a front foot shot and at best means the batsman has to waste precious microseconds if he has to play off the back foot.

The  growing eminence of T20 is resulting in the taking into first class cricket these  defective techniques  together with the T20 mentality of needing to score quickly regardless of the conditions and situation of the game.  To these batting sins must be added the toleration of switch hits such as the reverse sweep, shots which are the batsman’s equivalent of a bowler being able to go over or round the wicket at will without advising the batsman in advance and consequently should be banned. They are also very ugly shots.

The emphasis on limited overs cricket generally and T20 in particular is also having a malign effect on bowlers who strive to contain rather than take wickets.  Ironically this often results in bowlers being slogged unmercifully because their bowling ends up as  both inconsistent and poorly executed  as they strive for ever greater variation,  with frequent and radical changes of pace which are generally poorly disguised, slow bouncers and attempted Yorkers which more often than not end up as low full tosses.  This species of bowling is also encouraged by the lack of close catchers in limited overs cricket and the frequent reduction of wicket keepers to little more than glorified longstops.  It is also probably no coincidence that today there is barely a fast bowler worthy of the name and spin bowling is  dying on its feet.  This can be plausibly attributed to bowlers adapting themselves to T20. Because the decline of pace bowlers and spinners has coincided with the advent of  the format.     Genuine pace can be expensive in terms of  runs scored off edges  and fast bowlers are rarely as accurate as fast medium ones, while spin bowlers in  bowl flat most of the time and are found out in  the first class game where more than  flat barely turning deliveries are  needed to dismiss batsmen with a great deal of time for to play themselves in.

In fact, T20  is a game barely recognisable as cricket.   The present T20 world cup has  batsmen displaying stances which must by their very nature leave a batsman unable to react in the most efficient fashion, batsmen dancing about the crease before the bowler bowls,  batsmen playing  strokes,  many of which are wild slogs, which they could never play safely in a first class match. As for bowlers, they have largely served as helpless cannon fodder, something they have  been complicit in by inconsistent bowling which has included  an embarrassing number of  full tosses , many of which have gone for six. Close catching has been rare if not  non-existent.  Add in the coloured clothing and numbers on a player’s back and it might almost be baseball.

The danger for professional  cricket is twofold: that the skills necessary to play first class cricket in general and Test cricket in particular will be lost and that T20 will prove to lack staying power because it has a decided one-dimensional quality, regardless of the many close finishes which occur.  The problem is that exiting cricket does not equal good cricket and that is true with knobs on when a match only lasts 40 overs.  Sooner or later boredom will set in and the lack of quality will matter.

T20 is terribly  vulnerable to  being a shortish term fad. Who honestly remembers the results of  international T20 games or even ODIs as the results of Test matches and series are commonly  remembered?  In my experience few  cricket followers could tell you the winners of  ODI series   or recall even the winners of  T20 World Cups.  The same applies to individual performances.  Bowlers restricted to ten overs in ODIs  or four in T20 cannot produce great feats.  A batsman scoring 50 in a T20 match will have done well,  but it is scarcely likely to be an innings which remains in the memory, not least because so much of the strokeplay is ugly to watch. Who can take pleasure in watching low full tosses hit for six with what are essentially baseball shots?.

If T20 does lose its current popularity in, say, twenty years time there will be a generation of professional cricketers who will have  developed their games to play  T20 and in all probability will have little first class experience. It is even possible that first class  cricket may have died completely.  If first class cricket has been seriously diminished  and  T20 falls out of fashion it is all too possible that cricket itself will die or at the least cease to be a serious international sport.

Robert Henderson

The batting of the 2015 Australian side on anything other than a featherbed pitch  has been shockingly inept,  not least because for  twenty years or so from the late 1980s  Australia had top class batsmen coming out of their ears.   Some, like Darren Lehmann,  played much less  Test cricket  than their talent  deserved and  others like poor Stuart Law managed but one game wearing the baggy green cap. The lack of proper practice games on tours

But the current Australians are not alone in their ineptitude whenever a ball swings, seams or spins.  There is a growing  propensity  for Test sides to collapse whenever faced with a large opposing total  – England are a good example of this.  Specialist batsmen  playing at the highest level are increasingly showing that they have  neither the technique nor the mentality to play not just Test cricket but first class cricket.

No country has any room for complacency because as older players with good techniques  retire there are few plausible replacements.  Look at Sri Lanka without  Dilshan, Jayawardene and Sangakkara  or imagine Australia minus Clarke, Rogers, Watson and Voges.   Take Bell and Cook away from England’s top order and what  is left but Root of proven Test batsmen?   How many really reliable day-in-day-out Test batsmen are there today?  Precious few and almost all of them are players nearer the end of their Test careers  than the beginning.

The batting averages of the 2015 Ashes tell their own story of ever diminishing batting technique.  England had only one player Root (57 ) averaging over 40 with the rest of the specialist batsmen turning in 36 (Cook), 29 (Bairstow), 26 (Bell),  14 (Lyth), and 24 (Balance) . Australia had three players (Smith, Rogers and Warner) averaging over 40,  which looks respectable but disguises the fact that Smith and Rogers alternated big scores with runs of small scores, while Warner repeatedly failed to make a  big  score in the first innings.   They also had their captain Clarke averaging 16 and Voges 28.   Nor did the often  pivotal batting spots of  six and seven do much, with no player who regularly appeared for either side in those positions managing an average of  better than 25 (Stokes).

It might be thought from those statistics that the bowling on both sides was of high quality.  Well, compare the bowling attacks of 2005 Ashes series with those today. In 2005 there were  Flintoff, Harmison, Jones, Hoggard and Giles (England); Mcgrath, Lee, Gillespie, Warne (Australia).  Today we have Anderson, Broad, Wood, Finn, Stokes and Ali (England) and Johnson, Starc, Hazlewood, Marsh and Lyon (Australia).

I doubt whether there would be much dissension from the claim that the 2005 bowling was decidedly  superior to that of the 2015 series .   Apart from two all time greats in Warne and Mcgrath, England’s four pronged pace attack with three genuinely fast bowlers in Flintoff, Harmison and Jones  was formidable. Yet  the scoring of top six batsmen in 2005 was heavier on the England side  than that of the 2015 team with four  of the top six averaging 39 or better   with  Pietersen, Trescothick, Strauss and Flintoff scoring 393 runs or better. The 2005 Australians did not score more heavily than the present day side overall  but they scored much more consistently, with four of their top six (Ponting, Langer,  Clarke, Hayden) scoring over 300 runs in the series.  Given the  superiority of the 2005 bowling, it would have been reasonable to expect the 2015 sides to score more heavily than those 2005 if the quality of batting was as good as that of  2005.   Patently it was not as both the averages and the frequency of collapses by both sides shows.  .

Another good example of how batting technique has declined is the inability of present day Indian batsmen  to play spin. This is a startling change because Indians have always been the batsmen noted for being expert in dealing with spinners. Yet now that the old guard of Tendulkar, Dravid and Sewag have departed the Test scene India are suddenly all at sea against spinners .  In England in 2014 they allowed Mooen Ali to take 19 wickets in four Tests despite the fact that he is not and never has been  considered a serious spin bowler. More recently in Sri Lanka India  were shot out for 112  when chasing a target of 175 with the main damage being done by  the slow left armer Herath  (7-48) and the offspinner Kaushal (3-47). Watching those ten dismissals it is  astonishing how uncertain the batsmen’s footwork was and how often they went hard at the ball early despite the fact that it was turning and bouncing.

What has caused this decline in batting technique?

T20

It has been suggested that the Australian batting  failure was down to a lack of experience of English conditions, both because the lure  of T20 cricket has meant Australian players have not spent seasons with county clubs as they often did before the India Premier League began  and the attenuated nature of tours these days.

These arguments  will not stand up to close scrutiny. Before the relaxation of county qualification rules in 1968  Australian Test players did not have the experience of  playing in county cricket. As a consequence Australian teams would arrive in England with many players without any experience of first class cricket in English conditions and those with experience would be players  who had toured England before so they would probably have only a single season’s experience. Yet they still managed to make a fist of things.   As for the short tours, this is not a new circumstance. On the 2015  tour Australia also had four first class matches outside of the Test against Kent , Essex, Northants and Derbyshire. In 2005 Australia played only four first class matches outside the Tests against Leicestershire,  Essex, Worcestershire and  Northants.  It is worth adding that  Australians still play plenty of  county cricket and most of their  specialist batsmen  had with experience of English conditions either from playing for counties or from having previously toured England.

A much more likely cause of the decline in  Australian batsmanship is T20. It is surely no coincidence that the decline in technique is most marked amongst batsmen who have played all or most of their  careers after  T20 had gained a real hold.  Batsmen are conditioned by T20 to go hard at the ball . Playing with soft hands is seemingly unknown to them, and  the idea of building an innings completely alien.  Bowl a couple of maidens  in succession  at players in a first class match and their anxiety to score becomes palpable.

Other aspects of T20 play to the changes in technique and mentality. Benign T20 pitches with white balls used play to rarely provide much of an examination of technique. As the batsman has only a short time to play in T20  – 90 minutes at best if they bat through the innings-  batsmen have not only an urge to score quickly but no incentive to build an innings.  As T20 is where the big money is these days, batsmen will naturally enough increasingly think that  a cameo innings of 30 or most of the time with a fifty  now or then and  an occasional century in T20 is to be preferred to heavy scoring in the first class game.

There is also the absence of close catchers in T20 breeding bad habits. Players get away with risky stroke play in T20 because there are few if any close fielders,  then find when they return to first class cricket that they cannot stop themselves playing  the same strokes which have them  regularly caught  close to the wicket.

Bowling in T20 also has its part to play. As bowlers have only four overs to each bowl batsmen never have to come to terms with a bowler as such.  At most they can only face twenty four balls and will be unlikely to face more than a dozen. If a bowler is causing them serious difficulties they have a good chance of surviving an over or two whereas in a first class match they would probably get out.

When batsmen return to first class cricket from T20 because their techniques are faulty they find it difficult to adjust to cricket which is played on pitches which are normally more difficult to play on than those used for T20, not least because the games last for days. In addition, first class cricket is a much more fluid game than T20 with no limits, other than the time available,  on how many overs a bowler may bowl or a team may bat  and no fielding restrictions. The best bowlers can bowl as long as their captain wants. The batsman must  live with an uncertainty which does not exist in T20 where a  batsman knows that he  will only have to bat for quite a short time  even if he bats through the innings and because of the restriction of four  overs per bowler a batsman will be able to structure their approach to an innings around the knowledge that a bowler has only so many overs to bowl and have a good idea when a  bowler will bowl. In short, in a first class game the batsman has to think for themselves far more than they do in T20.

It might be objected that limited over cricket has been widely played since the mid 1960s without having the same effect as that of T20.  There are two answers to that. Limited overs cricket  longer than T20 has been played over 65 over, 55 overs, 50 overs and 40 overs. The longer the limited overs  game the nearer it will  correspond to first class cricket simply because duration alone  necessitates a difference in approach to the game..

The other major difference between the T20 period and what went before is that before T20 limited overs cricket loomed much less large than first class cricket and especially Test cricket which was the main revenue source.   Since the advent of T20 in England in 2003 and the creation of the Indian Premier League in 2008, T20 has become the main cash cow for cricketers with T20 competitions around the world.  Professional cricketers increasingly see their careers in terms of what T20 will bring them and concentrate on excelling at that variety of  the game to the detriment of acquiring the skills naturally learnt by playing first class cricket.

The batting stance

T20 is also probably  driving  the adoption of increasingly odd  stances in the professional game. Watch a first class game in England  today and almost all the specialist batsmen (and most of the allrounders and lower order) have foresworn the traditional stance.  Instead of standing still with, at most,  the bat thumping the ground a few times as the bowler moves in, batsmen adopt a variety of stances which place the batsman in an awkward position.   Quite a few batsmen look more  like a baseball hitter than a batsman as they wait for the bowler to deliver.

The most common oddities are where the  batsman holds the bat raised in a locked position. This hich looks both awkward and traps the player in a position which delays his movement to play the ball.  Some combine the raised bat with bat waving. A few mix the fixed bat raised stance with leaning forward in the stance which means they  are committed to the front foot and a sucker for the short fast ball.

Locking the bat in a raised position or waving it about  must both distract the batsman from concentrating on the bowler and the ball after it is delivered.  The  stance with the bat raised in a set position  must also be tiring in an innings of any length. A batsman making a century will probably  face 200+ balls so that is  200+ holding the bat in an awkward and tense position whilst supporting its full weight. Batting for a full day would probably mean 400-500 times of doing this tiring action.

Then  there  are  the extraordinary movements around the crease of some batsmen, for example, Steve Smith, before the ball is bowled. This leaves them vulnerable to any ball which moves in the air or off the pitch because it will take a fraction of a second longer to move to the correct position to play the ball than it would in an orthodox stance.   Movement about the crease before the bowler bowls must also distract the batsman from concentrating wholeheartedly on the bowler. Movement of the head is also  common, which again must distract the batsman from concentrating on the ball.

The orthodox stance is the best technical stance because it has the batsman with their weight evenly distributed so the batsman can play back or forward with equal physical ease, the batsman does not have to support the full weight of the bat , the batsman is  in a relaxed and comfortable position and,  most important,  has nothing to stop him giving his full attention to the bowler and the ball.

Helmets and batsmen who look like Michelin men

Since the adoption of helmets batsmen are regularly hit  on the head. Before helmets it was very rare to see a batsman struck on the head. I began  regularly watching first class cricket in England in the nineteen fifties. Between then and the routine adoption of helmets around 1980 I saw only two batsmen hit on the head: Jim Parks by Don Bennett in a Middlesex/Sussex county game at Lords  (Parks  was knocked out when a ball jumped from a length and hit him flush on the chin),  and Denis Amiss who walked into the line of a Holding bouncer playing  for the MCC against the 1976 West Indies.

It was not that bouncers were  bowled infrequently before helmets.  Throughout  cricket history there have been complaints about the overuse of the bouncer: Macdonald and Gregory just after the Great War, the Bodyline tour of 1932/3, Miller and Lindwall immediately after WW2, Thomson and Lillee  in the 1970s and  Holding, Roberts and Daniel on the 1976 West Indies tour of England all produced vociferous complaints. Nor were bouncers reserved only for those who could bat. It is true that that there was a supposedly gentleman’s agreement not to bowl bouncers at tail enders, but that  did not prevent  Lindwall hitting Tyson on the head during the 1954/5 Ashes tour or Charlie Griffith  bouncing Underwood during the 1966 West Indies tour of England when he lingered too long  at the crease for Griffith’s liking.  Batsmen were rarely hit on the head because they were skilled at getting out of the way by swaying or ducking.

The most plausible reason for why batsmen are regularly hit today is  that helmets  have made them  careless in their treatment of the bouncer, either through not watching the ball or a too ready willingness to hook and pull regardless of their technical command of the shots.   Before helmets, batsmen only hooked or pulled bowlers of any pace if they were competent players of the shot. Fine opening batsmen such as John Edrich and  Bobbie Simpson rarely if ever hooked.  Moreover, even the competent players  were very selective in what they hooked and pulled. Today every  Tom, Dick and Harry in the first class game feels they  should hook and pull, with even undisputed rabbits indulging themselves on occasion.

The false sense of security which helmets bring is heightened by the extraordinary extra protective paraphernalia with which batsmen equip themselves  today: bumper bras, arm guards, massive thigh pads which go round both thighs. The result is batsmen routinely get to the wicket looking like Michelin men.  This must impede their movement.  In the past batsmen had at most pads,  rudimentary gloves, a box and an inadequate thigh pad or a towel shoved down the trousers on the leading thigh for protection. Some, like Trevor Bailey,  dispensed with thigh protection altogether believing it made them less agile.

 Bowling

There are two main worries about bowling: inaccuracy and  the decline in spin bowling. I can vouch for the fact that bowlers in the past were much more accurate than they are today. Those of a younger generation who doubt this should go and view a few clips of extended play  from the fifties and sixties to see the difference. Bowlers in the past knew how to bowl to their field in a way which bowlers today all too often do not.

Bowlers today experiment too much, but they also are conditioned by T20 (and to a lesser degree in the longer limited formats)  to bowl  to contain rather than take wickets.  This has a particularly unfortunate effect on spin bowlers.  It makes them bowl flat and fast. The England and Middlesex offspinner John Emburey who started his career in the 1970s bowling an attacking line outside the offstump with plenty of spin and ended it bowling middle and off after spending a good deal of time bowling in limited overs games.

Spinners are used freely in T20 and longer form limited overs games. Indeed, in England you are more likely to see spin bowlers in those forms of cricket than in first class games where it is rare to see two frontline spinners in a team and even when there are two captains never seem to keep them bowling in tandem, the most effective tactic for spinners on most pitches. As for the idea that spinners can be attacking bowlers on any pitch, through flight and disguised changes of pace where a pitch is benign, this has gone completely out of the English game.

Fielding

Not only does accuracy and bowling to a field make life  more difficult for the batsmen, it also helps the  fielding because, guess what, batsmen play the ball to the set field more often. This means that less spectacular fielding is required.

Modern fielding is often   lauded as being vastly better than it was in the past. It is certainly true that the sliding tackle stop looks spectacular and some of the catches in the outfield are spectacular, but I would question whether the fielding is superior overall. In particular, close catching has declined.   This I suspect is due to the movement away from specialist fielders  as limited overs cricket and particularly T20 has expanded its importance.  The fact that limited overs cricket constitutes so much of the modern player’s career also means  that the opportunities  to be a close catcher are much reduced.

Modern wicket keeping is much inferior to that of the past. That is partly a consequence of the universal fashion for selecting wicket keepers who can bat well enough to at least qualify as genuine  allrounders  (ideally well enough to score like specialist batsman) and partly the decline in spin bowling which robs them of the experience of keeping whilst standing up.

The aesthetic side of cricket

Cricket has become much uglier since the 1970s when helmets came in. Instead of watching  a batsman with bare head or a cap or sunhat on it batsmen now look out for bars covering their face.  Nor is it only batsmen because it has become routine to see wicket keepers and fielders such as short leg  wearing helmets with grills. The bulkiness of the other new protective I have already remarked on but they also make batsmen look both un-athletic  and less agile and natural in their movements.

Then there are the weird modern  stances and the dancing around the crease instead of standing still as the bowler runs in. These are both ugly to watch and irritating to watch.

Watch extended recordings of batsmen from the fifties and sixties and you will see that they looked better, adopted neat orthodox stances which left them balanced to go back or forward with equal ease and were readily recognisable.

First class cricket is in danger of dying

First class cricket is the form of cricket which develops and maintains the fullest range of  skills. It needs to be played regularly  to both develop the skills and maintain them.  Someone playing little first class cricket outside of Tests,  as many established Test players do these days,  will find flaws enter their techniques that  go uncorrected because of their  lack of regular first class play.  To be a young international  batsman with a central contract from their national cricket authority means that the normal development of technique through playing  regular first class  cricket does not happen.

First class cricket will die if  the skills needed to play it are lost or so reduced that the idea of playing a three  day game let alone a five day Test match simply becomes impractical because the players will be unable to play a match which lasts so much longer than limed overs cricket.  Batsmen will lack the technique to handle pitches and climatic conditions where red  balls spin, seam and  swing; bowlers will be conditioned to bowling defensively and will probably lack the fitness to bowl twenty overs or more in a day; fielders will be unused to fielding for day after day and all players will simply be mentally unprepared for the much greater and more varied demands first class cricket  poses.

If first class cricket does die or even becomes a very poor relation of T20, cricket as a serious professional sport could be finished. Limited overs cricket whether it is 50 overs or 20 overs is formulaic and one dimensional compared with first class cricket which has an extended and varied narrative that limited overs cricket can never begin to match.  That is why limited overs matches are rarely remembered while Test matches and Test series  have a resonance which often lasts a cricket lover  for a lifetime.  The danger is that eventually T20 is  all pervasive and cricket  becomes less and less popular as the  stereotyped and predicable  nature  of T20 begins to bore people.

I have been watching English first class cricket  since the 1950s. During the  2014 season I  watched  eight days of county cricket. The matches  involved  ten of the eighteen counties . These counties  were evenly drawn from the first and second divisions of the County Championship.

There are many differences  between the 1950s  and now,  but the most alarming changes be are  the decline in batting technique, spin bowling and close catching amongst present day [players.

Poor batting techniques

The  techniques of modern batsmen never cease to amaze me. They are pathetically vulnerable to the short pitched ball, a failing made all the more dismaying because there is not  a bowler in world cricket who  could be described as having extreme pace of a Tyson or Marshall and precious few who are fast in the sense that, for example, Statham was fast, that is quicker than fast medium but not hurtingly  fast.

This must be down to the amount of protective equipment they wear, especially helmets. Before helmets batsmen had to make a choice. Hook or learn to sway or duck out of the way of bouncers.  Some very good players  very rarely hooked, for example, Bobby Simpson and John Edrich. Now every Tom Dick and Harry think they can hook and pull and most make a mess of it,  frequently getting  into trouble through  hooking aerially or  all too often being hit.  All of this  because they have never learnt to duck and sway.  Most disturbing is the frequency with which  even  run-of-the-mill fast medium bowlers hit specialist batsmen s on the helmet, so inept at the strokes are many of those who try to hook or pull or they are players who simply do not seem to know how to duck or sway out of the way.

The second major  problem with modern batting technique is the modern stance, which incidentally also contributes to the  vulnerability  against pace.  The  baseball-style  stance is rapidly becoming normal,   being virtually universal amongst those under the age of twenty five . For example, in the Middlesex v Warwickshire  at Lords  this year all eight players who got to the crease on the day I was there can bat and all had variations of the bat waving baseball stance – the  Warks reserve keeper McKay was the nearest to having an orthodox stance. Rikki Clarke – an immense and largely wasted cricketing talent – added to the bat waving with a crouch at the  crease with legs as wide apart as Desperate Dan in the Dandy. Keith Barker wasn’t far behind him in outlandishness.

The ill result of these type of stances in twofold. First, they lock the player into a position from which he has to extricate himself before he can play his shot. Microseconds I know but microseconds is all you have when facing anyone over medium pace.  If the stance is of the upright type it  puts the batsman in a position where forward play is physically difficult. Unless a batsman has  a sound forward play technique he  will always be vulnerable in England to the ball moving especially off the pitch.  Where the stance includes a  forward lunge as used by for example Moeen Ali this is particularly disabling because although it lessens the difficulty with  forward play, it makes the batsman a sucker for the short ball.

There is a further problem with the baseball stance. Many batsman who adopt it – the ones with the upright bat waving tendency most noticeably – render  the guard they had taken  effectively redundant because they move so far from it. The upshot is batsmen often  do not know where their off-stump is.   (If someone doubts this I suggest that they sit in line with the wicket then next time they go to a county game or watches carefully on television. Both show the failing clearly).

The natural orthodox stance with the bat behind the rear foot both puts the batsman in the best position to form a stroke,   keeps the body and head still and maintains the guard they have taken.

The diminishing amount and quality of spin bowling – see below –  is also affecting seriously the technical ability of batsmen to play it, with the few quality spinners who have survived often making even the best Test players look rather stupid.

The death of spin bowling

There probably isn’t a modern county  captain  who understands how to use spinners.  None seem to understand that spinners bowl best in tandem, each one helping the other by strangling scoring.  None think  of them as attacking bowlers. It is always assumed that they need a helpful pitch to bowl on.  This is nonsense. Until the past twenty  years or so, spinners  would regularly bowl fifty per cent or more of the overs bowled in a day.  They would not infrequently come on as first change on a first morning. They would be expected to bowl for long periods on good pitches and restrain the scoring.  Spinners would routinely operate in tandem.

Good bowlers can bowl regardless of the conditions. After the introduction of the new LBW law in 1935es, which ostensibly disadvantaged leg spinners and advantaged offspinners,  quality leg spinners who were established at the time the new LBW law  was introduced continued to be highly successful way into the 1950s, for example Eric- Hollies, Doug Wright, Roly  Jenkins, Freddie Brown , Jim Simms and Peter Smith. .

Similarly, after restrictions were placed on the number of legside  flielders behind the bat in the 1950s, quality offspinners who were established before the law change continued to be successful  for many years after the law change: Titmus, Shepherd, Allen, Mortimore, Langford, Illingworth .

In both instances the change in the law resulted the popularity of spin bowling styles changing  so there was a decline in leg spinners emerging after the LBW change and fewer quality offspinners making their name following the restriction of leg-side fielders.  In both cases the change happened because bowlers were  thought wrongly that the law change would make legbreak and offbreak  bowlers much less effective.

In the eight days of championship cricket I watched this year not once has 30 overs of spin been bowled in the day and on only one  occasion (Batty and Ansari for Surrey) have I seen spinners bowling  in tandem for any length of time.

A full day’s play between g  Middlesex v Warwickshire  yielded the  first spin  at 3 pm.  Only 13 overs of spin bowled in the day . The spin which was bowled (by Patel) had as much flight in it as an Ostrich. At  the Surrey versus Derbyshire match at the Oval only two overs of spin were bowled on the day I attended.

All spinners are suffering, but  young spinners are hardly being given a chance. This is partly because of the practice of playing only one specialist spinner in most county sides, but is also a consequence of counties going for the safe option of choosing foreign spinners such as Patel of Warwickshire a or  an older  English spinner,   regardless of potential of the young spinner . For example, forty-year-old Gary Keedy played for  Notts in the last few Championship matches of the season  despite Notts having a very talented off-spinning allrounder in Sam Wood. Or how about Danny Briggs, the Hampshire  slow left armer who has played for  England in ODI and T20 cricket being  left out because the Pakistani  Imran Tahir was available.

There are other  young  spinners who have turned in good second eleven performances,  but who have not been able to establish themselves in as Championship players, bowlers such as Lilley  (ROB) of Lancs, Beer (LBG) of Sussex, Sykes (SLA) of Leicester,   Taylor (ROB) of Hants,  Craddock (LBG)  of Essex, Leach (SLA) of Somerset and MacQueen  (ROB) of Surrey.  They need to be given a chance soon or else they will simply drift out of the first class game.

It is also worth wondering if  spin bowling talent is simply being ignored. Nick Gubbins  of Middlesex who made his Championship debut this year ,  took ten wickets cheaply in a second XI CC match with his leg spin in 2013, yet  has not bowled much in second eleven games since nor  in any of his first team Championship games.

Returning to uncovered pitches, ending pitch inspectors (see below), ensuring there are reasonable sized boundaries  and restricting the weight of bats would all help to reinvigorate spin bowling in England.

Over zealous pitch regulation

A major part of the reason for the decline in spin is the interference of  the ECB in pitch preparation.  Until the  Championship moved from 3-day to 4-day games counties could prepare pitches as they wished without any fear of having points deducted. Counties used to play to their bowling strength by preparing pitches to suit their bowlers. For example, in the 1950s if a team went to play Derby at Buxton they knew the pitch would be a seamer’s paradise to suit Les Jackson and Cliff Gladwin. If a county visited  Bristol  it was a fair bet the pitch would turn on the first morning for John Mortimer, David Allen and Sam Cook to work on. A visit to the Oval would guarantee a nightmare pitch which helped all of Surrey’s great attack of Bedser, Loader, Laker and Lock.  Yet Peter May averaged nearly 50 on it during the 1950s. Demanding pitches sort out the sheep from the goats.

Counties should be allowed to prepare their pitches as they see fit. Doubtless a cry would go up from the  ECB that it would not produce cricket which prepared players to play for England. This is simple nonsense. In the 1950s when bowlers were the most dominant in county cricket  they had been since 1914 England enjoyed arguably its most successful decade, with no series being lost from the end of the 1950/51 Ashes series to the 1958/9 Ashes series.

The 1950s saw county cricket producing  such players as  players: May, Barrington, Graveney,  Dexter, Cowdrey,  Pullar, Richardson,  Sheppard, Tyson, Trueman, Statham,  Loader, Lock, Titmus, Illingworth and  Appleyard,  whilst   players established before the 1950s such as Hutton, Washbrook, Compton, Bill Edrich, Bailey, Evans, Wardle, Alec  Bedser continued to thrive.   If English cricket did not reach the same general level after the 1950s,   it was not because of pitches being too demanding  for batsmen or  overly easy for bowlers.

Pitches which give the bowler a chance  do not create a false sense of ability in the bowler because the quality of the batsmen also improves as they learn to counter more difficult conditions.   English bowlers had great success at Test level in the 1950s. No  England bowler who played more than ten Tests in the decade  ended with a Test average of over  30 and only Trevor Bailey (an allrounder not a specialist bowler)  had a Test average of more than 27 at the end of the 1950s. Laker, Lock, Wardle, Trueman , Appleyard and Tyson all had Test averages of under 22.   This emphatically shows that having helpful pitches to bowl on in county cricket did not inflate  judgements of their ability.

The other objection to doing away with pitch inspectors is that games would be over too quickly is easily countered.    Many four day Championship games already finish early, a fair number of them within three days. It is also true that when Championship games were played over three days on uncovered pitches prepared as counties wanted  to prepare them, many games either resulted in draws or contrived finishes with declarations  Counties also have a vested interest in games not finishing early because it both reduces revenue at the gate and from catering and reduces the value of county memberships.

There is no reason to believe that allowing counties to prepare pitches they choose would make a radical change in the length of matches. Moreover, by allowing the counties to prepare the pitches to suit their bowlers this would produce much more varied cricket than we presently see. That would be an attraction for the spectators.

The decline of close fielding

The outfielding may have improved in recent times, although I think much of this belief may arise from the spectacular nature of the slide tackle stop rather than any massive actual improvement in overall run-saving. What is indubitably poorer today  is the close catching, especially slip catching.  Why is this? I suspect the answer is very simple: the death of the specialist close catcher.    In the 1950s and indeed for almost all of cricket’s first class history close catchers spent almost all their time in the same position. Who ever saw Cowdrey,  Phil Sharp or Bobby Simpson anywhere but slip?  This constant practice improved them and kept them sharp. These days fielders are frequently moved all over the place and the skill level in close positions is inevitably lowered. Come to think of it, this practice may also affect other positions. When did you last see a really top class cover?

The bogus nature of two divisional cricket

The introduction of two divisions into English cricket has three drawbacks:

1. It is bogus. The oft made claim s by its supporters that the gap between the two divisions is massive goes against the facts, namely, the frequent changes in fortune from one season to the next of clubs, most notably demonstrated by Lancashire winning the Championship in 2012 and being relegated the next year.   Unfortunately, many players buy into the propaganda and also think that the England selectors will not choose them if they play into the second division of the Championship. This is causing many of the best players from the smaller counties to leave for counties which are thought to have the best chances of remaining in division one.  This sometimes backfires as it has in the case of Nathan Buck who left Leicestershire for Lancashire at the end of the 2014 season and finds himself in the second division because  Lancashire have  been relegated once more.
2. The division of   the Championship into two divisions means that cricket followers are deprived of seeing half the county teams playing the county they support.
3. It complicates the fixture list – see below.

The chaotic fixture list

The 2014 fixture list was seriously defective because of the way in which Championship cricket was treated.  The Championship season began  on 6 April and ended on 26 September,  a total of 172 or 24 weeks and 4 days.

Each county had to play only 16 Championship games,   so spreading them fairly evenly between 172 days should have been a piece of cake. It did not happen. Instead half the Championship matches  had been played by early June.   The rate of Championship games slowed , Between  15 June and 24 July  a mere  36 Championship games were  played . But this was riches compared with what followed. Between 24 July and 15 August  only a single round of Championship games was held.  The rest of the  Championship season was then crowded into  September when four rounds were played.  This dislocation of the Championship was compounded by many of the games starting on different days.

This unsatisfactory state of affairs was partly down to the wilful disregard for the Championship as a valuable thing in its own right.  The limited overs completions were given unashamed priority. This showed most blatantly in the placing of the 50 overs competition in August which was the reason so little Championship was played in August.  But the existence of two divisions in the Championship and the group organisation of  the T20 and 50 over competitions  also played a large part because they complicated the fixture list.

What would be a better fixture list? I suggest this.

1. The season should begin on 1 May and end on 18 September, a total of 140 days or 20 weeks.
2. The Championship should revert to being a single division. With each county playing the others once.
3. The T20 competition should be a league with each county playing the others once.
4. Each of the seventeen championship games and seventeen T20 games to be played together. The T20 game would be played on the Friday immediately  followed by the Championship game starting on the Saturday. For example, Yorkshire would play  Lancashire at home with the T20 on a Friday and the Championship on the next four days.  That would allow the players two days off on Wednesday and Thursday.

As there are twenty weeks in the season there would be three weeks free . Those could be used to  fit in a  50 overs knock out competition at the end of the season and a few matches against touring sides.

Championship cricket has a value in its own right 

The County Championship  has become diminished in the public’s eyes   because  the counties and administrators have too often taken the view that  the completion is purely a breeding ground for  the England team from which most of English cricket’s funding now comes.  This attitude has been increasingly  taken up by the mainstream media which has remorselessly concentrated  ever more on the rapidly  expanding number of international matches England plays  whilst greatly contracting the coverage of county matches. The tabloids have more or less stopped covering Championship cricket , whilst even the  broadsheets such as the Daily Telegraph no longer have match reports on every Championship game as they used to do. The one bright spot in the media  gloom has been  the BBC’s  extensive commentary of Championship matches on Radio 5 extra in the past few years. However, there is no guarantee that will continue, or that BBC local radio will continue to cover matches.

The idea that the County Championship is simply or even primarily a training ground for England players is unsustainable. It may do service for a another decade or so but eventually  it will die if that is the only message which goes out to the public. That is  because it is an uninspiring message which suggests that the Championship  has no value in itself.

If  County cricket dies it is difficult to see where the supply of players for the England side would come  from. Out of city franchises? Regional teams? Back to the future with All-England elevens of various descriptions simply drawing players from club cricket and touring as a cricketing version of the Harlem Globe Trotters? ? Hardly viable? All of those possibilities would have far less resonance with supporters than the counties.

If the healthy condition of county cricket is the best guarantor for  English cricket to be healthy,  what can be done to keep it safe?  At  present Championship cricket  is effectively never advertised to the general public or even to the cricket loving part of it.  The ECB  and the counties need to realise that a substantial part of the money they get from broadcasting rights  should be spent promoting it.   Make it more publicly  visible and the mainstream media will be  more likely to take an interest.

There is also a simple way of boosting Championship  attendance which would cost next to nothing. Allow free entry to a Championship match for a day on the production of the ticket stub from an England game of any sort, Test, ODI or T20. As several  hundreds of thousands of people go to watch England in England every summer ,  this potentially could boost Championship attendances very substantially even if  people simply take the free day’s Championship cricket. Although there would be no entry money such spectators  would  boost sales of refreshments and purchases from the club shop. In addition,. it could well result in people coming back to pay for entry in the future or even to take out county memberships.  The scheme is worked out in detail here .

Increased attendances  would make Championship cricket more attractive to the mainstream media and to sponsors.  That is the bottom line both in terms of economics and the long term health of English cricket

But if Championship cricket is to be successfully  promoted,  it is essential that the counties ensure that they have the facilities to cope with decent size crowds, that the games are played throughout the season not crammed into the beginning and end of it, entry prices are  reasonable – counties are starting to get too greedy – and the catering is  both decent and not priced to cost an arm and a leg.