Right now cricket is a mile away from the mind of the most traditional sporting folk and it is not remotely sexy enough to attract a new, young audience of its own. Paul Allott, the former England bowler, said his 14-year-old son couldn't care less about cricket. He is quite taken by ice hockey and supports Manchester Storm, who sell out to 12,000 people each match. This is 1,000 more than made it to Old Trafford yesterday. How depressing, and still people say there is nothing wrong with cricket in this country.
In a way cricket is a victim of its own surprising commercial success. Test match grounds have been pretty full for as long as most people remember and crowds for one-day internationals have consistently sold out. Counties gleefully accept the handout of around œ1 million per county per year that comes from money made at those England matches and the garden stays rosy enough for the whole facade to perpetuate itself the following year. What it needs is bankruptcy to wake everyone up or a Packer-type bully to come in and shake the aching system to the core.
Like it or not, it is a fact that major companies are turning their back on cricket. Texaco and Tetley have gone, Britannic and AXA are on the way out. Only 50 per cent of country clubs are sponsored in any meaningful way. Vodafone, who have replaced Tetley as the England team's sponsors, must have their lines jammed with shareholders who wonder why on earth their directors are spending 15 million quid over three years to support a team who have not won a five-match series for more than a decade.
The ECB have been proud of their marketing because sales of tickets and of corporate hospitality at England matches has been so strong. But there were 2,000 unsold tickets for the one-day match against South Africa at Headingley in May and 200 for the one at Old Trafford. This, in a country of 58 million people who have easy access to small capacity cricket grounds. The England team have no superstars, no heroes for kids to latch on to, and they lose a lot.
This is a problem and it is not cyclical. It is endemic of an old-fashioned approach to selling and administering an old-fashioned game that urgently needs modernising. If county cricket is played in order to produce Test players, it is failing. If county cricket is played in order to make money it is failing, too, because the central fund bails most of it out. So what is country cricket doing and why is it so concerned about changing itself and embracing new ideas?
English cricket is run by the county members and while that absurd state of affairs continues there is little room for manoeuvre. Even Lord MacLaurin has found that out. It is pointless to ask county members about changing the system; it would make more sense to survey the people - young and old - who go to watch cricket once a year and ask them why they don't go more. You could start with the spectators who are not members of Lancashire but who were at Old Trafford yesterday. It wouldn't take long, there weren't many.