Arthur Crabtree wrote:The loss of cricket on fta in UK is commonly cited as a factor in people losing interest in the sport, of my generation anyway. And the management of the ECB was a massive factor in people in the UK growing disillusioned with cricket. I get most of my opinion from the Guardian, so maybe that doesn't represent the entirety of the breadth of opinion out there, but the governance of the game has seemed to be a big breaking point in people's support. Maybe the KP affair most of all out of any single incident, perhaps the sake of rights to Sky similarly.
Is this not a case of the old establishment being in control of the message, and established bias having an effect on their interpretation?
We are told that cricket is in crisis, that counties are dying a death, but in 2016 (the last figures available) counties were getting on average 7000 people through the gate to watch a T20 game. Thats near 130,000 people over a whole spread of each team hosting a home game, taking away the showpiece finals for the rugby union that attract over 85,000, its a similar amount of people that rugby union can drum up if all teams hosted a home game in the same week. Its about the same as League One football attracts. Its a couple of thousand off super league, but again take away the showpiece games played in much bigger stadiums, you are looking a similar amount on average non finals situations. In comparison to other sports, it doesnt show an absolute disaster. This situation gets even more indicative when you travel around the world; the IPL and Big Bash are now returning some of the best average attendances (both comfortably top 10) out of any sports in the world.
Attendances in the Big Bash have nearly doubled over 5 years. They now stand at over 30,000 per game average, and havent stopped rising. IPL has touched these figures too (over the 30,000 per game mark). These firmly place T20 cricket in the most watched sports in the world.
More people are going to watch cricket than ever live, so I am not sure where we can bring in this "cricket is dying". The inconvenient truth is, we fans are making the decision on the product alone. Bank Holiday Monday, cost drops to get in and a series on the line with a full day cricket foreseen, 2,000 turned up for the day (Sri Lanka v England at Headingly)..... 3.5 times lower than a normal T20 game.
Its debatable as to whether or not First Class/Test cricket is even sustainable anymore, or more likely, is it the reason for reliance on the ECB that creates the administration problems. If First Class counties spent all summer in a much expanded calendar of T20 games, they would be raking in income. It seems the whole county system is rotting to produce a sport that 300 to 400 people turn up every day to watch. In a short season, for nearly a whole month, these players trot out on lose making missions to play in front of more livestock than humans.