by Alviro Patterson » Fri May 11, 2018 1:34 am
Went to the New York Stadium earlier this evening to watch England and Switzerland U17s in the U17 European Championships.
The 6,200 crowd consisted of Andrew Strauss target audience, young kids and their parents. Half the crowd weren't even interested in the match (albeit it was dull in places). Young mother taking selfies behind me, another mother attending to her restless toddler who was playing/throwing a bunch of keys and crawling all over his seat. Then there were kids blowing hard into their plastic horns and making un-coordinated noise.
Even when England had three good chances to score, the crowd reaction was virtually non-responsive and this is a game of football. A fair amount of the crowd was restless as well so they were coming and going mid-match as they please. Good luck trying to keep unruly people still during an over behind the bowlers arm!
If new audiences are not interested in a simple game of football, the ECB have no chance of 100 ball cricket or even 10 over cricket. Even GG's suggestion of Super 6 cricket might be too much for the goldfish generation.
Unless if they have a genuine interest for the game, fairweather families do not belong in sports stadia. Kew Gardens is a more stimulating place for them rather than Sophia Gardens.
"Stats are there to be broken" Dominic Cork
"They took all our players away, banned our captain and we still came away with a ten-wicket victory" Jason Gillespie
"You won't get anywhere slouching about half out of bed" Geoffrey Boycott
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