Batting on a Sticky Wicket

 

 

Minto in action! He is a left-arm seamer.

I happened to read a piece recently about James Minto, a 17-year-old who was named last week as a member of England’s Under-19 cricket squad to play India this week. He is from Norton, a market town in Stockton-on-Tees where the cricket club is twinned with the local miners’ Welfare Institute. He grew up in a single parent family with his mother, Jemma, and his two brothers but his mother recently died so that James is now also the family breadwinner.

Durham's team in play.

Minto is short but strong with his strength developed from his active interest in boxing. In cricketing terms, he is a left-arm seamer already capable of bowling speeds of 85/87 mph and a left-hand bat who opens the batting in club cricket. Last year, he became Durham’s youngest first-class debutant at 16. He is the youngest to take five wickets in one match for the club and made 67 as a ‘nightwatchman’ opening in a championship match against Nottinghamshire this season to make him the club’s youngest first-class cricketer to score half a century. His own personal story is remarkable but wider than that, he is a perfect representative to illustrate what one county, Durham, is doing to address professional cricket’s perennial class problem by working with the British white working-class community that overwhelmingly makes up the demographic of the North-East and is often the most overlooked part of society.

Village cricket, 1687 painting.

It is worth a brief detour here to look at the history of cricket in class terms which have been seminal in their important long-term effect on today’s world of cricket. In its early origins in the 17-18th centuries, cricket began as a simple ‘bat and ball’ folk game for rural folk and working people in the southeast of England. The game eventually developed into the sport of cricket which engaged the interest and patronage of aristocrats and other wealthy men, and their gambling on matches helped to formalise the game, leading to many upper-class gents playing cricket themselves. This development solidified a lasting social division between the gentry who played as amateurs and the worki

Evolution of the cricket bat over 400 years.

ng-class professionals who were paid to play. In effect, the deep-seated English class hierarchy was reinforced, and it defined this cricketing ‘gentlemen and players’ era for over 300 years. ‘Gentlemen’ were amateurs [lovers of the game], typically aristos and upper-class sporty men who played for fun and leisure, while ‘Players’ were working-class men who played for a living. This strong class divide widened systemically into a North-South cultural split with League cricket in the industrial north seen as a working-class, professional, competitive enterprise. In contrast, club cricket in the suburban south was rather more middle-class and amateur, a somewhat more up-market and less competitive social affair.

1875 notice outlining protocol for both teams.
Note the difference in tone between  advice for Gentlemen and Players.

 The modern paucity of white working-class participation in today’s professional cricket has produced what amounts to systemic barriers which have increasingly priced out white working-class communities from the professional game. The current situation sees cricket’s professional elite significantly over-represented by privately educated players, a situation largely either accepted as normal, or unnoticed, by the public. A personal aside which illustrates the usual working-class attitude to cricket over thirty years ago. In the Seventies, when I was Head of House in a huge comprehensive school, there came the annual Summer inter-house games matches watched by the entire school over several sunny days [in memory] The July afternoon of my first year there when we had, with considerable difficulty, managed to field an entire house cricket team from reluctant boys in a House of approximately 300 boys and girls , the absence rate of possible spectators was in the region of 75% and the following day saw the explanation from numerous miscreants that nobody was interested in cricket anyway; it was a ‘posh’ game best avoided.

Advertisement in The Yorkshire Post 28th August 1875.

Key Factors aggravating this decline of white working-class participation in cricket, and it must be noted, also Asian boys too, are:

1.      Low-income families cannot afford equipment, with basics like decent cricket bats and helmets, out of reach for many. Limited access to transport to attend training or matches is also a handicap.

2.      The loss of traditional industries in coal and steel have decimated working-class communities and, with it, their local cricket clubs often affiliated to the Miners’ Welfare Club for instance.

3.      Many local authority recreational grounds and school playing fields have been sold off, limiting access to all sports.

 Cricket is especially popular among Asian communities

4.      Meanwhile, independent school pupil numbers have increased and these elite institutions have the resources to invest in cricketing facilities and, importantly, in high quality coaching which effectively establishes an available direct route for their pupils to professional level.  

5.      The move of major cricket matches to pay-per-view television has dramatically reduced the sport’s visibility in working-class communities and this lack of exposure to high-class cricket reduces the likelihood of a new generation of ‘have a go’ enthusiasts.

Potential Consequences and Initiatives

Minto in play as batsman and ...

The relatively low level of white working-class participation in cricket affects more than just the demographics; it impacts the talent pool and the social cohesion of the game.  Cricket is also very popular indeed among British Asians but players from these groups, both Asian and white, are much less likely to make it professionally. Given the considerable popularity of the game in Asian communities, it is unlikely that lack of potential talent is a factor. To counter this trend, efforts are underway to make the sport more widely accessible and there are some initiatives which focus on democratising access and nurturing talent from all backgrounds. Grassroots programmes in community and youth groups are now supported by the ECB and the England and Wales Cricket Board, and efforts to engage diverse communities are being made by bodies like the South Asian Cricket Academy while the African-Caribbean Engagement Programme [ACE] is directing efforts to bring more players from under-represented ethnic groups into cricket.  Other encouraging developments include Warwickshire County Club which is committed to finding contingency within its own budget to grant aid to all club youngsters in need, while the Brian Johnston Memorial Trust supports talented individuals who need financial assistance to play at club cricket level.

..... as bowler

 

Charterhouse School where cricket appeared
on the syllabus in 1859 and the Summer Term
is known as the Cricket Quarter.

     CRICKETING NOTES for the uninitiated.                                  

Downe House, an independent girls' school where cricket
is both popular and competitively successful.

 Left arm seamer is a cricketer who bowls with their left arm, using the seam of the ball to make it bounce or move in the air, often in a way that swings into right-handed batsmen or away from left-handed batters.

Nightwatchman is a lower-order batsman, usually a bowler, who comes in to bat instead of a more skillful batsman near the end of a day’s play to protect the latter’s wicket.

Debutant is a person who is making a first appearance in a particular capacity, such as a sportsperson playing in his first game of cricket for a team.

Batting on a Sticky Wicket is a metaphor used to describe a difficult circumstance which needs careful management. It originated as a cricketing expression to describe a damp and soft wicket.

Training session at South Shields Cricket Club.
Girls increasingly play cricket in a range 
of schools