Readers of The Cricketer and thecricketer.com flood our inboxes with correspondence each week. Here are some of the opinions that have been shared with us in recent days...
I was amused to read in the October issue that Alec Stewart ‘praised’ Worcestershire for bringing on local talent. The only time Stewart will be slightly interested in promising young players from counties other than Surrey will be when he is considering getting out the chequebook in an effort to lure them away when their contracts expire. The present system so disadvantages the ‘smaller’ counties that I wonder why any of them continue to seek out and nurture promising youngsters when they must know that two or three counties (and you know who you are) will entice them away with the promise of greater glory, with no financial recompense. It is credit to counties such as Worcestershire and Northants, for instance, that they continue to seek out and encourage young players at the start of their careers, despite the predatory instincts of the ‘big boys’.
Michael Latham, via email
After turning over to Sky Cricket hoping to watch Warwickshire play Kent, which was the decider on who wins the Division Two title, I was surprised to see Sky Sports showing they Surrey and Essex match at The Oval. Surrey were already crowned champions of Division One so it was a dead rubber. It was disappointing not to be able to see who was going to be crowned champions of Division Two. I think the ECB and Sky Sports should think more about the matches they show. We want to see winner takes all games with everything to play for.
Will Tilson, Sidcup, Kent
Surrey vs Essex served up a treat
It's the last day of the County Championship 2018, the temperature is in the seventies (not the twenties!) and there is hardly a cloud in the Sky. All the matches have finished in three days with the exception of Surrey v Essex at The Oval which I am listening to on BBC radio.
Surrey were shot out for 67 in their first innings and Essex replied with 477 for 8 declared, so the result is a foregone conclusion. However Surrey have different ideas and put together well over 500 in their second knock. I switch on just after lunch and Essex need about 50 to win with five wickets down and Dernbach and Morkel intent on a spot of GBH. Wickets are falling regularly - two in the 21st over bowled by Morkel - and suddenly Essex are 111 for 8 then 124 for 9, following a nerve-wracking run out.
Ten Doeschate steadies the sinking Essex ship with a captain's innings, hits the winning runs and is engulfed by his team-mates, not least a very nervous No. 11. I know not all the County Championship games have been so exciting this season but what a scintillating end to 2018; can the ECB really be thinking about ending or at changing it all when it can offer up matches like this?
Brian Baker, PeterboroughWe know that the ECB is trying to destroy the counties' world so it shouldn’t be a surprise that they have now turned their attention from the Championship to the T20 competition. At the Finals Day there was an attendance of 25,000 yet the four Counties involved were awarded 500 tickets each. Somerset’s quarter-final attendance was 7,500 and they could have sold more whilst all their group games were also sold out. Have the ECB any idea of the bitter resentment felt by loyal and regular supporters?
We would ask three questions of them: 1) how many of the 23,000 other spectators had been to a T20 match this season?, 2) how many of them are within easy reach of Edgbaston and had no trouble getting home when the final ended after 9pm? and 3) how many are county members or even regular watchers of cricket? If they don’t know the answers, they should.
Finals Day at Edgbaston
The fundamental truth is that this is marketed as a fun day, not as a cricket final. Even the normally responsible Sky team (when they were not chattering on about next year’s World Cup during commentary) concentrated on the visual aspects of banana hurling, fancy dress and razzmatazz, even inducing poor old Rob Key to demean himself by joining in the crowd games.
That is why crowd reaction to key moments such as the fall of a vital wicket was so low key. The spectators didn’t seem to care. Core supporters on the other hand were denied even the dubious pleasure of a day in the Eric Hollies stand for heaven's sake.
When The Hundred arrives, the final will, of course, also be a sell out for the same reasons but how many of those there will have been at the group games? Certainly not us, nor any of our cricketing friends. We wouldn’t cross the road let alone make a long trip to Bristol or Cardiff to see Western Willies vs Midland Muppets.
David and Pamela Harrison, Sidmouth, Devon
It was reassuring to read George Dobell’s balanced view (October) on the Ben Stokes court case. Dobell was correct to point out the rebuttals that were less reported than the prosecution side in the mainstream media such was the latter’s desire to bring Stokes down, pandering to the prejudices of their readers.
As Dobell said, Stokes has been through enough [he has missed an Ashes tour and is likely to go on just one more, fitness pending], and so have all those associated with him in cricket and personally. He has been cleared in a court of law but is it necessary for him to through a quasi-legal process [via the ECB]? I am not sure, though I concede there is a separate charge that by his actions that fateful night in Bristol, the Durham allrounder brought the game into disrepute.
That is a separate subject from what was decided in court. However, Dobell was right to stress that Stokes did protect the vulnerable, and for that reason cannot be wholly castigated. Stokes is not a hero but it is the responsibility of those within the ECB and at Durham to help him spend his time constructively in the dead hours between matches and practice. I am not holding my breath that Stokes will become an Agatha Christie devotee!
David Rimmer, Hertford Heath
Jimmy Adams retired at the end of the 2018 campaign
Hampshire's Jimmy Adams had a eventful conclusion to his notable first-class career. In his last two matches he recorded scores of 0, 0 and 13 but more to the point in the Yorkshire match he was dismissed in both the singular and the plural (c Brook b Brooks) and his final innings against Lancashire included a seven. A happy retirement to one who has served the game with much credit.
Geoff Wellsteed, Caldy, Wirral
Little did I know in 1979, when I visited Kensal Green cemetery in London to see the grave of Reginald Brooks, that I was also only a few steps from the last resting place of William Murdoch. This occurred in the early days of my research for the first biography of the Ashes urn, Cricket's Biggest Mystery: The Ashes (Rigby, Australia, 1982; Lutterworth Press, UK, 1983). Brooks was first up with the phrase, "the Ashes" in a cricket context; Murdoch the first Australian cricket captain to "take" the then mythical Ashes to Australia. All this happening in late 1882. The Kensal Green revelation for me came about only the other day when a pal whose only interest in the game occurs when he spots a cricket book of which he thinks I might be unaware. Such is the case with Roland Perry's Captain Australia: a history of the celebrated captains of Australian cricket (Random House, Australia, 2000).
Perry quotes the famous mock obituary and attributes it to "a writer at Sporting Times". Perhaps Perry had as little awareness of Reginald Brooks (1854-1888), buried beside his parents at Kensal Green, as I have had of William Murdoch (1854-1911) being nearby. Sports' midget pot of pots made its debut appearance in a Victorian backyard at Christmas time 1882. There are, of course, ongoing mysteries associated with the urn that's now ensconced at Lord's,
Ron Willis, Perth, Western Australia
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