A thrilling innings by one of England’s star players put them on the path to a four-wicket win over the mighty Australians in their first match of cricket’s summer. Playing with confidence and conviction, strong in all departments — batting, bowling and fielding — and led by a supremely smart captain, England now look the favourites to win the series.
What’s the matter? Bit perturbed that the above paragraph doesn’t look familiar, given what you’ve been reading in the Sports section over the past few days? That’s because I’m talking about England’s women cricketers, whereas you’ve been reading about our men.
I was at Lord’s on Sunday to watch our blokes capitulate, thrashed as they were by more than 400 runs in scenes that recalled the dark days of the Nineties. Pretty much the only thing that got me out of the ensuing depression, other than Pimm’s, was the feeling that at least our girls can beat the Austalians.
Earlier this summer, after an entertaining win by England’s men against New Zealand, we were all raving about how English cricket is strong again. Last Sunday at Lord’s was nearer the truth. Cricket, and particularly Test cricket, is not in rude health at all. Over the past few years there has been a dramatic shift in power, as India launched the Indian Premier League (IPL), in which both sides bat for just 20 overs.
Closer to baseball than most cricket fans would like, this brash version of the game has robbed the Test match arena of talent while creating a new fan base and injecting millions into the sport. But when any sport, or indeed any industry, is flooded with cash before it has the institutional structures in place to make good use of that cash, you get rampant corruption. That is exactly what has happened to the IPL, a carnival of bribery that shames the modern game.
This descent into chaos is documented in a widely acclaimed new film. I’ve not yet seen Death of a Gentleman, written by Sampson Collins and Jarrod Kimber, but it is the most hotly anticipated cricket film since Fire in Babylon, Ben Goldsmith’s superb documentary about the great West Indies team of the Eighties.
The title is operative: if cricket as we’ve known it, the ultimate gentleman’s game, is dying before our eyes, might the ladies rescue it? England’s ladies above all, perhaps? After all, they are world-class, just like England’s female footballers.
What we need, other than ever more coverage in the sports pages, is for a modern version of Bend it like Beckham to glamorise and inspire young girls to take up this peerless game — one, moreover, which relies on skill more than power. This might prove a winner with girls from some ethnic minorities in particular.
The almost total collapse of cricket in state schools — a subject on which, by the way, Nigel Farage has spoken very eloquently — has made football the first-choice sport for a whole generation, not least because it’s so cheap to play. This has accelerated cricket’s demise. If there is to be a revival, and this dying gentleman is to be saved from his sickbed, it may be to England’s surging ladies that we look.
