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As you will be aware if you buy the Croydon Advertiser or the Surrey Mirror, First Innings has undergone something of an expansion this summer in the form of The Hook Report. I hope I have been accurately reflecting the mood of the supporters in my column, which, unfortunately, as I remarked in a recent one, seems to be up one week and down the next! When my cricket editor Simon Osborn came up with idea, he just said to me: "Write it as though you're Victor Meldrew." As it happens, One Foot In The Grave is one of my favourite programmes (although nothing comes close to Only Fools And Horses). But I am happy to say the Hook Report hasn't just been a long list of moans and groans. As I remarked early on, I did find it satisfying that, despite the ECB's latest effort to marginalise the County Championship - by coming up with an utterly ludicrous fixture list - the opening weeks of the season were blessed with excellent weather. From recollection, not an over of play was lost to the elements in Surrey's first four championship matches. Indeed, there was the rare sight of male torsos being bared in the Peter May Enclosure on the opening day of the season! So far this year, those who visit the Oval World messageboard haven't had many nice things to say. As we also saw when Surrey lost each of their first two T20 encounters, the lads were booed off the pitch, which I can't recall happening before. While it would be easy to brush it off as something that was always likely to occur thanks to the Twenty20, for any Surrey side to be afforded such a lack of respect is deplorable. For many of us, the winning of eight trophies in as many years is still fresh in the mind. But a lot of water has passed under the bridge since then - only one member of that side still playing for Surrey. As depressing as the defeats to Gloucestershire and Leicestershire within three days were, it is important to keep things in perspective. In 1992, the seconds won the Second XI Championship, but it was another seven years before the first team became county champions. Hopefully the next conversion won't take that long again, but, realistically, Surrey aren't even going to be in Division One until 2012. As Keeners put it in his Komments, there are some green shoots of recovery emerging at last. No one can ever predict what the future holds, but the fulcrum of what has the makings of the next great Surrey side seems to be taking shape in the form of Steven Davies, Jade Dernbach, Arun Harinath, Rory Hamilton-Brown, Stuart Meaker and Jason Roy. In the last edition of Oval World, I listed my hopes for the coming season. If taken as benchmarks, so far, other than the setback to Chris Jordan's development, they all have ticks alongside them. When I spoke with Ian Salisbury after the Leicestershire game he said that, at times, Surrey seem to take one step forward and two back. I didn't say this to Ian, but before his move from Sussex at the end of 1996 - which I just felt at the time was the final piece in the jigsaw - that was pretty much the way things had been at the Oval for fifteen years. The key then was that Dave Gilbert gave the guys the confidence to go out an express themselves on the cricket field. The six players I have listed above all seem to be doing that at the moment, so in my view there is every reason for Surrey supporters to be optimistic about the future. In the latest edition of the Wisden Cricketer, Mark Nicholas - cricket presenter on Channel Five, cookery presenter on BBC2 and a player who wasn't good enough to play Test cricket - has come out and said: "It would be no shame for some counties to relinquish their first-class status. The battle to survive is self-serving and damaging to the game's resources. Derbyshire, Northamptonshire, Gloucestershire and Worcestershire - to name four of six or seven - exist for no obviously justifiable reason." Nicholas has obviously been listening too much to Rod Bransgrove, the Hampshire chairman. Whenever I read such swipes at the domestic game, I ask myself: "Oh yeah, and when did I last see him at a county match?" The last time I saw Nicholas at a game involving Surrey was eight years ago. I remember it well because we were playing at the Rose Bowl during the World Cup. The TV in the press box was on terrestrial and the one in the pavilion was on digital, which meant that when the match between Ireland and Spain went to penalties, we saw each spot-kick being taken, but had to wait a couple of seconds to hear the reaction of the members. Spain won the penalty shoot-out 3-2. The only thing I remember about the cricket was that it was Adam Hollioake's first game back after we lost Ben. Well, it was a one-dayer, of which very few linger in the memory for more than a week. The ECB's efforts to reduce the size of the County Championship seem to have gone away for now, but the idea of city franchises is now having new life breathed back into it. All this chopping and changing is becoming extremely tedious. Now the golden goose that is the Twenty20 Cup is in danger of being killed off by the sheer greed of the counties, it's a case of going back to the drawing board, yet again, to find ways of attracting a new audience. How many more new audiences are still out there? And don't tell me that people want to come and watch split innings 40-over matches. What the authorities need to understand is that even if the season was turned over entirely to Twenty20 cricket, punters need to know when the matches will be taking place. Right now, the fixtures are all over the place, but, bizarrely, this summer, Saturday is the day of the week when the least amount of county cricket is being played. It's as if the ECB believes the last thing anyone would want to do on Saturday is watch cricket - and these are the people who are in charge of promoting the game in this country! BACK TO: |
