Care About First-Class or...

Give it Away

Subscribers and readers of South Africa’s Business Day newspaper may have read this already but, for those who aren’t, this column has already appeared. But if you are then you can enjoy the wonderful photos from my friend and colleague, Jonathan Knowles, who regular readers will know as an occasional guest columnist. He was careful to include the crowd in his lens.

Just look at the beauty of the surrounds of Boland Park, the inviting grass banks. What a place to spread out, relax and enjoy some excellent, competitive cricket. It was a working day, of course, but surely there were three or four hundred people who might have been tempted to enjoy some first-class cricket. If they’d known it was happening. There are thousands of retired cricket lovers in Cape Town. I’ve met many of them.

Anyway, here’s the column:

On Thursday last week Nottinghamshire won the English County Championship when they reached 300-4 on the second day of their final match against Warwickshire at their home ground, Trent Bridge. It gave them a second batting bonus point which put them beyond the reach of their closest challenger, defending champions Surrey.

Fast bowler Nathan Gilchrist, Harare-born but educated at St.Stithians and on-loan to Warwickshire from Kent, bowled a bouncer to the Notts wicketkeeper which was smashed over midwicket for six sparking peculiar celebrations, as you can imagine, with just two Notts players in the middle and the rest crowded onto the players balcony.

In South Africa the first round of the CSA 4-Day competition was just starting. Western Province were without the man who captained them last season - Kyle Verreynne – because he was the wicket keeper winning Notts the Championship.

Only three of the 15-man Proteas Test squad due to play a two-Test series against Pakistan nest month played first-class cricket last week. Verreynne for Notts, David Bedingham for Durham – who were relegated – and Simon Harmer for Essex. None of the players whose teams played the first round of matches in South Africa were selected. The squad doesn’t depart for Lahore until October 7.

Boland played some tremendous cricket in Paarl where Gavin Kaplan (238) and Grant Roelofsen (150) carried the home side to a first innings total of 616 before Glenton Stuurman (6-61) helped them to a 9-wicket victory against the Titans for whom Dewald Brevis and Corbin Bosch did not play.

Sinethemba Qeshile (129) shone for the Warriors as they clinched a tight 48-run victory against a Verreynne-less WP and newly promoted Tuskers (KZN Inland) had their captain Michael Erlank (200) to thank for a first innings total of 399 before collapsing to 98 all out to lose by 8-wickets to the North West Dragons in Potchefstroom for whom opener Lesiba Ngoepe scored 154.

It is more than a little ironic that the Test squad (minus Verreynne and Bedingham) were on tour with the ICC Test Mace in the week before the first round of matches, celebrating a magnificent achievement in the hardest form of the game. The skills required to become World Test Champions were acquired, of course, by playing four-day cricket, not avoiding it.

First-class cricket has never attracted large crowds but, in England, it has enjoyed a resurgence with Surrey averaging something like 1500 spectators a day with peaks of around 6000. There were over 4000 at Trent Bridge to witness Notts eventual three-day win against Warwickshire and a ‘proper’ celebration but the days of ‘two-men-and-a-dog’ audiences are long gone. Except in South Africa.

There weren’t even gate stewards at Boland Park on Thursday, never mind an entrance fee. Jonathan estimated the crowd to be 25. Actually, it wasn’t an estimation. He counted them. There were, apparently, a few more spectators at the weekend. It feels, and looks, like South Africa has officially given up on first-class cricket as a spectacle which is a pity because it remains the only means to the end which produced the Test champions.

Financial prudence might suggest that 4-day cricket not only fails to generate income, it loses money, so why spend anything at all on promoting it. It has already been cut to just seven rounds of matches in the first division while the second division teams are heading inexorably towards dissolvement. Cricket South Africa cannot support 15 professional teams, no matter how desirable the concept is.

To be fair, all professional cricketers would chose to play in front of an audience rather than empty seats and barren grass banks. You can’t blame Verreynne. But by not selecting the best available players and not doing anything to incentivise spectators, the message is clear: domestic first-class is an irritation, like unpleasant medicine.

But until cricketers believe they can prepare adequately for Test cricket by practising in the nets, it is also critical medicine for the health of the greatest format of the game. Test relies on its regular doses of first-class. Administrators at national and provincial level must continue the effort to sweeten the medicine, however difficult that talk might be.