Lou: they have no idea (about juniors, about scheduling, about ticket pricing, about anything)

I’m reading an article in Friday’s Australian about how much money Cricket Australia is making and how many kids are playing the game and the numbers don’t make sense to me. I have a friend who often travels around Australia, visiting schools. He tells me that cricket has all but vanished from primary schools because of the length of the game and the predominance of female teachers. He says that in country areas many towns don’t even have junior clubs. It would then follow that there would be a fall off in the numbers playing in secondary schools and a subsequent downturn in talented players. We also know that some parents are pushing kids into Basketball and Volleyball  so that their weekends are free from the five hour drudge of sitting on the boundary in the heat. So, someone is fudging the figures.

 

The other thing that occurred to me is that if they are making so much money why aren’t they pouring it into junior cricket. It is obvious from the results of our underage teams that there is no money being spent there.

 

Cricket Australia is amazed at the low crowd figure in Melbourne. It’s not rocket science. All you have to do is look at the ticket cost combined with the stupid overcrowding of tournaments and matches this season. There are too many choices, the ticket prices are too high, families do not have enough dollars and the standard of cricket so far has been woeful and it will not improve. Wait until we’re subjected to Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan and Ireland. By mid-February  we’ll be hanging out for some decent football. Especially after the deep fried big bash where some teams will be sporting players who can’t even make their state teams. Take out the test squad and add two more teams, add a few well-ripened overseas has beens and you end up with mediocrity.

 

C’mon the footy.

Comments

  1. Our neighbours across the road grew up in Bombay. Their kids grew up in Melbourne. They’re going to matches in Adelaide, Sydney (a final), as well as Melbourne. The whole family’s going along with some mates. There’s enough for their own cricket team in the party. Pakistan v India (ADL) is already booked out and they tell me tix are $300 on eBay. You can’t buy a flight into the City of Churches that weekend and even if you could you’d have to roll out your swag in Rundle Mall because you’d have more chance of finding a bed in Bethlehem on census night. But that’s the equivalent of an ANZAC Day Blockbuster.

    Take Ireland v Canada in the Shadows of ANZAC Hill; you’re right Almanac Admin, you’d e battling to pull two men and a goanna. And the goanna would have wandered in by mistake.

    I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this before, but The Deccan Chronicle recently led their editorial page with ‘Have We Reached Peak Cricket?’ The reasons were not dissimilar to those trotted out above. At least Cricket Australia’s in the lead bunch in the Stupidity Stakes.

    The Long Dark Summer rolls on.

  2. Mark Duffett says

    I was just chatting with a retired primary school principal today about how, when school lunch breaks went close to an hour and thus made the exercise worthwhile, we were able to take full kit bits (pads, keeping gloves, boxes etc) across the street to the bare concrete pitch on the school oval and play with a compo ball. We might get a new one once or twice a season. This was a small country primary school, not flush with resources, but that was the priority cricket had. All largely unsupervised. Hard to imagine happening today, and if a bunch of kids did happen to try it, it’d be stopped quicker than you can say ‘duty of care’.

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