SPECTATOR SPORT
Culture shocks
Frank Keating
IN A matter of days, Rupert Murdoch's promise of millions has so detonated the game of rugby league that by the time you have arrived here the after-shocks will still be exploding all over the shop so as to ren- der worthless any hasty knee jerk reaction by this column. What will be seen once the dust has settled, however, is that Mr Mur- doch's brass (as well as his brass neck) will have turned friends into enemies, and riven content and ancient communities in his power-crazed urge to sell satellite dishes.
Mercifully, so much as a blink of his cold eye will never glance towards English coun- ty cricket, which sauntered unsprightly into some sort of action this week. Mind you, any number of weary lovers of the county game see it already on a suicide path with- out recourse to, or recompense from, Mr M. As Simon Heifer beadily warned in Sat- urday's Daily Telegraph: [County] cricket can slide ever deeper into boredom; first-class cricketers can give an even better impression of hating playing it than they do already; more people can give up watching it; and, worst of all, yet more people can give up playing it in clubs and on village greens, thereby torpedoing a central part of our culture.
But I merrily packed my first picnic of the summer for Taunton on Tuesday to see what Young England were made of. Plus the new Cricketers' Who's Who to identify the future. It is an in-dipper in the Waqar class if you care to know the name of Alan Igglesdon's dog (`Lillee', after Dennis), or Darren Gough's (`Jack', after stumper Rus- sell), or Mike Field-Buss's cats (`Sam' and `Cassey'). Steve Rhodes is full of his tankful of self-bred tropical fish but does not name them individually.
A browse might even cheer up Heifer. Gloucesfershire's Simon Hinks, for instance, notes:
The media insist current players do not enjoy ourselves. We do, but we cannot afford to be seen to, otherwise we are accused of being less than professional. Give us more say and you would be really surprised how many so- called 'traditionalists' you would find among us.
Surrey's lusty Adam Hollioake (Hobbies: 'A few Fosters, a few barbies, a few late nights, and spending time with a delightful little wood-nymph called Judy') thinks county cricket 'far too boring for spectators — if you hit the ball out of the ground you should get 12', and in one-dayers it should be compulsory for two spinners to bowl in each innings with the straight boundary reduced to 20 yards'.
James Boiling, Durham and England A off-spinner who went to university from Mr Major's south London school of Rutlish, offers an 11-point plan to overhaul the game — including a weed-out of players `trying to have their cake and eating it'; TCCB groundsmen for all counties; scrap- ping the Sunday League; putting big busi- ness sponsors in charge of clubs; letting all spectators in for free; making umpires the Test selectors, with Geoff Boycott as `supremo' and Ian Botham as his 'Little John'; allowing 'humorous banter between players on the field'; and pruning the Championship by merging such neighbours as Surrey and Middlesex, Worcester and Warwickshire, Lancashire and Yorkshire, and so on.
There is obviously the ruthless circus ringmaster touch of Rupert M. about our James.
Worth pondering.
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