According to a Cricket Club Development Network poll in March, way too many local club leaders lacked enthusiasm for the start of the 2022 season. We put it down to the Ashes debacle, the Rafiq affair and ECB flux.
So we ran a survey to see how things were as the season drew to a close. Two-hundred-and-fifty club leaders responded; seemingly all celebrating, as mine, 1st XI promotion, a step nearer Premier League status and, universally, the 2nd XI just falling short.
Of course, that can’t be. Much as not all Network clubs can possibly have record membership, revenues, matches (across all formats, ages and genders) played, and net asset accumulation. But it’s what most said.
We’re used to evidence from the Network, over 1,000 mainly ECB Clubmark-accredited clubs, challenging the ‘cricket in decline’ narrative. It may be a skewed sample but the survey also reveals much about the state of club cricket. It is backed up by one-to-one interviews with club chairs from Durham to the Somerset levels and South Wales to the Fenlands.
The interviewees are not an entirely representative cross sample. Droitwich’s Martyn Davies is in his early thirties and Jon Maskrey of Bignall End his late twenties. Eighty per cent of club leaders in the survey are over the age of 50 and the median age of club chairs in excess of 60.
But the bigger news: 42 per cent of club chairs say they will step down in the next one to two years and 80 per cent intend to relinquish within three to five years. Given 62 per cent have been in post for more than five, and half beyond the 10-year ceiling recommended by Sport England, that’s a timebomb.
So why is the end looming for so many club leaders? For Mike Palmer, it is no idle threat. Hampton & Solihull’s management committee already know his time’s up. He’s carried the burden for most of the club’s 18 years existence since a shotgun merger. “I just want to sleep better,” he says.
I interrupt Simon Griffiths on Saturday morning at Macclesfield’s ground taking delivery of a new scarifier: “I’m semi-retired and the club work expands to fill the available time. I don’t know how I coped when I was NHS senior management. My boss was sympathetic when I needed time. But my wife will be less sympathetic if I don’t live up to my promise to progress the ‘bucket list’ in the next three-to-five years.”
The workload is year-round. Forty-four per cent of club chairs commit more than two hours per day in summer when playing matters commonly absorb time but 90 per cent still do at least three to five per week in the winter, with one third more than 10 hours. September to April is when club leaders are typically catching up with administration and longer-term strategic thinking and planning.
So, contrary to ECB groupthink, club leaders do not hibernate in winter. Late imposition of a much delayed Clubmark reaccreditation deadline mid-season – when chairs are already running from pillar to post – reaffirmed club perceptions that they’re oblivious or just plain out of touch.
But club chairs are confident, Micawber-like, that something will turn up. Most say they are part of a good team even if an obvious successor has yet to emerge. Only 7 per cent, like Jon Ball of Shapwick & Polden, in the shadow of Glastonbury Tor, report their club completely reliant on one or two heroic individuals. He is now chair, secretary, ground crew and most other things after his predecessor’s premature death. But even he is hopeful of encouraging wider participation in a village club enjoying Premier League status.
“A willingness to make collective decisions and an ability to see different perspectives,” professed Karen Klomp when asked for the key characteristics of successful club leaders. Discovering cricket through Google, after relocating from her native Netherlands, she received a warm welcome at Streatham & Marlborough: “Nine years later, after helping out and getting to know everyone, becoming chair of a big club was much easier.”
Mark Shevill picked up Retford, alongside running three successful businesses, when it was fielding only one team. Eight years later, three men’s, two women’s and nine junior teams is more like the club that produced Nottinghamshire legend Derek Randall. “I’d rather be consensual. Patience, pragmatism and persistence are valuable traits. It’s why we have so many people involved, including parents, and an effective management committee.”
Bernard Hughes is possibly the only resident composer orchestrating a club. Chiswick’s new facilities open up recreational and commercial opportunities that should guarantee a long-term future. He is convinced that creating a cohesive social and local community centre, even in London, is key to members becoming co-collaborators and not just cricket ‘customers’.
Grant applications are a winter preoccupation. Droitwich have just completed a £230,000 clubhouse revamp, thanks to landfill tax monies, and Bignall End started their £150,000 refurb even before Sport England agreed extra funds to cover post-Covid cost inflation. “We had faith our vision and credentials as a community hub including women’s, South Asian and disability cricket were ticking the right boxes,” says Jon Maskrey.
Often, big plans drive regular contact with county boards. “Extremely supportive even though under threat”, said one. Lack of commitment and longer-term funding of local boards, on top of ECB’s club support team redundancies, explains club leader discontent. Recent ECB recruitment of ‘discipline officers’ to enforce their General Conduct Regulations across the club game, instead, was the “final straw” for another exiting chair.
So will ‘something turn up’, I ask Simon Lunn, chair of Benwell Hill, occasional Northumbria University lecturer and former senior local authority sport development officer? Is recreational cricket like the Tory party and Church of England – reports of its death much exaggerated as they continue to be nourished by new generations of ageing devotees?
He laughs: “Sport England’s guidelines on maximum terms have some merit but are derided in clubs because they’re just not practical. Recommending your treasurer moves on after 10 years is a bit like asking you to shoot Bambi. Those who say there’s no obvious successor often mean there’s no one who’ll do it like them. But different isn’t necessarily worse. Sometimes you just need to step back and say, as my dad used to: “Go on then, do it your way.”
Sage words.
John Swannick spoke to club leaders across to the land about whether they see willing and able successors on the horizon
This article was first published in The Cricketer November 2022 edition