Here is the squad representing English cricket at the Lord’s Test on Thursday. It may not be the one you expected. Delia Bushell, Martin Darlow, Alan Dickinson, Colin Graves, Tom Harrison, Barry O’Brien, Kamlesh Patel, Lucy Pearson, Scott Smith, Jane Stichbury, Brenda Trenowden, Jim Wood.

If you think that’s not so much a Who’s Who of English cricket but a Who? Who? you would not be alone. Don’t worry: they are not taking the field. But they are, quite astonishingly, the 12 most important people in the national summer game – and now the only 12 with any power worth mentioning: the directors of the England and Wales Cricket Board.

Some say only one of them matters. And there is no doubt about the captain of this team. There have been dominant chairmen of the ECB before now. But the board itself have never accrued anything like the power wielded under this incumbent, the Yorkshire businessman Colin Graves.

Remember the verse by the Scottish poet Andrew Lang? “I am the batsman and the bat/I am the bowler and the ball/The umpire, the pavilion cat/The roller, pitch, and stumps, and all.” The reference is to God, who may or may not also surround himself with non‑executive directors.

Graves came to prominence in cricket in 2002: he gallantly bailed out Yorkshire when they were heading for bankruptcy, and became chairman of the ECB in 2015. He made his money as the founder of Costcutter, a supply chain and unifying brand for nearly 2,000 independent retailers, a setup that bore some resemblance to the cooperative relationship between the ECB and its component counties. Not any more.

Two months ago, the ECB’s old board was reconstituted. This was partly to fulfil Sport England’s requirements, which are indeed hotter on diversity (Boxes Must Be Ticked) than democracy. Penalty for non-compliance: no government handouts. However, the ECB, under Graves’s command, went far beyond this and somehow persuaded its constituents (the counties, major and minor, plus MCC) to cut themselves out of any meaningful role in decision-making.

Specifically, the board’s new articles of association preclude the counties from any say in “the new Twenty20 competition” (now scheduled as 16.4 overs a side not 20), due to start two years hence, involving eight still non-existent teams sprawling across 38 days of prime summertime.

The new event is riddled with obvious flaws: it isn’t just mad old me saying this. However, some of us can express this view freely; others are nervy. Yet there are only two possibilities. Either the marketing money being hurled at it will buy short-term success, leading to the permanent enfeeblement of all other domestic cricket. Or it will be a very, very expensive fiasco.

So who are these 12 people who might halt the runaway train? There are three ex officio board members: Graves, Harrison the chief executive officer and Smith the CFO. There are four “independent directors”: Patel (a peer, professor and all-purpose committee man), Bushell (former Sky executive), Trenowden (banker) and Stichbury (retired chief constable)

There are five “cricket non-executives”: Pearson played women’s Tests back in amateur days; Darlow (another ex-cop) and Wood are from Minor Counties cricket; O’Brien (reputedly a staunch Graves ally) is a former Glamorgan chairman and Dickinson (another banker) was treasurer of Surrey. They look well set up to handle riots caused by a financial crisis. But run cricket?

But these obscure figures are not to blame – not yet. The counties were bribed (as clubs, not individuals), browbeaten and bamboozled into giving away their power. This was in effect a coup d’état – the transformation of an old democracy into a top-down dictatorship – but a coup in which the counties connived.

Meanwhile, down the food chain, people who actually understand cricket are trying to work out how to schedule regular fixtures when almost half the first-team professionals in the business – the top half – will be yanked out of their counties for nearly six weeks. The whisper is that this committee is not so much struggling as writhing. The schedule is already atrocious: a bonkers number of competitions but hardly any sport; Essex and Hampshire are in the midst of 52 days with 30 hours of playing time. The players might as well take holiday jobs.

The counties could stop the extra nonsense. The articles of association bar them from interfering with a Twenty20 tournament, not a 16.4-16.4. Their own Twenty 20 is expected to attract well over a million spectators to 23 different centres this summer. If the 16.4, confined to eight cities, filled every seat at every match, it would still produce only half as many spectators. This aspect of cricket is not broke and does not need fixing. But the counties have been promised more than £1m a year to shut up.

It is up to the rest of us. More than 40 years ago, Camra stopped the breweries condemning British drinkers to fizzy keg bitter. Now we need a Campaign for Real Cricket. Not to re-create the past but to demand that the great game has a viable, sensible, sustainable, coherent future.

Resource:https://www.theguardian.com/sport/bl...he-hundred-ecb