It was at boarding school in Essex that I first discovered the glory of cricket on a perfect English summer’s day. Before that the hot, dry grounds of Nairobi, with their mostly matting pitches, provided functional retreats rather than inspirational ones, though there were one or two there that could conjure the same effect.
Those days of school cricket in England were halcyon indeed. We had a talented team, a wise cricket master, a brilliant coach in Gordon Barker, a former Essex player with the gift of Yorkshire gab, and no pressure from tutors or housemasters about summer term exams.
We also boarded, or 99 per cent of us did, with just two exeats each term allowed, so the team spent long hours together like a county side.
I tell you all this because English cricket has relied on public schools, and by extension the universities, for some of its best players ever since cricket became organised in the 19th century. Mostly there has been a strong link, though the relationship is now under threat on several fronts, all of them likely to reduce the amount of youthful talent taking up the game with anything like intent. It is something cricket can ill afford given so few schools in the state sector even bother to play the game at all anymore.
The first problem is that few pupils board full-time these days, the costs of doing so being prohibitive to all but the very rich. That means most parents who have children at public school pick up their sons and daughters for the weekend.
But as one former player of my era told me recently, from his position as cricket pro at one such establishment: “Cricket does not fit into many parents’ schedules any more. They want to pick their kids up at 10am on a Saturday morning so they can have most of Saturday and Sunday at home before they have to drop them back again on Sunday evening.
They don’t want to have to come at 7.30pm when the cricket has finished, especially if they have travelled far. It’s understandable, but it’s reducing the pool of kids we can pick teams from.”
The point is anecdotal as is the testimony from a former teammate at Essex who says that he has not noticed anything similar at his children’s school. But, he says, most of those who play cricket there have parents who are obsessed with the game so not playing in order to go home on Saturday morning is simply not an option.
Where he did think there was a pressure point regarding cricket was over parents wanting their children to excel at their exams. If they felt there was a conflict then many would have no hesitation in banning their children from playing.
With such schools costing enormous sums of money, parents, justifiably, want their children to get excellent exam results. But though it was not so much a problem when I was at school, or indeed even now in some schools, the clash of cricket and summer exams did prevent several talented school cricketers continuing with cricket at university.
Only a few weeks ago I was at Fenners watching Cambridge MCCU play Essex when I overheard Chris Scott, the head coach, negotiating with one of his players as to when they might next be available. It wasn’t the following week because he had to revise but the week after was a possibility, depending on what work his tutor set him.
It is difficult to run a cricket team on those lines but equally one cannot be critical of the student. His degree is the gateway to his future world.
Of all Britain’s major sports, cricket is at the most disadvantage from the way the academic year falls, especially in relation to important exams. Not only does the game take up long hours that could be spent revising, it requires lengthy practice too.
I was fortunate my tutor at Cambridge liked cricket but that did not stop him from delivering some fearful rollockings when essays were sacrificed for extra cover drives.
If you are bright and organised, cricket and exams need not be an impediment. Zafar Ansari, who now plays for Surrey and England Lions, got a double first at Cambridge a few years ago while John Claughton, Oxford and Warwickshire, before injury forced him into education (he is headmaster of King Edward’s Birmingham), got a first with applause, the highest accolade there is at Oxford University.
Easier still, for cricket’s sake, would be to shift those summer exams to November/December, which is when I took them while at school in Kenya.
I spoke to several teachers here about why exams held the position in the calendar they did and none could give me a definitive reason.
Further research proffered why there is a long summer holiday in England – something to do with pre-mechanisation in the 19th century and children having to help with the harvest – but nothing as to why exams had to be in the summer as well. Earlier in the year the Daily Mail reported that some key GCSE and A-level exams were being shifted forward so as to fall before Ramadan but only by a week or so, not an entire season.
Anyway, many educators appear to side with William Temple, once Archbishop of Canterbury, who said that cricket was little more than “organised loafing”, so any meaningful change is unlikely.
For those who see cricket’s merits, and there are many, these are worrying times for the game and its social context. Cricket is awkward enough to fit with modern lives without having to compete with exams and weekends at home.
Until that changes, cricket can do little except continue its battle to attract young cricketers and keep them engaged as best it can.
This piece originally featured in The Cricket Paper, Friday April 22 2016
