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| Saturday, 31 January 2004 |
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'Cricket - fastest growing sport in England' By Sa'adi Thawfeeq Cricket and not football or rugby is the fastest growing sport in Britain claims England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) vice chairman Michael Soper. One of the main reasons Soper attributes this sudden change is the introduction of Twenty20 cricket in England. "We started a new competition called Twenty20 cricket over the three weeks and Surrey won it. About 240,000 people came to watch the games played among the counties and among them 105,000 were under 15-year-olds," said Soper, who is also Chairman of Surrey County Cricket Club. "From that day in July, county cricket attendances went up by 24 percent which may not be a lot, but still a lot. Talking to the clubs, the number of young people starting to come into the grounds and actually learn how to play has increased. That proves a point," he said. "The problem you've got with kids in England, and you might find the same in Sri Lanka also, is that they have got so many other things on their mind. The more they get involved in computers and computer games they don't spend their time outside. Twenty20 cricket proves people want to see instant cricket," Soper said. He revealed that recent figures show that two million children had played cricket upto the age of 14 of which 800,000 are regularly playing cricket. This is quite a large number compared with maybe 30 years ago when it was half that figure. "It is far better if children spend their time doing healthy pursuits than some of the other things young children unfortunately get involved in these days. I've always believed that if you have a healthy body, you have a healthy mind," Soper said. Over the last 20 years England have been battling with the decline of cricket at school level and Soper said one of the main reasons was that there aren't many teachers who can give up time to teach the children. To overcome this problem the ECB is concentrating on the clubs to teach them to get cricket development officers going. "We are now encouraging clubs to take over for when the youngsters pick up a bat and start to play cricket after 9,10 11 there is very little the schools can do to help them. So we are encouraging clubs with financial incentives to take on these youngsters," said Soper. "For the first time in England I see cricket being played in the parks where there has always been football. We've got to grab those youngsters and get them into some form of system and bring them up through the academies. "The British academy in Loughborough has been really working in England. It has been in existence for three years now. It is undoubtedly the best in the world. It's got full run ups and enough space for wicket-keepers to stand back It has state of the art all the innovations. Rod Marsh (the former Australian wicket-keeper) takes pride in the fact that he is running one of the world's greatest indoor facilities. We are aiming to become in the top four in 2007," he said. "If you look at England today, for the first time we've got clubs with very large coaching sections. I am hopeful that in the next 4-5 years we'll see a lot of good youngsters coming through. We have the Academies, the Board XIs and hopefully there will be more to choose from. The more you have the better chance you got of getting the best. "Most schools play just one-day cricket. The problem is to try and get them to play two-day and three days. The second XI game is going to be over three days getting up to four-day cricket, but you've got to offer a lot of incentives because of lot of these lads have got other things to do. They will have to give up an entire weekend if they are working," said Soper, who contested the post of ECB chairman with Lord MacLauren last year and ended up as his deputy. He admitted that although England won the World Rugby championships in Australia, there has been a wane in the number of active rugby clubs. "Rugby put all their money and their expertise into having the most successful rugby side in the world. Rugby went professional years ago, but till now there are 30,000 people less playing rugby and in the last two years the number of rugby clubs in England has fallen from 1800 to 1400. That is where the worry is," said Soper. "You can put too much emphasis on your international side and you are forgetting about your grassroots. If you take too much money from the base and give it to a side the bottom can be withering away even though the fruit on the line is very good. We must not make that mistake. We put a lot of money into national cricket, but not too much because development will die," he said. Soper was of the opinion that England should start having exchange of tours with all the major cricket playing nations in the world. "If we can have teams being exchanged between countries, it will improve their cricket as well as ours." "I want to talk with the counties and find out whether we can have swaps between Sri Lankan sides and county sides at under17 and under 19 age groups. This is the way to spread the gospel around the world," he said. |
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