Cricket Popularity In England

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Is it true that it is wayyyy more expensive to play cricket in England compared to Australia? Hence only upper class ppl play in England whereas in Australia anyone can play and hence Australia is better at cricket
 
ginger_ninja said:
Is it true that it is wayyyy more expensive to play cricket in England compared to Australia? Hence only upper class ppl play in England whereas in Australia anyone can play and hence Australia is better at cricket
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No mate, maybe 80 years ago, not any more. It is quite expensive though and depending on where you live in the UK cricket is perceived to be like that. There's a handful of social factors and some socio-economic aspects to it, I'll try and sum it up in a short way from my perception.

1. If you're working class or from a working class background as I am, culturally you're more inclined to be introduced to football rather than cricket. There's probably a level of ignorance where you kind of believe (as I did) when I was younger that it is a game for middle class people, viewed from the outside, it looks dreadfully well-mannered and posh in comparison to other sports and there is that historical element that people are aware of that gives 'Outsiders' the impression it still is that way. Added to this, in the media, a lot of the people that do the commentary are well spoken and some are down-right posh, so again that reinforces that whole misconception of it being middle class.

2. Culture and region; It tends to be the case that the bigger towns and cities have predominantly working class populations that play and support football. Historically in schools since the 1960's less men have been employed as teachers, so whereas kids in previous generations may have been introduced to cricket by blokes during their early years in education, this has increasingly not been the case. Add to this the fact that in most working class, comprehensive schools since the 1960's the PE teachers have increasingly come from working class backgrounds and therefore have a tendency to focus on football and rugby and have no experience of cricket and so cricket has increasingly been pushed aside in preference of football.

Whereas if you move away from big cities and towns, especially if you move north to the midlands and northern England villages and towns have far more cricket for some reason. It's as though there's more space and the land is cheaper and not so sought after for development, so whereas in the south if there was a football pitch and a cricket pitch and one had to go in preference for the other, cricket in more densely populated areas is always the victim.

There are other factors, but the truth of the matter is, if you were to visit 90% of cricket teams in the UK you'd find that they're made up of working class people. Arguably one of the main things that works against cricket ever growing in popularity in this country is that you can't watch it on the television for free. It's well known that in 2005 when we beat you lot (Even though you had Warnie at the time) because that test series was on the tele early in the evening it caused a massive surge in people taking up cricket. The following tests have all been bought up by SKY TV and so no-one can watch live cricket on the tele unless they subscribe to SKY and that is massively expensive.

3. Cost.

It's difficult to make comparisons with regards cost, but an Aussie mate of mine I used to surf with used to work these things out using the cost of something familiar and we used Snickers bars. So it works like this. In the UK a Snickers bar weighs about 50 grams and you can get a couple of snickers bars to a UK pound. So a good cricket bats costs about 400 snickers bars. Which in terms of cash that's obviously £200 for a good bat. Saying that cheap bats you can pick up for £25. So doing it on the cheap... Me and two kids on the cheap...

£70.00 joint club fees.
£30.00 Winter nets.
£24.00 per week match fees x 16 matches in a season.
£150 x 3 cheap bats
£120 x 3 cricket bags
£80 x 2 helmets
£120 cricket whites
£80 x 3 cricket spikes
£60 x three pairs of gloves

A car and all the fuel costs getting to the matches - generally though that doesn't cost more than about £20 a week.

I think here in the UK, the biggest thing is the time, most people don't have the time to play cricket and culturally it's perceived incorrectly with the same misconception you have. There's so many things stacked against cricket. The fact that everyone plays football and they're all chasing the dumb idea of becoming a premiership footballer and earning gazillions doing that. So much time and effort is committed to that and that is the central focus of most working class kids and their families, so if a kid is introduced to cricket and shows some aptitude for it, there's that massive social barrier that working class people that are ignorant of the truth have to cross and they always kind of perceive it to be to the detriment of the football. In addition they then have to take Johnny not only football, but now cricket, and if you've not come from a cricket background that is a massive cultural move, despite once they get there and go to a few games they see that it's not all toffs and that 95% are just blokes and Bogans like the rest of society. But not knowing the rules of the game and the fact that it takes so long in their eyes to play and they don't understand the nuances and complexities of the game, it means Johnny very often doesn't last that long in the game.

Personally, I reckon one of the greatest factors in the UK for big cities and the survival of town and city clubs in the UK is our immigrant populations... Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshi's, Sri Lankans, West Indians and even Afghan's - these people come from cultures that haven't been brain-washed into thinking that football is the Soma of working class people. Their cricket culture and history is newer and less hindered by the perception of class.

As for your lot being better than us, that's cyclical, but you do have the advantage of the weather being on your side and that as a nation, you do seem to be more in tune with doing stuff outside. But I guess that in a way should be offset by the fact that there's a lot more of us than there is of you. Here's a question - and this may be the clincher. How important is cricket in the average school in Australia and how often would it be played and for how long in the year would they be focussed on it. For instance today my son's come home and he's got a match tomorrow - but at the moment across three years at school they can only get together 5 boys and only 2 of them including my son play for a club, the others are just kids that have said they'd give it a go.
 
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It gets worse. Joe (My son) had a match scheduled for Wednesday night this week. They had 5 boys who said they'd play (these blokes are 13 years old). Two of them are at clubs and the rest are kids that have said they'd have a go. It seems the boys -in particular the captain the other kids that plays cricket for a club, were set the task to try and get another 6 boys to make a team. They had about 36 hours. These are 13 year old boys they're not known for their organisational skills at that age. I asked my son "What about the teachers, do they not know which kids in the 2 years below you and your year who play cricket and might play? Couldn't they somehow get the other kids involved"? He said "They don't care - they don't care if the match happens or not so no..."

This is in a school where across the 3 years (1st, 2nd and 3rd year secondary school) there are more than 360 boys and potentially the same number of girls and for all I know there's a couple of Sarah Taylors in amongst them? But, they couldn't get another kid and the game was cancelled. This isn't in some industrial urban town, this is leafy Essex - Brentwood, a town surrounded by cricket pitches, but it just seems to me to be indicative of the attitude people brought up on a diet of football.
 
someblokecalleddave said:
Here's a question - and this may be the clincher. How important is cricket in the average school in Australia and how often would it be played and for how long in the year would they be focussed on it. For instance today my son's come home and he's got a match tomorrow - but at the moment across three years at school they can only get together 5 boys and only 2 of them including my son play for a club, the others are just kids that have said they'd give it a go.
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Wow that sounds bad. I think it depends on the school i guess, maybe ur kids dont go to a very sports orientated school. I know my first primary school was quite 'hippy' so cricket or sports in general wasnt a big focus.
My second school was quite sporty and there was much focus on sports there and we had a lot of ppl play cricket there.

I think the main reason as its been said is there is a season dedicated just for cricket here in the summer for 6 months and the remaining 6 months they play football (aussie rules or rugby depending on whereabouts u live in aus, north is rugby south is aussie rules). I cant imagine too many ppl giving up footy if cricket clashed with it tho. So in that sense australia is lucky its one sport that the whole country gets to unite in.
 
Coming from the other end of Essex, we have a totally different story. We are as far north of the county as you can get; just outside Cambridge.

This is [atm] a small market town and not a football town; the local state school pays lip service to it... rugby and cricket is where we are at here and both clubs and schools compete quite highly!

The school cricket pavilion:

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The local club runs 26 teams from under 10 to the East Anglian Premier League. With almost 300 youngsters and approximately 50 senior playing members. This includes Ladies and Disabilities Teams.

However, we are not stuck in the past... if you want to cause major damage for free, we also have this facility:

 
I think I need to move further north then! North Essex or Derbyshire! Liz talking about Rugby Joe and I have got tickets for some Rugby event this coming Saturday at Twickenham. Any idea what that's about, it's through Joe's school and it means we wont be playing cricket next Saturday which I'm gutted about.
 
It's a great weekend at Twickers...
Saturday is the Aviva Premiership final. Saracens beat the Saints in a thrilling semi and in a surprise [for me] Bath beat the Tigers with comfort to be in their first final since 2004. It will be a great match... have fun!
Sunday is the Barbarians game.
 
This Saturday I played in North London, and the ground we were playing on had 8 other grounds surrounding it, and there were actually 6 different clubs at the same place I asked someone from the other team if cricket was the main sport in their area, he said "Definitely !"
 
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shahidpak said:
Nobody cares about cricket here, when i came here i thought everybody would be talking about cricket, but only a few people actually play iN my school. One of them told me that most of cricket players Come from private schools?!
No wonder England lose the ashes And when in class i said cricket was invented in France they all got sooooo pissed off So why is cricket so unpopular in England? Not what i was expecting?
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It used to be very popular, but you have to remember that cricket has not been shown on the tv for over 10 years now. Every other sport is shown on the tv apart from cricket. It is not surprising that fewer and fewer people like it each year.

Once you join a cricket club and get to know people from different teams, there are still a lot of people who do like it, but the number is decreasing rapidly.
 
It is supposedly the most popular sport in Australia with more people registered than for any other sport. It has dropped off markedly since I was a kid. It was cricket in summer and dream of being a Test cricketer. Footy (Aussie Rules) in winter and become a League player. They were the only wide spread sports in those days. Nowadays there are all manner of sports on offer to kids (as well as computers), so for many of them they don't even get to experience cricket. When I was at school we had sport every Wed afternoon from about 1 to 3-30. You played either in a house team or if you were good enough in the school team.,The season at school lasted about 12 weeks and you had cricket at the start of the year, footy in the middle of the year and then cricket again in the lead up to Christmas. You got a lot of coaching (although it varied a lot in quality) and time each week to get better. Nowadays students don't have a sports day every week, only PE classes where they might focus on cricket over 2 or 3 weeks for the year. Every term there is one day for a round robin sports competition between schools. You might play 2 games on the day and if you are a winner you go on to play one more day. If you lose you play one game if you win then you get another game. As long as you keep winning then you keep playing at other times. School sport's influence on cricket is minimal. I guess the weather here also plays a part in being able to get out and on the park reqularly.
 
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