Weekend thoughts

There is no cricket for Derbyshire next week, which has worked out quite nicely because my wife and I are taking the dogs with us once again to Berwick upon Tweed. The final coastal break of the summer and I am sure it will be as relaxing and enjoyable as always. 

I had another interview with Matt Rhodes of North Derbyshire Radio yesterday, during which we discussed the 50 over competition, the successes and things we need to work on. We also talked about the ECB plans for next summer. 

Honestly, I am astonished at the lack of leadership, clarity and transparency from an organisation supposedly leading the national sport. At this stage, the overhaul of the county game looks like reducing the workload by two T20 matches and possibly one four-day game, which I wouldn't expect to transform many lives. 

I don't get the issues. I appreciate there is a lot of travelling - though most of it these days is done by luxury coach - but they play less than in the old days and are paid better than they used to be for the privilege. 

I accept and frequently refer to the stresses and challenges of maintaining a standard and how it isn't as much fun as some people might expect it to be, when your form is scrutinised and a lack of it criticised. It is one thing playing cricket, but there is a different kind of stress when it is your livelihood.

Yet is it any more challenging than what is faced by other people? I worked in high profile roles for over thirty years, where I was paid for 35 hours a week, yet often ended up working far more than that. I had my travel to do, I had a family to support and bills to pay. It was stressful, but life generally tends to be. 

Fifty-six days of red ball cricket and around twenty of white ball per summer, if you play all the matches. Is that really so difficult in a 365-day year? We constantly hear about down time, about time to work on skills, but surely there is enough in the other 289 days?  At any time in my working life, if I had gone to my boss and said I would like less time doing my job and greater opportunity to do more training about it, the response would have been short and sweet. 

Pressure, as Keith Miller once famously said, 'is a Messerschmitt up your arse. Cricket is not'. Sage words from a man who experienced far more severe challenges in the Second World War. Similarly, such comments would have got short shrift from my Dad, who spent most of his working life down the pit. Pressure was ensuring you didn't do something silly and bring the pit face down on you. Stress was carrying out one of your mates, either dead or seriously injured. It gave me a sense of perspective that carried me through the tougher days of my working life. Whatever the challenges, they simply didn't compare. 

So while I understand the need to look after players, I don't think they are unduly worked these days. Talk to any old professionals, when fixture planning saw them traverse the country, even mid-match, then back to resume the main game in their own cars. There were more overs per day, more days of cricket per season. With three games to go, no Derbyshire player will get close to bowling five hundred overs, yet it was once commonplace for even the quicks to bowl a thousand. Les Jackson certainly did and in his second-last summer, in 1962, he exceeded over a thousand overs at the age of 41. Yet still saw it as better than even a surface job at the pit...

Logically, a reduction in the playing 'offer' should see a reduction in salaries and, if continued, could see a reduction in players. If you aren't playing so many matches, you don't need so many players, do you? People need to keep such things in mind. Be careful what you wish for...

So we now get to a situation where Derbyshire might gain promotion (I don't think so) but it might not matter, because the structure has changed.

It seems as if the lunatics have taken over the asylum. I'm getting old, like it or not, but to me everything seems to get unduly complicated and one is left with the impression that the left and right hands haven't a clue what the other is doing.

Eventually the dust will settle, the game will carry on and we will all silently despair at what is happening to the game that we love. 

Without doubt, it is desperately sad. 

Postscript: last night's interview can be heard here

I am on 34 minutes into the show.