Being a fan

There's a nice piece in the Guardian today by David Hopps on our game against the Aussies, where he makes some favourable comments on the work going on at the County Ground. I hope that it is read by a few of those who suggest we are surplus to requirements in the County game, especially a Mr M Nicholas...

You can read it at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/jul/08/ricky-ponting-australia-derbyshire

Particularly pleasing, at least for me, is his comment on the attendance and the fact that over 3,000 people chose to watch Derbyshire play Australia in a meaningless warm-up match rather than go down the road to see England play Bangladesh.

There's two things about that. First of all, with the exception of Tamim Iqbal, the Bangladesh side are not especially good and by extension are not really crowd pullers. Whether at this stage they should be playing top level international cricket has been debated far and wide all summer, but we should perhaps remember that the West Indies in their formative years were a very poor side, while India, New Zealand and Pakistan had only one or two players of genuine ability when they first played international cricket. Only by playing the best can they improve, but the administrators must remember that there will be a number of mismatches along the way, especially on foreign soil.

Secondly, as I have said on numerous occasions on this blog, a lot of cricket fans, like me, are very parochial. If there's a Test match on at the same time as Derbyshire are playing, I will always follow our score first. If you give me a choice between a strong England side and a strong Derbyshire, I'll take our boys every time, thanks very much, even if we're playing a friendly against Australia or one against a senior citizens select…

Does that make me unpatriotic? No, but it makes me a fan, or a supporter. I still get irritated by those, such as someone on IMWT yesterday, who suggested that only if you go to all the matches do you have a right to pass comment on things.

Really? That rules me out then, as six hours there and the same back for every home game might just become too much, even if I didn't have a full time job to occupy a lot of my time. I've touched on this before, around a year ago, and would suggest (again) that you can be a fan, even if your personal circumstances dictate you see few, if any matches. In fact, I could argue that by not going and moaning all the time, you're perhaps doing the club an even greater service…

When I was younger, my Dad and I would give each other "the look" when we heard people moaning about X being "hopeless" and Y being "bloody useless." On one occasion a Derbyshire batsman was labelled thus after scoring 80 that subsequently won us the game on an obviously awkward wicket. On another, a bowler's wayward opening spell saw him labelled "a waste of space,", then heralded, by the same person, as a real talent when he ended up with five wickets.

I would love to be in a position to go to every game that Derbyshire play. The only problem is that to do so I'd have to win the lottery, or be retired, or jack in my job or actively dislike my family as things stand. None of those apply or are likely, so for now I'll make do with seeing them on Sky and on occasional trips down to see my parents.

But by crikey, don't question my passionate interest in the club, or that of many others in similar situations. Over the two years or so I've been doing this blog I've had e mails from people in seven or eight countries, all of them big fans of the club who have moved away from Derby for business and family reasons. They all say the same thing - that they still look for all or any news about the county side and follow their fortunes with great interest.

Maybe that's the real test. When you're starved of something, does the interest remain, or does it wane? I played club hockey for ten years or so and enjoyed it immensely, but when I retired I never once thought about it on a Saturday afternoon, even when I was going round Marks and Spencer instead of sweeping behind the defence.

Yet Derbyshire cricket is in my blood and will be till the day I die. I know that, and there's nowt that I can do about it. Hopefully at some point I'll be able to see more of them than I do at present, but I'm realistic enough to realise that it might need to wait until I'm retired, till my kids have finished their education and my personal circumstances dictate a move back down to Gods own county.

It might never happen, but I can't see a time coming when I no longer care about Derbyshire cricket.