23-07-2021, 02:25
(This post was last modified: 23-07-2021, 05:21 by Ska'dForLife-WBA.)
(22-07-2021, 23:34)spireitematt Wrote: Watched the men's match tonight. I enjoyed it but I feel like it's still lacking something. The other thing is there are 8 teams and a majority of people in the country can't really support or follow a team locally. Why have London got 2 teams? But every other region has 1 team.
The fairly obvious answer is that they're focusing on the places with the largest venues, which can accommodate the biggest crowds. But it does leave whole swathes of the country unrepresented, as you say. The gamble they're taking is that they'll gain more fans in the big cities who felt no connection with their county side, than they'll lose in the hinterlands amongst county fans who don't feel able to transfer their support to the nearest city. I did previously think this was a misjudgement on their part, but on tonight's match there was a vox pop with some fan going to the Oval, born and bred in Clapham, saying "it's great that we've *finally* got cricket here in the city!" Like no one's ever hosted a cricket match in London before. Honestly, I don't know how these people even dress themselves.
Still, when it comes to areas like Cornwall and East Anglia, you'll find no shortage of football "fans" wearing Chelsea or Man Utd shirts, so I suppose a lot of people in those places will just pick a winning team to support in the cricket too, if they take an interest at all. It's the traditional but non-metropolitan cricketing heartlands where people like us are going to feel left out.
It was also noticeable how many in the Oval crowd were wearing England shirts and Surrey shirts. There may have been a few cricket newbies in amongst them, but by and large - unlike the women's game - it was clearly existing fans in the majority. That may change over time, but if it doesn't then the ECB will have big questions to answer, as the people who arbitrarily decided that a 120-ball format was some kind of dinosaur game for middle-aged fuddy-duddies, while knocking 20 balls off the total magically conjures a brave new world of happy families and super-cool urban yoof.
"I would rather spend a holiday in Tuscany than in the Black Country, but if I were compelled to choose between living in West Bromwich or Florence, I should make straight for West Bromwich." - J.B. Priestley