Not Quite Stumped

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I watched the finals of The Hundred from Lords on TV yesterday, a format of the game of cricket that - as I think have written before - I was ready initially to loathe as a debased and rather tawdry version of the beloved game. However, in recent months, I've come to appreciate it for what is and for its potential to save the domestic game from oblivion in its longer forms. We were in danger of concentrating on the highly lucrative - although not domestically - Indian Premier League at the expensive of cricket here in the UK. Falling spectator numbers across the longer formats, with decreasing take up of the game amongst the young meant that the game was slowly atrophying and unable to turn a profit and stay alive. 

Early take up of the game was not a problem in my childhood, as all - admittedly mostly boys in those days, unfortunately - played street and park cricket all summer long, switching to football for the autumn and winter. Schools actively taught and played cricket, fielding inter-school teams in competitions and leagues, with finals often played on the hallowed squares and to the boundaries of county grounds, attended by thousands of kids and their teachers on a special day out from school. Cricket was not solely the province of the public school, post-war; it was pretty much a universal sport across the social spectrum.

The Hundred is a welcome return to a more democratised cricket, bringing families in for an exciting day's sport and entertainment, in much the same way that in decades past, working class urbanites used to flock to speedway tracks in the evenings, for a family night out. Judging by the interviews with the younger kids attending Hundred matches, there is a renewed hunger to actually play the game again; new blood to both play and to watch the game: the perfect gateway to the longer, less frenetic forms of cricket. BTW, pictured in 1978 after the demolition of the street had started, is the 'stumps' against which we played endless games of street cricket in my childhood: the lamp post across Winson Street from my childhood home, and where the bowler had only to wait the passing of an occasional car before his delivery. One particular straight drive by one of my mates put a wound in our front downstairs window that remained taped up rather than repaired until the house was razed to the ground for redevelopment; the street returning to the green space it would been in the early 1800s...

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