The first-class game

What with the nation consumed by Chavs fever and Owen doing his best across all media to initiate a public debate on the issue of class, I thought I'd better write something on the subject relating to cricket.

Actually that's not true: I was reading The Cricketer magazine's feature on Strauss, Cook and Broad, and happened to notice that - almost sixty years after Len Hutton first captained England* - all three current captains are ex-public schoolboys.

Hutton

They are also all exceptional players and, for all I can tell, perfectly nice young men and good role models. Remarkably so, in the case of Stuart Broad, given his stumps-kicking, rebel-touring father. This article certainly isn't about attacking them, or anyone else, for their background.

The problem seems to be that our national team(s) is, if anything, less representative of the nation's class make-up than at any time in the recent past. Much has been written about the failure of second-generation Asian players to establish themselves as England regulars, and the dearth of second-generation West Indian players in recent years, but it's worth also noting that, despite all the efforts to break down professional/amateur distinctions and rid cricket of its Victorian-era enmeshment with the structures of the English ruling class, our national team seems to be regressing in that regard.

Since Paul Collingwood's retirement, not one single member of the England top eight is a product of the British state school system which educates 93% of the population**. (The picture regarding bowlers is less dramatically unbalanced, reviving another Victorian class distinction.)

Collingwood (picture credit: Killiondude)

Question one: does it matter? Given that England are as good as they have been in many a year, perhaps not. If you don't think so, feel free to close your browser now. Personally, I think it is a glaring anomaly that, of the millions of young men in England and Wales who play our former national sport, not one is deemed good enough to be a first-choice Test match batsman. Thank goodness for the qualification rules allowing Trott, KP and Morgan to play for us, eh?

But how well does this situation bode for the future: if future teams will always have to be selected from a handful of privately-educated boys and those educated overseas who can be persuaded to represent England? How much better could the England team be if that wasn't the case?

Question two: why this tendency? 'Cultural factors' (eg. posh people are historically and statistically more likely to be into cricket) might play a part, in which case we should be concentrating all our efforts on trying to get Test cricket on free-to-air TV so it reaches and attracts the widest possible audience.

But surely the main difference is in resources and coaching. No doubt the famous school playing field sell-offs have had their effect, as fewer and fewer young people come into contact with the game at its most basic level. And what of those from modest backgrounds who do, and who go on to sign up for a local team and rise through the ranks - what happens to them? Where are today's Hobbs, Gooch, Flintoff, Botham, Boycott, Compton or Barrington? If you have the answer, please do let me know.

Hobbs (pic: BBC)

Am I bashing public schools? Not really. There are plenty of reasons to disagree with private education; 'producing good cricketers' would seem to be a strange reason to get on their collective back. The real question is why our state schools can't do the same and why we choose to handicap ourselves as a Test nation in this way.


* Don't be pedantic and talk to me about Arthur Shrewsbury
** v Sri Lanka last week: Strauss (Radlett), Cook (Bedford), Trott (educated abroad), Pietersen (abroad), Ian Bell (Princethorpe College), Eoin Morgan (abroad), Matt Prior (Brighton College) and Stuart Broad (Oakham).