Why did cricket decline in England?
Your question probably can be framed, England failed to adjust to the reveolution in cricket.Cricket has changed a lot with moder fielding techniques, limited over cricket, unorthodox batying techniques but England seem to be still stuc with the orthodox test style. Alistair Cook although a great captain, is one such example, they have a tendency to draw matches rather than to win in tests.In limited overs cricket, on account of their slow playing nature they have tendency to score low.But for the past 1 year England cricket is changing rapidly with many youngsters in team like Jos Butler, Joe Root, Jonny Bairstow, Stuart Broad, Eoin Morgan, Ben Stokes.
Is the game of cricket dying in England?
I seem to think so.If you go through cricket’s popular forums like guardian site or cricinfo, you will notice that English fans constantly lament that there is no place to see cricket as it is behind expensive pay wall i.e. SKY TV and that how the expensive subscription required has forced live cricket out of reach of a vast majority of cricket fans. There is talk about clubs closing due to lack of players, of their children having no interest in cricket whatsoever.The sport England’s surveys have regularly stated that number of regular cricket players are constantly decreasing. The same thing was reiterated by ECB’s in house survey last year.If you watch any telecast of England’s game on TV, you will notice that a very largest proportion of crowd consist of middle aged or elderly people and there are very few kids. Contrast that with a high profile cricket game in India or even Australia. It means that new fans are not being created in spite of a healthy Base.The sponsors - If you ever notice the sponsors of ECB, you will notice that most of its sponsors are related to rich or older clientele. For example, Nat West which is a large upmarket bank, investec which is an asset management company or royal london which a insurer. There are no mass market sponsors like Coca Cola or Hyundai for that matter. Or brands related to kids like KFC or milo etc.
Has cricket lost its relevance in England and Australia? Will it end up as a sport played exclusively on the subcontinent?
I can’t speak of English cricket, but there are basic changes taking place in Australian cricket. To summarise :test cricket is becoming less popular. The only thing keeping it vital at all is tradition I think.T20 or big bash type cricket is becoming more popular.one day or 50 over cricket is being subjected to more experimentation. It is floating at the moment I think.it is becoming more and more difficult to fit all the formats into a season and still attract an audience. One of them will give way I think, probably test cricket, probably by being reduced to 3–4 days.commercialism is rampant in Aust now, and is the No 1 consideration no matter what the suits say. It is a linked chain: after Packer increased pay, top cricketers now expect lots of money, and will go on strike to get it, as recently. This has to be raised from sponsors and broadcasters, who won’t pay heaps unless people watch and can be soaked in advertising. The advertisers won’t pay either without audiences. People won’t watch unless it suits their lifestyle, their attention span, and their image of what the game is. That is less and less a 5 day game.Aussie cricketers have become known as foul-mouthed sledgers (eg McGrath, Warner). They say that is OK, others disagree (including me, what a terrible terrible example for our youngsters wanting to play like the big guys). Now some have been exposed as cheats, but they have had lots of company in that (also the England and Sth African captains no less). I think that will continue, in many different and sneaky ways.Aussie cricket has been somewhat anti-betting in the past, but that is now changing, with several commercial organisations (eg Sportsbet) establishing themselves in routine betting on cricket here. It will come in solidly if the Govt can take a tax and therefore approve (as they do with slots). Organised crime is a risk, I don’t know how much here tho.the ‘nursery’ for Aussie cricket was the States competition, the Sheffield Shield. That is in poor health now, with declining audiences, I think mainly because it is a long-format comp, best suited to developing test players. The short-format players can bypass it altogether to some extent. That is a big problem right now.So cricket will definitely continue in Aust I think, but its nature will be much changed.
Why did cricket decline in England as a sport?
Two years ago,England cricket was declined but after the captaincy had been given to Morgan,it leads to rising of cricket and cricketer in England.you can see that as many as 4 England players like Chris Woakes,Ben Stokes and jason roy,Tymal mills playing for their respected franchises. So it has been rising pretty much in England since then.
Why is the popularity of cricket declining in the UK?
It’s simple. A lack of free broadcasting and the general lack of appeal to youth in the UK. For example the 2005 ashes was broadcast for free on channel 4. Every single year since then it’s been on paid subscription on sky sports. Even though sky’s coverage is superb, the fact is that putting test matches, particularly the ashes, behind a paid subscription will cut away any potential audience. When coverage was free on channel 4, the ashes got almost 9 million viewers. Last year the largest number of viewers was a 1.3 million. That’s almost an 80% cut!In comparison the world snooker finals in Sheffield garnered almost three times that number.Another reason as to the decline of cricket is the elitist and very privileged attitude surrounding cricket. Most state schools in the UK don’t have Cricket as a part of their sports programme simply because it’s a very expensive game to play. It’s much cheaper for state schools to find a grass field, get two different sets of shirts, have a teacher blow a whistle, and find something that vaguely resembles a football/rugby ball (you don’t even really need a ball to play either) than it is to buy 22 cricket bats, a large set of balls, a wicket, and the various other protective equipment required for cricket.I genuinely hope for a reversal of fortunes and that our great gift of a national sport continues to be played in the future.
Why is cricket chosen the national sport of England?
I don’t think anyone “chose” cricket as the national sport - in fact I don’t think anyone ever woke up and said, “I think we ought to have a designated national sport in England, and i think it should be…[insert your sport of choice here].”Cricket is a quintessentially summer game - and as you can’t play it when it’s raining, it doesn’t always work too well even in what passes for summer round here. But because it is associated with warm, sunny days and evenings, and something pleasantly cool to drink while watching, we tend to have a national fondness for it even if we can’t tell a silly mid on from a slip, or a yorker from a googly.It’s a game routinely played at public schools (i.e. the independent ones) and was standard at grammar schools as well, which tends to give it a gentlemanly (or indeed ladylike, because girls play too) air. But fewer comprehensives play it, and there aren’t many grammar schools left now, so there are fewer people now growing up with cricket than there used to be.Sadly, the BBC no longer broadcasts Test Matches or even County matches on television, having allowed the rights to be bought up elsewhere (Sky, I think), so the audience for cricket is also declining. But we still think of ourselves as a cricketing country, and just occasionally the England team (ably and loudly supported by the Barmy Army of touring supporters) manages to bash the Australians, which is an important matter of national pride. And when this doesn’t happen, we try to accept it gracefully - or at least more gracefully than the Aussies!
Don't you think that cricket is slowly declining in India and field hockey is dominating again as India/England series is going on, and no one is taking interest, or is there too much/excess cricket that people lost interest?
I too want to see hockey and football to get back to their past glories.Even till 1970’s India was a world beater in hockey and was a strong football team in the Asian level. Prior to that India was one of the strongest representatives in the world level from Asia. In 1948 olympics India fought neck to neck with France and lost 1–2 in the last minute. Had Indians not missed two penalties awarded to them, the football history might have been written differently. India won the Asian games football gold in 1962 beating South Korea and Japan on it’s way and those were the times when the full teams, not the U23 players got to play in Asian games and Olympics.However, popularity is a parameter which doesn’t work this way.Popularity comes with international success. For example popularity of tennis and badminton went up only after Indian players started making international success on a regular scale in this regard, cricket is still miles ahead of hockey and light years ahead of football though recent performances by our hockey team has been very encouraging. However, management of a sports is more important and these are the areas which sadly was not there for football and few other sports like shooting, wrestling and boxing where India has got very good international success in the recent past.As far your query goes, I don’t think that there is a downslide in the popularity of cricket. Only thing is that the popularity is being shifted from tests and ODIs to T20s. Once again, there has been , is and will be classic cricket lovers like me who would prefer to get up at 5.00 AM to watch an India-Australia test match rather than watching IPL.