THE day after England's star crossed cricket team lost its 11th one-day game in a row so ignominiously to the Australians, the news appeared that Sol Campbell, the Spurs and England centre back, was about to join Barcelona on an astounding �200,000 a week contract. These two news items seemed to me to tell us much, perhaps even too much, about the wretched decline of English cricket, for so many years no better than an ailing convalescent.
Various explanations have been advanced. The decline of cricket in state schools dominated by the Labour party orthodoxy of cutting out "competitive" sport because it allegedly harmed the psychology of schoolchildren! The pitiful state of a once thriving County Championship, which especially in the years following the last war could pack out Lord's, Headingley and The Oval, but which now is a moribund affair, its matches played out in front of yawning gaps in the seats, which are all too often a haven for ageing pensioners, dozing in the sunshine.
Yet surely the truth is that football, for many years a second choice for the gifted English athlete, has now become so wildly lucrative that such talented youngsters no longer see cricket as a valid alternative. Why and how should they, when they can probably, if they are at the top of the tree, or even slightly below it, earn more in a few months than a cricketer can earn in the whole of his career?
It was not ever thus. My mind goes back to a conversation I had in the 1960s outside The Oval with Ken Taylor, the Yorkshire batsman who was there to play for his county against Surrey, and who had figured with much success as a forceful centre-half with Huddersfield Town. Which sport did he prefer, I asked? Taylor did not hesitate. It was cricket, he answered. Soccer offered by comparison so brief a career, whereas a cricketer could go on playing long after a footballer had hung up his boots.
There was no denying that, and in those days when the iniquitous 20 a week maximum wage in the English League had barely been abolished, financial security clearly lay in cricket rather than in football. Look around you today, however, and it is not difficult to find footballers who could well have excelled as cricketers. Gary Lineker, for example.
Son of parents who ran a market stall in Leicester, Gary's ball skills accoutred him for success in several sports. Snooker was one of them; he has always had a liking for the game, and one of his closest friends was a local snooker star. But cricket was emphatically another, and had he not signed on as a footballer with Leicester City, embarking on a career which would take him on to Barcelona and a World Cup in which he was top scorer, Leicestershire County Cricket Club would gladly have enrolled him.
He still plays cricket from time to time, and not long ago took part in a match at Lord's against a German team, when he was dismissed after scoring just one run. With characteristic dry humour, he remarked, "I always score one against Germany!" harking back to the semifinal of the 1990 World Cup in Turin, when he scored England's goal.
Never again will we see a sportsman capped for England at both soccer and cricket. The last was Arthur Milton, and thereby hangs an economic tale. As a schoolboy Arsenal fan, I followed Milton's soccer career from the start, even saw him make his muted debut for the Gunners at inside right in a friendly when he was 17. And cycled 10 miles each way from school to watch him play for their reserves against Aldershot. Later, I watched him, now a dynamic blond right winger, playing for Arsenal reserves. Meanwhile, he was showing high promise as a cricketer.
In October 1951, he came to something of a watershed in his career, unexpectedly picked to play outside right for England against a powerful Austrian team at Wembley. Twice in the opening minutes he dashed down the wing to make fine chances for the England inside-right, Ivan Broadis. Both of them were missed and Arthur faded out of the game, never getting another England cap.
He did, however, have many a fine game for Arsenal, but in due course gave up soccer to become a regular opening batsman for Gloucestershire, and he capped for England at cricket too. But there wasn't much money to be made out of cricket then, and certainly little out of football. When Milton eventually retired, he became a postman in his local West Country area. Just think what a right winger of his class and quality would have earned out of football today!
His illustrious footballer-cricketer predecessor with Arsenal was of course a major hero of mine, Denis Compton, a superb, adventurous batsman for England and Middlesex, a brilliant, ball juggling, powerfully left-footed outside-left for Arsenal. By a freak of chance, Denis never did win a full England soccer cap, his dozen wartime internationals in a glorious England attack not counting officially. Nor did the "Victory" international he played in at Hampden against Scotland in April, 1946. Yet his much less talented brother, Leslie Compton, who also won a few caps for England in the war, did in fact play two full blown internationals as a centre half in 1950 at the age of 38!
But for Denis, cricket emphatically came first, and Arsenal were resigned to losing him for as much of three months of the season, not least when England's cricketers went on tour to Australia. A cricket star of Denis' quality would doubtlessly earn an Ian Botham-esque salary now, but still nothing to touch what he could make from playing football.
So there, alas, we have it. The astounding explosion in players' wages means that even a solid Premiership footballer, or such a performer in Italy's Serie A or Spain's Primera Liga, will earn more than even the most gifted cricketer.
The earnings of leading internationals, especially after the Bosman decision, will continue to go through the roof. And young potential English cricketers will turn their backs on the game and opt for football, even if they cannot play it for as long as cricket. Is it any wonder that the England cricket team is such a bunch of strugglers?
Comments
SHARE