If you only ever watch sport on TV, it is easy to forget that Football is very much the exception rather than the rule. If you compare sports at the most elite level, there are lots of similarities. The leading lights in the sport will be globally known, very rich, be incredibly driven and focused and whilst their physical attributes may vary due to the demands of their sport, in their own way they will all be at the peak of physical fitness. The way these sports are presented on TV is also very similar, in terms of how the pre and post event coverage is structured, the on-screen graphics and commentary style.
Football however is one of the few sports which receives lots of media coverage in the UK below elite level. When Coventry City dropped into League Two a few years ago, it was no more difficult for me to follow than it is now that they are back in the Championship. Whilst there is a clear drop in standards from the Championship to League Two, that drop isn’t huge. Coventry City still averaged more than 9,000 spectators at home games during their season in League Two, and were good enough to beat Premier League Stoke City in the FA Cup.
Cricket is one of the most popular sports in the UK, but it highlights what other sports have to deal with that Football does not. In the Men’s game, the whilst limited overs competitions can attract big crowds, the County Championship is regularly played out in front of sparse crowds, and if you venture beyond the County game to Minor Counties or club Cricket, you might get some coverage in a local newspaper or specialist Cricket press, maybe.
In the Women’s game, the drop-off is even sharper. Today I went to watch the Central Sparks against the South East Stars in the Charlotte Edwards Cup, which is the T20 competition. Most of the players on show featured throughout The Hundred, but whilst those games were broadcast on Sky Sports and the BBC and played in Test match venues in front of thousands of spectators, this was a much more modest affair. Rather than the main Edgbaston stadium, it was played at the Edgbaston Foundation ground, a very pretty but also very small ground. I’m not sure what the official capacity would be as there was space for spectators to bring their own seating if they wished, but there were probably only about 150 people watching today and I’d guess the majority of them were related or friends of the players. Very few people were like me and turned up purely to watch a Cricket match.
In many ways that is a shame, because the standard of the match was very good. There were a couple of excellent catches, the bowling was generally accurate and most of the wickets came as a result of the pressure of the match situation. The South East Stars came away victorious largely thanks to a bit more aggression during the power play and harder running between the wickets, but there were players on both sides who will have realistic ambitions of playing for England. It wasn’t quite up to the standards set during The Hundred, lacking both the imports and the current England international players who start a series against New Zealand on Wednesday, but it really wasn’t that far off.
So why was the crowd so much smaller? Well, for a start, how many people were actually aware this match was on? I almost wasn’t, and if it wasn’t for the fact I followed a few of the Birmingham Phoenix squad on Instagram during The Hundred, I would have probably been in Worcester watching the County Championship today instead. Live coverage, post match reports and highlights were so easy to find for The Hundred, and whilst it would have been possible for me to sit at home and live stream today’s game, you really need to know where to look (I think it was a Facebook Live stream).
How to get the Charlotte Edwards Cup and other domestic Women’s Cricket competitions closer to The Hundred isn’t easy. Putting on a show like that costs a lot of money, and you could certainly see why the ECB or individual teams would be reluctant to take a gamble like that. But there are little things that could be done. The schedule for a start leaves a lot to be desired. Today was the final day of group matches, but the competition actually started back in June, before pausing for about 6 weeks to make room for The Hundred. That doesn’t help when you’re trying to build a narrative around a competition, and surely a better solution would have been to start this competition earlier in June and play it through to it’s conclusion before The Hundred? The Men’s T20 Blast suffered from the same issue this season, and moving forwards there is a lot of room for improvement on this front.
Individual teams could do more too. If you go to Lord’s for a County Championship match, there will be no glitz or glamour, but you will hear an announcer at regular intervals, such as when a new batter comes to the crease or there is a 50 partnership. I expect a tannoy system would probably be quite expense to install, but surely a basic microphone and speaker or even a megaphone would be better than no announcements? I was instead left to try to read some very small names on backs of shirts to work out who was batting and who was bowling.
This might seem a very small and trivial thing within the bigger picture of growing the sport, but it all comes back to the idea of making it as easy to follow for the spectators as possible. Because pretty much every sport is in the same position, fighting for attention, and often in a crowded market place, it is those that focus on the detail who end up succeeding.
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