A Game Out of Time: Anachronism and Survival at Blackpool CC

The County Championship is frequently mythologised, cast as a totem of an idealised English summer where days are long and sun-drenched. Where folk gather on village greens to watch local heroes in pristine whites do a very civilised kind of battle. The ECB’s 2015 history of the tournament is entitled Summer’s Crown, a term which suggests that multi-day cricket is an intrinsic part of the season. Certain writers, influenced by this discourse, engage in a process of near constant eulogization of the Championship. They suggest its loss would have consequences as grave for England as if the ravens were to leave the Tower. In the real, decidedly unromantic England it often feels like the nation would barely notice, let alone fall to ruin, if the sun were to set for the last time after 135 summers. That’s perhaps a melodramatic turn of phrase, and it is undeniable that the Championship has proved to be a tenacious survivor despite many a cricket writer’s efforts to put the final nail in its coffin, but the existential threats it faces are many and real. A far from exhaustive list might include: dwindling, ageing audiences; the inexorable global expansion of franchise T20; the execrable Hundred; the ECB’s endless tinkering with the tournament’s structure; diminishing global interest in Test cricket; and, crucially, a fundamental failure to pique the interest of the majority of Britons.

That the very real possibility of its loss is treated with indifference not only by the public but also by many in the world of cricket punditry is tragic. That the ECB is hell-bent on reducing the number of games ever further, has already reserved the peak of summer for an insufferable form of quasi-cricket played nowhere else in the world, and continues to schedule late season four-day games when no other cricket is being played to be held from Tuesday-Friday is utterly inexcusable. It is also, in your correspondent’s opinion, a complete failure to understand that perhaps the Championship’s many, glorious anachronisms can be a marketable product. A day watching a bottom-of-the-table Division Two clash between Lancashire and Kent at Blackpool Cricket Club shows just how much this kind of cricket has to offer, and just what we would lose if it were to be taken away.

This modest ground on the edge of Stanley Park is awash with charming anachronisms. The field of play sits in a kind of bowl, bounded on its south and east side by steep banks. Some are grass, others are tiered concrete bleachers with dark wood benches stretching out along their full length. Modern individual seats are to be found only in one small stand on the west side of the ground, although calling them modern is something of stretch given their aged, weathered appearance. Some of the sponsors’ adverts painted on the whitewashed east boundary wall look like the kind of retro signage you’d see on the side of a Hornby scale model of an old-fashioned freight carriage. A picturesque mock Tudor pavilion overlooks the north-west corner of the ground in doubly archaic style as a 19^th century imitation of 15^th-17^th century architecture. Half a mile to the west but still looming over the ground is Blackpool tower, a symbol of a bygone era when Blackpool, like the Championship, was synonymous with excitement and not decline. It’s a glorious setting, albeit that the strong west wind blowing in from the Irish Sea does its best to make this feel like the first round of matches in April and not the eighth in late June.

Playing top-level cricket at such a venue is one of English cricket’s more peculiar quirks, although one that, as Paul Edwards chronicled in the 2020 edition of Wisden, is slowly dying. With England and Wales’ professional clubs representing counties rather than cities, many have toured their home regions throughout their histories, bringing professional cricket to a wider audience who may have lacked the means or the time to travel to their principal grounds. As the number of Championship games has gone down over decades, there has been a proportionate reduction in the amount of out ground cricket played each season. Where once many counties would have played at several venues per year, these days, in the men’s game at least, only Middlesex remain consistently peripatetic and that is likely a consequence of the MCC’s ownership of Lord’s rather than a desire to bring the game to the good people of Middlesex given that the county no longer officially exists (representing somewhere that has been erased from the map is surely the pinnacle of sporting anachronism). However, the women’s game and, to a lesser extent, the One Day Cup – albeit now diminished to a glorified 2^nd XI competition thanks to The Hundred – provide some hope that the out ground tradition will live on.

This is to be celebrated, and the continuation of the County Championship in these provincial settings is also to be encouraged. After all, there is a certain pride to be taken that only in cricket could one watch Sir James Anderson, one of England’s all-time greats, perform in a non-stadium that has Portaloo’s and more plastic lawn chairs than fixed seats. An out ground also makes the game’s elite accessible in a way that bigger venues cannot. At Blackpool, Lancashire’s Aussie all-rounder Chris Green spends the time between balls chatting and joking with spectators sat just across the boundary rope, taking selfies and even stealing a rest in a vacant fold out chair when its occupant trundles off to the bar.

Jimmy Anderson bowls at Blackpool CC

A healthy-sized crowd, all the more impressive because it’s a Monday and wind chill needs to be taken into consideration despite the fact midsummer’s day has just passed, has turned out for this. To reduce this to the cold economic logic of the ECB, there is a market for this. And perhaps it could be a growth market. In pushing The Hundred and cutting four-day cricket, the ECB is leaning into the notion that faster and shorter is always better. They are battling for the seemingly ever-shrinking attention spans of the social media age. But is this the wrong play? A growing public discourse, including amongst the young, focuses on the ills of social media and the isolation of being chronically online. A movement in favour of logging off and shutting down appears to be emerging. Can long-form cricket be sold to those looking to do a digital detox as a perfect tonic for TikToks and reels? A four-day county game necessarily takes time, it ebbs and flows, with big scores and impressive bowling figures being earned over hours and not seconds. The lulls in the action provide space to socialise and enjoy sitting in the summer sun (or rain, or hail, or icy wind), while every milestone reached during the course of a game is an opportunity to share in collective elation or agony and later be able to say that you were there when an improbable victory was clinched, a longstanding record was broken, or a partnership dug in and held out for a draw against all the odds.

Lunchtime recreation

It might not be a big market, at least not in the short-term, and it’s likely that shorter formats will need to continue subsidising the Championship for now. But I do hold out some hope for a world where there is a growing audience for this kind of entertainment. At Blackpool, the cricket was played at a pace from another age, with Kent eking out their runs in ones and twos. Wickets followed that old adage about buses, coming in irregular groups, with only seven falling across the whole day. It wasn’t flashy. In fact, it was often almost soporific. But I left the world behind for a few hours and was lulled into a pleasant tranquillity from which I didn’t wish to be broken. I can think of few ways I’d prefer to spend a Monday in June. The 1,500 or so others around me seemed to feel the same.

Such attendance numbers won’t be enough to stop the ECB tinkering with the schedule. The imminent threat of them doing just that for next season hung over this game. Nobody – fans, players, commentators, or coaches alike – knew what was being played for. If things were to remain unchanged, this could just be a wooden spoon game between the two bottom-ranked sides in Division Two. If the ECB decide on a system whereby there are no divisions and each county plays a representative cross-section of its peers based on performance ratings, it could have an impact on both teams’ schedules for 2026. It could also have been a preview of a 2026 Division Three match between these two sides if they are both relegated to English cricket’s mooted bottom tier.

This was a great day out, but one with a pall cast over it by the fear that there may not be as many of them to enjoy in future. There is much that is worth saving in the County Championship, and much to be shared with the uninitiated in an effort to spark a love for the longer form of the game. It will take vision and leadership that I fear cricket’s governing authorities lack to make that happen. As I left for the station with a few overs remaining in the day, that west wind kept howling, threatening to blow it all away.