LEE PAYNE

Tag: uk

  • England’s World Cup success can get the country into cricket again

    It was in early January 2003, just before school started again after Christmas, that I first got into cricket.

    I was 10 years old and would get up in the morning to find my dad in the living room watching the Ashes Test from Sydney on TV. On the screen, I could see Michael Vaughan batting for England and can remember thinking ‘this is great’.

    Vaughan’s strokeplay, especially his cover drive, were just so pleasing on the eye. I knew next to nothing about the sport at the time. I didn’t know England were 4-0 down in the five match series. I didn’t know the Australian team was one of the best there had ever been. But I was fascinated by this Englishman artfully approaching these little red missiles being fired at him and making several Australians chase after them. I didn’t want to stop watching.

    Watching Michael Vaughan bat got me into cricket

    I would say I love football and cricket equally. Thankfully, with the end of the football season signalling the start of the cricket season in this country I rarely have to choose between the two. If I had to pick just one, however, it would be cricket.

    So much can happen at any moment in a cricket match. Every ball is an event. There are so many ways for the batsman to score runs and so many ways for the bowler to get him out. Football tends to be mostly tedious until the last ten minutes of a game. And cricket is so aesthetically pleasing – it certainly takes the crown of ‘the beautiful game’ for me. Sorry, Pele.

    I also love how cricket is so incredibly difficult to be good at. You’ve got three disciplines to tackle and it’s hard to be proficient at any of them. The chances of being good at all three are next to zero. International cricketers seem almost superhuman compared to mere mortals like me. Just look (below) at this catch England’s Ben Stokes took in an Ashes Test in 2015.

    Cricket was the new cool in 2005 when England won the Ashes for the first time in 18 years, beating an immensely strong Australia 2-1 in what is unlikely ever to usurped as the best Test series of all time. The game was on the front and back pages of the newspapers and 7.4 million people tuned in to watch the end of the final Test live on Channel 4.

    Since then, the England cricket team has only been visible on live television to Sky Sports subscribers. Prohibitively expensive to many and not likely to be stumbled upon by the casual viewer, cricket dropped out of the national consciousness and the numbers of people playing and watching sank. The conclusion of the final Ashes Test in 2009, only on Sky Sports, was watched by less than two million.

    These are the reasons why this year’s World Cup has been so important for cricket in the UK. The world’s best players have been competing on our doorsteps for nearly seven weeks. Fan parks have opened the tournament up to thousands of newcomers. And to top it all, England came into it as favourites and have reached the final.

    England thrashed Australia in the semi-finals to reach the Cricket World Cup final for the first time since 1992

    It’s hard to put into words what England winning the World Cup would do for the game. How often can we say that England are world champions in any sport? With the match against New Zealand at Lord’s being the first time the England team can be seen live on terrestrial television for 14 years – it’s going to be live on Channel 4 – this is a massive opportunity for cricket to engage with the wider public once again.

    I’d love for a kid to catch sight of cricket on the TV for the first time on Sunday and be captured by it in the way I was sixteen years ago. For Jonny Bairstow or Joe Root to inspire in the way that Michael Vaughan did. After all, success makes you popular.

    • The Cricket World Cup final between England and New Zealand at Lord’s will be live on Channel 4 and Sky Sports on Sunday 14th July, with the first ball at 10.30am.

  • The ECB’s new Twenty20 tournament could be make or break for cricket in the UK

     

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    The new Twenty20 tournament would co-exist with the current T20 Blast

     

    The England and Wales Cricket Board have announced a Twenty20 competition to begin in 2020 – their attempt at getting more people interested in cricket.

    It has caused controversy, with some saying it will be the beginning of the end for county cricket and others saying it will keep the game alive in the UK.

    While the domestic game currently has 18 major counties, the proposed tournament will contain eight teams with squads of 15 players each. The teams will most likely take on the names of the cities they are based in, doing away with Surrey and Yorkshire and perhaps introducing London and Leeds.

    This eight team, city-based structure mirrors the hugely successful Big Bash in Australia and the Indian Premier League.

    The plan is for 36 matches to be played over 38 days in the school summer holidays, and for 8 of those matches to be live on free-to-air TV.

    The timing of the tournament could help to attract the best players in the world to it, as only England play regular international cricket at that time of year. Squads may miss England players but will be allowed 3 overseas stars.

    Here are a few thoughts I have about this proposal.

    County cricket is dying anyway

    The County Championship, the oldest and purest cricket championship, has been attended by almost nobody for decades. Counties have a few die-hard members, and some of them will get a few spectators in at the height of the holiday season, but other than that matches are played in front of empty grounds, rendering the four-day competition next to pointless. The Twenty20 tournament is not threatening to end the Championship, but might make enough money to keep it alive. Each county has been promised £1.3 million as part of the proposal.

     

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    A County Championship match takes place in front of not many people at Edgbaston

     

    Will enough matches be on free-to-air TV?

    English cricket has not been live on free-to-air TV since 2005. Since the ECB made the game available only to people who could afford a Sky Sports subscription the number of schoolchildren getting into cricket has dropped dramatically. They know they made a mistake, and while they can’t do anything about it until the end of the current rights deal in 2019, they have ringfenced 8 of the 36 matches for FTA TV in the proposal. I wonder, is that enough? Will it be eight of the early league fixtures, making it difficult to follow, or will it include the semi-finals and the final? Only time will tell, but it seems you’re still going to need a pay TV subscription to have much of an idea of what’s going on.

    Two Twenty20 tournaments could mean overkill

    The ECB are not proposing to replace the current T20 Blast with this city-based tournament – they intend for them to co-exist. This year, the T20 Blast (which does feature all 18 counties) will take place over seven weeks. The new tournament would be planned to start almost immediately after the Blast – I have a feeling even a massive cricket fan like me could get fed up of watching Twenty20 after 12 solid weeks of it.

    While there are questions to be answered, I think overall this is a positive step from the ECB and a genuine attempt to inject new life into cricket in this country. They’ve got three years to get it ready – the future of the sport could depend on them getting it right.

  • My Durham holiday photo treasure hunt

    This is a break from the norm for this blog.

    I’ve been spending a few days in Durham. While Norwich City do in fact play away at Newcastle this weekend (about 18 miles away) my visit is unrelated. I had a week off work coming up, did not want to be at home crawling up the walls with boredom, and my godmother – who works up here – kindly offered me the chance to come and stay at her place.

    My Durham Cathedral selfie.
    My Durham Cathedral selfie.

    Last night, while out for a walk, I had an idea. I asked my godmother to come up with a list of things that she wanted me to go and photograph the next day – a sort of treasure hunt. When I got up this morning, I had a Skype message from her containing this list:

    Whatever is up both of those alleyways (alleyways we had seen on our walk)
    The Sanctuary knocker
    Harry Potter style cloisters
    A cathedral made of Lego
    A poem on a stone bridge with the cathedral in the background
    A piece of rubbish in an inappropriate place
    A large map of the UK embedded in the pavement, made up of coloured stone in a geological manner
    Tracy Franklin’s studio
    A nice pile of washing up on the draining board
    A cup of coffee in your hand

    Around midday today, I was ready with my phone to start the challenge. Here’s how I got on.

    Whatever is up both of those alleyways

    Durham is a very old city. It’s full of narrow streets, listed buildings and hidden passages. On our walk last night, my godmother and I came to one of these hidden passages.

    The entrance to one of the alleyways.
    The entrance to one of the alleyways.

    It was getting quite late and the alleyway looked rather spooky in the dark, it has to be said. In the comfort of daylight, I headed up the steps and saw this ahead of me:

    This is what was up one of those alleyways.
    This is what was up one of those alleyways.

    When we had been looking at the entrance last night, a man in a suit strolled past us and went up there. It felt rather narrow and a bit eerie even during the day, so I would certainly not have gone up there at night like he did! The other alleyway I was tasked to explore looked like this:

    The other alleyway.
    The other alleyway.

    It turns out that this alleyway merges with the other one and they both take you just outside Pizza Express!

    The Sanctuary knocker

    In case you don’t know, a Sanctuary knocker (or ‘haogday’ but that’s just a weird name for it) is an ornamental knocker on the door of a cathedral. Long ago, if you touched the knocker, you were afforded the right of asylum inside. Think of a medieval Julian Assange. This ended about 400 years ago, so don’t try it the next time you are on the run from the police. Here’s the Sanctuary knocker on Durham Cathedral.

    It's much bigger than it looks here.
    It’s much bigger than it looks here.

    Harry Potter style cloisters

    The city of Durham is dominated by its cathedral. It looms large over the whole peninsula.

    Durham Cathedral looms large over the city.
    Durham Cathedral looms large over the city.

    I knew that the next target on the list would involve a trip inside this magnificent building. I made my way to the cloisters – stopping to take in the awe-inspiring interior – and got the shot I needed.

    The Harry Potter style cloisters of Durham Cathedral.
    The Harry Potter style cloisters of Durham Cathedral.

    My godmother hadn’t put ‘Harry Potter style’ cloisters on the list just because they look like they should be part of Hogwarts – she put it like that because they are part of Hogwarts. Durham Cathedral was used as a location for the first two films in the series – the Philosopher’s Stone and the Chamber of Secrets. The cloisters are where Ron’s spell backfired and he ended up coughing up slugs. Here is a page showing some of the scenes shot here.

    Parts of Durham Cathedral are currently covered in scaffolding as it undergoes major repairs and development. They are calling the project Open Treasure and you can donate to help them maintain this amazing place.

    A cathedral made of Lego

    Reading the list with somewhat bleary eyes this morning, I did think ‘she wants me to make the cathedral out of Lego!?’. It seems an unlikely request, but you don’t know my godmother like I do. I then realised that there must be a Lego model of Durham Cathedral. After taking a photo of the cloisters, I headed for the gift shop and found what I was looking for.

    That's a lot of Lego.
    That’s a lot of Lego.

    The ‘182,000’ on the roof of this impressive Lego creation refers to the fact that there are now more than 182,000 pieces of Lego used in the model. And it’s not even finished. People can buy a brick and add it to the model personally.

    A poem on a stone bridge with the cathedral in the background

    Having left the cathedral, I went in search of this rather specific target. I had heard vaguely before about a bridge in Durham inscribed with a poem, but I had no idea where it was. It turns out it is on the secluded Prebends Bridge. It’s more than 340 years old and features the words of Sir Walter Scott from Harold the Dauntless.

    I was pretty pleased to get the money shot of the cathedral in the background too.
    I was pretty pleased to get the money shot of the cathedral in the background too.

    A piece of rubbish in an inappropriate place

    I thought this one would be easy. Durham is so historic that pretty much any rubbish lying around would be inappropriate. However, it seems the people here know that and so I discovered that Durham is one of the most litter-free places I have ever been to. I was scouring the flowerbeds close to the cathedral for just one crisp packet. I was desperate enough at one point to consider putting a piece of rubbish on the toilet seat in the flat and claiming that as target complete. Eventually, I settled on this:

    I get a pass for this one, don't I?
    I get a pass for this one, don’t I?

    That’s rubbish. Check. That’s in the front yard of the road leading to the World Heritage Site. That’s got to be inappropriate, right? I do wonder what the people who saw me take that photo must have thought of me.

    A large map of the UK embedded in the pavement, made up of coloured stone in a geological manner

    This was the most difficult one on the list to find. This is because it’s not in the city centre, but outside the University of Durham’s Bill Bryson Library.

    Like Ronseal, it does exactly what it says on the tin.
    Like Ronseal, it does exactly what it says on the tin.

    Once you get the idea of what it is and what it represents it’s pretty cool I think.

    Tracy Franklin’s studio

    ‘Who the hell is Tracy Franklin?’ I hear you ask. Good question. I hadn’t got a clue either. Tracy Franklin is an embroiderer, and her studio is here in a back street.

    Tracy Franklin's studio.
    Tracy Franklin’s studio.

    I would tell you more about Tracy Franklin and her embroidery, but as embroidery is one of the most boring things in the world, I won’t.

    A nice pile of washing up on the draining board

    Now this was a very sneaky way for my godmother to get the washing up done in her flat. Being the excellent guest that I am, I did this before heading out this morning. Here’s the proof.

    How clean is your house?
    How clean is your house?

    Last but not least…

    A cup of coffee in your hand

    After traipsing around Durham for more than three hours, I was quite happy to complete the challenge with this one. Sat back in the flat, this cup of coffee was very welcome on a chilly October day.

    Raising a mug to my successful completion of the challenge.
    Raising a mug to my successful completion of the challenge.

    With that, my photo treasure hunt was finished. It was a lot of fun actually, a great way to explore somewhere you’re not familiar with. I recommend this game the next time you go on holiday.

    Thanks for reading, and rest assured normal service will be resumed shortly.