Kmflett's Blog

The start of the First Class Cricket Season in 1968

The County Cricket season gets underway on Good Friday. The weather predictably is not great. The refrain of shortage of spectators and lack of money can be heard in some quarters. In addition plans to mess around with the structure of domestic cricket continue to be on the agenda despite considerable controversy. The general focus is around how to get more people to watch and hence how to get more money into the game at local levels.

While researching quite different matters recently I came across a piece in the Daily Telegraph about the start of the County cricket season, 58 years ago, in 1968. Strangely it seemed rather familiar.

1968 was a year when the Australians visited but the piece started by noting the ‘enduring problems of making ends meet’. It goes on to mention ‘reduced gates and falling membership’ in many Counties and questions how County Cricket continued to survive.

According Wilf Wooller of Glamorgan ‘cricket had been tottering on the edge of bankruptcy for 90 years’.

The article ponders how clubs like Gloucestershire which ‘has had little success in recent years’ survive. The answer in 1968 was partly through indulgent bank managers but mainly through the work of supporter’s clubs.

However the Telegraph reports that ‘County Secretaries hope that the Sunday League due to start in 1969 will inject greater interest’. Meanwhile Michael Turner of Leicestershire thought that financial stability would only come when the ‘valuable acreages’ around the grounds were developed for multi-purpose activities that took place year round.

58 years on there are some enduring themes here and supporters are still keeping the Counties going. The interesting thing is that in the main they are not same ones as those in 1968 but new generations. How did that happen? Perhaps someone should investigate