On Thursday last week Nottinghamshire won the English County Championship when they reached 300/4 on the second day of their final match against Warwickshire at their home ground, Trent Bridge. It gave them a second batting bonus point, which put them beyond the reach of their closest challenger, defending champions Surrey.
Fast bowler Nathan Gilchrist, Harare-born but educated at St Stithians and on loan to Warwickshire from Kent, bowled a bouncer to the Notts wicketkeeper which was smashed over midwicket for six, sparking peculiar celebrations, as you can imagine, with just two Notts players in the middle and the rest crowded onto the players' balcony.
In SA the first round of the Cricket SA 4-Day competition was just starting. Western Province were without the man who captained them last season — Kyle Verreynne — because he was the wicketkeeper winning Notts the Championship.
Only three of the 15-man Proteas Test squad due to play a two-Test series against Pakistan in October played first-class cricket last week. Verreynne for Notts, David Bedingham for Durham — who were relegated — and Simon Harmer for Essex. None of the players whose teams played the first round of matches in SA was selected. The squad doesn’t depart for Lahore until October 7.
Boland played some tremendous cricket in Paarl, where Gavin Kaplan (238) and Grant Roelofsen (150) carried the home side to a first-innings total of 616 before Glenton Stuurman (6/61) helped them to a 9-wicket victory against the Titans, for whom Dewald Brevis and Corbin Bosch did not play.
Sinethemba Qeshile (129) shone for the Warriors as they clinched a tight 48-run victory against a Verreynne-less WP, and the newly promoted Tuskers (KZN Inland) had their captain Michael Erlank (200) to thank for a first-innings total of 399 before collapsing to 98 all out to lose by 8 wickets to the North West Dragons in Potchefstroom, for whom opener Lesiba Ngoepe scored 154.
It is more than a little ironic that the Test squad (minus Verreynne and Bedingham) were on tour with the ICC Test mace in the week before the first round of matches, celebrating a magnificent achievement in the hardest form of the game. The skills required to become World Test Champions were acquired, of course, by playing four-day cricket, not avoiding it.
First-class cricket has never attracted large crowds, but, in England, it has enjoyed a resurgence, with Surrey averaging a remarkable 6,000 spectators a day with peaks of around 15,000. There were over 5,000 at Trent Bridge to witness Notts’ eventual three-day win against Warwickshire and a “proper” celebration, but the days of “two men and a dog” audiences are long gone. Except in SA.
There weren’t even gate stewards at Boland Park on Thursday, never mind an entrance fee. A colleague estimated the crowd to be 25. Actually, it wasn’t an estimation. He counted them. There were, apparently, a few more spectators at the weekend. It feels, and looks, like SA has officially given up on first-class cricket as a spectacle, which is a pity because it remains the only means to the end which produced the Test champions.
Financial prudence might suggest that 4-day cricket not only fails to generate income but also loses money, so why spend anything at all on promoting it? It has already been cut to just seven rounds of matches in the first division, while the second division teams are heading inexorably towards dissolution. Cricket SA cannot support 15 professional teams, no matter how desirable the concept is.
To be fair, all professional cricketers would choose to play in front of an audience rather than empty seats and barren grass banks. You can’t blame Verreynne. But by not selecting the best available players and not doing anything to incentivise spectators, the message is clear: domestic first-class is an irritation, like unpleasant medicine.
But until cricketers believe they can prepare adequately for Test cricket by practising in the nets, it is also critical medicine for the health of the greatest format of the game. Test cricket relies on its regular doses of first-class games. Administrators at the national and provincial levels must continue the effort to sweeten the medicine, however difficult that talk might be.
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