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1st grade? Crowds at Matador games?

stephen

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
Most Queenslanders were calling for Hartley to be selected. People tend to know guys on the verge of selection but not the bit players. The big bash has helped raise awareness of domestic players too.
 

Tom Flint

International Regular
Interesting. What percentage of the public do you think could name 3 Shield Cricketers who have never represented Australia? I dont think most people I know could and a lot of them do like sport.

I said it before but the fact that our Australian players hardly play in our comps hurt so much.
I think cricket fans who dont follow shield would still know most of the as they mostly all play in the big bash.
 

Tom Flint

International Regular
There is a lot more interest in cricket in aus than in england imo. Any big bash or australia game in any format is always on in the pubs. In england you have to literally beg the landlord to put it on and even then they usually say no as no one wants to watch it and they will switch it over as people want to watch something else. Even the ashes isnt automatically on unless you request it to be?
 

TheJediBrah

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There is a lot more interest in cricket in aus than in england imo. Any big bash or australia game in any format is always on in the pubs. In england you have to literally beg the landlord to put it on and even then they usually say no as no one wants to watch it and they will switch it over as people want to watch something else. Even the ashes isnt automatically on unless you request it to be��
**** no

Big Bash is maybe the exception where Aus shows more interest than England
 

Prince EWS

Global Moderator
It's perhaps hard to compare because cricket isn't on free-to-air TV in the UK, but yeah judging on ratings alone it's much more popular in Australia. I think it's more tied to the summer culture here than in the UK too -- even people who don't like or follow cricket tend to know when it's on and vaguely how Australia are doing in the summer Tests. In terms of proper fans who'd consider sitting down and watching an entire session of a Test there's probably not much difference (people here are always quick to tell you how they don't like cricket or that Tests are boring or what have you), but in a broader sense I do think it's more embedded in Australia.
 

S.Kennedy

International Vice-Captain
Which in all honesty is the same with all domestic FC cricket.
Weird, because I follow county cricket and I know a lot of people who also follow country cricket, to the extent that they travel up and down the country following away games.
 

S.Kennedy

International Vice-Captain
In regards to test cricket, test cricket is about as popular as tiddlywinks in England since the greedy ECB decided to sell out to Sky in 2005. The sport was buried. Joe Root could walk down any high-street and he'd be an unknown. The English are obsessed with the football premier league.

Has anyone ever requested the cricket to be shown in a pub? It is hilarious. You hear comments by the regular old men drinkers like, ''what is this ****e?'', ''I do not understand the rules for this load of bollocks'', and ''bunch of posh boys''.
 

Adders

Cricketer Of The Year
**** no

Big Bash is maybe the exception where Aus shows more interest than England
No, you're way off the mark here mate.

I'm wondering if you're being fooled by the large travelling fan base that England enjoys and see an MCG test with 20,000 England supporters and think wow they really must be into their cricket over there. It's very much a niche sport in England that has a very small (but I guess hardcore) following.........the game has way way more general interest in it in Aus.
 

Adders

Cricketer Of The Year
Has anyone ever requested the cricket to be shown in a pub? It is hilarious. You hear comments by the regular old men drinkers like, ''what is this ****e?'', ''I do not understand the rules for this load of bollocks'', and ''bunch of posh boys''.
I can totally believe that. In contrast I was in an RSL club when David Warner was teeing off against India in that Perth test........when Warner got into the 80's just about everyone in the club stopped what they were doing and came over to the big screen to watch it. The old ****s even left their pokie machines for it.

Would never have happened in England.
 

S.Kennedy

International Vice-Captain
I can totally believe that. In contrast I was in an RSL club when David Warner was teeing off against India in that Perth test........when Warner got into the 80's just about everyone in the club stopped what they were doing and came over to the big screen to watch it. The old ****s even left their pokie machines for it.

Would never have happened in England.
Once when I was watching it in a pub I believe one old bloke was mistaking the sport for an entirely different game as I kept hearing things like, ''I divint nah'' (I live in the north east) ''what a birdie or a bogey is''.
 

morgieb

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What's the main reason for cricket in England being more unpopular than in Australia? I suppose it not being on FTA has an effect but even then some of the comments above suggests it's a lot more ingrained than that.
 

Gnske

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
Well to be fair, whereas it's just depressing watching Australia play at times, it's always depressing and completely unexciting watching England play.
 

Adders

Cricketer Of The Year
What's the main reason for cricket in England being more unpopular than in Australia? I suppose it not being on FTA has an effect but even then some of the comments above suggests it's a lot more ingrained than that.
I'm sure not being on FTA is a contributor, but you're right it goes back a lot further than that.

The English football season goes for 10 months of the year.......aint no sport in England ever going to compete against that for popularity. Not sure how many of you blokes have spent time over in the UK but you really have to have to be able to appreciate just how all consuming football is over there. Sure your AFL and NRL are huge deals here with massive interest, but their seasons are short by comparison with not much challenging the cricket in the summer months.

Plus as much as I hate to discuss this with Australians:p ......the weather. You have a long summer that is perfect for cricket participation and watching. England sometimes has June.
 

Camo999

State 12th Man
Difference is accessibility in my opinion. In Aus: big stadia, relatively affordable tix, live free to air coverage for both home internationals and big bash. The game is available to virtually everyone.

Eng: tiny grounds, horrifically expensive tix. Unless you want to part with £60+ or pay for Sky Sports you will probably not have seen a single live delivery in over a decade. Casual and potential new fans have been eliminated and any real mainstream presence the game had seems to be long gone. It seems cricket has a reputation for being somewhat 'exclusive' here and sadly ECB have done more than anyone to perpetuate this view
 

S.Kennedy

International Vice-Captain
What's the main reason for cricket in England being more unpopular than in Australia? I suppose it not being on FTA has an effect but even then some of the comments above suggests it's a lot more ingrained than that.
Pay-walling it in 2005 is the main reason, but the dominance of the English Premier League here (also, ironically paywalled) does not help matters. Sport in Britain can be summarised thus,

Football, football, a bit of rugger over the winter (six nations), football, football, ashes (if it occurs), football, football, Olympics (if it occurs), football, football. It is not so much that sports like cricket and rugby take second place to football, but that football takes second, third and fourth place spots.
 

vic_orthdox

Global Moderator
I spent the summer in England in 2011, when the Poms beat India 4-0; it may have made them number one in the world after that series??

But you could count on one hand how many times during the summer the cricket was on the back page of the tabloids. Even in the "offseason" of June, let alone July when the transfer window opens, there's eight pages of football before you get a chance of seeing the cricket. With my job over there, spent a lot of time with the small papers in my hand so got a decent idea of it.

Rugby union definitely got more following/coverage than cricket. I was surprised about how big boxing was in England, and the coverage of cricket wasn't much more significant than boxing.

As a comparison, the coverage of the A-League here would be bigger in terms of pages than what cricket got in England.

I should point out that once you got up to Yorkshire where I was, and I think the more localised papers in general, it was a lot more focused on cricket.
 
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vic_orthdox

Global Moderator
One thing about the grade cricket "crowds" - the commitment to grade cricket means it's often a "young mans" game. We play 17 rounds, with seven of them two day games, that we have to squeeze into 26 weeks, including three weeks of finals. The competition has done a lot to reduce the amount of Sundays, but you can end up playing anywhere between four to ten during the season (if you have a really successful one). Add in three to four month long pre-seasons, training at least twice a week, and the commitment means that most people pull up stumps and move back to local cricket around 30.

So when people start having families, and their kids and families coming down to watch it's back at local cricket. And then the player will stay around there when they retire, because the local clubs have the bigger and better junior programs, so they want to help their child's team. You'll get better crowds at local cricket.

In terms of standard, I'd say grade/premier cricket is pretty much around County 2nd / Minor County standard.
 

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