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(More customer reviews)If you take a look at the photo on the cover, you'll see the MCC members at their pavillion at Lord's. You'll note that the MCC crowd is all male, and all white. The MCC has played a major role in the management of English cricket since the 19th century. Pommies is largely about the failures of English cricket in contrast to the much more successful Australian game. Buckland is an Englishman, and has been frustrated by the English lack of success in international cricket, particularly in Test matches.
For the cricket-ignorant, English cricket is run largely by the MCC (Marylebone Cricket Club) and the 18 counties that participate in the County Championship. The County Championship, which started in the 19th century, is based on 3-day and 4-day matches (with 2-day matches in 1919). Test matches are similar, usually lasting 5 days. Salaries are meager, especially when compared to professional sports in the US. Attendance, other than at test matches, is small. Spending 6 mid-day hours a day at a 3-day midweek County Championship match would certainly seem to require a passion for the game. So to sex things up and improve attendance, limited-over matches and 1-day matches were inaugurated decades ago. There is also now cricket under the lights and colored uniforms instead of the traditional whites. But the skills needed for these short matches are very different from those needed for 3-, 4-, and 5-day matches, particularly test matches.
Buckland describes the Australian tiered system--a pyramid structure designed in part to create an elite cadre of cricket players. England's structure, by contrast, results in a much flatter peak--the level of play in the 18 English counties is much weaker than in the handful of Australian States in the Sheffield Shield matches. (perhaps think of a new baseball expansion team compared to a team that has been winning 100 games a season). Cricket grounds in England are smaller than those in Australia. There is, however, perhaps an inherent problem with Buckland's thesis. If the purpose of English cricket is to win test matches, then Buckland has lots of very valid points. There is a lot of wonderful tradition in the County Championship, which has been going on since roughly the same time as professional baseball. Like baseball, there have been changes in the game, changes in the rules, but cricket, like baseball, is not that much different in its basics from the way it was played in 1900, say. The purpose of baseball is not to produce players for the Olympics (when baseball was played therein). Ditto basketball. English cricket is certainly quite hidebound--think of baseball pre-free-agency, perhaps, or think even of baseball today vis-a-vis drug policy. So there are a lot of good points to the book, but I would still hate to see the County Championship reduced to, say, 5 regions as Buckland suggests.
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Based on extensive research and interviews with leading sports executives, "Pommies" is the first book to investigate the management of professional cricket in England. Three years after the great Ashes victory in 2005, the England team has reverted to type. In 2007, it lost three out of four Test series and got nowhere in the ICC World Cup and Twenty20 tournaments. Since 1987, Australia has thrashed England 34-9 in Tests and won four World Cups to England's none. Today, Australia has five cricket stadiums with more than 30,000 seats to England's none. Their team is accessible to all on Channel Nine, but England fans have to pay GBP400 a year for Sky. Using Australia as the model and inspiration, "Pommies" explains what is wrong with England cricket and presents a radical plan to improve the national team and open up the game for fans.
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