This is a column about children’s sport, the commodification of play and the exclusion of some sections of the population from structures that allow it to take place.
A bit further down the page it contains exclusively sourced information about some informal advice being offered by the England and Wales Cricket Board to counties about the continued existence of junior age group teams.
This will be of extreme interest to a small, intensely involved group of people. These are mainly cricket‑crazed children and their parents, who always imagined their weekends might be crammed with fine, mind-expanding activities but who instead do huge amounts of driving in cars full of garden chairs and empty crisp packets.
The fact this second point is of such limited public interest is of course a symptom of the first, the one about access. With this in mind it is probably necessary to mention here some more populist, Google-friendly subject such as Pep Guardiola or Manchester City midfielder Phil Foden in order to get the point across more widely.
Talking of which, I was listening to a BBC radio show this week where one of the pundits suggested the worst thing Foden could possibly do was go out on loan to another club because this might “dilute Pep Guardiola’s philosophy”.
The fear seemed to be that having “another manager’s voice in his head”, hearing a few words from some competing system of thought – the philosophy of Steve Bruce or Gary Rowett – could prove a fatal note of contamination.
Other pundits agreed. There were concerned noises, as those present pictured this appalling scenario in action. But then, Foden has been a City player since the age of eight. His entire life beyond early boyhood has been embedded in the club, the only note of impurity some possible childhood exposure to the philosophy of Roberto Mancini, the philosophy of Mark Hughes or even briefly the philosophy of – God help us – Sven Göran Eriksson.
At which point it is easy to forget how new this kind of thing is, the channelling of young athletes into a highly formal system that not only affects those inside it, but also their peers beyond.
The Foden generation has been disappearing from park football for the past decade or so, talented eight‑year‑olds plucked out by pro sport, away from the poor diet, parental habits, terrible facilities and all the other behaviours society would otherwise (it is assumed, perhaps correctly) foist upon them.
As a point of contrast the first chapter of Frank McAvennie’s autobiography, Scoring: An Expert’s Guide, describes how the extravagantly coiffured 1980s star had various manual jobs, including being a road sweeper, until the age of 20. McAvennie had never played organised football and was heading off to the bookies when he was asked by a stranger to get on the bus and come and play a game. McAvennie went for a laugh, ran rings around a centre‑half who had 20 scouts watching him, and two years later was Scottish PFA Young Player Of The Year.
There are various reasons why this route, road sweeper to professional athlete, is so rare now. Most obvious is the way academies operate, and not only in football, the scarcity of late entry points once those first precious junior crops have been airlifted to safety.
Beyond this there is the basic inaccessibility of sport to large parts of the urban population. Perfectly laid facilities do exist, but in many areas only for those with talent or money to burn. With this in mind the news, exclusively earwigged by this column, that the ECB has been suggesting informally county cricket clubs might consider abandoning rep cricket under the age of 13 is both fascinating and perhaps a little alarming.
Counties run their junior sections for boys and girls under 13 without ECB input. Most start at U10s. And yes it can be a terrible world. I have driven those miles, have witnessed the horror of 10‑year‑olds swanning around like Virat Kohli in immaculate sponsored gear, bringing to mind the kind of super‑pressured American teenager whose entire life is eaten up by competitive figure skating, and who ends up living in a polygamous rural Texan cult building an orgone-powered space rocket to escape the coming rapture.
Even many junior coaches, for whom this is work, would feel no great sadness at seeing rep cricket for those below 13 disappear; if only because of the parents, the rigid routine, the unnecessary narrowing down.
And this seems to be the real motivation here. There is a powerful argument in all sports to keep the doors open, to invert the pyramid and broaden rather than shrink the available talent pool with age. There is separately a resumption of ECB funding for university cricket, for example, a fertile ground for late-blooming talent.
The fear is this could end up being a strand in another, less welcome process. Even with the best of intentions, abandoning junior age group cricket would leave an unfilled hole. If you go to a state secondary school there is a fair chance you would simply fall out of the sport in those first two years. Meanwhile just watch the private schools pour their best hothoused talent into that inaugural under-13 slot, the private coaching companies cash in their county contacts (which already happens).
The genuine grassroots, casual, amateur sport, has been terribly neglected. Land use, government funding and a culture of passive consumption have led us here. It is a process all professional sports should fight against where they can. Spread the wealth, don’t close any more doors: surely one philosophy of sport we can all get behind.