Wednesday 27 January 2016

THE DECLINE OF STOKE'S INNER-CITY CLUBS


Another month, another 'Cordon' blog for ESPNcricinfo. I cannot really recall what prompted me to write about the old, defunct grounds of the Potteries – not only Great Chell and Sneyd, but all the other factory grounds that have fallen by the wayside – but I do know that 24 hours after it was published I received an email from my editor in India telling me they had had the UK office on the phone, not particularly happy with the content. 

Apparently, UK cricinfo was just about to embark on a series of interviews with the ECB about grassroots cricket, and felt that I ought to have offered them right of reply. First, this isn't a news piece; it's a column. Second, it wasn't remotely scathing of the ECB (although I think here the headline was a little alarmist).

My stock at the UK end of ESPNcricinfo is non-existent, with pretty much every pitch having been rejected there on the grounds of them having no budget, so I don't suppose I've done anything drastic to my prospects of getting more work from them. 

Anyway, there was a quickly cobbled together paragraph shoe-horned into the piece, and nothing more was said. All a storm in a teacup, no doubt. 

'The Cordon': The Slow Withering of English Club Cricket

 

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