Rotation policy is selling the spectator short

The effects of squad rotation in sport has long been a talking point in sport but Michael Atherton, writing in The Times, says it is the spectators who make the effort to buy a ticket who suffer.

If you were hoping to show your gratitude to Paul Collingwood, for his leadership of England’s Twenty20 team in the Caribbean recently, you will be disappointed, too. Collingwood could have played, but he has been withdrawn to treat a niggling shoulder injury — one that has been troubling him since and, note, during England’s tour to Bangladesh the previous time they played Test cricket.

Funny how the system works, isn’t it? England have only just played Bangladesh in Tests and now they are playing them again. It happened last summer, too, when West Indies came shortly after the two teams had played each other in the Caribbean.

It happened the summer before that as well — New Zealand and England were sick of the sight of each other by the time they had played home and away in the space of a few short months. The ICC’s Future Tours Programme clearly cannot cope with the overloaded schedule.

Now that you have your seat and you have been reading the paper for a while, it may be that your backside is starting to ache a little. Some of the seats in the ground are a bit archaic, I know, but maybe it’s because your wallet is a little lighter this morning than before and is not providing sufficient padding. How much lighter? Tickets for this match are cheap by the standards of Lord’s, but when you add travel and a few prawns and a glass of fizz at lunch, it is quite an outlay. And that’s just for one day. Are you getting value for money?

It’s a difficult question, I know. What if Andy Flower had chosen to rest Kevin Pietersen, too, and Graeme Swann, the other players who play in all three forms of the game? You might have felt a little short-changed then. Maybe, you would be regretting that moment of weakness in the winter, when you shelled out for the one day’s Test cricket that you will watch live this summer.

As cricket becomes increasingly a sport made for and packaged for television, it is always the paying spectator who misses out. In the Caribbean recently, matches started at 9.30am to placate the Indian television audience. Never mind the locals, who might have wanted to watch at a more sociable hour. You are the ones making the effort to buy tickets and travel to the game — don’t you deserve the best?

The policy of rotating players is here to stay, as Flower emphasised this week, but it is entirely regrettable; it short-changes those who pay to watch. A few hundred hardy souls travelled to Bangladesh. If they could make the effort to do so, Andrew Strauss, the England captain, should have done the same. Collingwood is untouchable at the moment, but it should not prevent him from copping criticism because, by agreeing to play for Delhi Daredevils in the Indian Premier League when his shoulder was injured and in need of a rest, he paved the way for his present paid holiday.

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