Cricket has always been a sport of words.

The game is played at a pace that allows witty, intelligent observers to articulate its stories with a true poetic flourish. It is no surprise that characters like Neville Cardus and John Arlott revolutionised their respective areas of sports journalism in the 20th century. Football has always been our most popular sport but it took the growth of When Saturday Comes in the late 1980s to spark the culture of high-quality soccer writing we enjoy today. Fans had happily lapped up a diet of match reports and transfer news but the fanzine movement showed their appetite was much wider and almost bottomless. Though it is not lost on me that WSC has had issues staying afloat in recent years.

These days, there is so much football coverage it has burst the seams of traditional formats. It exists in its own supplements within our national newspapers and on a clutch of dedicated channels on lucrative satellite broadcasters. One of the first casualties of this expansion was county cricket. Long gone are the daily reports and scorecards I poured over as a child once The Express had been snatched from my Dad’s snoozing hands.

Unfortunately, we must all accept that the domestic game is now ‘niche’, a fact reflected in the media prepared to dedicate any level of depth to its coverage. There are a couple of key websites, a couple of key magazines, the Cricket Paper and that is about it.

The BBC have supported the game with blanket ball-by-ball commentaries but its rationale and funding is not market-driven. The mainstream media clearly believes county cricket coverage will not make a commercial return.

However, you only have to look at the figures for online streaming to see that devotees still revel in consuming the domestic game. Lancashire’s coverage of the recent Roses’ clash enjoyed almost 600,000 views and, perhaps more meaningfully, Somerset’s YouTube channel regularly receives 100,000 unique visitors per week. As we witnessed 15 years ago when T20 cricket kicked off a revolution, there is a small hardcore audience for cricket but a much larger latent one that keeps half-an-eye on the game. Give them the right product and they will re-emerge in numbers.

The BBC’s audio commentaries developed an expectation of live coverage on every game, moving us far beyond Ceefax page 341 and the scores on Cricinfo. A devoted audience grew and cricket’s very particular reporting rhythm spawned another crucial element – community. The chumminess and cakes on TMS had created the blueprint, this was just the local version. Adding live video has sent this growth into hyperdrive. The knock-on effect has been the development of a new ‘culture’ around the county game, something akin to the football fanzine movement of the 1980s with supporters filling the content void left by the mainstream media. Of course, the nature of the beast has changed. We live in a time of web 3.0 so there is no need to hawk a photocopied pamphlet outside a ground hoping to recoup your costs.

Podcasts and YouTube channels can be launched in an afternoon by anyone prepared to follow a few basic instructions. So fans can now produce ‘their content, their way’. That does not mean poor production values and unknown voices. The likes of County Cricket Natters, the podcast for its near-namesake magazine, and The County Cricket Podcast have spoken to the likes of Ed Barnard, David Lloyd, Jamie Porter, Ian Holland, Jack Brooks and Ian Cockbain this season. Cricket Life Stories on YouTube has managed to snag some global names like Greg Chapple, Lockie Ferguson, Marnus Labuschagne and Darren Ganga as well as leading county names. However, the most impressive guest list belongs to 98 Not Out who have spoken to many of those plus Alec Stewart, Jonty Rhodes, Mark Waugh, Jason Holder and David Gower in the past couple of years. It is clear that these days, an email to a press officer or a cricket connection from a keen, polite yet amateur host is going to receive positive assistance.

Not all podcasts rely on star guests. Scouting Cricket exclusively examines cricketers under the age of 24, often taking a more ‘Moneyball’ approach and speaking to backroom staff. Then there are the fan-only pods like All The Overs, in which a trio of supporter exclusively discuss Essex.

Clubs like Surrey are producing official podcasts after each day’s play and many of the BBC local stations put out excellent live shows in catch-up form, however, fan-led content is the key element of this genre. It can be too waffly, lack journalistic nous and often its ‘experts’ do not really live up to their billing. Yet, it is a sign of intent from a fanbase ill-served by the market.

As I said, the low barrier to entry and easy, effective distribution has seen this trend concentrate on YouTube channels and podcasts. This is a lucky landing. Unlike social media platforms such as Facebook, Snapchat or Tik-Tok, these two outlets truly cross genders and generations. The technical side of streaming county games on YouTube has proved little problem for older fans while returning myth-busting statistics concerning the younger fans. Around 70 per cent of the views on that Roses game were from 18 to 34-year-olds. Other counties have reported a similar story.

Meanwhile, RAJAR figures in 2020 revealed 18.1 per cent of the population listened to at least one podcast every week, up from two per cent five years ago. Listeners aged 15 to 24 were 19 per cent of the market and those over 55 were 17 per cent. Almost half of the listeners were female.

So if cricket wants to reach beyond its ‘pale, male and stale’ stereotype, then fans producing YouTube channels and podcasts would appear to offer an efficient and effective route.

And if the mainstream will not satisfy the demands of the county cricket-supporting public then, these days, the fans will clearly look to entertain themselves.

* This article first appeared in The Cricket Paper, get it every Sunday or subscribe here

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