Cricket: Olympic Stadium Could Be Used for Cricket
Kevin Mitchell adds his support to the campaign for Stratford's planned 80,000-seat stadium to be used for cricket after the 2012 Olympics. An intriguing document landed on my desk last week, containing a suggestion so left-field it might just fly: after the 2012 Olympics, turn the 80,0000-seat stadium in Stratford over to... cricket.
William Buckland, a handy player at university, earns his living advising companies and institutions on business strategy - and he has already planted his idea in a few high places. He has given a copy to the Sports Minister, Richard Caborn, and told cricket executives about it in informal talks. And if Buckland is desperate, he can always call up an old schoolmate, the new Conservative party leader, David Cameron.
Buckland's fellow enthusiast for the Stratford project is Robert Franklin, a chartered company secretary. But, as Buckland points out: 'We're just a couple of ordinary blokes.' Which is not to say their plan is mad - just hard to get into the public domain.
The Government plan in place is to demolish two thirds of the seats after the Games and turn the stadium over to athletics. But, says Buckland, the sport has only a handful of meetings a year and crowds are not large. Cricket, though, is riding high after the Ashes and, although 2012 is seven years away, there is reason to hope that the game's new fans will stay with cricket, and probably grow.
Anyone who saw the many thousands of new supporters left outside Old Trafford and the Oval last summer, begging for tickets, will agree the potential for growth is there.
Cricket has a huge playing base - much bigger than athletics - and TV ratings are impressive. What they don't have - and what Australia and countries on the subcontinent do have - is a stadium large enough to accommodate crowds of far more than 30,000.
'Melbourne provides seven times, and Sydney three times, as many seats per person for international games as London does,' Buckland says, 'while Brentford Football Club provides 15 per cent more seats per year to the public at Griffin Park than England cricket does at its two London grounds.'
Also, the views for the paying public at England cricket grounds are invariably poor and overpriced. The best vantage points are usually occupied by the media, members and debenture holders, a lot of whom are too busy knocking back the complimentary plonk even to watch the cricket.
It was while watching the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne two years ago the thought occurred to Buckland that England ought to have a ground to match the MCG, which holds 105,000. The sight lines are perfect and, filled to capacity, it can generate more money on a single day than Lord's, the Oval or any other of the Test grounds in England do in a week.
'Melbourne, with 25 per cent of the 14 million metropolitan area population of London, provides 780,000 seats per year for major games at the MCG. This is seven times as many seats per inhabitant as London.'
But, Buckland concedes, there is not the money in the game here to build a new ground the size of the MCG. Which is why he is suggesting cricket piggy-back the Olympic project and take over the stadium in Stratford.
'Otherwise,' he says, 'it could easily become another Dome.' He argues it would be politically popular too and points out that Caborn is a passionate cricket fan, which can only help. The sports minister is thought to have played a part in Sky handing over all those millions to the ECB for the rights to cricket from next season.
'An 80,000-plus-seat stadium would make several hundred thousand cheaper tickets available,' Buckland says, 'providing better access to a wider audience, including women, children, ethnic minorities and the less well-off.'
There have been suggestions Tottenham or West Ham might be interested in taking it over. Spurs don't want to know, and West Ham might baulk at taking it on.
However, according to Buckland, cricket could easily fit in around track and field events. It could stage 20 or so one-day games there, as well as the Twenty20 final jamboree, when the semi-finals and final are played on the same day and, naturally, attract four different sets of supporters.
Again, the MCG is the model. It has cricket this month, the Commonwealth Games in March.
A cricket covering could be relaid over the athletics track at Stratford after any athletics event because the games would attract sufficient revenue to cover the costs, as happens with the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff.
The dimensions are not a problem either, he says. It's wide enough and, although too long at the ends, these could be brought in and temporary seating installed.
Buckland makes the valid point that football and rugby grounds have been overhauled, or built from scratch, as those games have expanded in recent years, but cricket has not reacted at all to the growth of its audience. It was never more apparent than during the last World Cup here, with thousands of fans excluded from tiny grounds such as Hove and Taunton.
It would be unwise to compare football directly with cricket, but the summer game is definitely on the up. It would be a shame if, when the Australians tour in 2013 and the entire nation is clamoring for tickets, they are still going to be crammed into tiny grounds designed for Victorian gentlemen of leisure.
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