Cricket at Olympic stadium?

There has been renewed press speculation that the 2012 Olympic stadium could be used for cricket once The Torch has begun it’s four-year crawl in the general direction of Rio.  This isn’t a particularly fresh idea, but it comes on the back of a statement from Mayor of London Boris Johnson:

The LDA has engaged with two professional cricket clubs and the national governing body of the sport to explore opportunities for professional cricket (particularly Twenty20 cricket) to be played in the legacy stadium post 2012 and proposes to identify areas within the legacy park, where cricket nets and recreational cricket can be played.

Naturally, the ECB and surrounding counties say they know nothing about it.  They aren’t in favour of the idea anyway, as they fear it will upset the current equilibrium of first class grounds around the country.

With the Olympic stadium to seat anywhere up to about 80,000 during the games, with an unspecified reduction afterwards, it is possible that the Test match ground’s capacities, including Lord’s 30,000, could be dwarfed.  Nobody wants the competition so they are trying to down the idea before it’s even taken off, so to speak.

The plan for cricket at the Olympic stadium first came about, as far as I can tell, in 2005.  William Buckland, an influential business consultant, put a great deal of effort into lobbying politicians and administrators to do just so.  That the ECB still claim that the idea is completely new to them shows just how much attention they were paying.

But, the idea is a sensible one when you consider the changing face of cricket, something that English cricket will have to do sooner rather than later.  Twenty20 is now the main bread-winner for most cricketing countries ahead of Test cricket.  The IPL is, apparantly, one of the fastest growing businesses in the world.

If the ECB wants to get it’s grubby hands on a slice of this pie, it needs to have a modern sporting infrastructure at its disposal.  Instead it has Old Trafford, about as modern as Alf Garnett.  It’s latest “international standard” stadium holds a mere 15,000 people.

The snobbish attitude of many English cricket movers-and-shakers is that cricket-IPL-style doesn’t bleed red and should therefore be shot just in case.  I’ll refer you back to Andy Nash of Somerset and his smelling salts remark for evidence of that.

So when the London Development Agency makes it’s decision on the future of the Olympic Stadium, don’t expect to see Giles Clarke anywhere near the photocall.