The business (for that, sadly, is what cricket now is) that Mr Wright found is one that has haemorrhaged customers over the last 40 years or so. Bastardised versions of the game — notably the obtuse and grim Twenty20 slogabout format — still pull in crowds. But those games are short and cater for the modern attention span, which lasts about as long as a computer game or the downloading of a pop music album. Championship cricket, which everyone seems to agree is the raison d'être of the county game, seems now to be only for the elderly. Yet it is important, for it is there that cricketers learn the skills that are needed in Test matches. And Test matches remain important because, at least when certain teams are playing, they pack out grounds despite the outrageously high prices charged for tickets.

I feel I have watched English cricket shoot itself in the foot, and indeed in several other parts of its anatomy, in the 40 or more years I have been watching it. Its administrators should have worked out that people had other things to do during their leisure hours rather than watch cricket — not just computer games, but also, as Mr Wright notes, the alarming habit men have acquired of going shopping — and sought to market their game better and try to make it more attractive. A remorseless diet of limited-overs cricket, so ubiquitous that it ceases to be of interest, was one way of doing this, but now many people have had enough. The real failure has been with the two-innings-a-side championship match, which has become about as compelling to watch as a ploughed field.

Until 1988 all championship games were of three days' duration. Because cricketers started to play the game more slowly, it became harder and harder to get a result. Back in the 1930s it was not unusual for sides to bowl 130 overs in a six-hour day. During the 1980s a 117-over minimum was established, and games would go on until it was almost dark. So it was decided to play over four days, not merely to seek a result, but to ensure that more batsmen could play long innings and that spin bowling, which seemed to be dying out, could make a comeback.

To an extent, this has been achieved. More than 20 years later, England has a strong batting side and some useful spinners. But it is a rare county match that has a decent crowd. The four-day game is slow and attritional. Worse, it seldom includes anyone currently prominent in the game because the greed-based international schedule removes players from county matches for much of the season, or forces them to rest. One official Mr Wright talked to described the county circuit as "England reserves". To an extent he is right: if county cricket has ceased to exist for its own sake, but is merely keeping the understudies of the test team in form, then cricket, shorn of its local patriotism, will soon be dead.