The Forgotten: What life is like in a pandemic for the pros without a county

NICK FRIEND: There is never an ideal time to be an unemployed professional cricketer, but this period is more challenging than most. Michael Richardson, Alex Mellor and Ben Aitchison open up on their frustrations and thoughts on what the future holds

For county cricketers, the vast majority of whom are currently furloughed, there may well be a not-too-distant light at the end of the tunnel.

The wait has been long, frustrating and – at times – confusing. But when summer reaches its natural end, there is increasing hope that some domestic cricket will by then have been played.

For those, who came into 2020 without a county, however, recent months have proven taxing in their own way: a moment forced upon individuals to consider more bluntly what the future holds, an opportunity to evaluate the state of play, a chance as well to take a step back and broaden horizons.

At the best of times, life without a club is a challenge – remaining in the thoughts of decision-makers and retaining the personal identity of an elite athlete. In a campaign so far prevented from beginning by the coronavirus pandemic, those feelings and fears have been amplified.

“Until the cricket season starts, in theory you still feel like a professional,” reflects wicketkeeper Alex Mellor, who was released by Warwickshire at the end of 2019. “Then, you’re unemployed – that’s the only difference. That’s where the struggle can lie.”

The 28-year-old finds himself at an interesting crossroads. He has spent part of his lockdown experience working his way through an online course focused on personal training that came to him through an email from the Professional Cricketers’ Association.

It is one of the major benefits of the organisation that its support is unconditional and unlimited, regardless of whether a player remains attached to a first-class county. Mellor has also signed up to the Player Resettlement Programme launched recently by Liam Plunkett in conjunction with The Training Room, the aim of which is to upskill sportspeople in other areas in order to assist their transition into retirement – not that he has reached that point yet.

He had approached 2020 with the ambition of working to find himself a new club, trialing perhaps and searching for that breakthrough moment. Instead, lockdown struck. Back in simpler times, he had also been due to spend the start of pre-season with Nottinghamshire in the hope of earning a deal with Peter Moores’ squad. What happens next where that agreement is concerned, Mellor knows he can’t be sure.

“It’s one of those million-dollar questions,” he says with a wry chuckle. “How long’s a piece of string? I was supposed to be there the week after lockdown started. I was in touch with my agent and I was like: ‘I don’t want to be dumb here, but I’m guessing this isn’t going ahead.’ I’m just waiting to see what happens just in general, really. It would be nice to play some form of cricket, whether it’s just a mini competition – no one really knows. It would just be nice to play.

“I was going to go down for a couple of days and give it my all. It’s those little opportunities where you think that if can I do well and I can impress and show them what I’m capable of doing, the next thing you know, it can lead to bigger things. I was really looking forward to getting stuck in and being around a different set of lads.”

He has trialed before and is used to the double-edged oddity of the experience. “It’s the uncertainty,” he explains. “Are they looking at you? Are you just a body or a number in the eleven? But I’ve always looked at it as every game being an opportunity to impress someone. It only takes one person.”

After the blow of being let go from Edgbaston, he spent his winter “looking at the bigger picture”. He is back at home now in Staffordshire but is still in touch with his former teammates, speaking to them on a regular basis; after all, this remains an exceptional time for everyone.

“It is mentally draining when you do take a knock like that and you are no longer in the professional setup,” he admits. “You do take a look back and ask whether the hunger and desire are still there. And the answer is yes.”

^{Alex Mellor was due to begin pre-season with Nottinghamshire, having left Warwickshire at the end of last season}

Needless to say, it is a complicated time for a sizeable, varied batch of unattached cricketers in what is, even in a normal year, a claustrophobic, ultra-competitive battle for contracts. There are those who were released at the end of last season by their counties – at least 20 of them, those who have performed consistently on the national counties circuit and also those who have developed later to dominate the club scene. It is a portion of the industry that is easily forgotten at a moment like this: people’s livelihoods are at stake.

For Ben Aitchison, the frustration has been the same as Mellor’s, but different. A 20-year-old seamer from Southport who plays his club cricket for Formby, this was meant to be a big year on the back of a noteworthy body of groundwork. A late starter by his own admission, he had until recently been something of an unknown quantity, barring some time spent on Lancashire’s academy and a small sample of second team appearances.

He came into 2020, however, after a winter spent in Australia, where he took 26 wickets in 11 first-grade matches for Parramatta, impressing to the point that he was watched by Sussex and spoke to other counties during his time abroad.

He had initially been expected to play predominantly at second-grade level – so rare would it be for an uncontracted, unknown English teenager to press his case any higher. Instead, though, he ended his spell as the club’s highest wicket-taker across all formats at first-grade level, an almost unprecedented achievement. For context, only 11 men in the division took more.

By consequence, he had been due to return home just in time to spend his pre-season with a county side, with a contract offer not expected to be far behind. Six counties were keeping tabs on him through the winter, at the very least watching footage of him. Lancashire, who last saw Aitchison bowl 12 months ago, were keen to revisit him on the back of his Australian breakthrough.

“I was buzzing to get into it,” he stresses. He had planned to focus on putting himself in the shop window for trials, while continuing to perform for Cheshire and for Formby in the Liverpool and District Cricket Competition. Whether any meaningful club cricket takes place this year, however, is a matter of considerable doubt.

“I had the big aim just of getting a contract by the end of the summer,” he says. “I got a lot of interest from my first-grade stuff, so it’s obviously frustrating coming back to no cricket.”

He lives a one-minute walk from his club, and so has been bowling more than most. In the event of cricket, he hopes theoretically that he might be well-placed for offers, especially given the need to manage the workload of seamers should the county game return on the back of a hurried practice period. “I’m pretty confident that if we can get some cricket on this summer, I’m going to have an involvement somewhere,” he adds, wondering also what the world’s current state means for his planned return to Parramatta again this winter.

In Michael Richardson’s case, released by Durham nine years after joining the club, he acknowledges that his age makes his situation more complicated. The South Africa-born wicketkeeper turns 34 in October, but points to his relatively late entrance to the professional game, having only made his first-class debut ten years ago.

“Prejudice is too strong a word, but I think people do consider age as almost a given across the board, where potentially they shouldn’t,” he ponders. “People develop at different stages; I do see myself as a relatively young 33-year-old. I don’t want that to sound arrogant; everyone sees themselves in that light.”

He maintains that he is “desperate to get another opportunity” but adds that he has tried not to overthink his predicament for the sake of his own wellbeing, especially bearing in mind the possible financial implications for counties following whatever becomes of this year and any subsequent impact on the transfer market. He wonders as well whether county coaches and directors will remember him, especially in – and after – a summer as complex as this.

“I can imagine you become so concerned with the players that you have in your closed environment that you would forget players,” he suggests pensively. “I don’t really know what I’m basing that on. Only that when I was a player, I wasn’t thinking: ‘God, there’s a player who’s making runs for Berkshire or Lincolnshire.’

“It’s so far out of my control and what I seem to have noticed is that it’s not a linear process. I’ve seen some amazing cricketers who haven’t got opportunities – guys like Ollie Rayner and Azeem Rafiq, who have come out of the game. I think luck plays a bit of a part – circumstantial, who needs a wicketkeeper or a batsman or a spinner.

“I think the uncertainty does throw a little bit of a cloud on players like myself and all players outside of the setup. But I don’t think we can let that eat away at us; as players, it will come down to if a county needs a specific player at a specific time. You just have to make sure that you somehow are on their radar.”

^{County cricket remains on lockdown - only players at Surrey and Lancashire are unfurloughed}

Among those currently in the county system, 134 are out of contract at the end of this summer and may not get the chance to show they deserve an extended stay at their current clubs.

The PCA expect to see a noticeable increase from the 40 to 50 who leave the game each year, either through retirement or after being released, and many face a winter weighing up whether to wait for the possibility of a new deal in the spring, or try to forge a career elsewhere.

In an attempt to help younger players coming to the end of rookie contracts, 22-year-olds will next year be eligible to receive one, where otherwise they would have been considered too old.

“Hopefully that might encourage counties to keep a couple of those guys on for an extra year so they can prove their worth down the line,” PCA chairman and Worcestershire batsman Daryl Mitchell told The Cricketer as part of a wide-ranging report published in May into the impact of coronavirus on the English game.

As well as his personal training course, Mellor already holds a degree in sports development and coaching from Staffordshire University and admits that being without a club has forced him to consider the possibility of a career shift.

“You always want to hold it off in your mind,” he says, “but it is going to be in there at some point. I suppose you always have to look at other options, no matter what. Even if you are playing, you still might get a career-ending injury and the next thing you know, you’re on the back foot.

“Right now, it’s a great opportunity for professional cricketers to look at options in life after cricket and to add more skills to their CV. I was originally thinking about being a teacher or a coach. I’ve got that as a back-up really, and I’m hopeful of doing my Level Three when the courses are back up and running.

“When you are full-time in cricket, the times that you have free are limited. This time, even if I was still a pro, I think I’d be looking to do something that I’m interested in.”

For Richardson, the postponement of The Hundred until 2021 has thrown an additional spanner into the works. Given his record in the List A format – he averages 56.69 with three centuries and 10 fifties in just 27 innings, he had hoped initially that the overlap between the new competition and the Royal London Cup might work in his favour, with clubs decimated by The Hundred on the lookout for players to feature in the 50-over tournament. Players drafted for the eight new teams last October were to be unable to feature for their counties during the event’s monthlong window.

“I suppose it’s almost been a rollercoaster in terms of how I thought things would pan out versus how they have,” he says. “For example, I thought county squads would be bigger now that there’s The Hundred. I thought there would be more money in the game. I don’t think it has panned out as rosy as what we thought it would be – we thought there would be loads more jobs in cricket because of The Hundred across the board, but not so, as it’s turned out with the delay.”

^{Michael Richardson was released by Durham at the end of the 2019 campaign}

He is philosophical, however, about what the future might hold. There is a frank acknowledgement that “for most of your life, this is your goal”, and he remains disappointed by the manner of his exit from Durham, for whom he played 171 games across all formats. In his final campaign at the club, he averaged 71.66 in 50-over cricket but played just once in the County Championship. It was in August of last year that he was told it was the end. 

“It could have been managed so much better,” Richardson recalls, though also stressing throughout that he doesn’t want to come across at all bitter in discussing his current plight. He enjoys the corporate world and is keen in the future to utilise his degree and interest in the sport’s off-field sphere.

He is now chief executive at South Northumberland Cricket Club, with an enormous junior section and an indoor school. He describes it as the exact position he would have designed for himself coming out of the game, even if Covid-19 has disrupted plans too for the amateur season.

In that sense, he takes after his father, Dave, also a former wicketkeeper whose playing career has been followed by high-profile administrative roles, culminating in a spell as ICC chief executive. It is the kind of path that his son is looking to follow once his playing days are behind him. Only, he hopes he isn’t yet finished on the field.

He made his international debut for Germany in June last year, a new venture that has given him a much-needed drive as a leader in a fast-growing and hugely exciting cricketing nation, while his domestic white-ball numbers have afforded him reason to be optimistic that another opportunity might appear when cricket resumes. His proficiency, too, with the gloves provides him with another string to his bow.

“It was hugely disappointing when that situation did arise last year,” he admits, “but in terms of getting over it, I was. I was still very disappointed that no opportunities had arisen and I suppose coming into the season, I was just hoping that somewhere some opening would occur. Obviously, that doesn’t look like that’s going to happen this year. It then becomes a strange one because everyone gets a year older but no one gets a year more experience under their belt.

“If I didn’t have that Germany motivation, I’d probably still talk a good game, but things would probably be slipping away. Even though I’m technically not a professional cricketer anymore, I still have to maintain my standards.

“I’m trying to keep as fit as I possibly can because I know that’s probably the first thing that goes out of the window when you’re not getting paid to train and be a professional. I’m in good shape and I don’t feel like I’m sitting next to the phone waiting for a phone call, but if a phone call came, I’d love to get back into the setup somewhere.”

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