Leicestershire offer parable for English cricket: teams should serve, not just sell

T he fourth morning at Grace Road dawns brightly and the game is moving at a frightening pace. Leicestershire, following on, are 16 without loss. The Sussex fielders are bounding and skipping across the turf in short, jerky movements. The seamer Brad Currie walks back to his mark in a droll, Charlie Chaplin-style double-step. The commentators are talking in weird electronic blips. At this point you realise the live stream is not working.

Which is obviously something that could happen to anybody. Certainly it would be premature to draw any link between Leicestershire’s apparent inability to operate a simple two-camera feed and the fact that the club have finished bottom of the County Championship in eight of the past 14 seasons, and failed to win a single red-ball game in 2022. Eventually the technical gremlins are sorted, in which time the home team have lost one of their openers and are sliding towards a meek defeat.

At which point something curious happens. The promising opener Rishi Patel goes on a spirited counter-attack, and with the all-rounder Wiaan Mulder in support Leicestershire bat out the day for a stirring draw. Steve Smith, here for a pre-Ashes hit, has just three runs and one risible over of leg-spin to show for his week’s work. And who says Leicestershire never do their bit for England?

So continues one of the early summer’s more quietly uplifting stories. Six rounds in, the championship’s perennial punchline are still unbeaten. Last month they won at Headingley for the first time in 113 years. A first promotion in more than two decades is a tantalising possibility. And perhaps the case of Leicestershire offers both a parable and a warning for English cricket, at a time when the very principles of the