Sports Letter: Cricket for kids

Sir: Derek Pringle's article (27 July) entitled "Wholesale restructuring of the domestic game needed to produce Test-quality players" is the latest of many over the last few years focusing on perceived changes required in the county game.

The hard fact to face for the mother nation of cricket is that our system as a whole is no longer producing the raw material for any county system to refine. Very little organised cricket is played now in most high schools. The majority of the most talented sportsmen amongst the current generation of teenagers play football and rugby. Many will play basketball, tennis or golf - but a disturbing and increasing number would never consider playing cricket or play it very little.

In the short term England has to do the best with the players it has, and this may involve reorganisation of the county game. But sustainable recovery in the longer term will require as much change in the lower levels of the game as it does at the top. The changes at all levels need to generate real interest in cricket in the nurseries of the game, so that playing cricket again holds for young people the attraction and kudos which it had in the past and which it has today in the top Test- playing nations.

DAVE GOODWIN

Poynton, Cheshire