Public protest against Southend cricket decision planned

Southend Borough Council have called a public meeting tomorrow to protest the decision not to play first-class cricket in the town next year.

Essex County Cricket Club last week announced that there would be no first-team matches in Southend in 2012, breaking 105 years of tradition.

The rationale behind the decision is not immediately clear. The festival week at Southend routinely attracts more spectators than for equivalent fixtures at Essex's headquarters in Chelmsford.

Southend Cricket Festival has also recorded a £60,000 profit over the last three years, whereas the festival week at Colchester has made losses over the same time period. In spite of this, Colchester will retain its fixtures, whereas the matches that would have been played at Southend will be played at Chelmsford instead.

More games will be played here at the County Ground in Chelmsford from next year

While the figures would seem to suggest that the Southend festival is a steady success story, there has been plenty of grumbling about Southend festival from cricket-goers in recent years. In 2005, the festival moved from the centrally-located Southchurch Park to Garon Park on the outskirts of the town. The move was badly received, with many Essex fans dubbing the venue 'Barren Park'.

In decades gone by, festival cricket was a regular staple of the domestic cricket calendar, with county teams regularly touring around to reach out to a larger number of their fanbase. It is a habit that has dwindled in the modern age as counties pursue expensive redevelopment plans at their headquarters.

Essex have been forced to put a halt to their own rebuilding plans at Chelmsford due to financial and planning constraints, but the Olympic boom could give a lifeline to the county's coffers. Although the cricket club continue to be non-committal on the issue, the prospect of Essex playing lucrative Twenty20 matches at the Olympic Stadium in Stratford in the future has long been mooted.

However, today's news that West Ham's bid (of which Essex were partners) to move into the stadium has collapsed throws the issue up in the air even more.

Could Essex be playing cricket at the Olympic Stadium in years to come?

While the financial motives are plain to see, do the club risk alienating their support in the south of the county by looking more towards East London than towards the south of Essex?