Chris Waters: Surely bubbling under the top 50 in list of game's most influential people

YOU may have seen the list of the 50 most powerful people in English cricket as determined by The Cricketer magazine.
SHURELY SHOME MISTAKE: Our man Chris Waters contemplates missing out on a place in the top 50 Power List - as compiled by The Cricket magazine.SHURELY SHOME MISTAKE: Our man Chris Waters contemplates missing out on a place in the top 50 Power List - as compiled by The Cricket magazine.
SHURELY SHOME MISTAKE: Our man Chris Waters contemplates missing out on a place in the top 50 Power List - as compiled by The Cricket magazine.

At first, I thought there must have been some sort of mistake as I scrolled through the names.

Colin Graves, Joe Root, Michael Vaughan, Mark Arthur, Geoffrey Boycott... the list was not short of Yorkshire representation.

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But, as the deputy sports editor gleefully pointed out, there was no mention of yours truly, a body blow to say the least.

As I sloped away to drown my sorrows, wondering whether I would still have a job to go to the next day, my mood improved somewhat when it started to dawn that there was no Martyn Moxon, Jason Gillespie or Andrew Gale either; no Dave Callaghan, who covers Yorkshire for BBC Radio Leeds, and, more importantly, no Richard Sutcliffe, The Yorkshire Post’s chief football writer, who has been known to stand in for me and do a better job.

Further delight was derived by the realisation that there was no mention of national selector James Whitaker or his colleagues Mick Newell and Angus Fraser, or indeed 90 per cent of the country’s players and coaches.

It was a list, unsurprisingly, full of administrators, media moguls, and a scattering of former players.

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It included the likes of Ben Gallop (head of BBC Sport’s digital content), Martyn Wilson (of cricket sponsors NatWest), and Delia Bushell (boss of BT Sport).

Joking aside, had the same list been compiled 50 years ago, it is inconceivable that the cricket correspondent of the Yorkshire Post would not have been included.

Indeed, JM Kilburn would have been one of the first names on the “team-sheet” in an era where print journalism was king.

Back then, Kilburn’s word was the equivalent of scripture.

Nowadays, with the Internet having revolutionised the media industry, and the way that sport is covered and consumed, the list reflects how the game has become increasingly commercialised.

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Indeed, only two people on the list – itself a gimmick reflective of how the media has changed – are newspaper writers in the form of ex-England captain Michael Atherton, of The Times, and Nick Hoult, of the Daily Telegraph.

Incredibly, the editor of Wisden, the sport’s bible, only just scrapes in in 50th place.

Fifty years ago, the Wisden editor would surely have been in the top-10 at the very least, along with the likes of EW “Jim” Swanton of the Daily Telegraph.

Why, it used to be joked that Swanton practically picked the England side ­– although, when the likes of Fred Trueman bemoaned that fact, it was certainly no joke on his part, with the Yorkshire pace bowler several times having cause to regret Swanton’s lack of support.

Anyway, back to my being “snubbed” by The Cricketer

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As I continued to drown my sorrows with a vengeance, I at least managed to convince myself that I must have been just outside the top-50 – presumably, in 51st place.

By about pint number 20, I had also determined that I would have made any number of comparable lists, such as The 50 Coolest Dudes Working In The Cricket World, for example.

You know the sort of thing… “No 1 Chris Waters, No 2 Chris Gayle”, and so on.

At which point, I decided to stop drinking for the night as I always like to keep a clear head.