ONE of Herefordshire's longest serving cricket stalwarts has given a damning verdict on the state of the game in the county.

Eastnor chairman Jim Sandford was involved with the Marches League for 25 years before stepping down at the end of the season.

Speaking to the Hereford Times, Sandford is flabbergasted that there is only one cricket team in Hereford and believes the current crop of players in the county are not as good as they were in the past.

"We had a 17's game here and the 17-year-olds were not up to the mark in my opinion," he said.

"We have coaching here on a Wednesday night and I think a lot of it is like a babysitting service.

"There's a few people who will make the standard, but there's a lot that won't.

"When I first starting playing many years ago, you went to a side like Kington, Brockhampton, Bromyard, Luctonians, and they all had good cricketers.

"But you look around now and there's not the players of the same quality."

Herefordshire Cricket Ltd have confirmed that they are due to have meetings with the English Cricket Board (ECB) and Chance 2 Shine this week that is set to "shape the future for Herefordshire cricket at club and school level".

But Sandford believes that the board has a big task on their hands in increasing player participation in the county.

"Clubs come and go, but it's a great shame that there's no club in the city of Hereford, which is a disaster in my opinion," said Sandford.

"I think the cricket board of Herefordshire should look at that and see what's happened there and try and get that back into Hereford.

"Herefordians is the only team now and they just run a lower team.

"Best of luck to them, but I just feel that Herefordshire Cricket misses a trick sometimes.

"They should put some effort into re-establishing cricket back into the city of Hereford.

"I think cricket is struggling really badly."

Sandford believes one of the reasons why some players struggle to commit to playing on a regular basis is because of the travelling involved and the length of games.

"I would personally like to see lower divisions regionalised and that will be passed on to the committee to decide," said Sandford.

"It seems a long way to travel to play lower league games in my opinion.

"We [Eastnor] run four teams and we struggle on occasions," he admitted.

"I'm sure for every club it's the same.

"The interest is dying unfortunately and I don't know what the answer is.

"When we were young, we had one thing to do and that was play cricket.

"But now, they seem to have nightclubs to go To and computer games to play.

"I think another big reason is that football is now overrunning cricket.

"It starts a lot earlier and finishes a lot later.

"I think perhaps it will be a good idea if cricket and the football got together and try and organise the dates between ourselves to help cricket.

"When I played football and cricket, I think it only overlapped by a week at most, but you could play both sports.

"Now football seems to be taking over at times."

Sandford also believes more local cricketers should play for the Minor Counties side.

Of the side that won the Unicorns Knock-out Trophy at Wormsley, the only Herefordshire-based players who featured were Brockhampton's Will Barrett and Jamie McIlroy.

"I would like to see more Herefordshire players play, but whether they're committed enough to play a three day game is another matter," said Sandford.

"My only personal feeling is that the cricket board should employ an ex professional cricketer to work in the office and coach the better youngsters in Herefordshire.

"He then plays his cricket in Herefordshire, is good enough to play Minor Counties and knows what's coming through.

"But I don't think that will ever happen."