THE inexorable decline of the county cricket festival, an integral part of the game in England since 1842, will be accentuated next year when another traditional week is likely to be discontinued. Somerset, who first played at Bath in 1880, are planning to give up holding championship matches at the Recreation Ground and are looking instead at staging fixtures at Truro in Cornwall, where a significant number of their members reside.

Harsh financial considerations, which a number of first-class counties who plan to redevelop their grounds are having to take, are behind this recommendation by Richard Gould, the chief executive of Somerset, to his committee.

“Staging a traditional cricket week at Bath costs us £82,000 a year to set up, yet we only have 86 members living in BA1 or BA2 post codes,” he told The Times. “It would make more sense for us to hold one 50-over match on May Day bank holiday, followed by an unofficial Twenty20 challenge, which would not involve erecting marquees or bringing in Portakabins.”

Although Gould did not discount the possibility of championship cricket returning to Bath, the reality is that, since 1969, Somerset have given up playing at ten other outgrounds, including Weston-super-Mare, where a festival week was staged, Frome, Glastonbury and Yeovil. A group of businessmen have offered to underwrite a festival at Truro, whereas financial support for the festival at Bath, in spite of being a wealthy area, has been conspicuously lacking.

“We have been lucky with the weather at Bath, but if we did have a rain-affected match, quite a lot of the firms taking marquees for corporate hospitality might not want to come the following year. If councils want to stage county cricket, they have to put the money in,” Giles Clarke, the Somerset chairman, said. “Bath and North East Somerset Council’s ability to support the festival has declined — they used to give us £15,000 but that has gone down considerably.

“Although the Friends of Bath work very hard to put on the festival, we just do not receive enough economic support. For the past two years it has been reliant on myself and Martin Powell, the Somerset committee member for the area, and the week cannot be dependent on the generosity of two businessmen. So we might end up swapping one festival for another in Truro. We have 1,600 members in Devon and Cornwall,” he said.

Concerns about the takings from the Bath festival, which is staged in June, have been omnipresent since Bertie Buse’s benefit match in 1953 was over in a day. The cost of setting it up is heightened because, unlike at other remaining out venues elsewhere in the country, the Recreation Ground is a public park and not a cricket ground. Yet, overlooked by Georgian houses and ringed with marquees, it is a highly attractive setting and is redolent of triumphs: Warwick Armstrong, the captain of Australia, made his career-best score, an unbeaten 303, there in 1905, and, in 1977, Somerset, led by Brian Close, defeated the Australians for the first time.

Although the festival, comprising a four-day championship fixture followed by a one-day match, attracts decent crowds, the reality for Somerset is that half their supporters live within 25 minutes’ drive of Taunton, which is an hour away from Bath by car and still more by rail, and that Twenty20 cricket is of greater interest to the populace. “Out of 45 days’ home cricket last summer, 41 per cent of our gate takings came from four days of Twenty20 cricket,” Gould said.

A festival at Truro would be staged on an established club ground and lead to speculation that Somerset might become amalgamated with Cornwall and Devon, minor counties that have provided a number of their players down the years. However, Gould said: “Somerset represents the South West, so there is no need for the three to be combined. I do not think the Devon and Cornwall Cricket Boards would want that.”

Losing grounds

Venues from which county championship cricket has disappeared

BOURNEMOUTH (Dean Park): First game Hampshire v Somerset, 1898; last game Hampshire v Middlesex, 1992

DOVER (Crabble Ground): First game Kent v Gloucestershire, 1907; last game Kent v Derbyshire, 1976

EASTBOURNE (The Saffrons): first game Sussex v Middlesex, 1897; last game Sussex v Northamptonshire, 2000

FOLKESTONE (Cheriton Road): First game Kent v Worcestershire, 1927; last game Kent v Essex, 1991

FROME (Agricultural Showgrounds): First game Somerset v Northamptonshire, 1932; last game Somerset v Hampshire, 1961

GLASTONBURY (Morlands Ground): First game Somerset v Northamptonshire, 1952; last game Somerset v Nottinghamshire, 1973

HARROGATE (St George’s Road): First game Yorkshire v Essex, 1895; last game Yorkshire v Hampshire, 1996

LEYTON (County Ground): First game Essex v Middlesex, 1895; last game Essex v Glamorgan, 1977

WESTCLIFF (Chalkwell Park): First game Essex v Nottinghamshire, 1934; last game Essex v Worcestershire, 1976

WESTON-SUPER-MARE (Clarence Park): First game Somerset v Yorkshire, 1914; last game Somerset v Durham, 1996

YEOVIL (two grounds): First game Somerset v Surrey, 1935; last game Somerset v Essex, 1967

DAVID BLACKMORE