"Cultures know how to fight their battles; cultures know how to struggle. It is up to the owner of any particular culture to ensure it survives, or if they don't want it to survive, they should act accordingly." Apologies for making such a bombastic beginning to a cricket column. I hope you'll excuse because of the wisdom of the words and fact that the man who wrote them, Chinua Achebe, used to play the game himself when he was a student at Government College in Umuahia, south-east Nigeria.

"One of the most thrilling peculiarities of the Umuahia experience was playing cricket," Achebe writes in There Was a Country. "Umuahia had a huge cricket field, which had a beautiful grass lawn and a clear sand pitch area with wooden wickets. It was cared for almost more carefully than grass anywhere else in the school. In the afternoon, cricket matches were packed, and the bleachers and grandstands had scarcely an empty spot."

Umuahia was one of many grounds across Nigeria, along with those in Lagos, Enugu, Kano, Ibadan, Warri and Zaria. The national team would play a quadrangular tournament against the Gambia, Ghana and Sierra Leone. They still play a little cricket in Nigeria, it seems. The team are currently ranked 37th in the world, one below Jersey. The bleachers and grandstands are not packed anymore, though, as they were in Achebe's day. Somewhere along the way, the love of cricket slipped away, despite the fight of a committed few to try and preserve it.

Achebe's words seem to capture something of the condition cricket finds itself in England too. The pull of progress creates a tension with the past. As the sport evolves, parts of its culture come under strain and those who run the game must decide whether or not to try and preserve them. The news attracted little notice outside the pages of the provincial papers where I started out as a sportswriter but Somerset announced last week that they were being forced to cancel their plans to play a match against Yorkshire at Bath, because of "significant concerns" about the pitch.

The Bath cricket festival is not as famous as the one Gloucester hold in Cheltenham, the ground is not as picturesque as Arundel where Sussex still play each year, but its history is long and rich. Somerset first played on the Recreation Ground, at the back of the rugby club by the banks of the River Avon, back in 1897. From that point on first-class fixtures were played there every year, except during the wars, through to 2006. Since then the schedule has been cut back, first to one-day games, then to Twenty20 matches. Finally, last year, Somerset didn't play in Bath at all.

It is long-forgotten now but Somerset were founded as a wandering club, the idea being that they would have no permanent home but would roam across the county. Taunton soon became their base but they still played all over, in Frome, Wells, Glastonbury and Yeovil, where Brian Langford once bowled a spell of 8-8-0-0 in a one-day game against Essex.

Weston-super-Mare, Simon Hughes reckoned, was "the most quintessential county venue", with its sloping wicket, bumpy outfield covered in dog dirt, the park keeper's hut converted into a pavilion that was "full of shrapnel-sized splinters", where play is accompanied by "the constant hum of generators fuelling beer pumps and ice cream vans."

Bath was the last still in use. It was there, in 1923, that Jack Hobbs scored his 100th hundred. It was there, in 1953, Bertie Buse memorably helped scuttle his own benefit match by taking six for 41 against Lancashire, ensuring that the match was all over inside a single day. It was there, in 1977, Somerset beat Australia by seven wickets. And it was there, in 1985, a certain VJ Marks once took eight for 17 in 22 overs (with 15 maidens) to bowl Lancashire out for 89 as they followed-on.

It would be easy to rail against the club for discarding all that history and tradition, which underlays every match played at the ground like a palimpsest. But there are plenty of people at Somerset CCC who are still keen to play at Bath, who feel its absence from the schedule just as keenly as the group of enthusiastic amateurs who endeavour to keep the festival going by lending their time and commitment to the local organising committee every year.

The unfortunate fact, is that festival cricket isn't, to use an ugly phrase, financially viable. The money spent putting up temporary seating must be recouped by corporate sponsorship, which is increasingly hard to come by. Somerset, like many counties, have invested so much in their home ground, they can't afford to squander the opportunities they have to maximise the revenue they make playing there. The bottom line is now the top priority. Dull truths, these, for the romantics among us.

It is the same story across the country. By my count there are 16 out grounds on the County schedule this season, which seems like a lot until you think of all the others that have fallen out of use over the years. Each side, each set of supporters, will have their own list.

Festival cricket, I have been told, does not feature much in the plans for English cricket's future. So another part of the culture of the game falls away, like a berg breaking off the shelf, which drifts until it disappears, leaving the whole smaller, poorer, for it. Those who love county cricket must decide whether they want to fight to ensure that part of its culture survives. Those who run it seem to have already made their minds up and are acting accordingly.

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