ABSTRACT
The inter-war period saw a rise in the importance of economic factors for the location of county fixtures, but the game was still chiefly being run along Victorian lines as a sport dependent on its patrons and its fans. During the 1950s and 1960s, there were further changes to these geographical patterns, especially as public interest started to wane, and the British public found new ways of spending their leisure time during the summer months. Table 7 shows how most counties suffered a sharp decline in gross gates between 1951 and 1961, with 12 of the counties grossing smaller gates in 1961 than in 1951.1 Some of the decline was quite sizeable, with the gates recorded by nine counties - Derbyshire, Glamorgan, Gloucestershire, Lancashire, Middlesex, Northamptonshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Yorkshire - all falling by over £500 during this period.
