DOWN IN THE BULLOCK’S HEAD the other day with a couple of old friends, and the topic of the declining standard of sports writing, in print and online, was chewed over.

The write-it-off-the-telly approach of many national papers’ sports desks and using “click bait tossers” – actually, we were ruder than that – came in for especial criticism, while the shedding of hundreds of experienced subs’ jobs was also blamed for the fall in standards.

The all-consuming obsession with football (see last week’s column) doesn’t help. Too often, sports desk staff can tell you who played left-back for Accrington Stanley in 1967, but look blank if you ask them to name the current Wimbledon women’s champion or the British men’s record-holder at 1,500 metres.

Two recent examples that crossed m’desk at work highlighted the issue.

PA Sport was putting out some copy from the European swimming championships in Berlin. It was unclear whether the national agency was actually staffing this one-time must-cover event, or whether they were just pumping out what I call “talking six-point”, and having someone in their Yorkshire office writing lacklustre copy based on nothing more than the results appearing on the organisers’ website.

In a single session, the Great Britain swimmers managed to win three gold medals, including breaking a world record. First mention of the world record came in the ninth paragraph of the PA copy. There was no mention by PA that this was the most successful hour in the history of competitive British swimming.

Maybe the reporter didn’t know that. They might have done had they’d been in Berlin. But surely PA Sport still employs some sub-editors who can manage a quick re-write to nose on the news and manage to ensure that the home towns or club affiliations of the six medal-winning Britons that night are properly mentioned, for the benefit of the local newspapers who actually pay for this crap?

No better over at the Little Shard and the shiny new offices of The Times, which always prided itself as being a paper of record. For the three-day event at the World Equestrian Games, the 400-word report was written not by a specialist correspondent at the venue in Normandy, but by a stringer in the Home Counties watching the telly.  

The intro suggested that William Fox-Pitt, the world No1 rider, had “exceeded all expectations”. Fox-Pitt finished third. Maybe they just had low expectations of the world No1. 

Suitably deferential, since the British team included the Queen’s grand daughter, Zara Phillips, the reporter praised them for winning silver medals. But the reporter failed to mention until very late in the piece that one of the team’s horses dropped down dead after the second of the three days.

It was not just the reporter who missed the story, but the sub-editor and the sports desk’s copy-taker, too. Or are we just flogging a dead horse over this?

These are bad times, sad times for cricket writing in this country.

The summer game has often been the province of some of the greats of sports journalism, from last century’s poets Cardus and Arlott, through to some who grace the sports pages today, even including the likes of Marks and Engel. That's Victor and Matthew, since you ask.

But with Sky Sports’ Test-centric coverage increasingly provided only by those who have at some time captained their country at the game – regardless of their merits as broadcasters or journalists – the opportunities for genuine journalists to work on cricket are becoming more limited by the day.

Earlier this year, the Press Association abandoned its commitment to ensure coverage at all county championship games by ending agreements with around 20 freelance stringers to file live copy and scores from around the grounds during the summer.

“We took the decision to bring coverage of the county game in-house,” PA Sport said at the time, leaving themselves without any reporters actually in the press box at county grounds for the summer. At least, that was, until the Cricket Writers’ Club cut a deal with the governing body, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), to pay freelancers to do what PA Sport was no longer prepared to budget for. What happens next season has yet to be determined.

PA’s cricket coverage was once the mainstay of regional evening and daily newspapers’ summer sports pages, and latterly some nationals, too, as they cut-back on stringer fees. But as not even the Telegraph, Times and Guardian bother paying lip-service to the game at county level these days, someone at the PA must have asked the question, “Why bother?” 

It gets worse. Now the august Cricketer magazine is without any writers on its staff, after the editor, Andrew Miller, and two other journalists were made redundant last month.

“How do you expect to get out a decent magazine if you don’t have any journalists working on it?” one interested party said. Others suggest that an announcement of a new “editor-in-chief” and production person – both new job titles so as not to break any employment law – may be imminent.

First published in 1921, The Cricketer’s past editors have included EW Swanton, David Frith and Richard Hutton, but in more recent times, since it was sold by BSkyB and abandoned an association with the publishers of Wisden, the monthly magazine’s fate has begun to appear about as assured as an Indian batsman playing outside his off-stump to Jimmy Anderson.

That may have something to do with its sometimes owners since 2010. Neil Davidson, is the sometimes controversial former chairman of Leicestershire County Cricket Club, while Lord Marland is a former Conservative Party treasurer.

Neither has any background in publishing. Before taking on The Cricketer, Marland, who made some of his fortune with Hunter boots, had tried to take over the ECB chairmanship, but was foiled. It was Marland’s interview with Tory leader David Cameron that appeared in the pages of the magazine which may have precipitated the decision of the previous editor, John Stern, to leave The Cricketer.

But it is little wonder neither the pre-eminent magazine on the national game nor the national news agency can make coverage of cricket pay any longer. At least one cricket website is being given full journalistic access and privileges at the press boxes at county grounds by being accredited by the ECB, even though the website tends not to pay its writers.

Who’s to say that PA Sport or the Cricketer magazine might not soon be using cricket copy and scores data provided by unpaid students and trainees, all because it is provided free.