When Jimmy Anderson dreamed of taking five-wicket hauls for England, perhaps even on his birthday, did he envisage the noisy acclaim of full houses at Lord’s, The Oval or, closer to home, Old Trafford? He will not lose any sleep over it, but it seems safe to assume that a sparsely populated and incomplete ground on a Hampshire hillside did not figure prominently in those dreams.  Anderson was warmly applauded as he returned to the pavilion but when he turned around to raise the ball to the rest of the Ageas Bowl, in the modern manner, he saw mostly empty white and off-white seats. There was a better atmosphere than this for Gloucestershire’s County Championship games at Cheltenham this month. That has to be a major concern, for Hampshire in particular but surely for the England and Wales Cricket Board too, especially as this dispiriting attendance was not a one-off.  It is only five weeks since a crowd of 2,428 turned up at Headingley for what turned out to be an absorbing last day of the second Test against Sri Lanka. That was despite rock-bottom admission fees, and there had been only 3,989 the previous day. There were at least plausible explanations for those grim gates. It was June, the spring half-term had gone and the national sporting attention was focused on the World Cup in Brazil, whereas Yorkshire was preparing for the Grand Départ of the Tour de France.  None of those excuses applied here. The weather has been set fair throughout, the match was well-poised, with every chance of England’s first win of the summer, and although much has been made of Hampshire receiving a hospital pass with the Sunday start, it is the holiday season now.  Rod Bransgrove, the Hampshire chairman who has been the driving force behind this out-of-town development, admitted that even the surprisingly large official gate figure of 4,784 was a “massive disappointment”. Presented with the opportunity to watch Test cricket on a lovely sunny day, the people of Southampton, Portsmouth and beyond decided not to bother.  The ECB declined the chance to discuss the reasons why. A minimum ticket price of £45 for adults would seem to have outweighed a more attractive £10 for under-16s. Then there is the location of the ground – six miles out of Southampton, meaning an extra bus or train journey, or another £10 to park the car.  The contrast with much brighter prospects for next week’s fourth Test at Old Trafford seems instructive. Lancashire have £30 adult tickets available for each of the first four days, with concessions at £15, and expect the ground to be at or close to its 20,000 capacity on Friday and Saturday, with crowds well into five figures already guaranteed for days one and four.  Significantly, Lancashire have been able to market the game to the sizeable population of British Indians in the north-west, whether through specialist media or promotional visits to clubs such as Bolton Indians. Warwickshire would have loved the chance to do something similar in and around Birmingham but they have not staged a Test at Edgbaston since 2012. The system of allocation of major matches is crying out for reform.  There are numerous other issues, such as cricket’s invisibility to the terrestrial television audience barring the Channel 5 highlights package, and an England team who are in a tricky transitional stage after a period of success. After the embarrassing emptiness of Headingley and now the Ageas Bowl this summer, any complacency that England are exempt from the global struggle to sell Test cricket must surely have given way to realistic concern.  London, with its cashed-up corporate market and where the MCC can still find ample demand for £90 tickets for Lord’s, is perhaps immune from such worries. But despite the best efforts of Bransgrove, Hampshire are still some way short of proving sufficient demand to take even more international matches to the south.
Andy Wilson: Poor crowds at the third Test in Southampton, following those at Headingley in June, are a worry for England Test cricket