What is happening to league cricket? For years now it has been outdated, there is no semblance to the professional game, it’s becoming tedious for a lot of players and isn’t developing youngsters. For things to improve we have to see changes.
I was recently involved in a debate on changing the structure within league cricket. The problems being is that some and I stress some, ECB premier leagues have rules which mean you can see a successful club team with three or four good players and the rest just make up the numbers. The purpose of top end league cricket is not only for players to compete on a Saturday, but it is a breeding ground for the next generation of County and International cricketers.
I am a strong advocate for change and there are so many reasons why. There is no place anymore for win/lose/draw scenario in a 50 over game. Matches would be far more competitive if you could only win or lose. I see it all too often when a team is 150/8 chasing 200 and the captain will tell a youngster when he goes in to block out for the draw. It is a real pet hate of mine. That youngster learns nothing by just blocking every ball. In a win/lose environment they would have the freedom to play shots and improve their game. It is a real skill chasing down a total and it can only be practiced out in the middle in the heat of the battle.
On the flip side it teaches bowlers the art of death bowling, and believe me it is very tough. It’s easy for bowlers to just run in at the tailenders and blow them away; you are waiting for them to make the mistake. But you are under most pressure as a bowler when the batters are after you. It is a different type of bowling which players develop too late in their careers. Both these skills are highly sought after in the professional game and it essential l that young players can develop these skills in the leagues.
Another pet hate of mine in league cricket is the fact that you can survive with only two bowlers. There is nothing worse than seeing two 40 year old ‘dobbers’ bowling 25 overs each. I know this doesn’t happen in every game, every weekend. However it shouldn’t happen at all. Ever. How can young bowlers develop when they are stood in the field for 50 overs watching others bowl? It’s happened to me and it’s so frustrating. There just has to be a restriction on bowler’s overs, somewhere between 10 to 15 overs per bowler.
I would also like to see a 30 yard fielding circle introduced, so you have to at least four fielders inside the circle at all times. This then adds an extra dimension to an innings, meaning you have to be cuter with your fielding positions as you won’t be able to send them all to the boundary when the pressure is on.
Organisers seem very content for current system to remain. For me they are not seeing the bigger picture. The development of young players should be of primary concern, but currently being stunted by an outdated system. The organisers need to wake up and smell the americano, change the structure and better cricketers will be developed. There can be no prouder feeling for league organisers than watching professional cricketers develop through their system. But with outdated rules and structures I’m afraid this feeling will become extinct.
Interesting points, Chris. I have to tell you, though, that I’ve been arguing for the introduction into our league (The Michigan Cricket Association) of precisely the format you are so against and for precisely the same reasons, using the example of English Premier League cricket. Our league, like many in the States, is very uneven — people with first-class experience, a few with representative experience, and a lot of guys who wouldn’t get into a good club 3rd XI in a major cricketing country. The club I’m involved with, and for which my sixteen-year-old son plays, has some good players, but lacks a bit of fire-power both in the middle order and with the ball, so we’ve been overwhelmed in matches quite often in the last two years. On the other hand, we have more young and American-born players than anyone else in our league, and make their development a high priority — last year, two of our regular players played for the national U-15 side.
In recent seasons we’ve played a number of matches against the top teams in the league where we’ve ended up chasing huge totals. When we’ve batted out our overs a couple of times, chasing a big target, against stronger opponents, it’s been frustrating that there’s been no reward for the application and concentration shown, especially by our younger players. Here, playing on poor fields, a young player (especially one like my son who’s never played outside of North America), finds himself over-rewarded for slogging and under-rewarded for playing “good cricketing shots”, which will be better for his development and more useful to him if he gets the chance to play beyond club level. When one of our youngest players carried his bat in a losing cause, helping our team keep the league champions out in the field for the full forty overs while we lost only 5 wickets, it felt like something of a triumph, and the umpire, who has played first-class cricket and coached internationals, kept telling that player to forget about the score and keep his wicket — good advice, I think, and a system that would have rewarded us would have been good.
Equally, our strictly limited-overs format, given the make-up of our teams and the condition of our grounds (poor outfields, Astroturf on concrete wickets), mean that fielding captains don’t have to work too hard, don’t have to think about actually bowling teams out. I take your point about death overs, but I think that a modified declaration form of the game for whole-day matches has much to recommend it. And, if you look at how the American national side does in international tournaments, you can see that our leagues are clearly not developing enough of the necessary skills (of course, the majority of current U.S. senior internationals came to the States as adults, but the point is still worth making — our leagues don’t prepare them for anything like the elite level).
As for your points about limiting the overs a man can bowl and using a fielding circle, I’m very surprised that the playing conditions for Premier League cricket in England don’t already require both restrictions (but, as I recall, playing conditions vary a lot by league — right?).
Win/Lose or Draw is fine, league cricket is about developing rounded cricketers and that means bowlers who can take wickets against defensive batsmen and batsmen who can bat for a long time and not give their wicket way!