This morning I picked up the Herald and opened it to the club results and was interested in the story of one sided cricket matches in our club cricket written by Alvin Reeves.
So I perused through the results and boy was I stunned. Two nine wicket wins for NMMU1. Old Grey win by 314 runs. Rhodes win by 9 wickets and so it goes on. So who are these poor teams who are suffering such indignity. Northerns, Pirates, Welcome, KwaDwesi, Northville, Gamrose to name a few.
So I decided to do a little digging. I called two trusted current top level cricket playing friends and asked them their opinion. Both were of the opinion that it is a huge joke. The NMMU1 game was finished at 12h20 on Saturday. So do the umpires get paid full for this less than half days work? I’m sure they do. Add to that the price of a cricket ball. A Kooka match ball, which all Super A teams play with as a minimum standard, costs around R400 to R500 and then it gets wasted on a 11 over innings. Then a lot of clubs cater for the lunch time meals and if games are done so early this gets wasted in some cases as well. Then I was told by one of my friends that last weekend they only had one umpire. This is unheard of and unprecedented in Super league club cricket.
Between the Super A, Super B, Premiers and first division there are very close to 60 teams if not more. If only half of these teams play on a Saturday and the other half on a Sunday then there will be in the region of 60 umpires per day. Do we have that many umpires? and where does that leave the lower leagues in respect of umpires? In attempts to try to find this out I was on three occasions told sorry we are not allowed to talk to the media. I said I was not a reporter just a member of the public trying to find out what is going on in club cricket but no joy. I was however told that there was a new committee in place and they are looking hard at how to cover all games. We trust that Mr Sauls and his new committee in EP Cricket will sort this fiasco out as soon as possible. Oh and if you are wondering about KwaDwesi. They finished the Super B last season in about 5th place but were promoted because they are a team of colour. Seriously.
Regards
Cricket Fan
