Liam Durkin
WHILE it is generally accepted the cricket season always starts in the first week of October, has the time come to seriously consider a November start date?
Those who have frequented the Gippsland Times sports pages in recent years will surely be in no doubt as to this writer’s love for the summer game, but even he is willing to concede a November start date has merit.
Growing up on a potato farm in the rolling hills of Thorpdale (not far from Mirboo North), the year was generally divided into two seasons: ‘spud season’, and ‘sheep season’.
From a sporting lens, there was also only two seasons: footy season and cricket season.
That line of thinking has hardly changed, even if the times clearly have.
Usually, the local football season finishes mid-September and the cricket starts two to three weeks later.
Conversely, once cricket season finishes at the end of March, it is around the same turnaround for the new footy season to begin, sometimes depending on when Easter falls.
Football season rolling into cricket season was previously local players swapping the boots for bats.
Now however, most local cricket clubs have international players, meaning they jump straight off a plane with a whole season’s worth of match practice immediately behind them.
Any cricketer worth their salt hankers to do well, and in order to compete with overseas players (who are often professionals) a lot of locals tied up with both sports have to try and play footy during winter and practice for cricket at the same time – a difficult proposition playing two totally different sports simultaneously.
Curators too are under increased pressure.
As soon as the last game of football is done, ground staff generally have less than three weeks to raise squares.
A couple of years ago, Stratford Cricket Club was string lining its wicket literally the day after Stratford Football-Netball Club played its last game for the season on the local reserve.
Is it any wonder scores are often low during October?
How curators would love a whole month to properly prepare surfaces.
October is often hit and miss anyway. Most people will allow at least one, maybe two wash-outs, while there has been seasons when virtually the entre month has been abandoned.
Looking at the calendar, a November start could honestly work.
It would however be predicated on these factors:
The first XI competition playing one Saturday-Sunday game every month, and;
Capping the remaining grades to either six or eight teams, on the assumption all matches will be one-dayers.
If you were to start in the first week of November, there would be:
Eight Saturdays before Christmas, and
Nine after Christmas, taking in the three-week holiday break.
This equals a total of 17 days of cricket.
For the first XI, working with an eight-nine team model, you need 21 days to make an even, or as close to an even fixture (seven one-dayers, seven two-dayers).
As a November start allows 17 Saturdays, you would therefore need to play one Saturday-Sunday game each month between November and February to get to 21 days.
Most people playing first XI are serious about their cricket, and should be able to work in a Saturday-Sunday commitment once-a-month, keeping in mind there would be no cricket commitments in October.
Notwithstanding Gippsland Cricket League games are also on Sundays, one hopes a league as strong as the Sale-Maffra Cricket Association has little trouble rounding up 12 players for these monthly engagements.
For the lower grades, there is room to play 14 rounds of one-dayers (eight-team competition), and then two weeks of finals, which would fit well within the 17 days of cricket mapped out.
If grades are capped at six teams, play 15 rounds (everyone plays each other three times) and two weeks of finals, equalling 17 weeks.
A 14-to-15-round season can still be considered genuine competition, and if anything, would put more emphasis on players committing for a season, rather than sneaking in a handful of games to quality for finals.
Seventeen Saturdays takes you to the second week of March.
If the lower grades are all finished by then, it sets aside two standalone weeks for first XI finals, which has the potential to enable greater exposure for the top grade, as well as more club support and spectators.
