Custom Bats Cricket Forum
General Cricket => Your Cricket => Topic started by: uknsaunders on September 05, 2014, 10:35:07 PM
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Our league has finished and its appears most people have packed up as well. Why?
September is a far better month weather wise than April. Average high temperatures fall from 21c to 17c but April is only 11-15c. Indeed you have to go to mid October before finding comparable temperatures to our traditional start in mid April. It rains less in September as well. The wickets are harder after 6 months warm weather. The only minor issue is the light, but just start earlier, many leagues do this already.
My gut feel is most people has a preconceived view of when the season should start and end. Very few look at the realities of global warming or simply the weather outside. Some people say they lose people to winter sports, but surely no more so than April when they are still playing.
If clubs looked to play in September, it would be in better weather ,played on better decks and they would earn more revenue. Leagues have a part to play in moving fixtures into September but in these hard times clubs are missing a trick by not doing it themselves.
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Football!
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I know a lot of local clubs struggle to field all their teams in the last couple of weeks of the season due to football, going therefore and into September could escalate that>
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Light??
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Completely agree, I hate playing in April. Damp wickets, games abandoned half way through and icy winds requiring two jumpers (minimum) whilst fielding. It's not what cricket is all about, is it?
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We still have 3 saturday games left and 2 Sundays.
Partly this is due to the league not scheduling bank holiday games after they were considered unbalanced with teams dropping players down.
Availability will always be an issue at this time of year, as we have quite a few that play football, rugby and hockey.
Will have to see how the weather goes, but it does make sense to play in September apart from availability issues.
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Completely agree, I hate playing in April. Damp wickets, games abandoned half way through and icy winds requiring two jumpers (minimum) whilst fielding. It's not what cricket is all about, is it?
Don't ever come play at our ground then. It's a 3 jumper minimum even in the hottest weather!
Joys of playin ont top of ill
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I agree that September should be used but most league committees are stuck in the past. There are issues with players going to football but also clubs who share grounds/facilities with football and rugby clubs. In the 10 team division I play in I reckon 3 clubs wouldn't be able to play home matches in September if the schedule was changed. Lower down the leagues that number would increase.
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I don't think football is an issue. Games are played all through April, same as September.
Id much prefer games all the way through September rather than April. Could also use it to make up for any lost games due to weather
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Cricket should go from early apr to end of sept. If people want to choose footy then fair enough, clubs will just need the depth to cope or find more committed players who will miss footy of they are going for promotion or relegation.
No reason why cricketers should lose out because a few want to play footy anymore.. Weather is good in sept, wickets are good and start times can be earlier to accommodate light
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Speaking as a groundsman the ground I look after has its last game on Sept 21st, couldn't get the equipment booked til the following Thursday and by the time everything is done it'll be around the 27th by the time I get seed down. Not great having to overseed your square in essentially October when temperatures are down, rainfall increases etc, expecting germination to be slow and not uniform at all. Yes you could probably play until the end of October if you really wanted to but there's no way the ground will be good enough for the following year!
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Totally agree. As I PE teacher I never understood why I went back to school and found myself teaching indoor winter sports when the weather was great. My old school's pitches would flood from Oct/Nov through to Apr/May. A 6 week Saturday/Sunday morning T20 league would be a great way to extend the season in Sept.
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Sharing grounds is the issue, we share ours with a football club and are therefore unable to use it from the 1st of September.
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We've still got 3 games left
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We've still got 3 games left
Same here
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Just some thoughts on the comments. Football/rugby seasons - surely that's the same if you start in mid April and those sports don't finish until mid may? Pitch sharing, same thing really but I know on Yorks the footy players don't play at the same time as the cricketers ie. Sunday mornings . Pitch prep - clubs do play to late sept and into Oct so it can be overcome.
I like the concept of a mini cup or league in September either a 40 overs or less tournament or a t20 league with double headers. I personally just enjoy the friendlies but that seems to be going out of the club game a bit.
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Our league has finished and its appears most people have packed up as well. Why?
September is a far better month weather wise than April. Average high temperatures fall from 21c to 17c but April is only 11-15c. Indeed you have to go to mid October before finding comparable temperatures to our traditional start in mid April. It rains less in September as well. The wickets are harder after 6 months warm weather. The only minor issue is the light, but just start earlier, many leagues do this already.
My gut feel is most people has a preconceived view of when the season should start and end. Very few look at the realities of global warming or simply the weather outside. Some people say they lose people to winter sports, but surely no more so than April when they are still playing.
If clubs looked to play in September, it would be in better weather ,played on better decks and they would earn more revenue. Leagues have a part to play in moving fixtures into September but in these hard times clubs are missing a trick by not doing it themselves.
It's raining here now Nick and I'm blaming it all on you!
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It wouldn't be a Yorkshire summer if it didn't rain.
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Just some thoughts on the comments. Football/rugby seasons - surely that's the same if you start in mid April and those sports don't finish until mid may? Pitch sharing, same thing really but I know on Yorks the footy players don't play at the same time as the cricketers ie. Sunday mornings . Pitch prep - clubs do play to late sept and into Oct so it can be overcome.
I like the concept of a mini cup or league in September either a 40 overs or less tournament or a t20 league with double headers. I personally just enjoy the friendlies but that seems to be going out of the club game a bit.
In April, if your football team is mid-table with no chance of going up or down, you will find players at cricket as your season is just starting and if you don't play, you may not get your place back.
Same with winter, if your cricket team are playing (to them) dead rubbers, people will play football rather than waste the whole day playing a game that is irrelevant (to them).
A cup may help with this, but many would still pick football.
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I find myself a little confused, I usually disagree with most things Nick says but I couldn't agree more with him. Seems silly to me but appreciate that its probably more of a timing thing with other sports. I'd myself prefer to start at say 10am and play a pro40 style game. Coloured kits, white ball and fielding/ bowling restrictions. I think it would attract younger players and obviously free up some more of everyone's Saturdays.
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I too find myself uncomfortable agreeing with Henry the Hoover, but there is a first time for everything!
Our 4th XI always seem to play on for another 3 weeks after the league has ended, so up to late Sept, as the kids still want to play.
However, our leagues don;t seem to start until 1st week of May nowadays.
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Would be nice to play later into the year but as a few others have said, our ground is also taken over by football / rugby when we hit September
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Just to add to this, it really is down to the league committee's as to whether play can continue later in the year. In my league (Wiltshire) the committee is very much set in their ways. An example of this is the fact it's taken two years to get them to even vote on a change in match start times by half an hour. If there is a fixture secretary who is happy to consider all the extra requirements of clubs then there is no reason why clubs shouldn't play on until late September. An example of a league where these considerations are taken into account is Oxfordshire where Radley can only play at home during school holidays as they use the pitch of Radley College, you can see last season's fixtures here http://www.pitchero.com/clubs/radley/s/fixtures-results-82460.html (http://www.pitchero.com/clubs/radley/s/fixtures-results-82460.html)
I know that if a club in the Wilts league wanted the same consideration they would be told to find a new home venue.
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Due to lack of pitches over in Norway we play all the way until the last week in September and it causes no real issues other than a few matches need to have their overs reduced due to bad light.
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We play till end of sept, our league finished last week but we have 3 weeks of friendlies which i enjoy after the intensity of league cricket.
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We end the season by going to the Isle of Wight the first weekend of September.
Our home wicket was put to bed while we were away so that's season done for us.
We sometimes have a presidents XI match the following week, but the groundsman wanted to get the wicket out to bed while it was still dry this year, and we currently have people in doing the drainage. Would be hard to play round the diggers and holes!
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Our season finishes this week. Then it'll be a long wait until nets.