Yeah it does seem so.
We don't play at a high standard so everyone initially wants to score as many as possible or stop the opposition scoring as many as possible. Most teams have one or two decent bats but usually 3 decent bowlers who dominate games. The second half will nearly always start with teams going for the win. Then, when they don't look like winning they can often play very negative cricket to deny points to the winning team and also scrape a few themselves. They wouldn't bat like this if they were close to winning.
I guess in better leagues the batting is much better and deeper so allowing a team to just score 180-5 would be beneficial if you wanted to bowl very negatively.
My whole point is that it is a very long day (we finished at 8pm on Saturday). A lot of people are leaving the game because they want a Saturday night free. Or they don't want to commit over 8 hours door-to-door to something. In our league you sometimes get a chance to finish early if a game is one-sided (a rare treat) but then someone decides to drag it out.
I'm questioning if I will play next season. I might do but I am getting sick of missing friends' birthday meals, bbqs, or just general socialising. If I could restrict cricket to 6 hours 11am-5pm then I can go for breakfast or dinner. My other option is to play occasionally but I've never been able to do that, I think you need to commit to a league.
I am barely playing weekend this season for similar reasons. I have a young family now and I cannot justify being out of the house from 12noon to 9pm every Saturday, as much as I enjoy Saturday cricket. Last year I tried playing alternate games, but it really didn't work at all, I never found any kind of form, and I didn't enjoy it.
This year I am throwing myself into midweek T20 cricket instead, which is less of a time commitment. It seems to be working better as I am actually enjoying the games I get to play.
The MAJOR problem we have as a club is that the league we are in is very badly organised, and its letting our players down badly. For some reason the league decided on small leagues with only 12 fixtures, and with some clubs having consecutive bye weeks in the middle of the summer. The problem is that they are also very lax on letting teams default without penalty. The upshot of this is that our 2nd XI have gone 7 weeks now without playing a game. 7 weeks in the middle of the summer, with all this sun!
and guess what is happening - a lot of our players have had enough and have said there is no point being in a cricket club if you never get to play a game so they will take up golf instead.
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Topic: Changes to cricket games that you think would encourage more participation (Read 21819 times)