I expect other leagues will now follow Sussex, we have been headed towards shorter games in the last couple of years and so this is no real surprise. Have to say for the social part of the game which has been vanishing I will miss it, but if we are honest the social part of the game has been going down for a long time, we can look back at how it was and get all rose coloured glasses but that is not recreational cricket in 2020/21.
There has not been much mention I can see of costs on this thread and this may be worth thinking about. Very generally 100-250 annual Subs and 10 quid a game-it adds up during the season.
As an example we had people charging 75 quid for a tea, then other clubs started charging 85 as a limit and we still had to find 90 per game back in 2018 for someone to do our teas....it became something of a money spinner in the wrong type of way.
It's very hard to put money back into the club funds when 90 quid is out straight away, you are left with match fees-reduced for juniors and the unemployed.
For this reason I think no tea is the way forward despite missing it, all clubs need to make cricket affordable for the members..it's an expensive game anyway and taking out this cost may enable clubs to make cricket a bit more affordable going forward.
Less people are playing ameteur cricket, the average club does not have much money...will this change help retain players?
Let's hope that is the positive from this....