What’s Going on with Auckland Cricket?
2By Keith Miller
This season won’t go down in the annals of history as a year of great decision making at Auckland Cricket.
First we had the boundary rope debacle in the pinnacle of the domestic one day game.
Then, after knowing for years – quite literally – that should New Zealand make the World Cup quarter finals then they would be in the fixture held today, Auckland Cricket decides it would be a good idea to make all afternoon cricketers (Senior & Junior) play at the same time.
It’s not like a precedent had not been sent. They were quite happy to shift all games that clashed with an Eden Park fixture to the corresponding Sunday. Nothing wrong with that by the way – that actually makes perfect sense. A rare occurrence it would seem.
Yet after warning all players before the season started that there would be a number of games transferred to Sundays during the World Cup, today is the second occasion that Auckland Club Cricket has been played at the same time as a New Zealand fixture. Ludicrous.
So what is the impact?
Well, generally you can rely on 2-3 defaults across the board for club cricket in Auckland. So far today there have been 15 (that we know of). That’s in excess of 300 players affected already. You can almost sense the tension of the Mexican Stand Offs at other fixtures to see which team blinks last this afternoon and wins the default points.
There have also been a number of clandestine arrangements between teams across some grades to play tomorrow instead
Furthermore, there’s some light drizzle hanging around Auckland today. At the first spot of rain, there’ll be a few sideways glances, a few sheepish grins, and handshakes all round in record time.
The most common sound throughout Auckland today will be the sound of squealing tyres as cricketers leave their venues to catch the second innings of the New Zealand/West Indies game.
It’s a ridiculous situation, and one that should have been so easily avoided months ago.
I think the tone of this article – which is largely that club cricket administrators are incompetent – is unwarranted and unfair.
You imply there is no logic to the moving or non-moving of fixtures to Sundays, when the pattern is actually very simple. Club cricket gets moved to Sunday when there is an international fixture being played in that city, and not otherwise. This is a long-standing arrangement designed to encourage attendance at international matches.
It’s also not an Auckland thing. Club cricket was played across the country yesterday with the exception of Wellington, which makes the linking with the previous boundary-rope incident seem a bit of a stretch. Club cricketers in most of the country missed two NZ matches (v Sri Lanka and Australia) while playing themselves.
So it might be worth asking yourself why all club cricket administrators the length of the land are equally incompetent.
If you spoke to club cricket administrators, you’d find that Sunday play is unpopular amongst many players, which is why they aim to play on Saturdays where there is no direct fixture clash in the same city. I’d also expect you to find that the planning of fixtures is being done by edict from NZC, since all associations seem to be treating it the same way.
Hi Piechucker – apologies for the delay in response.
You may well be right as far as this being a nationwide edict. Under normal circumstances, I would agree with you – Sunday cricket CAN be unpopular amongst club players. However, this is no normal circumstance.
This schedule for this tournament was teed up ages ago, and as a seasonal “one-off” matches that clashed with NZ games should have been transferred to a Sunday. I am involved in club cricket (as both a player and parent) and can assure you that that the huge majority of players, spectators and coaches I spoke to would far rather have played games on the Sunday than play at the same time as the NZ side.
Don’t forget that we are talking about a tournament that has not been in NZ for a long time – it’s hardly a stretch to have some cricket shifted to Sundays every 23 years. I have no issue with administrators playing Saturday games during a general run-of-the-mill ODI series. But this was no ordinary series, and denying people a chance to watch their national team play (especially during the knockout stages) was pretty poor.