Another League Cricket season is behind us and for players and spectators alike it has been a rather strange one in the Saturday league we play in. During the 2014/15 close season our SHPCL Leagues were reduced from 20 teams to 10 with some future prospective promotions and relegations of up to 2 x Divisions at a time, and with League matches played under two different sets of Match Formats and Match Rules! As a player you now need a fixture card marker and a change of mind-set one third, and two thirds of the way through the season, to take account of the switches from “Overs matches with Draws” to “Limited Overs matches – Win or Lose” As a spectator you turn up to watch a match and cannot be actually sure what is going on, and what the tactics really are/ought to be, until you have met and interrogated a player or official! A marvellous testament to confused thinking and indecision! TWO SHPCL club surveys last year asked Clubs and Members what they wanted – presumably the first answer (pretty clear decision as I recall!) was not what the SHPCL hoped for, or wanted. So then they launch a second survey! Same answer as the first as I believe, and then ultimately the powers that be slide through a hotchpotch proposal at the winter AGM when most players are switched off, not in Cricket mode. Players tend to leave the “boring stuff” of AGM’s and other Meetings etc. to their club stalwarts/administrators – who are in the main, especially in the higher leagues, more likely NOT to vote against a League Management proposal. So now, in summer 2015 – we have just had [...]