Moaning about the U19 over limits (again!)
It does my head in as a skipper. We've got two 19 year-olds who love bowling and hate the fact that they have to end their spells after 7 overs of slow-medium bowling (the keeper stands up for both of them). They're without doubt not even vaguely tired but they have to come off. One of them opened the bowling and had 4 for 27 so had to give up the chance of a 5 for. The other came on first change and had 3 for 6 from his 7 overs of slow medium. You can view the scorecard here.
Fortunately it looks like we're going to get through this period without losing them to non-cricket related activities on a Saturday as next year they'll be able to bowl normal spells of unlimited length. But one of them in particular moans all the time about not being able to bowl longer spells - it can't be good for cricket that keen youngsters are kept from maximising their role in adult sides.
As a skipper it creates farcical situations - when selecting we have to consider how many "unlimited" bowlers we have as it can become very problematical if all your seamers are subject to the 7 over maximum rule. And when in the field I have to consider giving batsmen in the top 5 of the opposition 1, just so our one strike bowler, who is 15, gets to bowl at the opposition's best batsmen before he has to come off.
It's a crazy situation to be in and I've got a simple solution - keep the maximum overs per day but lose the maximum per spell. A maximum number of overs per spell surely increases the chances of injury as players have to warm up 2 or 3 times and if a bowler is tired the skipper will take them off anyway as they'll be costing the team runs. That would ensure that young bowlers really enjoy playing a full part in adult cricket. It seems particularly unfair on bowlers - no-one hauls our U16 opening batsman, who leads the league runs, off after he's scored 50 - he's allowed to bat all day....
3 comments:
A suggestion to get round this particularly idiotic rule: if your two bowlers are similar in type and style, let them bowl alternate overs from the same end, with someone else bowling from the other end. Surely then they are only bowling one over spells? Without knowing the exact wording of the restriction I'm not sure whether or not this would work (and it would make a mess of the scorebook with all those bowling changes and it's possibly not within the "spirit"), but in a 52-over innings you could then get 13 overs from each of them. Of course, even if this theoretically works, in practice the state of the game may sabotage such a plan, just adding to the captain's problems, and you'd need to brief the whole team in advance, so that there isn't an interminable delay while fields are reset. But is it a theoretical possibility?
You'd still only get 14 overs from one end so it's no different to two 7 over spells unfortunately. Once they've bowled 7, they can't bowl until 14 overs have passed I think - that may not be exactly how the rules are worded but that's the gist.
Having now found the appropriate ECB fast bowling directive, I think my suggestion would in fact work: each of the two (A and B) would bowl 13 one-over spells, with the appropriate one-over gap in between. From the other end 26 overs would be bowled by different bowlers (C): the sequence would go: A, C, B, C, A, C, B, C and so on indefinitely. This seems to abide by the word if not the spirit of the directive. Incidentally, if you can find a wicket-keeper OF THE SAME AGE-GROUP who would usually stand up. then the directive apparently doesn't apply at all, as the bowler is regarded as slow.
I'm afraid it's typical of the nanny state in which we live that such matters are the subject of a directive at all, rather than being left to the common sense of the individual players and captains actually involved.
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