National Cricket Playing Survey

You may have seen this already - the ECB are promoting the National Cricket Playing Survey as a way of helping them to get things right - I've filled it in and it's approx 15 minutes or so.

I think they've missed a trick in that there's no free text area at the end to allow you to give extra input on anything you feel strongly about.   I know free text fields need manual analysis and are a pain from that point of view, but that's normally where the most pertinent insights come from.

Perhaps I'm just sour because I didn't get to rant about bad light and the way it's handled!   Last year bad light even became an issue in Sussex Division 3 West!   In one game we were sure to win we had to take off our overseas bowler due to the light and the opposition held on 9 down (thanks umps).   That result was one of the many reasons we're now in the restructured Division 4 having finished 6th out of 10 and we now get opposition teams asking us what we're doing in their league (having won 5 from 5 so far).   I'd like to point them in the direction of the umpire we had that day who took pride in how many times he'd taken players off for bad light in his career as a club umpire.   Once would be too many!!   Fingers crossed we can maintain our run of wins and continue to have clubs questioning why we're in Div 4 (no doubt an implosion will happen!).

As well as ranting about bad light, it also meant I couldn't praise the Sussex League for moving back to County-wide leagues.   While there was a Division 3 East and West, players had long been suggesting that the East league was far weaker than the West league.   We're not quite a third of the way through the season, but that suggestion would appear to be right given that Division 4 is populated by West teams in the top 5 and East in the bottom 5 (5th and 6th having the same points).   Division 3 shows West teams in the top 3 positions, although Stirlands (who came 2nd in 3 West last year) are bottom having lost 2 of the 3 players that held their team together to Middleton.