Is cricket not an inclusive sport?

[topazann]

This could be a personal thing, but for me the beauty of cricket is sometimes in it's lack of popularity. It took me a while to realize what we cricket fans enjoy, in a game that lasts significantly longer even in it's shortest format, is incomparable and unparalleled.

 

[Flem274*]

I think this is mostly a problem where there's a really wide stratification of talent (either real or perceived) within a team, and is exacerbated further when there's a big step between levels meaning everyone at the top of the talent tree is effectively an all-rounder by virtue of their exposure to the level above. If your top five batsmen are also your top five bowlers, there's not much need for 8-11 to do anything other than field.

club cricket summarised.

 

[Line and Length]

club cricket summarised.

Not so with the Club I played for. My best friend (an 'offie') and I (a new ball bowler) batted 10 and 11 (often alternating). Down the grades there were a few examples of players batting in the top 5 and bowling (guilty as charged in my later years) but these were few and far between.

 

[Engle]

Reminds me of one of my early games. The captain put cricketers he least liked down the bottom of the list. Thus, my bro at #10 and me at #11 (he didn't like our family). Much to our protests that we could bat better, he refused to budge. Come the game, the top order collapsed and the largest partnership was me and my bro in a last wicket partnership that had the opposition running ragged. We could have won that match, but for the idiot captain who took a lot of flak from members and was never made captain again.

 

[Marius]

club cricket summarised.

Back in my playing days, if I was skip, if you were one of the main four bowlers, you didn't bat in the Top Six no matter how good you were. Recreational club cricket is more about the participation than the victory.

 

[Red]

I've captained plenty of seasons in lower grade club cricket. When a club is struggling for numbers, you have to give blokes a go, even though you know how crap they are. No one's going to rock up to 20 Saturday summer arvos a year to stand in the field for 80 overs, then sit around (or more likely score or square leg umpire) while the rest bat, before they go in at 10 or 11 and make a duck. And not get a bowl. If you treat guys like that, they'll stop rocking up.

It's a catch 22, because if you wanna start a winning culture, you wanna be able to captain a team the way you want, but from a club perspective, you need to keep guys interested even if they're not very good, otherwise you struggle for numbers in your lowest two grades.

The clubs that do all this most successfully in the lower grades, usually have a core of 5 or 6 older blokes, who have played a-grade in their prime, in their lower grade teams. They know how to win, and they can carry a few less talented guys in a game. It gets a lot harder if you don't have that core to rely on and you've got a bunch of guys in their mid 20s-30s who never played cricket as a kid and want to have a crack but really dont have the experience/talent.

 

[England First]

This thread should be deleted. It’s embarrassing

 

[Line and Length]

This thread should be deleted. It’s embarrassing

Explain.

To me it is a case of members relating personal experiences that pertain to the topic.

 

[TheJediBrah]

This thread should be deleted. It’s embarrassing

Your face should be deleted. It's embarrassing.

 

[trundler]

This thread should be deleted. It’s embarrassing

A post so pig headed and obtuse it's entirely befitting for a man who worships Boycott.

 

[Prince EWS]

I think a more important question to ask, at least in Australia, is: why do we care?

I'm not saying it's wrong to care (it's right IMO) but it's important to swallow why that's the case. We want cricket to be popular so good cricketers can be financially supported while they hone their cricket skills. This will probably seem like Captain Obvious to most people here but (from a single-country perspective at least) it's important to reiterate that's fundamentaly *why* we want to spread the game within the country.

More fans means better cricketers which means more fans etc which means more and higher quality televised cricket for existing fans - we all get it. But does 'more diverse' cricket really deliver this in a way we should care? Even in the 'non-woke' way Starfighter mentions in the OP, who trusts anyone tasked to rectify this to actually make headway? Not me.

Cricket is a game of differing roles, and sometimes your role is gonna suck. I think it'd be great if clubs who kept new players trapped in this way by not sending captains and scouts to training just failed and died, but like, who's gonna police this ****? I don't think it's really solvable. We probably just have to deal with it.

 

[Chugaster]

Thanks for sharing your perspective on cricket and inclusivity. It's understandable how feeling left out or sidelined can impact one's enjoyment of the game. I've had similar experiences in different sports, where cliques or favoritism can make it tough to fully engage and contribute.

 

[Shri]

Thanks for sharing your perspective on cricket and inclusivity. It's understandable how feeling left out or sidelined can impact one's enjoyment of the game. I've had similar experiences in different sports, where cliques or favoritism can make it tough to fully engage and contribute.

are you a brown person from yorkshire

 

[Migara]

When you bowl legspin, and spin it across the batsman, and extremely mouthy on the field you get noticed. Although I was not that good with my leg breaks, just because I spun it so much, always had an opportunity to bowl.

 

[howitzer]

are you a brown person from yorkshire

If not, they have questions to answer.

 

[CricAddict]

Now there was the thread recently with this title http://www.cricketweb.net/forum/threads/is-cricket-an-inclusive-sport.83770/ which was about perceived racial discrimination. Now needless to say, this is about less touchy a subject, one that I immediately thought of when reading the thread title and before I clicked on it.

After playing for ten years, hitting a few guys in the nuts, bowling lots of wides, taking the occasional wicket, playing a few fetching cover drives, making lots of blocks, getting away the odd late cut, taking a catch or two, and dropping as many I've observed that cricket is perhaps not a very inclusive sport.

Now I played football (or soccer as I still prefer to call it) for quite a while. While you can be vastly variable in your ability in any sport, I feel like it's quite hard to hide away on a football field. Sooner or later the ball will go near you, and there's plenty of opportunities to place yourself near it. Outside of politics over actually being selected in the team, or of being permanently on substitute (not an option if you only get the bare XI, which was usually the case), it's quite easy to get involved and make a proper contribution, even if you aren't overly besotted with your teammates.

In comparison in cricket it's possible to end up doing extremely little if you're not in the team's clique. I didn't bowl for the first half of my first club season (nor batted above eight, and usually eleven, if at all), and it wasn't due to a surfeit of quality players. There ended up being quite a nasty breakdown but thankfully the captain and the more odious of his mates disappeared. But I still only got a bowl through taking up some truly horrible leg spin, as that could be added to the variety grab-bag. There was no shortage of fielding at square or fine leg, though, that's usually where the unwanted players are left.

Junior cricket was just as bad, since the teams tended to a) revolve around the coach's son and b) I tended to be in a team with everyone else a year below me, which already created a divide before you even considered the usual cliques. So while there might, for example, have been a begrudging acceptance of me as one of the less bad bowlers, it still meant not getting as many overs and only getting the ball after the shine was off it, but not getting to bowl at the tail while runs were racked up against filth bowled by said coach's son. Also best mates would be placed in slips, and not even see (let alone catch) any edges offered.

And that's if you're not terrible relative to your team members, aren't completely disliked, or aren't in a team where there is a clique of 'do everything' players. I was usually in a team with a high turnover and fairly young players. In comparison I've played many a team where there were groups who had played together for years who assigned themselves everything - even if they weren't good at it - and the other players were simply there to make up the numbers. And if you've got someone who's bad (we had a player like this last year) they end up bowling two overs, or none at all, and you bat them as high as you dare, but not very high. It's easy to end up with specialist fielders.

Overall I feel like it's quite hard to place yourself in the action in cricket, and wonder if it perhaps is worse at creating team and play dynamics where members who aren't in the clique are left with very little to do other than field in a crappy position. Fielding aside it is perhaps more reliant on individual performances than, say, football, and so perhaps isn't as inclusive.

Being captain of my club, I can connect to this a lot having been on both ends. While playing for another team, I usually never get a bat and field behind the keeper while the same complaints were raised against me as recently as last month by couple of my club members.

It is a very difficult task balancing out on giving proper batting/bowling chances to everyone against winning the tournament by always playing your best batsmen/bowlers at the top which in club cricket are the same people many a times.

 

[CricAddict]

I think this is mostly a problem where there's a really wide stratification of talent (either real or perceived) within a team, and is exacerbated further when there's a big step between levels meaning everyone at the top of the talent tree is effectively an all-rounder by virtue of their exposure to the level above. If your top five batsmen are also your top five bowlers, there's not much need for 8-11 to do anything other than field.

Just read this after making an almost similar post above.

My sixth bowler who can't bat(but wants a top 6 position) is moving out of the club because I gave the ball to my top 5 bowlers throughout the tournament. We lost in the semis.

 

[Shady Slim]

Being captain of my club, I can connect to this a lot having been on both ends. While playing for another team, I usually never get a bat and field behind the keeper while the same complaints were raised against me as recently as last month by couple of my club members.

It is a very difficult task balancing out on giving proper batting/bowling chances to everyone against winning the tournament by always playing your best batsmen/bowlers at the top which in club cricket are the same people many a times.

yeah right from the get-go when we formed the team i play for now we set down with the fellas, everyone who doesn't get a bowl bats in the top seven in the regular season. further, we get all of our non-batsmen goes up in the order invariably when one of our batsmen are out, because for a rando game in the reg season if you're missing your number five, i think it's easier to just throw a bowler in and let everyone else stay in their usual spot than do some game of musical chairs. so all the bowlers get batting opportunities, and that's a good thing too because come the finals you never know who's going to be needed to stand up and be counted to make a big partnership.

we do have some guys in the top seven who get a regular bowl, but we still think we keep it pretty democratic. but if you have a captain who doesn't subscribe to that theory i imagine it can get out of hand pretty quick and that's not right

 

[TheJediBrah]

yeah right from the get-go when we formed the team i play for now we set down with the fellas, everyone who doesn't get a bowl bats in the top seven in the regular season. further, we get all of our non-batsmen goes up in the order invariably when one of our batsmen are out, because for a rando game in the reg season if you're missing your number five, i think it's easier to just throw a bowler in and let everyone else stay in their usual spot than do some game of musical chairs. so all the bowlers get batting opportunities, and that's a good thing too because come the finals you never know who's going to be needed to stand up and be counted to make a big partnership.

we do have some guys in the top seven who get a regular bowl, but we still think we keep it pretty democratic. but if you have a captain who doesn't subscribe to that theory i imagine it can get out of hand pretty quick and that's not right

CCP-approved

 

[Line and Length]

When we decided to take cricket seriously, my best friend and I went to training at a Pennant cricket club (pennants being the top level of Club cricket). We were directed to fielding practice without any introductions. We did fielding practice until it was time to pack up. We never got a chance to bat or bowl and left very disillusioned young men. The next week my friend was invited to the local Club, playing Suburban Turf, (the level below pennants) by a player from the Club who was a regular at the Post Office where my friend worked. Neither of us ever looked back. I wonder how much potential was overlooked/ignored by the Pennant club.