Penalties for NO scorers or umpires

[Acumen]

I note that a number of English leagues are imposing penalties on clubs who fail to provide scorers and/or umpires.

My own league has a financial penalty for clubs who do not provide a scorer for a match.

As regards umpires, they appoint from a panel to senior games and requires clubs to provide umpires for second team games. There is currently no penalty for failure.

BUT I understand some leagues are imposing fines and a couple of leagues are deducting points for these offences!

I would be interested in hearing what levels your leagues are contemplating and how successful it has been in ensuring games are properly officiated.

[tippexii]

My previous league in Scotland imposed escalating points penalties for failure to provide a scorer - 1 point for first absence, 2 for 2nd etc.

Was successful in ensuring clubs provided a warm body, although there were a few who press-ganged an unenthusiastic 12-year-old into service with minimal instruction.

[swerveman]

West Sussex Invitation Cricket League insists that each home team in Division 1 and each team in every other division has to provide an umpire, or lose a player. Away umpires in Division 1 are appointed from the Sussex Cricket League Panel, with the regular umpire from the away team getting a Sussex Cricket League appointment.

[chiggers]

Our league has panel umpires down to tier 5 (of 11) on a regular basis (8 divisions because we are regional below tier 4), and into most of tier 6 on most weeks. Below that a club can nominate a 'club' umpire' who is authorised to umpire for them and has slightly limited reporting powers for disciplinary offences. Other than that we have no requirement to supply an umpire. We do have some guidance though on players umpiring:

Under-16s should not normally stand as umpires, and should not stand at the non-striker’s end unless completely unavoidable
Players acting as umpires should be suitably attired; they should wear a white coat and dark trousers to distinguish them from the fielding side
Players acting as umpires shall not engage in any distracting activity, such as, but not restricted to, using mobile phones, music players etc.
Any dissent or abuse directed at a player standing as an umpire will be treated in a similar manner to that of a League-appointed or Club umpire
Players standing with a League-appointed (NOT club) umpire should consult with that umpire on matters of law and league rule, or where clarification is required
Where a League-appointed (NOT club) umpire is standing with a player, they should have the ultimate decision on matters of law and league rule, but should not interfere in matters of judgement.

We also have some guidance regarding scorers:
A competent scorer is considered to be a person who:
Has basic knowledge of the Laws of Cricket
Has basic knowledge of scoring procedures
Has a knowledge of umpires’ signals and is able to communicate appropriately with umpires
Is able to identify all individual players of the team for which they are scoring
Scorers should sit side by side, so that proper communication and checking can be maintained, and clubs should ensure that distractions such as players or third parties not relevant to the scoring of the game are not allowed.
It would normally be expected that a competent scorer would be scoring on a regular basis and is likely to be aged 13 or over.

We have a 3 point penalty in the top four tiers for failure to supply a scorer. It may be in the future that the requirement may spread further down, now that umpiring coverage is regular at lower levels. However attempting to impose penalties, or telling teams to lose a player to score, when there are no panel umpires present is not practicable. We all know that the two captains are just going to agree to ignore it and play with eleven players.

Nor is it equitable to impose restrictions in a division where not all games have panel umpires - why should one team get penalised just because there are umpires there when another team might do exactly the same and get away with it because there aren't? You must be consistent.

We have found that for things like this, financial penalties don't work; the bigger clubs will have someone who will just bankroll the fines, so a points penalty hits the players where it hurts and makes sure that the club does something

[swerveman]

Chiggers, can you please clarify where you are based? I'm thinking you're probably not in the UK, because you're using some terms that are unfamiliar to me. There are some really good points in this post.

[chiggers]

Based in Derbyshire, swerveman. I'm not sure what terms I might have used that are out of the ordinary apart from 'tier' perhaps? That is because our Premier League sits above County League Division 1, and is so effectively 'Division 0' - so 'tier' better reflects the absolute situation. Incidentally I was slightly wrong - we have panel umpires down to tier 6 with good coverage in tier 7 most weeks.

Our local ACO is very active, with well-attended L1 training courses in the winter, and our coverage is growing year on year. The league is also very strong on discipline and will always take any report by an umpire seriously. So where some leagues seem to be losing umpires because indiscipline goes unpunished, we are retaining ours and actually increasing numbers year on year as people come through the courses.

In terms of scoring, I think that in three seasons only three points penalties have been imposed for lack of a scorer - so it seems to work. We do have minimum standards for conditions at that level - a distinct score-box with lighting, heating and a confirmation light; maybe that helps create an environment where scorers are seen to be as important as umpires, rather than stuck on a table open to the elements, and it helps to encourage people to score.

[swerveman]

Yes, it was "tier" that was unfamiliar. Our Premier League is County League Division 1, and Division 3 is split between East and West Sussex, so we have 4 1st XI Divisions and 4 2nd XI Divisions. We have Panel umpires for all 4 1st XI Divisions, and provide the "away" umpire for 2nd XI Division 1 and the West Sussex Invitation League Division 1.

Our county ACO is also divided regionally, with courses in Hastings, Eastbourne, Hove, Horsham and Arundel.

We're not so tight on scoring, though we do mark the scorers' facilities.

[chiggers]

Jul 23, 2012 13:22:07 GMT swerveman said:

Yes, it was "tier" that was unfamiliar. Our Premier League is County League Division 1, and Division 3 is split between East and West Sussex, so we have 4 1st XI Divisions and 4 2nd XI Divisions. We have Panel umpires for all 4 1st XI Divisions, and provide the "away" umpire for 2nd XI Division 1 and the West Sussex Invitation League Division 1.

Our county ACO is also divided regionally, with courses in Hastings, Eastbourne, Hove, Horsham and Arundel.

We're not so tight on scoring, though we do mark the scorers' facilities.

We are 'free-flow', with no segregation of teams, apart from County League Division 1 where no 2nd XI's are allowed as it is the feeder into the Premier League. We have a north/south split below County League Division 3 so we have 18 12-team divisions in our structure, plus another two leagues in the pyramid, with a total of around 100 teams, where the champions have the option to transfer in at the top of the regional structure if they are ambitious and looking towards Premier League cricket.