I Just Shakes Me Head!

I spent more than twenty years in cricket administration, returning to get the key for the door this year with a club in Tamworth. I also had a twenty year flirtation with that bastion of all things ridiculous, the Dept of Education (or whatever it's called now). In fact, if you add in the five or six years I had as a teenager involved with the machinations of one of the biggest junior sports club in Sydney (then and now), the Miranda Magpies, I have reached the conclusion that I've earned the right to pass comment on organisations and how they run (tee hee, lol, rflmao and all that).

One conclusion is eminently clear - they don't. For most of the time they just lumber on from one crisis to the other, often bailed out by a higher authority who have paid professionals at their disposal and more experience at making a cock of things.

A second is similar - whilst the details of what these organisations design in their meetings vary (camels from the idea of a horse comes to mind), the nature of how they do it is all too similar.

I should add at this stage, intentions are almost always honourable and so many of these sages on community stages work hard at getting it right, only to get it horribly wrong.

You will all know many examples so I'll only levy the argument with one.

Last weekend, two enterprising first grade skippers from the fourth & sixth placed clubs in Tamworth, both needing maximum points from their last round match to secure end of season positions, decided, after consultation with the umpires, to declare both of their innings closed at 0-0, therefore ensuring both had a chance at securing outright points. The side batting third therefore batted and scored enough runs for three West Indians innings and clearly were well placed for outright points. Nice day's work.

Then the bush lawyers from the fifth-placed club took out their combs and fine-toothed the sacred laws of the MCC and the not nearly as sacred rules of the TDCA until a case was mounted on the grounds that the skippers had made a mistake in the how and therefore inspiration was to slapped on the wrist with a brick. Law 14, correctly stated showed that had the skippers wished to jointly declare at 0-0, their teams would have had to take the field, which they didn't. Therefore, both innings are deemed to have been forfeited therefore interpreting that the winning side could only receive 4 points (6 for 1st innings, 10 for outright normally). Problem is, Law 14 also goes on to say that when an innings is forfeited it is deemed to be a completed innings.

Both teams should already have 3 points for the first innings tie. The winning side should get 7 and the losers 3.

Oops. Bet that flies to roost at appeal and comes back to squirt egg and others barnyard delights on the grey faces.

The second yell from the peanut gallery failed to proceed to a vote but it was on the basis that both skippers had contrived to create a result outside the spirit of the game. It's nice to know that such meetings can occasionally let the wind come under the door and blow some common sense in.

Some left, wondering what they did wrong, others with the eggshells they had clutched at, now firmly in the safe reservoir of pockets to be used to cover other, future disappointing results on the field, where the game, spirit and all, was supposed to be played.

I'm getting old and I'm wondering why I'm not drinking pink gins yet.

POSTSCRIPT: Delicious, ironic rain fell yesterday and will fall again today so that all matches will end in draws. God is in his heaven!