Lightning McQueen wrote:Bottom line is that cricket is declining in numbers at community level.
People are time poor nowadays and cricket takes too long.
As kids we grew up with two seasons, football and cricket season, there are far more options now and the cricket at the top level has dropped off, we once molded our evenings around a day/nighter to watch Bevo guide us home with a ball to spare or watch a Gilly or a Viv tee off, it just doesn't have that same appeal anymore.
I hate making excuses as such but I think your bang on LM.
Clubs do need to do everything possible to attract junior players but I think the overriding issue is actually cricket as a sport in our country.
It feels as if cricket becomes less and less attractive as each year goes on.....not sure but how does junior cricket participation rates compare to other sports like soccer, basketball, netball etc. I would imagine total junior participation rates are higher now than say 20 years ago in 2000 but that would be purely population growth, I wonder how that growth compares to other sports.
Thinking outside the square do we need to try and make cricket easier for parents/coaches. One thing that I noticed works really well in the country is we primarily use permentantly stuck down matting. Yes we lose the odd game to rain but boy does it make 'cricket' easier. Whack in a few stumps and cones around the oval and off we go. Generally players aren't required to arrive until 15 minutes before the game, toss done 5 minutes before pad up and off we go. After a game you are packed up within 5 minutes at most and off you go. I understand the matting potentially last as long as and their is a risk of vandalism but could the positive potentially outweigh the negatives.
Not sure if its currently being done but do we play much to my disgust the 5 overs at one end, 5 at the next to cut down on time. Cricket is a bloody long sport.
Do we consider more mid week games. 4pm start finish by 7pm. Teams could training Tuesday night play Thursday night then its only a two day a week commitment. I know our juniors only train once a week and that seems to be a real benefit to parents.
Is it something ridiculous like having kids play in coloured colours like the pro's, I know as a kid I loved nothing more than whacking on my footy colours and wearing it with pride. My cricket baggy has a similar feel but never really got that same feel from wearing the whites.
Obviously the cost of cricket when taking into account their own bat, pads, gloves, helmets is huge compared to buying a pair of boots for footy or decent shoes for basketball. Yes clubs have team kits but who really wants to where second hand gear especially in the Covid era.
Dunno just trying to think of different things as I don't feel whats happening at the moment is working for the majority of clubs.