ACO NEWSLETTER - Ecb - England and Wales Cricket Board

ScorersECB ACO Conference: Scorers ForumThe forum began with me updating those inattendance on the progress made since thelast conference regarding education and appointments.Of the 38 counties, 30 deliveredthe new Level 1 course during the winter of2011-12 and Level 1A assessments werestarted during the summer. The new Level 2course has been successfully piloted and willbe rolled out by the regions this winter andthe new Level 3 course will be piloted thisautumn. Three new modules covering linearscoring, computer scoring using TotalCricket Scorer and Duckworth/Lewis arenow available on a regional basis. The ScorersInitiative, aimed at assessing existingscorers and recruiting them into the organisationhas been extended for a further year.Scorers wishing to progress along the pathwaywere encouraged to contact theirCounty or Regional Scorers’ Officers to findout about courses in their area and to encouragenon-member colleagues to comeOnce again, National Scorers Administration Officer, Geoff Trett, led theScorers’ Forum at the National Conference with 60-70 scorers from ECBACO’s membership in attendance. Geoff has written the following report.forward for assessment.Moving to appointments, I reported thatthe range of opportunities is gradually increasing.This year, in addition to the MCCcorporate sixes and MCC Universitiesteams which we have supported in the past,we have made appointments for the MCCYoung Cricketer Ladies team, a CricketerCup semi-final, have suppliedDuckworth/Lewis managers for the latterstages of the Kingfisher Cup and helpedCricHQ develop their software by findingscorers to help with testing in real game situations.For scorers looking for wider experienceor multi-day cricket, County age-groupyouth and academy matches were recommended,which are proliferating and oftenneed scorers – either contact your CSO orCounty Cricket Board for more information.We then widened the discussion to thefloor. With Duckworth/Lewis becoming increasinglyprevalent in league cricket, wewere fortunate to have scorers who haveused D/L in the Surrey Championship and inEurope and they shared their experienceswith us. Basically, these have been positive– it is important for scorers and umpires tobe trained in the use of the system in advance.Scorers had either deployed additionalscoreboards or had used fields onexisting scoreboards e.g. “last man” to showD/L targets at the end of each over. Clubsneed to have a printer available to print outthe relevant tables. The players had all welcomedthe innovation; in Northern IrelandDuckworth/Lewis is being cascaded downthe leagues in response to player request. Itwas encouraging to hear such positive reportsfrom scorers as I’m sure a lot more ofus will be using this system in the years tocome.We also had a debate about the paymentof scorers in league cricket. A straw poll indicatedthat a lot of scorers present do notreceive remuneration for league cricket andare quite content with that situation – althoughthey feel that payments for higherlevels of cricket are appropriate. There weresome scorers present who do receive someform of payment for league cricket – thisranged from travelling expenses to paymentsof up to £25-£30 per match. Practices clearlyvary in different parts of the country and itwas interesting to hear an update on thissubject from the good cross-section of scorersrepresented at the meeting.Earlier in the conference, Nick Cousinshad stated that retention of new membersafter their initial free year had been a problemand we briefly discussed the reasons behindthis for scorers. We are looking at waysto try and get leagues to help with scorer retentionand ECB ACO membership, but thiswork is still in its very early stages.Overall a very positive and constructivediscussion and I’d like to thank everyone forcoming along and taking an active part.Response to queries on the application of the D/L methodThe following discussion relates to points made in this email message.Recent rain-affected CB40 matches have revealeda critical weakness in the Duckworth-Lewis system which systematically favoursthe team batting second.The Derbyshire versus Nottinghamshiregame this season typifies the problem.Derbyshire lost 4 early wickets and hadclearly embarked on a re-building exercisewhen rain intervened after 13 overs of theirinnings with Derbyshire on a score of 48.When the game re-started it was reducedto a 14 over match, which left Derbyshirethrowing the bat for a mere 6 balls. Nottinghamshirewere then given a meagre 67 runsto win off their 14 overs by Duckworth-Lewis. The outcome was so certain that theyneedn’t have batted.This is typical of many early rain-affectedmatches in which the team batting second isalmost certain to be victorious.I would therefore propose an amendmentto the Duckworth-Lewis calculation in suchcircumstances, which links the target set forthe team batting second directly to the numberof wickets they lose in the chase.Take the match above to illustrate the proposedamendment:48 for 4 after 13 overs before the rain:• Assemble the matches (set A) in whichteams batting first passed through this exactsame score (48 for 4) in rain-unaffectedmatches• Calculate the average total runs at 40 oversof this set of scores – this would represent afair target for the team batting second ifthey were to have 40 overs to bat with 10wickets in hand.• Now take all matches unaffected by rain(set B) & assemble all first innings scoresafter 13 overs.• Take all matches with 0 wickets lost after13 overs & calculate the lowest score (s0)at 13 overs above which the 40-over targetwas exceeded more times than it was notachieved in these matches.• Repeat this for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 wicketsat 13 overs – to set s1, s2, …. to s9 respectively• The team batting second should then be issuedwith a Table of the 10 targets (s1 tos9) after 13 overs – one for each of 0, 1, 2,3,4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 wickets lost”This will have the effect of conditioning thetarget by the number of wickets lost, and willconstrain the team which currently is allowedall 10 wickets to achieve what is usually ameagre target.”Duckworth and Lewis responseA bias to Team 2?The first assertion by the correspondent relatesto an alleged bias to Team 2 in interruptedmatches.continued on page 30e-mail us at ecbaco@ecb.co.uk 28 contact us on 0121 446 2710