Ballarat Cricket Association

Very poor of Ballarat Cricket Association for worst ever effort in organising 12 years and younger Cricket National Championship.



1. Every day, either boys or girls matches were playing on synthetic wickets which is a well below expected for National championships. If you are in Ballarat, go and take a look at White Flat Oval and try to find reasonable explanation for any organisation even thinking of organising National Championship match in that ground.



2. Umpiring/Rules:

2.1 When four states finished on equal points, rather than following written championship rules, voting was done to decide the point table positions costing WA place in the major finals. Probably first in the world to change rules mid championship.



2.2 Even though umpiring in general was good standard, many umpires were unsure of impact players rule. Some allowed 4 and some 7 to unlimited fielders on the boundary. Bring some consistency!



2.3 A kid from Queensland were given stumped on free hit which is very ordinary for umpiring standards in National championships. Hope a senior umpires or Ballarat umpiring association note this and give some training to umpires to stop in the future.



2.4 You suppose to get 2 * badge umpires in every match but a teenager in civil clothes was seen umpiring in a national championship match. Shows you organisation effort by Ballarat Cricket Association.



3. The championship rules talks about having compulsory rest days but Ballarat Cricket Association choose to ignore all that and have none. Why? Were they trying to keep grounds free for local club cricket on the weekend rather than organising a good National Championships? Weather is being poor in Victoria for many months which no one can control but poor decisions like this do not help.



4. The matches in the Eastern Oval (main oval) on day 1 were cancelled as pitch was not properly covered. Quite a poor start to the championship and this also showed how serious the organisers were to organise National championship. Why would you not have responsible groundmen to cover all the wickets when its start of National championship next day? How can you rely on local cricketers to do the job?



5. When Eastern oval was ready to play again, they choose to put 2 * Victorian teams in that ground. Use the best facilities for yourself rather than thinking about any visiting teams.



You can add many more points to the list above. The organisers failed to understand that kids have worked hard many years to get selected in state teams and they deserve better organised championship. Every family has spent $6-8k to come over to Ballarat and it was painful to see all of this. We understand that the championship got moved, weather was ordinary and BCA had 6-8 weeks to prepare but if you take the responsibility do it properly or don't do it all.