Saturday Serve: Cancelling cricket was the right call

THE Sunraysia Cricket Association copped a bit of flak recently in the Sunraysia Daily text column over its decision to cancel last weekend’s round due to the heat.

While Saturday reached only 33 degrees – well below the cutoff – an early decision had been made during the week around the three days well into the 40s that preceded it.

It’s all well and good to claim the decision was made for absolutely no reason and clubs lost revenue from the day, despite nothing stopping the clubs opening their clubrooms and bars, but spare a thought for what goes into preparing the pitches.

The Thursday before the round reached 45, Friday got to almost 47 – would people be happy for the largely volunteer curators to be out rolling pitches in the sun?

Have a look at the average age, there’s not too many younger than 50 – there is some duty of care to be followed there.

At the same time there was doubt over water restrictions and whether it would be possible get any water on the ground.

The cancellation was the right call at the time and the loss of bar sales from the handful of drinks a visiting team may have bought is immaterial when clubs had every right and ability to open their clubrooms anyway for their own players.

If people wanted to go there then they would, and if not they’d have stayed away – in the end the clubs didn’t really “lose” anything aside from a day of play – they just didn’t gain what they normally would have.

One day of cricket lost isn’t going to have a massive impact on the season, so the Sunraysia Cricket Association did not do anything really wrong in their decision-making process.