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New Twenty20 Evening League for 2008 season
David Piesing
Evening League cricket has been played in Guernsey for more than 80 years and is an extremely popular format of the game. Around 800 cricketers participate in summer-long leagues, taking advantage of the island's size which enables them to leave work at 5pm and get to any ground on the island with half an hour.
Around 45 teams from approximately 28 clubs typically participate in the leagues between the end of April and late August and 2008 sees a brand new sponsor, Barclays Wealth, and a brand new league format to more formally embrace the explosion of interest in Twenty20 cricket. In 2008 there are five divisions and 44 teams.
The hours of available daylight renders it difficult to play 20-over cricket in May and August and so in those months the format is 16-overs. Teams in each divisions are split into two pools and once the pool phase is completed at the end of May, the teams qualify for new pools for the August phase of the 16-over competition. The Twenty20 format commences at the end of May and runs through until the end of July. Teams play each other once in their league and promotion and relegation for 2009 will be based on the finishing positions in those leagues (regardless of performance in the 16-over competition).
in Divisions 1 and 2 the standard Twenty20 rules are applied, except that for 2008 only bowlers are able to bowl a maximum of 5 overs rather than the standard 4 overs so that only four bowlers are required. In 2009 this will change to the standard Twenty20 format of five bowlers being able to bowl 4 overs each.
Division 1 teams all wear coloured clothing with games played with white balls.
The extraordinarily high participation rate in evening league cricket in Guernsey can largely be attributed to the short travelling distances to games, which enables many players with family commitments who in the UK would mainly have just the option of playing weekend crickey, to continue to play regular league cricket one night a week for the whole of the summer without excessively eating into their family time. By keeping those players involved in the game when their family commitments are at their height, it is easier for them to return to playing the more serious weekend cricket as their young families get older, rather than dropping out of the game altogether.
© Guernsey Cricket Board
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