Rebecca Baker: These lily-livered councillors need to get some balls

REBECCA Baker has two boys who love cricket — and she is gobsmacked that councillors want to ban the use of hard cricket balls in the nets. Is this really the nanny state we want our kids to grow up in?

05/01/16 Rebecca Baker Digital Editor. New staff pic 2016 Picture Roy VanDerVegt

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• THE REACTION: Read what our readers have to say about the idea
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• RED TAPE: Is that a toy boat? Where’s your permit?

IF I was a cornflakes-with-peaches-for-breakfast kind of girl, my morning newspaper would surely have ended up covered in globs of golden goo.

News that a suburban council is looking into banning the use of cricket balls in cricket nets is enough to make any mum or dad of young cricketers spit out their cereal.

Yep, that’s right – no ACTUAL cricket balls at ACTUAL cricket nets. You know, those tall-fenced thingies typically set up at the edge of a sports oval designed for, well, practising ACTUAL cricket skills.

Well okay, you and your kids would still be able to use the nets – but you’ll need to book them and the entire oval/sporting reserve in case someone walking nearby gets hurt.

What happened to simply taking the kids down to your local cricket nets for a hit after school or at the weekend? Surely we should be making it easier for them to get outside and be active, not harder.

According to the South Australian Cricket Association, about 15,000 youngsters take part in primary school cricket competitions across the state each year.

In the ridiculously chaotic world in which we live, it’s refreshingly cheering to watch a dad – or mum – take time out with their kids at the nets after a day in the office.

Or to watch young mates, old enough to head to a “nets session” without adults, not only offering advice and encouragement to each other, but often to younger kids they don’t even know practising in an adjacent net.

Sport SA CEO Jan Sutherland says it’s vital we provide space and facilities for kids to play sport and to enjoy the many social benefits of local, shared-use areas.

“We really don’t have a large number of spaces for kids to be active. School grounds aren’t available, so if there is an opportunity for children at their local reserve, we should be encouraging it,” she says.

“We need to make it work, even if this means educating users. If kids aren’t using the reserves, where will they play – on the roads?”

Messenger columnist Rebecca Baker thinks councils should focus on encouraging people to use communal parks, not imposing more regulations.

But still, we are told the Port Adelaide Enfield Council is considering erecting signs on more than 12 cricket nets telling people to use tennis balls unless they have a booking.

While I don’t I live in this council area, the move has left me shaking my head.

How would it be policed?

Councillor Carol Martin is worried, offering this ominous warning: “Someone will die. I have heard of incidents where people who are playing soccer have been hit by cricket balls and I can tell you there will be an accident.

Of course the councillors concerns are well intentioned – but seriously people, surely we can be switched on enough to stay well clear of a cricket net if it’s in use?

And if you’ve worried your poor pooch might get pinged by a hard red ball, walk on the other side of the oval.

Have we as a society really become so self-centred we can’t easily and safely share a fantastic community space with others without having our every move micromanaged?

How about a little bit of common sense, respect and consideration? Let’s take a bit of responsibility for our own – and our kids’ – actions. How hard can it be?

But to stop people from using cricket nets as they were intended to be used would just be silly — and incredibly sad.

I’ll leave the last words to my old mate Peter Hosking, a former star bowler for St Kilda who knew Don Bradman and first played on the Adelaide Oval back in 1955: “How does a young lad, or an old one, learn length and direction with a tennis ball? The weight of the respective balls is like chalk and cheese. Words fail me at such a thought.”