Newtown & Chilwell, East Belmont, Bell Post Hill react new GCA cricket fixture

GCA clubs are up in arms over the new fixture for the 2022/23 season, after the league’s officials announced a revised draw. Find out what they said.

GEELONG Cricket Association clubs are up in arms over the new fixture for the 2022/23 season after the league’s officials announced a revised draw.

The league had suffered four consecutive abandoned rounds to start the year, with growing calls to reschedule games to avoid an unbalanced fixture.

While the GCA3 and GCA4 teams will abandon two-day cricket and play just 50-over games, GCA1 and GCA2 will still play seven two-day games while also playing in three one-day matches.

East Belmont, Bell Post Hill and Newtown & Chilwell officials have slammed the new fixture, with Panthers president Mark Brady claiming that “two-day cricket in Geelong is dead”.

“We’ll have to pull our fourths team out because no one wants to play two-day cricket,” he said.

“For cricket to survive and for people to have the chance to play the game it needs to be one-day cricket.

“It’s hard get people available, we’re a 24-hour society and weekends are what they used to be.

“But the tail wags the dog, the top sides seem to dictate what happens, and the rest have to follow the line.”

Newtown & Chilwell coach Tom Meredith said he did not understand the new fixture.

“From our club’s point of view, where we’ve landed doesn’t make any sense,” he said.

“There seems to be a bit of a fascination with two-day cricket in this league, and probably at the expense of commonsense in this instance.

Tom Meredith said the decision did not make “any sense”. Picture: Mark Wilson

“The option to have 14 games, and play everyone twice, would’ve been the way to go, and I think we’ve landed on a position that is an uneven season.

“It’s a difficult time for the league and it is a difficult decision to make, and I think they’ve done fairly well in terms of canvassing all the clubs and giving everyone a say.

“But from a cricketing point of view, we probably have even less cricket than we would’ve had if we had just gone for the one-dayers.”

East Belmont coach Chris Williams said he voted against keeping two-day cricket in the competition for this season, but he appreciated it was a difficult process for the league.”

“Unfortunately for us we’ve fallen on the wrong side of democracy, we wanted to play all one-dayers for the rest of the season,” he said.

Chris Williams said he was disappointed his vote lost, but he was happy with the process. Picture: Mark Wilson

“For me, it just makes sense to play more games of cricket, more chances to bat, more chances to develop, and more chances of actually getting a result.

“At least if the rain comes in the first week then we play a one-dayer the second week, but we’ve seen how difficult it can be to get consecutive days of cricket.

“As a club we liked the idea of going to one-dayers and just getting more results.

“The GCA has done a really good job of actually being flexible with the start to the season we’ve had, they’ve done as good a job as they could have to make this season as fair as possible.

“I think the way the competition has gone about it is really good, they asked everyone for their votes and cast a decision on that.”

Originally published as Newtown & Chilwell, East Belmont, Bell Post Hill react new GCA cricket fixture