Victorian Premier Cricket season to start with group matches
Keen to keep travel to a limit, Cricket Victoria officials are devising a draw around clubs playing their nearest neighbours in the first five rounds. Here’s how it will work.
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Victorian Premier clubs will play a bunch of neighbours when the season opens on Saturday, November 21.
The first five rounds will be played in geographic groups as officials try to minimise travel in the early exchanges.
Casey South Melbourne, Dandenong, Frankston Peninsula, Kingston Hawthorn, Melbourne and Richmond make up a south-east group.
Camberwell Magpies, Fitzroy/Doncaster, Northcote, Prahran, Ringwood and St Kilda are in central, and Carlton, Essendon, Footscray, Geelong, Greenvale Kangaroos and Melbourne University in the north-west.
The teams in each group of six will play each other once before meeting other sides.
The Premier Cricket season will consist of 17 one-day matches, with the last round set down for March 27.
Semi-finals will be staged on April 3, preliminary finals on April 10 and the grand final on April 17.
“We’ve grouped the clubs for the first five rounds to try limit the cross-town travel and keeps things as local as we can,’’ CV competitions manager Darren Anderson said this morning.
“The last thing we want is for a team like Casey South Melbourne having to travel to Geelong given everything we’ve been through in the past few months.
“It’s like a baby-step approach.’’
A draft fixture went out to clubs this week.
Anderson said CV was waiting for feedback on the draft fixture, would assess and hopefully release the official draw next Wednesday.
On the women’s side, the First and Second XIs will play 14 One Day matches, starting on Sunday, November 22.
Fixtures for the new Premier Thirds haven’t been finalised.
The Victorian Super Slam, which started two years ago, will almost certainly go into recess fore 2020-21.
All going well and restrictions continue to ease, Premier and all metropolitan clubs will be able to resume training from October 20, under strict conditions, including sticking to groups of 10 and maintaining social distancing.
When matches start players will not be required to use masks.
“Based on the requirements and regulations for wearing masks, if you’re doing exercise or needing to do efforts that leave you out of breath, you’re exempt from wearing a mask, and it was considered that players who are in the field and chasing the ball can be exempt,’’ Anderson said.
“We know first slip can potentially sit in the field all day and not move, but you can also get the day when first slip needs to chase a number of balls down to third man.’’
There has been much talk in the past few weeks about umpires having to wear masks during games, unless they have a medical exemption.
Some umpires have threatened to sit out the season, put off by the prospect of having to wear a mask on hot days.
Cricket Victoria and Sports and Recreation Victoria (SRV) are discussing the situation with the Department of Health and Human Services.
SRV has helped Cricket Victoria plot a path towards starting the season, clarifying issues around the sharing of equipment and spectators being permitted to attend senior cricket.
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