Berkshire Cricket League

Crusty · Joined: 09 May 2004 Posts: 8 Location: Knowl Hill CC

Can I recommend Clubs have a look at this site, sponsiored by the ECB.

http://www.play-cricket.com/home/home.asp

Whether you already have a club website or not, it is an excellent way of getting a web presence and communicating club info to all on-line members.

In Div 4 Knowl Hill, Yateley, Mortimer WE and Waltham St L have signed up. All you need is a member with a bit of IT and Internet experiene and a couple of hours to spare.
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Neil

Always the Knowlies

Martin · Joined: 20 Apr 2004 Posts: 11

I agree.

The Play Cricket site is excellent. We had no one with Web expeperience to build a bespoke site so its perfect for us.

You could argue that their are limits to the individuality that you can introduce to your site but we are now getting in excess of 900 hits a month and our members (juniors in particular) think its great. - nothing like sitting in your IT lesson on Monday morning and catching up with your own score from the weekend.

The on line entry of scores - compilation of stats etc is great.

Why not use it for League results????????????? Would save waiting for Monday to get results (no disrespect to Ian - who is doing a great job!
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Martin Bishop

Chairman, Purley on Thames CC

lawrenceh_w · Joined: 21 Apr 2004 Posts: 6 Location: Shinfield CC

Hi Guys,

At Shinfield we use the play-cricket website as well. Certainly the easiest method of setting up a website I've seen. Has all the fixture/result/statistics information most clubs require.

It can get a bit tricky when you start using interactive fixtures. We tend to use it as a standalone results entry for our end-of-season averages.

One way I have seen it used is even if you have an existing website each club in a league has to register all it's players on a play-cricket site. I think the league admin then enters the scorecards and hey presto - all results are entered and stats for the league generated. Seeing as it's linked to your own site, each player's stats for the league are generated as well.

Could be something for the committee to look into. Would probably require a trial of 1 or 2 divisions as well as the current method. Certainly be worth looking into!

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with the flexibility of the play-cricket website. It covers most of our needs and one of the most important things is the basic site is FREE!
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Cheers,
Lawrence

Shinfield CC
http://shinfieldcc.play-cricket.com/home/home.asp

iwilliams · Posted: Thu Jun 03, 2004 4:28 pm Post subject:

The hardest part, from my understanding of what goes on, is not putting the results online (which takes me half an hour unless I am enjoying a bank holiday), but actually verifying the correctness of the data. I am doing my best to fly the flag for double-entry scorecard submission, but it's difficult to imagine success, when only about a quarter of the clubs in the league have shown any interest at all in promoting their clubs online using the current facilities we've made available. Perhaps it would be different if it were compulsory... but at Farley we can barely work the mower Wink

Bearded Burbler · Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2004 8:07 am Post subject:

I agree with Ian. It's all very well having an all new, all singing and dancing web site, but if people just can't be bothered to input the data or use the site to its maximum potential what can you do? As with most things, having averages and the like on the web site would be nice and probably possible, but it depends heavily on EVERYBODY doing their bit. this means that it would only be as robust as the weakest link (or in some cases, the missing link!) and you know what Anne Robinson says about that!

Martin · Joined: 20 Apr 2004 Posts: 11

Perhaps the Results person for each div could input the skeleton results/points - interested clubs could then fill in full details etc.

Posting a basic result takes about 2 minutes per game!
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Martin Bishop

Chairman, Purley on Thames CC

Bearded Burbler · Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2004 3:11 pm Post subject:

Martin,

I think you have missed the point. It doesn't matter how short a time it takes to input the results, the fact is that not enough people seem to be bothered enough to actually do it! Besides, as i understand it, people were looking for online league averages etc, not just league tables which we have pretty soon after the event anyway thanks to people like Ian working his nuts off.

Martin · Joined: 20 Apr 2004 Posts: 11

Surely the point here is that there is a possible way of making peoples lives easier because of technology.

The vast majority of results are phoned in on time - which proves that if something has to be done then it gets done by the vast majority.

The current situation is I believe that each of the Divisional Results Secs then compile their results - these then get phoned to Andrea who compiles the League tables/results and faxes them to papers and Ian for the Website - Ian then loads them onto the Website.

A Play Cricket type website would cut out at least 2 of these operations and produce results and league tables - possibly all by late saturday night!

I'm not being critical - just think its worth exploration.
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Martin Bishop

Chairman, Purley on Thames CC

iwilliams · Posted: Mon Jun 07, 2004 8:17 am Post subject:

I'm all for life being easier - but bear in mind that it's a lot easier to grab your mobile and phone in the results without stopping to go home and switch on your computer.

The "technology" required to create a suitable system is not rocket surgery, and is certainly something I'd hope to have in place in time for next season.

The problems I see are:

1) club acceptance. I've always wanted to build a website that people were forced to use, but I can see some opposition for the reasons above. I personally didn't get home 'til half nine yesterday (a Sunday, yes I know), and the prospect of one of our members having to go home early to log results doesn't do us a lot of favours.

2) committee acceptance. The current system does work, and 24 hours isn't a long time to wait really (particularly given the level of service at the web end).

3) Even if both clubs agree, and the scores tally, the result still has to be verified by a member of the committee, and if she wants to do that on a Sunday afternoon, for no money, rather than on the Saturday night, then I'm quite happy to let her.

How about we try a voluntary system for the next few weeks. Why not post your result as a message on this board by 9pm on the Saturday evening.

Bearded Burbler · Posted: Mon Jun 07, 2004 9:18 am Post subject:

I'm with Ian all the way on this one. Just how important is it to get league results in as they happen anyway? About the only time people might want to know what happened sooner rather than later is towards the end of the season, and that only really concerns teams in the hunt for divisional title/promotion or knocking at the relegation door, and nothing is stopping them get on the phone to other clubs if they wish.

Really, this is only a cricket league. There ARE more important things in life than league points and placings. How about teams start to enjoy their cricket and apres-cricket first, and hunt for points/tables later. There is nothing they can do about the result in their own match, so just how quickly can it matter when they hear about the results in other matches?

I especially go along with the point regarding match result and point confirmation. The volunteers working on the committee give up a lot of their free time already, especially Andrea (let's face it, we all know who you were referring to Ian) without putting further needless constraints upon their/her time. This may be a shock to some people, but some of us really do have a life outside of cricket! Perhaps the chairman of Purley would fancy volunteering for the task of taking all the results and inputting them onto the website directly after a game? After all, apparently, it should only take a couple of minutes for each result!

If it really is so very important to so very many people (and I guess we will only really find out if people take up Ian's idea of putting results on the noticeboard), then perhaps we could have facilities for a "provisional" table or results facility, updated as results/points are confirmed at a later date. But I can't imagine that it will really come to much. If you had just been stuffed, which meant your club missed the title or promotion, would you really be that keen to rush home and mess about with a web site to tell everybody else that you had been kippered? I think I would rather drown my sorrows in the bar, wouldn't you? Equally, if we had just won our last match to take the title I think a celebratory glass of lemonade would be more on the cards than tapping away on a computer!

Martin · Joined: 20 Apr 2004 Posts: 11

1. Having been on the League Committee for over 10 years and been a Divisional results secretary for a few as well I think I have a fair idea of the amount of work that goes into processing / publishing results etc.

2. I fully support the excellent progress and improvements Ian is making to the website.

3. My comments were only offered from our (Purley's) experience and as a suggestion that may actually save peoples time!

4. But if you are not interested in alternative methods and points of view why have a message board?

I'll shut up now.
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Martin Bishop

Chairman, Purley on Thames CC

Martin · Joined: 20 Apr 2004 Posts: 11

Information from the Shepperd Neame Kent Cricket League Results/Web site administrator (talking about Play-Cricket website):

All Clubs have to submit their summary
result by Noon on a Sunday and scorecards by Wednesday - each have their own
site administrator/s who do this.

We very much like the system - it is not 100% foolproof but then what is -
humans and machines can make mistakes!

We have been using it since it began in March 2002.

The summary results create the League tables yes. Home Club enters result
which is meant to be (but is not always) verified by clicking a button by
the opposition. Once I lock the summary results on a Sunday after checking
points etc which takes may be 20 minutes, no on can then edit a score
without coming through me. I have always found that if an error does occur
someone is usually very quick to point it out to me!

With 900 odd games in a season it is hard to verify every full score card -
again these primarily being done by both clubs - home club enter, opposition
check and edit if wrong player is chosen etc. I ask all administrators to
check the score cards with their scorebooks - and individuals can also get
in touch if they see an error.

It is not perfect, but as close as I think you can get to perfection. Before
this system I had to manually go though 56 score sheets a week, enter data
etc. and although both captains signed them, often they did not add up and
or contained errors. It is really only scorers who check books - captains
tended to accept the scorebook without checking I suspect, or copied in
haste and erred. Rarely problems in Premier and Division 1, with panel
umpires, but outside that how can you police so many matches and totally
ensure accuracy - I suspect impossible! Play Cricket does tell the inputter
if a score sheet does not add up, but if there was originally a small
mistake in the book, no one can usually resolve without adding a bye or two!
We get them all as close as we can - I like accuracy but all Clubs have
different levels of scorers so sadly sometimes you have to compromise!

We would (and I have made a presentation to premier league Chairmen at the
ECB) totally recommend the system to anyone.
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Martin Bishop

Chairman, Purley on Thames CC

iwilliams · Posted: Mon Jun 07, 2004 2:49 pm Post subject:

Hey tigers... it's a gentlemans game don't you know.

Can I summarise the common ground:

PROS: An online system would allow keener clubs to submit results early, would allow some level of sanity checking on the results, and the automation would reduce the reliance, workload and stress on unpaid volunteers.

CONS: The system will not work unless it is fully subscribed to by all clubs, and will cause some inconveniences in its own right. Extending the deadline for submission of results will help alleviate these inconveniences, but does remove some of the advantages of implementing it in the first place.

On a personal note, although I don't receive payment for the work I do on the website, it does provide me with an excellent opportunity to showcase my web development abilities to potential employers. As such, I am always in favour of building groovy tools that make the website more interactive and attractive. However, I'm sceptical about whether a fully end-to-end system would work at the moment, until we receive buy-in from clubs, and those who regulate the league.

Interesting fact: use of the club information pages amongst premiership teams is lower than the overall average.

Keep the discussion flowing, and please don't ever think that opinion is not warmly welcome. I certainly don't think the Bearded Wonder is trying to shut anyone up by the way... he just seems to be focussed on cricket, which, lets face it, is why we're all here, even though I'm hobbling at the moment, and can't type the letter Q because the ring finger on my left hand is twice its usual size Smile

cheers
ian

ian herrington · Joined: 30 May 2004 Posts: 5 Location: west berkshire

Interesting picture Ian
Hobbling and throbbing ring finger twice the normal size......are these two facts connected?

iwilliams · Posted: Mon Jun 07, 2004 3:39 pm Post subject:

Well I wasn't going to mention the grass stains on my knees, but as you ask... yes I was keeping wicket, and copped a few dodgy ones.