Lancashire League Handbook 2016

20 Barry Evans continued for a third season as appointments secretary and he’s already got his diary ready for 2016. The Lancashire Knockout fixed dates means that we have again have more Saturday fixtures and finding umpires will be like finding sub pros so be ready for the calls to find an umpire for the day. You really do have to have done the job to fully understand how difficult it is. The Captains reports on Umpires performances form the basis of the award of the Wally Ashley Shield and the Harry Saul Trophy and these are now collated by our Deputy Chairman Mr. Peter West which helps my workload greatly during the season. The only comment I would make with the marks are that we still have the who won who lost marking syndrome and there are still captains giving average marking i.e. 4 all the way down. We don’t just mark the umpires to decide who wins the trophies, we use them to identify weaknesses and trends in performances and provide them with an appropriate grade for their development outside the League so if captains could give them due attention it would be appreciated. The Lancashire League Umpiring panel seems to get stronger every year and this is reflected in the standards achieved. This year we had 15 umpires achieving over 90%. The top 6 all had over 95% and top 3 over 97%. The top three dropped only 17, 19 and 21 points over the whole season so there were only 2 points separating each position. We are again represented in Minor County Cricket with Ian Laurence and Naeem Ashraf joining myself on the panel for 2016. The winner of the runner up award for the Wally Ashley trophy this year went to an umpire who is making his way through the examination pathway and achieved his Level 2 qualification during the last winter, Tony Woodworth. The winner of the Harry Saul trophy for Umpire of the year was Duncan Warburton. Jack Bottomley our Assistant Secretary collates the marks for best 1st team scoreboard, best tea room, sportsmanship and the captain’s award again another greatly appreciated help to me. Thanks Jack. This year’s scoreboard award was again a close run thing. Rishton were third with 96.36%. In second place were East Lancs with 98%. And just pipping them with 98.18%, probably only a point was Bacup. The second award is the tea room award. In 3rd place with 92.73% we had three sides Bacup Haslingden and Rishton.