Consultation on adoption of play-cricket

The SDYCL committee would like all member clubs to provide feedback regarding a proposal to use the website www.play-cricket.com as a hub for South Devon Youth Cricket League fixtures, results and statistics for the 2017 season.

As you may well be aware, the Devon Cricket League; South Devon League and South Devon Indoor League (all adult leagues) already use play-cricket as the hub for their leagues. As every club within the SDYCL also run at least 2 teams in the Devon Cricket League, this means there are adults in every club who have experience of using the website and system to administer fixtures, results and statistics.

We feel that adopting a similar approach as the Devon Cricket League offers many benefits to us as a league as well as to you and your junior players. This includes

a) Clubs having the ability to set and amend fixture dates directly onto the website without needing to go through the league committee
b) Clubs having the ability to directly input their own results onto the website
c) Any clubs who are already using scoring software (i.e. TCS) can immediately transfer computerised scorecards onto play-criket
d) Automatic live updates of player statistics allows for more engagement of junior players and removes the need for clubs to nominate individual award winners at the end of the season
e) Providing more transparency, accountability and live updated information for teams and clubs so that it is clear when games have been played or when they are scheduled to be played and results/league tables do not need inputting by the league committee
f) Engage older juniors in the process of team management by giving them responsibility for inputting results

The precise details of how the system would work in practise are not yet agreed - at this point we are interested in views on the principle before we put time and effort into refining systems. However, we are fully committed to the idea that, if implemented, a transfer to play-cricket would be fully supported by the league through facilitating training and providing assistance for new users of the software.

Having spoken to a contact at play-cricket, we are aware that there are significant upgrades being made to the software which will be in place before the 2017 season, in order to try and make the package easier to use and address a couple of 'glitches' which have affected some elements of result inputting in the DCL.

We are also investigating possible options to help ease the transition to use of play-cricket which may include some combination of...

a) An "either or" option for 2017 where clubs/teams could either use play-cricket to input results or text results in the same way as they have done this season with a view to full adoption in 2018

b) Initially launch play-cricket only in younger age groups (i.e. u10 and u11) for 2017 with a view to increasing use in older age groups in 2018

c) Offer a discount on league entry fees to clubs/teams who adopt play-cricket result reporting in 2017.

At this stage the committee would appreciate all views and comments from across different stakeholders - managers/teams/players etc. If there is enough support for the idea at the consultation stage, we will put a refined version of the proposals forward for a vote at the AGM later this year.