It’s week two on the ‘Return to Cricket’ road for Grantham CC and, with some frustration, I hosted and watched our first nets on Monday, following all the social distancing rules that are required.

How this can possibly be a danger to anyone I really don’t know. We are Membership Club and we know who we are. Compared to the joy of going to a Supermarket with lots of people we don’t know, the chance of a cricket net providing a Covid Risk seems completely barking mad that could only be dreamed up by some civil servant who has no idea how you actually play cricket.

To have 22 people on a space the size of a cricket ground taking sensible precautions and having washed their hands and the ball in Zoono is probably one of the safest ways to spend an afternoon you can imagine. But don’t worry because it’s ok for our grossly overpaid premier league footballers to play contact football.....

My wish last week was for leadership from the ECB. This has obviously not arrived yet. The Lincolnshire ECB Premier League starts its second half of season fixtures on July 11th. We have 10 teams in the league so 9 matches would see us all play each other. Surely this is possible and should be planned for. Even if we started two weeks late on 25th July we could finish on 19th September which would be perfectly possible. And if a club does not want to take part for whatever reason that is completely fine but don’t stop those who want to play.

This cannot be different across the country. Derbyshire and Yorkshire are apparently making these plans already. So could someone at the ECB grow a pair and show some leadership and get on with it. And those who don’t want to take part don’t need to!

Wish for this week - same as last week - please lead and not follow.

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