ARE SCORERS POOR RELATIONS?

Today's Daily Telegraph gives front page billing to the story of how the popular and respected Malcolm Ashton won't be scoring and providing the match statistics on the radio for the BBC's Test Match Special over the coming weeks because the payment package was such that he'd have to dip into his own pocket to fund part of the Ashes trip to Australia. He describes himself as not being "exactly a registered charity."
Belt-tightening at the BBC is one of the reasons suggested by the Daily Telegraph for this unfortunate state of affairs.
It's not too difficult to compare the above with the situation existing within Lincolnshire club cricket. Some of the better off/bigger teams have regular scorers and tip them a few quid after matches. Others, perhaps lower down the scale, offer a free drink or two. However, what these scorers receive isn't an official set fee, as is the case with locally-appointed umpires (eg £25 for standing in the Lincs League).
The England and Wales Cricket Board's newly-established Association of Cricket Officials represents umpires and scorers and if you read copies of their excellent glossy newsletter, it's obvious the ACO gives equal billing to both. These days the scorer is regarded as part of the team managing the match, alongside the umpires. Just like the fourth official in football. Although, in our case, it's the third official (as we don't have match referees at this level of club cricket).
As the ACO has just embarked on a national review of the payments/expenses/fees system in club cricket throughout the UK, it will be interesting to see whether scorers get a mention in their final report, alongside the umpires.
It wouldn't surprise me to see a recommended amount included for qualified scorers who are members of the ACO.
This is not intended to cause concern to cash-strapped Lincolnshire clubs, especially in these times of economic recession when money is tight. However, you don't need to be Einstein to work out the way things might well progress now the England and Wales Cricket Board has taken control of match officials, through the ACO, from the previous independent organisation which was not the governing body of our nation's main summer sport.
Personally, I hope that once the ACO outlines what umpires should be paid in club cricket for various levels of matches across the UK, they also include a recommended amount for scorers. This only seems fair, right and proper.
The role played by scorers in the efficient running of the game has become even more important now more and more leagues are replacing paper scoresheets in favour of recording the information online through the ECB's Play Cricket system.
These days if a team leaves the ground after a match and doesn't have all the necessary information recorded in the scorebook, it makes things very difficult, if not impossible, for the person who has to sit down, log on and enter things on the league website.
With that in mind we need to be encouraging more clubs to find scorers and training more people to take on the role on a regular basis.
The recent Lincs League AGM added a new rule which recommends teams have a scorer. Not mandatory - purely advisory. But, for me, it's a very welcome step in the right direction. No fee is laid down, by the way.
During a summer discussion on scorers at a Lincs League meeting of clubs, there was strong opposition to making it mandatory for teams to provide a dedicated scorer in every match - a nominated player having to drop out and score, if necessary (as happens in many football and hockey leagues). With many teams struggling at times to put 11 in the field, the majority saw that as being unworkable and unfair, particularly to those in the lower divisions.
I was captain and vice-captain of lower X1 hockey teams for many years, latterly in the Yorkshire League. If we didn't have an umpire, I often had to miss out on a match to do the job myself, as a league rule ensured this had to happen. This was a very good rule, as come the next selection committee meeting, the chairman would get his ear bent by the lower X1 team member who'd had to umpire rather than play.
This resulted in great efforts being made to find, and train, umpires. Which was then of benefit to the league and its clubs.
Following July's Lincs League debate when it was clear many were violently opposed to players being made to drop out to do the scoring, I was later informed by one club that, actually, they hadn't previously considered tapping into their pool of youngsters to see whether anyone wished to help out in the scorebox.
Could be there's another Malcolm Ashton somewhere in Lincolnshire, waiting to be discovered by one of our clubs.