NIGHT OF THE LONG DISCUSSIONS

In addition to U13 players batting and bowling, the 2012 Lincolnshire County Cricket League had perhaps a record number of rule change proposals put forward for consideration at Wednesday night's AGM, some of which failed to gain sufficient support and some did enough to enter next season's Handbook.

APPROVED
'Spirit of the Game': An admin fee of £25 must accompany any complaint - to be refunded if the complaint is upheld.
Intervals: The tea interval shall be 30 minutes. The interval between innings shall be 10 minutes, but under no circumstances shall the 40 minutes be taken at one time.
Penalty for using ineligible players: Points deductions and/or any subsequent reassignment of points to opposing teams will include all games involving the ineligible player/players, not just the game that has generated the complaint.
Other Leagues from which a club transfer is required to play in the Lincolnshire League: Include Bassetlaw League (to replace Bassetlaw League Championship - highest division).
Failure to fulfil a fixture: Any club not fulfilling a fixture shall be fined as Per Rule 8, shall pay the cost of teas to the non-offending club and reasonable expenses to the umpires.

NOTIFYING SCORES TO THE LEAGUE
The Management Committee (league officials) put forward a rule change to end the current practice of teams having to phone through scores after the game. The proposal was that, instead, full scorecards should be entered on Play Cricket by 11.59pm on the day. Some clubs felt this would prove very difficult and it was heavily rejected. However, many delegates seemed in favour of replacing after-match phone calls with the requirement to enter "summary" team scores/wickets lost and brief highlights on Play Cricket by early Sunday morning.
It was impossible to adopt this on Wednesday as the AGM can only adopt or decide rule changes put before it, and not any amendments.
However, Gary Sutton (Hartsholme) came up with an ingenious compromise, which was agreed. Prior to the January Executive Committee meeting of league clubs at Market Rasen CC, there will be an Extraordinary Annual General Meeting to consider adopting the "summary score" proposal.

Among rule change proposals rejected were:

• Deduct 5pts from a club making a 'Spirit of the Game' claim against its opponents when this is not upheld.
• Clubs shall not use any overseas players.
• Any ball which passes down the leg-side of the batsman in his normal 'ready' position shall be called 'wide' and the ball bowled again (premier division only)
• Limit a bowler's maximum number of overs in an innings to 12.
• Limit a bowler to 25 per cent of the total overs in an innings.
• Increase visiting team team costs to £30 (from £25).