Starfighter
Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
Now there was the thread recently with this title http://www.cricketweb.net/forum/threads/is-cricket-an-inclusive-sport.83770/ which was about perceived racial discrimination. Now needless to say, this is about less touchy a subject, one that I immediately thought of when reading the thread title and before I clicked on it.
After playing for ten years, hitting a few guys in the nuts, bowling lots of wides, taking the occasional wicket, playing a few fetching cover drives, making lots of blocks, getting away the odd late cut, taking a catch or two, and dropping as many I've observed that cricket is perhaps not a very inclusive sport.
Now I played football (or soccer as I still prefer to call it) for quite a while. While you can be vastly variable in your ability in any sport, I feel like it's quite hard to hide away on a football field. Sooner or later the ball will go near you, and there's plenty of opportunities to place yourself near it. Outside of politics over actually being selected in the team, or of being permanently on substitute (not an option if you only get the bare XI, which was usually the case), it's quite easy to get involved and make a proper contribution, even if you aren't overly besotted with your teammates.
In comparison in cricket it's possible to end up doing extremely little if you're not in the team's clique. I didn't bowl for the first half of my first club season (nor batted above eight, and usually eleven, if at all), and it wasn't due to a surfeit of quality players. There ended up being quite a nasty breakdown but thankfully the captain and the more odious of his mates disappeared. But I still only got a bowl through taking up some truly horrible leg spin, as that could be added to the variety grab-bag. There was no shortage of fielding at square or fine leg, though, that's usually where the unwanted players are left.
Junior cricket was just as bad, since the teams tended to a) revolve around the coach's son and b) I tended to be in a team with everyone else a year below me, which already created a divide before you even considered the usual cliques. So while there might, for example, have been a begrudging acceptance of me as one of the less bad bowlers, it still meant not getting as many overs and only getting the ball after the shine was off it, but not getting to bowl at the tail while runs were racked up against filth bowled by said coach's son. Also best mates would be placed in slips, and not even see (let alone catch) any edges offered.
And that's if you're not terrible relative to your team members, aren't completely disliked, or aren't in a team where there is a clique of 'do everything' players. I was usually in a team with a high turnover and fairly young players. In comparison I've played many a team where there were groups who had played together for years who assigned themselves everything - even if they weren't good at it - and the other players were simply there to make up the numbers. And if you've got someone who's bad (we had a player like this last year) they end up bowling two overs, or none at all, and you bat them as high as you dare, but not very high. It's easy to end up with specialist fielders.
Overall I feel like it's quite hard to place yourself in the action in cricket, and wonder if it perhaps is worse at creating team and play dynamics where members who aren't in the clique are left with very little to do other than field in a crappy position. Fielding aside it is perhaps more reliant on individual performances than, say, football, and so perhaps isn't as inclusive.
After playing for ten years, hitting a few guys in the nuts, bowling lots of wides, taking the occasional wicket, playing a few fetching cover drives, making lots of blocks, getting away the odd late cut, taking a catch or two, and dropping as many I've observed that cricket is perhaps not a very inclusive sport.
Now I played football (or soccer as I still prefer to call it) for quite a while. While you can be vastly variable in your ability in any sport, I feel like it's quite hard to hide away on a football field. Sooner or later the ball will go near you, and there's plenty of opportunities to place yourself near it. Outside of politics over actually being selected in the team, or of being permanently on substitute (not an option if you only get the bare XI, which was usually the case), it's quite easy to get involved and make a proper contribution, even if you aren't overly besotted with your teammates.
In comparison in cricket it's possible to end up doing extremely little if you're not in the team's clique. I didn't bowl for the first half of my first club season (nor batted above eight, and usually eleven, if at all), and it wasn't due to a surfeit of quality players. There ended up being quite a nasty breakdown but thankfully the captain and the more odious of his mates disappeared. But I still only got a bowl through taking up some truly horrible leg spin, as that could be added to the variety grab-bag. There was no shortage of fielding at square or fine leg, though, that's usually where the unwanted players are left.
Junior cricket was just as bad, since the teams tended to a) revolve around the coach's son and b) I tended to be in a team with everyone else a year below me, which already created a divide before you even considered the usual cliques. So while there might, for example, have been a begrudging acceptance of me as one of the less bad bowlers, it still meant not getting as many overs and only getting the ball after the shine was off it, but not getting to bowl at the tail while runs were racked up against filth bowled by said coach's son. Also best mates would be placed in slips, and not even see (let alone catch) any edges offered.
And that's if you're not terrible relative to your team members, aren't completely disliked, or aren't in a team where there is a clique of 'do everything' players. I was usually in a team with a high turnover and fairly young players. In comparison I've played many a team where there were groups who had played together for years who assigned themselves everything - even if they weren't good at it - and the other players were simply there to make up the numbers. And if you've got someone who's bad (we had a player like this last year) they end up bowling two overs, or none at all, and you bat them as high as you dare, but not very high. It's easy to end up with specialist fielders.
Overall I feel like it's quite hard to place yourself in the action in cricket, and wonder if it perhaps is worse at creating team and play dynamics where members who aren't in the clique are left with very little to do other than field in a crappy position. Fielding aside it is perhaps more reliant on individual performances than, say, football, and so perhaps isn't as inclusive.
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