3. Reg 8 Clothing

• The team shirts with fifty adverts on 'em.
• The daggy, half clean grey shirt/pants
• Sneakers with fluoro stripes
• Black socks
• Hats that look like Harry Butler or a day trip to Dreamworld...

Is this what we want?


It could be worse.

• Thongs, shorts, singlets.
• No shirts.
• Gorilla costumes. Spaceman outfits.

It could also be better....

In the old days you would have argued about costs. You'd say something like players can't afford an expensive uniform so let 'em wear what they have.

But in other rules we are insisting that bowlers wear spiked shoes (best part of $100 for even the cheapest pair) and all batters wear batting helmets (best part of another $100 for even the cheapest kit.)

This means either cost is not a valid objection for clothing (you have the money to spend) or a more acute one (the money's been spent on shoes and helmets !!)


Here's two ideas that we could pursue.

Relax the Team Shirt rule.
Once approved Team shirts must be worn by the whole team. (Sat Reg 8.2.3) As inevitably happens there's gonna be a case later in the season when a fill-in player will be unable to find a conforming team shirt to wear.

So in this case allow up to two players per team shirt team to wear a white shirt.

Introduce some actual penalty for shirt violations.
What's worse is the slack attitude to clothing and clothing rules that many teams seem to adopt.

• They play in unapproved team shirts.
• They allow players to take the field in non-white shirts.
• Umpires seem to be not reporting this. (The ONLY requirement is to report the violation to Management Committee.) 
• The Management Committee is unable to enforce this this. I can tell you that the VERY few reports ManCom receives are mostly not acted on. I have minuted the ManCom for 4 seasons and I can't tell what our attitude to this is.
• Teams aren't interested in enforcement either.

So ambit claim time.....

• Umpires to inspect clothing and report in writing each game. (Add a box to the Spirit of Cricket Form)

And / or

• Captains to inspect opposition teams and report in writing each match in their MyCricket abstract.

• $100 fine for each team with non-regulation clothing/$10 fine for each player with non-regulation clothing

And / or

• Bonus points for each game awarded only on receipt of opposition captain's good report. (VERY open to corruption....possibly not a very good idea.)

Tell me why we shouldn't do it....... (please note: I'm being provocative.)

(Note: There's gonna be a "Future of Subbies Cricket Convention" after the end of the season where this topic will be thrashed out so I think that suggestion is only half serious..... promise.)

I think this is way too hard to address satisfactorily. I think abandon it for 2019.

ABM 18-Feb-2019 
Revised 9-Jun-2019

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