Thursday, April 22, 2010

Midwest Cricket Conference - Season Opener

The Season Opener is cancelled due to the weather conditions this weekend. We apologize for the inconvenience.

18 comments:

Alpesh said...

Guys,

If weather permits, we will have the season opener. Please bring along your family and friends to this event.

Thanks,
Alpesh

Shekhs said...

Fellas,
This has been called off. We cancelled the season opener due to bad weather.

Thanks
Shekhs

pukka punjabi said...

This blog doesn't get nearly as many comments as it once did, besides, my buddy farhat has been deported which makes me even more sad.... he truly was a character a made it a fun experience. Shekhs, you need to get this blog rolling again, bring back those threads with over 500 comments, such nostaligia.

Sincerely,

Pukkapunjabi

Dinesh_Rovers said...

hey shekhs,

Congrats on winning the election dude. I havent been active in the blog as I have been busy with some exams. Its a great win for you and I am very happy for you.

I would like to acknowledge the work of Tariq for bringing our league to such prominence. I also hope you can take it to the next level.

Anyways, I love the changes that I see. My BIG thanks for putting out the schedule 2 or 3 weeks in advance and it really helps us to make plans for us around cricket. We hope to see many more positive things :)

Unknown said...

Question: If there is no time listed for the 30/30 game, is the default start time 10:00 AM?

Can someone please confirm?

Looks like rain is scheduled for the first week :(

Good luck to all the teams.
Thank you.
Mitul

Shekhs said...

Pukka Punjabi...yeah, we'll get it going soon bud..matter of time..

Dinesh,
Thanks for the kind words. Yes, you're right, tariq and co did do a splendid job, hopefully, we'll be able to keep up the good work.

Mitul,
Yeah, unless otherwise specified, and unless there is no other game scheduled for the day, the game starts at 10 am.

Alpesh said...

Guys ..

by now you may have heard about the 'Freedom to Play' rule, we were planning to open up this season .. As many teams did not vote for it, the rule is not will not be in effect this season ... But I want to get your feedback about the rule ...

For people who do not know about this rule, it is opening up all the three divisions for guest players ... That is Div 2 player can play as a guest player in Div 1 and 30-30 and similarly for other division players ...

Rajiv said...

I think this rule did not go through because of 2 reasons:-

1) the clause which states that if your primary team is playing on same day as your secondary team then you cannot play for secondary team regardless of whether you are picked to play for primary team or not. If the aim is yo play 'more' cricket and you are not picked in primary team then why can't I play for the secondary team?

2) some of the away teams are in a lose-lose situation where they cannot get guest players due to them being an away team and if they vote yes then their opponents get players from Div 1 as guest players. For example Springfield.

Mayb some quick fine tuning and this rule might go thru. But we don't have enough time. Div 2 will benefit a lot from this rule.

naren said...

I agree with Rajiv firstly the rule was not presented effectively.
Shekhs and team should have done some ground work which i would imagine they did, but it fell short.

There was lot of confusion as to what exactly the rule was and how it was useful for teams.

I agree that this is a good rule, and this should be implemented, but at the same time if a player is not allowed to play for his secondary team if on the same day his primary team does not select him then it defeats the whole purpose of allowing players to play more cricket. We still have time, we can still implement this rule after 2 weeks if it is a good rule.

There might be a team or two who might not get the benefit of this rule, but most others will get the benefit as every year every team is looking for players.

So in short

1) Be precise as to what the new rule is( lot of confusion yesterday).
2) bring that on the website and let teams decide on it in may be 2 days, and then take an online voting or email voting or whatever and then go by the majority(Pres should not have taken the vote then and there as teams were not sure what the rule was, it was like imposing it on the teams).

Bottom line is no rule is perfect, teams if needed can find a way to defeat the purpose, but at least most teams will benefit.

Shekhs said...

I completely agree with Rajiv and Naren, we (as in the management team) were under prepared to present and pass this rule.

This rule would have made an interesting impact on our league.

But, I'm glad it didnt get passed without ironing out all the kinks.

We'll prepare this better and address this with everybody ahead of time next year.

Its too late into the season to implement it this year.

naren said...

Shekhs why wait for next year when the rule will benefit everyone, or most of us.

Iron our the issues in may be 2 days and bring that to the website and give 2 days for ppl to respond, and you can implement it by friday night.
I know its just my thought but the logistics of managing this is not as easy as it looks.
As i said i would like to play more cricket than what i play today.

My 2 cents.

Alpesh said...

Arena/ QC Kings/ Purdue/ Peoria and other out of Chicago teams ... What do you think about this rule?? We would like to hear some feedback from your teams as well ...

Shekhs said...

Yeah Naren, it would be good to have this year.

But I dont want to rush this in 2 days and try to squeeze it in.

We'll just prepare the right document and run it by all the teams during this season or off season and get it voted in.

Try to implement this next year.

ice_cold said...

It will also be nice to send the agenda of AGM meeting ahead of time...so when there is an important decision which needs to be made, capts can discuss it with their team on what side they want to vote.
Also, that will help management to answer all questions and clear some of the glitches few days ahead of voting time :)

Unknown said...

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Rajiv said...
I think this rule did not go through because of 2 reasons:-

1) the clause which states that if your primary team is playing on same day as your secondary team then you cannot play for secondary team regardless of whether you are picked to play for primary team or not. If the aim is yo play 'more' cricket and you are not picked in primary team then why can't I play for the secondary team?
-------

Honestly, while I was a proponent of this rule, Iam glad it didnt go thru yesterday as well.. it was thought of a little late, all the kinks couldnt be ironed out in time for the AGM, and I did a pretty poor job explaining it on the spot.. too many teams didnt understand everything that was proposed, and some had concerns (which couldnt be addressed in time). Obviously its out there now, and more ideas and corrections will hopefully flow in - given that, IMHO, we can have a much-improved rule and put it up for vote in the future, and IMHO it'll have a much better chance of passing (and will deserve to pass more, too :-)

I agree with the point made above.. we have to figure out details. The idea behind this rule was not to have Div2 lose players to Div1 (ie ignoring Div2 Primary game for a Guest-game).. so if there are 2 games on the same day, maybe it makes sense you play for your primary. But, of course, thats sort of restrictive for players - in the end its their choice who they play for. And then there's the good point made above.. what if you arent picked for your Primary Team? The problem there is.. how do we enforce that? Some teams, after all, pick their final XI at the ground on the morning of the game :-) At what point should the league know if youve been picked or not, and how will the league even monitor the above situation?


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2) some of the away teams are in a lose-lose situation where they cannot get guest players due to them being an away team and if they vote yes then their opponents get players from Div 1 as guest players. For example Springfield.
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I do agree Springfield is in a slightly different spot from others - but even Springfield, IMHO, might be able to get a few players from Peoria, Bloomington etc, places about an hour away (ie not much different from north-burbs to Hammond :-)

A lot of other away-teams.. Milwaukee now has 2 Div2 teams and 1 Div1 team; StLouis has a Div1 and a Div2 team; QC Kings are a special case (where you have several Div1 friends willing to travel to Moline tomorrow to play for QC if needed, apparently :-)..all these "away" teams would actually benefit just as much from this rule too IMHO. Madison is sort of isolated.. but they have ex-players who are playing elsewhere, who visit Madison often enough, and would probably be happy to play for them. Also, note, all "away" teams nowadays have to travel 5 times, usually to Chicago.. and these are games in which they sometimes struggle the most to put up players.. they could easily have 1 or 2 roster guest players from the Chicagoland area, who could join them for Chicagoland games if needed.

Again, the idea behind the rule was to allow more players to play, to make it a little easier for Div2 teams to have players, maybe expose more talent across the league etc. Next year, IMHO, there may be an even more urgent need for it - 30/30 voted yesterday to not allow *any* guest players from next year onwards! That pool of players who wish to play more cricket.. where will they go, from next season, if there is no 30/30 allowed? The ACC?

It is incumbent upon us all to fine-tune this idea and make it better... Id urge everybody, if you see any holes in the idea, please post them on here :-) Lets figure out all its flaws, so we can try and work on ironing them out for the future.

c8w

Shekhs said...

Ice_cold,
The agenda was sent a week ahead of time. But, this particular rule was drafted a couple of days ago, hence was missing from the agenda and also didnt have the MOJO to go thru..

I think if compiled and presented correctly, this will go thru and wil benefit the league tremendously.

Dinesh_Rovers said...

Hi,

I am not talking on behalf of Rovers as I am not the captain :) But I am NOT in favor of this rule at all. This will basically help a few chicago players get more games and will help a few Chicago teams win more matches. The out of station teams will get screwed :)

So, basically by this logic,if the whole idea is to get more games for players, why cant a guy from the same division play for multiple teams in the same division. I think everyone will agree that sounds absurd and thats how I see this too.

What this will do is, especially in Div 1 where there will be relegation, a team fearing relegation will come up with an all star Div 2 or 3 players to survivive in Div 1.

Even in other divisions, a team will be bad one week and will be strong another week based on who they can find. This will screw up our league in my opinion. My 2 cents folks!

Dinesh

Unknown said...

Alpesh, I respectfully disagree on behalf of Peoria.

Yousaf
Peoria