BORIS BOWLS NO BALL

CLUB and social cricketers have been kept on lockdown after the Prime Minister branded the cricket ball a “vector of disease”. Boris Johnson refused to relax rules around playing the game despite giving other bat and ball sports such as tennis the go-ahead weeks ago.

It means that thousands of frustrated recreational cricketers up and down the country must wait while golfers and cyclists continue to enjoy the fine weather.

In Prime Minister’s Questions Greg Clark, Conservative MP for Tunbridge Wells, asked for clarification on whether “the ban on cricket has come to an end”. In response, Mr Johnson said: “The problem with cricket as everybody understands [is] that the ball is a natural vector of disease, potentially at any rate. We’ve been round it many times with our scientific friends.

“At the moment, we’re still working on ways to make cricket more Covid-secure but we can’t change the guidance yet.”

And during the final regular daily briefing the PM repeated his assertion that recreational cricket was still off

the agenda for the time being.

Grassroots football was also left behind with full squad training sessions for amateur clubs remaining outlawed despite pubs, restaurants and cinemas re-opening.

Radio 5 Live pundit Robbie Savage, below, who runs a junior football team, campaigned for kids to train under supervision after that was ruled out last month as the country began to emerge from the crisis.

Savage said last night: “I was really happy when small group training was allowed to resume but now I don’t understand why whole squads can’t train together.

“You can go indoors into a pub or a restaurant, but you can’t do football training outside. I could take my players to the cinema and 18 of us could sit together, but we can’t then go outside and train together. It’s an absolute nonsense.”