Clean your bat, wash your hands and don’t sweat

Local cricketers will have to follow a strict set of health guidelines when they start playing competitively again this weekend.

The UK Government eventually backed down from calling a cricket ball ‘a natural vector of disease,’ but they and the ECB have still come up with a set of rules which will take some getting used to at club level.

They include...

• Sanitiser breaks every six overs. Players must wash their hands at the end of each six-over spell. Expect plenty of bottles to be left around the boundary edges.

• Bats must be cleaned after every innings. It’s probably best they are no longer hurled around in dressing rooms after a poor umpiring decision.

• Umpires are no longer allowed to touch players’ clothing so no carrying or holding bowlers’ jumpers, caps or designer sunglasses.

• No sweat or saliva can be placed on the match ball. This is different to Test match regulations which allow sweat, but not saliva.

• One team’s scorer can sit inside the scorebox, but the other team’s scorer must sit outside.

• Players and officials must now bring their own tea to a game.

• Socially distant running lanes for the non-striking batsman are to be used. Not good news for groundsmen with small squares who will be effectively forced to use two pitches per game.

The new regulations are expected to slow the game down, but Peterborough Town captain David Clarke accepts them as a necessary evil.

“To be honest we just want to play so whatever we have to do we will do,” Clarke stated.

“It’s just a case of getting used to the new regulations and abiding by them.

“They will take some getting used to, but they are all small prices to pay to be able to get out playing again.”

David Clarke