Drink-driving plans not good news for cricket

EVENING cricket took a hammer blow this week and not a ball was bowled. This time, nobody has fiddled around with the rules or the structure of the league.

No. It's the Home Department which is meddling on this occasion with its proposals to slash the drink-drive limits and, at the same time, hammer another nail in the coffin of what once was the key to the domestic evening league - the post-game social in the pub.

Ever since the drink-drive laws were significantly tightened, there has been a marked drop-off in the number putting the finishing touches to a summer's evening game of cricket with a couple of pints.

The overall number of teams playing the game has also fallen.

Are the two connected? One has to ask.

Driving while drunk or seriously affected by alcohol is abhorred. Rightly so.

But one cannot help concluding that the way things are going with regard to civil liberties, before long we will all have to stay at home if we want a pint and a fag.

More and more players are going straight home from a game because they do not feel inclined to drink two pints of Coke or have a couple of pints of beer and then worry all the way home if tha they are going to be tailed by a police car.

In the lower leagues, in particular, the social side of cricket has always been a hugely important factor.

But with half the fun being taken out of playing the game, will it ever be the same again?

STEVE OGIER should be applauded for exploring all avenues to making Guernsey great at this year's NatWest Island Games football tournament.

Why should he not invite bona-fide Guernsey footballers such as Ryan-Zico Black and Dave Waterman to pull on the green-and-white shirt in Shetland?

I hope he does, too.

Unlike others, neither player, as far as I know, has ever shown an indifference to representing Guernsey, or turned his back on the island game.

I hope Ogier goes further and names the two in the squad. For events such as the Island Games, anyone qualified to play/run/jump/swim/shoot for the island should be seriously considered.

Dale Garland is not punished for spending most of his year in the UK. He will be at the forefront of the Guernsey athletics team. It is, after all, not the GIAAC he is representing, although it will be its vest he wears and his selection will have been sanctioned by the club.

In the same way, Black and Waterman will not be representing the GFA, they will be playing for Guernsey, if they do go to Shetland.

Ultimately, though, Ogier, with the help of the GFA, has to weigh up whether, by selecting the likes of Black and Waterman, he would damage the spirit of a squad.

It shouldn't and as long as those two - or anybody else for that matter who falls into that category - are prepared to play a full role in the preparations for what is a one-off tournament, why worry?