Call for helmets in youth cricket

More attention must be paid to safer playing conditions for the youngsters now taking part in the Piton Malta Herman Griffith Memorial Cricket Competition, say two visiting umpires.

After umpiring a game in Queen's Park earlier this week, Ted Searle and Robert Foulkes, two English adjudicators, said this was one area which needed to be improved.

'They ought to be more careful. If one of these boys is hit with a cricket ball and breaks his jaw, I don't know what the law is here, but in England, a batsman's parents can sue the bowler's parents and that is not what the game is about,' said Searle, president of the Norfolk Cricket Umpires Association.

'As adjudicators, we can be sued for allowing it to happen,' he added.

Searle and Foulkes, both fully qualified by the Association of Cricket Umpires (ACU), are here with a team from Norwich to play three matches.

They said all players under 17 years of age were required to wear helmets in England.

'In a game like this, everyone has to wear a helmet. Everyone has to be very careful and we have strict instructions that fielders don't encroach or get too close,' Searle said.

'That is true,' Foulkes added. 'A lot of young people are put off games when they are injured at a young age or by playing against people who are better and they are not properly protected.'

Foulkes now resides in Mexico and is a yacht captain, but officiates every chance he gets.

He said he was in Canada last year and the game there was being affected by legal wrangling.

The two have 38 years' experience between them and love the game so much they called the National Sports Council (NSC) to find out if there were matches they could umpire.

The offer was gladly accepted and they were called to the middle for the game between Wesley Hall and St. Paul's Primary in Queen's Park on Tuesday.

But NSC director Erskine King told Weekend Sport there were no immediate plans to introduce helmets into the game.

'Traditionally in Barbados we have played without helmets, but it is a personal preference. Some batsmen will say they can't play in them, some can't play without.'

'And while we have not looked at the possibility of all players having helmets, we encourage all cricketers to have boxes.'