Blind Cricket at Strath Creek

3 December 2012

Former Aus IFCR president, Don McQueen, was quite surprised when he received a request some weeks ago from the Victorian Blind Cricket Association to provide a team to play a cricket game at Strath Creek against them. What better group could there be for this game than IFCR, thought Don.

And so it was settled that an IFCR team would play the VBCA on Sunday, November 18.

One stipulation by the visitors was that the game must be played under blind cricket rules.

The appointed Sunday arrived and the two teams assembled mid morning. The VBCA as the organising group for the day had arranged for the participation of the radio station for the visually handicapped to broadcast live the opening ceremony of the game and some of the early play.

Other features of the day were the crowd of friends of the VBCA, vendors of local produce such as wine, bread etc and games for the children such as a jumping castle.

Some special rules apply in Blind cricket. Among them are the following:

The game is played with a special ball with a rattle in it

A line is drawn half way down the pitch.

The bowler must ensure that the ball bounces at least once in his half of the pitch. Failure to do so results in a No Ball.

The bowler must call out to the batsman 'Are you ready' and receive an affirmative reply before delivering the ball.

After the above procedure the bowler must call 'Play' before delivering the ball.

Official teams must comprise cricketers in each of 3 groups - totally blind, sighted up to 5% and sighted more than 5%.

Totally blind cricketers have a runner.

Totally blind cricketers score double any runs made.

Totally blind cricketers are entitled to a second innings if dismissed once.

The VBCA team at Strath Creek included many players who had previously represented Victoria at national festivals so it was not surprising that their team score from their 35 overs was 260. The IFCR team showed their inexperience at this version of cricket and could barely muster half their opponents'score from their 35 overs.

As a footnote to a very successful experiment it was revealed that 9 of the team at Strath Creek were included in the Australian party which takes part in the Blind cricket World Festival in Bengaluru starting on December 2, 2012