Nakuru was the venue of the latest scorers’ course which was successfully completed at the Rift Valley Sports Club.
The course brought together 20 participants from the schools program, which included mainly school teachers, current students of the game and the development officers working in the Rift Valley province.
With an increased number of games in Rift Valley as the province continues to grow within the game, there was a necessity to support those that are charged with keeping the records of matches played across the region.
The initial steps of understanding the important role that a scorer plays within the game were taught alongside the basics of acceptance, prompt acknowledgement of umpire signals, clear recordings and constant checking to ensure that mistakes are eliminated.
Well detailed scorebooks can provide several important statistics to the assist coaches, selectors and team managers in accessing the performances and progress of their squad players.
While the media will crave for partnerships that got the team to winning positions or match saving contributions from the batsmen and bowlers, hat tricks, missed opportunities and all these will come from the scorer’s records.
Up to four participants within the participants had already tried their hand at scoring and they welcomed the formal training that additionally educated them on a few finer points which are important towards their task.
Martin Bentley, Rift Valley Province Chairman, who was present during the afternoon session encouraged them in their new tasks and pointed out the importance that is placed on the statistics that can be drawn from the scorebook.
The participants reckon that theoretically, they have grasped the requirements to make it in scoring but felt strongly that they would need to practice in a real game situation to assess their capabilities. They chose to make those practices at the next mini-cricket tournament to be held in early November in Nakuru.
The course facilitator added the significance of the comfort of the scorers while performing their duties as it can be crucial to their concentration, not to mention the many hours that they might be subjected to and still be expected to produce accurate recordings of the match.
The majority of this group of scorers will exhibit naivety in their new roles, but the gap between them and competent scorers can be eased slowly through their involvement with the game. They were encouraged to practice the skill more often to grasp its fundamentals and a few opportunities will be available to them before the end of the year.
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