Bermuda Cricket Board of Control (BCBC) and the clubs to come up with a more suitable structural plan for the 1995 season.

With the start of the new season only three weeks away, well-known cricket official Mansfield Smith this week pointed out several flaws in plans recently passed by the clubs and undertaken by the Board. He said they are bound to have a negative effect on the sport.

Although it was largely the clubs who had the final say in how league cricket will be run this season, the recently-elected president of St. George's Cricket Club fingered the governing body for not showing more responsibility by taking the initiative and implementing a more progressive structure that was necessary for the sport.

Commenting specifically on the club's decision to vote against operating a Super Eight league, Smith said that this format is not going to help the development of players.

"The BCBC have simply got to take the bull by the horns and lead the way, they shouldn't have bowed to the clubs. The Board should not have put the decision in the hands of the clubs. If the governing body felt that a Super Eight league was best for our cricket, combined with a First Division, then their decision should be final,'' said Smith.

"The Board has got to learn to administrate, they are put there for this purpose and what they feel is best for the game they should go ahead and implement it.'' Like many others he felt that a Super Eight league would have the better teams playing against each other with the remaining nine subsequently being more competitive by operating in a First Division where they would be striving for promotion places.

Since it'll be the status quo with 17 teams playing in the Premier Division the stronger teams will continue to flourish in the tables with the same weaker teams seldom being competitive. That will again result in matches ending early and in some cases players losing interest when their team is out of contention.

"I firmly believe that until we go back to the Super Eight our cricket will not improve. Super Eight is a must. With it every week we have quality teams playing against each other and this only produces a higher standard of play and helps to develop our cricket, they have to be extra sharp every week,'' said Smith.

Open cricket is another format which will be played this season that Smith disapproved of. He said it will stall plans to have local players prepare for the ICC Trophy and also hamper their readiness for visiting teams like the Australians in May.

"We have the ICC Trophy in two years time and open cricket is not conducive to that type of play. All of the international cricket that we will be playing will involve limited overs, so why not implement more of that here? I just don't understand the reasoning behind it,'' claimed Smith.

"If we are going into limited overs competition abroad and against touring teams here why are we playing open cricket, we certainly are not preparing our players for the challenges that lie in limited overs play.'' The Board's decision to have Premier Division games played on consecutive days, Saturday and Sunday, in order to complete the league season by early August, also drew fire from Smith. He said that the clubs had no input in this plan.

He assumed the logic was that the Board felt too many defaults were taking place in September after teams out of the race lost interest. Playing on consecutive days was something Smith felt was too demanding on the amateur players.

"It is awfully demanding and a burden on the players, both the married and single. You have to consider the fact that these people work five days a week and asking them to play games on their weekends is asking a lot.

"Everybody has chores and other responsibilities on the weekend, it definitely is asking too much on the family man to have him away from home for most of the summer on both Saturdays and Sundays,'' confided Smith.

The logic in holding the Knockout competition after the completion of league play is something that Smith also questions, pointing out that the end would probably come early for so many teams.

"What happens to the team that gets knocked out in the first round, this means that their season is long over before everybody else,'' he said.

The absence of a decent junior league has concerned Smith for the past four years since Shell pulled out, but he is confident that with the help of Russell Richardson the Board will finally get one underway this time.

"Russell has been outspoken about this for awhile, but now that he is on the Board's junior committee I have high hopes that something positive will at last happen. He has made a lot of noise about it and now he is in the position where I feel he is committed to see something materialise,'' said Smith.

Mansfield Smith