There are some things which are more important than hitting a ball around a park on any given Saturday, such as community safety, welfare concerns and a view to the larger picture.<\/p>\n
The Wangaratta and District Cricket Association made the call to cancel the weekend\u2019s cricket fixtures in a post publicised on early Friday afternoon, citing excessive risk factors and variables arising from the ongoing bushfires raging across the area.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe WDCA has made the call to cancel this weekend\u2019s round of cricket on Saturday, 10 January,\u201d the post reads.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are too many risk factors and variables in play. <\/p>\n
\u201cCommunity safety is our top priority. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe will cancel the round as opposed to rescheduling due to the short notice of the change and player availability. <\/p>\n
\u201cPlease look after yourself and others.\u201d<\/p>\n
The weekend would\u2019ve seen the resumption of the local A grade, A reserve, B grade and C grade senior cricket competitions, following the Christmas and new year break.<\/p>\n
The WDCA executive was monitoring conditions over the week in the lead-up, in particular the consecutive days in excess of 40 degrees.<\/p>\n
WDCA president James Ladd said there had been consistent and reliable communication with clubs, particularly those situated closer to the fire front.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was kind of an odd one, because it wasn\u2019t going to be hot on the Saturday, but everybody felt it was the best way to go,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cDelatite had already contacted us and said they weren\u2019t able to field a playing team that weekend, so we were already in the process of postponing those games and working that part out.<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring the week, we talked about it as an executive, and informed the clubs the day before to say that on the Friday we\u2019d make a decision by 12pm.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs the weather and the situation kept going on with the fires, we just decided that it\u2019d be better off if everyone had the ability to focus on the people they knew in those areas, helping people and not having any anxiety about having to travel or move around for cricket.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople have felt anxiety around it, so we thought it was the best option.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe main thing is that the community is safe, that\u2019s the main thing we\u2019re focused on.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was very well received by all the clubs.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the Saturday competition was cancelled, Sunday\u2019s Junior Country Week was allowed to proceed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have gone ahead and continued with Junior Country Week which started on Sunday in association with Cricket Albury Wodonga,\u201d Ladd said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been in discussion with them all week with where it\u2019s sitting and how comfortable we are \u2013 we think with the cooler temperatures we\u2019re okay to go ahead with that.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re monitoring conditions as we go.\u201d<\/p>\n
Currently, the league plans for the season to resume on Saturday, 17 January, with both the senior and junior grades slated to get back on the park, subject to the ever-changing situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s such a versatile situation,\u201d Ladd said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe other thing we\u2019ve got to consider is are there parts of the town being used for evacuation points and things like that.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt this point, I\u2019d say no, we\u2019re not going to cancel next week, but who knows what\u2019s going to happen with the fires and all of that<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s nothing to say it\u2019s not going ahead – we\u2019ll go off the advice of clubs and how they reach out to us, we\u2019ve got strong communication channels with that, so we can go from there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are some things which are more important than hitting a ball around a park on any given…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":405836,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-405835","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cricket","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405835\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/405836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}