Published: Thursday, 25th September, 2008 9:30am

Dunfermline Knights on crusade to change points system

by Simon Harris

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DUNFERMLINE Knights Cricket Club are pressing for a rules rethink at a meeting of the Scottish National Cricket League"s club forum in Stirling next month.

McKane Park chiefs are unhappy with the current system of awarding teams two points if the weather forces a match to be abandoned.

Dunfermline say that, effectively, last season"s SNCL division 2 champions Stoneywood-Dyce only won the title because they had fewest matches fall victim to the weather.

Stoneywood won the league despite losing four times during the season. Dunfermline, who were also promoted after finishing second and winning a play-off, lost just once.

Even if they had won all their matches, they wouldn"t have finished champions because more of their games were called off.

The two points they were awarded for each of these games wasn"t enough to overhaul Stoneywood, despite Dunfermline having a superior record in matches played.

'We only lost five points on the pitch last season,' club stalwart Tom Gibson explained.

'Even if we had won the one game we lost – against Dumfries – and had a perfect record, if you add five points to our total we would still have finished second which is a nonsense.

'Corstorphine, who were just behind us, should have finished second.'

However, Gibson doesn"t hold out much hope of the rules being altered.

'Last season they brought in a new system of three points being awarded for matches that were rained off but when we discussed it at the forum last year, the clubs didn"t really like the system and voted against it,' he claimed.

'But instead of coming up with something different they cut the points from three to two.

'What we also proposed at the forum last year was to make provision for all the games rained off to be played.

'I suggested four Sundays, one in May, June, July and August and two weekends in September when this could be done.

"That way you would be almost certain of being able to complete the programme. The majority of clubs agreed but when the rules came out there was no mention.

'I"m afraid I haven"t got much faith in them.'

Gibson also said that despite appealing against Corstorphine"s controversial home match switch late last season, he was still waiting to hear from Cricket Scotland.

'We should go back to three points for a match being rained off and bring in a percentage system where the number of points won is multiplied by the winning percentage. That would be quite fair.'

No-one from the sport"s governing body, Cricket Scotland, was available to comment.