Over the past couple of months several focus groups have been established to consider different aspects of the playing of cricket in Leinster. It is hoped that the outcomes from these focus groups will feed into the discussions to take place on the Club Day [5th November] and in turn into the updating and revision of the Cricket Leinster Strategy for the development of the sport in the province.

Over the next few weeks we will provide some additional information and related commentary on how the sport has changed [or not] over the past seven years. Today we look at the participation in senior club cricket [Open Competitions] from 2011 to the present day.

The first thing to say is that the numbers playing club cricket are broadly the same in 2017 as they were in 2011. There has been some small fluctuation in the figures over this period - but the promise from an increase in numbers from 2011 - 2013 has not been maintained.

Further the numbers from 2011 need to be adjusted upwards to reflect players whose name was not known [pre-registration]. Basically we don’t know how often the same unknown player turned out. The table below contains the core figure of registered / known players and the high / low range for actual players taking into account unknowns. 

In that period 12 new clubs have been formed and seven have folded [including three that did both]. The total number of clubs [in the league] has gone up for 29 to 41 [some clubs in the early years only had cup teams]. The number of teams has risen from 110 [2011] to a high of 128 [2015] to 123 today. But this last figure does not include Development Teams that some clubs entered instead of an OC league team.

The breakdown of players [registered] per club is set out in the table below*.

*Clubs [cup teams only] with one team in a couple of cases did not register any players or fewer than 11. In these cases the non-registered figures are included up to 11. Trinity players [and a few others] may have played for more than one team in a year so the aggregate figures differ from the table above.

One of the trends that one might try to identify from the above figures is where the growth in players is taking place. If one distinguishes in the first instance between established v new clubs [the latter being any club without a team in 2011] we see that while the total growth in numbers of registered players between the two years is 37, the numbers playing for new clubs is 285. In overall terms this represents a shift in numbers in established clubs relative to new clubs of 248.

Perhaps a more interesting breakdown is the proportion of registered players in 2011 and 2017 based on a rough geographic spread - Fingal [including Malahide], Leinster, Dublin City [including Phoenix, Civil Service, Dundrum and Clontarf] and an outer ring of clubs in mainly new areas. 

While there is nothing surprising in the growth in numbers of players from clubs in what loosely might be called the outer circle in Dublin, the shift in playing strength is confirmed in the numbers of registered players.