Sarah Pollard: Inspiring current and future cricket scorers

Chatting to Sarah Pollard on a Zoom call, the story of Yorkshire’s County Scoring Officer is one of a love of maths but also sharing knowledge with others.

In both her day job as a secondary school maths teacher and outside of that as a Level 3 cricket scorer (that’s Advanced to you and I), number crunching comes easily.

Her prowess with dot balls to Duckworth Lewis Stern means Sarah scores Northern Diamonds matches and is sufficiently qualified to officiate internationals.

The story begins in club cricket, with a cricket-mad family and starting to score at a young age.

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“As an eight-year-old child, I had to go along to all of the cricket…I just got used to watching my mum scoring in a book. I was quite a studious person when I was younger, quite advanced for my age so I picked up stuff from her.”

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That curiosity in watching her mum scoring at Bradshaw Cricket Club in the Halifax Cricket League led to a stint doing the book for their juniors when her dad became a manager of the junior side.

When her dad moved to a mile down the road to play at Illingworth St. Mary’s Cricket Club, who were playing in the Aire-Wharfe League at the time, Sarah became their scorer.

Courses and qualifications followed and by 2014, she’d qualified as a Level 3 scorer and tutor.

As scorers move up the ECB pathway, they tend to want to officiate at a higher standard of cricket and Sarah followed suit when an opportunity presented itself.

Watching a family friend at a Yorkshire U13 game, no scorer turned up – so she volunteered.

County-age group duties lasted for a few years before taking over from Howard Clayton as Yorkshire’s 2nd XI scorer.

Juggling the many demands of teaching, midweek scoring became too much of an ask but there has been weekend representation for Yorkshire Academy (following on from Harold Galley) and also a year at North Marine Road for Scarborough.

Yorkshire County Scoring Officer

Alongside scoring matches herself, Sarah is County Scorer Officer which means she is heavily involved in organising all of the training, with a tutor group of six across the region delivering those sessions.

It encompasses education (courses), development (working with leagues) and appointments (allocating matches for umpires).

On the courses side of things, the ECB (delivered locally by the Yorkshire Cricket Board) offers these: Introductory Course, Basic Scoring (Online), Club Scorer, Levels 1-3 plus additional modules such as linear and electronic scoring modules.

Sarah believes that there’s much more of a clear path for ambitious scorers to learn and develop than when she began. My observation would also be that there are several options for beginners to take their first steps.

So, how are numbers currently?

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“We’re always struggling for scorers but we’re better than we used to be. You’ve still got teams in Division 6 or 7 of Yorkshire Premier League North, let’s say, that struggle for a scorer week in, week out. But, quite a lot of teams in the higher-up divisions are doing really well for scorers.”

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One thing they’re doing in Yorkshire that has been popular is scoring roadshows around leagues to offer taster sessions: A grasp of the basic laws and scoring on app or laptop.

It’s not a formal qualification but as Sarah puts it, enough to muddle through. After all, some are put off by the time commitment for any courses, whether umpiring, scoring or coaching.

Making them as convenient and accessible as possible for newbies to those aspiring to score Test matches will reap rewards for years.

Choice of scoring technology

We talk tech for a while as you can score a cricket match in a variety of ways from old-school paper book (doesn’t go offline but you need sharp pencils) to the Play Cricket Scorer Pro software for laptops favoured by the professional game and premier leagues.

There’s also the Play Cricket Scorer app for phone or tablet that has a pleasing simplicity to it but far less of the detail of PCS Pro.

Being so user-friendly, the app has become popular with younger scorers, junior cricketers and parents thrust into action at short notice to help out.

Scoring courses in 2024

The good news is that there have been lots over winter with more inked in for 2024. The will is there to help out clubs as much as possible with leagues also looking to be more proactive.

Here’s the YCB website with the latest scoring courses and I recommend checking out the Yorkshire Scorers Facebook page for news and updates too.

Kudos to scorers

I don’t think scorers always get the credit they deserve given their importance (along with players, umpires and everyone else). It’s vital to champion cricket scorers in recreational cricket because that will attract more volunteers into the game to give it a go.

I was surprised to learn from Sarah that the only league she knew of that recognised scorers in their annual awards was the Aire-Wharfe Cricket League.

(Before I get buried in disgruntled emails, there may be more out there but the point is perhaps: Why not every league?). I believe that the Yorkshire Cricket Southern Premier League have a young scorers award which is a good idea.

DBS and safeguarding controversy

I was astonished, as are many, to learn that DBS checks are no longer required of cricket scorers after the ECB changed its requirements for this year. That is believed to have happened after scoring was deemed to not be within ‘Regulatory Activity’ guidelines.

While a DBS check is no guarantee of anything, the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) is a reassurance and a requirement in many areas of recreational sport involving children or vulnerable adults.

It raises the possibility of an adult scorer being with an under 18 scorer in an enclosed scorebox unsupervised, without any background checks having been done on the adult.

The advice after this bombshell is for clubs to do a number of things.

Scorers over the age of 16 are being asked to complete two ECB Safeguarding e-learning modules: Safeguarding for Specialist Roles & Safeguarding to Umpires and Scorers.

While the removal of DBS checks for scorers has shocked many, it gives clubs and the game itself pause to consider what else can be done.

Sarah told me: “I do think that clubs have relied on scorers having a DBS to ‘tick the box’ on safeguarding duties so as much as I don’t like the DBS disappearing, I do think it is a prime opportunity for clubs to re-evaluate their attitudes towards safeguarding.”

She added: “Safeguarding is everybody’s responsibility so regardless of our feelings on the ECB’s decision around DBS, we need to act to protect our scorers.”

Here in Yorkshire, the advice is to encourage scorers to be outside and visible wherever possible. If the weather or scoring set-up doesn’t allow that, it is advised that a second adult accompanies the scorers.

This development is, in my own view, a staggering backward step. It has caught many by surprise and those who are involved in recreational cricket are attempting to make the best of a bad decision.

All of this actually emerged days after my hour of scoring chat with Sarah who issued a clarion call for leagues to get in touch, book training and encourage more promotion of scoring.

Demand from volunteers to become cricket scorers looks promising, judging by the take-up with YCB courses and here are those scoring courses for everyone (in Yorkshire) if you’re tempted or know someone who might be.