Putting the water into Waterlooville – the sorry statistics for Southern League and Hampshire League cricketers in a soggy 2021

This was the scene at Waterlooville’s Rowlands Avenue pitch last Saturday morning following the latest batch of wet weather to wreak havoc with the Southern Premier League and Hampshire League fixture lists.

A dismal case of a lot of water at Waterlooville.

Though the rain had relented by late morning, there was no way Ville’s scheduled SPL Division 2 game would meet anything other than a watery grave.

It was a miserable vista sadly repeated elsewhere, with 10 other SPL games - out of a 20-strong programme of games - to be cancelled.

Three matches did start, only to be abandoned once further rain had set in, with only six actually being completed.

Remarkably, 88 games - out of a scheduled 300 across the four SPL divisions - have now been cancelled or abandoned due to rain in the saturated 2021 season.

In all, that works out at almost a third of games - 29.3 per cent - falling foul of the elements.

In the top flight and Division 1, there have been 21 games cancelled or abandoned (28 per cent) with 54 played.

The figure is slightly lower in Waterlooville’s division, where 19 games have met a watery end (25 per cent).

But it’s the Division 3 clubs that have been hardest hit by the rain Gods.

Out of a scheduled 75 games, 28 (37 per cent) have been cancelled or abandoned and only 47 played.

Three SPL clubs have lost almost half of their 15 league games - Havant, Portsmouth & Southsea and Calmore Sports seeing seven matches called off or abandoned.

The rain caused more postponements on Sunday, washing out Portsmouth’s home SPL T20 Cup tie with South Wilts. Due to start at 11am, the winners had been due to pay their quarter-final at Havant later that day.

Of course, rain in the summer months in England is hardly a new concept. Our weather has been the butt of jokes for as long as anyone can remember. But the facts bear out that local cricketers have been far harder hit than ever in 2021 - and that after their 2020 season didn’t start until mid-July, compared to mid-April, due to the pandemic and first national lockdown.

In 2019, the last ‘normal’ Southern Premier League campaign, only 39 games were cancelled or abandoned out of 360 - just 10.8 per cent.

Twelve months earlier, only 29 - eight per cent - had been lost in the entire 2018 campaign. There was just one cancellation in Division 3 that summer compared to 28 this year.

The previous couple of years had been wetter - there were 51 games off in 2017 and 76 meeting a watery grave in 2016.

However, if there’s one club who deserves sympathy more than anyone else, it’s Fareham & Crofton.

They have amazingly managed to complete just FOUR of their 13 scheduled Hampshire League County Division 1 fixtures.

Seven have been cancelled and two more abandoned, including their weekend encounter with Old Basing at Bath Lane. That unprecedented run of inaction has left them playing a maximum of seven league games in May, June, July and August - and that’s if the rains stay away for the final three weeks!

Not all of their cancellations, though, have been weather-related - they only lost two fixtures due to opponents’ citing positive Covid-19 test results among their squad.

Fareham have only completed one fixture since mid-June, and that was over in next-to-no-time after they rolled Winton out for 23 and won by 10 wickets.

Of their 11 players, only four had any meaningful action - just two bowled (Ben White and Connor Clark) and only two batted (Dan Wimble and Tom Kent).

Across the top flight of the Hampshire League, 40 matches have fallen to the weather - compared with only 71 being played, meaning more than half have been lost to rain.

Can anyone remember, in living memory, a wetter local cricket season?