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The players from the batting side umpired when I played second XI cricket.
Application of the rules was sporadic at times.
Relax and remember you’re all there to enjoy it. Advise rather than enforce - if a player oversteps on their delivery, for example, they won’t learn much from conceding a no ball the first couple of times.
Also - do you really need to be marking every dot ball in the scorebook for u11 cricket? I’d say probably not.
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Rules will be applied gently but consistently hopefully, we (our club and set of parents at least) want the girls to have fun rather than have any kind of "win at all costs" mentality, although we've heard that some of the other teams in the league are a bit more ruthless.
Hopefully the majority of teams will agree to be a bit more lenient at first, the suggestion was to warn them of the first no ball (unless it's huge or and results in a really unplayable ball) and guide them in from there. It helps that wides and no-balls don't need to be re-bowled, it's a straight 6 balls from each over regardless.
(This is partly the concern for me over scoring and umpiring, remembering that things aren't quite the same as "normal" cricket. It's "pairs" cricket so each pair is in for 2 overs and can't be out, each wicket just costs the team -5 runs.)
We'll be doing the scoring on paper first, and if we don't balls that up then I can transfer it to the app after the game(s). Or, hopefully, we'll have someone doing paper scoring and someone else plugging it into the app at the same time.
Identification of the players is going to be the big problem at first, most parents don't know any of the other kids at all. Hopefully none of the parents try and drop-off and pick them up later.
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The dot balls are the easy ones! I scored an under 8 match on Saturday. Favourite entry on the score card was a wide (2 runs) on which they than ran 2 more, then a poor throw meant they tried to scamper two over throws, but the none striker was run out (-5). Net total for the ball - 0 but not a dot.
Greenbank
Scrabble
Daughter starting to play in the local "Smash it" U11 girls league this weekend.
The parents have to do all of the various jobs and I'm really hoping I don't get thrown straight into the deep end either umpiring or scoring (I've just had an hour long intro session into the Play Cricket scoring app - ugh).
Watching cricket, and playing recreationally/occasionally at school thousands of years ago, is all a bit different to trying to keep an eye on things during a real game, even if it is a bunch of U11's.
If I do end up being the best option for an umpire it'll be chaotic to say the least.