Bowling days lost to the weather

Winter League

After the recent block of bowling days we have lost to the weather, I wondered if the situation is getting better or worse? Are the winters getting milder or not? Or are bowlers getting less tolerant of cold weather and more likely to postpone a bowling day if the weather is too cold for too many? Saying that we have lost these days to the weather is a little misleading of course as all the days are recovered when the rearranged fixtures are played but you know what I mean.

One of the factors taken into account when we started the Winter League in 2020 was the belief that winters were indeed getting milder with global warming blamed/credited with that over the last 5 years. I am sure that there is ample evidence available somewhere to answer that question but it is not something covered in this simple exercise undertaken to while away a bit of time that became available on a fifth consecutive day of a weather-hit fixture programme.

The chart below covers each year since 2021 in looking at how many days, month-by-month, we have lost each year. I have excluded the first ever season, 2020-21, as we lost more days through COVID than we did through the weather and we never did complete the full season. Obviously as the number of divisions has increased the number of lost days has also increased. The bottom line of the table below covers that by providing a figure of the number of days lost, on average, by division.

The last column provides the number of days by month over the five years of this exercise and this shows that January is by far and away the most hit month of the winter calendar. Adding the total number of days lost in all the other months (28) over five years doesn't reach the January total of 31 lost days.

So does this table answer the three questions I posed in paragraph one of this posting?

Q1 Is the situation getting better or worse in the number of days lost annually?

Well it is over a relative short time span but that does show an increase in the number of days lost per division. Looking back we are likely to lose some more bowling days in January this year and that could take us past the first 3-year totals and last year had been the worst than any of the three previous years.

Q2 Are the winters getting milder or not?

That answer is not within the scope of this very short exercise but there is an indication that the winters over the last 5 years have become colder if you assume that the tolerance level of bowlers has remained consistent over that period.

Q3 Are bowlers getting less tolerant of cold weather?

There is no evidence here to support that view, in fact the opposite is true. Look at the number of bowlers turning out each week to bowl through the winter months. In 2020 we had 56 bowlers playing each week in the new Winter League. That has grown each year to 320 bowlers now turning out for the 80 teams each week during the current season. This is Yorkshire as well of course, so any such rumours of bowlers going soft cannot be allowed to stand up to any serious scrutiny. So I rest my case.