By Denis Musali
Uganda Cricket Association confirmed the schedule of the 2019 season as well as some new rules to guide clubs ahead of a very busy year. The Uganda Cricket board decided that for the 2019 season no club will be allowed to field more than three national team players in their match day XI. Clubs are allowed to have more than three players in their team squads for the season but can only field three on match day.
This particular rule will affect clubs in the top flight especially two time league champions Aziz Damani who have over eight players on their roaster. Mr Siva Koti team manager of Aziz Damani was very livid at the decision and said
We are not happy with the timing of the decision, there are less than 10 days left to the starts of the season which makes it impossible for us to change our team. We signed players as early June last year and even paid all of them their sign on fees. Unless the association is willing to pay us our money back we shall challenge the decision legally.
KICC was other team affected by the same owing to fact that they have five national team players on their cards. However, KICC captain Hanumant Katkar who is also a board member did not protest the new development and said they will find a way to live within the rules.
The board made a decision based on the fact national team players need to be evenly distributed amongst the local clubs to allow them to compete against each other regulary.
The 2019 season will kick off with the T20 format to allow national team players to prepare for the World Cup qualifiers due in Kampala in May. The 50 over league will be played immediately after the qualifiers in May and then close the season with an improved T20 tournament.
There are eight clubs in Div 1 and Div 2 with the clubs seperated into two groups, teams will play two T20 games per day with the top two sides in each group going to compete in the semi finals and then finals.
Div 3 which only has six teams will play a round bin format with the top team walking away as champions.
The season will officially start on Feb 16th with games played both on Saturday and Sunday.