ADCA 2024-25: A-grade competition changes to full coloured kits, white ball in “exciting move” for cricket

The Albany and Districts Cricket Association A-grade competition will play with full-coloured kits and a white ball across all matches this season as they look to move away from “boring” red-ball cricket. Teams across all grades have been wearing their coloured team shirts and playing with a red ball in recent seasons, but the ADCA has chosen to adopt full colours and a white ball in the top grade in a move to grow the game in the region. It’s the first major move from the ADCA’s new president Ryan Tindale who took over the reins from former president Ryan Kinear in July. Tindale said the change had been in the pipeline for three years and would add to the spectacle of short-format cricket while aligning with a new direction from the WA Country Cricket Board. “It’s been building for about three years, with a number of clubs going coloured shirts and white pants, and then the T20s going full coloured kits last year,” he said. “It just builds that extra level of what we want to get out of our association, especially with the country (week) also going full-coloured kit as well.” A long-time servant on junior committees, Tindale hoped the colourful new look across A-grade cricket would help attract juniors to the game with the Friday night T20 competition a major drawcard this season. “The juniors are our lifeblood,” he said. “We’re not attracting older people to the game, so we actually need to attract them at a grassroots level and pull them through that way. “We’re trying to make the T20 comp on a Friday night more attractive, to get more people down, more people watching, getting more kids to hang around to watch it as well, under lights and with full coloured kits.” The ADCA has ambitions to introduce the junior grades into full coloured kits in the future. “I spoke when I was in charge of the juniors a number of years ago, about trying to get the kids into colour kits and now the 17s have coloured shirts and in future years will be full coloured kits,” Tindale said. “We’re trying to attach the under-14s to our club style cricket and get them into colours as well.” Both B-grade and C-grade will continue using a red ball and wearing white pants with a coloured top this season. The new ADCA season will start on October 19 but fixtures are yet to be confirmed.