Before someone at the Bermuda Cricket Board thinks I have it in for them, it is nothing of the sort. It is just that what I have been presented with as the cricket season ramps up into full swing is scarcely believable and has removed any chance of me even entertaining the notion of extending a successive run of first-team cricket into a 40th year.

But even as a bystander, it is difficult to stomach, or even get excited about, a league programme for which you need a programmer to work out the tables.

Knowing where your team stand in the league and knowing almost immediately how they stand to profit from a hard-earned and exciting victory are the statutory rights of any supporter; especially when you enter the business end of the season, where championship and relegation and promotion issues come to the fore.

You want to be able to come to a match knowing what your team require to move from second to first, without having to drag league regulations around to work out any number of variables.

I normally have the patience of Job, but I lost the will to live having got only halfway through sorting out the points breakdown for just the one match a few weeks back, when Somerset Bridge played Bermuda Under-17 in a First Division match that was brought forward from this weekend. How can I justify to the staff that we become codebreakers for six matches on a weekly basis, all in time to make the Monday edition. I cannot and we will not! There are not that many “Beautiful Minds” in any office.

I can understand the Board’s thinking behind trying to extract from our cricketers a more responsible approach to the game, but to coerce them into doing so with a litany of bonuses is so much more than overegging the pudding. Irresponsible players will be irresponsible. Accept it.

What a national championship requires is clarity and ease of comprehension from its administrators, not something that requires Calculus I on your CV.

Think I’m joking? No. This is far from funny. Have a look. The following is the breakdown of the bonus points on offer gleaned from the regulations on the website of the BCB (Bermuda Calculus Bureau).

* Bat maximum available overs — 1 bonus point

* 100-run partnership — 1 bonus point

* 250 runs — 1 bonus point

* 300 runs — 2 bonus points

* Bowl opposition out under 50 overs — 1 bonus point

* Bowl opposition out under 30 overs — 2 bonus points

* Bowl less than 10 wides and no-balls — 1 bonus point

* Two or more run-outs — 1 bonus point

For teams batting second, in the event that their opponents do not score 250 runs, bonus points will be calculated on the basis of runs scored per wicket lost.

* An average of 35 or more runs per wicket — 2 bonus points.

* An average of 30-34.99 runs per wicket — 1 bonus point.

* Winning teams batting second — 1 bonus point

Still reading? Thanks for that.

What confounds me is not that someone who is too clever by half thought this up, but that the cricket clubs agreed to it. Or was this pushed through while they were sleeping? In which case the average Joe would be as clued in as Sandra Bullock’s ex after months in a coma.

As a player, I would have been incandescent with rage; almost as I am now. I would have protested to my captain and to the club hierarchy until someone got the point that this was ridiculous. Then, hopefully, it would reach Board level.

If the Board really wanted to be progressive, it would introduce the Duckworth/Lewis Method, which might have produced a different winner in the Somerset Bridge-Bermuda Under-17 match. You will recall that the match was curtailed by rain seven overs into the Bridge innings, with the youngsters having to chase an actual target in 24 overs, rather than an adjusted one. Patently unfair to the side batting first.

There are some eminently sensible people involved in cricket, at Board and club level. This is not to play down their roles because there has been a degree of progress in various areas, significantly the commitment to youth cricket. But one should never ever take their eye off the greatest draw card — senior cricket. It may not be at the standard that we would all like, and sometimes those playing do not behave as we would have them, but it remains the main event and has been so through time immemorial.

As written earlier, we at The Royal Gazette are not going to run a weekly league table with the scorecards — if for no other reason than it may take more than a week to produce — but what we will do is present an alternative and eminently simpler version. Something that anyone can understand, regardless of their IQ. It will be made clear that it is not the official table — when the Board gets around to updating the official version, we will publish it — but there will also be a bonus option.

Simply put, ten points on offer; no more, no less. The bonus element would be operated on a slide basis, with teams collecting the maximum ten points for winning by more than 40 runs or by four wickets or more. Failure to do so would result in the winning team being awarded nine points and the loser one. Simple.