TENBURY CC’s Aaron Morris lamented his side’s misfortune in Saturday’s six-wicket defeat at Claverley in Division Four of the Worcestershire County League.

But the Tenbury vice captain says, beyond ill luck, there is a real issue to be looked at by league officials who have stuck to the 50 overs per side club competition despite the rise of popular shorter formats of the game.

“Something’s got to change,” said Morris, “if it was 40 overs [per side] it wouldn’t be so bad, but 50 overs is just too long.”

Morris, who has had a newborn to care for this season, has been restricted to just three appearances despite his captaincy duties, and says the club game needs to better reflect modern lifestyles.

“We haven’t had one game this year when we’ve had our strongest team out,” said the Tenbury player. “If it was 30 overs per side, win or lose, there’d be a lot more interest. There’s a lot of clubs that used to have two or three sides that only have one nowadays, but the league doesn’t seem to understand that.

“The problem is, the people on the Worcestershire committee are all older guys who played when 50 overs was the only option, but there’s so many shorter formats available now.”

On Saturday, Tenbury skipper Rob Farrar won the toss and opted to bat but, as Morris explained, the tactic of promoting the captain up the order to try and tie up Claverley’s opening bowlers at one end didn’t go to plan.

“He usually bats at nine or ten so we chucked him in but they have a decent bowling attack and we lost him in the second over after about 10 balls!” said the vice captain, who claimed three of his side’s four wickets on Saturday.

Kier Sellars, Marcus Griffiths and Tom Pugh offered some resistance with scores above 20, but luck deserted the visitors, who lost three batsman playing on as they posted 156 all out.

And it was the same story during Claverley’s reply, as an lbw shout by wicketkeeper Dave Hunt went unheeded early on and the home side’s opener Rupert Grainger made the most of his reprieve to top score with 51 as the hosts knocked off the required runs to finish on 157-4.

There appears little prospect of a let-up for Tenbury either, as they host league leaders Halesowen thirds on Saturday.

There was success, however, for Tenbury’s 2nds, who piled up 205 all out at home to Claverley on Saturday in the Division Four 2nd XI competition before bowling out the league leaders for 130 in just 35.2 overs.

Jonathan Pearson starred for Tenbury with bat and ball as he top-scored with a half century batting halfway down the order and then claimed three wickets for 16 runs in four overs.