GDTTL

Congratulations to Jane Geddes, Dan Broad and Mark Foxwell who all qualified as County Level Umpires after taking the practical part of the examination at the Kent Senior Closed Championships on Sunday. Along with Andy Larner, there are now four County Level Umpires in the Gravesend League, but there is still a shortage of umpires in Kent. If anyone is interested in becoming an umpire, contact the Kent Umpire's Secretary David Cue for more information.

We are now ready to implement a points based ratings system! This will enable you to gauge how well you are playing compared to others and should prove to be more accurate than averages (which we will still be running) as the rating points will be carried on to each season. Basically, each player has a certain amount of rating points and after each fixture you will either gain or lose points based on how well you play against your opponents. If you beat a player with a high rating, you will gain more points than beating a player with a low rating and conversely you will lose fewer points if you lose to a player with a high rating as opposed to a lower rating.

There are quite a few variables to the system and therefore the rest of the current season will be used to test the variables and adjustments may be necessary before next season. I am basing everyone's initial rating on their averages at the end of 2008 so that players in the Premier Division have ratings ranging from 2000 to 2500, Division One 1500 to 2000 and Division Two 1000 to 1500. Another variable is the maximum amount of points that you could win or lose in a single match which will be set at 32 points. The last variable is the points difference between two players which would mean the full 32 points are won or lost which is set to a 720 point difference.