Club Cricket Conference

During the First World War a drive was made by the authorities to use all available space for growing foodstuffs, which led to sports fields being dug up for this purpose, either in the form of allotments or under direct cultivation by local authorities. This put several well-established cricket grounds at risk, with a real possibility that they would never be brought back to their earlier use, and also that munition workers and servicemen home on leave might be deprived of much needed relaxation on the sports field.

In 1915 a meeting of well-known club cricketers was convened by E. A. C. Thomson, a sports journalist, to discuss ways and means of combating the threat, and at this gathering the London Club Cricket Conference was formed. Later, the membership expanded beyond London and the title was changed to London and Southern Counties Club Cricket Conference and, later still, to the Club Cricket Conference, which is the one now in use, generally abbreviated to CCC.

The 1st Annual General Meeting was held in 1916, when Thomson was officially appointed as honorary Secretary; other officers were elected and the 1st Rules approved. One of the most comprehensive objects, which has been retained through the years, was "to foster amateur cricket", but at that time the words "on non-competitive lines" were added and, indeed, until as recently as 1968, the emphasis was strongly on non-competitive cricket, with permitted exceptions in the case of inter-university or college, inter-departmental, inter-hospital and other similar tournaments, as a number of cup competitions in this category were already in existence.

The Conference quickly became the biggest association of cricket clubs in the world and has remained so. It was recognized as able to speak for club cricket in the south-east and MCC, then the sole law makers for cricket, approached the CCC Council for the opinion of club cricket before introducing the larger wicket in 1931 and also obtained, through the same channel, the co-operation of a large number of clubs in using the LBW(N) Law during the two experimental years prior to its permanent adoption in 1937.

Shortly after the Second World War a movement was initiated in Sussex to gather as many associations of cricket clubs together as possible to form a national body and this was welcomed by the Conference, who became founder members of the National Club Cricket Association. This organization was supported by MCC and, when it was found that Government grants for sport would only be made to national bodies, and that MCC as a club did not qualify and that the NCCA was also ruled out as representing only club cricket, the two co-operated to form the MCC National Cricket Association, only to find that this failed on the grounds that first-class cricket was not included. And so the Cricket Council came into being, composed of the TCCB, MCC and NCA, which now dropped the prefix MCC.

Another important body that has received wholehearted support from the Conference is the Association of Cricket Umpires, founded in 1953. Prior to this the Conference had done what it could to improve the standard of club umpiring, which was not generally high, but this only amounted to one or two lectures each year given by first-class umpires and it could not be pretended that this was very effective; whereas the training courses carried over 8 evenings in various parts of the country every year by the ACU are certainly more so. The ACU, which has become international in scope, now has some 4,000 members in this country alone.

The CCC has also arranged regular tours abroad, and for a time a CCC side often played the tourists in a first-class fixture.

The basis of Conference work remains service in any form for the benefit of club cricket. Every year the Handbook is issued, containing, inter alia, details of principal officers and grounds, with addresses and telephone numbers, of all the 1,250 clubs. The Emergency Fixture Bureau is another invaluable service and in 2005 over 3000 fixtures were arranged.
FLJ Dolman
Adapted from Barclays World of Cricket (Collins 1980)