England: Yorkshire deal with Premier bouncer (20 Feb 1998)

20 February 1998

Yorkshire deal with Premier bouncer

By Andrew Collomosse

YORKSHIRE Cricket Board officials will this weekend outline plans to set up a Premier League, playing two-day cricket, in 1999.

Representatives from 18 clubs are expected to attend a meeting at Headingley to hear the county's blueprint for a 12-club league to meet guidelines set out by the England and Wales Cricket Board.

It remains to be seen how many of the 18 will, in the end, join the proposed league, although Yorkshire chief executive Chris Hassall says: "I am confident we will have enough support. And we would be prepared to set up a Premier League in 1999 with as few as eight clubs playing 14 two-day games."

Plans to convert the Yorkshire League to premier status have been scuppered by opposition from a majority, who are also likely to vote out moves to introduce limited two-day cricket this year.

However, four of the 14 Yorkshire League clubs - Harrogate, York, Scarborough and the Yorkshire Academy - are in favour of a Premier League and there is talk of Bradford and Huddersfield League clubs being among the Headingley 18.

Across the Pennines, though, opposition among major leagues to the ECB proposals is undiluted.

A year ago, the Lancashire Cricket Board were confident they would lead the Premier League revolution - but that was before they discovered that ECB directives count for nought when more than a century of league cricket tradition is at stake.

The major Lancashire leagues closed the door on the premier pipedream, instead setting up their own Confederation of Lancashire Cricket Leagues to prepare for the new millennium.

The two sides seem as far apart as ever, although Jim Kenyon, chairman of the LCB's premier league sub-committee, insists: "We can work something out. Lancashire has so many outstanding leagues, clubs and players that we should lead the way."

In the North-East, Durham and Northumberland intend combining to set up a Premier League featuring leading clubs from the two counties. Durham CCC director Bob Jackson is hopeful a blueprint will be drawn up next month for a 12-club league to start in the year 2000.

"If it was just a case of finding 12 suitable clubs there would be no problem at all," says Jackson. "Our difficulty has been setting up a feeder system into that league."

Nowhere has the concept of Premier League cricket been more enthusiastically embraced than Cheshire, whose advance planning should ensure a seven-tier pyramid system will be up and running in 1999. Four clubs - Birkenhead Park, Chester Boughton Hall, Oxton and Neston - will join the Cheshire County League from the Liverpool Competition.

Plans for a pyramid system are in place in Cumbria, too, involving clubs from the North Lancashire, Cumbria, Westmoreland and Eden Valley leagues although Dave Morewood, secretary of the Cumbria League, agrees there is opposition.

"That is inevitable," he says, "when you bear in mind that some clubs have been playing in the same league for over 100 years. Traditions die hard. But provided there is a clear route to the Premier League for every club with genuine ambitions, there seems to be a general acceptance that this is the way forward for league cricket."

Try telling them that in Lancashire.

Source :: Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk)