THE Drakes Huddersfield Cricket League looks all set to get much bigger.
Having already been given the green light to expand the League, the Executive have now concluded a series of consultations with a number of potential new members, and have scheduled a special general meeting to vote on accepting FOUR new clubs for the start of next season.
That will take the total number of Drakes League members to 34 – should they all be accepted by the current membership – and that will be highest number of clubs the Huddersfield League have ever boasted.
One of the prospective newcomers is the Mirfield-based Central Yorkshire League side Moorlands, who were formerly Dewsbury Moorlands when they played in the Huddersfield Central League a number of years ago.
The other three clubs are all from the arrowselfdrive Huddersfield Central League with Denby and Almondbury Wesleyans from the Premier Section and Denby Dale from Section B.
The purpose behind the League’s decision to expand relates to complaints from clubs in theConference and Championship who were dissatisfied with playing each other on at least three occasions, sometimes four and even five times during the season.
Because there are only eight clubs in the Conference (Division three in real money) and in the Championship (Division II), it means everyone plays each other three times in the League, which is an obvious imbalance.
On top of which some teams have been drawn against each other in the Romida Sykes Cup, or the Oddfellows Cup and then pitched in the same section of the Twenty/20 competition.
“We asked the clubs for permission to expand the League in response to the complaints we received with regards to the composition of the League,” said chairman Trevor Atkinson.
“We have both visited and held discussions with clubs interested in joining the Drakes League in 2013, and we are hoping our member clubs will rubber-stamp our recommendations at the special meeting. If our recommendations are accepted, the four new clubs will all go straight into the Cedar Court Conference for the 2013 season, bringing that section up to 12 clubs, while retaining 14 in the Premiership and eight in the Frank Platt Championship.
“That will very quickly give us a better balance in the Conference, and we will continue to work towards getting a similar balance in the Championship.”
One fear for current Drakes League members and their supporters is that the Executive do not pursue new clubs simply in order to boost the numbers, irrespective of the facilities and infrastructure.
In 2002, former Executive Secretary Paul Whiteley put forward a plan to ensure every ground in the League conformed to a certain standard, which was expected of every club in what is acknowledged as one of Yorkshire’s senior leagues.
As well as a minimum standard requirement, there were further expectations placed on current and potential top-flight clubs – ‘Premiership Clubs, Premier Conditions’ – such as each club having adequate covers, sight screens, separate changing facilities for umpires, among others things.
Indeed, the League have more recently appointed a Ground and Facilities Coordinator in Roger Peaker, whose job is to constantly review, recommend and update the League as to what is happening at each club.
Up until 1987, when Kexborough and Skelmanthorpe were the first two clubs to join the Drakes League since Hall Bower in, 1940, the Huddersfield District League, as it used to be known, had operated with just 24 clubs, 12 in Section A and 12 in Section B.
Various new clubs joined (and left), while there was an experiment allowing some Second teams to play alongside first teams, until 2001 when the League underwent a major new re-structuring with the introduction of the Premiership and the Cedar Court and Frank Platt Conferences.
At that time, each club in the Conferences played each other twice, plus one game against a team in the opposite Conference, which again was a far from satisfactory arrangement.
But then for the 2010 season the League was re-formatted to give a Premiership and two Conferences based on where the clubs had finished the previous season, thereby ensuring a genuine pyramid-style three-division structure.
The majority of clubs have fully embraced the three-division format, and now in its third season, those clubs in the Conferences have more or less found their true position in the League.
However, there are a number of concerns with regards to expanding the League, even to the immediate proposal of 34.
One that immediately springs to mind has to be the increased number of umpires that will be required to accommodate so many new clubs, although Atkinson admitted that one of the four potential newcomers were prepared to bring up to five umpires with them.
Another worry would be as to how the League would propose to run the Sykes Cup and Paddock Shield with 34 teams in each of the knockout competitions.
That would require either four teams playing a preliminary round, or alternatively, picking out two first round winners to compete in an intermediate round!
There also seems to be scant regard as to the welfare of the Central League, who are being slowly and inexorably stripped of their ‘prime assets.’
For those against expansion, however, it is worth noting that of the 14 clubs in this season’s Premiership, no fewer than six of them are ‘new acquisitions.’
