Two-tier CLL plan rejected

Norden's attempt to change the Lake Garage CLL into a two-division league in 2010 has been defeated.

A special meeting of CLL delegates voted to reject two proposals which would have seen this season’s top eight teams go into a Premier League and the bottom eight play in a second section known as The Championship.

Under Norden’s proposals, clubs in each section would have played each other twice and faced teams from the other division once to produce 22 league matches.

This would have freed up weekends and provided spare dates for cancelled Twenty20 and Wood Cup ties.

Delegates voted 12-3 and 10-5 against the changes. Monton and Weaste did not have a representative at the meeting.

Norden spokesman Greg Tattersall said the proposals were intended to provide more competitive league matches and also to move Twenty20 Competition games to weekends, instead of Friday nights, when it would be easier for clubs to field their best teams.

He also said Crompton had stated they would not be competing in next year’s Twenty20 Competition under the current Friday-night format.

But CLL secretary Alan Wright countered: “The League’s Management Committee is there for the benefit of all the teams in the league and it is, in their view, totally unfair to base these divisions on last season’s standings.

“Had they known about this they might have made an extra effort to get into the top eight.”


Offendingclubs were fined a total of £2,420 in 2009 - a hefty increase of £900 on the previous year - but they have not been hasty in coughing up.

The annual meeting of the CLL, which followed the special meeting, heard that eight clubs still owed £1,230 and they were urged to pay up as soon as possible.


Royton's bid to introduce a free hit following no-balls in the John Willie Lees Wood Cup was rejected.

Twenty20 matches use the free-hit rule, but CLL delegates voted 8-7 to leave the no-ball situation unchanged.


Rain-affected matches in this year’s programme were often decided by a Duckworth-Lewis style method of calculation.

But a move to implement the complete D/L method was defeated when delegates voted to retain the current, more simple means of calculating which team comes out on top.

League chairman Neville Fletcher, who is also the Umpires Secretary for the CLL, said: “It is expecting a lot of umpires to take that on board.

“Realistically, we would need someone at each club with a laptop to work it out.”

Mr Fletcher retained his two posts in the CLL, while delegates also voted for Alan Wright to remain as secretary, John Cleary as president and Derek Ashford as auditor.