Liverpool Cricket Competition

 

Founder members of the Liverpool Cricket Competition, Northern Cricket Club has been at the forefront of Merseyside cricket since 1859.

Today, the Liverpool (and District) Cricket Competition is an ECB Premier League, so is the major club cricket league in Merseyside and Lancashire, and the highest level of cricket Liverpool and the north west offer.

Cricket in Liverpool is generally traced back to a Cricket Society established in 1807 around the Edge Hill area of Liverpool. Initially a club for the affluent gentlemen of the city, Mosslake Field Cricket Society is claimed by Liverpool Cricket Club to be its forerunner. By the time of the foundation of Northern Cricket Club in 1859, the Liverpool Cricket Club was established in its own right, with fixtures against local clubs that included New Brighton and Southport, also founded at that time. Birkenhead Park and Bootle had come into existence a few years earlier, and by 1865 Formby, Wallasey, Huyton and Sefton had also appeared.

 

  
  Cricket Liverpool 1914, the Northern team   The Liverpool Cricket Competition was initially the brainchild of a local Liverpool newspaper, who began publishing a weekly table in 1892 that included Northern Cricket Club along with Birkenhead Park, Bootle, Formby, Huyton, Liverpool, New Brighton, Ormskirk, Oxton, Rock Ferry and Sefton.  
 

Northern team (above) 1914 and (below) 1951

  
  Cricket Liverpool 1951, the Northern team   Southport joined in 1919, along with Hightown, while Wallasey replaced Rock Ferry. Neston, Boughton Hall and Preston were also added, but it was only in 1949 that the Liverpool Cricket Competition became official, and fixtures between all clubs were formalised. St.Helens Recs replaced Preston in 1953, but the Liverpool Cricket Competition remained otherwise unaltered until 1996.  

 

  In recent years, the Liverpool Cricket Competition has changed radically, first with an expansion that introduced clubs from further afield in Lancashire and North Wales. In 1999 a two-division structure was introduced, and in 2000 the top 1st.XI division was awarded ECB Premier League status. From the end of the 2004 cricket season, promotion from and relegation to the Merseyside Alliance feeder league was introduced, but was then curtailed from the start of the 2010 cricket season. At this time, additional clubs from the Alliance were invited to join, to form a new three-division Liverpool Cricket Competition structure.

2nd.XIs play in a three-division structure that mirrors the 1st.XIs. There is also a two-division structure for Saturday 3rd.XIs and below, with another structure for those clubs preferring to play 3rd.XI cricket on Sundays. In Northern's case we field 3rd, 4th and 5th teams in the Saturday league.