European Cricket League: Northern rely on familiar faces for their journey into the unknown

Northern celebrate winning the National T20 Cup

Show me the way to Barcelona (well, Malaga) – the Northern boys are taking over, and the European Cricket League waits for them.

James Cole’s National T20 champions are off to sunny-ish Spain for the fifth ever meeting of some of Europe’s top clubs.

As the first Love Lane Liverpool Competition side ever to win a national title, they are also the first to compete in the relatively new competition.

All the games will be 10 overs a side on the artificial wicket of the Costa Del Sol Cricket Club’s Cartama Oval, with boundaries about 20% shorter than Northern’s Moor Park home. 

And while the format might take a bit of getting used to, Cole is confident that his players have the talent to fly the flag.

He said: “We’re there because we won the national T20 and we want to go and test ourselves against other leading clubs in various countries. 

“It’s a new format and I’d bet a lot of the clubs we’re playing against have played a lot of this format and a lot on astroturf, so they’re probably a bit more prepared than we are. 

“But we’ve got good cricketers and most of them can adapt quickly. 

“You’re not going to change that much with the bowling or fielding, but with the batting you’re going a lot harder at the ball. 

“With smaller boundaries, you’re probably looking at not far off a normal T20 score.”

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Northern’s Group B games take place on Thursday and Friday against Austrian Cricket Tigers, Greek side Byron, Al Fatah from Cyprus and Essex League side Hornchurch, who became England’s first ECL winners last year.

After that, there is a finals day for the top four out of five on Saturday, and the winners go on to the tournament’s championship week from March 17-21, along with the other six group winners.

“We’ll be pretty disappointed if we don’t make finals day, and obviously anything can happen there,” Cole added.

There may be a few familiar faces along the way – Hornchurch have former Ormskirk and Lancashire seamer Gavin Griffiths in their ranks, while Edinburgh’s Grange, in Group C, have ex-Wallasey man Jamie Crawley at the top of the order.

Some of the sides from mainland Europe are based in areas with big Subcontinental populations and boast ex-pros from Sri Lanka, Pakistan and India.

Cole has a full-strength squad available, at least for the first stage – Aussie all-rounder Alex Vincent has returned to the club for 2025 and is with the squad heading to Spain.

Jac Kennedy and George Harris have left, but their slots in the top order will be filled by Stephen Lucas, who returns from Ainsdale for his second spell at the club, and Louis Bhabra, recently acquired from Nottinghamshire’s Papplewich and Linby.

The ECL permits clubs to use newly signed players to cover departures or absences. 

But rather than draft in players specially for the tournament, Cole is as far as possible keeping faith with the side who earned their spot in September’s national final against Oundle – and the bowlers who held their nerve in the bowl-out.

He added: “We want to reward the lads who’ve got us there, so if anyone wasn’t available then we’d look to 2nd XI lads. It just seems like the right thing to do. 

“But there will be loads of good cricketers there and we’ll have to play really well to get anything out of it.

“I don’t know what availability looks like if we win the first week, but it’s not too much of a commitment because we’re only going from Wednesday to Sunday, so a lot of the lads have managed to get time off work. 

“We’ll handle the second week if we get that far.”

from Merseyside Cricket Online https://ift.tt/952zCeJ