Lancashire League Handbook 2025

LCL Handbook 2025 20 SECRETARY’S REPORT 2024 The weather in both the weeks leading up to and on the scheduled start date meant that clubs opted to delay the start of the season and that the first two sets of fixtures would be replayed. A further casualty was the Ron Singleton Colne Trophy which was therefore shared between Littleborough and Burnley. The Résumé begins with Third Eleven cricket where we again had 3 divisions with promotion and relegation, but we now had 30 teams competing meaning divisions of 10. Ramsbottom entered their Women’s 1st XI into the 3rd elevens league and laid down a benchmark for other Leagues throughout the cricket community to follow. In Division 3 had Colne were runners up with 12 wins and 3 defeats, The winners, Bacup, had an identical record but 6 more bonus points gave them the advantage by the end of the season. It was also a tight finish in Division 2 with runners up Nelson who had 11 wins and just 3 defeats. The title was taken by Middleton who won one more game and took it by just 2 points, The overall winners of Third eleven cricket are of course the Division One winners and the margin between the winners, and the runners up was again just 2 points, with Great Harwood 4th XL winning 10 and losing 3 compared to the winners Haslingden 3rd XI who had 12 wins and three losses to secure back to back Championships and their 7th title. Now to Second eleven cricket starting with Division Two there was a battle between Nelson and Rochdale for the title but in the end 15 wins and just 3 defeats with Sardar Asghar top scoring with 383 runs followed by Jack Bradley with 351 and skipper Chris Gildea with 308. With the ball Sardar also took 46 wickets and Haroon Manaf chipped in with 33. Division One of the Junior League was contested by Burnley the runners up from 2023 and Ramsbottom. Burnley secured the title with a victory at Littleborough in what should have been the penultimate game which of course fell victim to the weather. The champions won 17 of their 22 games and lost just 3 games with 2 washouts. Ali Ahmed was leading run scorer with 509 runs, backed up by Josh Holding with 410. Nani Hassan took 32 wickets and Jack Brunt 30 and skipper Matt Thornton 28. This is Burnley’s 11th 2nd eleven championship.