It’s time for club cricket

The first deliveries of the club cricket season will be bowled on the weekend of Saturday, October 3, and Sunday, October 4.

The union’s elite club competition, the Premier League, always throws up some engrossing encounters and that is set to be the case following the release of the first half of fixtures by Easterns.

This year’s Premier League sees an additional side (Boksburg Cricket Club), making it a 10-team campaign after they won last season’s Promotion League.

Boksburg remain the only team from Easterns to have won a National Club Championships (NCC).

New alterations to the structure of the league will also ensure that interest will be maintained right until the final match-day.

This is according to Llewellyn van Dyk, Easterns director of senior club cricket, who confirmed the new changes with the City Times on Monday.

Previously, the team which finished in top spot would automatically pack their bags to represent Easterns at the NCC.

Now, however, the top-placed club will meet the winner of a play-off match between the second and third best teams in the league, in a winner-takes-all final to secure a spot at Club Championships.

Defending Premier League champions Benoni Northerns Cricket Club (BNCC) will begin their challenge with five straight home matches at Northern Areas.

They will square up against KwaThema on the opening Sunday, followed by clashes with Duduza, Boksburg, CBC Old Boys and Tembisa, at home.

The first Benoni Cricket Derby, between Northerns and Actonville Spurs Cricket Club, will be played on Sunday, November 15, at Northern Areas.

Actonville will open their campaign away to Boksburg on October 4.

Another interesting change to the status quo by Easterns has been the re-establishment of the old-style Promotion League, as opposed to last year’s second-tier Premier Reserve League and third-tier Promotion League.

Twelve club teams, including Actonville, Benoni Northerns and Daveyton, will fly the local flag in this league.

The scarcity of venues in the Easterns region has been a headache for the organisers of local club cricket.

“Venues are definitely a challenge for us,” van Dyk said.

“We basically had to close our eyes and just schedule matches in the hope that we will find suitable locations at which to play cricket.

“We are in constant negotiations with the metro and schools to find alternatives.”

He confirmed that the union is in the process of upgrading facilities in the townships of KwaThema and Duduza, in the hope that matches will be played there by the time the second half of the season begins.

For the Saturday and Sunday league fixtures for the first half of the club cricket season CLICK HERE: club_fixtures_1sthalf15-16