Cricket: New and changed competitions in the Greater Manchester Cricket League

Greater Manchester Cricket League

The Greater Manchester Cricket League will be adding an extra GMCL20 trophy, an extra second XI cup competition and an additional Sunday Cup to its competitions next season.

Derek Kay First XI Cup goes full colour

Colour is coming to the league's premier cup competition, the Derek Kay Cup, with coloured clothing in 2019 and the game will become a 45 over competition played with a pink ball.

First XI League Cup & Championship Cups

These competitions will also become 45 over tournaments and the league committee is looking the League Cup to move to coloured clothing in 2020 and the Championship Cup will follow when those teams are ready.

GMCL20 will be split into two

There will be two competitions in 2019 with the Premier Group competition to feature four groups of seven, each team playing three home, three away with the top two going through from each group to the quarter finals. The winner of the Premier Group has to be decided by the second week of July to go through to the 2019 ECB National competition, so dates are tight.

The Championship Group competition will start later, freeing up more umpires to officiate and taking many games out of Ramadan too. It will feature all clubs not in the Premier groups and have a group stage and knockout rounds to lead to a second lucrative GMCL20 finals day.

Second XI & Sunday Cup changes

These games will also become 45 over competitions and they will both be split into two to give four teams the chance of a trophy. All second XIs will take part in the second XI cup even where they play in the Sunday League. The Sunday Cups will be for genuine third and fourth XI teams only. First XI teams playing in the Sunday League will join the 2019 first XI Cup competition.

League Calendar

The Saturday competition begins on 20 April, Easter weekend and finish on 14 September, all league games to be played on Saturdays, so giving more dates for the Sunday competition.

The Lancashire knock out dates and any interleague dates are awaited before the league's exact calendar can be published, but the changes mean that there will be more league games before the start of the second XI and Sunday Cup competitions which will eliminate the player qualification problems.