Mirfield set to bat on in new league

From the Telegraph & Argus, first published Wednesday 5th Jan 2005.

Mirfield Cricket Club have a crucial meeting about their future on Thursday.

Having resigned from the Bradford League last month due to a lack of players, they still hope to play in another league in 2005, and it is understood that they have more than one option.

"Hopefully there will be cricket at Memorial Park, but on a more modest scale," said 72-year-old club president Clive Brook, who has been involved with the club since its formation in 1952.

"The Bradford League First Division is the best standard of cricket we have played in, and we have had some great cricket in that league over the past four years, particularly in the last two seasons when we have been in the First Division.

"And I feel gutted because I was involved in our move to the Bradford League, and ironically our facilities have never been better.

"Also we have lost people with cricketing expertise, and you need them when you are playing in a standard as high as the Bradford League.

"But our problems really started before the beginning of the 2004 season, when we had two late withdrawals by players."

Brook explained: "Of the side that won the Heavy Woollen Cup in 2003 and got to the semi-finals of the Priestley Cup in the same year, we knew that our overseas player Mohammed Asif was leaving by mutual consent, but we didn't realise that Ibrahim Latif was going to Townville in pre-season too.

"Then we lost Simon Horkin, Richard Haikings and Steven Lane during the season due to, shall we say, disagreements, and by the time we got to halfway through the season we were playing four or five second-teamers in the first team who didn't want to play there because they were out of their depth."

Brook added: "Then we had Neil Parkinson's knee injury to contend with, and wicketkeeper Philip Ackroyd was injured too.

"But we were able to bring in Andy Bolt, who had retired from first-team cricket, out of the second team to keep wicket, so we didn't miss Philip as much.

"But it was only in the last two games of the season that Neil was able to come in off his full run, and he took eight wickets in our victory over Pudsey St Lawrence in one of those matches."

Brook continued: "Then Neil indicated that he was leaving, and with our chairman David Walker moving to live in Cyprus we were left with a situation where three players - David Jackson, Philip Ackroyd and Matthew Harrison - didn't want to commit themselves to Mirfield without knowing the constitution of the team for 2005."

The president, who has recently been standing in as club chairman without having the title, said: "I can sympathise with their position, but in the past we have been paying money to players who have had no allegiance to the club at all.

"They go along from season to season looking for the highest bidder, and have their statutory drink at the bar after matches and then disappear."

In the opposite category, however, Brook places Iqbal Khan and Russell Heritage.

He said: "They brought good skills and attitude - they were role models for the young players."

Crowds in 2003 had been good, but had fallen away in 2004, and Brook confessed that Mirfield had also suffered because there were too many teams in a small geographical area.

He said: "I can think of 11 players who have left the club but we never seem to get any coming the other way.

"Moorlands, Mirfield Parish Cavaliers, Hopton, Hopton Mills, Liversedge and ourselves are all competing for players in the same area, but Mirfield Cricket Club will regroup and consolidate.

"When we were in the Central Yorkshire League, even in the Premier Division, we had three or four matches a season that were over by tea-time, and you feel cheated as players and spectators by that.

"We run junior sides at under-11s, under-13s, under-15s and under-17s, and hopefully we will be back in the Bradford League some day."

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