Sussex League restructure – The ALG has gone through an extensive consultation process and have recommended to the SCL Board that a new recreational league structure be constituted. Those recommendations include:
- A new structure taking the form of one league containing all member Clubs of the four existing leagues – Sussex Premier, East Sussex, Mid Sussex and West Sussex Invitation.
- The new league is proposed to operate from the 2019 season onward and will be known simply as the ‘Sussex Cricket League’.
- Following the 2018 season, all Clubs will be formally invited to join the new league and its first AGM will take place in October / November 2018.
- At that point, the four existing leagues will be dissolved.
Following this it was suggested that should member clubs be in favour, the four leagues could operate under the new structure in the forthcoming season 2018, one year early, although under the administration of their existing committees until the Sussex Cricket League proper is formed.
We can now confirm that the new playing structure will begin next season in 2018, with the Sussex Cricket League proper to commence in 2019. All but 25 of the league clubs in Sussex voted and the final tally was 102 to 12 in favour of 2018.
The BHCC committee were in favour of the restructuring and having this in place for 2018. The club were, in association with Lindfield CC, at the forefront of driving this initiative through, and this was publicly acknowledged by the Chairman of the Sussex Cricket Foundation, Jon Filby. Our 1st XI will remain playing in the third tier of Sussex Cricket with our other teams playing in the newly formed Central column of the pyramid. This will result in the 2nd XI in particular having considerably less travelling time to games with many more local derbies. The 3rd and 4th XIs will be playing shorter format games structured to encourage more youngsters to participate in League Cricket.