With thanks to Tom Evans @ Merseyside Cricket Online (merseysidecricket.com can be supported @ https://buymeacoffee.com/tomevanscricket)
Northern’s Cole seeks home comfort in the Comp after success further afield
James Cole wants to get Northern’s home fires burning again after a successful season took them further and further from Moor Park.
In September, they went to Derby and became the first Love Lane Liverpool Competition side ever to be crowned national champions, winning a bowl-out against Oundle Town in the ECB National Club T20.
The win, a week after losing the National KO final to Brentwood in Worcester, guaranteed them a spot in the history books.
Then in February, they travelled to Malaga to represent their league and their country in the European Cricket League, another unique honour.
But now it’s April, they’re back in Crosby and it’s time to start again. Which means, according to the skipper, focusing on winning a first league title since 2021.
“You always want to win your own league,” said Cole.
“It’s our bread and butter and it’s a very difficult task. We’ve found it tough coming up against an Ormskirk side in the last couple of years who’ve played really well.
“With our wicket, it’s tough to force a result sometimes, but we’ve got to find a way.
“We had a really good record until the last month of last season, then we fell away.
“The league is something we really want to push for.
“We’ve been a really good cup side for a few years now but there’s no point planning your season around that, when if you have a couple of bad weekends in May, you can be out.
“We want to compete in every format and we think we’ve got a squad to keep winning trophies.
“But we know we’ve got 22 league games and that’s our goal.”
The trip to Spain may have ended in a painful defeat in the group final, and it may not have taught Cole much beyond “Hornchurch’s Muhammad Irfan can really give it a whack”.
But it goes down as decent pre-season preparation, albeit in a slightly alien T10 format, and a chance for new arrivals Stephen Lucas and Louis Bhabra to settle in.
Lucas is no stranger to the club, having played there successfully for six seasons before returning to Ainsdale in 2018.
And Bhabra, signed from Nottinghamshire’s Papplewich and Linby, had already spent some time with his new teammates.
Cole is looking forward to seeing how they go, along with the progress of young batter Shivi Gautam and bowler Sandy McEwan, part of their title-winning 2nd XI.
He said: “I feel like we’ve got a really good squad of 14 or 15 players and it should be really competitive for places.
“The 2nd XI winning the league last year shows the strength in depth at the club.
“We know if we play well on a Saturday and a Sunday, we can have a successful season.”
Except for a sporting declaration in a must-win game against Wallasey, and an end-of-season thrash against Ormskirk after the title was already won and lost, Northern’s only league defeat last year came early on at Wigan.
This shows not only how consistent they were, but how consistent they will have to be to overhaul Gary Knight’s champions.
Cole expects to be competitive – but in his 17th year as skipper, he’s too wise to take anything for granted.
“These things happen in cycles,” he said.
“Ormskirk have been strong for years and we have as well.
“There are so many good cricketers in both sides that I can’t see that it’s not going to be the same again.
“If you finish ahead of Ormskirk, you’ll win the league in my opinion.
“We’ve got the two best XIs but we’ve also both got a lot of depth, so it’s going to be tight again, I’d have thought.
“We’ve got a lot of options and we’ve got to try our best to get 10 wickets, which is the key in this league.
“Getting 10 wickets at Northern is hard, so we have to mix it up. “The key is going to be keeping everyone fit – and maybe some sportier wickets at home.”
build on that the following year. “We don’t want to look too far ahead, we’re just looking forward to the first game.”
Stats give Knight a fright… but his Ormskirk side are hungry for more success
‘Scary’ is not an adjective often used to describe a club cricket season. And Ormskirk captain Gary Knight is not the sort to use words carelessly.
Nonetheless, that is exactly how he describes the prospect of trying to build on his side’s 2024.
Love Lane Liverpool Competition champions – the first side to go back-to-back since 2007.
Ray Digman Trophy winners. Lancashire Cup joint winners, after two washouts against Prestwich.
Two defeats all season in anything longer than a T20, only one of them – a defeat at fierce rivals Northern in the National KO quarter-finals – of any consequence.
“It’s scary when you think about it,” said Knight. “It doesn’t really sit in your head when you’re worrying about the next game and focusing on the next game.
“One bad day we had at Wigan, and losing in the National at Northern – that was it.”
But if Knight was worried about his players feeling burned out, like the Ormskirk side did after a similarly dominant season in 2017, he was in for a pleasant surprise.
He recalled: “In 2017 it took so much effort out of the players – winning the league, getting to the National final, sharing the Lancashire cup – and the year after that, everyone was shattered.
“Whereas when we got to the end of last season, especially with the Lancs final being rained off, people were saying ‘what’s next?’, which is really exciting.
“I do like to have a bit of time away from cricket after the season has ended, to think about what I’ve done wrong, what I can improve.
“So to have that as the last message from everyone – what’s next, we’re all excited to achieve bigger things – it’s not quite as easy as that, but at the same time it was really refreshing to hear the lads are even hungrier.”
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Hunger is one thing. But the sort of consistency required to keep up those levels takes a lot of talent, and a fair amount of fortune too.
Ormskirk’s XI last year was incredibly settled, the conditions all summer were perfect for their seamers and nobody except Northern could maintain a challenge.
Those are all things that can be influenced – by working on fitness, by having an attack for all conditions, by never giving weaker opponents a sniff – but not controlled.
If you want to make God laugh, make plans; if you want to make everyone else laugh, make predictions about club cricket. Still, all the signs are that the Big Two will maintain their supremacy for this year.
“It ebbs and flows,” said Knight. “There will be a time when Ormskirk and Northern are no longer the two best teams in the Comp.
“As much as you can put plans in place and build for the next generation, there are two clubs at the peak of their powers with really good cricketers at the moment.”
Ormskirk welcome back two old favourites to the top order – Mike Jones, who Knight hopes will be available between Lancashire games after joining the Red Rose from Durham, and Owen Griffiths, back after three seasons at Didsbury.
“It’s been really good to have Owen back in the squad, it makes my life a hell of a lot easier,” said Knight, whose batting line-up was short of left-handers.
In the out tray, youngsters Kiran Naidoo and Matty Aggrey have swapped Ormskirk’s fringes for the frontline at Southport & Birkdale and Orrell Red Triangle.
The skipper said: “We wish them all the best, but it comes with the territory. I couldn’t promise them 1st XI cricket here.
“I’ve still got an eye on succession planning.
“I’m looking forward to giving Cam Hill a few more games, he’s come back a little bit bigger and stronger and I’m hoping he can provide a boost for our seam attack and take a bit of pressure off the others.”
Other than those few tweaks, all else will be much the same. Sam Marsh, Scott Lees and Jamie Barnes will be as relentless as ever; if the weather holds up, left-armer Toby Bulcock and Aussie prospect Tom Brown might have more opportunities to show what they can do.
And in Calum Turner, George Politis, Knight and Harvey Rankin, Ormskirk have a settled top order which can only be made stronger by Griffiths and Jones.
Which brings us back to the main question: Where do they go from here?
Two in a row is rare enough. Nobody has claimed three Comp titles on the bounce since Birkenhead Park won five in the 1960s.
Knight’s team have as good a chance as any since then of making a little bit of history – but their leader is not looking too far ahead.
“Everything we enter, we try to win, but it’s very difficult,” he said. “I’ll bark at my lads all summer and be a pain in the arse all summer, and we’ll see where we end up.”
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With thanks to Tom Evans @ Merseyside Cricket Online (merseysidecricket.com can be supported @ https://buymeacoffee.com/tomevanscricket)
