The ECB would like to invite your club to enter the 2015 Royal London Club Championship, formerly known as the ECB National Club Championship.
The entry for next season’s competition will remain at £50 if paying by BACS and will be £55 if paying by cheque.
Details of how to pay are on the entry form (attached below), which is to be completed and returned no later than Friday 28 November 2014. Any entries received after this date may only be considered if the draw is not already full.
The ECB is once again limited by the busy summer schedule to a competition of just eight rounds; therefore only 256 clubs can participate.
All participating clubs from the 2014 competition have been invited and demand traditionally exceeds supply so it will be necessary to limit the number of clubs that are included.
The following criteria will be used in judging suitable entries (please note the requirement to be ECB Clubmark accredited applies across all ECB club competitions as agreed by the ECB Recreational Cricket Group and Recreational Assembly):
1) ECB Clubmark accredited club
2) The league and division that the club plays in on a Saturday
3) Standard of the club’s ground and ancillary facilities
4) Previous history of the club in the competition.
As such this invitation and your completion of the entry form is not a guarantee that your club will be included in the competition for 2015 as the above entry criteria may need to be invoked.
The draw for each group will be released by January 2015 at the latest and seeded based on the record of the club in the previous season both in this competition and in the ECB Premier Leagues.
The first round is to be played by Saturday 2 May 2015 at the latest, although fixtures will be scheduled for Sunday 26 April 2015.
Clubs involved in 10-team leagues, i.e. those starting later on in the season, are encouraged to play these matches as early as possible and one option is for clubs to utilise the Saturday prior to the start of their league season for these first round matches or any team may agree to play their first round match on any Sunday in April if they wish.
Clubs will be required to meet the costs of umpires until the group finals stage, at which point ECB will assume this responsibility.
Each host club will receive match balls for all home matches throughout the competition. Please indicate on the entry form whether you would prefer to have these balls sent to your club or contact person’s home address.
The national final will be held at a first-class ground to be confirmed once the first-class fixture list is published in December 2014 by the ECB First-Class Cricket Department.
