The Hertfordshire Cricket League is an amateur league cricket

Cricket

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

 competition based in the county of Hertfordshire

Hertfordshire

Hertfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England. The county town is Hertford.The county is one of the Home Counties and lies inland, bordered by Greater London , Buckinghamshire , Bedfordshire , Cambridgeshire and...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. It serves as a feeder league to the Home Counties Premier Cricket League

Home Counties Premier Cricket League

The Home Counties Premier Cricket League is the top level of competition for recreational club cricket in the Home Counties of England, and since 2000 has been a designated ECB Premier League...

, which is a designated ECB Premier League

ECB Premier Leagues

In 1997 the ECB published "Raising the Standard", the ECB Management Board Blueprint for the Future Playing Structure of cricket. This introduced the concept of ECB Premier Leagues, designed to raise the playing standard of the top tier of club cricket and to bridge the gap between recreational...

, the highest level of recreational club cricket

Club cricket

Club cricket is a mainly amateur, but still formal, form of the sport of cricket, usually involving teams playing in competitions at weekends or in the evening. There is a great deal of variation in game format although the Laws of Cricket are always observed...

 in England and Wales.

Although most of the leagues member clubs are located within the borders of the county, and in the major towns, teams from North London

North London

North London is the northern part of London, England. It is an imprecise description and the area it covers is defined differently for a range of purposes. Common to these definitions is that it includes districts located north of the River Thames and is used in comparison with South...

 and across the border into Bedfordshire

Bedfordshire

Bedfordshire is a ceremonial county of historic origin in England that forms part of the East of England region.It borders Cambridgeshire to the north-east, Northamptonshire to the north, Buckinghamshire to the west and Hertfordshire to the south-east....

 are also members. The league is sponsored by Saracens Rugby Football Club.

History

The league has its origins in two smaller leagues in the county, the Grasshopper and Herts County league which eventually merged in the mid 1980s. The league is run by a committee

Committee

A committee is a type of small deliberative assembly that is usually intended to remain subordinate to another, larger deliberative assembly—which when organized so that action on committee requires a vote by all its entitled members, is called the "Committee of the Whole"...

 consisting of elected persons from member clubs. The league can also invite additional members to join on a co-option

Co-option

A co-opting or less frequently co-optation most commonly refers to action performed in a number of fields whereby an opponent is nullified or neutralized by absorption but there are other distinct senses as well....

 basis.

Structure

The League comprises 14 division

Division (sport)

In sports, a division is a group of teams who compete against each other for a championship.-League system:In sports using a league system , a division consists a group of teams who play a sport at a similar competitive level...

s, with 10 teams in Division 1 and 2, increasing to 17 further down the league before reducing in size in the bottom two divisions. Sides in Divisions 1 to 9 play 100 over

Over (cricket)

In the sport of cricket, an over is a set of six consecutive balls bowled in succession. An over is normally bowled by a single bowler. However, in the event of injury preventing a bowler from completing an over, it is completed by a teammate....

 cricket, 9 to 14 play a reduced 90 over format. The side batting

Batting (cricket)

In the sport of cricket, batting is the act or skill of hitting the cricket ball with a cricket bat to score runs or prevent the loss of one's wicket. A player who is currently batting is denoted as a batsman, while the act of hitting the ball is called a shot or stroke...

 first receives a greater number of overs (53 to 47, and 47 to 43).

The league is organised on a pyramid system

League system

A league system is a hierarchy of leagues in a sport, usually with a system of promotion and relegation between consecutive levels of the hierarchy. They are often called pyramids due to their tendency to split into an increasing number of regional divisions the further down the pyramid one descends...

, with promotion and relegation

Promotion and relegation

In many sports leagues around the world, promotion and relegation is a process that takes place at the end of each season. Through it, teams are transferred between divisions based on their performance that season...

 at stake in all divisions, bar the latter in Division 14. The league-winning side in Division 1 is elected to the Home Counties Premier Cricket League. The most successful club sides in recent years have been Knebworth Park http://kpcctest.hitscricket.com/home/default.aspx Letchworth

Letchworth

Letchworth Garden City, commonly known as Letchworth, is a town and civil parish in Hertfordshire, England. The town's name is taken from one of the three villages it surrounded - all of which featured in the Domesday Book. The land used was first purchased by Quakers who had intended to farm the...

, Hitchin

Hitchin

Hitchin is a town in Hertfordshire, England, with an estimated population of 30,360.-History:Hitchin is first noted as the central place of the Hicce people mentioned in a 7th century document, the Tribal Hidage. The tribal name is Brittonic rather than Old English and derives from *siccā, meaning...

, Potters Bar

Potters Bar

Potters Bar is a town in the Hertsmere borough of Hertfordshire, England, located north of Central London. In 2001 it had a population of 21,618....

 and Radlett

Radlett

Radlett is a small town in the county of Hertfordshire between St Albans and Borehamwood on Watling Street with a population of approximately 8,000. It is located in the council district of Hertsmere and is covered by two wards, Aldenham East and Aldenham West...

.