ONCE again the Bolton League’s T20 competition is proving to be a success, with clubs able to attract several hundred spectators on dry, warm Friday nights.

There is an added financial bonus for clubs providing entertainment into the night, keeping people on the premises until closing time.

Not all clubs choose to play on a Friday, mainly because of the disruption it causes to junior practice night. Farnworth Social Circle will be playing both Farnworth and Tonge this Sunday, repeating an event that proved to be a success last season.

Other clubs have chosen to play Tuesday nights, and while these matches are reasonably well supported, sales of alcohol do not match those on a Friday evening and Sunday afternoon.

Hopefully next season more clubs will follow Social Circle’s example and play on a Sunday or even a May Bank Holiday Monday.

The last round of matches in the group stages will be played a week tomorrow. Four out of the five group winners will have a home tie in the quarter-finals, with their opponents being drawn from the remaining group winner with least points and the three runners-up with the most points.

Should two or more teams be level on points qualification will be determined as follows:

1. The team with most wins.

2. The team with least defeats.

3. Most points won in the matches between the teams.

4. Net aggregate run rate.

Hopefully, if it comes down to number three a team will not exit the competition because they have already lost a match on the toss of a coin, and that will count against them twice!

The quarter-finals will be played on Friday, July 6, or another mutually-convenient date for the clubs, with the following Tuesday in reserve in case of bad weather.

The semis and final will be at Farnworth Cricket Club on Sunday July 15.

A Bolton League club will stage the area semis and finals on Sunday, July 29. Hopefully this will be our competition winner, but the club will have to have mobile covers and be in a location where cricket balls hit out of the ground can be retrieved quickly as the organisers only supply two balls for each team.

On Sunday, Bradshaw entertain Heywood from the Greater Manchester Cricket League in the England Cricket Board Club Championship, with the winner travelling to face the winner of Ormskirk from the Liverpool Competition or Furness from the Northern League. Ormskirk were last season’s losing national finalists, and the strength of the Liverpool Competition in this particular contest can be noted from the fact that two of their other clubs are also in a regional final.

In the 1980s and 1990s the Lancashire Knockout was dominated by clubs from the Northern League.

In recent years their presence in the later stages of the competition declined markedly, but this season they have five out of the last 16 clubs, and with four more from the Lancashire League there is a good chance the winner will come from Lancashire rather than Greater Manchester or Merseyside, the two regions dominating the LKO since the turn of the century.