The Warwickshire Cricket League is part of the Warwickshire pyramid systems and acts as a feeder league into the Birmingham League, the countries premier competition. It has been in existence in its present form for 12 years but has a history going back to the origins of cricket in the county.

The Warwickshire Cricket League is the natural place for ambitious teams in the Warwickshire, and West Midlands areas to start their progress towards becoming premier cricket clubs. By progressing through the pyramid system clubs can aspire to play at the highest level.

The current League is 98 teams strong organised into 18 divisions. All except the bottom four divisions run as first and second team leagues so on any given Saturday there are 90 games of cricket being played under the custodianship of the Warwickshire Cricket League.

If you want to join the strongest league setup in the county then go to the contacts section of this site and we will be only too pleased to talk with you direct about joining us.

Before 1989, league cricket in the Midlands consisted of several independent leagues with between 12 and 18 clubs playing each other home and away with no promotion or relegation. This meant that teams of varying degrees of ability were kept together for several years and sometimes to compensate for playing better teams, opposition captains would play very defensively to achieve a draw.

In 1989 two leagues suggested a merger, the Central League and the Willis Coroon and although this did not come to fruition, Gordon Sharpe on behalf of the Worcestershire League and Geoff Gale of The Warwickshire & Staffordshire League got together and after several meetings between the two committees these two agreed to merge. As these discussions went on other leagues wanted to be involved and by not taking set positions on the batting order, these leagues i.e. The James Travel and the Print Line combined with the other two to form the Midlands Combined Counties League, with promotion and relegation between five divisions on a two up, two down basis. An umpire's panel was set up so that neutral umpires could officiate.

Several years later the ECB floated the idea of Premier Leagues formed on a countywide basis. Leicestershire was one of the early counties to go down this road and so the Leicestershire based clubs in the Central League left leaving several clubs on their own. However, immediately with the same goodwill as in 1989, the MCCL invited these clubs into the top division having to relegate some clubs to make room for them, again believing that in time clubs would again find their own level. The formation of a Premier League in the West Midlands took much longer, as the Birmingham League found it harder to convince its 12 clubs to accept the idea of promotion and relegation. However, very much due to the work of Tony Cross of the Warwickshire County Cricket Club, a Birmingham & District Premier League was set up. It consisted of the 12 clubs in the Birmingham League, clubs in the Debenham Tewson League and top clubs in the MCCL.

At that time, it was requested by the ECB that below the level of the Birmingham League, cricket be organised on a county basis and so several other clubs left the MCCL to go into the Staffordshire Club Championship & the Worcestershire County League. The remaining clubs from the MCCL stayed to form the Warwickshire League and later the Coventry & District League joined taking the full membership up to 90 + clubs.

Thus the pyramid system in the West Midlands was in place, at the top, the Birmingham & District League, and then four feeder leagues; Warwickshire, Staffordshire, Worcestershire and Shropshire.