THE senior Cricket leagues throughout Lancashire have joined together in a new "Confederation'.

And that makes the prospect of the proposed Premier League even slimmer.

Lancashire League secretary Rod Slater believes the Lancashire Cricket Board's attempt to impose the new Premiership set-up on local leagues has no chance of succeeding before the Millennium.

And the long-established leagues have strengthened their own hand by setting up a new organisation - the Confederation of Cricket Leagues in Lancashire."

Their principal aim seems to be to exert more influence over the LCB, which is attempting to dictate the future of the league game in the county, partly through the establishment of a Premier League.

At the next meeting scheduled for March, the Confederation will appoint a chairman and deputy, along with a secretary.

The new set-up could become a powerful voice. Mr Slater explained: "The Premier League is on the back-burner. It isn't dead but, as I see it, it will be a struggle for it to happen by the year 2000.

"There are around 20 or 21 senior leagues in Lancashire and, at the last confederation meeting, 15 attended and all the others, bar one (the Palace Shield), sent apologies saying they were still interested in what was happening.

"We feel we should have a say in what is going to happen to league cricket in the county. At the moment we don't have that."

The leagues want to appoint as many as eight of their own representatives on the LCB. "But, everything we propose, we get outvoted," he added.

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