A NEW cricket league has been formed in Bradford.

The Quaid-e-Azam Premier Cricket League - not to be confused with the original Quaid-e-Azam Sunday Cricket League - was inaugurated at the Kashmiri Aroma restaurant at Frizinghall.

The fledgling league has 26 clubs split into three divisions - a Premier Section of 10 and parallel Crescent and Star sections below that with eight clubs in each.

A total of 15 of the clubs have a Bradford postcode, six have a Leeds postcode, with the rest being from Wakefield (three) and Huddersfield (two).

In addition, the Dewsbury & District Sunday Cricket League, which has 10 clubs, have joined as associate members to tap into the administration of the new league.

The original Quaid-e-Azam League now has 16 clubs split into two divisions.

Basharat Hussain, formerly president of the original league, was persuaded out of retirement to become executive chair of the new league.

He told the Telegraph & Argus: “At first I said I wasn’t interested because I had retired from organising cricket but because of the issues and, more importantly, because the Dewsbury League rang me up at the same time and said that they were struggling, I decided to come back.

“I have always been a cricket man and it is important for the survival of Asian cricket in West Yorkshire, so listening to some of the lads and looking at the evidence, I felt that it was time to come back in.

“The fact that I have the trust of the majority of the clubs was a reason to get back in, and as a group we need to unite.

“We now have 36 clubs all playing under the same umbrella of the Quaid-e-Azam Premier League and cricket lives on, and that is what it is all about - cricket.”

The new league was due to start on April 19, but that date will now have to be pushed back until at least the end of May due to the coronavirus pandemic.