Local cricket: Leigh's Karl Brown ready for another assault on Love Lane Liverpool Competition's top spots

County thoroughbred Karl Brown is looking forward to leading Leigh’s energetic young colts into another Love Lane Liverpool Competition season.

With a little help from their fitness guru - former rugby league coach Winston Sarsfield - Brown’s side have hit the ground running in winter nets as they look to build on last year’s impressive third place finish in the Premier Division.

“The lads are well into the fitness stuff,” Brown said.

“We’re lucky in that the age group of our lads is quite young, so they’re keen to get stuck into that side of things - from my experience, that’s quite rare in club cricket.”

Leigh were the nearest challengers to runaway champions Northern for much of 2021, eventually finishing 40 points behind Wallasey.

But for a blip in July and some rotten weather in May, they could have pushed even harder - as it was, Brown was more than happy with Lancashire Cup qualification and memorable victories over the champions and Ormskirk.

Leg-spinning all-rounder Mattie McKiernan was their standout performer, with 530 runs and 33 wickets. But even if his Derbyshire commitments keep him away this year, Brown can still rely on a balanced and varied attack featuring left-arm spinner Alex Mason, seamers Paddy Allen and Finn Hulbert, and all-rounder Adam Shallcross.

He said: “We’ll have a similar balance to last year. I think it’s quite well-known that spin is really important in the Comp, so we’ve got Alex and Mattie when he’s available.

“Finn and Paddy will take the new ball - we feel like we’ve got good options. I guess it’s about what conditions you’re faced with on the day, but we feel like we cover most bases.

“Hopefully, we’ll have gained a lot of confidence from last year.

“There’s always going to be