BRADFORD & Bingley captain Ed Brown is eager to kick on with his youthful side after an indifferent start to the 2023 Bradford Premier League campaign.

All fixtures on the scheduled opening weekend of the BPL were cancelled due to the heavy downfall of rain in West Yorkshire, and Bradford & Bingley then had their following match against Bankfoot postponed because of Eid celebrations.

Brown’s side eventually got their season underway on April 23 with a 51-run victory at home to Methley in the Heavy Woollen Cup (Round Two) before falling to a Bradford Premier League opening day defeat at home to Townville on April 29 – this time being edged by 18 runs.

Reflecting on his side’s start to the 2023 season, Brown said: “It’s been a bit of a disjointed start for us because we had the first week washout and then our first league game against Bankfoot was cancelled for Eid. So, last week was our first league game and it’s meant that we are a bit undercooked. Furthermore, our pitch hasn’t been great because of the weather, so we’ve only just been able to get out on the grass in training.

“We should have beaten Townville last week, but we batted poorly and it’s probably due to the fact that we were slightly underprepared. We are disappointed with ourselves and if we weren’t then I feel that could be a problem. Don’t get me wrong, we were happy with some aspects of the performance, particularly with our bowling attack but our batting was well off it.”

Last season Bradford & Bingley put a real emphasis on developing and integrating youth players into the first team and they continue to do so this season much to the delight of Brown.

He said: “We are continuing to promote a number of lads from the junior section into the first team and we are delighted with the response we’ve had from them – particularly young Reece Cockshott who managed to get five wickets for us against Townville in his first run out for the men’s first team in the league.

“After the 2021 season we had a look at our extremely promising junior section because they were winning trophies on a consistent basis. We realised that we couldn’t compete with the teams on a bigger budget, so it was about helping to integrate these boys into the first team. We’ve now doing that and we are starting to reap the awards of it. It’s something that we will continue to focus on throughout this season and well beyond that. We had five players from the junior section in our squad on Saturday against Townville, so it shows the emphasis we have on helping these boys.

Discussing the club’s targets for the season, Brown said: “In pre-season me and a few of the other senior players managed to have a look at our desired targets for the year and we all agreed that improvement is a must. We finished fifth in the league last year and we felt that there was several games that we should have won, for sure. We want to show progression and you can do that through results and table positioning, so we want to be ending up in the top four at least. We are aware that the top two is hard to break into because Woodlands and New Farnley have had a solid core of team members playing together for years, they’re experienced and they have a bigger budget than most sides in the league. Beating them would signal that you have a good chance of winning the division.”

Bradford & Bingley take on New Farnley this weekend and Brown admitted that a win is vital for his side if they want to show progression, saying: “New Farnley are a strong and well-rounded team, so it’s going to be a tough game but we feel it’s key that we get the win this weekend because we missed out on all the batting bonus points last weekend. It’s only early in the season but it’s important that we don’t allow ourselves to get too far behind because we don’t want to be desperately trying to claw things back as the season progresses.”