IT is always useful to have a Plan B, but the Dales Council Cricket League also have a Plan C as they prepare for the 2021 season.

Plan A is the scenario for a full campaign, starting on April 17 and finishing on September 11, with the earlier cup rounds on May 9 and 16 and June 6 and 27.

The knockout finals are scheduled for Pudsey Congs (Pool Paper Mills Cup for first teams on August 1), Rodley (T20 on August 15) and potentially Tong Park Esholt (Cawthorne Cup for second teams on July 18).

Fixture secretary Ken Firth’s gut feeling is that the season will start under the same restrictions (closed clubhouses and sanitisation breaks after every six overs) as the 2020 season, which will mean 40 overs per side games rather than 45.

Plan B is for a season with no definite start date and potentially scrapping the cup competitions, or alternately starting off the campaign with the cup competitions and playing half a league season, while Plan C is for an even shorter season, potentially played in regional groups.

Apart from the uncertainty caused by coronavirus, Firth is also dealing with clubs who don’t know how many teams they will be fielding, clubs who are ground-sharing, and teams who don’t know where they will be playing.

Firth said: “Some (council-owned) clubhouses won’t even have been opened for 12 months, so we don’t know what state they will be in and there will have to be a clean-up, and even when we do play I am certain that we will be in some kind of tier-management system from the government.

“We are waiting for more concrete information from the government and the ECB.”

At least Muff Field have said that they will be going back to fielding two teams, as have Leeds Sikh, who are again set to play at Gledhow Sports & Social Club.

Morley have internal administration issues to resolve, while Bradford Moor need to find a ground, as New Rover have formed a third team to play in the Leeds & Wetherby League and will be ground-sharing at Woodhouse, where Moor used to play.

There are also question marks over where all of the St Chads Broomfield teams will be playing in their various leagues.

Their fourth team (Leeds & Wetherby League) and fifth team (Dales Council League) will be using Glen Road, but that leaves the newly-formed sixth team still to find a ground to play on in the Dales Council League.

New Farnley may put a team into the league and share the postage-stamp ground at Tong with Rodley.

Other teams ground-sharing are Leeds Caribbean and Crompark.

The Dales Council have the option of extending their season by two weeks to September 25 but then run into the usual problems of council-owned grounds also being used for football.

The league have given clubs until the end of January to sort out how many teams they will be fielding and what cup competitions they will be entering, with the next league meeting due to be held by Zoom on Thursday, February 11.