Humberside Alliance cricket league  The Humberside Alliance cricket league was a club cricket competition that was ran in the former county of Humberside. The competition was a secondary league mainly open to 2nd XI sides, friendly teams or teams not able to pass the criteria to join the main cricket competitions in the area, the Yorkshire Cricket League for teams in North Humberside, now East Yorkshire, and the Lincolnshire County Cricket League for teams in the South. The competition started in 1980 with only 1 division and a 2nd division was added 1984. The competition was created during the winter of 1979 thanks to a lot of hard work from local journalist Nigel Fisher (Brigg Town Cricket Club) and well known cricketing administrator Bryan Simpson (Broughton Cricket Club) to create a league that mimicked the county lines of the county of Humberside that was formed in 1974. This also meant a league could be created outside of the Lincolnshire County Cricket league as the league didn't allow many 2nd XI teams at the time and also had a high entry criteria that some teams trying to start were struggling to reach. The falling standards at grounds in the North Lindsey League and Grimsby and District Cricket League which at the time was home to a number of local second Xi's was the main focus for improvement within the new league. The format was written as a 40 over a side league but anything from 45 to 30 over games could be played so long as the captains on the day agreed, with these rules and others the league considered itself to be a more friendly format to other county leagues. Because of this however the league did consider itself secondary and accepted in its own rules that the Lincolnshire league was "superior". By the Mid 90s the league was still active with 2 divisions but some of the more friendly sides were struggling for adequate grounds to play at and other teams were struggling to fulfill their fixtures. In 1996 the 2nd XI sides of teams in the Lincolnshire league decided to join the Lincolnshire league who created their own more relaxed 2nd XI competition. The county of Humberside was abolished in 1996 meaning the league faced more problems in trying to keep running and by this time all but 1 of the teams were sides from South of the River Humber as teams north had all joined the Yorkshire league.  in the year 2000 the ECB had a full restructure of club cricket across the country which resulted in the Lincolnshire County Cricket League Abolishing their 2nd XI division and creating a full top to bottom structure for all teams of all playing style, allowing teams starting up to enter at the bottom.