A year ago there was considerable apprehension following the merger of the former Tyneside Senior League with the Northumberland County League, necessitated by the formation of the Foster's North- East Premier League.

Clubs from the two leagues were uncertain as to whether they would gel but 12 months on the league is considered possibly the strongest in the region behind the NYSD and Premier Leagues.

There will be an increase from next season to 23 with the admission of The Readers Durham County League champions Leadgate together with Kirkley and Newcastle City from the Three Counties Northumberland League.

The 20 clubs have split into two divisions, with three clubs will be relegated from Division One and three promoted from Division Two.

"We had the opportunity 18 months ago to look at the formation of cricket in the North-East and how best to plan for the future. Nobody was empire-building but it was sensible for the two former leagues to come together and I think everyone is extremely happy at the progress which has been made in 12 months," said League chairman Brian Taylor.

Swalwell are due to have their superb clubhouse handed over by the builders tomorrow. They will boast first-class facilities but a blow to them on the playing front is the unavailability of Australian Shawn Bradstreet who set the League alight last season. The New South Wales all-rounder averaged a phenomenal 145, scoring 725 runs and also topped the bowling averages with 39 wickets at 6.5 runs apiece.

Champions Tynedale have also changed their professional with Kelvin Williams returning to Hexham for the third time.

Tynedale will again hope that openers Neil Clark and Stephen Lishman maintain their prolific scoring form. In one weekend last June they remarkably scored 402 runs between them from just 441 deliveries, taking 105 off the Blyth attack and 24 hours later plundering 297 against Sacriston.

Annfield Plain are never far away from the championship and in recent years have been extremely happy with the form of South African Sean Ackermann but he is unable to play this season and the Plain have replaced him with Aldo Van Den Berg who is currently playing for Eastern Province.

Whickham enjoyed their best season for some time and surprised many by ending in fourth position. Much of their success was credited to Dominic McCabe who besides scoring 481 runs at 37.0, also claimed 50 wickets for an economical 14.0 to finish fifth in the bowling averages.

Former Durham County all-rounder David Jackson is back at Consett. They were just two places away from being in Division Two when, uncharacteristically, Jackson managed only 360 runs in addition to capturing 46 wickets. Even so, he took his total runs for Consett to 6769 and also claimed his 600th wicket.

Ryton have engaged Indian off-spinner Ramesh Powar while Greenside are pleased to have Lee Innes back for a second term as they aim to bounce back to the rop flight. Harry Hubber is back to his roots at Sacriston. The legspinner was pro with Lanchester last summer but had a frustrating time after breaking a wrist in the first match which caused him to miss half the season.

Scott Kay will be a big miss to Ashington and an interesting selection at Burnopfield is 23-year old Pakistani Imran Abbas a right-handed batsman and offspinner who played two one-day internationals against Sri Lanka in 1999. His top score in the first class game is 204 not out.