The Official Website of
Prescot & Odyssey Cricket Club
Burrows Lane, Prescot, Merseyside, L34 6JW

A Short History of Prescot & Odyssey CC (formerly Prescot CC)

Prescot Cricket Club was founded on the 1st July 1854. Prescot & Odyssey celebrated the 150th Anniversary (sesquicentennial) in 2004 with an array of events & functions.
The main events took place week commencing Monday 28th June 2004, a "Cricket Festival" was arranged and featured a game against an MCC XI on Wednesday 30th June, along with a Merseyside Competition XI v a Manchester & District Association XI and a fixture against Prescot's first opponents St Helens.
The week culminated on Friday 2nd July with a celebratory black tie dinner dance held in the Crowne Plaza Hotel on Liverpool's Princes Dock.

Formed on 1st July 1854, Prescot CC was initially sited in Warrington Road behind Prescot Railway Station.
Members of PCC started playing soccer and formed Prescot FC, now Prescot Cables in 1884.
A compulsory purchase order (to allow BICC to build on the site) saw PCC move Burrows Lane in 1938.
The original square was lifted and moved to Burrows Lane and is still in use on the 3rd XI pitch.

In 1953-56 the National Coal Board acquired the ground for open cast coalmining. The front ground was part of the open cast mine, which spanned the land between Burrows Lane & St Helens Road. 1st XI’s and the 2nd XI’s had to play on the back ground whilst the 3rd XI had to play on the Prescot Grammar School field on St. Helens Road (this field is now a housing estate.)

In the early 1960’s the pylons and overhead cables were erected on the ground,. The committee of the Cricket Club along with Labour MP Harold Wilson appealed to Parliament to intervene, but whilst they could not stop the erection of the pylons they did get them re-routed from across the front ground to the edge of the wood on the back ground. During the same time an underground water pipe line was put at the top of the ground.

Prescot played for many years in the Manchester & District Cricket Association (M&DCA) were initially players would travel by tram & trolley bus to Manchester for games.

In the 1980’s Prescot suffered from a string of poor results, players did not want to travel to Manchester every other week to get beaten and the club was in danger of folding however a business meeting between a solicitor (Kingsley Hayes, a player from Prescot CC) & a land developer (Carl Oughterson, a player from the Merseyside Cricket Competition Club, Odyssey CC) who were also struggling and who did not own their own ground saw talks and the subsequent merger take place in 1992.

Prescot CC resigned from the M&DCA, & Prescot & Odyssey CC took their place in the MCC in 1993. Success followed in the form of the Lever Cup in 1995.

P&O now play in the Merseyside & Southport Cricket Alliance, which was formed in 2002 following the merger of the MCC and Southport League. Won promotion to Alliance 1 for 2005 at the end of the 2004 season

A few facts:
Sidney Reaks JP Captained the club for 30 years was Chairman from 1948 and later President until his death.
Sid Reakes was also Chairman & Director of Liverpool FC and was influential in the Shankly era.

Sidney Reakes' Daughter; Mrs Cherry Hamilton-Smith currently President

Patron: The Right Honourable the Earl of Derby

Members who have played football for Prescot Cables and cricket for Prescot C.C. are:
W. Rainford, J. Hughes, J. Gaffney, M.Taylor and G. Pearl

Cricketers who went on to play County Cricket from Prescot C.C. were:
R.H. Spooner wicket keeper/opening bat Warwickshire & England
J. Leadbetter wicket keeper Northants
D. Pullen wicket keeper Nottinghamshire
J. Gore; wicket keeper / batsman Lancashire & England disabled