Barnsley Woolley Miners have Yorkshire CCC captain Gary Ballance on their books while the Tykes' director of cricket Martyn Moxon is from the town and played for the club – but they now want to establish themselves as one of the best club sides in the county.

Jason Booth's side – who stayed up in the final weeks of the first ECB Yorkshire Premiers South season with a series of wins – will play their first game after changing the club's 150-year-old name from Barnsley CC when they host Cleethorpes tomorrow. The Griffins have merged with Woolley Miners Welfare, where they will base the community side of their club as well as their junior system and also two of their five men's sides with the first, second and fifth teams remaining at Shaw Lane.

Captain Booth said: "It will be an historic game and hopefully the start of something great. It's a new chapter for the club and hopefully the merger can breathe new life into cricket in Barnsley and increase participation in the sport. "We are hoping that the move to Woolley will help us become financially competitive enough to be challenging for major honours in a few years.

"But we need to develop our players as well. I spoke to the league-winning captain at Wakefield Thornes last season and he said our team reminded him of where they were a few years ago, which is encouraging."

The Shaw Laners won three of their last four completed matches of the 2016 season to finish eighth out of 12 after being embroiled in a relegation scrap for most of the campaign. Booth said: "We are hoping to be in the top half of the league. We just got into our stride at the end of last season and we didn't want the season to end.

"Hopefully we can find that form straight away this time and finish as high as possible. I am expecting the league to be a lot more competitive this season with a lot more teams competing for the title. I really enjoyed the league last season, it was tough but fun."

Barnsley were unable to bring back successful Pakistani overseas signing Zohaib Ahmad and initially reached an agreement with South African Daryl Hendricks but he could not secure a VISA. Instead they have brought in Indian Harpreet Singh who has played more than 40 First Class matches, scoring more than 2,000 runs including an unbeaten 216.

Booth said: "It is a very exciting signing and back to the marquee signings we were making a few years ago when we were bringing in Yorkshire players like Gary Ballance, Azeem Rafiq and Oliver Hannon-Dalby. We're hoping Harpreet will be even better than Zohaib and score a lot of runs for us."

Barnsley have also recruited wicketkeeper David Hunt, who can also contribute with the bat. Booth said: "We highlighted what went wrong last season and addressed it.  Our bowling was OK, but we just didn't score enough runs. Oliver Jackson and Ali Jahangir are among the best spinners in the league."