Aigburth gets top marks as Lancashire enjoy stay

Aug 4 2007 by Our Correspondent, Liverpool Daily Post

AT SOME stage over the past 36 hours or so Sussex and Lancashire’s players took their leave of Liverpool and headed for Birmingham.

All of them must put aside the result at Aigburth and swap the disciplines required in the four-day game for the intensity and improvisation which will be needed on Twenty20 Finals Day.

But amid the coloured clothing, the razzmatazz, the mascot-race and – if the Midlands entrepreneurs are quick off the mark – the jelly-bean stalls at Edgbaston, it would be pleasant to think that both sets of players will retain warm memories of their three days on Merseyside thanks to the officials and volunteers at Liverpool Cricket Club.

“I think the ground looks fantastic, I really do,” said Lancashire Chief Executive, Jim Cumbes, as he surveyed a packed and sunlit Aigburth on Thursday afternoon.

So who’s responsible for one of Liverpool’s best cricket weeks of the summer? First in line for a pat on the back should be groundsman Terry Glover.

If an outground can’t provide a surface worthy of first-class cricket, it shouldn’t get the gig. Fortunately, the Aigburth strip offered a little help for all varieties of bowlers but it was also a track whose even bounce and pace the batsmen could trust.

“The wicket’s playing well and that’s the most important thing when you’re going to an outground,” said Cumbes on Thursday, “but there’s never any doubt about the wicket here at Liverpool.”

The Lancashire CEO’s comments were endorsed later the same evening by Andrew Flintoff who said that his team-mates players reckoned the track was as good as any they had played on this year and Cumbes said: “You have to make sure that everything is in order for the crowd and I think the facilities here at Liverpool are great.

“They’ve done it really well. It’s well-organised and we enjoy coming to Liverpool, the people here make you feel so welcome.”

And Cumbes offered the tantalising, but very provisional, prospect that Lancashire may be calling on their outgrounds rather more in the next few years. The major redevelopment of Old Trafford is still at the planning stage but if the proposal that the square be turned round 90 degrees is implemented, there will be one season in which Lancashire’s HQ will not be able to host as many games as it normally does.

“We’d probably have to play away from Old Trafford on half-a-dozen occasions,” said Cumbes, in which case we’d be talking to our outgrounds and saying, ‘what can you accommodate ?”

But that is for the rather distant future. In the coming week another Business Assistance Liverpool Competition club will be in the spotlight when Colwyn Bay hosts the game between Glamorgan and Northants.

As for Liverpool, it holds its Bicentenary Ball tonight and the guests will no doubt celebrate in appropriate fashion. They can now toast their famous old club secure in the knowledge that it has just hosted a week when, in comparison to the glories of Aigburth, the bonehead stunts of a few Test cricketers didn’t amount to a hill of jelly beans.

TODAY Business Assistance Liverpool Competition ECB Premier League Bootle v Northern; Leigh v Hightown; Lytham v New Brighton; Maghull v Fleetwood Hesketh;St Helens Recs v Ormskirk; Southport & Birkdale v Huyton; Wallasey v Colwyn Bay. First Division: Ainsdale v Wavertree; Formby v St Helens; Highfield v Prestatyn; Liverpool v Wigan; Newton-le-Willows v Orrell Red Triangle; Northop Hall v Rainhill; Sefton Park v Southport Trinity

TOMORROW First Division: Liverpool v Newton-le-Willows. Lancashire Cup: Bootle v Heywood.