Cricket: No rest for Lancashire’s dedicated player of year

Nov 14 2007 by Our Correspondent, Liverpool Daily Post

CASUAL visitors to the impressive Litherland Sports Park last Friday could have been forgiven for thinking that they were seeing things.

On a bleak November evening when most fans of the summer game would settle for watching Test Match highlights from Australia, Lancashire Cricket Board officials and junior coaches from four Merseyside clubs were intent on making sure the inaugural Merseyside Under-10s Floodlit Trophy was a roaring success.

Anyone doubting the wisdom of the project would probably have been won over pretty quickly. The provision of fleeces, the enthusiasm of the youngsters and the pace of the Kwik Cricket format combined to ensure that Upton Urchins’ triumph over Bootle Bucks in the final was well worth watching.

The attendance of Lancashire’s Player of the Year didn’t harm either. Paul Horton, still ‘elated’ from being capped by his county at the end of a memorable season, was on hand to present the trophies, pose for photos and sign autographs.

“I don’t see it as ‘putting something back’ into the game,” said Horton. “It’s an honour and it puts a smile on my face to do these things. I find it very humbling and to be at a cricket event in Liverpool is quite rare, so if there’s anything going on to do with the game in the city, I always put my hand up. I may live in Manchester now but Liverpool is my second home.”

Horton’s admirable attitude is unsurprising given his frequent tributes to Sefton Park CC this summer although his presence at Litherland was all the more remarkable given that the 25-year-old opening batsman is officially on holiday.

Lancashire gives players October and November off before reporting back on December 1 but Horton’s dedication means he is now ready to get back to work.

“I’ve been back at the gym since three weeks after the Oval game in September,” he revealed. “This time last year I hadn’t played a full season or scored a first-class century. Now I’ve achieved both and there’s no reason why I can’t replicate that level of performance in years to come. I know what it takes in the county game and now I’m moving on to what I need to do to score more runs.”

To that end, Horton is heading off to Mumbai in the New Year to work on his technique against spin bowling, a visit which may scupper a planned trip to Australia to play club cricket. He is already preparing for a season in which opponents will be ready to test his technique afresh.

“People wouldn’t have highlighted me in any sort of way as someone to worry about last season,” he conceded. “But they will have learned things from playing against me. However, having scored a thousand runs in 13 games in 2007, there’s no reason why I can score 1,200 if I play 16 matches in 2008.”

The disappointment of having failed to win the title at the Oval still rankles but Horton insists Lancashire’s heroic run-chase proved what the team was capable of and he believes it “bodes well for the future”.

That future, though, will be led by either a new captain whose name will be announced today, Mark Chilton having decided to step down in October, a decision Horton views with great sympathy.

“I felt a bit sorry for Chilly,” he said. “I think the pressure of captaincy and trying to win trophies began to affect his own game. The captain bears the brunt of criticism for the way a side performs and I thought he did a fantastic job. Hopefully, now he’s not captain, we’ll begin to see the Mark Chilton we had a couple of years ago.”

It is a measure of Horton’s emergence as an established county cricketer that some supporters mentioned him as a candidate for the captaincy. He admits that he has “leadership ambitions” and says that captaining Lancashire at some stage in the future would be an honour he would find “hard to turn down”.

Other perceptive critics considered him a strong candidate for a place in the ECB Academy squad and for Horton’s name even to be discussed in these terms is a measure of his development. Yet it is a safe bet that further honours would not change him. He will still get a buzz from handing out the cups on a dour evening in Litherland.

Lancashire’s 2008 fixtures will be released today with Liverpool again expected to figure in the schedule with a county game and also a one-day fixture.