Lancashire County Cricket Club

Lancashire County Cricket Club is one of eighteen professional cricket clubs in English country cricket. The Lancashire Cricket club is based in Stretford at the Old Trafford ground. In Lancashire cricket got established in the late 17th century. Prior to the formation of the Lancashire county cricket club Lancashire was represented on a domestic level by the Manchester cricket club.

The Lancashire County Cricket Club was officially formed on 12th January 1864. The debut match of this club was against Middlesex which Lancashire won by 62 runs. The Lancashire County Cricket team was very reputed in England for its batting strategy during the 1870s. One of the outstanding batsman of this era was A.N. Hornby.

Lancashire was extremely successful during the 1880s and the club could win several titles consecutively. In 1890-91 Lancashire was seeded as the runners-up in the county championship. In the 1895 season one of the finest batsman of this club was MacLaren. In the match against Somerset he scored a record breaking 424 runs. This record of scoring the highest runs in county cricket is still unbroken. Due to the batting of MacLaren the Lancashire County Cricket team could reach the finals however it had to be content with the second position.

The performance of the Lancashire Cricket Club began to decline after the second World War as the county found it tough to stabilize. After several years of declination the team rose up again in the 1960s under the captaincy of Brian Statham. This team remained dominant in the limited overs tournament up to the late 1970s and this success rein was continued till the end of the century.

After 2003 the team has experienced considerable improvements due to a number of alterations done to the team. Several reputed players like Wasim Akram, Farokh Engineer, Brad Hodge, Andrew Symonds, Stuart Law, Ted McDonald, Clive Lloyd, Michael Holding, Muttiah Muralitharan and Mohammad Yousuf have been a part of the Lancashire side at some point of their career.

During the 2007-08 county championship Lancashire could reach the final however was defeated by Surrey Cricket County Club in an extremely close match. Lancashire had to score 489 runs to win however it managed only 464. The limited overs cricket team that represents Lancashire county is called as Lancashire Lightning.

Major achievements

7 Friends Provident titles

5 Pro40 titles

8 County championship titles