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Lancashire look on the bright side

Lancashire are unlikely to repeat last summer's laudable runners-up position in the championship this time around, but the club's efforts to bring customers in greater numbers through the Old Trafford gates continue. Floodlit cricket is the key.

AXA League champions Lancashire have four National League night matches arranged, and their Saturday game against Essex on July 3 should be an interesting barometer. One official said: ``One of our objectives is to close our doors with a capacity crowd inside.'' Last summer, on a wet night in July, a crowd of 9,500 visited the ground to watch Worcestershire.

Whatever the size of the crowds, cricket thrived in Manchester last year, and keeping the wagon rolling this summer in success terms will not be easy.

Wasim Akram, Lancashire's captain, has moved on and four other senior players, plus the new overseas signing Muttiah Muralitharan, the Sri Lankan off-spinner, will miss almost half the season.

John Crawley is the new captain and he will be expected to lead from the front with weight of runs; seven championship hundreds, as last year, would do very nicely.

The batting generally seems Lancashire's weakest suit. Graham Lloyd is occasionally capable of sustained innings, but the absence of Neil Fairbrother, Andrew Flintoff and Ian Austin knocks a hole in the order, which lacks proven quality in reserve, and the loss of Mike Atherton through injury hardly helps.

Muralitharan's savagely spun off-breaks will win matches only after his Sri Lanka duties are completed. Lancashire have to assume he does not run into no-ball problems during the World Cup; otherwise the knock-on effect to his county season hardly bears thinking about.

The Old Trafford ground will have a new feature at the Warwick Road end near the pavilion. The £2.7 million 68-room budget hotel, called the Old Trafford Lodge, is due to open on May 1 and the club are confident they can achieve their 75 per cent occupancy rate in the first year. Some of the rooms have balconies overlooking the cricket field, and they are to be used for hospitality boxes during big matches.

One could imagine Lancashire winning a one-day title every season until doomsday, but a high placing in the championship would be a very good achievement.