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Lancashire face a crisis when they host the eagerly awaited NatWest Trophy quarter-final against Yorkshire later this month because they have run out of pitches.

They must have had mixed feelings when the draw was made last week, knowing they would have to use an exhausted second or third-hand strip at Old Trafford and leave themselves open to accusations of doctoring the surface for Muttiah Muralitharan on July 28.

Six strips have been taken out of commission for relaying and another is being reserved for the third Test against New Zealand. Every other inch of space has effectively been exhausted.

Peter Marron, the head groundsman, created a golden era of pacey wickets by renewing part of the square a decade ago, but these compacted Surrey loam-based strips have suffered ``root break''. He said yesterday: ``In my terms this is a crisis. I'll have to take a pitch used twice or three times before and roll it out as flat as I can.''

He added: ``For the relaid strips I'm trying to find a more natural soil that allows the grass to grow well.''

In case Muralitharan is wondering, there is no question of returning to marl, the red clay that, when rain-affected, gave Jim Laker his 19-wicket paradise against Australia in 1956.

Michael Geliot raises an interesting point on behalf of the MCC members angry at being charged admission to the World Cup final. His group lost their no-confidence vote, but he reckons the committee could still be sued for as much as L300,000.

Geliot, 65, a former director of the Welsh National Opera, has been up in arms over the compulsory L60 for a World Cup final ticket or, as he prefers to put it, the denial of ``right of access'' to Lord's.

Writing in this month's Cricket Lore magazine, Geliot summarises a strong legal case against the MCC committee, who have suffered flak since pushing the membership into admitting women.

Geliot details the water-tight case for members' rights - they must always agree first before they pay and so on (no matter the public paid L100 each to the World Cup fund) -and he asks in conclusion: ``Could a member who purchased World Cup tickets sue for re-imbursement? Could members who did not purchase such tickets sue for some form of breach of contract?''

The time is ripe for a phalanx of lawyers to march forward and for the MCC to disappear up their own backsides.

The Tremlett dynasty is producing a potential third generation of county cricketer. Chris Tremlett, a 6ft 6in all-rounder from Taunton's College in Southampton, is in Belfast this weekend with England Under-17. His father Tim played for Hampshire, and his grandfather Maurice was a Somerset regular, winning three England caps in 1947.

Tim Tremlett is standing in as Hampshire's coach while Malcolm Marshall completes a course of chemotherapy treatment for colon cancer.

France were banned from this week's European Under-19 Championship in Belfast for selecting a girl - Cindy Paquin, a leg-spinner from Picardy -and for the squad's ``age differential''. Their average age was only 15.

The French authorities are to appeal to the International Sports Tribunal in Lausanne against their exclusion by the European Cricket Council, whose chairman is Doug Insole.

Dennis Lillee is 50 tomorrow and remains Australia's leading Test wicket-taker. He has two more claims to fame, because he was responsible for a change in the laws of cricket and for a new first-class regulation. Bats, by law, must be made of wood only after Dennis tried to use an aluminium one against England at Perth in the 1979-80 Test series. And a regulation had to be introduced to deter absence from the field after the 1981 series when our Dennis changed his shirt and rested in the pavilion after each spell of bowling.