Lancashire County Cricket Club represents the historic county of Lancashire in cricket's County Championship. Founded in 1864 as a successor to Manchester Cricket Club, Lancashire have played at Old Trafford since then and, in 1865, played their inaugural first-class match, beating Middlesex at Old Trafford.
Johnny Briggs, whose career lasted from 1879 to 1900, was the first player to score 10,000 runs and take 1,000 wickets for Lancashire. Lancashire was widely recognised as the champion county four times between 1879 and 1889. When the County Championship was officially founded in December 1889, Lancashire was one of eight clubs to feature in the competition's first season in 1890. In 1895 Archie MacLaren scored 424 in an innings for Lancashire, which remains the highest score by an Englishman in first-class cricket. Lancashire won their first two County Championship titles in 1897 and 1904.
Ernest Tyldesley is the club's leading run-scorer with 34,222 runs in 573 matches for Lancashire between 1909 and 1936. Between 1926 and 1934, Lancashire won the County Championship five times, but would not claim the title again until 1950, when it was shared with Surrey. Lancashire next won the County Championship in 2011.
Cyril Washbrook became Lancashire's first professional captain in 1954. Fast bowler Brian Statham took 1,816 wickets in 430 first-class matches between 1950 and 1968. This remains a club record. The Lancashire side of the late 1960s and early 1970s was successful in one-day cricket, winning the Sunday League in 1969 and 1970 and the Gillette Cup four times between 1970 and 1975. Lancashire won the Benson and Hedges Cup in 1984, three times between 1990 and 1996, and the Sunday League in 1989, 1998 and 1999. The County Championship was restructured in 2000 with Lancashire in the first division. They were relegated in 2004 but promoted again in 2005. In 2011, Lancashire won the County Championship but were then relegated to the second division in 2012.
Read more about Lancashire County Cricket Club: Honours, Earliest Cricket in Lancashire, Ground, Finances, Captains
Famous quotes containing the words county, cricket and/or club:
“Don’t you know there are 200 temperance women in this county who control 200 votes. Why does a woman work for temperance? Because she’s tired of liftin’ that besotted mate of hers off the floor every Saturday night and puttin’ him on the sofa so he won’t catch cold. Tonight we’re for temperance. Help yourself to them cloves and chew them, chew them hard. We’re goin’ to that festival tonight smelling like a hot mince pie.”
—Laurence Stallings (1894–1968)
“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“He loved to sit silent in a corner of his club and listen to the loud chattering of politicians, and to think how they all were in his power—how he could smite the loudest of them, were it worth his while to raise his pen for such a purpose.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)