Lancashire CCC 2011 - County Champions

Old Trafford - home of the Premier League Champions 2011

Old Trafford - home of the County Champions 2011

forget "the Theatre of Dreams", more like "The Home of Champions"
 
Finally, after a whole bloody life time. Well done lancs! :) Old Trafford, home of the champions.
 
Amazing
I'm not a massive Lancashire fan, they're the team I follow and see more or less once a season, but this is brilliant.

Fantastic achievement, from an unheralded group

Hopefully this is just the beginning, with hopefully an Ashes test coming soon
 
Lancashire knows a bit about the waiting game
Old men were just little boys when Lancashire last won cricket’s county championship

Something important happened in Lancashire this week: they stopped waiting. Seventy seven years the county had been hanging around to celebrate winning cricket’s championship. In that time, as this paper’s cricket correspondent Derek Pringle points out, society has embraced the Hoover, cat’s eyes and the world wide web. The last time their cricketers held the trophy, a Briton won the men’s singles title at Wimbledon. It has been that long.
And what a glorious way to end the wait. Beta blockers are not often required to calm the nerves during the denouement of cricket’s county championship. But this week, with Lancashire and Warwickshire both entering the final day with a chance to take the trophy, tension gripped the throat.
It was Warwickshire’s to win. Overnight, they were in a better position than the men of the red rose county. But as the day progressed, as Warwickshire’s opponents, Hampshire, became more ever more obdurate, battling for a draw, so the Lancashire supporters began to believe in the impossible as their team got the better of Somerset. Suddenly there were Lankies everywhere. Seventy seven years is a long time to lurk in the woodwork. Never mind that some had not paid any heed to the county for so long they assumed Michael Atherton was still captain and Andrew Flintoff the up-and-coming youngster, how they wanted to celebrate when it was finally won.
In sport, as in the army, there is a lot of waiting involved. Waiting is the inevitable corollary of an obsession with keeping tabs on history; the record books pay almost as much note to those who don’t achieve as those who do. In England, we are obsessed with the growing gap between successes. Every Arsenal fan knows it is six years since they last won a trophy; the 21-season wait for a league title hangs heavily on the shoulders of Liverpool followers; while it is now 15 years since Skinner and Baddiel sung of 30 years of hurt waiting for England to win the World Cup. And still the wait drags on.
In Lancashire, they had intimate acquaintance with hanging around. Over the road from the cricket club, Manchester United took 26 years – from 1967 to 1993 – to win the football championship. Across town, City ended a 34-year wait for success when they picked up the FA Cup last May. But 77 years… In a sense, that was what made Lancashire special. The grand cricketing county that couldn’t actually come top: it may not be the most illustrious calling card, but it was theirs.

Now, though, their wait is over – and they may come to miss it. The Boston Red Sox were once proud holders of sport’s longest delay. Eighty six years the club had been playing baseball without getting close to flying the World Series pennant. When the curse was lifted, in 2004, with victory in the Series, some Red Sox followers found themselves deflated. The win was all very well, but lingering was what made their team special.
The players are unlikely to worry too much about removing Lancashire’s unique point of identity. All waits eventually end, that is what is so delicious about them. Indeed, others could draw comfort from their experience. Chelsea supporters, for instance. If Lancashire can win, then surely their own wait will end and their pricey misfiring forward Fernando Torres will score a goal.
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Lancashire knows a bit about the waiting game - Telegraph
 
EdWeatherall said:
Hopefully this is just the beginning, with hopefully an Ashes test coming soon
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Test Cricket is coming back :D

I know we hosted Bangladesh in 2010, but these are proper games coming, particularly the Ashes Test in 2013...will definitely be getting tickets for that


Old Trafford matches

2013

England v Australia Test Match
England v Australia One Day International

2014

England v India Test Match
England v Sri Lanka One Day International

2015

England v Australia One Day International
England v New Zealand International T20

2016

England v Pakistan Test Match
England v Pakistan International T20
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