What do Harold Larwood, Rohan Kanhai, Richie Richardson and Mushtaq Mohammad have in common? All laced their cricket boots as pros at Blackpool CC, Lancashire\u2019s outground by the sea, watched over by the famous tower \u2013 a steel Mona Lisa in a kiss-me-quick hat.<\/p>\n
Last week, the ground hosted Lancashire\u2019s men in what has been re-established as an annual Championship match, four days of picnics and fun. At least, it was supposed to be four days \u2013 but Kent completed a 140-run win on the third evening, a third morale-sapping defeat for Lancashire, who have also gone down badly to Middlesex and Durham.<\/p>\n
Where the top of Division One is currently a close-run thing<\/a> between three teams that don\u2019t host Tests \u2013 Essex, Sussex and Somerset \u2013 Lancashire are growing wearily familiar with the second tier, after being relegated at the end of 2024.<\/p>\n They started last season as warm favourites for promotion, only to suffer a torrid first couple of months before the captain, Keaton Jennings, and the coach, Dale Benkenstein, resigned.<\/p>\n The subsequent renaissance was too late for them to hop up a division, but helped to re-establish them as promotion favourites in 2026. Again, though, the summer has lurched downwards after two early wins \u2013 and with half the season gone they lie fifth in Division Two, looking enviously upwards, albeit gutted by injury<\/a>.<\/p>\n To add to the bleak mood, the men\u2019s team are also bottom of the Blast north group, with their defeats including a balloon-popping implosion against Glamorgan at Blackpool, while the women are seventh out of nine.<\/p>\n Glamorgan\u2019s last-ball win at Blackpool was one of a series of defeats across formats for Lancashire. Photograph: George Franks\/ProSports\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n Off the pitch the club has been embroiled in a civil war with some sections of the membership, special general meetings springing up like weeds, and including a vote of no confidence.<\/p>\n Daniel Gidney, who has been chief executive for 14 years, has announced that he will step down at the end of year, amid a general feeling that Old Trafford has become a (successful) events company with bit of unloved cricket on the side. Lancashire last won the Championship in 2011, with a mostly homegrown team who no one fancied but who scrapped with gumption. That memory is drifting into the past.<\/p>\n But what Lancashire \u2013 and Yorkshire \u2013 still do very well is use their outgrounds for Championship cricket, in contrast to those counties who now remain static in their headquarters. These are the grounds where members love to meet friends and watch in the (occasional) sunshine at Southport, Scarborough, York and Blackpool, though there are some worries that Lancashire\u2019s spanking new facility at landlocked Farington<\/a>, due to open later this summer, might threaten future trips to the north-west coast.<\/p>\n The walk from Blackpool North station to Stanley Park takes only 20 minutes and passes a huge Salvation Army building, a Citizen\u2019s Advice bureau, a good range of takeaways and, once upon a time, Jeanette\u2019s Sewing Alterations and Haberdashery, though that is now up for sale. The ground, Blackpool CC, is walled off from the main park, which has a beautiful art deco cafe and where, I\u2019m told, you can buy very good poached eggs on toast.<\/p>\n The many suspirating trees that overhang the perimeter add to the restful air, though the wind can be brutal when it picks up off the Irish Sea. Like Hampshire\u2019s Rose Bowl, the ground is largely an amphitheatre and the concrete seats have been touched up by the club recently \u2013 a local company donated planks of wood and the ground improvement team (one groundsman, four volunteers) sanded, painted and attached them. For the Kent match there was a pizza and coffee van and a pop-up bar, while in the pavilion you could buy a barm cake and a packet of crisps for \u00a34.<\/p>\n Lancashire\u2019s game against Kent at Blackpool last year was a high-scoring affair, with Luke Wells (arms up) one of five centurions. Photograph: Martin Rickett\/PA<\/p>\n Blackpool, like most clubs, is powered by volunteer energy, and the chair Dave Cresswell has been in post for 15 years at his boyhood club. He retired at 55 and it turned into a full-time job.<\/p>\n The club is able to put up under-10s, under-11s, under-13s, under-15s, under-17s, women\u2019s softball and women\u2019s 11-a-side teams, as well as four men\u2019s teams on a Saturday \u2013 but it is a struggle to attract and retain players.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re very high in deprivation terms, with a low-wage economy, and attracting even junior players to the club is a real effort at the moment,\u2019 says Cresswell. \u201cWe do run All-Stars [a nationwide initiative for 5-8-year-olds] and have loads down on a Friday, but we don\u2019t have any [feeder] private schools and local [state] schools do not play cricket any more<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWe host Kwik cricket games here for the primary schools and it\u2019s fantastic to see, but getting secondary schools in particular to even signpost people who are interested in cricket to come here is very, very difficult. There\u2019s no town team any more. There\u2019s no inter-school competitions any more. Unless you\u2019re from an elite group of players, you don\u2019t really know that it is even available.\u201d<\/p>\n But there is hope. The club has been boosted by Afghan refugees pointed in their direction by the council, and players from different backgrounds play together largely without, in Cresswell\u2019s words, \u201cthe social cohesion issues\u201d of some local areas.<\/p>\n \u201cThough larger companies have disappeared from Blackpool \u2013 British Nuclear Fuels, ICI and some civil service jobs,\u201d says Cresswell, \u201cthe council, through their regeneration process, are starting to attract more people to the town centre. Higher-value jobs are on the way but it\u2019s taken a long time for those to become available. There\u2019s an MOD office near the railway station, which will be employing probably a thousand people, and a multiversity, which sometimes become a feeder into local sports clubs. We hope to tap into them.\u201d<\/p>\n