Seeing how Where’s Sailor Jack? follows, in passing, the fortunes of Lancashire cricket from 1950 to date, I thought I’d have a bit of fun picking two teams from the whole period, one born and bred, one from anywhere outside the county. In the latter case, I’ve only picked players who played at least three seasons for us, so sadly no place for Graeme Pollock or Michael Holding for instance. I’ve made one or two startling omissions, such as Mike Atherton, as we have a surfeit of Lancastrian-born opening bats and his major contribution was to England. I’ve tried to find a balance between the fine players of the early fifties, the great one-day era of the late sixties, the years where we drifted, and the championship winning team of 2011.
The home team lines up in batting order as: Cyril Washbrook, Winston Place, Geoff Pullar, Neil Fairbrother, Andrew Flintoff, David Lloyd, Jack Simmons, Geoff Clayton (wk), Roy Tattersall, Brian Statham, James Anderson. The away team is Farokh Engineer (wk), Barry Wood, Jack Ikin, Clive Lloyd, Ashwell Prince, Stuart Law, Wasim Akram, Glenn Chapple, Ken Higgs, Gary Keedy, Muttiah Muralitharan.
Only Geoff Clayton, Glenn Chapple and Gary Keedy are uncapped.I make no apologies for the inclusion of so many of the Gillette Cup winning generation, when the rest of the country used to play each other to see who played Lancashire in the final. I particularly wish I could have found a place too for Harry Pilling. Some fine bowlers have had to be ignored, but with Statham, Anderson and Flintoff, the likes of Shuttleworth and Allott just couldn’t get in, and similarly with Peter Lever from whichever side of the bed in Todmorden he was born on. Warren Hegg was close to the wicketkeeper slot, but Geoff Clayton brings back the late fifties and early sixties. I’d have loved to have found a spot for Peter Marner, but like Frank Hayes, he wasn’t quite consistent enough. And regrettably, nothing for Steven Croft and Karl Brown, Blackpudlian and Boltonian, at the wicket when paradise was regained on that glorious day of redemption, which partly gave me the idea for Bob and Richard in the novel. But thank you all for the memories.