County Archives! This week is Lancashire of 2011

Moores’ superstars... with Keedy the unsung hero

Paul Edwards continues his fascinating series on the county teams by looking at how Lancashire broke their long drought and won the County Championship

Champs at last, Champs at last. Thank God almighty, we are champs at last.” The banner may have adapted words from an infinitely greater struggle but it seemed neither tasteless nor out of place, even when held aloft at Taunton, a ground which has yet to celebrate a County Championship for Somerset.

The date was September 15, 2011. Since that afternoon of improbable celebrations and good-humoured riot, it has been possible to separate Lancashire supporters into two groups: those who were present when the county won its first outright title since 1934 and those who, for whatever reason, were not.

The latter bunch included the county’s chief-executive, Jim Cumbes, and the former chairman, Jack Simmons, the burly off-spinner in whose heyday Lancashire’s best placing had been third.You could see their point. There had been so many shattered dreams and seven runners-up spots in 77 years. Lancashire cricket was not carrying a monkey on its back in 2011; it was lugging a bloody great orangutan.

Every now and then the irritating ape would whisper “1934” in the county’s ear and a grim silence would follow. Matters were made no better by the fact that Yorkshire had won the title on 14 occasions since Lancashire’s last triumph. True, Nigel Howard’s side had shared the Championship with Surrey in 1950, but that was viewed by true believers as something of half a loaf. Vexation ran deep.

It was fitting that when the pennant did finally arrive at Old Trafford, it did so at the end of a year in which the club’s very future had been threatened by a legal case over a planned redevelopment and after a season which had begun with Lancashire being tipped for relegation. The title arrived not so much out of a clear blue sky as in the eye of a cloud-tossed storm.

Yet the prophets of woe reckoned without the collective spirit of a squad composed mainly of cricketers who had learned the game in Lancashire and enjoyed playing professional sport with their mates; and they also reckoned without the coaching acumen of Peter Moores, who followed his 2003 triumph with Sussex with another demonstration of his ability to coax the very best out of county cricketers; and the pundits may have made their predictions without considering the impact of Lancashire having to play most of their home games on outgrounds while the realigned square at Old Trafford bedded in.

As it turned out, Glen Chapple’s team spent the whole of the four-day season on the road, winning four of their six games at Aigburth and beating Worcestershire at Blackpool. Defeats to Durham at Liverpool and to Nottinghamshire at Southport, seemed acceptable damage when weighed against the difficulty of winning matches on the frequently lifeless Manchester wickets.

Yet the joyous spectators who danced and sang with the players on the Taunton outfield did not give a hang about the pitches on which the games had been played. Everyone, they remembered, had done something in that summer of wonders and no one did more than Gary Keedy, the Yorkshire-born left-arm spinner whose accuracy and guile were occasionally overshadowed by the dramatic emergence of his slow-bowling colleague, Simon Kerrigan.

Keedy took 61 wickets in 2011 and bowled at least 150 more overs in Championship cricket than any other member of the Lancashire side. Without grabbing the headlines in the memorable fashion managed by some of his colleagues, he often held his side’s attack together, especially when the admirable Chapple was absent from the fray.

Keedy’s virtues were never more evident than in the two Roses matches, both of which Lancashire won, thus completing their first double over their keenest rivals for 22 years. In the first of these wonderful games he returned match figures of 10 for 177, although even that fine feat left Lancashire’s batsmen needing to score 121 in 15 overs to win the game. Largely thanks to Farveez Maharoof’s unbeaten 31, they completed the win with four balls to spare and the celebrations on the Aigburth balcony strained the architecture of the venerable pavilion.

For the local press – many of whom had already spent more time in tents than the most obsessive boy scout – that win over Yorkshire was the first indication that this might be a special season. It was Lancashire’s fourth win in their first five games and the journos had already seen maiden centuries by Karl Brown and Maharoof guide the Red Rose towards victories over Sussex and Somerset.

But on that steamy Saturday evening, when the crowd of players and spectators on the outfield foreshadowed their later congregation at Taunton, Lancashire’s players proved that they could win the close games. It was a knack they were never to lose in 2011. A couple of months later, Keedy found himself submerged beneath a heap of his teammates on the Headingley square after he had trapped Rich Pyrah leg before to complete Lancashire’s second Roses victory. This time the margin was a mere 23 runs and writers covering the Test against India in the Lord’s media centre found their attention wandering north.

Yet if 2011 remains Keedy’s summer to remember, it will also occupy a proud place in the recollections of Paul Horton and Stephen Moore. Despite playing half their innings on outground pitches, both Lancashire openers passed a 1,000 runs in Championship cricket; indeed, they each reached that mark on the afternoon the title was sealed at Taunton.

Nor will the summer ever be forgotten by the medium-fast bowler, Kyle Hogg, whose 50 scalps in 11 games included match figures of 11 for 59 at the Rose Bowl, where Hampshire’s batsmen could make nothing of him on a green pitch and Brown’s 96 helped set up a ten-wicket victory. That season was the pinnacle of Hogg’s career. Less than three summers later a severe back problem forced his retirement, a fate also experienced a few months ago by Tom Smith, another of Lancashire’s championship heroes. Both players remained utterly unspoilt by success and endearingly disarmed by their sudden fame.

“I was in my local pub going to the bar when Paul Scholes came up to me and shook my hand,” said Hogg a few weeks after the end of the season. “[Paul] said that he’d been following our season closely. To know that legends in football have been following how you’ve been doing is fantastic.”

For all their dramatic triumphs, Lancashire’s cricketers remained very vulnerable in 2011, and the battle for the title remained close until the final few overs of the season. Durham beat them twice and would have been worthy champions. On September 1, Worcestershire greatly aided their chances of staying in Division One by cleaning up Chapple’s side inside five full sessions at New Road. Lancashire’s cricketers returned north to play Hampshire at Liverpool and when the final session of that game began, they knew they needed to beat Jimmy Adams’ men and win at Taunton to have a chance of overtaking the new leaders, Warwickshire. What happened that evening and over the next five days will live in the memories of Lancashire supporters for as long as they retain even a small portion of their wits. First, having asked to bowl from the River End, Kerrigan married control with penetration and took six wickets in 14 overs. But the spinner was made to wait until four minutes from the end of the game before he had Neil McKenzie caught in the gully by Smith, thus ending a last-wicket partnership with James Tomlinson, which had frustrated Lancashire for 21 overs. Kerrigan finished with nine for 53, the best figures by a Lancashire bowler for 58 years. Even

Chapple’s 97 in the first innings and Moore’s outstanding century in the second became footnotes to the main narrative. Journalists, forgot their impartiality and shared a hug. Even after such heroics, Lancashire trailed Warwickshire by three points and their chances of victory seemed further harmed on the first day at Taunton when James Hildreth made a fine century and Chapple tore his hamstring, an impairment which took his tally of twinges up to ten instead of the normal nine.

On the final morning of the season the leaders semed on course for victory over Hampshire, while Chapple’s men needed to take five Somerset wickets and knock off whatever target was set. Peter Trego’s century increased the difficulty of the latter task, but the first direct hit of Keedy’s career ran out last man, Gemaal Hussain, and left Lancashire needing 211 to win. At Southampton, with nothing less to play for than professional pride, Hampshire batted out the day. Back at

Without grabbing the headlines, he often held his side’s attack together, especially when the admirable Chapple was absent from the fray

Taunton Lancashire knocked off the runs in 29.1 overs, their progress only interrupted by the cheers from their supporters when a draw was agreed at the Rose Bowl. The celebrations began and were to continue deep into the winter. Some folk say they saw an orangutan sloping off towards the Quantocks but that may have been the Jägermeister talking.