CRICKET: Lancashire will start 2019 season with a trip to Lord’s

Lancashire County Cricket Club’s Specsavers County Championship and Royal London One-Day Cup fixtures have been revealed for the 2019 season.

The Red Rose, following a two-week pre-season tour to Dubai in March, will start their Championship Division Two campaign away at Lord’s as Glen Chapple’s side take on Middlesex, starting on Thursday 11 April.

Prior to the start of the season, Lancashire take on Loughborough in a three-day fixture, starting on Friday 5th April.

The Royal London One-Day Cup competition commences early in 2019 with Lancashire’s first game against Worcestershire Rapids starting on Wednesday 17 April.

Emirates Old Trafford will host three further home fixtures in the Royal London One-Day Cup with Northants Steelbacks, Leicestershire Foxes and Derbyshire Falcons all playing in Manchester.

The first Roses fixture of the summer takes place at Headingley in the Royal London One-Day Cup against Yorkshire on Sunday 21 April, whilst the knockout stages are scheduled to be played on Friday 10 and Sunday 12 of May, with the Final taking place at Lord’s on Saturday May 25.

The Specsavers County Championship then resumes after the conclusion of the Royal London One-Day Cup with consecutive home fixtures at Emirates Old Trafford against Northants (14-17 May) and Worcestershire (20-23 May).

County Championship cricket will return to Liverpool Cricket Club for the first time since 2014 with Leicestershire the visitors to Aigburth, starting on Monday 3 June. Liverpool first hosted a Lancashire fixture back in 1881 with the most recent fixture against Nottinghamshire four years ago.

A venue for Lancashire’s home Specsavers County Championship fixture against Durham, which starts on Sunday 30 June, will be confirmed in due course. The same applies to Lancashire away fixture against Gloucestershire at the end of May.

Lancashire will take on Glamorgan at Colwyn Bay, starting on the 18 August and will be the first time since 2015 that the Red Rose have played in North Wales. In that fixture the Lancashire duo of Ashwell Prince and Alviro Petersen became only the 13th pair to share a stand of more than 500 runs in first-class cricket as Glamorgan were beaten by an innings.

Aside from the knock-out stages of the Vitality Blast competition and the Fourth Specsavers Ashes Test Match at Emirates Old Trafford, the remainder of the season in September is then focused on red-ball cricket, with home Specsavers County Championship fixtures against Derbyshire and Middlesex before a trip to Grace Road on Monday 23 September that will bring the curtain down on the 2019 domestic season.

Lancashire captain Dane Vilas said, “The announcement of the 2019 fixtures brings the season a step closer and we’re all determined to perform consistently next year and win back our position in Division One. That is where this Club should be.

“We’ve got a young, hungry group of players in that changing room, and we all want to put last year behind us and concentrate on improving both collectively and individually in all formats of the game in 2019.”