Lancs defend Old Trafford gigs
The Manchester weather has struck again © Getty Images
Lancashire chief executive Jim Cumbes has defended the club’s decision to stage two pop concerts at Old Trafford in the middle of the cricket season.
The Red Rose boss also insisted that the Arctic Monkey gigs were not the sole reason for the abandonment of the opening day of their LV County Championship match against Hampshire.
Parts of the Manchester ground, mostly at the Stretford End and in front of the Indoor School, are completely void of any grass and are muddy and boggy.
“I think it is fair to say that it hasn’t helped,” said Cumbes of the concerts that took place on July 28 and 29.
“If we hadn’t had the pop concerts you wouldn’t see the bare patches but given that we have had so much rain then it would still have been quite iffy to start on time anyway.
“I think the two captains possibly would have waited a little bit longer because the ground has dried out quite a bit since this morning.
“But I think that the feeling was that the conditions weren’t going to get that much better.”
Cumbes is cautiously optimistic that the Division One clash, that features a mouth-watering clash between spin kings Muttiah Muralitharan and Shane Warne, will get under way tomorrow.
And he also admitted the club decided against moving the fixture to Liverpool’s Aigburth ground after a meeting last Wednesday.
“I had a meeting with Mike Watkinson and Peter Marron last Wednesday afternoon where we discussed taking it to Liverpool.
“But it was a matter of could we prepare a wicket in time - and had we got to Monday morning having had a glorious weekend then people would have been asking why haven’t you played it at Old Trafford?”
Cumbes was also confident the one-day interntional between England and India scheduled for nest Thursday would go ahead but was keeping his fingers firmly crossed for a good spell of “drying weather”.
“We had a fantastic Test match here on something like June 7 but I don’t think we have had anything like a couple of decent drying days since.
“If we have some heavy rain over the next week, there will be a doubt. But that would be the same at any ground,” he added.
