Not The Spin 14

Martin Chandler | 9:46am BST 31 March 2024

Published: 2024
Pages: 32
Author: Davis, Rory (Editor)
Publisher: Lancashire Cricket Action Group
Rating: 3.5 stars

My first wish would be that the Lancashire Cricket Action Group didn’t need to exist at all. The reasons that it, and its predecessor the Lancashire Action Group, have been explained in detail in the first thirteen issues of Not The Spin. It is not a happy story.

That first wish clearly unfulfilled my second wish would be that the existence of the Group and Not The Spin enabled some sort of compromise to be reached. Perhaps naively for a long time I have thought that might happen, but there is a telling phrase in Rory Davis’s hard hitting editorial; LCCC is realistically now a largely non-cricket company and members rely on all these ‘other’ activities to service the huge debts.

It is a depressing thought, and one that a number of the features in NTS14 return to, but for those who care as deeply about the history of Lancashire cricket as its future there is writing in here that can take our minds off the problems, the very best of which is Mark Gretton’s excellent celebration of the career of the recently departed Lancashire legend Glen Chapple. It is impossible to praise too highly a piece of work that clearly signposts that an autobiography from Chapple would be a fascinating read.

Likewise would be an autobiography from Frank Hayes, the gifted but unfulfilled batsman who retired a decade before Chapple debuted. I remain hopeful that we will see that one, but in the meantime Roy Cavanagh has, via Red Rose Books, published an extended appreciation of Hayes, and he contributes an article on that subject to NTS14.

There is also a reminder of a piece of history, albeit one that had passed me by, even though it deals with a county competition held just once, won by Lancashire, and in my lifetime! The subject is the Lambert and Butler Cup, a floodlit competition played in football stadiums, including the other Old Trafford, in 1981.

As for the rest of the content that is rather more contemporary. There are a couple of pieces of entertaining satire, and a retrospective look at matches from the latter part of last summer and some looks at places to be visited by Lancashire in 2024. All of these and other features highlight matters of concern to the LCAG, sometimes bluntly rather than subtlely, and sometimes the observations are explicit rather than implicit, but all give food for thought.

NTS 14 can be sourced through LCAG whose email contact is NottheSpin@yahoo.com