BLACKPOOL

(day three of four)

Neville Scott

No play Friday due to rain

Jerry Lloyds, the senior umpire in this fixture who spent 13 seasons as a player with Somerset and Gloucestershire and has been on the ECB umpires list for a further 11, said of Stanley Park: "I have never seen a ground as boggy in my life". Unsurprisingly, therefore, play was again abandoned, for the third consecutive day, at 9.30am.

Both sides, with the threat of relegation hanging heavily over them, indicated they were prepared to play, bowling spinners from the start and setting fields to avoid the more obviously dangerous areas of the outfield. But the umpires, Lloyds and Nick Cook, took the view that this would "bring the game into disrepute". In truth, it would have rendered it farcical.

In Lloyds's view, with water only inches below the surface, any seamer would have turned the run-ups into mud within a few overs, and players would have risked injury in the field. It already seems unlikely that play will be possible on the final day, Saturday, and the match may prove the first Lancashire fixture to be abandoned without a ball bowled since 2001.

Delegates to political party conferences in this town sometimes used to be invited to go home and prepare for government. Either or both of these sides may now have to leave Blackpool preparing only for life in the second division.

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