LAST season may have been one to forget for Lancashire Cricket Club on the field but it was a memorable one for batsman Graham Lloyd off it.

His testimonial season saw him travelling the county for a series of events and he admitted: "It was great fun, I really enjoyed it.

"I met some really nice people and had some really good dos and am very grateful to all the people who helped me. But now the important thing is to improve the performances on the field."

Lloyd and his team mates have been hard at it in training in recent weeks and he is confident that the good times can come back to the county.

"I have had some great times, played in seven finals at Lord's and won five of them," he said. "Some people never get the chance to play in a single final and I have also played for England in one-day internationals.

"We didn't play well last year, myself included, and we have to battle on this time around. I would like to write it off as an aberration, it was our first really poor season for quite some time.

"I think everyone is looking forward to getting it right this time. We have been hard at it in the Old Trafford Indoor Cricket Centre, working hard on our fitness levels for a couple of months now."

As he looked ahead to the new campaign that will start in April, Lloyd admitted that there are a number of targets that the players are setting themselves.

"We have had a couple of seasons in the second division of the one-day competition so we want to get back into the first," he said. "Hopefully we will compete in the County Championship and it would be lovely to go back to Lord's in one or even both of the cup competitions.

"Also it would be nice to have some better weather this season because we were unlucky last year. It is normal for Manchester to have bad weather but it was worse than usual.

"Hopefully all the rain is being dumped now and that will mean we get a drier summer."

One man who has not had to worry about the rain recently is Lloyd's county colleague Andrew Flintoff. He has been all over the media in the past couple of days after his match winning display in England's final one-day international against India on Sunday.

"Freddie was very excited and I have never seen anyone do that on a cricket field," he said in relation to his waving his shirt over his head having claimed the final wicket. "It is a good job he has lost some weight or I am not sure he would have wanted to do it. Mind you, it looked like a spur of the moment thing."

Lloyd is hoping that his slimmer line colleague will have plenty more reasons to celebrate this season.