LANCASHIRE will play a Championship match at Southport this summer after a U-turn by the local council.

The future of county cricket at the Southport and Birkdale Sports Club, which has hosted Lancashire matches since the 1960s, was thrown into doubt when the council refused to provide £6,000 worth of funding for the game against Warwickshire starting on June 9 - with Lancashire making alternative arrangements to take the game to Aigburth in Liverpool.

But Neil McQuaid, the Southport chairman, has praised the council for their change of heart.

"It's tremendous news, not just for the club but for the whole of Sefton," he said.

"I'd like to thank the council members who had the courage to reconsider."

Southport has staged some memorable matches, with memories still fresh of Clive Lloyd hitting sixes on to the railway track and especially a 1982 meeting with Warwickshire, when Geoff Humpage and Alvin Kallicheran shared a partnership of 470 only for six wickets from Les MacFarlane and an unbroken opening stand of more than 200 between Accrington duo David Lloyd and Graeme Fowler to take Lancashire to a 10-wicket win.

It has gone on the rota with Lancashire's three other outgrounds - Liverpool, Blackpool and Lytham - since the introduction of four-day cricket to the Championship, and the last match there was in 1997 against Surrey, when the Lord's pitch inspector Harry Brind was called north after a clatter of wickets on the first day, although Lancashire escaped any punishment.

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