DAV Whatmore will meet with Geoff Ogden, chairman of Lancashire's Cricket Committee, this week to compile the annual report of a disappointing season and start the preparations for 1998.

They will have plenty to talk about.

Lancashire hung on for a draw with nine wickets down in an exciting finish against Gloucestershire at Bristol yesterday, leaving them 11th in the table.

That's four places higher than last year, with five wins compared to two in 1996, while they have also climbed six places in the Sunday League from ninth to third.

But last year Lancashire compensated for their poor championship performance by winning both the Benson & Hedges Cup at the NatWest Trophy. This time they crashed out of both one-day competitions, at the group stage in the B&H and, even worse, at struggling Sussex in the NatWest.

And Whatmore admits that finishing in the bottom half of the championship table is not good enough for a team containing so much talent.

Whatmore and captain Mike Watkinson will rightly point out that things could have been very different had the weather not robbed Lancashire of victory over Durham in their first game.

And they have been unlucky with injuries as Wasim Akram played only one championship game. But the batting performances at Derby, and also against Somerset at Taunton, were unacceptable. Lancashire suffered an even more spectacular collapse, to 51 all out in just 14 overs, against Glamorgan at Liverpool, but that was more excusable as Waqar Younis produced a truly world-class spell.

While Lancashire were locked in their mid-table scrap with Gloucestershire on Saturday evening, 40 miles down the M5 at Taunton, Waqar and his Welsh team mates were celebrating their first championship since 1969.

They were regarded as cricket's easy-beats a decade ago, but it is unpleasant food for thought for everyone at Old Trafford that the unfashionable Taffs have won all three of their Championships since Lancashire's last outright title, in 1934.

Watkinson, whose captaincy is under threat, was out in unfortunate style yesterday, run out for one after a mix-up with Neil Fairbrother.

Mark Harvey had gone in similar fashion three balls earlier, the victim of a brilliant piece of fielding, as Lancashire squandered the platform provided by John Crawley's 78.

But fittingly Ian Austin, Lancashire's only ever-present and their player of the season, added a half century to his four wickets in the first innings and although Lancashire's victory chances ended with his dismissal, last pair Glen Chapple and Gary Keedy hung on for the last two overs to prevent the season finishing with a seventh defeat.

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