It's always Lancashire's year.... The season of a Lancky fan:

:UMB:

I see people are saying Flintoff should skip the IPL like ponting has.How much would Lancs be missing out on if he does pull out of it?

Yorkshire 2 Lancashire 0, and the season hasn't even started yet.

be 3-0 by tomorrow

Was at the Rose Bowl yesterday for round 1 of the Friends Provident Trophy (free tickets supplied by some sort of grass roots club initiative - brilliant!). Worcestershire beat the hosts by 53 runs, after they scored 320 in the first innings and Hampshire could not chase it down.

Moeen Ali batting at four for Worcestershire was sensational, he started off rather slowly (50 from 73 balls) but his next 50 came off just 24 as he carted Dominic Cork and Chris Tremlett all over the place. He eventually holed out for 125 from 109 - good fifties too from Ben Smith and Steven Davies.

Hampshire started well with 50 from Michael Lump and 100 from John Crawley but there was precious little else and Gareth Batty returned career-best figures of 5-35.

Worcestershire certainly have a habit of finding young Asian talent in Birmingham and the surrounding areas much better than Warwickshire do (Ali was at the Bears for a while but never made it there).

I must admit I thought Hants could chase it down as neither of Worcestershire's main seamers - Matt Mason and Ashley Noffke - were playing and, the two spinners (Fisher & Batty) apart, there didn't seem to be much to the worcs bowling attack, compounded when Kabir Ali went off injured after only 5 overs.

I've watched Hampshire on a number of occasions now and each time I've see Sean Ervine get out for next to nothing

320 at this time of year is an impressive score at any ground there were a fair few low scores up and down the country

Good start for Yorkshire, just need to nip Blackwell out now.

Anderson has taken 6-56 for Lancs.

Dur 362

Yorks 16-0

Hoggard took 4-62, also Broad has taken the first 4 wickts for Notts 4-42.