Building work has officially finished on a new ground for Lancashire County Cricket Club, which has been created at the heart of the county.
The facility, on a site in the Farington area of South Ribble, will become a second home for the county side, to complement its main base at Emirates Old Trafford in Manchester.
The Lancashire County Council-backed development was handed over by constructors at a special event on Monday, enabling preparations to begin for the first matches, which are expected to be played in July.
The club says the project is unique in the way it has delivered a professional Test match-standard oval alongside another, which will be given over to community use.
While all major matches will continue to be played at Old Trafford, the new Farington ground, in Stanifield Lane, close to where the M6 and M65 motorways meet, is set to host county championship and Twenty20 games and the Lancashire women's team.
It will be able to accommodate around 5,000 spectators.
While that will be an undoubted boon for cricket fans, Lancashire CCC’s interim chair – the 19-time Paralympic cycling and swimming champion, Dame Sarah Storey – is especially excited about the potential for the ground to grow the cricketers of the future.
Having a base in Lancashire will make travel easier for young players attending training and games, avoiding having to make the journey to Manchester and all the traffic issues that can bring.
She said: “We really can work from the very grassroots of the sport, all the way through to the very elite end, and it’s an incredible opportunity.
“I’m sure when we first get children through the doors here, we will be able to follow their journeys from that community pitch to the professional pitch, and, who knows, from here they could go on to represent England one day, too.
“Cricket is embedded within so many communities across Lancashire and across the country.
“Farington is the first of its kind in the UK for cricket, having two ovals of this size with a facility and a building that we have.
“Where it is is so important, too. It provides us with the opportunity to reach right to the north of the county and all the way across to the south.
"We’re a huge county in Lancashire, and it’s really important that we get to showcase what’s on offer to all children and all communities.
“So this will make a huge difference to that, and it will provide that pathway. Future champions will be able to come here and see what their future might look like on the professional pitch, and then really go and put it into action themselves."
She added the pavilion also provided the space needed to host indoor events for disability cricket, boosting the sport’s credentials as “one of the most inclusive”.
As part of an agreement with the county council, 750 hours of community access to the ground will be provided each year.
Daniel Gidney, Lancashire CCC’s chief executive, said the facility would mean every child who wanted to play would now be able to enjoy a “cricket experience”.
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“We do that by inviting schools that don’t have facilities to come and play cricket here,” he said.
He also said the club’s men’s and women’s first teams would be able to enjoy training facilities akin to those found in Premier League football, thanks to what was on offer at Farington, and lauded the “genuine public-private partnership” between the club and Lancashire County Council that had made the facility possible.
The value of the subsidy provided by Lancashire County Council in developing the site is calculated to be £9.7 million, and the ground will be leased to Lancashire CCC on a 250-year agreement.
Cabinet member for economic development and growth, Councillor Brian Moore, said there was real value in the authority’s involvement.
He said: “It’s created a lot of local jobs during the construction and it will continue to create jobs for local people in terms of grounds maintenance and also using the facilities, so it is something Lancashire can be proud of.
“Cricket is the quintessential sport for England, and especially for us here in Lancashire.
“What we want to see is more people involved, more people watching, more people playing; that’s the whole point of it."
More than 50,000 cubic metres of topsoil had to be shifted as part of the construction project, with more than 46,000 of that volume able to be reused on site, an unheard of feat according to South Ribble-based Eric Wright Construction, which delivered the project.
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