THIS year has been quite a year for Morecambe Cricket Club with the second team winning the double. But, as cricket historian JOHN GLAISTER discovered, there is something else for the club to celebrate.
The received knowledge is that the first game of cricket ever to be played by a Morecambe team was on August 15 1855 at Lancaster, against Lancaster.
In the book 'The Lancaster Cricket Club 1841-1909 published in 1910 and written by J J Gilchrist th
e match report concludes "This is the first record of any match with Morecambe players". That was disinformation.
The first match with Morecambe players was over a year earlier on Wednesday, May 31, 1854 when a 10-a-side game took place in Morecambe itself between a Morecambe mixed eleven and a Lancaster mixed eleven.
Mixed in this instance does not mean unisex. The Lancaster club helped out by providing players for both teams.
It was a two innings game. Result Morecambe 50 and 84, Lancaster 44 and seven.
The dose was repeated in the 1855 game, 42 and 81 to 18 and 33 and so the tone was set for the blood-letting which takes place whenever these ancient rivals meet.
The Lancaster Gazette on Saturday, June 3, 1854 sets the scene for this historic first match:
"Wednesday afternoon was the opening day of Morecambe Cricket Club whose ground is adjacent the railway station, and a very trying ground we know it to be for a tired or elderly pedestrian to cross when fancying himself late for the train.
"The club have made the best playing ground that could be made of it. The wickets were pitched at 3pm and with the assistance of a strong detachment from the Lancaster club two 11s were formed.
Mr E Sharpe, a strong player played for the weaker side. Messrs Rawsthorne, Buck and Wright were strong in all points."
The Lancaster Guardian of the same day expressed surprise ... 'to find it convertible to even a very moderate ground for the manly game ... but concluded ...the Morecambe club were in earnest.'
Edmund Sharpe and James Rawsthorne counted themselves very, very fortunate to have been playing that day.
Two years earlier they were members of the Lancaster team which had played at Cartmel and escaped certain death by less than four minutes on their return home across the sands.
The game had ended at 7.30pm in crushing tension and high excitement with the scores tied on 212.
The long-lasting game was always going to make the return home a dodgy business, and so it proved with the tide coming in fast.
The equation was simple, which of the horses would win, the white horses of the spitting waves or those pulling the three carriages containing the Lancaster team.
As the three carriages emerged at Hest Bank the water was approaching chest high on the horses. Minutes later it would have been the ultimate tragedy.
Edmund Sharpe himself was a founding father of Lancaster Cricket Club in 1841, an architect, a genius and philanthropist. James Rawsthorne came from a family of solicitors in Sun Street, Lancaster.
There were two railway stations in Morecambe in 1854. Both had opened on June 12, 1848 when the little North Western Railway completed their branch line from Green Ayre Station, Lancaster.
One station was called Poulton-by-the-Sands and the the other Morecambe Pier, at the end of the stone jetty. The station buildings of the pier station is still in use today as a cafe where many pictures of old Morecambe can be seen.
On December 15, 1854, Poulton-by-the-Sands station was renamed Morecambe station which is when Morecambe officially became Morecambe.
The 1854 game between the two mixed sides took place near to Morecambe station, which was to become known as Northumberland Street.
Morecambe Cricket Club played throughout the 1850s. By the time they played Lancaster in July 1859 they were the 'Ever famous Morecambe Eleven ... having established an unrivaled reputation'.
Things went awry after 1860 - a phenomenon not uncommon in cricket clubs of that time - and the club did not restart until 1875.
The demise of 1888 - the year in which the Heysham club got going - was the last year the seaside town was not to have a cricket club.
Morecambe Cricket club was reformed at a meeting held in the King's Arms Hotel, Morecambe on Friday, June 7, 1889.
In 1989, the centenary of Morecambe Cricket club was celebrated. The first game had been played on Saturday, June 29 against Halton on the racecourse of the Summer Gardens, only one field away from today's Woodhill Lane ground.
Now, in 2004, the club can raise a tipple to their forefathers of 150 years ago who started the ball (and bat) rolling on a very trying ground near the station.
