Two days into their first Ashes Test for eight years, and Lancashire are already stressing the imperative of securing another in 2019. The county will miss out on the next home Ashes series, in 2015, but their chairman, Michael Cairns, believes the ambition they have shown in redeveloping and expanding the capacity of Old Trafford – at 25,750 it is now second only to Lord's – should be rewarded when the England & Wales Cricket Board allocates the next raft of major matches in 2014.
"I don't mean to be antagonistic, I mean to take a sensible business approach to where we find ourselves in cricket," said Cairns, a former president of InterContinental Hotels who is originally from Levenshulme and has been a hugely influential figure behind the scenes at Old Trafford since joining the committee in 2001, succeeding Jack Simmons as chairman in April 2008.
"If we want the structure of the game in this country to remain the same, the top-selling games have to go to the big grounds. The major grounds have the ability because of where they sit to generate more money for the poor. We need Test cricket here every year."
Lancashire have secured Tests for 2014 and 2016, against India and Pakistan respectively, and were recently awarded a second of the five-match one-day series against Australia that follows the Ashes series in 2015, which will significantly soften the blow of missing out on a Test to much smaller venues such as Cardiff and Trent Bridge.
That ODI had been given up by Durham for financial reasons, which could be seen as symbolic of a swing back towards the traditional international grounds after years when their future have been thrown into doubt.
But Cairns and the rest of his Lancashire management team are now eyeing up an attractive and lucrative schedule of fixtures from 2017-19. The ECB is likely to have 10 Tests to allocate in 2017, as they will host the first World Test Championship in addition to a three-match series against West Indies and four Tests against South Africa.
The following year England are scheduled to play two Tests against Pakistan and five against India, and 2019 will be another bumper summer in which Lancashire will be bidding to be one of 10 venues that will host World Cup matches in addition to the major prize of an Ashes Test.
Cairns has been reluctant to reveal any specific plans for the next phase of Old Trafford's redevelopment in the build-up to this match. "Once this is over, we'll go into another of the periods of self-flagellation that we had when we were first wondering what to do," he said.
But the club are already committed to expanding the indoor school as part of the integration with the local community that helped them secure planning permission for this first phase of development. They also have permission to replace the Old Trafford Lodge, which is now dwarfed by the new pavilion, and the Point conference centre with a new and considerably larger hotel stretching around the Statham Way side of the ground – plans which their chairman could hardly be better qualified to supervise.
That could also allow them to provide some covered seating, the absence of which led to some well-meaning worries before the start of this game – although so far, the sun has shone on Manchester, contributing significantly to the tangible feelgood factor in the ground. However, Cairns has confirmed Lancashire have no intention of building a permanent stand at what used to be the Stretford End, where a huge temporary stand has been installed for this Test. That will instead remain open to a stage for any future concerts at the ground.
But if all goes to plan, England's second oldest Test ground, which has been transformed since it last hosted the Ashes in 2005, will look significantly different again when Australia return in 2019.
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