CRICKET only arrived at Old Trafford by accident when, in 1857, the Manchester club were kicked out of their old ground to make way for a famous art exhibition visited by Queen Victoria.

Sir Humphrey de Trafford provided the club with an alternative site at an annual rent of £37, and the rest is history - glorious history, packed with great deeds and great players.

Archie MacLaren, Brian Statham, Cyril Washbrook and Clive Lloyd. These Lancashire legends stir so many memories in cricket lovers of all ages, and they all called Old Trafford home.

Selecting the highlights from a total of 1,321 first class matches at the ground, including 68 Tests, is near impossible, but here are a few of the famous summer days.

1860: George Parr's England team returns from their tour of America - to play "another England Eleven" in the first major match at Old Trafford, watched by "a crowd of thousands." They lose, after being bowled out for 83 and 57.

1870: Bill Hickton, the first professional to play for Lancashire, takes 10-46 against Hampshire, still the best figures by a Red Rose bowler at the ground.

1878: WG Grace brings his fabulous beard, and his Gloucestershire team, to Old Trafford for the first time. But Lancashire have the better of a drawn match with two of their own legends, A N Hornby and Richard Barlow, playing a leading role. The game establishes Lancashire as a major force in the game, and both Hornby and Barlow have stands named after them at Old Trafford.

1900: Johnny Briggs, probably Lancashire's finest all-rounder, matches Hickton's feat of taking all 10 wickets in an innings, despite having spent the winter in Cheadle Royal Hospital after suffering an epileptic fit during a Test match at Headingley.

1902: An England team captained by another of Lancashire's finest players, Archie MacLaren, loses one of the tightest Test matches in history to Australia by four runs after Australia's captain Victor Trumper hits a ton before lunch.

1921: A 50-year-old MacLaren, now 50, leads Lancashire to a famous victory over the Aussie tourists.

1945: Cyril Washbrook and his Lancashire team-mates Dick Pollard and Eddie Phillipson play for England in the Victory Test, watched by crowds of 25,000 every day. Old Trafford had been bombed during the war, with damage to the pavilion, stands and Warwick Road scorebox, and a sentry on the main gate killed.

1950: Washbrook scores one of his many Old Trafford centuries in a draw against Warwickshire, which helps Nigel Howard's Lancashire team to a share of the County championship title with Surrey. They have not won it since.

1956: Jim Laker, has Richie Benaud's Australians in a spin with 19 wickets, 9-37 in the first innings and 10-53 in the second. His performance remains the best in Test history.

1968: Brian Statham, the most successful bowler in Lancashire's history, walks off the Old Trafford field for the last time after a magnificent career in which he took 2,260 first-class wickets. Last year, the stretch of Warwick Road running up from the tram station was renamed the Brian Statham End.

1971: David Hughes hits 24 off a single over from Gloucestershire's John Mortimore as Lancashire win a Gillette Cup semi-final, which becomes Old Trafford's most famous one-day match because it finished at 8.55pm in near darkness. The BBC even had to delay the news.

1972: In his fifth year with the county, Clive Lloyd scores a magnificent 181 not out in front of the Granada TV cameras to set up an innings victory over Yorkshire - Lancashire's first in a Roses Match for decades. Current chairman Jack Simmons wraps it up with 10 wickets in the match.

1981: Ian Botham follows his heroics at Headingley with another brilliant century as Mike Brearley's England seal the Ashes.

1993: Shane Warne, a young, blond Australian leg-spinner playing his first Test in England, bowls probably the most famous delivery in cricket history. Mike Gatting is left completely bamboozled as the ball spins from outside his leg stump and clips the top of the off stump.

2003: James Anderson takes a hat-trick in the Championship game against Essex, including his England captain Nasser Hussain lbw for a first ball duck. It was the first hat-trick by a Lancashire bowler at Old Trafford for 34 years. Will it be the last?

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