At the break of day cricketers meet to play at the Adelphi, a green field opposite the crescent in Salford. The team was called ‘The Aurora’ for they met at dawn to play cricket.
This was Salford 100 years before L.S.Lowry painted the Mill chimneys and factory streets.
Meanwhile 30 miles to the west, in Liverpool, young men wipe the sleep from their eyes as they assemble in the cow shed on Mosslake Fields to play a game of cricket `for the ‘Original and Unrivalled Mosslake Fields Cricket Society’. This was the grass-roots of cricket in Lancashire, enthusiastic young men determined to play the game even if it meant getting up at the crack of dawn and playing a couple of hours cricket before work.
In 1864 the leading members of the Manchester Cricket Club (who had moved to Old Trafford in 1857) organised a meeting at the Queen’s Hotel for the purpose of forming a County club.
Thirteen clubs were represented and on the 12th January 1864 Lancashire County Cricket Club was born. The idea of playing matches in different parts of the county was adopted, ‘”By this means it is hoped to introduce other good cricket into every part of Lancashire”.
Sam Swire who was later to become the first Lancashire CCC Secretary, did not approve of this action as he thought Old Trafford should be used for all matches.