PJ Horton lbw b Whelan 5

The above would almost certainly be breezed past by many cricket fans and many more may not even recognise it as a line from a County Championship scorecard from last month but to some in a small corner of south Liverpool it stood out as sure as an ill-informed reactionary headline screams hysterically off the front page of the Daily Express.

For this slice of a rather one-sided victory for Lancashire over Worcestershire is one former Sefton player dismissing another; in fact the only thing missing was Paul being caught by Worcestershire’s other ex-Seftonite, Ashley Noffke, who played for the club as an overseas player a few years back but was absent from their starting XI in this game.

It’s one of those odd things with cricket that most of the populace don’t realise the quality of players who are paid for plying their trade on the league grounds around the corner from their house, mixed in with the better local amateur players. In some ways it’s a little like Gareth Bale signing for Prescot Cables.

There are various arguments as to whether these overseas professionals are good for the game; are they raising the standards of the league or do they push clubs to the brink of bankruptcy, leave first teams overly-reliant on one man and take the place of a playing member? It does, however, help to show that despite playing in the lower echelons of the club most of the scribes on here aren’t completely hopeless on the field.