Hirst made hundreds, sharing an unbroken partnership of 178 for the sixth wicket. Barnes, so effective at Bramall Lane, was reduced to 46-18-124-1. Cardus wrote: “Old Trafford was in those days the ‘country’, surrounded by fields; Stretford a village. No women or girls were to be seen in the crowd, except in the Ladies pavilion, a black and white timbered seclusion.” Archie MacLaren was now at the height of his powers. An immaculate batsman in the grand manner, he lives in history through his 424 at Taunton in 1895 and five hundreds against Australia. After finishing four years at Harrow as captain, he skippered Lancashire from 1894 to 1896 and again from 1899 to 1907. Twice in the 1890s he toured Australia with Andrew Stoddart and took out a side himself in 1901/02. Opinions differed as to his ability as captain, pessimistic and unlucky, perhaps, but a rigid disciplinarian, skilled tactician and one who sometimes found himself at odds with the selectors, Hawke in particular. Reggie Spooner and Walter Brearley rated him highly and John Gunn described him as “the best captain I ever played under.” MacLaren was England’s captain in that epic 1902 series, which Australia won 2-1, although it might just as easily gone the opposite way. The England team at Edgbaston which dismissed the tourists for 36 before the weather intervened, and in the rain-ruined Lord’s game, can still make a case for being the best-ever: MacLaren, Fry, Ranjitsinhji, Jackson, Tyldesley, Lilley, Hirst, Jessop, Braund, Lockwood and Rhodes. Five of the golden eleven were Roses men. Although they won the Championship in 1904, remaining undefeated, Lancashire found the days long as far as the Roses matches were concerned. Both were drawn – at Headingley Hirst’s benefit attracted an attendance of 78,792 over the three days, the crowd reputedly consuming 135,000 bananas. Eleven such matches had now passed without a Red Rose victory but the run was halted in emphatic fashion during the 1905 Whitsuntide fixture at Old Trafford, Lancashire won by an innings after some fine bowling by Brearley and Kermode on a treacherous pitch enlivened by second-day rain. Earlier a Monday paying attendance of 24,661 had been treated to some superb batting by Tyldesley and Spooner who added 213 for the second wicket. They had some luck, Tyldesley being missed by John Tunnicliffe at slip when 14 and Spooner on 37 surviving a ball which hit the stumps and failed to dislodge a bail. Yorkshire won the August match at Sheffield in the face of some magnificent fast bowling from Brearley, who took seven for 35 and six for 122. Fine batting from Denton and Rhodes’s all-round skills saw them home. It was AA Thomson’s first visit to Bramall Lane, its gloomy skies reminding him of the biblical ‘pillar of cloud by day’ which floated above the Israelites in the wilderness. Yorkshire won the Championship, although Lancashire were first in mid-August. It would be another 21 years before the Roses counties occupied the top two positions in the table. George Hirst was now at his peak. Short, thick-set and tenacious, he was a hard-hitting right handed batsman and left-arm bowler a shade faster than medium, who was described as the father of modern seam and swing bowling. Hirst was all the more deadly because his swerve took place in the last two or three yards of flight. His contemporary, Wilfred Rhodes, was the greatest slow left arm bowler in the country at the turn of the century: later his bowling was set aside as he became a batsman good enough to forge a successful opening partnership for England with Hobbs. Hirst, in 1906, scored 2,385 first-class runs and took 208 wickets. At Bradford he took six for 20 in Lancashire’s first innings and made 58, the highest score of the match, which Yorkshire won by six wickets Roses in Bud 37