How Lancashire are battling to repair winter of discontent: The goal new captain Jimmy Anderson has set, the recent faces to bolster injury-hit squad and what they discovered from Burnley

Jimmy Anderson doesn’t hesitate when asked about targets on the eve of his first season as Lancashire club captain.

‘The priority at this club is to get back into Division One,’ he says. ‘As a club it’s where we want to be. I’m not saying it’s where we deserve to be. We are where we deserve to be.’ Right now, that place is Division Two, and the bottom half of it after finishing well off the promotion pace last season.

Anderson, 44 in July, spent a huge chunk of his decorated international career with Stuart Broad as his trusted sidekick, but is now part of a new double act. Steven Croft, two years his junior, is the youngest of the head coaches at the 18 first-class counties and has a similar background, emerging primarily from league cricket as a state school pupil.

They have known each other since being 2nd XI team-mates with Lancashire at the turn of the century and Lancashire thrust them back together over a winter that is yet to emerge from dark cloud. A revolt led by club legends including David Lloyd and Paul Allott over the running of the club has spilled over into a season that begins on Friday with a trip to Northamptonshire.

On-field plans have also been severely disrupted. Victoria’s progress to the Sheffield Shield final ruled their Australian overseas pairing of Marcus Harris and Mitch Perry out of the opening fixture weeks ago, but news that seamer Perry will not now travel at all due to a lumbar stress fracture and that Keaton Jennings is sidelined with a calf injury have dented dressing room positivity.

Director of cricket Mark Chilton has spent the past 48 hours trying to source a quality replacement for Perry, but a call to New Zealand coach Rob Walter proved fruitless due to the Black Caps’ upcoming limited-overs series against Bangladesh, while Cricket Australia’s restrictions on bowlers has severely impacted the availability of a relatively small pool.

Sir James Anderson is Lancashire’s new permanent club captain, as he plays on at the age of 43 looking to add to his 1,143 first-class wickets

And club icon and former player Steven Croft is now permanent head coach after an interim spell when Dale Benkenstein left last May

‘We’re not just going to get someone to fill a spot,’ says Anderson. ‘It’s got to be someone who we think could add value to the team – and we’ve got an incredibly strong squad.’

Such a statement is at odds with the evidence of a 2025 season in which Lancashire failed to win any of their first eight Division Two matches, leading to Dale Benkenstein being removed as head coach and Jennings stepping down as captain.

This season, they have added the coveted Ajeet Singh Dale from Gloucestershire and Paul Coughlin, the seasoned Durham all-rounder, while Anderson is also excited by the prospect of having a fully-fit and motivated Mitchell Stanley at his disposal, after he took 11 wickets against Kent in only his second first-class appearance last September.

Focus has also been placed on developing the kind of camaraderie synonymous with the 2011 season – Lancashire’s only County Championship title in the last 75 years – amid a belief that togetherness can make the difference when things get tough.

During his interim stint wearing the armband late last summer, Anderson made a point of getting the players to sit together as a group to ‘soak in’ wins rather than jump in their cars to hit the road.

Fast bowler Jack Blatherwick’s friendship with Joe Worrall resulted in a training session with Premier League Burnley – ironically, Clarets fan Anderson was missing due to a prior engagement – while Croft, initially promoted from 2nd XI duties at Old Trafford last June in an interim role of his own, compared coaching notes with Scott Parker.

Players and staff completed the annual Rivington ‘fun’ run – an ascent of more than 800 feet over three and a half miles. The all-in nature of the regular squad fitness sessions resulted in Croft damaging his knee ligaments at the Trafford Athletic Club. There were also weekly trips to the Manchester Institute of Health and Performance – part-owned by Manchester City’s parent company – to monitor fitness and played regular padel matches as part of the 29-man squad’s team bonding.

Lancashire failed to win any of their first eight Division Two matches last season, before recovering to finish fifth

Anderson is excited by the prospect of having a fully-fit Mitchell Stanley at his disposal, after he took 11 wickets against Kent in only his second first-class appearance last September

Pre-season concluded with a warm weather camp at Desert Springs in Spain last week, after a four-day trip to Dubai primarily for commercial reasons – it is home to sponsors Emirates – was cancelled due to the ongoing war.

Prioritising corporate needs over cricket itself has not gone down well with a core of former players, though, with Lloyd, Allott, Mike Atherton and Neil Fairbrother among those to have backed a resolution at the second of two Special General Meetings next Thursday that would see the limit of two former employees sitting on a board of 10 increased to four.

It is a move that the rebel group say would increase a worrying lack of cricket knowledge – currently only John Abrahams has first-class experience, although the club argues that president-elect Clive Lloyd, the legendary former West Indies captain whose position must be ratified next month, offers a second.

Lancashire, meanwhile, are encouraging members to vote on seven resolutions the same day that would empower the executive and seemingly move the club towards demutualisation. Croft said on Wednesday that such distractions had been easy to ignore for the players, and even if Anderson insists he is taking his career day by day, he has already dared to dream about one final crack at glory aged 45.

‘There were times throughout the winter where I maybe thought: “What if we get promoted and we’ve got a chance to push for the Championship next year?” Would I want to be involved in that? Of course I would. Then, other times I wake up and struggle to walk to the toilet in the morning, so maybe I can’t get another year out of my body.’