AS BEFITS a proud Queenslander who was awarded the Order of Australia in January, Stuart Law tells it exactly as he sees it. This is a help when you’re inquiring about a tense week which might end with cricket’s County Championship returning to Old Trafford for the first time in 73 years. So when the 38-year-old Lancashire batsman was asked about his thoughts on Lancashire’s four-day game against Surrey tomorrow his reply scarcely came as a surprise. “Bring it on,” he said. “The Oval’s a good place to play, Surrey are a tough team to be facing and I don’t think they’ll want to play a meaningless game of cricket. There’ll be a few people at the ground, it’s on TV and they’ll want to put on a spectacle. So yeah, looking forward to it.” Law is unusual in the Old Trafford dressing room in that having helped Queensland to secure five Sheffield Shield/Pura Cup titles, he knows what it’s like to win a title. “Beating Surrey this week would almost certainly mean that Law had another honour to include on a CV that, strangely, includes only one Test cap. “Winning the County Championship can be compared to winning the Sheffield Shield,” he reflected. “It stirs the emotions in the same way I used to get playing for Queensland in their Sheffield Shield finals, yeah of course it does.” “But there’s no point putting out the open-topped buses just yet.” he cautioned. “We’ve got to go and play a good four-day game of cricket but there’s no secret in the fact that there could be something big at the end of the week. It’s just that there’s no point thinking about that. We have to forget about the bull and just worry about what we’ve got to do.” The irony of Lancashire winning the title in one of wettest summers on record would not be lost on Law either, but he has the succinct response, “Welcome to our world,” to the counties who might complain about how much time they’ve lost to the weather this year. If the title goes to Old Trafford he will have no truck whatever with the argument that it will have done so by default. High-class cricket – particularly in the last month or so – will have been the deciding factor. “It seems to be that a lot of people are surprised by our quality and a lot of them are our members,” he said. “They are into us all the time even when we’re winning. I’ve just come to the conclusion that they are very hard people to please.” Maybe so, but it would probably be beyond the capacity of even the most curmudgeonly Lancastrian to criticise Law’s double-hundred against a Test-match quality Yorkshire attack at Headingley or his outstanding 82 not out against Durham at Blackpool. The first knock set up Lancashire’s biggest-ever win in a Roses match and the second sealed a pivotal victory on a difficult wicket. “Locking horns with Ottis Gibson (the Durham fast bowler) was a special moment,” said Law. “Batsmen say ‘Oh you love those situations’, well you don’t love ’em but you have to deal with ’em and I managed to do that through guts and determination, things I don’t show a great deal of these days.” Leaving aside the obvious point that guts and determin-ation fairly drip from Stuart Law’s batting, his explanation of how he dealt with Gibson offers an insight into the duels which decide matches. “Going out to bat when you need 180 and you’re seven for two is quite a tough one,” said Law. “You just have to hang in. It helped that I found a way to wind Ottis up. I got him away from bowling at the areas where I thought he might get me out. Instead he came round the wicket to try and kill me. It was good for our cricket team but it wasn’t so good for me.” Such understated courage may well be needed this week, but Law is confident that his team-mates have what’s needed to beat Surrey. “We don’t have to play a perfect game of cricket, we have to play a good game of cricket,” he observed. “And we’re capable of doing that.” | 
