 | HOPES WASHED AWAY Rain wilted the Red Rose in 2003 |
Looking on as Sussex celebrate their first ever championship title, Lancashire must surely view 2003 as the season that got away.
History will show the Old Trafford club as having a good summer, finishing second in the County Championship and winning promotion to the top flight of the National League as Division Two champions.
But no review of the season would be complete without nominating the Red Rose county as the hard luck story of 2003.
In one of the driest summers in memory, Lancashire seemed to take bad weather with them wherever they went.
Sussex will rightly claim that bad luck befalls us all, but this year Lancashire had it by the bucketful.
Lancashire's first four championship matches were rain-affected draws. Twice - against Surrey and Nottinghamshire - their opponents were following on, and on the other two occasions they held big first innings leads.
Their first uninterrupted four-day match did not come along until the last days of May when they beat Kent away by 75 runs, and they quickly followed that up with a crushing victory over Leicestershire.
|  It can be quite heartbreaking at times. Lancashire were a bit unlucky |
But Lancashire were again beset by rotten weather in mid-summer, falling one wicket short in the stalemate against Essex and drawing against Warwickshire despite enforcing the follow-on with a 320-run lead.
Warren Hegg's side finished the season with a flourish, and for all of their climatic irritations were just 34 points behind Sussex at summer's end.
Former Lancashire and England all-rounder Ian Austin beileves the outcome of the title race could have been very different had Lady Luck shone down on Old Trafford.
"To not win those games when they were in great positions would have been heartbreaking for the lads," Austin told the BBC Sport website.
"You do all the right things in preparation for the match and during the match only for it to be all washed away, but the weather is one thing you can't allow for.
 Law was imperious for Lancashire, scoring seven centuries |
"If you'd offered Lancashire second in championship and the Division Two title at the start of the season, I think they'd have taken it.
"But you just know that if a couple of those games had been kinder to Lancashire then we would have had a completely different ball game on our hands."
Lancashire's season was defined by a series of scores that were out of this world.
On six occasions they passed 500 - including two mammoth totals of 734 and 781 - and in Stuart Law they boasted the championship's breakaway leading scorer with 1,820 runs.
The Australian was one of four to make more than 1,000 runs, the quartet completed by Mark Chilton and new signings Mal Loye and Carl Hooper.
"Over the years I think we've looked at ourselves and said maybe if there is a weak point then it is our bowling," Austin opined.
"But over the past few years it was the batting that had disappointed, so they deliberately went outside the county to strengthen the batting and it worked.
"Bowlers like Gary Keedy (60 wickets) and Glen Chapple (49 wickets) did a good job, but it's hard to take wickets in the rain."
Lancashire can take heart in the wisdom that there is always next year.
"They've got a good platform now," Austin went on. "Who knows, maybe 2004 could be the one."
MMIX
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