Mike Birtwistle's belters: A collection of classic Lancashire shirts

We will give you some thinking time before revealing the answer shortly, but that particularly shirt is one avid collector Mike Birtwistle is keen to get his hands on.

Birtwistle is a Red Rose follower since the late 1980s, with a twist. He operates the scoreboard at Emirates Old Trafford and the outgrounds too, and he is also someone who loves a vintage Lancashire shirt.

He often wears them whilst punching in the all-important buttons, and while his collection may not be vast - “I’ve got 10 Lancashire shirts and two sweaters,” he says - it includes some absolute belters.

Cards on the table. Right from the moment myself and Paul Edwards decided to get LankyLanky off the ground, this was a chat I was desperate to have.

For collecting shirts is my thing too. At home, I have approximately 40 Bolton Wanderers shirts new and old, dating back to the early nineties. Some are tattered, some are brand new, my favourite could double up as my gran’s table cloth.

Vintage, Retro, Classic shirts, whatever phrase you want to use, are a big thing nowadays. 

There are companies all over the internet selling them, more so football but also cricket. 

The Cricket Plug is one which has recently come to prominence, selling match worn and player issues shirts from all over the globe.

Classic Football Shirts are perhaps the most famous one, though. They even have a shop on Dale Street in Manchester city centre.

As much as it’s a wonderful place to go, make sure you’ve saved up first, though.

Much like myself, Mike has tried to be a bit more frugal building his collection.

I certainly got somewhat stung when buying an Aaron Collins match worn shirt from when the Wanderers won at Wigan last April.

Anyway, it got delivered around May time. By June, he’d been sold to MK Dons. Bloody typical, hey! 

Thankfully, it came from a club-linked auction site which sent some of the proceeds into their community projects.

“The most I paid for a shirt was just under £50,” said Birtwistle.

“But most of the ones I look at - now that I’ve got the ones I want - I’m only interested in bargains.

“Most will go for between £30 and £50, the match worn and player issue ones for maybe a bit more. 

“I’ve got a pretty rare red-ball shirt which Jos Buttler wore that was pushing £50, and I won one of Mal Loye’s T20 shirts in a Foundation raffle. I always see him as like the godfather of T20 cricket. 

“For me, he basically changed the way you attack.”

So, before we go any further, let’s tackle that early quiz question.

“This is one I haven’t got but am pretty keen to get my hands on,” said Birtwistle. “I’d love a player issue 2020 One-Day Cup shirt, which was never worn in a competitive match.

“The club released it, they went to Dubai on pre-season tour and played a couple of friendlies in it before coming home early due to Covid.

“Then, when the season started late that summer, they only played Championship and T20 cricket. What a collector’s item that would be.”

When Birtwistle first went to watch Lancashire in a Sunday League game with his uncle and aunt, they were still playing in whites.

“My dad worked on a Sunday morning, and it wasn’t until he stopped in the mid-nineties that he started coming along with us,” he recalled. “I remember being impressed with Foxy Fowler, who was opening the batting at the time.”

As most youngsters do, Birtwistle had a number of shirts which he has since grown out of. But the collector’s itch followed.

His love for shirts was inspired by the whacky designs worn by Mexico football goalkeeper Jorge Campos through the nineties and Manchester United’s 1985 FA Cup final shirt.

“Campos used to wear the most outlandish designs and colours,” he said. “Like a proper Aztec design with chevrons and all sorts of different colours. They were just so unusual and out there. I’d have to say one of his would be my all-time favourite.

“United’s at that time, they were so simple yet so great.

“The red one had a white sash on each sleeve, the away was white with red sashes and the third kit blue with white.”

Birtwistle’s shirt collection is mainly Lancashire but also includes “a handful of United shirts” and two or three England cricket ones, including the famous 1992 World Cup shirt adorned by Red Rose stars Neil Fairbrother and Phil Defreitas.

He also has an England one from another Australian tour.

“It’s not an original, just a cotton one that the ECB released as a remake shirt,” said Birtwistle. 

“Anyway, I was wearing this walking around the Media Centre at Old Trafford and Phil Tufnell comes past me and says, ‘I played in that. It was great being out there, but whatever you do, don’t look at my bowling figures’.

“So I had to look it up, and he went for eight or 10 an over, which nowadays would be like going for nearer 20.”

Another of Birtwistle’s collection includes a Canada ODI shirt. His wife Nancy is Canadian.

“I went to see the film about cricket, Death of a Gentleman,” he continued. “In that, the journalist and podcaster Jarrod Kimber was wearing a Canada shirt, and I wondered where he’d got it from. So I messaged him, and he said that he’d just found it on eBay. 

“It would have been 2015/2016 ish. I went on, found one, and then started searching for Lancashire shirts, as you do. 

“The first one I found was the top for our first coloured kit in 1993 and 1994, the one with the blue and green rectangles on.”

Lancashire and current partner Castore are actually bringing that shirt back this summer for the men's and women's Vitality Blast. They released it just this afternoon. Plenty of clubs across the sports do so nowadays in a nod to their past. This one, in particular, is a beauty.

“My favourite shirt is the one which they brought out a few years later, the one with the lighting bolt across it,” said Birtwistle. “But I still really like it. 

“It was the one which basically changed cricket.

“As far as following Lancashire has gone, there’s probably been three major changes. There was the move to coloured clothing, the move to two divisions in the Championship and then the introduction of T20.

“That kit, I can remember it was the first time I went to cricket and thought, ‘This game might not be just for stuffy old gentleman’. It was modern, it was new, it was something very different.

“It was a really good design, and all the counties had the same one, but it was the first time they probably had to think about what colour they were. Lancashire weren’t going to be anything else but red given we have the red rose. It screamed Lancashire Lightning.”

That shirt was made by Hogger Sports, the same company which produced the iconic 1992 World Cup kits, and Lancashire sold approximately 2,500 in the club shop and 20,000 nationally via mail order and other outlets.

We asked Birtwistle to rank his Lancashire kits.

“My favourite is the one with the lightning bolt through it, from 1999,” he said. “That’s an amazing shirt.

“I would have our 2019 T20 shirt in second, and then I’d have 2009 in third.

“I’d only put 2009 ahead of 1993 because the two kits that season were the same designs but just different colours. The T20 one was red with white down the side, the one-day shirt blue with white down the side.

“It was so simple but such a clever way to differentiate.”

Returning to his 1999 favourite, Birtwistle said: “We won the Sunday League that year and had one of the best one-day teams the club had ever had.

“Andrew Flintoff was just coming to prominence, Neil Fairbrother was coming towards the end, we had Atherton, Crawley, Austin, Martin and Murali.

“It was such a great summer of sport as well, with United winning the treble, and I’d finished my exams.”

One shirt which wouldn’t make Birtwistle’s ‘greatest’ list is the lime green number worn for four seasons between 2015 and 2018, in conjunction with Bolton-based electrical goods retailer AO. 

“It’s by no means one of my favourites, but I do have a sweater, and I accept that it’s iconic," he added.

"It will always be remembered and spoken about.”

Joey D’Urso, a journalist from the Guardian, has recently released a football book, 'More Than A Shirt - how football shirts explain global politics, money and power’.

In it, he says, ‘Football clubs provide many of us with a constant in a world where everything seems to change’.

I completely agree with that and believe shirts are right at the heart of that. 

It works with cricket too, rugby as well if that sport floats your boat. 

Think of a sporting memory which means most to you and I bet the shirt instantly comes to mind. There will no doubt be stories aplenty.

Fingers crossed, this season’s Lancashire shirts will be remembered in years to come by the likes of Mike Birtwistle and thousands more Red Rose followers.