A look back over the career of Grappenhall, Lancashire and England cricket legend Neil Fairbrother, who is celebrating his 60th birthday today...

NAMED after one of Australia’s most prolific run-scorers, Neil Harvey Fairbrother had no alternative but to succeed in the cricketing world.

An inventive left-handed batsman, like his namesake, the former Lymm High School pupil would taste success on the international scene as well as with Lancashire.

Despite failing to hold down a regular Test spot with England, appearing 10 times and accruing an average of 15.64, Fairbrother in his prime became his country’s leading one-day batsman.

The former Grappenhall man would go on to play 75 One Day Internationals for England, scoring 2,092 runs and racking up one century and 16 half-centuries along the way.

The Lancashire stalwart made his first-class debut with the Red Rose in 1982 aged 16, but it was the following season when Fairbrother began to establish himself.

Then, a year later, he produced his first century for the club in a match against Derbyshire.

His England breakthrough came in 1987, after a successful season with his Old Trafford-based side had seen Fairbrother clock up 1,217 runs.

His first international appearance was in the Sharjah Cup against India in April.

Fairbrother scored 14 runs on his debut and went on to play three times in the competition including a high score of 32 against Australia.

His Test career, however, continued to fail to take off, with disappointing tours to Pakistan and New Zealand, but by the end of 1990 the Warrington man had written himself into Lancashire folklore.

Fairbrother’s finest hour came in a Championship match against Surrey at the Oval.

It proved a memorable match for the left-hander as he scored an astounding 366 off 407 balls, including an incredible 311 on a single day, to help Lancashire take the lead – it was a season that would see him average more than 60.

Named Lancashire captain in 1992, 'Harvey' had already established himself in the international one-day set-up after a brilliant 113 versus the West Indies.

The knock came against a side including Messrs Marshall, Ambrose and Walsh at Lord’s in 1991, helping England to a 3-0 series victory.

A year later he was playing in the ODI World Cup Final. The middle-order man added a 50 to his previous high scores of 63 against Sri Lanka and 75 against South Africa earlier in the tournament.

However, it proved too little in an unsuccessful run chase against Pakistan in Melbourne as Wasim Akram made light work of his partners.

Fairbrother went on to be selected for two more World Cups, 1996 and 1999, as well as appearing in the Tri-Series in Australia and Wills International Cup in Dhaka.

On the domestic front, the Lancashire linchpin helped his side to three NatWest Trophy wins, four Benson & Hedges Cup wins, narrowly missing out on a fifth after his heroic unbeaten 87 against Derbyshire in 1993, and three Sunday/National League titles.

He scored four tons in his penultimate season with Lancashire in 2001 and at the time of retiring, aged 38, in 2002 he had scored more one-day runs than anyone in the club’s history, 11,520.

In total, Fairbrother racked up 20,612 first-class runs in 366 matches.