IT was a great day out at Old Trafford, home of Lancashire County Cricket Club.

The club — still celebrating the good news that legal challenges have failed to scupper plans for a major re-vamp at the famous Manchester ground — staged a one-day international that saw England beat Sri Lanka in an exciting finish.

There was a sell-out crowd of 19,500 on a dry Saturday and everything was absolutely fine until my friend and I went to the nearby Metrolink station to catch a tram that would take us three stops down the line to Deansgate where we would catch a train back to Bolton.

We had waited half an hour or so for the crowd to clear, but there was not much evidence of that because we then spent more than an hour getting increasingly frustrated at the lack of progress.

We all wondered why more trams could not be provided at an obviously busy time to cope with the numbers of people requiring the service.

Eventually, with the determined use of sharp elbows, we fought our way on to a tram and travelled sardine class to Deansgate.

This was nothing new on the day because the transport system between Bolton and Old Trafford was totally overloaded — seats were also unavailable on the trains.

The following Monday I rang Metrolink customer services to moan and was told by a very pleasant lady that all their available trams had been in use at the time we were fuming in the queue.

It seems there is the same problem when Manchester United play at home but fans “expected to queue for an hour or so”.

The suggestion was that we cricket fans did not know what was in store for us.

Well, I have queued there before and this was by far the worst delay I have encountered.

I suspect I will have to work out another way to get home when Lancashire’s spanking new ground attracts more and more big matches in future.