Boom boom at Lord's

Walk up around lunch time and guess who is at the media centre? Boris ‘Boom boom’ Becker sitting behind the press box and watching golf (The Open) while helping himself to some lunch. “It’s my first time at a cricket match,” he announces as a large media gaggle approach him gingerly. “I’ve seen bits on TV but never at a ground.” It’s the golf, though, that keeps Becker interested as he discusses various possibilities with his partner. He signs a few autographs, consents to a few photos being taken but soon decides he’s had enough and returns to concentrating on his golf. When India last won at Lord’s, the only time they’ve triumphed here, Becker was a 19-year-old sensation making waves on the lawns of Wimbledon. Now he’s at his first cricket match. Surely India can’t lose now.

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Watching the rain can get quite gloomy, especially when it’s pelting down like it was this morning, so this diary decided to take a walk. Waiting for the lift is Ashley Giles, “slimmer and trying to get back to full fitness”. He sure looks it, all decked up in his black suit and dressed for a television show he’s supposed to be part of. “Basically saying the usual” he grins. India mainly remembers Giles for the nasty act on a December day in in 2001. “Has Tendulkar ever been stumped after that?” he asks referring to the dismissal at Bangalore, the only time Tendulkar was stumped in his Test career. When reassured he shoots back: “He has to retire soon for me to keep that record!”

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Andrew Turner has never seen an international cricket match before. “I was lucky Mikey gave me a pass for today”. Turner is a builder and has been involved in the construction of Michael Holding’s house in Cambridge. To prove his association with Holding, just in case there was any doubt, he ferrets out his mobile phone and sorts through all his voice messages to find the clincher. “Hi Andrew, I found a screwdriver in my bedroom,” said a baritone voice that we’re accustomed to hearing on TV.