Does the Cowdrey Lecture matter?

Rod Marsh, a one-time firebrand behind the stumps for Australia, took one of the approved walks towards English cricketing respectability at Lord's last week. He delivered the 15th Cowdrey Lecture, extolled the Spirit of Cricket that lies at its heart, promoted much that is good in the game, spruced up some familiar anecdotes, and generally persuaded the MCC members present that his address was by and large a Good Thing.

There was a challenge to the authorities, too. Marsh wants a control on the width of bats in the professional game. His comparison with curbs on the power of golf clubs was instructive. It was thought-provoking stuff. It is to be hoped that the ICC has the sagacity to explore it further.

"So what?" I hear some of you say. "What does it matter?" The MCC might still oversee the Laws of the Game (and come to think of it, Law 37 might need a bit of a look after the dispute over Ben Stokes' dismissal on your own ground on Saturday), but apart from that it has no relevance to the modern world. It is merely a private members club, and owner of Lord's; Marsh's address essentially is of no consequence, just an echo from another age.

It has to be conceded that it is hard to show incontestable proof of when the Cowdrey Lecture has actually made a difference. Geoffrey Boycott could claim to have promoted day-night Tests ten years ago - and the experiment finally takes place in Adelaide this year. But then Boycott also condemned slow over-rates as a "cheats charter" and he obviously had no effect there.

Clive Lloyd called for cricket revenue to be shared equally between all nations - and instead, a decade later, the Big Three pulled off a power grab. Imran Khan's warning about a proliferation of cricket also fell on deaf ears. Adam Gilchrist's view that cricket should be an Olympic sport is only just beginning to find scattered voices in support. You could say that leaves a lot of agonising about the balance between T20 and Test cricket and some entertaining memories of times gone by.

This is a narrow and overly hostile view. I am no apologist for the MCC. Its history of privilege and entrenched conservatism has made me recoil too often over the past four decades for that. As a private members club, the MCC's handover of control of the English game in the 1960s and the international game a generation later seemed overdue.

But in its attempts to retain an influence in the world (perhaps that should be just "the cricketing world" but then the MCC does not always make the distinction), it seems to be doing a remarkably good job. Its opinion has never been more needed. We should not ask "what has it achieved?" as wonder whether occasionally those in power should be taking a little more notice.

Telling truth to power is an essential duty of life. The world suffocates under the weight of soft lies. If those truths are told constructively, all the better. Without intelligent debate, atrophy at best, corruption at worst is the end result.

And how wonderfully incongruous that this truth-telling to cricket now comes most effectively from the MCC, once an offshoot of the Empire, narrow and autocratic in its management of the world game, but now taking the chance to speak with ambition and authority in an annual lecture that has attracted some of the most notable figures in the game.

That is a privilege denied to many. International cricket is in the hands of the Big Three. Media power resides primarily with TV companies and it takes a committed journalist not to be cowed by the recognition that the relationship is mutually beneficial. Newspapers are losing influence, or even worse losing interest, as football holds sway. Official websites blur the distinction between running a game and reporting a game.

Crucially, as these developments take hold, the MCC has become cricket's most respectable lobby group.

That is unlikely to please the ICC's power brokers, and it does not please the MCC's own reactionary elements, who would have much rather retreat from a world that has long rejected its right to lead, but by furthering, not stifling, public debate; by exploring, not resisting, new ideas; by daring to measure the past against the future, it is arguably more in tune with the broader cricketing world than ever before.

Why, it is even possible to hear key MCC figures speak supportively of the ideals expressed in Death of a Gentleman, the recently released documentary that seeks to hold cricket to task. Only in private, admittedly. But you may have noticed that cricket prefers not to speak of this documentary at all.

Against the odds, the MCC remains, in the words of former president Sir Pelham Warner, "a private club with a public function". That is not to say Plum Warner, a man from a very different time, possessed by an inexhaustible sense of his own right to rule, would have approved of all this democracy. Whereas the MCC was once defined by the decisions taken by the few, it is now defined by the conversations held by the many.

The Spirit of Cricket preamble to the Laws does not suit everyone - it is too imprecise for one thing - but it has held the line on player behaviour. The Cowdrey Lecture has balanced a faith in old ways and desire for new ambitions in a way that has put cricket under scrutiny, and the final undertaking, the MCC World Cricket Committee - which has no legitimacy and so could easily be depicted as an exercise in pomposity - has attracted such an impressive list of worldwide cricketing figures that its conclusions deserve to be a central part of the debate. Crucially, they are free to speak openly, their only mandate being their belief in what is good for the game.

Roger Knight was the MCC secretary, later chief executive, when these changes took place. He also drove the acceptance of women members, albeit two centuries too late. On October 1, he takes up the office of president, the fifth person in the MCC's history to fulfil both roles. As an educationalist - after retiring from the county game, he became the head teacher at Worksop College and is now head of governors at King's College, Taunton - he has been a strong influence in the club's yearning for continued relevance.

"Yes, we have given up control of the game and it is right that a private members club doesn't control the game," Knight says, "but that doesn't mean to say that we can't have very strong views about the present game. What we need to get away from is the view that the MCC in any way is old hat. It is a vibrant and go-ahead club.

"At the turn of the century we were looking to establish how we could retain a role in the world. In a way it is acting a little bit as a lobby group. There is a worry among some of our members that MCC can sound old hat or critical. But it encourages a conversation. Whether it is the World Cricket Committee or the Cowdrey Spirit of Cricket Lecture, these sort of things should be aired even if they don't always change things."

There will be many who fail to listen, especially now that the novelty of the lecture has long since receded. The lecture in itself is not trendy. Educationalists have been predicting its demise for half a century. Streaming a lecture live on YouTube is precisely what you should not do, according to the moguls of modern media. But for those who pay it attention, the Cowdrey Lecture, while still underpinned by the notion of the Spirit of Cricket, has broadened out into an annual considered view about how the game is developing and administered.

"The aim is to advance public understanding and debate about significant issues of contemporary interest." That was actually the objective of the Reith Lectures, first aired by the BBC in 1948, a high-minded ambition that also fights against allegations of irrelevance. But it's a laudable aim. Cricket should be grateful that the MCC is committed to it.