Headingley v Lord’s

The difference is evident long before one reaches the ground. The bus to Lord’s fills up with elderly men wearing red-and-yellow ties, whereas the bus to Headingley is packed with groups of young men dressed as medieval knights or popular chanteuses. On the top deck, a beach ball is tossed around, occasionally descending downstairs to be propelled back up with some force.

I get off before the more fancily-dressed, heading through the members’ entrance to the sanity of the East Stand while they go two more stops and take up position in the West.

Headingley on Test match Saturday is divided into four zones. In the Football Stand to the south Yorkshire’s plutocracy grace this premier sporting event with their presence. To the north and northeast are the general cricket followers, while the southeast and east is filled with the Yorkshire members, possibly the toughest conversational company known to cricket.

The MCC member’s view of cricket is an impressionist painting, the Yorkshireman’s a sheaf of detailed engineering blueprints. Suggest at Lord’s that Ashwell Prince reminds you of that West Indian fellow Gomes and someone will nod understandingly. The Tyke will snort and give a point-by-point dissection of exactly how Gomes’ technique was different, his range of shot completely other and generally make it clear that you do not know what you are talking about. Only when countered with an encyclopaedic treatment of the parallels will a grudging truce be offered.

But what makes Headingley Headingley is the West Stand. This is where Sir Drinkalot and Amy Winelake (and their clones) are spending their Saturday. Round the ground at lunch, I spotted three separate groups wearing t-shirts proclaiming this to be some lad’s stag do. Enough of them know enough to spot when England are doing particularly well or badly and can organise suitable cheering, but for many the cricket is almost irrelevant.

They spend the morning session quietly enough, sluicing down the beer which will sustain them through a hard afternoon. Thereafter, the rival groups indulge in posturing and taunting each other. They used to make beer snakes, formed by stacking the hundreds of empty plastic pints, but there are signs at the gates now warning that such manufacture will result in ejection from the ground and only one is attempted. They practice the toxic variant on the Mexican wave which involves tearing up newspapers and anything else to hand and chucking them up in the air, the prevailing wind ensuring that the debris will interrupt play as the batsmen clear the wicket of litter.

And so they while away the afternoon, getting louder and drunker, some of them get thrown out or arrested for disorderly or violent behaviour, while a few yards away there is a cricket match going on. It is simply an extension of their normal Friday night routine of wandering around in packs and getting bladdered – they’re just doing it at the Test rather than at the Scarbrough Taps in the centre of town.

And it’s impossible for anyone else to concentrate wholly on the cricket while they’re at it. Your eye is ineluctably drawn to the knot of policemen burrowing their way into the noisiest bunch or the huge clump of balloons they have launched for no obvious reason. If this coincides with a wicket falling or a brilliant shot, the distraction is highly annoying, but at times when the cricket is flaccid one can almost be grateful for their unquenchable enthusiasm – at the safe distance of 180 yards in the members’ area it can even be amusing.

But why they come remains a mystery.