Lord's set for £20 million redevelopment

The MCC, the owners of Lord's, have announced plans to spend up to £20 million to refurbish the Mound Stand and install state-of-the-art scoreboards and replay screens.

More than £50m has been spent on refurbishing the venue since 1987, including the addition of a new media centre and indoor cricket school. The Grandstand, the Compton and Edrich Stands and the Mound Stand have all been knocked down and rebuilt in that time. The award-winning canopy roof on the Mound Stand was only replaced last winter.

The club will finance the redevelopment by issuing debentures which will run from 2007 to 2014. These will cost between £8000 and 12,000.

Although the scoreboards are relatively new, they have already been left behind by technological advances, and the new board installed at The Oval is superior in every regard. The MCC hopes to have the replacements, which will cost almost £3 million, in place in time for the 2008 summer, and work on the Mound Stand should be finished by the time Lord's hosts the Olympic archery competition in 2012.

An MCC spokesman admitted that the club was also looking for ways of increasing the ground's capacity, which is currently around 30,000. While extra seating has been installed in the last decade, the venue used to be able to hold several thousand more seated on the grass. Crowd and safety concerns led to that practice being stopped in the 1980s.