MCC members in revolting mood (30 March 1999)

30 March 1999

MCC members in revolting mood

Christopher Martin-Jenkins

MCC members angry at having to pay for entry to Lord's during the World Cup are planning a vote of no confidence in the committee at the club's annual meeting on May 5.

It requires only 180 members to demand an obligatory special meeting and the agitators are determined to bring the matter to a head, according to their spokesman, Michael Geliot, "not because of the money, or to stir up trouble, but on a point of principle".

Members of MCC, who have never had to pay for entry before, will be required to pay for World Cup tickets for the three matches at Lord's, including £75 for the final on June 20, a discount of £25.

A club spokesman said yesterday that it would have cost the club £800,000 to subsidise members for entry to the final and that the only alternative would have been to raise the subscription of £182 for full members.

Geliot, a former director of the Welsh National Opera and Theatre Company, believes the MCC committee were "gutless" to concede the right of members to free entry of their own ground. He and others who contest the committee's position, including Nigel Peters QC, who is expected to be elected to committee membership from Oct 1, take the view that it is fundamentally wrong for MCC to pay the England and Wales Cricket Board for the use of their own ground.

Ironically the Test Grounds Consortium, in which MCC have played a leading role since their formation last September, are threatening to make their grounds unavailable for big games if the ECB will not improve the terms on which they stage international events. The matter is top of the agenda at the meeting of the First Class Forum tomorrow.

Geliot and his associates have been told that the committee are planning a promulgation at the annual meeting to the effect that members will never again be asked to pay for admission to matches at Lord's. But some who took up life membership (offered to raise cash for the new Grand Stand, opened last year) feel they did so on this understanding.

Potentially more embarrassing for the committee is the promise made to members in 1987 by a past committee after a dispute with the Test and County Cricket Board, the former governing body for professional cricket.

At that time, MCC conceded the TCCB's "overall and ultimate responsibility" for staging major matches, including the right to direct the organisation, administration and promotion of major matches. In calling on members to pass the 1986 accounts at a special meeting in July the following year, the then MCC committee stated: "If TCCB's responsibilities were exercised in a way that seriously affected members' rights, MCC would have a legal obligation to put the matter to members before action was taken."

Most members will have forgotten the former dispute but in view of that statement, last year's committee may have made a costly mistake in not consulting members before agreeing they would be required to pay for World Cup tickets.

Source :: Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk)