T Lewis: Lord's without peer for intimidation and stimulus (14 Jun 1998)

14 June 1998

Lord's without peer for intimidation and stimulus

By Tony Lewis

ON Thursday morning, those South African cricketers who have never played a Test at Lord's may smile to think that their cricket careers have got them a big game at the great ground. They may walk out through the Long Room to the nets before play and even feel more nervous than usual. Fear of failure always flits around in the dark corners of the mind and the massive formality of architect F T Verity's pavilion with its two great towers at the end of a massive central structure does not look sanctuary for the bowler with 10-0-83-0 hanging around his neck.

The South Africans who did play last time, in 1994, in the historic return from the 29-year excommunication will not be so nervous. They will banter about their colossal win by 356 runs. They will recall how they silenced all observations about their lack of international opposition for so long. They shattered a well-rehearsed England side - Atherton, Stewart, Crawley, Hick, Gooch, White, Rhodes, Salisbury, DeFreitas, Gough and Fraser. Lord's was not intimidating: it was their stimulus.

Lord's brings the best out of visiting sides. You only have to spend time abroad hearing how they love to have a verbal bash at 'MCC and all the egg-and-tomato stuff' but long to down a pint at Lord's or swill a Pimms and come away with the T-shirt.

Some writers strain to debunk Lord's, and that is their right. Frank Keating prefers the Oval as "a better introduction to big-time cricket than the pontifical, cathedral awe and hush-in-the-close that stately Lord's can induce." Fair enough.

Cardus eventually preferred Lord's to the Oval and yet as Keating puts it - "but then he lived, in his pomp, in Baker Street." So be it.

Attitudes to Lord's are not solely created by the ground itself, the infamous gatemen of old or the stuffy members and remote committee. Much depends on what Sir Neville once called your "receiving set". Mike Selvey wrote a superb essay on his Lord's, reviewing his association both as a Middlesex 'delinquent' who did not much care for dress codes or gatemen and latterly as a respected cricket correspondent.

"Now, Lord's is a different world; one I never knew or even appreciated existed. Can, for example, these gatemen and attendants, salts of the earth to a man, I now realise, be the ones who barred the way before; the ones we believed were descended from an elite defence that would have stifled a wartime invasion before it could have begun? 'Have you got your pass, Mr Hitler? Well, I'm sorry, you can't come in here'."

He concludes: "The ground may change but the people haven't. It was just our attitudes as players. It's me that's changed, damn it. When I go to Lord's now, it's in a jacket and with collar and tie - socks even. No matter how hard I try, for better or for worse, I've joined the Establishment. I even quite like MCC, and what is worse, they quite like me. By God, if I were 60 years younger I might even put my name down."

What never quite happens is that Lord's works for an England side in action. Let us hope that the humiliation by the 1994 South Africans has turned into embers of fury which will be ignited by the sight of the old sloping field or by the novelty of floating covers.

Does the spirit of W G Grace still lurk? Can the greatest of the household gods move England in his 150th birthday summer?

Recently opened in the Lord's Museum is the W G Grace collection, and the trophy to be presented to the winning side after the Princess Diana match on July 18 - W G's actual birth-date - will be the W G Grace Trophy, a superb gift from Waterford, two-foot tall, of crystal stumps and bails and with the great man in batting pose on the top.

On the Diana day there will be shown on the big screen some magical film footage of the doctor walking around the Lord's outfield with his team exactly 100 years ago to the day.

Next Thursday there will be the biggest crowd at Lord's since the Safety of Sports Ground Act 1985. The new Grandstand, built at a cost of £13 million will accommodate an extra 2,000 spectators. The capacity is now 30,000 and all major matches at Lord's are a sell-out this year.

It was in England's Test against South Africa in 1994 that Michael Atherton was involved in the dust-in-the-pocket incident. I remember being the television commentator at the time and had to make a crucial observation from one of the most ludicrously positioned press and television centres in any international ground, high above fine leg, at the top of the Warner Stand.

The new Media Centre, which will be ready for the World Cup, is a move to elevate the role of the working journalist and broadcaster. It will do more. It will not only demonstrate the wisdom of having the game's commentators in line with play, but its design will speak clearly of the futuristic views taken by MCC. The Lord's Media Centre, created through architectural competition, I believe will be one of the country's outstanding millennium buildings. It will be in use all year for media training and business seminars.

Forget buildings. Everyone dreams of playing at Lord's. Once, many years ago, August 8, 1958, I caught the night train to London from RAF Innsworth in Gloucester which arrived in Paddington at about 4am. There I met another airman from Somerset who had come up from Taunton, Graham Atkinson. We slept on the wooden benches at Paddington until public transport began. We took the tube to St John's Wood.

We were first at the gate. Eventually we were admitted to join the Combined Services team which would play a two-day match against The Public Schools. It was my debut at Lord's. It rained all day. Unforgettable.

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