The Cowdrey lecture

It's a long listen of an hour, but you can listen to Kumar Sangakkara's Cowdrey lecture and apparently it's captivating (not that I've had the time to listen myself yet!).

Lord's was nearly sold as a building estate....

...back in 1825 apparently. There's mention of it in this article from Friday marking the 190th anniversary of the first Norfolk XI match against the MCC.

Cricket and baseball exhibition at Lord's

With Twenty20 now established, cricket is closer than ever to baseball, and there's an exhibition on at Lord's looking at how the two sports have overlapped if you're interested....

ECB advertising Bangladesh Test on Facebook

The ECB are advertising the Lord's Bangladesh match on Facebook - it would be interesting to know if they targeted me because I'd mentioned that "cricket" was one of my interests in my profile, or if it was less targeted. Also interesting to note that they're having to advertise - I don't think they normally need to, but with the underwhelming visitors of Bangladesh and Pakistan this summer, advertising might be a necessary evil.

Dining like a Lord

Another weekend, another formal dinner for a delegation of Cricket Burblers. A draining but necessary consequence of the glitz and glamour of the Burble lifestyle, you doubtless suspect. It's true that the constant whirlwind of film premieres, backstage passes and celebrity after-parties takes its toll after a while (and that night on Beefy's yacht with Rod Hull, Ronnie Irani and the missing Duran Duran album will live long in the memory). But Friday's dinner in the Long Room at Lords was particularly special.

The occasion was the annual black-tie dinner of the Old Merchant Taylors' Society, and guests were greeted by the words 'Lords welcomes the Old Merchant Taylors Society' on the digital screens around the ground (perhaps the closest an OMT has come to featuring on the Lords scoreboard recently). The evening commenced with a tour of the pavilion and ground, taking in the home dressing room, the Ashes urn and the new media centre. After a pre-prandial glass of champagne a fine four-course dinner was served in the historic Long Room overlooking the pitch. An entertaining after-dinner speech was made by the former MCC secretary, Roger Knight.

Some photos of the evening are below.

The home dressing room and batting honours board:

The media centre:


















The Ashes Urn (for the benefit of our Australian readership!):


















The Long Room:














Helpful instructions on the doors:

ICC to move back to England?

This report suggests that there is a proposal on the table to bring the ICC offices back to London from Dubai. It must be so disruptive to keep moving offices and they've now gone from Lord's to Monaco to Dubai in recent years. Let's hope that any such move from Dubai is their last for a while and they can concentrate on cricketing matters moving forward....

Getting ahead of ourselves....

As always the English media are assuming that England will go on to win the 2nd Test at Lords now - the same happens whenever England have a good day and it makes me exceedingly nervous!

Australia are unlikely to save the follow on and England should enforce it if the conditions are still overcast, but there is no way that Australia will get skittled again in the second innings. They will go well past England's first innings total of 425 and the pressure will be on England's batsmen....and having watched England over the years we must realise now that we're susceptible to the odd collapse or two.

So I wish we'd stop getting ahead of ourselves in the UK....

Cricket ground architecture

This might not appeal to you all, but I was interested by this article about cricket ground architecture in the Architect's Journal. I can't say I'm totally surprised that Lord's comes out at number 1 in a British piece! Interesting to see the other grounds that come into the top 6 - no country features more than once.

By the way, I realise this is sacrilege not to know, but is it Lord's - i.e. belonging to Thomas Lord - or is it now Lords in these days with less apostrophes?

Observations from Lords

Having taken the day off work and spent the day at Lord's in the over-optimistic hope of a tense finish to the first test vs South Africa, only to witness a flat and anticlimactic day's play on a lifeless and benign Lord's pitch. Andrew Miller sums it up well on Cricinfo, but here are my burbles from the day, in no particular order...

- What on earth are the rules for an early finish to a draw-bound match?! The 'bad light' ruse after Amla had got his century was nonsense - I was applying suncream while the players were off the pitch! Clearly none of the players wanted to be there any more, but the way the match was concluded was something of a farce for the paying crowd.

- With Sidebottom, fielding at fine leg by us in the Tavern Stand, clearly in trainers for the final session and Anderson bowled into the ground, the third new ball was taken by Broad and...Collingwood. Which takes the tally of England new-ball bowlers this test to six (as the spinners Panesar and KP were used in failing light on day three). That must be some sort of record!

- Vaughan never stops tinkering as a captain. It clearly wasn't England's day in the field on an unhelpful pitch and against obdurate batting, but I don't think we saw the same field twice through the day. Unlike an indecisive club captain though, the changes - at times, every ball - were always in place before the bowler was back at his run-up.

- The number of overs Panesar bowled over the wicket was baffling. A disciplined McKensie played everything outside leg with his pad, and any chance of taking a wicket was essentially eliminated.

- It was impressive to watch Ambrose effortlessly standing up to the stumps off Sidebottom (though it probably reflected how lifeless the pitch was). Maybe he was trying to sell his keeping to the selectors after his dropped catch yesterday!

- Given that, to my mind, there are not currently any undroppables from or shoe-ins into the England pace attack from a pool of Anderson, Broad, Flintoff, Sidebottom, Jones and Hoggard, and given the three days' toil (and injury niggles) of the current attack, the selectors could do worse than rest a bowler or two for the next test starting on Friday. Given the current squad (today's XI plus Flintoff), this would probably entail Flintoff for Sidebottom (and require a fit Freddie!).

- The queueing system for getting into Lord's is bizarre. Much to the amusement of the American and the Canadian that I was taking for their first experience of cricket, we were first directed by stewards at the East Gate to head over to the North Gate for the queue. After about half an hour of this queue, we reached the front, and were sent...round the block again to join another 15 minute queue back where we started!

Lighten up Bucknor!

Yes, I know it's not Steve Bucknor's fault that there are some idiotic laws in place covering bad light, but it was hard not to hate him yesterday as he kept waving around his lightmeter. Let's remember it's meant to be about the safety of the players (allegedly) - when Vettori has just hit Anderson for 12 off an over I think we can "safely" say that he's feeling pretty safe! With all the advances in protective equipment I think it would be quite difficult to argue that they are ever unsafe - exactly the argument that Mark Davis made last year.

Up and down the country today club cricketers will be playing in far worse light than there was at Lords on Thursday and Friday, and that is far more risky. The bowling may be slower but equally that batsman's reactions are slower, and there is no first aid on hand in case of injury. If the cricketing authorities are really worried about player safety then they'd have to tackle play where emergency services aren't available first. But they aren't really worried about safety at all really are they? Is it too cynical to suggest that once they have got past their 25 over threshold for spectators not getting any money back, they are quite keen to go off? Both against West Indies last year and against New Zealand this year, bad light could be used as an excuse to ensure there is 5 days play and the money rolls in.

That sort of view will undoubtedly see the death of sell out crowds for Tests, with Twenty20 taking over, so something needs to be done. But having said that, I wonder if Twenty20 will actually become a saviour of Test matches if the authorities don't use common sense first (which evidence suggests they won't) - if grounds require floodlights for day/night matches then these can be used for Tests too. Of course, we'd probably be told that it was the wrong sort of light!

Fortunately, to save this post becoming rediculously long, Cricinfo have already written much of what I wanted to. You can read their thoughts here. I'm personally coming round to the view that there should be no bad light law at all - the only possible reason for coming off is if the spectators (who over the last 2 days paid far more than £1 an over) can't see the middle.

Ba humbug.

Lords and The Oval recommended for Twenty20

This morning, the ECB are going to announce their recommendation to the ICC that Lords and The Oval will be two of the three grounds where ICC Twenty20 World Championship matches will take place during June 2009.

As part of this announcement, ECB is recommending that the final of the competition, together with warm-up, group and super 8 matches, be staged at Lords. The ECB recommendation will be put to the ICC Board for approval on 18th March.

The full information is on the ECB site.

A spare £8k?

If so, why not get a debenture seat at Lords...

Lords - the home of...archery?

The banner flew proudly from the back of a helicopter when the Test v the West Indies was played earlier this month: Lords - the home of cricket. At the time I wondered why we needed reminding and wondered who was paying for that helicopter...after all we clearly had no doubt about where we were sat. But perhaps it was decided that we needed a little reminding that Lords was the home of cricket as it was only shortly before today's big launch of London 2012 at 12:30. After all, for a short while in 2012, Lords will be the home of archery.

While Lords is obviously steeped in tradition, the building of the NatWest Media Centre showed that there were people willing to look to the future without forgetting the past. Back in 2005, Lords was the stage for an archery demonstration during the Bangladesh Test match that year and Lords will be used to host the archery tournament in 2012. London 2012 Chairman Sebastian Coe was impressed back in 2005 "the atmosphere generated by the spectators in the ground today offers a tantalising glimpse of the levels of support Archery would enjoy at a London Games in 2012. Today's archery demonstration highlights one of London 2012's key selling points - our ability to combine state-of-the-art new facilities in Olympic Park with existing iconic venues such as Lord's and Horse Guard's Parade.

I couldn't agree more. Just keep off the square.

Pics of Day 1 at Lords

I thought I'd make those of you that haven't made it to Lords for the West Indies Test Match a little jealous. Despite the gloomy conditions on the first day, the calypso band on their steel drums made sure that we all got in the mood.

Did we need any encouragement? I'm not sure anyone did...more time with the players off just meant that after a little grumble about how the light seemed perfectly playable, most spectators hit the bars. Even by lunch time several were dancing away to the band.

Clouds - as you can see it was a pretty overcast day. But it was incredible how play carried on in the late morning and early afternoon in gloomy conditions, and then as soon as we got to the evening session the umpires started getting all twitchy about the light.

You can read my burble about bad light issues here, but suffice is to say that this photo was taken before lunch and it was the same gloom when the players were taken off. On Day 2 of course they were even taken off against the will of the England players it seemed!


I'm not sure if you'll be able to make it out but in the background is the list of match officials. I couldn't help wondering why there needs to be four umpires and a match referee. What on earth do they all do? As far as I can see the 4th umpires duties seem to entail taking spare balls and light meters out to the umpires in the middle occassionally. The rest of the time they get to sit back and enjoy the Test Match.

I'd like to see their job descriptions....jobs for the boys maybe?

Lords

I presume from the post I left on Friday morning that no-one could think that I don't love going to Lords - of course I do. I'm sure everyone else does as well or otherwise it wouldn't be so hard to get a ticket. But there's always some moaning from people around me and I can't help a lot of that could be easily stopped with a bit of extra thought from the cricketing authorities. Here's just a few examples:

Getting into the ground:

There is clearly a problem getting spectators into all sports grounds - cricket is not alone - and the tightening of security due to an increased threat of terrorism lately makes things worse. But I can't help feeling that the problems could largely be avoided. By that I don't mean that there should be no security checks as some whiners around me in the queue seemed to be suggesting....far from it. I think my exact words to them were "I'd rather queue up for a while than die from a bomb". But there could be a few other things that would help.

The time that people arrive is clearly a big issue. All the moaners around me were struggling to get into the ground at 5 to 11, desperate to catch the first over. One guy even fell over and injured himself as he tried to break into a run to catch the first ball. But there was no-one else to blame but himself as he'd left it so late to get into the ground. The same was true for all those around me having a whinge (and me which is why I wasn't complaining!). It's common sense that spectators should get there early so that they aren't under time pressure if they want to see the first ball. The ground authorities could help with this by putting on entertainment of any variety before the game. Imagine the TMS team taking questions from the crowd between 9:45 and 10:30 from the centre of the pitch etc etc. With a little thought, the authorities could make it more enticing to arrive at the match early. Free bacon roll before 10 anyone?

Alcohol

The grounds want to make as much money as possible, that's common sense and I don't blame them. They do this by restricting the amount of alcohol you can take in, or not letting you take any in at all. Then they charge premium prices to buy alcohol you could have brought with you. We feel hard done by, because we always used to be allowed to bring in as much alcohol as we wanted. But that's not really the main concern. The concern is that there are a couple of idiotic rules that serve no purpose other than to frustrate the paying customer.

Buying 4 beers at a time or one bottle. Why, oh why? Does it reduce the number of people getting drunk? No. Does it create longer queues at the bar? Yes. If common sense was used and any number of cans were allowed the result would be less draught beer being sold as it's impossible to carry many pints. But, 12 or 16 cans can easily be carried by stacking 4 packs on top of each other. Net result: less time at the bar waiting for drinks to be poured, maybe even less bar staff required, customers who can watch more of the game, far less drinks spilt over others as people try to carry four pints back to their friends.

Opening cans at the bar? Some staff do and some don't but I gather there is some legal requirement to do that. Surely that can be got round?

Returning to your seats with you beers is often comical. Clearly your hands are full. You've sat in your seat for a bit before going to get beers so it's not like you don't know where you are going. But the ticket guy always needs to see your ticket. I found myself having to ask the guy to pull out the bottle of mineral water in the inside pocket of my jacket and then find my ticket, which he did and I was then allowed through to my seat. It doesn't bear thinking about what could have happened if I had my ticket in my trouser pocket! Let's see - an alternative ticketing system that involved wearing a band around your wrist once you are in. That should solve that one.

Had a great day at the cricket and fancy a last round of drinks before the close. If that's ever been your thought process you'll know that the bars are shut at this point. How is this sensible? The authorities have shown some commercial nouse by reducing the amount of alcohol people bring in so that you can make the money instead of supermarkets and off-licences outside the ground. So why alter that view later in the day? The sensible thing to do would actually be to encourage drinking towards the end of the day because people will then mill around a lot longer after the game, rather than all 28,500 people trying to get through the exits at the same time. A lot of spectators hit the local pubs to discuss the day's play - I can't help feeling that grounds are missing something here - why not take a share of that post match drinking revenue and help crowd control as everyone tries to leave after the match in the process?

Bad Light

This is increasingly becoming rediculous and a serious problem given that spectators have paid £60 for their entertainment. On Thursday morning the umpires were quite happy playing in what is sometimes considered bad light, but in the final session of the day on Friday they seemed desperate to get the players off, despite the fact that England wanted to carry on. Sarwan was grinning from ear to ear. The cynics around me suggested that umpires never worry about bad light until 25 overs are played and spectators therefore can't claim their money back. The more the players come off for bad light, of course, the more a one-sided match can be extended to the 5th day to ensure the authorities coffers are filled to the maximum.

Here's an idea. Bad light is part of the game. When you elect what you would like to do having won the toss you must consider the chances of bad light. On Thursday, for example, with cloud everywhere it was always going to get pretty dark later in the day, so Sarwan could chose to bowl with the advantages that come from bowling in slightly darker light (or is it all physchological - after all there's a huge sightscreen to help the batsman?), but also knowing that his fielders will find it tough given poor sighting conditions. Come 6pm, the umpires can take the players off if they consider the light poor, but only after 6pm.

As someone that loves going to the cricket I'm a little concerned that these things need to be considered now rather than in a few years time. After all, if I can sit at home with a group of friends bantering in the same way as we do in the crowd, but it takes 30 seconds to get beers from the fridge, rather than 20 minutes in a queue, and we have access to all the replays such as Hawkeye and Hot Spot, won't there come a time when even people like me think that it's easier and cheaper to watch at home, but without the cost?

Great to be back at Lords

Having got back to the country only 2 days ago, it was great to be back at Lords immediately! But such a pity that the day was marred by weather. The bad light issue is one that I'll no doubt burble about as soon as I get time.

Hopefully I'll be able to put up the odd photo too, although I'm not certain it's allowed to publish pics of Lords on a blog - trying to find out what is allowed and what isn't.

Speaking of things that are allowed or aren't there were the usual slightly annoying issues yesterday....I didn't want to keep going up and down to the bar as I wanted to watch the cricket so I bought 4 cans of John Smiths....only to find that the bar staff have to open them all on the spot. They can't allow you to open them when you want to. Of course the guy by our seats wanted to see my ticket, so I had to ask him to rumage through my pockets to get my ticket out as I was carrying 4 beers and had no hands free - is that really necessary? At 5:30ish I wanted to get another beer, only to find the bar was shut. Only little niggles, but I can't believe there aren't easier ways of doing things....

So I'll be burbling for Britain on this and England's performance some time soon. Until then, I'm off to Lords again today!