And so to Lord’s, the fine and venerable old cricket ground they call the Home of Cricket because it’s where cricket goes when it leaves work or a nice restaurant or after a holiday with the kids in Fiji. No it doesn’t, it’s just a piece of whimsy, a riff on the name of Lord’s.
Lord’s? It’s a ripper, Lord’s. We’ll begin as many tales do in a pub, the Duke of York, a fine establishment on the “high street” of St.John’s Wood, a suburb of old white buildings and flash cars and dudes in pastel sports jackets and boat shoes and money squirting out their very pores. The get-up actually looks quite cool in this context, and I’d wear lemon yellow pants were I not afraid of being mocked.
Into the ground and there’s a venerable old Members Stand from where members sit and mutter through mutton-chops about the massive media box which dominates the skyline, perching over the Nursery End like the Star Ship Enterprise touching down on St.John’s Wood.
Soldiers guard doors at Lord’s, a good use for guards. In Australia doors are manned by dull goons in bright yellow bibs, on the minimum wage and borderline bovine. Police used to “police” grounds in Australia until they got bored of being glorified bouncers and out-sourced the job to actual bouncers. And now watching the cricket in Australia is like being guarded by bouncers.
To the back of the aptly-named Grand Stand with some friends and there we meet Rodney Hogg, the great “Rocket”, and gibber with him about his 41 wickets at 12.85 in 1978-79, statistics our Rocket is not averse to reminiscing upon. Nice fellah, Rocket, he’s one of the star turns for a tour group which means his job description is, effectively, “be Rod Hogg”. It’s a role he nails.
Lovely day, a sunny 22 degrees. And you’re there talking with mates, watching Australia versus the Poms at the place cricket goes after getting back from the pub with a cracking view over the checkerboard surface, the pitch running horizontally across our viewing pane bordered by the stand’s concrete roof and the back of Hoggy’s head.
Warner! The pugnacious chunk of big whacking bat-action, David Warner, takes a hankering for the sweet fruits of off-spinner Moeen Ali and launches him high into the stratosphere and 28,000 people as one say “Woooo…”. And then they all say “Ooooh?” because running underneath the flying red rock is Jimmy-Jimmy Anderson, and it looks like … will he? Will he catch it? Yes! He will! And the people as are up and saying “Yeesssss” in the particular throaty roar of mass human voices roaring as one when someone scores a goal or Jimmy-Jimmy Anderson catches David Warner right on the first hour of day one at Lord’s. Good times.
But from there it’s Australia Day. Indeed Australia’s batsmen Chris Rogers and Steve Smith dominate England like … something. Something that dominates something else. Like a boll weevil dominating a smaller, weaker boll weevil.
It’s tea and Warney and Mark “Groovy Baby” Nicholas are telling television viewers about the great dun-coloured strip of hard-rolled dead grass upon which the entire grotesque pantomime is playing out. It’s not grotesque or even a pantomime. It’s the Ashes at Lord’s and for a day of cricket it is all-time.
There’s the old weather vane man thing, Old Father Time, on the East Clock Tower Balcony, a thing that’s stood sentinel measuring how long Geoff Boycott’s innings lasted, but they were so boring they killed entire herds of wildebeest, roaming across the African savannah. That said Boycott has a host of Test hundreds against the West Indies which is a pretty big rap for Geoff Boycott because the West Indies of his era spread were bad-ass.
Today you’ll find Boycott talking on the radio about cricket, a role similar to Hoggy’s and Merv Hughes’s and many other ex-Test cricketers who now make a quid from the cachet of their well-known ex-cricketer status. Good work if you can get it.
Warney and Groovy Baby walk off the ground, talking to each other and making karate-chopping gestures to illustrate cricket stuff. Cricket people love to talk about the game, it’s part of its charm. And good luck to it.
An advertisement for a book called The Art of Captaincy by Mike Brearley pops up on the big screen and entire herds of wildebeest suffer stricken, terrible deaths in Africa. Because, oh please, Mike Brearley, the art of captaincy is give the ball to your fast bowlers and then slow bowlers after that. And that’s it. Steve Waugh, Mark Taylor, Ricky Ponting, all they did was give the ball to Glenn McGrath and then Warney, boom, win. Clive Lloyd did the same but he just rotated bad-asses.
Mike Brearley’s England won the 1978-79 Ashes series against Australia 5-1 because Bob Willis bowled fast and then John Emburey bowled slow, and Australia didn’t have anyone who could play Test cricket because Kerry Packer had bought everyone for World Series Cricket.
Anyway.
Anyway! We’re into the Starship Enterprise Media Box and it’s like a waxworks museum with a pulse. There’s Ian Botham and Andrew Strauss and Mike Atherton chopping away at his fine column. There’s Michael Holding and Damien Fleming who used to bowl huge hooping out-swingers and said that sometimes, when they were coming out well, he didn’t even mind not taking a wicket as long as he could make that Kookaburra sing. Nice fellah.
Back to the Grand Stand to see Steve Smith score another Test century, his 432rd since January. The man is a tap-dancing cricket machine. Soon enough Chris Rogers smokes a beautiful straight drive down the ground and he’s got himself a Test hundred at Lords, the best kind, and the Wave The Flag tour mob in front of us stand up like actors at the Oscars applauding a life-time achievement award for one of their tribe’s old people.
Because how good would that be? A Test ton at Lord’s. There used to be books for boys called Adventure Books for Boys and they had all sorts of stuff like this, Roy of the Rovers scoring in the European Cup, Biggles shooting down Jerries, and Chris Rogers scoring a century at the Home of Cricket on day one of an Ashes Test.
Top stuff, Lords.
