Lord's - some photos and a very little history

The next stop in this Ashes series that you may just have heard about lately is Lord's, the 'home of cricket', which, since you ask, is St John's Wood, NW8. In the spirit of evangelism, I thought that I might put a few photos of the ground up and maybe even write a little bit about it to try to give some idea of what all the fuss is about.

The pavilion in pre-season serenity

Cricket has been played on this pitch since 1814, when the wine merchant and entrepreneur Thomas Lord moved the Marylebone Cricket Club, or MCC (formerly of Dorset Square, NW1 and White Conduit Fields, N1), to St John's Wood.

The MCC, founded in 1787, had shortly after established a Code of Laws for the game of cricket (as it did for lawn tennis just under a century later), very necessary in view of the sums aristocrats of the time were gambling upon it. It became and remained for a long time the game's central administrative body as its laws were adopted throughout the country, the empire and the world (though attempts to break the American market continue to meet obstacles).

In view of this history, it is perhaps not surprising that the club built up quite a reputation for stuffiness, refusing until 1997 to allow women to be members or to enter the pavilion. Its 20-year waiting list means that, in some respects, it can be slow to change and that its members are prone to wear the club's colours of red and gold as much as possible when finally accepted.

He was wearing the tie too

Yet the MCC is now very forward-thinking in its support for and tours of emerging cricketing countries around the world, from Argentina to Afghanistan, the latter one of the most notable success stories over the past few years. And at one end of Lord's itself stands the rather space-agey media centre, built for the 1999 World Cup.

The media centre, a magnificent viewpoint

And, though it is rather a cliché , it is this combination of tradition and modernity that makes Lord's such a magnificent venue for cricket. The teams make their way out from the pavilion through the Long Room, filled with paintings from cricket's centuries of history and the members' applause, and are greeted by the media centre, the advertising hoardings and a chanting crowd 30,000-strong. The familiar slope of the pitch remains even as ever more inventive strokes, such as Kevin Pietersen's switch hits, are played upon it.

The only problem for tomorrow? Touring teams tend to rise to the occasion: the Australians have not lost there since 1934.

Not Michael Vaughan...

Earlier today, Afghanistan went through with a whimper to the Super Eight phase, after losing to the UAE by 5 wickets and seeing Bermuda beaten by the Dutch. They will start that phase from the bottom of the table and it is, alas, hard to see them making a great deal of movement from that position, with the ruthless Irish side awaiting them on Saturday and the second-placed Canadians on Monday.

Nonetheless, the World Cup Qualifiers have provided a welcome distraction from the movement of Michael Vaughan towards the forefront of media speculation ahead of this summer's home test series against West Indies and Australia. The traditional English season-opener between the MCC and the champion county, Durham, starts tomorrow, with attention focusing on the battle between MCC batsmen Ian Bell, Vaughan and Rob Key for the number 3 berth that Owais Shah failed to make his own in the West Indies.

Even the eminently sensible Lawrence Booth, one of the very best cricket writers around, has put the case for Vaughan's reinstatement, arguing that "England tend not to beat Australia by playing it safe." Certainly Andrew Strauss would be well-advised to take note of the importance of risk-taking - he has historically been ultra-conservative in setting a total, whether sending in James Anderson as nightwatchman against the West Indies this year or pressing on to his own century against Pakistan in 2006, and cannot afford to pass up any comparable opportunity to force the game against the Aussies - but this argument surely cannot be made to pick a man who has scored only 2 Test centuries in his last 17 matches. Booth may have a certain claim to authority, having been a firm advocate of Kevin Pietersen before the 2005 series, but Pietersen had just taken a one-day series against South Africa unprecedentedly by storm, whilst Vaughan has scored one century against Surrey in a pre-season tournament in Abu Dhabi.

If Vaughan is picked, as Booth suggests, for his tactical nous, the effect, ironically, would be to implement the second of the demands (the other being Peter Moores' departure) that brought about Kevin Pietersen's unceremonious downfall as captain. In short, it would be an absurd move that would highlight once again the absurdity of England's management since the end of the Indian tour. I would love to be proven wrong, since there are few finer summer sights than a Vaughan cover drive - there can, however, be few more aggravating than that of Vaughan walking off with his trademark quizzical glance pitchwards, stumps strewn everywhere.