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Most grounds are pleased if they get even one Test match, let alone two.
Lord’s is the home of cricket
What does that even mean? People just bandy the phrase about mindlessly. It’s propaganda. We grew up with cricket and have followed it our whole adult life and never went to Lord’s until we were in our thirties. It seems cricket is thriving away from its home.
Half the cricket that is played in this country is played in Lancashire, Yorkshire and Durham. Half! That’s cricket’s heartland right there. Isn’t that the home of cricket?
Lord’s is special
For whom? The players? You don’t schedule matches for the players. There are 22 of them and several thousand spectators. Is Lord’s special for spectators? When we went it felt like pretty much every English ground we’ve been to – plastic seating and overlooked by blocks of flats. It was nice, but nothing special.
you’re in your 30s?
We know we seem older what with all our wisdom and that.
What’s that? You thought we were eight?
Lord’s is the home of plastic seating.
Lord’s is the home of batting collapses.
Worringly, I entirely agree. And I go to Lords more than any other ground.
Lords got three tests this summer. That’s completely ridiculous.
They certainly don’t schedule matches for the spectators, not given how keen they are to come off for bad light at every passing cloud.
Two reasons why every Test should be at Lord’s (three if you include the real tennis court):
1) The bag searches are very minimal and you are trusted to bring in alcohol without throwing it at someone
2) Rob Key and that double hundred. Hallowed turf indeed
It would be nice if both of those could be addressed at other grounds.
What compounds the problem is that The Oval gets a test match every summer as well, which means three London tests in a typical year. When you factor in that London is the centre for all the corporate hospitality that surrounds cricket, it means that three of every summer’s test matches can be seen live by a total of no more than nine actual cricket fans.
By the way, Cricinfo is reporting that this is the first instance in history when England’s 4 – 5 – 6 have all scored 0 in an test innings. Who else thought like me when on hearing that fact – that you can recall it happening at least twelve times in the 1990s.
I wrote something similar a few years back. It’s been pissing me off for a long time…
http://www.thegoogly.com/2007/05/is_it_time_for_.html
Wise words that are barely sullied by Shiny’s amateurish positioning of advertising.
Good to hear from you by the way, Lee.
Love Lord’s.
The place is ultra special.
Hate to disagree so vehemently, but on this one I don’t care if your majesty sends me into exile for treason or something.
Ged
I discard you. How dare you have your own opinion?
Consider yourself discar-Ged!
Haha. Oh hahahahaha. Haha haha ha.
Definitely another pause and eyebrow raise there.
That’s how you make a joke; with a pause and an eyebrow raise.
Lord’s is special for the ECB – they charge about a million pounds a ticket for Tests. Edgbaston is almost as bad, though, and no-one (I hope) is claiming that as the ‘home of cricket’.
Old Trafford should get 2 Tests a year, no – make that 3.
I’m with you KC, fuck Lord’s.
Home of cricket. I don’t care if it’s the home of the lord god almighty, they should share out test matches evenly to different parts of the country.
Lord’s might think it is the home of cricket but it sure ain’t the future of it!
[and it is home to the ECB – need one say more?]
Isn’t Lord’s only getting one test match in 2012?
I live in London these days. Lords is the most convenient test ground for me (although the Oval isn’t bad), so I go. I’m going tomorrow in fact. I like it there. Why do I feel I should be appologising for that?
About 1 in 7 people live in London. I don’t really care about that though, what is more pertinent is that I live in London, therefore London test matches are inherently good.
£100 to sit on a plastic chair in the rain and drink £5 plastic cups of shit lager is a wonderful day out,
And by people, I mean people who live in England of course. There are a couple of Chinese people for example, who live neither in England or London.,
Are you asking for one in seven Tests in London?
Your majesty is being deliberately obtuse. The two London grounds are the only current test venues in the south of England where a hell of a lot of people (Dawgs Chinese proviso noted) London and otherwise live.In the recent neutral tests, Lords was not exactly full but did a hell of a lot better than my beloved Headingley (for I will confess, I am one of them). The initial point was, i believe that the Lord’s mystique is bollocks. That is certainly an argument. Saying that 2 tests south of Edgbaston is disproportional I don’t buy.
But if those two Chinese people don’t follow cricket they are a wed hewwing and should be discarded fowthwith.
Cornwall hasn’t had a Test in ages. The teas would be great and cider instead of weak lager.
I ‘live’ in London at the moment, and have been to the Oval since I’ve been down, but London gets enough of everything – Lord’s is perhaps entitled to a Test a year, but the automatic assumption that the Oval (massive and luxurious though it is) is more deserving of Test cricket than anywhere else is a bit patronising.
Money, of course, is the deciding factor.
I am not O King, that would surely be less tests than London currently gets. I do not advocate fairness.
The lack of response from the Chinese suggests they aren’t keen followers of the game.
London should probably have more Tests than elsewhere, but it has two Test grounds, so it gets more. Why one of those two grounds should get two Tests, we really don’t know.
Add in The Rose Bowl in 2011 and the one in seven people who live in London can get to four of the seven Test matches with ease.
A third of English people live in the North and there is no Test there at all. That, to us, seems disproportional, particularly considering our point in the main post that half of competitive cricket is played in that region.
But King – at least up north you have decent county teams to watch.
What would us Londoners do without test cricket? We’d have to go and watch Middlesex. Or even Surrey! Can you imagine?
A P Webster’s idea of having three tests at Old Trafford is a good one though, because if you aggregated all the hours of play that would be possible between rain-breaks across the three matches, you’d probably get somewhere near five days of cricket.
You realise we’re actually on day three of the Lord’s Test, right, not day two?
Yes but the South of England invented both cricket and overcharging thus has more people willing to pay £100 a ticket; filling the ECBs coffers at a tremendous rate.
The Rose Bowl shouldn’t get a test though. No need. Test grounds are the London grounds, Trent Bridge, Edgbaston, Old Trafford. That’s just the right amount for a series of proper length.
Other grounds can get ODIs and t20.
If they want more test grounds they should come to the SLG!
# 那時，天下人的口音言語，都是一樣。
# 他們往東邊遷移的時候，在示拿地遇見一片平原，就住在那裡。
Rob Key’s bat wielded for that double hundred against the Windies is currently ensconsed in the Lord’s Museum.
Given the true cricket monuments housed there it’s like someone has cheekily sneaked in one of those Rolf Harris daubs into the Louvre.
That is beyond the pail!!! The poor, innocent Rob
was offered a chicken and mushroom pie if he scored a double century and then never made any runs after that.