Sometimes the obvious answer is the right one. And so it is with Lord’s versus the Oval. There’s a certain type of cricket fan who likes to point out that they prefer the south London ground, implying that Lord’s is just too famous, too touristy, not ‘real’ enough. If you’re interested in the actual play, goes the theory, if you’re properly gripped by how much turn the left-arm spinner will get in the second innings, then the Oval’s the place for you. Leave that poncey museum in NW8 to the arrivistes, the sort who can recite Blowers’s one-man show word-for-word but haven’t got a clue how Derbyshire’s seconds did last week. 

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The Ovaltinies are wrong, but for the opposite reason to the one they think. Actually I agree with them about Blowers (terrible man), and I agree about the play – it’s tedious when the crowd thins out in the first hour after lunch because the corporate boxes are still echoing to the sound of prawn sandwiches. (You get that at all grounds.) No, the reason I love Lord’s so much is not that it’s stuck in the past but that it’s surging into the future. As such it’s a metaphor for London as a whole. 

Over the last three decades, virtually every stand at Lord’s has been rebuilt, with the Tavern due to join the list soon. It is a Trigger’s broom of a venue. Only the 1890........

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