Lord’s looks a little different this week. The grass is the same shade of green, the pavilion still terracotta red, but the International Cricket Council, which runs the World Test Championship, has papered over every last trace of everyone else’s branding, from the posters outside publicising Middlesex’s upcoming games, to the sponsors’ logos spray-painted on the outfield. They’ve changed every last hoarding and billboard around the ground, and reprogrammed the three big screens so that they display, throughout the game, the slogans of their own sponsors. “Thums up Cola! Taste the Thunder!”
They’ve even installed six big bright-orange sofas in the Allen Stand, on behalf of Sobha Realty, which goes by the motto “Art of the Detail”. There were unconfirmed rumours that an apparatchik had been spotted taping over the egg-and-bacon stripes on the members’ ties. Anything to make sure everything is arranged exactly as the ICC’s chair, Jay Shah, likes it.
