When the Jubilee Line tube is within a few stops of St John’s Wood on a Lord’s weekend, there tends to be some indistinguishable moment the personnel completely changes. Should you drift into your phone for a fraction too long you might then look back up and the general public throng will have been replaced by men in tailored suits, one arm holding on to the rails, staring each other square in the eyes, networking intent lurking underneath the gleam. This year New Zealand fans are there too, in 20‑year‑old Black Cap shirts as a sign they come in peace, along with the rest of the cricketing miscellany.
On this Sunday morning train, as the hushed chat conforms gradually to the decisive fourth‑day hum, there enters an unusual tension. As if to illustrate it explicitly, a trapped bee manically bounces off the lights, darting from rail to rail for any form of escape. It viciously veers one direction and the other, as the suits and the black caps and the ladies in socks and sandals dodge and weave and half-flick it away. They then keep distance and warily track its course.
