There are many things you can’t do in the stands at Lord’s. You can’t wave flags, blow whistles, play with beach balls, you can’t wear fancy dress “and/or oversized hats”. There are even more banned activities in the Pavilion: you can’t take drinks out of the bar; you can’t save more than two seats at a time; you must never speak into your mobile phone, or even allow it to ring.
The above is not a comprehensive list, but it is an indicative one that demonstrates a common theme: decorum. The members of Marylebone Cricket Club – who include me – see their headquarters as a haven of calm, of old-school manners, of awed respect for its storied past. This is part of our unique sporting brand, along with stripy blazers that can trigger seizures, and the right to nap on a bench behind the bowler’s arm.
Hence, it’s considered classless to photograph the players as they walk through the Long Room and up the stairs to their dressing room. But you can, as evidenced on the final day of the second Ashes Test, form a mob that boos, heckles, and chants “Cheat!” at them. Only three members have been suspended for the incident but iPhone footage from members – who were prepared to break another club rule to record it – captured plenty of bad behaviour beside theirs.
Everyone agrees this was an unprecedented and isolated reaction, born of an unusually controversial dismissal. The scenes weren’t repeated – MCC’s chief executive personally addressed the Long Room before the players re-emerged after lunch to make sure of it. What hasn’t been addressed is the eye-watering hypocrisy of these self-appointed guardians of the Spirit of CricketTM, who cannot stomach a piece of questionable practice from a wicketkeeper but are happy to indulge in boorishness on their own time.
So let’s talk about the spirit of cricket, shall we? An infuriatingly nebulous concept – certainly in the case of the Jonny Bairstow decision – but much referenced in the club’s own rules. In 2019, MCC formalised a code of conduct which came with the following preamble: “Respect is central to the Spirit of Cricket … Any conduct demonstrating a failure to show respect, including abusive, discriminatory or inappropriate behaviour or language, will be considered a breach of the Rules of the Club.”
Voted in unanimously, the code was intended to end the offensive remarks and behaviour (mostly towards women) that have not yet been eradicated in the bars and on the benches. No one imagined it would be implemented to defend Australia from a hostile work environment. But then even the conditions of a general admission ticket state that “visitors must not engage in any conduct or behaviour which is abusive or threatening … or otherwise behave in a threatening, abusive, riotous, indecent, insulting or anti-social manner”. Those crowding the bottom of the stairwell or leaning over the banisters to “express themselves” racked up five of the last six. The stewards would have been within their rights to eject them then and there.
Their actions were as self-defeating as they were brainless. No member can be unaware of the current scrutiny of the club. The incendiary debate around the historic Eton v Harrow and Varsity fixtures – supposedly deferred for five years, while they continue to be played – was instantly reignited last week when the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket report singled them out as a prime example of cricket’s engrained classism and elitism. Resistance from large swathes of the membership to the leadership’s attempts to make it more diverse and inclusive doesn’t just look bad, it genuinely threatens the members’ own interests. Icec recommends the removal of international matches and other privileges for clubs that fail to change.
And yet there these Spiritual Defenders of the game stood, using the theatrical backdrop and the powerfully echoing acoustics of their private cricketing palace to bray and honk like entitled asses. Others have noted that the behaviour of sporting crowds has declined in recent years, that the legacy of a post-Brexit, peak-Boris society has been a licence to behave badly. True or not, Sunday looked, sounded and felt like a rather unfunny Bullingdon Club callback.
I can’t picture a more powerful demonstration that the club needs to change faster, not least because it’s impossible to imagine a membership made up of equal parts women indulging such a display of frustrated machismo. The club has chosen to concentrate on the three members who they could positively identify in altercation with the Australians but I’d have liked to have seen far more names taken, with swift expulsions all round. Not a bad way to tackle the ludicrous 27-year waiting list, after all.
Funny, too, how the last day at Lord’s has already wiped out the memory of the Just Stop Oil activists, invading the pitch with their harmless orange cornflour. That action was instantly condemned “in the strongest possible terms” by the club, while the members’ own disruptive and unpleasant protest was met with “emotions were running high”. Perhaps the dread of climate crisis and the fear of total planetary collapse just isn’t as upsetting as an Alex Carey run-out.
