Michael, the tour guide at this little known cricket stadium (I think they call it the Mecca of cricket or something like that) did turn out to be quite an entertaining fellow as he shepherded the group of 12 people crazy enough to take this tour on a bloody cold day, while the ground was covered with snow. The small museum that houses old snaps of cricketers and a few hand painted ones of later day famous ones also houses the original urn ‘Ashes’. The story is that in 1882, Australians defeated Englishmen in their home ground, and a sports writer wrote a scathing eulogy for English cricket. In the article he mentioned that the English cricket was dead and burned and Australians had taken the Ashes home with them. The public made some hue and cry asking the ashes to be brought back. Some time later, when the English were touring Aussies, they played a friendly game. After the game, one of the Australian cricketer’s wives decided to pull a small prank. She burnt one of the bails from the game played and presented it to the English captain as a gift, saying ‘ here are some ashes’. The fellow sportingly took them back with him to England and the urn remained with him till his death. The sports article is still kept there as well as the original urn in a glass case. The Ashes trophy presented nowadays is a replica of this one, as this does not leave its glass case.
The main tour takes us first into the famous long room in the main pavilion building. On a game day, the main table and the chairs around it are replaced completely with chairs on which the members of the club sit and enjoy the game. Having the capacity to seat about 2K people at a time, the club has a membership of around 18K, which poses a problem of sorts. Sometimes the members line up outside the main gate as early as 5 hours before the gates are opened to avail of the first come first seated rule. When the gates do open 2 hours before the game is to begin at 11 in the morning, there’s a mad scramble to get to the seats. Imagine a race where the average age of the sprinters is over 60, and all of them dressed in immaculately ironed suits, and well, you get the drift.
One of the doors in the in the long room leads to the bar, and according to the guide most players pass through here as well, and here was where Flintoff used to be confused as to which door to go through.
Next up is the home team’s dressing room, sadly no photography allowed. The seats all lined up along the four walls, with a big cube table in the middle. You have to be there to witness the stories that the guide narrates of numerous players’ escapades in that room, or how Matt prior broke the window, the area Pietersen keeps for his gloves and ego. Standing at the balcony right out this room, one can get a nice look of the entire field, which is covered with a thin layer of snow right now. Sadly, the visitors’ dressing room wasn’t accessible this time, so couldn’t see Dravid’s name on the wall boards there.
They also have a small ‘real tennis’ court in the ground premises, played with a small racquet, almost like squash, but has 2 sides like lawn tennis, but one can use the walls, I know, sounds weird! Next we move on to the spectator area, the Grand Stand, the white seats all folded up, and here finally thankfully, photography is allowed. On one side you can see the pavilion, and right opposite on the other end is the oval shaped JP Morgan media center, and between them is the big clock keeping time, so that the exhausted cricketers can break off for a cool one at the end of the day. So close to the green grass, yet can’t even walk on it, its completely forbidden. The pitch is completely covered in green grass, hard to believe that this is where the brown surface would be pounded on normally. On to the press center, which has been built using boat building technology, and stands right opposite to the pavilion. The story is, that when the plans for the weird oval structure of the center was shown to builders, most of them called it too crazy to be built, so they hired a shipbuilder to fashion the nice structure.
The tour ends , quite coincidentally ( in the tour guide’s words) at the gift shop, where you can buy some memorabilia, or just pose with one of the Lord’s hats, and call it a good day.
The main tour takes us first into the famous long room in the main pavilion building. On a game day, the main table and the chairs around it are replaced completely with chairs on which the members of the club sit and enjoy the game. Having the capacity to seat about 2K people at a time, the club has a membership of around 18K, which poses a problem of sorts. Sometimes the members line up outside the main gate as early as 5 hours before the gates are opened to avail of the first come first seated rule. When the gates do open 2 hours before the game is to begin at 11 in the morning, there’s a mad scramble to get to the seats. Imagine a race where the average age of the sprinters is over 60, and all of them dressed in immaculately ironed suits, and well, you get the drift.
One of the doors in the in the long room leads to the bar, and according to the guide most players pass through here as well, and here was where Flintoff used to be confused as to which door to go through.
Next up is the home team’s dressing room, sadly no photography allowed. The seats all lined up along the four walls, with a big cube table in the middle. You have to be there to witness the stories that the guide narrates of numerous players’ escapades in that room, or how Matt prior broke the window, the area Pietersen keeps for his gloves and ego. Standing at the balcony right out this room, one can get a nice look of the entire field, which is covered with a thin layer of snow right now. Sadly, the visitors’ dressing room wasn’t accessible this time, so couldn’t see Dravid’s name on the wall boards there.
They also have a small ‘real tennis’ court in the ground premises, played with a small racquet, almost like squash, but has 2 sides like lawn tennis, but one can use the walls, I know, sounds weird! Next we move on to the spectator area, the Grand Stand, the white seats all folded up, and here finally thankfully, photography is allowed. On one side you can see the pavilion, and right opposite on the other end is the oval shaped JP Morgan media center, and between them is the big clock keeping time, so that the exhausted cricketers can break off for a cool one at the end of the day. So close to the green grass, yet can’t even walk on it, its completely forbidden. The pitch is completely covered in green grass, hard to believe that this is where the brown surface would be pounded on normally. On to the press center, which has been built using boat building technology, and stands right opposite to the pavilion. The story is, that when the plans for the weird oval structure of the center was shown to builders, most of them called it too crazy to be built, so they hired a shipbuilder to fashion the nice structure.
The tour ends , quite coincidentally ( in the tour guide’s words) at the gift shop, where you can buy some memorabilia, or just pose with one of the Lord’s hats, and call it a good day.
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