‘Ashes Countdown, 4 Pages of Previews’ reads the banner above the fold on the front page of today’s Birmingham Post. ‘Plus Edgbaston Weather.’ From where I sit, the halves of this headline seem on a collision course. When I paused to examine a weather map of Europe just now, England could actually not be seen at all beneath the cloudy pall. And even if the rain remits, the water table beneath Edgbaston will not fall in a hurry. The only cheerful sight at the ground today was a sign reading ‘Caution: Ramps’. But then I remembered that England had picked Ian Bell.
Under the headline ‘Let’s Keep Tests in Brum’, the Post also carries details of a mooted £32 million redevelopment of Edgbaston, increasing its capacity from 21 000 to 25 000 with a rebuilding of the southern side of the arena and the installation of floodlights. Not before time—although any ground would appear dour on a day like today, Edgbaston looks increasingly ramshackle, a drab and motley collection of stands, and a media centre that seats only eighty compared to almost a third more at Lord’s. At Edgbaston, in fact, they still call it the ‘press box’—an archaism so charming you half expect a seat to have been permanently allocated to Sir Neville Cardus.
The scheme has been resisted, the Post reports, by local ‘campaigners’, including the ‘vocal’ Selly Oak MP Lynne Jones, who complains: ‘The problem is Warwickshire County Cricket Club has failed to adequately engage in dialogue with residents.’ Heaven forfend that Warwickshire should fail to adequately engage in dialogue; it may lead to an insufficiency of satisfactory interface. It sounds like bollocks anyway: as I’ve found it, the ground is simply badly served by public transport. Birmingham, England’s second most populous city, aspires to host the 2022 Commonwealth Games. Yet its cricket ground has palpably failed to keep pace with the legitimate expectations of patrons.
Bleak as it is at the best of times, Edgbaston will probably be bleaker these next few days. It is hard to foresee more than half a Test, which favours England, not just defending a series lead but keeping Andrew Flintoff in cotton wool. The sight of a rainy, windswept cricket ground will not entirely displease Andrew Strauss. For the rest of us, it’s looking like a very long week.