A sacred site for fans of the summer sport
Wembley for football, Wimbledon for tennis, Lord’s for cricket. Lord’s is older than the other two, as the first recorded match here took place on 22 June 1814. 200 years ago, aristocrats liked to play cricket and wagered enormous sums of money on the outcome. From 1787, the businessman Thomas Lord made ground available for this purpose on the site that is now Dorset Square. Later he moved to a place south-east of the present stadium, but had to make way for the new Regent’s Canal. The third Lord’s, »the home of cricket«, is for the most part a nondescript modern structure – with two notable exceptions. The Media Centre, a great viewing pod that was built in boatyards using marine technology, won the Stirling Prize for Architecture in 1999. The splendid Pavilion at the opposite end dates from 1890. Here, club members watch matches from the tiered balconies, or through the windows of the venerable Long Room beneath portraits of great cricketers of the past. Many members proudly wear the red-and-yellow (»bacon and egg«) striped blazer of the ground’s owner, the Marylebone Cricket Club. When rain stops play, they can see the treasures in the world’s oldest sports museum, including a stuffed sparrow that was hit by a ball in 1936, and the small urn containing the »ashes of English cricket«, a trophy made in 1882 following a catastrophic defeat at the hands of the Australian team.
Although the number 111 has a special aura – Tolkien’s »Lord of the Rings« opens with Bilbo Baggins’ eleventy-first birthday party, for example – in cricket it is unlucky, and is called a »Nelson« because Admiral Nelson is said to have had one arm, one eye and one leg (in fact he had two legs). When the score of a team or batsman is 111, or 222 or 333, the superstitious expect disaster. To avert misfortune, the umpire David Shepherd used to stand on one leg if this score was reached.
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Address St John’s Wood Road, NW8 8QN | Public Transport St John’s Wood ( Jubilee Line) | Tip A pleasant stroll along the Regent’s Canal, which can be reached 400 metres south or east of Lord’s, leads west to the canal basin at Little Venice or east to Regent’s Park.
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