Many MCC members are reported to be in a fury over the admission of ordinary cricket fans to the ground which they claim to be the home of the game. As the Daily Mail report today, there are calls to ban the ‘great unwashed’:
If you’re interested in this kind of thing, take a look at our post earlier this year about the peverse anachronism of the MCC’s continuing role in the way cricket functions:
https://www.thefulltoss.com/2012/03/16/mcc-the-greatest-anachronism-of-english-cricket/
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The remarks reported in yesterday’s Telegraph were made on the MCC’s Online Pavilion and lifted for the purpose of making mischief. It concerned a T20 match between Middx v Surrey last week. For Middlesex matches at Lords the both the home team members and opposition members have the right to introduce guests to the Lord’s pavilion and it appears that there were rather a lot of them on that particular evening. Many of them behaved in a manner rather more like a soccer crowd than spectators at a cricket match.
The piece was written very much tongue in cheek and, at the outset acknowledged that the writer was “in the vanguard of “The Old Farts Brigade/Grumpy Old Men Association”. It went on to describe the events of the evening in relation to the behavior of the “guests” and suggested that if such scenes were to become a regular feature at T20 matches, then MCC should review it’s policy of permitting guests to be introduced. All perfectly reasonable but, of course, meat and drink to those looking to take a cheap potshot at MCC.
Well, newspapers do enjoy making mischief! I actually know John Fingleton personally, and he’s a decent cove – he may have been being slightly bombastic. Obviously, not all MCC members share these views, but you can’t help but feel there’s some deeper truth in it. For me, the problem is that the MCC proclaims itself as the guardian of the game, and Lord’s as the home of cricket, but they don’t really like members of the public getting in their way.
They don’t particularly like MCC members getting in the way either! The Members Forum (from which the comments by John Fingleton were liftd has been closed down so as to prevent a repetition. Not a popular move by the new Secretary!!
ya de ya de ya de ya. as Full Toss says, MCC is a perverse anachronism and so are its apologists such as ”acricketsortofchap” (crazy name, crazy guy!)