CMJ

by Christopher Martin Jenkins

  So many occasions will live in the memory, not least the lunch to celebrate the Duke of Edinburgh’s ninetieth birthday celebrations and his many sporting patronages. It was planned and executed with meticulous precision, but it was also relaxed and enjoyable. This had much, naturally, to do with the character and experience of the Duke himself but food, wine and the presentation of the Long Room, complete with carefully thought-out table plans and suitable trophies on display, were all, like everything at Lord’s, from the highest drawer. HRH arrived at the appointed minute in his green Land Rover, hopping out at the door of the Museum to be introduced by me and senior members of the committee to small groups representing about forty other sporting clubs of which he was patron. Over lunch in the Long Room, while the two teams prepared for the England v. India Test starting the following day, I talked to the Duke about a range of subjects, mainly equine, before making a short speech and presenting him with a unique maquette of a fielder by the sculptor Antony Dufort. The Duke gave every impression of enjoying himself, despite drinking no more than half a glass of pale ale.

  The Cowdrey ‘Spirit of Cricket’ Lecture went well again, too. In the year after my own effort in 2008 the Club had delved even further into what the Aussies call ‘left field’ when Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the twinkling former Archbishop of Cape Town, came willingly to sprinkle his peculiar charm on Lord’s. Our choice in 2011, Kumar Sangakkara, could not have gone down better. He was eloquent, revealing and charming about the game and its social background in Sri Lanka. Predictably his carefully worded criticism of political interference in cricket in Sri Lanka caused a stir back home in Colombo.

  Sangakkara’s lecture was seen as yet another example of MCC’s recent enlightenment, but one or two members are never entirely happy with what goes on behind the imposing wood and glass doors of the committee room, despite the changes of recent years. It is some time since, according to J.J. Warr, one member said in amazement to a colleague as they passed beneath the windows in front of the pavilion during the afternoon of a Test match: ‘I’ve just seen something absolutely extraordinary. A woman talking to E.W. Swanton in the committee room.’

  The woman in question was the Queen. Since then, thanks to the enlightened views of, amongst others, Colin Ingleby-Mackenzie and Tim Rice, both past presidents, women have become members and have an active playing section. The girl I first met as Rachael Heyhoe, humorous publiciser of women’s cricket and a talented batsman of classical style, was the first female member on the committee and is now the first female trustee. I was delighted to be President when the portrait of her that the Club had commissioned was unveiled in the Long Room. Whether or not she considers that almost as great an honour as being appointed to the House of Lords with the title Baroness Heyhoe Flint of Wolverhampton is not for me to say. She may yet become the Club’s first woman president.

  Through regular website communications and the release of summarised committee minutes, the members who want to keep in touch with Club affairs – a minority when it comes to most of what is discussed – are kept much better informed than they used to be. Amongst the occasions I most enjoyed were the monthly dinners in the winter in the lovely room beside the players’ dining room at the top of the pavilion. These occasions enable members, mainly local ones for obvious reasons, to enjoy good food in like-minded company and to hear a single informal speech from a guest chosen by the President. Mine were Angus Fraser, Lord Brooke of Stoke Mandeville – alias Peter Brooke, a deeply knowledgable cricket-lover, Jeremey Coney, Dennis Amiss, Claire Taylor and the campaigning journalist Christopher Booker, who plays cricket still for his Somerset village although well into his seventies.

  These occasions, and the more formal ones in the Long Room at which I believe I must have presided more than any previous president, run like clockwork, as do most of the club’s affairs, thanks to the efficiency and experience of several largely unsung stalwarts, including the pavilion manager, Grant Halstead, and the deputy chief executive, Colin Maynard. Colin is the Sir Humphrey of Lord’s, a dapper, courteous man who, after some thirty years of service, possesses knowledge of all precedent. His high standards and meticulous attention to detail are evident in almost every activity undertaken by MCC. There is, too, a dedicated group of secretaries, linked by a love of the game.

  Between them the Secretariat guided me through my year with a sure and sympathetic hand. During a busy winter in 2010/11 I spent six weeks in Australia and two on the subcontinent for the ICC World Cup. I made nine speeches in ten days in my MCC role in Melbourne, where Judy and I, along with other members of the committee, were generously entertained in the pavilion by our counterparts at the other MCC. We were even asked to lunch in their spacious and elegant dining room on Christmas Day, on the eve of a momentous Test match. John Lill, a popular and successful past Secretary of Australia’s MCC, welcomed us with his successor Stephen Gough and did his best to convince his British guests that the very green looking pitch would be a beauty to bat upon. Andrew Strauss begged to differ the following morning, put Australia into bat and his fast bowlers routed Australia for ninety-eight.

  Home or away, there was seldom a dull week. In only my third week in office, for example, having broken my duck in the first few days with speeches at the annual dinners of Malmsbury CC in the west and North Runcorn in Norfolk, I had a members’ meeting and supper on the Monday, a cricket committee meeting on Tuesday, a main committee meeting on Wednesday and the annual dinner of the Brian Johnston Memorial Trust on Thursday. All these events required the allowance of two and a half hours’ journey time because of the uncertainties of travel from Sussex to London.

  I have to admit that so much responsibility and activity in a single year was exhausting at times. I came home from Australia with a cough that lingered for at least a month, but did my best at a series of dinners and a Special General Meeting, held in the Long Room at the end of January. This was to ask members to ratify a proposed increase in the number of associate members by 1000 to a total of 5000 in 2011 and, if that presented no problems, by a further 1000 a year later. Thereby we would be able to reduce by a little the (then) twenty-one-year waiting list for would-be full members of which, at the time, there were 10,000. The resolution was passed, if not without some well-meaning protest.

  The really busy part of my year – the AGM, choosing the next president and a summer of entertaining at most of the games at Lord’s throughout the summer – still lay ahead when I left England again on a two-week trip to Sri Lanka and India for the closing stages of the World Cup. Again combining MCC and BBC duties, I was encouraged, not to say inspired, by the way in which our post-tsunami project in Sri Lanka has developed. The MCC Centre of Excellence at Seenigama in the south-west of the island now caters, free of charge, for the needs of more than twenty-five local villages and 20,000 people a year.

  After the Test match in June, MCC held a dinner at Lord’s in tribute to Muttiah Muralitharan which rasied about £50,000.

  Every year the President approaches the AGM in May with some trepidation because of a small, articulate but somewhat obsessive band of MCC members who seem to have a permanent mission to embarrass and criticise the committee. Most of them no doubt mean well. I was determined to let them have their say without indulging them too far. Generally I was deemed to have done so in the long meeting in the Banqueting Suite at Lord’s that coincided with the national vote on the Alternative Voting System.

  I was able to begin with a joke about this. The committee, I said, had taken a vote on whether we should change all the MCC voting procedures to AVS. Sticking to the usual system came second, so we were sticking to the usual system. It went down well because it was topical but my address to members at the start of the meeting was a bit more serious, starting on a positive note by quoting a letter from a member in his nineties who ‘sits in those marvellous reserved seats for old codgers that Fiona Bean organises so wonderfully’.

  Fiona Bean is one of many generally unsun
g heroes and heroines on the MCC staff who together present to members and public alike an extremely friendly face at Lord’s these days, a fact that reflects very well on the senior staff and in particular on the secretary and deputy secretary.

  The old image of fortress Lord’s, guarded by retired prison warders and run by men with white moustaches beneath their panamas who like to go to bed in their egg and tomato tie – always a caricature – has long gone. There may be a very occasional exception when it is revived because it suits an argument being peddled by one of my colleagues from that bastion of virtue, the national press, but the popular and admirably well conducted Lord’s tours, the opening of the outfield to spectators during the lunch interval on two occasions during Tests in 2010 and 2011 and the use of the Long Room for several very popular gala dinners during the winter months had all demonstrated what an accessible place Lord’s has become, without losing its magic as far as the members are concerned.

  Those dinners were eagerly and gratefully attended by nonmembers, who were circulated because they often buy tickets for matches. It showed the affection and almost the reverence in which Lord’s is held.

  There were many days, of course, when the President’s ‘duty’ would better be described purely as ‘fun’. They included five days during the season spent with the MCC Golf Society. For some reason I played rather above par (although never below it) on a couple of these days, thus giving myself the happy experience of presenting myself with a prize.

  Two of the best occasions had nothing to do with cricket but instead with the long tradition at Lord’s of tennis – Real or Royal, as opposed to ‘lawn’. All the camaraderie of amateur sport was evident at a dinner in the Long Room for all ages after the men’s and women’s University matches between Oxford and Cambridge. There was a harder edge to the match in which the brilliant Australian player Rob Fahey retained his European title but the Long Room dinner that followed was equally relaxed.

  Relations with both the ECB and the ICC were, for me, perhaps the most interesting aspect of the ‘job’. Having sounded off about domestic and world affairs in print or on the air for so long, it was interesting to discuss problems from the inside for a while, especially by sitting in on the twice-yearly deliberations of the MCC’s World Cricket Committee. Chaired by A.R. (Tony) Lewis until he passed the baton to Mike Brearley after a final meeting in July 2011, this group lent credence to the Club’s role as an independent voice in the game, helped by the willing participation of outstanding cricketers such as Geoff Boycott, Martin Crowe, Tony Dodemaide, Rahul Dravid, Majid Khan, Shaun Pollock, Mike Gatting, Anil Kumble, Barry Richards, Alec Stewart, Michael Tissera, Courtney Walsh and Steve Waugh. Steve Bucknor provides umpiring expertise and Dave Richardson, the former South Africa wicket-keeper, a valuable link with the ICC.

  We had a lively meeting over two days in Perth just before the Test match in December when Waugh, as quiet and rapid of speech as Boycott is loud and deliberate, suggested that cricketers under suspicion of corruption in future should be subjected to lie-detector tests. Not long afterwards he took one himself and passed it convincingly in the view of an expert in polygraphy. To Waugh it was proof that such tests might at least guide people towards a fair verdict in any future cases of match fixing.

  This was just one of many riveting discussions on more familiar issues of the day, including the governance of the world game; regulations for one-day internationals; the unbalancing effect of the Indian Premier League and its largely unwanted offshoot, the Champions League; the umpires Decision Review System; over rates; world championships; floodlit Test cricket and the possible use of pink balls. MCC’s cricket secretary John Stephenson, the former Essex, Hampshire and England all-rounder, has overseen extensive research on pink (and other coloured) balls at Imperial College in London and is convinced that it is the best bet for the staging of Test cricket under floodlights in countries were crowds have fallen away seriously in recent years.

  Dravid played for MCC in Abu Dhabi in the game between the Club and the champion county in March 2011 (typically he scored a century) and agreed with most of those who played that it was a highly visible ball both by day and night. Twilight (a brief period in most parts of the southern hemisphere) was the one time when he thought that it might be trickier than normal when batting against a super-fast (90 mph plus) bowler, but that problem could be overcome by arranging an interval at sunset.

  ‘There have not been many presidents who have underestimated their importance in the world of cricket’, wrote Jonathan Rice in his book on the Presidents of MCC. I dare say I was no exception. I enjoyed the splendour of the surroundings, got thoroughly involved in every aspect of the Club’s activities, probably took it all a little too seriously and at times thought about little other than Lord’s and MCC. For a year it was highly flattering and pleasant to be addressed by everyone as ‘President’ and to realise that one was briefly the figurehead of a great and valuable institution.

  34

  A BEND IN THE RIVER

  Shortly before the start of my year as MCC President I had had two experiences that persuaded me that this should be something of a crossroad in my life.

  I had intended to walk the length of the South Downs Way with my brother David. Alas, I got a septic toe from an ingrowing toenail shortly before we left on the demandingly up and down 100-mile hike from Eastbourne to Winchester. Antibiotics had helped clear away most of the poison but it was still festering and, no doubt as a result of favouring my other foot, I tweaked a muscle somewhere in my left thigh on our short first afternoon leg to the beautiful and sleepy downland village of Alfriston.

  Two days further along, or up and down, the track, my brother, who had risked wearing new trainers rather than his mountaineering boots, had huge blisters on both feet and I had been reduced to a painful shuffle, like an old man trying to walk with his legs tied together. We had done about fifty-nine of the hundred miles when I decided that it would be stupid to go any further.

  Having previously walked longer distances, albeit only for a day at a time, during two of Ian Botham’s fund-raising walks for leukaemia research, I had expected better of myself. The ailments were simply badly timed but I loved the views, learned from David the names of a few of the wild flowers along the way and, as always, relished the pub meals and homely bed and breakfast houses that he had selected en route, no matter how long seemed the final mile downhill from a track once trodden by neolithic man. I managed to walk the remaining miles by myself the following spring, this time in the company of my dog, who wondered why the walk was so short and so slow.

  A fortnight after the original failed attempt to walk in five days a track that my daughter had comfortably traversed in two and a half, with my toe and muscle back in working order, I had left home at six am to beat the M25 traffic and driven north to Manchester to cover Lancashire’s final match of the season against the prospective new county champions, Nottinghamshire. It was mid-September and, to no one’s great surprise, it was raining by the time that Judy rang me halfway up the M40 to inquire whether I had meant to leave my overnight bag in the kitchen.

  Fortunately I had taken precautions against the probability of just this absent-mindedness by retaining in the car one of those smart little bags that airlines hand out on long-haul journeys. Shaving gear, toothbrush, toothpaste, folding brush and comb, paper hankies, even moisturisers: they were all there.

  Few setbacks are quite as bad as they first seem, I reflected the following day as, with rain pouring down and no prospect of play at Old Trafford, I utilised my golf kit to go for another walk, this time along the Dane Valley Way, close to the farmhouse that was offering me a comfortable bed and an excellent breakfast for £50 a night.

  Walking beside the rushing brown water of the Dane, expecting to see dippers at every bend in the river, made me think afresh that the time had come to slow down a bit: as Walter Hagen put it, to smell the flowers. But most of what I still do feels immensely worthwhile
. Given luck with my health, I hope that there will be no need to pull up stumps on my various commitments for a while yet. I shall try to be content with whatever is round the corner. Some things do come to those who wait, especially if they wait in the right places.

  INDEX

  (CMJ and RMJ in subentries refer to Christopher Martin-Jenkins and Robin Martin-Jenkins)

  Aamer, Mohammad, ref 1, ref 2

  ABC, ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4, ref 5

  Abrahams, Harold, ref 1

  Adams, Chris, ref 1, ref 2, ref 3

  Adams, Peter, ref 1

  Adamson, Steve, ref 1

  Afridi, Shahid, ref 1

  Agnew, Jonathan, ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4, ref 5, ref 6, ref 7, ref 8, ref 9, ref 10

  Ahmed, Bilal, ref 1

  Ahmed, Mushtaq, ref 1, ref 2, ref 3

  Aigburth, ref 1

  Aird, Ronnie, ref 1

  Akhtar, Shoaib, ref 1

  Akram, Wasim, ref 1, ref 2

  Albury CC, ref 1, ref 2, ref 3

  Alderman, Terry, ref 1

  Allen, Capt. Burls Lynn, ref 1

  Allen, David, ref 1

  Allen, Gubby, ref 1, ref 2

  Allen, Lily, ref 1, ref 2

  Allen, Richard, ref 1

  Allerton, Jeremy, ref 1

  Allott, Paul, ref 1

  Alston, Rex, ref 1, ref 2

  Ambrose, Curtley, ref 1, ref 2

  Ambrose, Tim, ref 1

  Amiss, Dennis, ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4, ref 5, ref 6

  Anderson, Alva, ref 1

  Anderson, Jimmy, ref 1

  Andrews, Eamonn, ref 1, ref 2

  Appleyard, Bob, ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4

  Arabs, ref 1, ref 2, ref 3

  Archer, Jeffrey, ref 1

  Arlidge, Jack, ref 1