Marylebone Cricket Club

 

Marylebone Cricket Club

 

Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) is a cricket club founded in 1787 and based since 1814 at Lord's Cricket Ground, which it owns, in St John's Wood, London. The club was formerly the governing body of cricket retaining considerable global influence.

 

In 1788, the MCC took responsibility for the laws of cricket, issuing a revised version that year. Changes to these Laws are now determined by the International Cricket Council (ICC), but the copyright is still owned by MCC. When the ICC was established in 1909, it was administered by the secretary of the MCC, and the president of MCC automatically assumed the chairmanship of ICC until 1989.

 

For much of the 20th century, commencing with the 1903–04 tour of Australia and ending with the 1976–77 tour of India, MCC organised international tours on behalf of the England cricket team for playing Test matches. On these tours, the England team played under the auspices of MCC in non-international matches. In 1993, its administrative and governance functions were transferred to the ICC and the Test and County Cricket Board (TCCB).

 

MCC teams are essentially ad hoc because they have never taken part in any formal competition, but have always held first-class status when playing against first-class opposition.

 

The present president of the club is Stephen Fry, who assumed the twelve-month office on 1 October 2022, replacing Clare Connor, the first woman to hold the post.[5] In May 2023, he named his successor as Mark Nicholas, the former Hampshire captain.

 

History and role

The origin of MCC was as a gentlemen's club that had flourished through most of the 18th century, including, at least in part, an existence as the original London Cricket Club, which had played at the Artillery Ground through the middle years of the century. Many of its members became involved with the Hambledon Club through the 1770s and then, in the early 1780s, had returned to the London area where the White Conduit Club had begun in Islington. It is not known for certain when the White Conduit was founded but it seems to have been after 1780 and certainly by 1785. According to Sir Pelham Warner, it was formed in 1782 as an offshoot from a West End convivial club called the Je-ne-sais-quoi, some of whose members frequented the White Conduit House in Islington and played matches on the neighbouring White Conduit Fields, which had been a prominent venue for cricket in the 1720s. Arthur Haygarth said in Scores and Biographies that "the Marylebone Club was founded in 1787 from the White Conduit's members" but the date of the formation of the White Conduit "could not be found".

 

This gentlemen's club, which was multi-purpose, had a social meeting place at the Star and Garter on Pall Mall. It was the same club that was responsible for drafting the Laws of Cricket at various times, most notably in 1744 and 1774, and this lawgiving responsibility was soon to be vested in the MCC as the final repose of these cricketing gentlemen. When the White Conduit began, its leading lights were George Finch, 9th Earl of Winchilsea (1752–1826) and the Hon. Colonel Charles Lennox (1764–1819), later succeeding as the 4th Duke of Richmond. White Conduit was nominally an exclusive club that only "gentlemen" might play for, but the club did engage professionals and one of these was Thomas Lord, a man who was recognised for his business acumen (becoming a successful wine merchant) "as well as his bowling ability".

 

The new club might have continued except that White Conduit Fields was an open area allowing members of the public, including the rowdier elements, to watch the matches and to voice their opinions on the play and the players. The White Conduit gentlemen were not amused by such interruptions and decided to look for a more private venue of their own.Winchilsea and Lennox asked Lord to find a new ground and offered him a guarantee against any losses he may suffer in the venture. Lord took a lease from the Portman Estate on some land at Dorset Fields where Dorset Square is now sited; and the ground was prepared and opened in 1787. It was initially called the New Cricket Ground, perhaps because it was off what was then called "the New Road" in Marylebone, when the first known match was played there on 21 May but, by the end of July, it was known as Lord's. As it was in Marylebone, the White Conduit members who relocated to it soon decided to call themselves the "Mary-le-bone Club". The exact date of MCC's foundation is lost but seems to have been sometime in the late spring or the summer of 1787.[14] On 10 & 11 July 1837, a South v North match was staged at Lord's to commemorate the MCC's Golden Jubilee. Warner described it as "a Grand Match to celebrate the Jubilee of the Club" and reproduced the full scorecard.

 

On 25 April 1787, the London Morning Herald newspaper carried a notice: "The Members of the Cricket Club are desired to meet at the Star and Garter, Pall Mall, on Mon., April 30. Dinner on table exactly at half past five o'clock. N.B. The favour of an answer is desired".The agenda is unknown but, only three weeks later on Saturday, 19 May, the Morning Herald advertised: "A grand match will be played on Monday, 21 May in the New Cricket Ground, the New Road, Mary-le-bone, between eleven Noblemen of the White Conduit Club and eleven Gentlemen of the County of Middlesex with two men given, for 500 guineas a side. The wickets to be pitched at ten o'clock, and the match to be played out". No post-match report has been found but, as G. B. Buckley said, it was "apparently the first match to be played on Lord's new ground".

 

A total of eight matches are known to have been played at Lord's in 1787, one of them a single wicket event. The only one which featured the Mary-le-bone Club took place on Monday, 30 July. It was advertised in The World on Friday, 27 July 1787: "On Monday, 30 July will be played (at Lord's) a match between 11 gentlemen of the Mary-le-bone Club and 11 gentlemen of the Islington Club".[Buckley stated that "this is the earliest notice of the Marylebone Club". As with the inaugural match at Lord's, no post-match report of the inaugural MCC match has been found.

 

Grounds

There have been three Lord's grounds: the original on the Portman Estate and two on the Eyre Estate. All three sites lie to the west of Regent's Park. Thomas Lord leased the original ground, now referred to as Lord's Old Ground, from the Portman Estate in 1787 and MCC played there until 1810 when Lord, after objecting to a rent increase, decided on termination of the lease to lift his turf and move out. Over 200 matches are known to have been played there, mostly involving MCC and/or Middlesex. The Old Ground was on the site now occupied by Dorset Square which is east of Marylebone Station and west of Baker Street. To commemorate the association, a plaque was unveiled in Dorset Square on 9 May 2006 by Sir Andrew Strauss.

 

Lord had been aware some years before 1810 that the Portman Estate intended to let the site on building leases which would command the much higher rent of over £600 per annum. On 15 October 1808, he rented two fields in the North Bank area of the St John's Wood Estate, which belonged to Richard Eyre, a local landowner after whom Eyre's Tunnel on the Regent's Canal was named. Rental on the Eyre site was only £54 per annum for a term of eighty years and free of both land tax and tithe.

 

The new ground was ready for use in 1809 and so Lord had two grounds at his disposal for the 1809 and 1810 seasons. The North Bank ground was sub-let to St John's Wood Cricket Club which eventually merged with MCC.[17] Lord officially took over his second ground on 8 May 1811 by re-laying there his turf from the Old Ground. He did this so that "the noblemen and gentlemen of the MCC should be able to play on the same footing as before". According to Warner, however, the relocation was unpopular with many MCC members and, as a result, the club played no matches there in either 1811 or 1812.[17] This may have been so, but cricket generally was in decline at the time because of the Napoleonic Wars. The Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians (the ACS) holds that "(from) 1810 to 1814 the game was all but dead", largely because of the war and "the very real threat of civil unrest in England".[18] The second venue is now generally known as Lord's Middle Ground. In the three years that Lord controlled it, only six matches are known to have taken place there and just three of these (all in 1813) involved MCC. The Middle Ground's exact location is uncertain but it is understood to have been in North Bank at the north end of Lisson Grove and that the Regent's Canal has been cut through it. This means that it was partially on the canal route and somewhere in the area now bounded by Lisson Grove (the B507) to south-west, Lodge Road to north-west, Park Road (the A41) to north-east and the Regent's Canal to south-east. It was less than 300 yards (270 m) from the site of the modern Lord's ground.

 

Lord was forced to abandon the Middle Ground because of the canal construction. The decision on the route was made by Parliament in 1813. Lord, via his protégé Lord Frederick Beauclerk, approached the Eyre family who agreed to lease him another plot nearby in St John's Wood, but at an increased rent of £100 per annum. Lord accepted and again removed and relaid his turf in time for the start of the 1814 season. This third ground was the present Lord's, now home to MCC for over 200 years.

 

Laws of Cricket

MCC is the body responsible for, and remains the copyright holder of, the Laws of Cricket. Its Laws Sub-Committee is responsible for debating and drafting changes to the Laws, with the Main Committee then voting on any changes proposed.

 

Membership

MCC has 18,000 full members and 5,000 associate members. Members have voting rights and can use the Pavilion and other stands at Lord's Cricket Ground to attend all matches played there.

 

In order to join the waiting list of candidates for membership one must obtain the vote (of which each full member has one a year) of three members, and the additional sponsorship of a person on the List of MCC Sponsors (which consists of members of all MCC Sub-Committees; MCC Committee; MCC Out-Match Representatives; and the Current, Past and Designate President). As the demand for membership always outstrips supply each year, there continues to be a substantial waiting list for Full Ordinary Membership, currently around 27 years.[20] There are, however, ways to lessen the time it takes to become a full member: one may qualify as a Playing Member, or Out-Match Member (although this carries none of the privileges of membership, apart from being able to play for the club).

 

In addition, membership rules allow a certain number of people each year to be elected ahead of their turn; beneficiaries have included Sir Mick Jagger and in 2018 the Prime Minister, Theresa, now Lady May. MCC also grants limited honorary membership to people who have had distinguished cricket careers. The club recognises achievement in women's cricket with, for example, Charlotte Edwards an inductee in the 2010s.

 

Controversies

The club's members refused to allow female membership up until 1998, with club ballots on the change unable to achieve the two-thirds majority amongst the membership required for implementation. The move to change was spearheaded by Rachael Heyhoe Flint who applied as "R Flint" to slip into the male-only application system. When Colin Ingleby-Mackenzie, a longstanding supporter of women's membership, took on the presidency of MCC in 1996 he led a two-year campaign to convince the membership to vote in favour of change. In September 1998 a 70% majority of members voted to allow female membership, so ending 212 years of male exclusivity, and 10 honorary life members were immediately admitted, including Baroness Heyhoe Flint. Until this time, The Queen, the club's patron, was the only woman (other than domestic staff) permitted to enter the Pavilion during play. In February 1999, five women were invited to join as playing members.

 

There was further controversy in 2005 when the club was criticised (including by a few of its own members) for siding with the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) over the latter's decision to award television rights for Test cricket to British Sky Broadcasting, thus removing Test cricket from terrestrial television. The then Secretary and Chief Executive of MCC, Roger Knight, represented the club on the board of the ECB and was party to this controversial and much criticised decision, prior to which Test cricket had been shown free to viewers on British television for more than half a century.

 

Another controversy was MCC's decision to allow members and other spectators to continue to bring limited amounts of alcoholic drinks into the ground at all matches. This decision challenged the ICC, which was attempting to implement a ban on this practice at all international matches around the world. MCC has opted to write to the ICC on an annual basis to seek permission for members and spectators to import alcohol into Lord's.

 

The Secretary & Chief Executive of the club has a place on the administrative board of the England and Wales Cricket Board and it is reported that Keith Bradshaw (Secretary & Chief Executive 2006–11) may have influenced the removal from office of England Coach Duncan Fletcher in April 2007.

 

In 2012, MCC made headlines over a controversial redevelopment plan, Vision for Lord's, that would have increased capacity but included construction of residential flats on some of the MCC site. Internal strife over the process of making a decision on the proposal led to the resignation of former Prime Minister Sir John Major from the Main Committee.

 

In 2022, Guy Lavender, Secretary & Chief Executive of MCC, announced that the annual one-day Oxford v Cambridge and Eton v Harrow matches, both of which have been played at Lord's since the early 19th century, would no longer be held at the ground, so as to make room in the fixture list for the finals of competitions for all universities and schools in pursuit of greater diversity. However, following opposition from a majority of its membership, the club decided that the matches would continue to be held at Lord's until at least 2023 to allow time for further consultation. In March 2023 it was announced that the fixtures would continue to be played at Lord's until at least 2027, following which there would be a review and a possible vote in 2028 on whether the matches should remain at Lord's.