Darren Wonk, ECB Marketing Coordinator for Now That’s What I Call The Greatest Summer Of Cricket… Ever! shares his thoughts on the first day’s play at Lord’s… 

What a thrilling start to the summer! It just goes to show, the earlier the better, and very much a feather in the cap of those of us who see no reason why a perfectly good (although unfortunately old) cricket ground such as Lord’s should not be hosting a Test or two during the winter as well. Some pretty influential players in our Television Liaison Revenue Stream Administration Committee have mooted the possibility of a Boxing Day Test in St John’s Wood, and events such as yesterday’s only add fuel to that fire (which might be just as well, given the bracing weather ha ha ha). 

Of course, the day wasn’t without its downsides. Not just the Test cricket, I mean, but the sight of one or two empty seats at Lord’s. It’s a sad sign of the times when our core fans, the people who really make the game such a key part of the English summer (or winter) find themselves priced out of the ground through no fault of their own. So to our friends and former corporate partners at Ernst and Goebbels, Bastard Brothers, Liquidate And Scarper Insurance Group and KPMGOMGWTFBBQ, we say: see you on the other side, homies. We’re pouring a magnum of warm chardonnay on the hallowed turf in your memory and putting up a plaque in your favourite hospitality tent (a safe distance away from the cricket and with real good reception for the old BlackBerry). 

As to the great unwashed, with 197 days of cricket still left to enjoy this summer, it was no surprise that one or two chose to save their pennies for the really big events to come, such as the World Twenty20, the Domestic Twenty20, the Local Twenty20 (featuring matches between every London borough) and a very exciting opportunity to see the Middlesex Pink Panthers take on the champions of Finland, Chinese Turkmenistan, Peru, and Derbyshire in a thrilling five-way orgy of Twenty20 fun. It would be disingenuous of me to suggest that the empty seats yesterday prove that people actually prefer Twenty20 to Test cricket, but the empty seats yesterday prove that people actually prefer Twenty20 to Test cricket. 

Finally, wasn’t it good to see Ravi Bopara getting a score and celebrating in that way? It’s been suggested that he was keen to get his name up on something called an Honour Board, but I can actually reveal that he was in fact miming the inking of a pretty lucrative and very exciting new contract with the ECB that will tie him to England cricket for the next few days at the very least. It just goes to show: a day at Lord’s is the perfect way to combine business and pleasure.
By Alan Tyers