Lords is the Vatican of cricket and the occupant since its first days has been the Marleborne Cricket Club. That cricket club would have you believe that they are a family of cricketers who trace their collective genealogy back to before the days the game was played on grass by gentlemen, hence the name ôLordsö for their ancestral home. Far from it. For those who bemoan the current plight of cricket with its betting, professionalism, marketing and match fixing, you will be comforted to know that the genus of the MCC and Lords was in gambling and the desire of the English nobility to do their scandalous business out of the eyes of the prying public. Go to the MCC website and click on to History and there it is for the likes of cricketing boards of inquiry, police forces, The News Of The World, MesserÆs Malik, Cronje, may he rest in peace, and the whole world to see.

"Like shooting and fox hunting, cricket was considered a manly sport for the elite, with plenty of gambling opportunities to boot. Around 20,000 pounds sterling was bet on a series of games between old Etonians and England back in 1751."

"As the population of London grew, so did the nobility's impatience with the crowds that gathered to watch them play. In pursuit of exclusivity, they therefor approached Thomas Lord,à.and asked him to set up a private ground with their backing."

The MCC is older than an anachronism and some would say color blind as evidenced by their choice of family colors, scrambled eggs and ketchup; I suspect gender blind as well, why they refused to recognize the existence of woman to apply for membership of the Club until recently.

My first recollection of the MCC is sitting by my grandfather's side and listening to the BBC World Service. For 5 minutes here and 10 minutes there, I was transported to Lords or some other cricket venue to listen to the MCC versus Australia or the West Indies. Australia was always Australia, The West Indies the West Indies, but England was always the MCC. Those recollections have stayed with me to the present. When we went to build our radio link for the Cricket Club webpage there was only one choice, the BBC World Service. I donÆt know why, but I have comfort in those acronyms, the BBC and the MCC.

Today I went searching for the MCC on the internet. I tried lords.org and lords.com without a success. I tried mcc.org and mcc.com upper and lower without success, only to be disappointed to find that I was searching for at ecb.co.uk, which is ôpoweredö by the Microsoft of cricket, cricinfo. I genuinely hope the name Marleyborne Cricket Club does not disappear from the cricket radar screen to become associated with a brand of sport apparel marketed over the net but I fear it and your sponsors may drive you to it.