Lord’s ready for right royal occasion as Ben Stokes begins England reign

There promises to be a great deal of pomp and pageantry at Lord’s this week, if the preparations are anything to go by. With the Queen’s Jubilee apparently upon us, the union flags have been draped around the ground and the sound checks a day before the toss – deafening renditions of the national anthem over the public address system – point to an incoming avalanche of red, white and blue.

But for those well-heeled enough to afford a ticket or subscribe to Sky Sports all this will be secondary when players take the field at 11am. England versus New Zealand, the reigning world champions, over five days at the Home of Cricket? Few adornments should be required to make this a special fixture, even if MCC were busy decorating the place while trying to ride out the grumbles about pricing.

And, of course, this is the first step in a new journey for this England team after 12 months of pain, with Ben Stokes starting out his captaincy and Brendon McCullum having crossed the divide as head coach. The pair barely knew each other before Rob Key, the new managing director, threw them together but they appear cut from similar cloth. Certainly the messages they are preaching mark a return to the simple, earthy cricketing truism of taking it a Test at a time that seemed to get lost during the previous regime.

That it is the Black Caps first up for the Stokes-McCullum axis adds a further layer of poetic narrative, for those looking on at least. Stokes may have spent the first 12 years of his life on the South Island, his late father, Ged, played rugby league for the Kiwis, while his mother, Deborah, and brother, James, have made the 12,000-mile trip from Christchurch to watch in person, but any extra sentiment will be kept in check.

“I’