Toxic relationship with money an elephant in the long room at Lord’s

The second evening at Lord’s, and the day has begun to sag a little. The cricket begins to lose its grip on you, a day of breezy sunshine has made you sleepy, and so you decide to stretch your legs and take a stroll. You stop for a cup of tea, which costs £3.10. *Tap. Bleep.* The tea merely draws attention to your empty stomach and so you join the ragged queue for a portion of fish and chips at £12.50. *Tap. Bleep.*

You walk a little longer, past the pasty stall, past the gin concession, past the souvenir shop and Great British Fudge emporium. A little way beyond there’s a charity collector shaking a tin. An invitation to book a tour of the ground. *Tap. Bleep.* It’s all so easy and frictionless, a sunlit orchard of card readers all arching their boughs towards you and promising you a little pleasure.

“Lord’s is a cashless ground,” announces a message on the big screen as you enter, a statement that is true only until the moment your bank statement drops. But then this has always been the genius of Lord’s: a place that works the senses so thoroughly that you barely notice the efficiency with which it is simultaneously working your wallet. They don’t really obsess about anything as vulgar as money here, largely because for centuries it has been run by the sort of people with so much of it that it hardly matters.

We got a taste of this earlier in the week, when the MCC was fleetingly blindsided by a sudden controversy over ticket prices for the first Test. Stuart Broad and Ben Stokes both spoke out. Pundits and journalists fumed at the audacity of charging £160 to watch one-fifth of a cricket match.

Eventually, confronted with a deluge of sour headlines, the club was forced to issue an extra tranche of £20 junior tickets