London, June 27: Various members of the Middlesex County Cricket Club (MCC) have expressed displeasure over the presence of unwanted and repulsive guests in the pavilion of the Lord’s cricket ground.
The problem has risen from an arrangement that allows MCC members to bring guests to Lord’s, the club’s home, in particular for T20 matches.
The Duke of Edinburgh is still the patron of the MCC, but members of the august cricket club are very worried about standards of behaviour and dress.
“I cannot ever recall experiencing the Pavilion both as full as it was for the Middlesex v Surrey 20/20 and so crammed with such predominantly repulsive, ill-behaved, apologies-for- membership-of-the-human- race what, for the most part, I would regard as ''The Great Unwashed’,” The Telegraph quoted John “Fingers” Fingleton, a colorful club stalwart, as saying.
“I have never recognised so few of my fellow members in the Pavilion at any previous match. The Long Bar was jammed to capacity with mobs of ill-behaved, ill-dressed, screaming yobbos and that was just the men,” he added.
“I understand, albeit anecdotally, that a number of our ''guests’ were drinking in the Long Room during the match, and when asked to refrain by a fellow member, behaved discourteously and even somewhat pugnaciously,” he said.
Another member of the MCC, D Tomlin said: “I will not be watching T20 cricket from the Pavilion again. It’s the Grandstand or Mound for me in the future. I bet half the people in the Pavilion never watched a ball being bowled.”
© ANI
