The Marylebone Cricket Club was founded in London in 1787. In 1788, the members of the Club revised the Laws of Cricket and have done so periodically over the last 227 years. Even though international cricket is now run through the International Cricket Council, the Laws currently in use are still drawn up by the MCC. The most recent edition of the Laws is the 5th edition of the 2000 Code. This was released in 2013. The ICC's playing conditions build on these Laws and the governing body has deferred to the MCC on matters such as the switch-hit. Until January 1997, the team known to us as "England" wore MCC colors on tour. So whenever an English touring party played a tour match during a Test tour, it would be MCC v Bombay or MCC v New South Wales.
In 1987, the MCC organized a Test match to celebrate its bicentenary. It was held from August 20-25, in the heart of the English season. The MCC and Rest of the World elevens assembled for that game were the best players of the day. The MCC line up was Greenidge, Broad, Gooch, Gower, Gatting, Rice, Hadlee, Shastri, Emburey, Marshall and French. Hadlee and Marshall would share the new ball in many people's all time World XIs. The Rest of the World line up was equally impressive - Gavaskar, Haynes, Vengsarkar, Border, Miandad, Dujon, Imran Khan, Kapil Dev, Roger Harper, Courtney Walsh and Abdul Qadir.
Gavaskar made 188, Gordon Greenidge 122 in the 2nd innings. Graham Gooch made a century for MCC and Mike Gatting made 179 not out. Imran and Gavaskar added 180. It rained a bit, but otherwise the batsmen had a good game in late August.
Ten years later, even though the MCC was no longer running the English Test team, a 50 overs game was organized to memorialize Princess Diana at Lord's. That day the MCC's bowling attack read Kumble, Srinath, Donald and McGrath. The Rest of the World line up would have beaten most teams in ODI history (especially in its 1998 form). It read Jayasurya, Tendulkar, Anwar, de Silva, Hick, Moody, Flower, Cairns, Akram, Mushtaq Ahmed, and Ian Bishop. A young Shivnarine Chanderpaul made a century for the MCC. In response, Tendulkar and de Silva added 179 in about 25 overs. This was not even considered an official limited overs game, but the cricket was of the highest quality. It was played by the best players of the day in the middle of the season.
In those days, the MCC could command the best players of the day. Contrast this with the 50 overs game held yesterday at Lord's to celebrate 200 years of the current ground. No current England players participated, even though England are between two series. The only current players who can be considered a top player somewhere close to his prime were Saeed Ajmal and Peter Siddle. Ajmal quickly proved to be too good for the competition and had to be withdrawn from the attack after taking 4 wickets in his first four overs. The quality of cricket was generally poor. Tino Best was erratic and drifted down leg more often than McGrath or Akram might in entire seasons of bowling.
This general lack of preparation almost resulted in tragedy. Brett Lee, who hasn't played a competitive game in which he had to bowl more than 4 overs in almost exactly 2 years let a high full toss slip out at Shane Warne in his final over. Warne fended it with his glove and fractured his hand. It could have been far worse. Warne is 44 years old now. Putting Warne and Lee in this situation borders on the irresponsible. It is too much to expect players who haven't trained to be match fit for multiple seasons to come out and perform at full tilt (or as close to full tilt as they can be expected to). Lee was not going to come off a short run. He is no longer good enough to come off his long run. This is not comment on his current form. It is simply an accurate measure of how difficult it is to be the elite express pace bowler that Lee once was. It takes endless training week in and week out to stay fit enough to bowl at the level Lee used to.
It was no surprise that Aaron Finch, age 27, and in the prime of his cricketing life (and more importantly, training week in and week out as an active professional cricketer) put a modest MCC attack to the sword.
The MCC of yore would have invited (and successfully at that) de Villiers, Kohli, Dhoni, Clarke, Johnson, Herath, Sangakkara, Smith, Kallis, Steyn and other top current players. The South African ODI tour to Sri Lanka was scheduled at least since March. Without question, they would have invited the top English players of the day - Bell, Cook, Anderson, Prior and Broad, with perhaps a promising young player like Moeen Ali or Ben Stokes thrown in.
The quality of the cricket would have very high, certainly too good for retired 45 year olds to compete in. Whats more, the retired 45 year olds know this. They might have been content to watch. After all, Greg Chappell and Clive Lloyd didn't play the 1987 bicentenary Test.
As if all the mediocre quality of cricket and the irresponsible injury to Shane Warne was not enough, the day was further marred by some disgraceful commentary by the former England captain Andrew Strauss. Yes it is true that Strauss was not the color commentator at the time and was sitting in the back of the box. But he was still at work, like a batsman waiting for his turn to bat. Strauss is a man of the establishment. Lord's is his home ground and he was everything the conservative English establishment expected of a player and captain in his playing days. He won the Ashes multiple times. That he chose this day to contribute to the list of strange episodes in the Kevin Pietersen affair, in which another Middlesex man Paul Downton has played no small role is fitting, as was his subsequent apology which formed a novel hybrid of the usual weasel words that are reserved for such apologies "i'm sorry if you were offended", and less equivocal "i apologize unreservedly".
The MCC did not admit female members until well into the 1990s. That the hideously sexist nature of Strauss's abuse was not remarked upon either by Sky Sports or by Strauss himself in his apology is not surprising. As humans go, women don't register either as customers or members of the public for most commentary boxes around the cricketing world. It remains the worst aspect of the game.
I cannot imagine Trevor Bailey or Fred Trueman giving as pathetic an account of themselves as Strauss did today. But we live in the age of a commentator named Bumble. An age in which selling nice pictures to spectators - pictures of things the spectators apparently want - is more important and playing the game at the highest possible quality. Today's disappointing game is symptomatic of these discontents. It is also symptomatic of the relegation of the MCC to the margins of the contemporary game, both in England and the world over.
As for Cricket's new home, I suggest that it resides neither at the Wankhede Stadium, nor in Dubai. Today the game resides in a few enormous corporate contracts. For all its faults, the MCC took the game all over the world for decades when television money did not exist. With all the modern technology and finance at its command, will the new ICC achieve anything comparable in the next 100 years?
In many ways then, the bicentenary game was fitting for the historical moment that the MCC finds itself in. It is a visible milestone in the great club's eclipse as the home of the game it made and of the rise of a new, more mediocre conformism demanded by the powers that run the game today.