The Summer Field

182 Hinton who (unlike so many) ‘did not chatter incessantly’. You had to accept that cricket (like life) would seem dull sometimes – how else could you recognise the good times? Hinton appreciated tradition, ‘new faces every season, but the same old game’. Britain kept going, despite losing its empire. Would the English game fade, as it had in the United States a century before? So the journalist Terry Coleman asked in the magazine New Society in August 1966. Could cricket halt the loss of audience? Other sports were gaining from ideas that cricket shunned, such as the football World Cup that England hosted in July 1966. MCC agreed not to host Test matches during the tournament. Would football eat more into the summer, more often? * When the historian of Leicestershire cricket Eric Snow became a full member of MCC in 1967, the club sent him a copy of its rules, dated 1961. Its ground regulations looked to keep the modern world out: it prohibited taking of ‘photographs and cine-photos’ (‘and all cameras must be left with the attendants’); and use of radio sets ‘in any part of the ground’. Lord’s also seemed loath to let people enjoy themselves: no betting; no ‘unnecessary noise’; no dogs (and no dogs left in the car parks); and ‘collection of autographs inside the ground from players prohibited’. On paper, the authorities seemed as closed to change as ever. Yet there was no faulting the club’s commercial sense; its rules began by saying when and how you paid your subscription. In reality, Lord’s was already hosting the final of a knockout tournament, sponsored by a firm that made razor blades. Cricket was already set on renewing itself. Renewal