The Summer Field

205 take photographs! They even stop taxis and buses; one I saw carrying an advert for something nutritious for men, as endorsed by James Anderson, ‘the world’s number two bowler’. Even while it’s funny to see foreigners enjoy an unremarkable London street, their goodwill is always moving. Everyone seems glad to be there; they have done what they came for. And so much graffiti on that low, white wall outside the studio! Often it quotes the Beatles. All you need is love. You notice also that the building where the Beatles once made music, and its grounds, do not have graffiti; these pilgrims are respectful. As you leave – there’s not much else to see – and walk or drive the last couple of streets to Lord’s, you may wonder: why is there no graffiti, no 9am fans of Bradman, Tendulkar or Grace at the gates? (Or, as the Beatles date from the 1960s, Boycott and Sobers?) Read the Abbey Road graffiti for an answer. Much is from Mexico, Argentina, Brazil and Spain; not cricketing countries. (Yet the Beatles did not sing in Spanish?) They are not making any more music, yet what they made is as fresh now as when it came out – fresher, if digital, compared with the crackly original records. Music, and sung words, linger with us in a way that an innings or spell of bowling does not, though Lord’s has tried to remind us of its history by flying flags that name great deeds by men (and women). If we feel as devoted to cricketers as those tourists do to a bunch of state-educated music-makers from Liverpool, we need only go to the next match. Or if we miss it, the one after. Some do pay for a tour of Lord’s or to see the museum. You don’t buy any ticket for Abbey Road; you don’t have to be a member or wear a tie; you just walk the pavement. Music has something that inspires the young and bright from abroad, that cricket, as English as the Beatles, does not. To The Present and Beyond