My First Visit To Lord’s, England v Pakistan Day Two, 26 July 1996

Picture taken from the Compton Stand at a Test some 20 years later.

There are only cryptic messages in my diary, but I do remember this day well:

Cookie Lords

Charlie Barnett 98 before lunch

Olly

Heather Rabbatts

Cookie in this instance is James Cooke, who was doing a bit of associate work with us, mostly introductions. As it turned out, the most fruitful introduction Cookie made (from my personal/selfish point of view) was introducing me to Lord’s.

Believe it or not this was my first visit to Lord’s. Little did I know then how much of my time I would end up spending in that wonderful place.

Why Cookie mentioned and I wrote down that factoid about Charlie Barnett, is a mystery. Perhaps Cookie had met or was related to Charlie Barnett?

I wrote down the names Olly and Heather Rabbatts in different coloured ink from the other notes – I’m guessing I wrote the latter two while at Lord’s with Cookie. I cannot remember who Olly is/was. I do recall that Cookie wanted to introduce us to Heather, whom he knew. She was a high flyer who at that time had recently become Chief Executive at Lambeth.

It was an informal invitation – just the two of us, me and Cookie sitting in the Compton Stand. That stand was still quite new then and did not yet have the sweep/link to the Grandstand, as the new Grandstand was still a year away.

England were not a good side in the mid 1990s and looked out of their depth batting against that fine Pakistan bowling line up, which included Wasim, Waqar and Mushtaq.

Here is a link to the scorecard from the match.

I remember Cookie providing a splendid picnic – I guess that was to be the prototype for my informal hospitality picnics in the coming decades.

I’m sure I thanked Cookie at the time but there is no way I could have thanked him sufficiently for planting that Lord’s seed in my psyche. So 20+ years and hundreds of visits later, I’d like to thank Cookie again for the introduction to Lord’s.