Real tennis Hong Kong dragon, not to be confused with a Welsh dragon
Tom Carew Hunt, in liaison with Charlie Barrows of Real Tennis Hong Kong, thought this occasion an ideal excuse…or should I say opportunity…to have an MCC v RTHK fixture on the same day.
It was a very bright idea which made for a very enjoyable day.
Ton Carew Hunt in the Lord’s dedans gallery, no doubt expounding on another bright idea
We MCC members had several conversations about ensuring that we were able to introduce all of our visitors into the pavilion during the day, only to discover that it was a “relatively relaxed” day, with no requirement to sign guests in.
After my rubber, I “introduced” (or rather, made an unnecessary attempt to sign in) John McVitie, with whom I supped in the Bowlers’ Bar watching cricket for a while, until an untimely short shower temporarily put paid to the cricket.
In the end, despite there being plentiful cricket to watch, I spent most of my time in the dedans gallery, where the majority of the tennis players were hanging out, watching tennis and chatting.
I did offer to mark a rubber or two, but Charlie Barrows was keen to mark most of the match. Tom marked one rubber, which I am told included a controversial call. But, sadly, my investigative journalism came to nought when the players all clammed up under interrogation. Strangely, it transpires that the video camera, normally in full flow throughout such matches, was suspiciously turned off during our match. “Fault-er-gate” will thus remain one of those unsolved mysteries.
Richard Wyse, Peter Brunner, Anthony Prince & Bill Higson line up for the final rubber
Below is the results card, showing, in excruciating detail, everything that Joe Public might like to know about this fixture, and more.
Although MCC took both the men’s and women’s cricket matches on the field of play, Real Tennis Hong Kong pipped MCC in the tennis fixture.
But more important than the result was the warmth and friendliness of the atmosphere throughout the day. Of course, most of the RTHK players are long-term friends of the MCC players through the real tennis community, plus, in many cases, through also being members of the MCC. It was lovely to spend a day at tennis and cricket in that relaxed and congenial setting.
I got to Lord’s early on Day One of the test, but my purpose was to play tennis, rather than grab a prime seat. I didn’t play well that day.
By the time I’d showered and changed, the only seating available was in members’ overflow in the Lower Compton Stand, which is a pretty decent place to watch cricket. I needed to do some musical chairs during the day to avoid the sun, but managed that process quite effectively.
Towards the end of Day One, I wandered round to the Allen Stand end of the Tavern Stand, from whence I took the headline photo. There was a “ladybirds stopped play” incident at that time, which doesn’t show in the photo.
Day Two
I got to Lord’s pretty early again on Day Two – this time to try and secure a shady seat in the Tavern Stand for the morning session. Success. Tony Friend came and joined me for a while there.
Just before lunch I wandered around to the tennis court, as I was to have a hit with Chris Bray at 2:30. In fact, Chris told me that the Cull match was likely to end early so we could start around 2:00, which we did.
The story of Brian Lara witnessing a fair chunk of our 30 minute hit will appear on King Cricket in the fulness of time, at which point I’ll link it through to Ogblog. The court was free until 3:00, so I worked on my serve and striking sitters from the roof for a while.
By the time I’d showered and changed it was tea. I hoped to find a vacated seat in the pavilion for the last session and wasn’t disappointed.
I got chatting with some interesting fellows in the neighbouring seats, as is often the way in members’ sections at Lord’s. And yes, my tie got a couple compliments again!
Day Three
Janie and I played “lawn” at Boston Manor and followed the cricket from the luxury of our own home.
Day Four
Janie and I got to Lord’s early enough to find good seats in the shadier part of the Warner Stand.
Janie was more keen on doing the double-selfie thing than I was. Does it show?
We left a little early to freshen up at the flat. In the evening, we went to the Wigmore Hall to see a super concert:
Janie and I commuted to Lord’s for this “bonus” day, securing Warner Stand seats near to the ones we occupied the day before.
We thought we’d be treated to two to three hours of cricket, but in fact the final innings of this match turned into a fascinating extended nail-biter.
Anyway, Daisy and I did our usual thing in Leamington – stopping there for a game of real with Dr Snoddie & his pals; also lunching and shopping in that fine spa town, before driving on to Birmingham (Moseley).
This time we had taken an out house in a family home as our Airbnb, which was less eccentric than the 2024 place but not quite as spacious and posh as the 2022 place in Edgbaston.
Still, plenty of room for producing smoked trout and smoked salmon bagels, smoked chicken, duck and cheese sandwiches, grape and strawberry courses and assorted snacks.
Nigel joined me and Daisy for dinner at Sabai Sabai the night before the test started. Harsha was unable to join us until Day Two, hence his absence from the pre-test repast. He (and we) had very much enjoyed that place in 2024, much as we all did in 2025.
A fairly large table, including cricket writers Simon Wilde and John Etheridge also dined in Sabai Sabai that evening. Being cricket writers, they must be discerning folk who know what they are on about food-wise.
Nigel, Morg, Jonny & Me – photo by Daisy
Here we are gathered at the start of Day One, brimming with antici…
…pation.
Jonny Twophones was making a third appearance this year, while his friend, Huge Morg, whom I had met through Jonny at Lord’s a couple of years earlier, was making his first appearance at a Heavy Rollers event. Unfortunately we neglected to conduct Morg’s initiation ceremony this time, so it will have to be a more extreme version of the initiation next time. Something for everyone to look forward to.
Did Sam come and visit us at lunchtime on Day Two?
Yes. As well as this selfie, he also took the headline photo for us. Thanks Sam.
Of course he did.
Daisy took a good few photos around the back of the Eric Hollies Stand over the three days, which will find their way as an educational feature on the King Cricket website in the fullness of time. A link to that feature will be annexed soon after that fullness.
Here is an example of such a photo, not used in that feature.
Knight time is the right time.
My performance in the traditional Heavy Rollers prediction game was dismal this year, whereas Daisy, professing to “knowing nothing” did quite well for a change.
As always, the days seemed to fly by and sooner than we possibly could imagine we were all on our way.
I had hoped to get to Lord’s a bit earlier than 4:15 on Disability Cricket Day, but work and other necessities intervened. By the time I got to Lord’s, most of the peripheral activities had finished, although there were still plenty of people enjoying their day around the Nursey Ground, especially the small stand at the side of the Cricket Academy.
Some of my steward friends urged me to hurry round to the pavilion side of the ground, lest I missed the whole of the flagship match between England and India, as England were seven-down for diddly-squat.
But this was no day for hurrying – I ambled around with my tennis equipment in hand, with a view to stowing the equipment and working out where to sit.
I had no jacket and tie with me, but suspected that it would be a “relaxed dress code” day and that my smart casual look would be sufficient to gain entry into the pavilion.
I asked one of my steward friends whether it was relaxed dress code today.
Totally relaxed – they’ve even told us we can let people in wearing flip-flops today.
I was flabberghasted.
I wish I’d phoned to ask before I left home. I’ve always wanted to wear flip-flops in the pavilion.
Relaxed dress – I still have this longyi somewhere…and flip-flops
On asking one question about the nature of this disability match, another friendly steward handed me a programme – then I found a seat on the front terrace.
The programme was helpful in answering my questions about what “mixed disability” is. In short, there are three categories of disability cricket:
Physical Disability;
Deaf / Hearing Impairment;
Learning Disability.
This mixed disability format requires a mixed team because all three categories of disability need to be represented in the top four batting and each category needs to bowl at least 25% of the overs – thus requiring a minimum of two bowlers from each category.
Clever.
By the time I had got my head around it, the England innings had revived somewhat and were making a good game of it for the last few overs of its 20 over allocation.
That said, India set off in the power play looking as though they would make short shrift of the 124 target.
At that juncture, I realised that I needed to go to the dressing room and change for my next gig – real tennis club night, which I curate, so it would be rude to be late.
On my way out, as I progressed through the Long Room, I ran into Arfan Akram, besuited in a conventional MCC stylee, whom I know well from his role with Essex and my role with the London Cricket Trust.
After greeting me warmly, and us both agreeing that the disability cricket day seemed to be a great success, Arfan asked,
are you going to write this up on your blog?
You don’t say no to Arfan without good reason.
Yes, of course,
I said.
In truth, I was really impressed by the quality of the cricket. It is the first time I have seen this mixed disability format. I think it is a great idea, to showcase the best of the disability cricketers and to encourage players in each of those three disability categories to aspire to make the most of their talents.
I can’t find any video from the match I saw, but here is a YouTube of the mixed disability match earlier in the day, MCC v Middlesex D40 First XI, which was also a humdinger:
I tried to explain to anyone who’d listen to me that I should be allowed to represent at mixed disability cricket, given the ravages of time and the advent of Pinky, my brand-new hip.
I was politely informed that I wouldn’t be good enough, not that I really needed anyone to tell me, given the quality of cricket I had witnessed.
No such impediment for real tennis club night. We play a mixed ability format, the criterion for which is quite straightforward – all are welcome regardless of ability.
Just as well that criterion is simple, because real tennis is a complex game which we amateurs play on handicap. For “all are welcome” sessions such as club night, where several of the players tend to be of unknown or unsettled handicaps, I favour the use of sliding handicaps, to ensure that each set will tend towards a tight finish. Works almost every time.
Again, no footage from club night itself (heaven forbid) but I do have some footage of several of us regular “Club-night-istas” at play in early February, just before I parted company with Pinky’s organic predecessor.
Of the four of us depicted, only me and Mike Lay were at Club Night this June. Mike was my nemesis on that February “quarter-final-like” occasion, and proved to be so again at Club Night, even though my ability to move has already come on leaps and bounds since February and the op.
It is wonderful, though, to be back on court playing with my friends again, without pain and at something starting to approach the level to which I aspire.
Back To Lord’s The Next Morning For Some Endorsing, While The MCC & MCC Foundation Launched The Knight-Stokes Cup
Young people…at Lord’s…enjoying themselves? Whatever next?
After a physiotherapy session first thing (planned, I hasten to add, not a reaction to the tennis the night before, which my body seemed to absorb most satisfactorily), I returned at 9:15 to Lord’s for a full morning of candidate endorsing.
When I agreed to endorse on the morning of 26 June, I didn’t realise that we’d end up doing the interviews in The President’s Suite of the Grandstand, while the MCC and the MCC Foundation launched the wonderful Knight-Stokes Cup for independent schools:
In some ways, there was something incongruous about conducting candidate endorsement interviews on such an auspicious occasion. Hardly any, if any of the candidates we interviewed that day had been to a state school. Still, the MCC can only do its best to try and widen its demographic; the Knight-Stokes Cup is one of the better ideas behind which the club is throwing its weight.
My interviewing partner for the session was Steven Bishop, another real tennis enthusiast who, coincidentally, had been one of my nemeses in the 2024 real tennis club weekend – on that occasion in a nail-biting semi-final:
But I digress.
We mostly interviewed young folk in this session and tried our best to present a very 21st century demeanour. Steven, in particular, spoke with them in detail about the MCC Foundation and the wonderful work it does, both nationally and internationally.
Steven did, however, on one occasion, while waxing lyrical about all the wonderful work the Foundation does overseas, mention Zaire, which slightly took me aback, partly because I had no idea that the MCC Foundation was active in DR Congo (I’m not 100% sure it is), and secondly because that country hasn’t been called Zaire since the previous millennium (1997 to be precise). I held my tongue. At least that small error is steeped in the late 20th century and not the 19th century, where the typical and unfair caricature of an MCC member, blissfully unaware that Queen Victoria is no longer with us, is perceived mentally to reside.
After six interviews I parted company with Steven and progressed, after a very short break for some lunch, to…
Steep Myself In The MCC’s 19th Century History – Research In The Library On Spencer Ponsonby-Fane & Other Related Topics
As part of my research for my forthcoming talk & small treatise on the emergence of the laws of tennis (lawn variety) around 1875, a central character in that story is Sir Spencer Cecil Brabazon Ponsonby-Fane, who chaired the MCC Tennis committee at the time those laws emerged and who also founded what is now MCC Heritage and Collections, including the Library and Museum.
Alan Rees in the library, as usual, was enormously helpful and had found some fascinating stuff for me to examine – some of which is highly pertinent to my talk and some of which is the sort of wonderful rabbit hole down which I like to dive when doing this sort of research.
When Alan told me about it, I thought the Ricardo in question was John Lewis Ricardo, perhaps the most famous of the nephews of the great political economist David Ricardo. But no, the cricket-loving Ricardo who was one of the first members of I Zingari and thus hanging out with Spencer Ponsonby and the like, was one of John Lewis Ricardo’s younger brothers, Albert Ricardo, whose wife, Charlotte Ricardo, aka Daisy, compiled the album.
It’s a shame that John Lewis Ricardo was not the cricketer, as I wanted to say that he was “never knowingly under bowled”. I’ve said it anyway.
Soon after 4:00, I decided that it would only be polite for me to return home and start preparing the birthday meal that I had promised my own Daisy, so I headed off around 4:15, almost exactly 24 hours after I arrived for the first of my four activities, having spent more time at Lord’s during that 24 hour period than away from the place.
In an unusual act of punctuality, King Cricket published my (Ged Ladd’s) write up of the four days I spent at Lord’s enjoying the ICC World Test Championship Final between Australia and South Africa, amongst other leisurely pursuits.
Pretty much everything I want to say about that match is included in that article.
Daisy likes these Lord’s double-headers, where you get a nice, reasonably quiet women’s match in the afternoon, followed by an increasingly noisy and boozy men’s match in the evening. The Hundred is her preferred choice of such double-headers, following a confusing experience in 2023, watching Sunrisers in May, as reported 18 months later on King Cricket:
This year, the women’s team has reverted to being Middlesex Women, so the idea of a Middlesex double-header of Middlesex v Sussex made a bit more sense and attracted us to attend.
Naturally Daisy’s favourite sun deck was the location of choice. Naturally we brought lashings of ginger beer with us and resolved to make a meal of the Long Room Bar Baps and salad (gammon again, seeing as you were going to ask).
Unlike Daisy, I prepared for this event inadequately, by assuming that at least one of my Middlesex caps was in my Middlesex bag. Neither of them were. In need of head protection, and with Daisy having doubled-up in the head gear department, I tried to look sensible in Daisy’s floppy hat.
In truth, I was struggling to look sensible in that hat.
Eventually I gave up trying to look sensible in that hat:
I took a stroll between matches – firstly to move the car and then around the ground, which took a long time as I ran into lots of people I knew – some regular friends from Lord’s but also, somewhat surprisingly, Andy Shindler.
We enjoyed our grub between the two matches. So much so that we didn’t even photograph each other eating the food. Older people like us just don’t get the entire purpose of eating out – which is to photograph the event and show your so-called friends that you know how to eat.
As the place started to fill up for the men’s match, Daisy became less enthralled and more aware of it being a bit chilly. After about half-an-hour, it became quite obvious to us which way the match was likely to go and we resolved to catch the end of it on the TV when we got home…which we did.
The weather smiled on us – oh boy did it smile on us – for the first day of the cricket season.
Even as recently as Wednesday, Janie was wondering whether it would be warm enough for her at Lord’s in early April. She’s never forgotten an icy day at Lord’s in June, on her favourite sundeck:
Anyway, 4 April 2025 was no such day. Glorious sunshine. More than 20 centigrade in the shade. Who said 4 April was too early for the start of the cricket season?
A sizeable crowd at Lord’s for the first day of the championship. We ran into lots of people I know, but there was still plenty of time/room for us to sit a little and wander round the ground a few times. What bliss.
Middlesex batting four down…
Middlesex were doing quite well when we arrived…
…but soon they weren’t.
…Middlesex bowling without joy.Scrubbed up for an afternoon outDaisy took on the chin a minor reprimand earlier, for entering the pavilion sleeveless. The steward ever so politely told her to put her sleeve-endowed top on!It isn’t just youngsters who can do double-selfies, you know.
Zara Larsson making a mockery of the pavilion dress code.
Janie and I went to the final of the Hundred…again.
Pretty much everything I want to say about the day is beautifully summarised in the King Cricket piece, “authored by Daisy”, in which I am Ged and Janie is Daisy:
If anything were to befall the King Cricket website, you can read that piece here.
The only details to add, as King Cricket match reports religiously omit anything about the cricket itself, are:
the women’s final was Welsh Fire v London Spirit, which the latter won. This was the first time a domestic home side had won a white ball trophy at Lord’s since the 1980s, so we were dancing in the seats of the Lord’s pavillion that afternoon;
This brace of matches (women’s and then men’s) was also a Nell Mescal concert.
Pretty much everything I wanted to say about our afternoon and evening was captured in a King Cricket piece, which was published with alarming speed, I think because it touched on one of KC’s pieces about Dan Lawrence’s gyratory bowling action.
As is so often the case with these matches, the women’s one was closer and in that regard far more entertaining. We didn’t stay to the end of the men’s one. We rarely do, regardless of how it is going. You CAN have too much of a good thing – especially when it starts to get a bit chilly in the evening.
Should a mishap ever befall the King Cricket site, a scrape of that piece can be found here.
Daisy omitted to mention the excellent meal Harish, Daisy and I enjoyed at Sabai Sabai in Moseley. We vowed to return there and stuck to our vow in 2025.
