Lords: 1st day of England v New Zealand

It was such a delight to be back at Lords.

Never mind the palaver of Covid restrictions which resulted in re-settlement in different seats when one of the benefits is your own seat.

No restaurant was open but the bar was flourishing.

I took in the new Edrich and Compton stands and did not much like their roofs which reminded me of that ‘upward graph’ stand in the old Dell at Southampton.

It takes more than the pandemic to prevent the socialising which is such a feature of cricket at Lords.

Our gang could not convene at our normal table but I bumped into an old friend whom you can rely on to bring a fine bottle of wine and we had our picnic lunch on one of the empty tables.

It was not the most thrilling of cricket but New Zealand showed their credentials to be one of the leading  Test powers by scoring 243 -3, Devon Conway scoring a maiden Lords century.

It rather ages me as I remember well John Hampshire of Yorkshire scoring his.

Ollie Robinson took 2 wickets.

At 83 mph he is not the quickest but his steepling action means he hits the deck hard.

Sadly somebody dug up 7 year-old tweets of his of an offensive nature and this became the story.

Michael Vaughan is fast becoming the Gary Neville of cricket analysts, ever ready to blame the institution not the perp let alone social media.

We were never told the exact contents of the tweet nor who broke the story.

It’s common knowledge that Ollie Robinson  at Yorkshire was a tear-away  and it all happened in a different, less PC, world.

His apology had clearly been drafted for him as he read from it unconvincingly.