Their members may be slow to respond to changing social trends but when it comes to the cricket Marylebone Cricket Club are firmly in the vanguard. The latest investment, approaching six figures, has been made in a contraption at least as futuristic as the new media centre and will live close to the 'spaceship' structure currently being constructed at the Nursery End.

As the MCC secretary, Roger Knight, says: ``We can spend millions on magnificent new stands - and we have done - but if we don't give our greatest attention to the square itself our priorities are wrong.''

The prototype lies in a field behind the elegant old home of Donald Kenyon, chairman of Stuart Canvas, the specialist manufacturers of sporting covers whose products have protected major events from the weather for years.

This latest invention may upstage even the brand new Centre Court cover at Wimbledon, another customer of the Warrington-based firm. Appropriately, it lies waiting within sight of another link with space, Jodrell Bank.

To say that the new cover will be flown to the middle to protect the most frequently used cricket square among all the great grounds of the world is a slight exaggeration, unless you think of a hovercraft as an aircraft. Flying is, however, the word which Kenyon prefers to use.

He first thought of the hovercover in conversation with one of his partners, Mike Begley, as much as seven years ago but it was only when last year's Australia Test at Lord's was ruined by the weather that the idea got further than the drawing board.

Kenyon recalls the meeting which persuaded him to take the risk. ``The first day of the Lord's Test was a disaster: a full house; not a ball bowled; tractors and wheelbarrows dashing back and forth; exhausted groundstaff dragging tarpaulins on and off and all that. They summoned me and said that there had to be some way of improving on all that.''

The answer, although everyone knows that the proof of the pudding will be in the eating, is a cover with no wheels to damage wet turf, a craft which will float rapidly to the middle with a man to guide it from behind and either the familiar blue Lord's tractor, or another member of the groundstaff, to steer it into place over the match pitch.

It will cover 100 feet along the length of the pitch and has 14-foot side-covers which can quickly be rolled out over the skirts of the hover to protect the neighbouring pitches as ICC regulations require.

Further covers, made like the others of synthetic, ultra-violet resistant PVC, can also be carried at each end for the bowlers' run-ups.

Two battery-powered fans have been built under the chassis at each end. They will keep the air circulating when pitches are covered overnight and the great hope is that this will be sufficient to prevent sweating under the covers and the effect of the dew at the beginning and end of the season.

If there is any doubt about the cover being in use when Middlesex open their Lord's season against Sussex, it is only because the cover has not yet been printed with the name of its sponsor. Even at Lord's, professional cricket and its finances are inseparable.