Roger Knight, secretary of MCC, will lead a side including the great Majid Khan, Russell Cake and Paul Parker. Derek Randall, the university coach, will have Derek Pringle, Nick Cook and some of the best of the Millfield boys coached by Frank Fenner during his 10 years in charge of cricket at the school. F P Fenner, who had a tobacco and cigar business in Cambridge and was a playing contemporary of Fuller Pilch and Alfred Mynn, laid out and rented his matchless sward at the request of the university cricketers, who wanted to get away from the hoi-polloi of Parker's Piece. It has been the most fruitful nursery of talent ever since, with the Oxford Parks not too far behind.
The intention of the England Cricket Board to facilitate centres of excellence at anything up to six universities, with subsequent attachment to counties, within the next few years has important implications for all young cricketers. John Carr, the Board's cricket operations manager, visualises Oxford and Cambridge entertaining the counties as usual, meanwhile, with the possibility of Durham University also doing so if fixture patterns permit.
There are few first-class cricketers or writers who have the privilege of recording the game for whom the name Fenner's does not provoke nostalgic recollection: Bradman on a fresh May morning bowled for a duck by Jack Davies, sleeves flapping, with an off-break that didn't and his walk back with a half-smile amidst a disappointed hush: an imperial 185 by Ted Dexter, 105 of them before lunch, against Lancashire, the evidence of which fuelled my criticism of his omission from MCC's selection for Australia a year later: a mere 30 or so by Michael Bushby against Ray Lindwall which evoked high praise from the Australians.
Such pictures come readily to my mind along with - a sharp descent in quality - my one appearance there for Middlesex, 12 and 26, the first innings abbreviated by a monstrous lbw decision by the elderly university umpire which, of course, I accepted without the very faintest suggestion of dissent.
AND so to the major feast-day of the summer, the Lord's Test. Frustrating though the Edgbaston climax was, at least the course of the four days' cricket can only have stimulated interest in the series. No one could have responded with better spirit to a critical situation than Jonty Rhodes and though the latter part of England's first innings was altogether too limp, all followed Alec Stewart's obviously positive orders on Sunday.
Michael Atherton's return to form is, of course, a major blessing as also is Dominic Cork's. As to Darren Gough's deflating injury, we can thank the selectors that they played five bowlers. If, as happened at least six times in the Illingworth regime, England had gone in with only four, they would have been reduced to a trio, as I recall happening at Sydney in 1951. First Trevor Bailey had his thumb broken, then Doug Wright pulled a muscle in getting run out, leaving Alec Bedser, Freddie Brown and a raw John Warr to shoulder 123 overs between them. May Alec prove a luckier captain than FRB!
The world will see the latest embellishment to the face of Lord's, the new Grand Stand now complete and due to be officially opened before play starts on Thursday. The Duke of Edinburgh will perform the ceremony, as he did with the new Mound Stand opposite, cutting the ceremonial tape, meeting those engaged on the project, and returning to the front of the Pavilion, where the England and South African teams will be presented.
Former MCC president twice, patron of the Forty Club and Twelfth Man of the Lords' Taverners, the Duke has always kept in touch with the game which he played pretty well, if infrequently, himself. He once delivered an aphorism never more worth repeating than today: ``Cricket can only flourish if it is played by civilised people with the highest standards of sportsmanship and good humour.''
NB: humour.
Watching at Canterbury recently, Derek Underwood reacted with strong disapproval for so serene a personality to an attempted reverse sweep. He suggests umpires ought to disallow it on the ground that the batsman is in effect batting left-handed, which by convention (though not by law) he may not do without informing the umpire. It is a modern ploy which can arouse strong emotions in some of us who ache to see batsmen showing spinners the full blade of the bat.
There are, of course, more pressing cases for fresh legislation, for instance a curtailing of the growing nuisance of spin bowlers, as a defensive ploy, systematically pitching wide into the rough. The fact is that MCC are engaged on a thorough revision, in time for the millennium, of the last code of laws published in 1980, their working party being under the distinguished chairmanship of the former president and Lord of Appeal, Lord Griffiths, ex of Cambridge and Glamorgan.