Long Room

The Long Room is a notable, historic room at Lord's cricket ground, in St John's Wood, London.

"The most evocative four walls in world cricket"Arm-Ball to Zooter, Lawrence Booth, Penguin 2006, ISBN0-140-51581-X, p.150-1] , the Long Room is situated in the Pavilion.

Function

Players walk through the Long Room on their way from the dressing rooms to the middle. The walk from dressing room to cricket field at Lord's is notoriously long and complex. On his Test debut in 1975, David Steele got lost "and ended up in the pavilion's basement toilets".

Members of the MCC and their guests have free access to the room (there are windows with views of the ground) and will often greet Australian batsmen with "witticisms ... like 'See you soon'". [The joke being that the batsman will soon be out and return the way he went] On this point, Australian Justin Langer, [Langer also played at Lord's on many occasions as a (home) Middlesex County Cricket Club|Middlesex player] described walking through the Long Room like "being bearhugged by an invisible spirit".

Decor

The Long Room is lined with paintings of famous cricketers and administrators, from the 18th century to the 21st. Portraits of modern, or overseas players amount to a tremendous compliment and are restricted to very few personalities. For example, only four Australian cricketers have ever been honoured in this way: Sir Donald Bradman, Keith Miller, Victor Trumper and Shane Warne; [The following sources are, respectively, a Miller obituary from 2004, which lists Trumper and Bradman and a further piece from 2005, when Warne's portrait was added. Michael Atherton, the author of the second piece, curiously overlooks Trumper's portrait; other articles of the same period do similarly.] cite news
first = Mike
last = Selvey
authorlink = Mike Selvey
title = Obituary: Keith Miller
url = http://www.guardian.co.uk/australia/story/0,,1325266,00.html
publisher = The Guardian
date = 2004-10-12
accessdate = 2008-01-14 ] [ [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.jhtml?xml=/sport/2005/06/12/scwarn12.xml Warne: still the incomparable master of spin bowler's craft - Telegraph ] ] and of those four, only one has played international cricket in the last 50 years. [Miller's last Test was in 1956. Only Warne has played since.]

References