The UK has one of the highest levels of “news avoidance”, according to a new study. This is where readers and viewers find the news so depressing they simply give up following it. To counter this, we at The Times try to be constructive in the way we report things. And with this in mind I have a suggestion for a certain leader who is finding himself at odds with his rank-and-file membership. You know the one, went to a fee-paying school but now seems to have private education in his sights. That’s right, Mark Nicholas, the new president of MCC. Just when you thought the kerfuffle over scrapping the Eton v Harrow fixture at Lord’s was buried, he wants to dig it up again.
Now, I have to declare a lack of interest here: I didn’t go to either school and neither did my three cricket-mad sons, but I do like the idea of that fixture having been played at Lord’s more or less consistently, and largely unnoticed, since 1805. It’s a quirky connection with our past, like those 300-year-old turtles that refuse to die, or that white glove the King put on during his coronation — a strange tradition that dates back to 1377 — or The Times stubbornly continuing to call its obituary section Register, providing a thread that goes back to 1785 when the paper was launched as The Daily Universal Register before changing to The Times three years later.
Of course I can see where Nicholas is coming from and that he is being consistent with his long-held desire to promote cricket in state schools. In 2005 he co-founded Chance to Shine with the help of a million-pound donation from Sir Tim Rice to do just that. Admirable stuff.
But state school children do now have their own “national hubs” finals day played at Lord’s, and if you then scrap its public-school equivalent on the grounds of class war, isn’t it a bit, well, discriminatory? It’s not the fault of the Eton and Harrow pupils that their parents bankrupted themselves to send them to those schools.
Anyway, my compromise proposal is this: if the idea of an Eton v Harrow match is too upsetting in the Starmer era, why not broaden the chance to play at Lord’s to lots of public schools?
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There are two big public school cups: the Colin Cowdrey Cup (played by, among others, Eton, Harrow and Charterhouse) and the John Harvey Cup (played by, among others, Winchester, Cheltenham, and, yes, Bradfield, where Mark Nicholas went — just saying). Why not let the winners of those two cups play each other at Lord’s instead of the Eton v Harrow match? That way Eton and Harrow would still get the chance to play there, if their teams were good enough. Only Radley currently plays in both cups, so they would have to choose one or the other. This year’s final at Lord’s, for example, would have been between Wellington, winner of the Colin Cowdrey Cup, and Marlborough, winner of the John Harvey Cup. As for a name for this new, more democratic Lord’s fixture, how about the Mark Nicholas Cup?
A lot to digest
On the subject of Times obits, did you know the longest ever was Queen Victoria’s at 49,741 words? Imagine ploughing through that over breakfast. In second place was the Duke of Wellington’s at 30,674 words. Queen Elizabeth’s last year comes in third at a much more reader-friendly 15,013 words.
My favourite piece of Times obits trivia, though, is that Joan Crawford’s date of birth was such a secret that hers stated with splendid vagueness that “She died on May 10, 1977, aged between 69 and 76”.
Stand against hatred
I dare say not all of the 100,000 or so British citizens marching through the capital on Saturday were chanting “intifada from London to Gaza”, nor will they all have meant to give succour to Hamas terrorists, but if, like me, you found the sight of them disturbing and antisemitic, please go to britishfriendsofisrael.org and sign The October Declaration. It would be apt, and reassuring to our Jewish friends here in the UK, if this petition reached 100,000 signatures. At the time of going to press it is on 67,400.
Giles Coren is away
