Lord's was a 28,000 sell-out for the first four days of the second Test and more than three-quarters full for Monday's play, which finished before lunch. Being there was a privilege, though, that cost the cricket lover an eye-watering £100, a price the England and Wales Cricket Board felt able to charge because of unanswerable demand.
The ECB say that a minimum of 50,000 tickets could have been sold for each of the opening three days at Lord's, Cardiff's Swalec Stadium for the first Test, or Edgbaston, Headingley and The Oval, the five grounds where the 2009 Ashes will be decided. But the ECB are unable to satisfy demand because English Test grounds are too small. While Lord's is the largest international ground in this country, it will still be only the 16th largest regular Test venue in the world even when its proposed redevelopment is completed.
Wembley and Twickenham, the national football and rugby stadiums, are the wrong dimensions to convert into temporary grounds – unlike, say, the Melbourne Cricket Ground, where 100,000 spectators can be packed in for cricket or Australian rules football. The MCG stages nearly 50 matches a year.
In 1953, 549,650 watched England win a five-match Ashes series 1-0, a record for the contest. Five years earlier, 158,000 saw Don Bradman's Invincibles defeat England at Headingley, the largest number for a single Test match in this country. Yet 10 years ago an estimated 100,000 crammed into Kolkata's cavernous Eden Gardens to watch a single day's play between India and Pakistan, while the highest officially recorded attendance was at the MCG, where 90,800 witnessed Australia play West Indies in 1961.
Crowds, though, for the longest form of the game are waning – except in England. "Test match attendances around the world have dropped," says Rahul Dravid, the great Indian batsman who is also a member of the MCC World Cricket Committee, which hopes to boost five-day cricket by experimenting with day/night Tests and a pink ball. "You want to be playing in front of crowds. Apart from in England, attendances are down."
Yet despite the appetite for Tests here and the continuing success of Twenty20 cricket, the ECB say they have no desire to build a purpose-built 50- or 60,000-seat cricket stadium, pointing to tradition and commercial viability as the prevailing factors for their stance. Nor have they expressed interest in the possibility of staging matches at the 2012 Olympic Stadium, whose future remains uncertain but could offer a multi-sport option of the kind seen elsewhere in the world.
"What delights me is the number of varied cricket grounds around the country, and they have to be of an economic sustainability for their respective counties," Giles Clarke, the ECB chairman, says. "If you were looking at building a 50 or 60 thousand stadium it would have to be a national stadium to make it economically viable, in the same way all England rugby and soccer internationals are at Twickenham and Wembley.
"One of the great charms and attractions of Test match cricket is that it goes around the country. At Cardiff earlier this month there were tracts of the crowd who'd never had the chance of watching Test cricket before. If you had a national stadium of that size, could you have a business model which would allow you to take cricket on the road?"
Yet some stakeholders in the game believe investment in current Test venues is restricting the ECB's options. "They've needed a bigger stadium for years and years," says Matthew Engel, a former editor of
Wisden. "But the problem the ECB have is that because they will have nine Test grounds competing with each other, if you bring in a 10th one it becomes impossible."
Others answer the issue of financial viability by arguing that the commercial success of Twenty20, which has driven up attendances and profits, could be harnessed to sustain a new super-stadium, which would have short-form cricket as its commercial motor while also being multi-purpose to avoid it becoming a white elephant.
"People like the format of T20, that's important," says Lalit Modi, the commissioner of the Indian Premier League. "Another issue is timing. Cricket has traditionally been a day sport. With T20, its starting to become an evening sport. If you do an analysis of major sporting events around the world, the majority of rugby, football or tennis matches are played late afternoon or evenings. It's to do with disposable time. In this paradigm one needs to go out and capture the fans. I think that's the most important thing right now."
Modi is confident that England will soon need a bigger stadium. "I'm sure that will happen over the years – larger capacities will be required. The growth will continue, we need to keep going forward and build on that. Even for an exhibition match between Rajasthan Royals and Middlesex, we pretty much filled the ground without any marketing support at Lord's," he added of the 20,000 plus who watched the inaugural British Asian Challenge earlier this month.
The chief executive of Hampshire, Stuart Robertson, who played a key role in the development of the Twenty20 Cup when he was the ECB's marketing manager, believes the 2012 Olympic Stadium in east London – currently destined to be an athletics track following the Games – could fit the profile of a multi-purpose, super-stadium employed for short-form cricket.
"Economically there has to be other things going on – like an outdoor version of the O2 in London," Robertson says. "Then you would have somewhere like Lord's, a 30,000 to 40,000 stadium in the middle of London for traditional cricket. And somewhere else not hidebound by local authority planning issues on floodlights, sound and music," he said of restrictions the Marylebone Cricket Club, proprietors of Lord's, are currently working with as they draw up redevelopment plans.
"If the new ground was going to become the short-form, T20 stadium then we need to really see T20 go to the next level, to the kind of entertainment and razzmatazz of the Indian Premier League."
Hugh Robertson, the shadow sports minister, says: "Given that the public purse has paid half a billion pounds for the Olympic Stadium, it makes perfect sense to examine every possible sporting use [of it] in legacy mode alongside the athletics." The ECB describe using the Stratford venue as "a hypothetical situation which hasn't been presented to us", but it is one they may face should the Conservatives win a general election before the Games.
Despite a new venue being a potential competitor to Lord's, Keith Bradshaw, the MCC's chief executive, is open-minded regarding the issue of a new stadium, and expresses surprise that one has not yet been built.
"Really from the day I arrived here three years ago I've always wondered when that was going to happen. What Stuart says about it being multi-purpose – that's definitely something to look at. I think it would definitely have an impact on all the grounds, without a doubt. Especially if the stadium had a roof. If you look at the commerciality, to be absolutely certain a match will be staged on a particular day and time in terms of your corporate sponsors, and the public – that they would get their three hours of Twenty20, or whatever it is – this has to be a huge strategic advantage."
Bradshaw believes a new stadium would provide healthy competition, and help strengthen Lord's' status as cricket's spiritual home. "We look at it differently as we're the home of cricket, the hallowed turf, the tradition and history. So we would need to work a lot harder."
He says it will probably be 2012 before the planned expansion of Lord's will be ready. "We're in a residential area so there's only certain capacities we can go to. We think for us it's 37-38,000, which is more a function of the footprint of the ground. We could accommodate – for an Ashes Test, when India play England, or for Twenty20 – significantly more than 37,000."
Bradshaw also echoes Robertson and Modi when describing Twenty20's impact on the MCC's plans. "Because of the nature of Twenty20, how you service people in the ground changes. When we redevelop it'll be more akin to serving them in their seats because if you go to get a pie during T20 and miss five overs that's a fair part of the match.
"We're looking at American models like baseball where there's a lot more hawking in the stands. You can even go to the premium-price tickets where you say: 'I want this. At the 10-over mark I'd like a pint and a pie,' and it gets delivered."
The MCG's model of using drop-in pitches is also being examined. "We're experimenting at the moment – on the Nursery [where club matches take place], not the main ground. Drop-in pitches will allow more days of cricket. Instead of having to keep the ground free for days to prepare it, you can actually prepare the pitch on the Nursery and drop it in on the day, or you can develop it off site in a greenhouse and drop it in. I don't think we'd ever see it for a Test match but certainly for one-dayers and Twenty20 matches.
"We are also looking for a raised or lower platform which would actually give us two lanes around the ground as it can get very congested at the moment even now with 28,000."
How might the cricket fan feel about a new super-sized stadium that would allow greater numbers to watch at far better value than a £100 seat at Lord's?
"In Australia they have five massive stadiums which turn over a huge profit," says Katy Cooke, general manager of the Barmy Army, who follow England all over the world. "So the ECB would be much better placed to have three or four massive stadiums in the country. If Old Trafford is being redeveloped, make it huge, use the Olympic Stadium as the one in London and have one in the middle. Then they could increase the number of people who could watch."
But staging a match at an 80,000-capacity venue would be a very different experience for fans. Cooke adds: "From a Barmy Army, supporters-on-the-terrace point of view, we like the little grounds." This seems English cricket's great dichotomy. Big versus small, traditional versus modern, Lord's or the MCG. Yet might there be accommodation for an old-fashioned English compromise?
While Lord Morris, chairman of the ECB's major match group who oversee venues, offers a view that ostensibly resembles Clarke's, it can also be read as a template for a similar cricket-watching experience to that suggested by Robertson, Modi and Bradshaw. "My starting point is that while the size of stadiums is of critical importance, the first priority should be the spectator experience. People want access to the ground, proper public transport, amenities, and we want to encourage a family constituency, not just dad with a pint and pork pie. I see no reason why at a future stadium we shouldn't have a crèche and play area for the young fans of the next 15 years. So we need to change the whole atmosphere and perception of what a cricket ground should be providing."
Test match tickets have become a luxury item. To match the vision of Lord Morris with that of the need to allow more fans to see games at more affordable prices, either a purpose-built stadium or a share in London's Olympic legacy could yet offer the solution.
