Suddenly, Lord’s isn’t English

Suddenly, Lord's isn't English

You would have been forgiven for thinking every South African who had yet been to a cricket match anywhere was on their way to Lord's on Wednesday morning. Australians, there were a few. But the biltong brigade were in the ascendency on St John's Wood's pavements.

Many, having taken the Jubilee Line, swarmed up and out of the underground station and poured down Wellington Road. On one such train, a dapper MCC member stuck out amid the forest of Protea shirts. His biscuity Panama and beige jacket teamed well with his egg-and-bacon tie. On the opposite row of seats, a man wore a brown Akubra, black jeans and brown RM Williams, his bare arms splashed with tattoos.

A spangle of Americans wondered loudly why the carriage was so full considering rush-hour had passed. They were even more confused when they, along with everyone else, were rushed through the station by bibbed underground staff. No-one does crowd control as well as the English.

A fair few of those bound for Lord's wore custard yellow blazers striped in navy blue. They were members of the Nicky Oppenheimer XI, who are currently playing matches in and around London. Oppenheimer is an 80-year-old mining tycoon reputedly worth USD12.3-billion who happens to like cricket. So much so that he built his own ground, at Randjesfontein, some 30 kilometres north of Johannesburg, replete with a spacious double-storey pavilion in which the taps are gold-plated.

India played the first match of their groundbreaking 1992/93 tour against the Oppenheimer XI. Subsequent visits by West Indies, Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan, England, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and, umm, Italy also started at the ground. Consequently the Oppenheimer XI has been graced by the presence of, among many others, Hansie Cronje, Daryll Cullinan, Fanie de Villiers, JP Duminy, Faf du Plessis, Herschelle Gibbs, Richard Hadlee, Lance Klusener, Malcolm Marshall, Albie Morkel, Makhaya Ntini, Clive Rice, Graeme Smith and Heath Streak. And, of course, Nicky. And his son, Jonathan Maximillian Ernest Oppenheimer, who went to Harrow and earned 10 first-class caps for Oxford.

Suddenly, the slight, wan figure of another Oppenheimer alumnus shines out of the masses like a ghost of cricket's past. It's Boeta Dippenaar, the world's oldest 12-year-old. Did he play a Test at Lord's? "Yes, in 2003," he says. Indeed: Dippenaar batted for a mite more than four-and-a-half hours for his 92 before blipping a catch to short cover off Ashley Giles.

Through the Heyhoe Flint Gate and into the ground, and the magnitude of the South African presence is crushingly apparent. They're everywhere, many easily identifiable – like the vast man in a blazer that seems to have been sewn from several large South Africa flags – others less so but betrayed by necks of serious girth, or a lack of any hint of a neck. Still others are outed by their flat vowels and a certain knobbliness of the knees. A thought blooms: there may be more Saffers at the match than at any South Africa Test, home or away, in decades.

"It's good to see all the support we've got here; it feels like a home game," Kagiso Rabada tells Graeme Smith on the outfield after taking 5/51 – and passing Allan Donald to become South Africa's third-most successful Test bowler – to help dismiss Australia for 212.

The only evidence of Englishness comes from the slew of MCC members who are also around. But that's only a suggestion because 10% or so of the 23,500 full and associate egg-and-bacon set are not British. It is a strange feeling to be at the perceived heart of a particular kind of thinking and not have much corroboration of it. It's the kind of thinking that assumes Britain is called Great because that's what it is. And not because, as is in fact the case, to avoid geographical confusion with smaller Brittany across the Channel in north-western France.