Why is Lord’s dropping the Eton-Harrow fixture?

In an act of thinly veiled class war, news broke this week that the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) has decided to stop hosting two of the longest running fixtures in English cricket history: the annual Eton versus Harrow and Oxford versus Cambridge matches. A sporting tradition that stretches back 200 years is no more, as Lord’s becomes the latest institution to embrace the all-encompassing need for change.

In a written statement, the MCC argued that cancelling the historic fixtures would help ‘broaden’ the fixture list and give a ‘wider range of players’ the chance to play at Lord’s. It’s a strange doublethink: how can removing two fixtures do anything but narrow the fixture list, and offer the opportunity to a ‘narrower range of players’? What is particularly infuriating is that no plans appear to be in place yet for new fixtures to replace the lost matches. As happens so frequently, the MCC has destroyed a much-loved tradition without bothering to think of something to replace it with.