If someone told you that officials from The Lord’s flew into the city last week to learn a thing or two about the cricket stadium at Dubai Sports City (DSC), you’d probably pass it off as a joke.
But it’s true! Lord’s may be the oldest cricketing venue in the world and if you care to trace back to the origins of the game, you’d probably end up at the gates of the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), which owns the Lord’s and is the custodian of the laws of cricket.
But as the MCC plans to take Lord’s to the next level in order to meet the rising demand for seats, it has become clear that the club will leave no stone unturned as it seeks to live up to its lofty status of being ‘The Home of Cricket’.
The planning committee though, is faced with numerous problems; one of the biggest hurdles being ensuring history and modernity go hand in hand and that one can be told from the other when the ground is finally ready in a few years’ time.
Sport Extra caught up with Tony Lewis CBE, former president of the MCC, and David Batts, MCC’s Masterplan Project Director, to find out more.
SPORT EXTRA: What is the MCC looking to do with Lord’s?
BATTS: Lord’s isn’t a stadium and we’re looking to increase its capacity and add some more stands. But it will always be an English cricket ground. The ICC Cricket Academy is of particular interest to us. We already have something that is well established with a gymnasium and all, but we’re looking at having a state-of-the-art centre towards the Nursery End of the ground. So we’re looking at various aspects.
LEWIS: The dimensions of things are important; what we’ve got at Lord’s is very small and what we’re planning is very important. There is no excuse to get it wrong.
What phase has the project reached?
BATTS: Well, the project has already started and right now we are in the process of selecting an architect. We’ve got bids from international firms, so in the next month or so we will select the architect and get busy with some real designs for the new stands, the players’ area, the academy and other facilities.
If all goes well, we plan to start construction in 2011-12. It’s a slow process in London because we are in a conservation area. It’s a very sensitive site and it’s not at all how it works here, so it’s going to be a busy, interesting few years.
Is the Dubai Sports City involved in your project?
BATTS: I don’t know which designers and architects were involved here, but the people who have worked with DSC are not involved at this stage with what we’re doing.
LEWIS: We’ve got the cricketing intelligence so I don’t think we’ve come to poach ideas. We’ve just come to see someone who has gone ahead and built a state-of-the-art complex like this. That’s the element that holds all the fascination for us. People here can come and look at what we’ve done at Lord’s.
We don’t want to carry the baggage of history with us; we just want to carry the glory of history when we have a new look.
What are the major challenges facing the planning team?
BATTS: We’ve got to consult a lot of people. We’ve got about 20,000 members and they’ll all have a say in how it should be. They are very keen for us to keep going and progress, but they want us to make sure we don’t spoil the special character and atmosphere of the ground and we won’t do that. That’s one of the major challenges for the architect.
Everything we hope to do will be north of £200 million (Dhs 1.4 billion). It will take us a long time to do that, but the main priority for us is to increase the capacity of the ground with new stands and to put permanent floodlights at the ground.
It’s much more difficult to do this where we are because it’s a sensitive area and you can’t put permanent lights; they’d have to be retractable and stuff that is architecturally acceptable. Ours is a residential area. People like to live this side of Lord’s, but don’t like to be inconvenienced by it.
LEWIS: We have local residents we need to speak to, we have the Westminster council we need to speak to and David has to take everybody with him and that’s a mighty job, because they might know nothing about cricket.
What aspect of the DSC complex has really caught your attention?
BATTS: People who have built it have really got the detail right. Just, for example, how the players and the press interact is very important because the players are protected and need to have access to the press at the same time.
The players’ facilities are second to none here and it should be because they are the actors on the stage and it is very important they are very well looked after on the field and in the stadium as well.
LEWIS: I think the drainage facilities are absolutely the way they should be. The composition of the pitch is fascinating too and I can’t wait to see how it plays. Anybody can build a stadium, but everything happens out there in the middle, and if the stadium is built wrong you won’t get high-quality cricket.
