Changing World Cannot Disturb Cricket's Eternal Verities

There was a coolness about headquarters today, the first day of the cricket season, that was both physical and metaphorical. Weather wise, the match between the MCC and Sussex, the champion county, started in brilliant sunshine, but it felt a little like that carefully modulated chill that we associate with aircraft cabins. Showers, we have been told, will interrupt the game with increasing frequency and with hail and snow around in recent weeks the opening days of the new season could turn into a Michael Fish fun fest.

The metaphorical bit was a bit more difficult to define but with so much going on in the world of cricket the proceedings felt a little surreal. The British politician Sir Edward Grey is said to have turned to a friend while a lamp was being lit in the street below, just before the outbreak of the First World War, and said: "The lights are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime." With apologies to Sir Ted, the floodlights are coming on all over Britain and we shall not see them dimmed again in our lifetime.

There were more meetings at Lord's today, this time to talk about various players' registrations, but again the well-aired topics of the IPL and the ICL, India's two new Twenty20 tournaments, came up in the discussions. When someone said that a change is as good as a rest they weren't necessarily thinking about cricket because what is happening now is momentous and has caught the game on the hop.

The worry, as one official said here, is that the brash new competitions will further enrich the already wealthy, the top, say 5%, and do very little for anyone else. How much of the money - and we are talking about huge amounts in India - will feed back into the grass roots of the game? Nothing, that's my guess.

But this didn't put off a healthy sprinkling of spectators venturing out, looking quirky and solitary, like dissidents in a totalitarian state who are afraid to talk to each other in case they are judged to be taking part in an illegal meeting. There was even a queue at the MCC shop. The new Wisden is out, another step in cricket's yellow-brick road, and it was selling well. So was the Playfair Cricket Annual, the cricket watcher's hipflask to Wisden's library brandy. And The Cricketers' Who's Who, new kid on the block. I bought all three and am poorer by £63. There was almost a sense here that in the midst of startling change, tradition must be embraced and held hard for fear that the game, as we know it, might disappear altogether. That, of course, won't happen. Not just yet, anyway. But a radical change of shape is taking place before our rheumy eyes.

So it felt quite reassuring to be turned away from the North Gate this morning.

"You can't park here, mate," he said.

"But I phoned up yesterday to make sure there was space," I protested. "My name's on the list!"

"There's no room mate."

Apparently the ground was full of contractors' vehicles which should never have been there. Frustrating, but strangely comforting. They did find space for me in the underground car park and when I turned up at the Grace Gates there were smiles and courtesies everywhere. Nothing traditional about that.