Pedigree Excitement At Lord's

I'm monumentally groggy as I write this, having spent a rather delightful day at Lord's yesterday, thoroughly enjoying both the hospitality and the produce of Marston's Pedigree, the official beer of etc, etc. It's a funny old thing when corporate hospitality and sport collide, and I'm not sure I'm a fan.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to appear ungrateful - I had a very lovely day, and met some very lovely people, and drank an awful lot of very lovely beer. What's more, the lunch was delightful - at the same time as being utterly bizarre. We sat down, the nice people poured the wine and brought us food, and we all tucked in. The forty minute lunch interval passed, the cricketers took to the field again, play recommenced... And we kept on eating. Whilst there's nothing wrong with watching sport on TV with a beer or two, it seems slightly odd to make the effort of organising tickets and travelling all the way to the ground to do it...

That aside, it was a great day. An overnight declaration meant that Hoggy was sending down the sent down the first ball of the day from the Nursery End. It was Mr Harmison's first delivery that everyone was interested in though, and third slip and gully readied themselves nervously as the lanky bastard piled in, with memories of the Ashes debacle still far too fresh. Not this time though. Phew. Despite the early overcast conditions, the ball wasn't doing a lot in the air, though Harmie was getting it to seam a little. Monty was clearly the hero of the day, odd-shaped chap that he is (massive shoulders. Vast.). There are few nicer things in sport than the sight of the Luton twirler gambolling down the wicket, arms flailing in delight as another wicket falls...

And then some lovely people from Wolfblass gave me lots of wine. Awesome.

PS It meant missing the football. But having seen the highlights, it doesn't appear that that was really any bad thing.