Later this week, Guy Lavender will walk out of the Grace Gates for the final time as chief executive of Marylebone Cricket Club after seven years in charge including a spell as secretary.

Lavender’s time in office, which straddled the unique challenge of Covid and coincided with rapid change in cricket and society, has been tumultuous. But the former paratrooper has been a steady, sensible leader.

On Wednesday, MCC announced his replacement, Rob Lawson, who arrives, according to the chairman Mark Nicholas, with “a wealth of leadership and commercial expertise, honed over a distinguished career at BP and Mercuria Energy Group”. Cricket has not been part of his professional life until now, but he is a life-long lover and player of the game.

Lawson’s arrival in February will complete an overhaul of MCC’s leadership in recent months. Rob Lynch joined from the Professional Cricketers’ Association to replace Jamie Cox as director of cricket and operations, while Nicholas is in the first of three years as chairman, and Lord King of Lothbury, the former Governer of the Bank of England, is now the president.

Lavender’s handover to Lawson comes at a time when the club are at a crossroads. Next year could herald some of the most seismic changes in their 237-year history through the sale of a stake in London Spirit, the Hundred franchise based at Lord’s.

They also have unsolved questions over the delayed redevelopment of the Tavern and Allen Stands and their relationship with troubled tenants Middlesex.

Then, there is the thorny question of exactly what the purpose of a club like MCC is as the second quarter of the 21st century begins; how, in essence, does a private members club with a decades-long waiting list sit within the nebulous aim of English cricket’s governing body, the England and Wales Cricket Board (which has its offices at Lord’s), to make cricket “the UK’s most inclusive sport”.

These burning questions must be answered by Lawson and his team in 2025 and beyond.

Trouble in the Long Room

The eyes of the cricketing world have rarely been more trained on Lord’s than they were on July 2, 2023.

An Ashes Test is a quadrennial highlight of the MCC calendar, but the 2023 match – despite being a fine game and a commercial smash hit – turned into something of a PR nightmare for the club.

Whatever your view on the spirit of cricket debate that erupted in the wake of Alex Carey’s stumping of Jonny Bairstow, the fallout hurt MCC.

Gideon Haigh, the highly-respected Australian journalist, condemned MCC members for their treatment of Pat Cummins’ players in the Long Room, asking “what could be a worse look in the week of the Equity in Cricket report than puce-faced, dim-bulb snobs picking fights with a placid, softly spoken Muslim player [Usman Khawaja]?”

Cummins felt members had “absolutely stepped over the line”.

Lavender may not have agreed exactly with Haigh’s assessment, but he felt angry enough to address members in the Long Room at lunch, and triggered a full investigation. That resulted in the tightening of the unique Long Room rules in which players walk through crowds of members on the way to the middle. It also resulted in the suspension of three members, one of whom was later banned for life.

In the days after the brouhaha, a doctored MCC press release did the rounds online claiming the banned three were called Bartholomew Frinton-Smythe, Humphrey Wigbert-Porter and Quinten Breckenridge. A bit of fun, but the fact so many – including Australia legend Mark Waugh whilst broadcasting – fell for the entirely made-up names was a window into the wider perception of the club – unfairly or not – as a bastion of privilege.

That image was worsened this summer when England beat Sri Lanka on the fourth day of their Test – a late summer Sunday – before a crowd of around 9,000 (less than a third of capacity).

The cost-of-living crisis combined with modest opposition and exorbitant prices simply put fans off. It was tin-eared from MCC, who assumed a summer of great success in 2023 would simply roll over. Day four crowds at Emirates Old Trafford and the Kia Oval were also modest in that series, but ‘the Home of Cricket’ styling and upmarket reputation of Lord’s exacerbates any attention on such issues.

In unrelated, but equally negative, ticketing news, six weeks later, it emerged that the club’s head of ticketing, Simon Wakefield, had been dismissed for gross misconduct after being found to have misappropriated complimentary tickets for personal gain and falsified records.

The backdrop to those accusations of privilege was years of debate over whether the club’s “historic fixtures” – notably Eton vs Harrow – should remain at Lord’s. The club’s leadership had quietly tried to usher the centuries’ old fixtures away, only for member outcry to force a reversal and result in them remaining for the foreseeable future.

As much as outsiders might have had a perception of MCC members, the club’s leadership developed an unfortunate knack for insulting them, too. Bruce Carnegie-Brown, the chairman of Lloyds of London who served as chairman of the club until this year, was caught joking that members were “taking an age to empty their colostomy bags” during a break on a zoom AGM in 2022. This year, former president Stephen Fry said at the Hay Literary Festival that the club “stinks” of privilege and is full of “beetroot-coloured gentlemen”.

The polymathic comedian said: “I felt slightly embarrassed to be president of the MCC at exactly this time [during the game’s racism crisis], because I thought I’m the perfect example of the problem [which] has been for hundreds of years, largely, fleshy, white Englishmen, public school, Oxbridge, that are running things.”

Fry later apologised, but a number of members complained about the comments, which had again hurt the club’s image, triggering a disciplinary hearing, at which Fry was cleared of wrongdoing. Fry had already had an awkward relationship with certain members after being accused of making inappropriate comments at a club dinner; his accuser, member Chris Waterman, ended up facing suspension himself.

It would be over-egging things to say that MCC are a club divided. Most members quietly potter on, watching a bit of cricket each summer and catching up with friends. There are many who take a more active interest in the club day-to-day, and there are fissures there. Last winter, for instance, there was a row about how members are nominated for club committees, which led to a vote, which the club’s leadership won very narrowly.

Nevertheless, Nicholas recognised there was work to be done, and cited “member harmony” as a key priority of his chairmanship, and said he wanted to make the club “fun” again.

The sale of the century

MCC held a member vote on the Hundred. The question being whether to accept the ECB’s gift of a 51 per cent stake in London Spirit to keep in its entirety, or to sell some or all of it.

Even though many members are inherently against the Hundred and what it stands for, the club won that vote convincingly, perhaps not coincidentally because they consulted with members far more exhaustively than any of the other seven host venues.

They have been particular and delicate with their approach to the Hundred, leaning on member expertise (in franchise cricket and beyond) and appointing a Hundred Steering Group to work with the ECB and would-be investors.

The Lord’s factor makes London Spirit the Hundred’s hottest property. It attracted the largest valuation (£140 million) of the eight franchises in the first round of bidding, and has been of interest to football club owners like Avram Glazer and Todd Boehly, IPL teams owned by some of the richest people in the world, and big firms like Liberty Media, which owns Formula One.

The sale of at least 49 per cent of London Spirit is a seismic moment in the club’s history. It will mean them running a fully professional team for the first time and, if they sell any of their 51 per cent share, it would make the club even wealthier than they already are.

It also adds layers of complication as the club partners with an investor. Even the most civil relationship will have teething problems over who is responsible for what, what rights the investors have. For all their prestige, MCC are potentially the most complicated of the eight hosts from an investor perspective.

In announcing his appointment, Nicholas placed great stock in Lawson’s business background, “including overseeing over US$ 100 billion in M&A transactions and drove large-scale organisational and cultural change with a clear strategic vision” which makes him “well positioned to advise on the Hundred”. An important part of his role will be bedding in those relationships.

As a trio at the top of the club, Lawson, Lynch and Nicholas should blend nicely. Lawson brings pure business and commercial acumen, Lynch (a New Zealander who was once an MCC Young Cricketer) the understanding of the game’s global landscape from his time with the players’ association, with Nicholas playing the front man and visionary.

Whilst bedding in London Spirit, the trio will also have to consider the club’s relationship with Middlesex, who have had an unhappy habit of attracting negative headlines in recent years.

The club are unique among the 18 counties, in that they do not own their home ground, and therefore are denied the off-field income that keeps so many of the other 17 afloat. They would love to find a site, as their chief executive Andrew Cornish has stated on the record this year, but that is not as easy as it sounds – especially when you are in a tight financial spot.

The club were so desperate this year that they took two Vitality Blast games to Essex’s home Chelmsford, a decision that might have saved some cash, but poor crowds meant it was shelved after one season.

Every few years, a conversation rolls around about MCC taking on Middlesex as a formal subsidiary. Lynch is a former Middlesex commercial boss, and knows the club inside out, so it may well be time to have that conversation again.

Evolving Lord’s

The on-field cricketing activities are not the only thing evolving at Lord’s.

It is 18 months since Telegraph Sport first published the designs of the proposed new Tavern and Allen Stands, which were due to cost £60 million and add 1,000 seats to the capacity, all while making it a more modern, accessible and spectator-friendly ground.

That project has now hit the skids, despite planning permission being secured.

This is because of the spiralling costs that have affected many building projects and a failure to agree terms with the preferred bidder for the construction contract, Grahams.

Work has been delayed until the end of the 2025 season and will take place in two stages, with the Allen Stand – the oldest stand at Lord’s, having been built in 1935 – sorted before the 2027 Ashes, and the Tavern (1968) after it.

Getting this project – and its price – right is vital for MCC.

A big year ahead

Next year is huge for the club. After a couple of low-key Tests in 2024 – although Jimmy Anderson’s last match added spice (and ticket sales) to the meeting with West Indies – England host India, and Lord’s hosts the final of the World Test Championship for the first time in June.

You sense that those who sell tickets would like India to be playing in that, too, although recent results mean it is more likely to be Australia vs South Africa, a tougher sell – especially at Lord’s prices. The following year, the ECB and MCC have said that Lord’s will host its first ever women’s Test – and there are women’s T20 World Cup hosting rights up for grabs, too.

On the eve of the WTC final – which it would be no surprise to see moved outside England in 2027 – MCC plan to host a second edition of World Cricket Connects, the event that attracted some of the game’s power brokers to Lord’s for a talking shop that is eye-opening, but also tricky to see ever changing much.

Nicholas sees this event as part of the MCC’s “global contribution”. He said this year: “Is MCC consigned to the past in terms of global relevance or not? I decided not. Thought it was a good time for a neutral body to knit things together a bit.”

This is a noble aim and one that, at a time of such flux in the game, makes sense for MCC to adopt. MCC’s voice could become a little louder; it would be good to see their world cricket committee – which is currently chaired by Kumar Sangakkara – bearing their teeth more on the issues of the day. It often feels like the red-ball game needs somebody to stick up for it.

It would be good, too, to see MCC throw their doors open a little more to balance tradition with modernity – both of which are important, good things. Eton and Harrow can take place there, but why not a state school competition, too?

The work of the MCC foundation is magnificent, and should continue to grow. So too the role of the club in inner London.

Nicholas said this year: ‌“We want to open it [Lord’s] up, not in a way that stops it having that little bit of mystique, but opens it up in a way that excites people, is not a closed door to an ordinary child.”

There should be ambitions, too, to promote the game’s history further through the MCC’s museum.

Could the MCC pick up the university scheme that the ECB recently dropped, in order to provide a pathway into the professional men’s and women’s game for late developers? Why not let fans on the outfield more often, as they did at the end of Anderson’s last Test? Little changes can go a long way.

Lavender departs and Lawson arrives at a time of great change, but also with an opportunity for MCC to prove they remain relevant, influential and can fit into the modern game.