Why is Lord’s so slippy?

2 minute read

Zak Crawley has been doing his best to combat his longstanding but unflattering association with the word ‘slip’. On Day 1 of the Lord’s Test, he not only ensured his edge behind went to the wicketkeeper, he also essayed a rather different kind of slip in a somewhat forlorn bid to confuse everyone.

Ben Duckett punched a Mohammed Siraj delivery past mid-off, but after completing the first run, Crawley did this:

He fell over.

This is a thing that happens at Lord’s, aka The Home of the Worst No in the History of Test Cricket.

Unlike Mike Atherton’s timeless indignity, Crawley’s slip didn’t prove so obviously costly. It cost England a run, and we suppose you could argue it also kept Duckett at the end where he would go on to lose his wicket a few balls later, but at least no-one was immediately dismissed for 99.

More interesting to us is why does this kind of thing keep happening? What is it about the substandard Lord’s surface that resulted in two England batters slipping over while trying to complete a run, barely 30 years apart?

As with any commonly recurring yet inexplicable event, theories abound. Many point a finger at the infamous Lord’s slope. Some blame the corks; others a gradual accumulation of Champagne residue that then pools out in the middle.

Our own best guess is that it is due to run-off from all the oleaginous captains of industry who routinely sit in attendance. We believe the resultant capitalist slick effectively laminates the playing surface, rendering it treacherous.

You’d think having grown up the son of a man who once placed fifth in The Sunday Times Rich List, Crawley would have learned to cope with such challenging conditions.

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