When I read that Keith Bradshaw, secretary and chief executive of the MCC, was leaving for family reasons and going back to Australia, I smelt a faint odour of rat emerging from the St. John’s Wood area. So I wasn’t entirely surprised to read a statement from the MCC committee denying press rumours that all was not well at Lord’s. The only surprise was that I hadn’t actually read any reports of trouble at the Home of Cricket.
Then I opened my latest copy of Private Eye and it all came spilling out. Allegedly, Bradshaw supported the Vision for Lord’s, the ambitious plans for redeveloping the ground whereas the MCC chairman and the treasurer opposed it. They supposedly called in Edwina Currie's ex-paramour, Sir John Major to persuade fellow committee members to go for a watered down version of the scheme.
The result was the resignation of Bradshaw as well as the departure of the planning consultant hired to oversee the Vision, the early retirement of the deputy chief executive, the disbanding of the development sub-committee and the departure of the real estate brokers advising on the scheme.
The problem with the MCC’s press release about the falseness of these rumours is that it doesn’t actually deal with them in any detail. Instead, it talks in more general terms, stating that Bradshaw "had enjoyed" – notice the tense – a productive and harmonious relationship with the committee and also had excellent relationships with the Chairman and Treasurer. The release also confirms that, but for his resignation, Bradshaw would still be in post, presumably meaning that MCC wouldn’t have had grounds to fire him. Of the detailed allegations, there is nothing.
So there we are. Do we believe a venerable British institution that has over the years secured a strong place deep in most of our hearts or do we go with those seeking to destroy its reputation for truthfulness and straight dealing? My instinct is to go with the venerable institution. So I vote for Private Eye, 50 years old, still going strong and still seeking to tell it like it is.
No doubt this is not the end of the story. In the meantime, it’s not a bad rule of thumb that, when certain matters are denied and others not, you can assume that the allegations that aren’t denied are probably true. or, taking a more extreme view, in the words of Claud Cockburn, Never believe anything until it's officially denied.
Update - January 2012
It would appear that I maligned the saintly Sir John, who has now resigned in protest at the abandonment of the plans for Lord's.
I was certainly right about the bad smell emanating from the Home of Cricket - see here
Ah, well, with a distinguished banker at the helm of MCC as chairman, what could possibly go wrong?
