How It's Used

“Those long uneven lines
Standing as patiently
As if they were stretched outside
The Oval or Villa Park,
The crowns of hats, the sun
On moustached archaic faces
Grinning as if it were all
An August Bank Holiday lark…”

“It's nearly midday, and the traditional sights and sounds of a brand-new English summer are all around. That is to say: dirty clouds drift low over the rusty south London gasworks; traffic and building machinery roar relentlessly; and the Oval cricket ground is more or less empty.

“Specifically: blocks 1 to 20 - 270 degrees of the stadium's circle - are entirely empty. So is the Peter May stand (another 10 degrees). There are 12 people in the Laker stand, three (including me) in the Lock stand, three in the Bedser stand and about 50 in the Pavilion stand, which completes the circle. Many of these people turn out, on inspection, to be stadium staff; I think the officials may outnumber the public. It would be neat to add that the cricketers outnumber the public, but there aren't, at the moment, any cricketers."

“Whatever history makes of John Major’s premiership, his leaving of it was adept: he announced he was off to see the cricket at the Oval. There was none of the usual unpleasantness about the sulkiness of defeat.”

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