The Home Of Cricket Poem by Paul Reed

The grass is worn in two distinct places
At opposite ends of the lawn
Where we stand and take guard
Where cricketing dreams were born;

This little patch of ground is Lord's in our minds
But we only encourage (we do not ‘sledge')
The pavilion is the back door to the kitchen
The boundary rope the hedge;

Our Old Father Time is the chimney pots
Where the gulls circle around and shriek
We have no old score books to pore over
No tradition, no mystique;

But imagination is a powerful thing
And here I can educate
My grandsons about Ken Barrington
Tell them to ‘run! ', tell them to ‘wait! ! '

My bowling might be only underarm
But varied with experience and guile
I throw a series of slow deliveries
But then a faster one after a while;

Here the fielders are only ghosts
And the creases are not marked
But they run to an imaginary place
On life's journey they have embarked;

The stumps may only be plastic
And the ball mere rubber foam
But this is just as good as Lord's
This, to us, is cricket's home.