Letter: Lord's, home of cricket's most civilised losers

I WAS at Lord's on what turned out to be the last day of the Test match. It did not seem obvious to me that England would have played better had they been allowed to enter through the Grace Gate or to wear shorts in the outfield, as suggested by Nasser Hussain ("Flaw Lord's out of order," Sport, 21 June).

The sad truth is that England rarely play well anywhere. One great performance is too often followed by a series of failures. This may be accentuated at Lord's because the pitch there tends more than most to reward good and punish bad bowling.

Stephen Fay finds it puzzling that Lord's is so popular when England so rarely win. It is the only English Test match ground where watching cricket is not ruined by drunken exhibitionism. The willingness of spectators to acknowledge fine play on both sides should be valued as an expression of traditional English fair-mindedness, the antithesis of what we see among some English World Cup "supporters".

Michael Pyke

Lichfield, Staffordshire