'The Home of Cricket' fights for its place under the sun

London, July 20 (UNI) Lord's, considered to be 'The Mecca of Cricket', is in danger of losing one of the two Tests allotted to it by ECB each summer, becuse of competition from newer provincial grounds which provide more options to the board.

The Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) will hold an urgent meeting with England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) officials to make sure Lord's retains the right to hold two Tests when the new staging agreement starts in 2009.

MCC's head of communications and public affairs Iain Wilton said, ''We'd like to think the facilities here are as good as anywhere if not better.'' ''But we need to make a very attractive case to the ECB to continue staging the number of major games we currently do,'' he was quoted as saying by the BBC.

Lord's, which has hosted Test matches since 1884, is the largest and most lucrative venue for England with capacity of 30,000.

With the increasing competition, Wilton said they do not want to be complacent.

''We're conscious of a number of pressures because there are more grounds looking to get Test status.'' ''The Rose Bowl is coming up for that once a few infrastructure things have been addressed, you have people like Durham who want Tests on an annual basis rather than an occasional basis and you have Cardiff getting a Test for the first time in the 2009 Ashes series.

''There are those pressures of more grounds competing for matches and you also have the Schofield report saying that we could make a case for taking the number of summer Tests down from seven to six,'' he added.

''Potentially you have more grounds competing for a smaller number of Test matches and we want to make sure that in terms of facilities and capacity and economics we can put forward a very good case for Lord's keeping its current share of the fixtures.'' The ECB refused to comment on the forthcoming talks saying, ''The ECB negotiate with host grounds over staging agreements and the details of those negotiations are always kept confidential.'' UNI XC BJR PDS KN1825