Marylebone Cricket Club is facing criticism from portions of its membership over an exhibition of Syrian paintings in the Lord’s Pavilion.
MCC members are unhappy with the exhibition, which was on display during the opening match of the new season, between Middlesex and Gloucestershire, over the Easter weekend.
A letter was pinned to the Pavilion noticeboard by Michael Henderson, the former cricket correspondent at The Telegraph and author who is a long-time member.
“Members may have noted the daubs upstairs and the club’s endorsement of ‘creativity’ and ‘solidarity’,” wrote Henderson. “‘Solidarity’ with whom? The human race, perhaps. We can all agree on that. But this ‘exhibition’ is nudging us towards another view; a partial one. This is meant to be a cricket club.”
One member told the Mail they thought the exhibition was designed to “project a progressive image of the club”. Another said they thought it was “woke”.
MCC declined to comment.
It is understood that the display recognises one of the MCC Foundation’s initiatives, the Alsama Project, which was launched in 2021. The project supports young Syrian refugees in Lebanon by funding cricket hubs, where children living in the Bekaa Valley and Shatila refugee camps play the game for six hours each week throughout the year.
The MCC Foundation is the club’s charitable arm and has projects in various countries, and in the UK. The artwork is a collection of paintings by Syrian and Palestinian refugee students alongside works by established artists.
The short-term exhibition went on display last month and finishes at the end of April.
The MCC’s chair of heritage and collections, Emma John, is a journalist who has written extensively on cricket and other subjects for The Guardian and other publications. John became a member in 2018 and declared she wanted to “fight to influence the MCC’s culture from the inside”. The club’s Pavilion is full of artwork, including many famous portraits of legendary players.
The MCC leadership’s relationship with its members has not always been smooth, although relations appear to have improved recently.
Four years ago, the former chairman Bruce Carnegie-Brown was caught up in a hot mic incident at the club’s AGM, offending the membership by saying “they are taking an age to empty their colostomy bags” during a pause in proceedings. Former President Sir Stephen Fry later said that the club “stinks” of privilege and is full of “beetroot-coloured gentlemen”.
MCC also faced an uprising over attempts to move historic fixtures such as Eton vs Harrow and Oxford vs Cambridge away from Lord’s.