Lord’s war at an end

A LANdSLidE MCC vote at a special general meeting in Westminster tomorrow in favour of Lord’s funding their own ground development rather than accept the £150million offered by property developers Rifkind Partners to build residential flats at the Nursery End will bring to an end a 20-year battle over the issue.

Former Prime Minister Sir John Major, a pivotal figure in the civil war, resigned from the MCC committee in 2011 because he supported Rifkind’s Vision. He has kept his counsel since but a letter has emerged that he sent to former MCC chairman oliver Stocken urging MCC to accept the Vision in its entirety or buy out Rifkind’s property interests at both ends of Lord’s.

Major will not be at the Westminster meeting because he is on a business trip abroad.

RAMPANT

self-publicist Damian Collins is chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee — a talking shop that has no statutory powers — but he continues to play the media to such an extent that his committee are seemingly portrayed as sport’s governing body. The real Minister for Sport Tracey Crouch needs to assert her authority.

KEViN LYNCH, who was on the FiFA linesman list for one year in 1992, is upset that he has not received an ‘England cap’ now awarded by the FA to officials who attain FiFA status. Lynch has made continued efforts to receive his cap, even offering to pay for it, and claims FA referee chief david Elleray, with whom he never got on, might be blocking his award. He also claims he wrote to FA chairman Martin glenn but received no reply.

The FA say that, pre-dating the start of the initiative in 2008, only officials who went to World Cups have received caps, so Lynch would not qualify. And Lynch’s letter to glenn was passed on to the referees’ department to answer.