The 150th Lord’s Test is a moment to celebrate the ground’s special position in world cricket and reflect on the future of a format that remains integral to the business and identity of Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC).

It is a milestone that arrives just as Test cricket faces an uncertain future and Lord’s embraces the eternal challenge of blending its history with modernity to remain relevant in the Indian Premier League (IPL) era.

One look at the England side picked to face New Zealand this week shows how things have changed: their premier fast bowler, Jofra Archer, is missing because of the IPL.

This summer, Lord’s will share ownership of the Hundred franchise, London Spirit, with its Tech Titans business partners in August while considering the future of one of the sport’s oldest fixtures – the Eton versus Harrow match, first played in 1805 – and gender-balancing the membership.

Mark Nicholas, MCC chairman since 2024, is a passionate advocate of Test cricket and believes the game is as exciting and compelling as ever. He thinks Test cricket has a bright future but stops short of committing to whether one of his successors will one day host a celebration for a 250th Lord’s Test; the world and the game pose too many unknowns.

“I don’t think Test cricket will go, but I think it’ll change. And I think there’ll be less of it,” says Nicholas. “I think it’s possible there’ll be fewer teams. I can see a six-six split. And I can see the standard of the best teams being very high, but I think there’ll be less of it in the main. I doubt there’ll be six or seven Tests a summer, but there’ll be marquee series.

“I really think Test cricket is a spectacle now, and very rarely do you leave a game thinking ‘well, that was disappointing’ so I think that’s a real attribute for Test cricket going forward. I can see a good, immediate future for the game, and I can see it being around for a long while but 250 Lord’s Tests? That’s another question.”

Lord’s is Test cricket’s spiritual home, a position strengthened this century, while at the same time T20 has emerged to threaten the format. No other ground puts on Test cricket better than Lord’s, and even the opposition from rival grounds has quietened in recent years over Lord’s hosting two Tests.

Since 2000, Lord’s has held two Tests per year. This will be England’s 50th Test at the venue since then and the 52nd overall. It has held a third of all its Tests in the last quarter of a century, a source of income that funds redevelopment. If that is put at risk, the club will have to be imaginative.

“This is a milestone of sustainability and tradition. I wonder if you’d said to Thomas Lord, when he first came here, from Dorset Fields, that we’d be celebrating 150 years of cricket, and 150 Test matches on this ground,” says Nicholas. “Could one have imagined it? So, what’s interesting to me is that the respect for Lord’s still remains.

“The game still holds this ground in regard, and players still want to come here. It’s still the place of choice, particularly if you’re touring England. And that comes really from the story. You know, it’s like walking with the ghosts of the game. You go in the same dressing room as them, you walk down the same stairs, you take the same journey out, you hear the same murmur.

“At the moment, MCC’s business model is driven by member subscription, and international matches on this ground, and that’s what allows us to create the place that people feel is so special. We would be concerned [at losing two Tests per summer] but we’d find other ways to make money, to make the ground what it needs to be for people to want to be here.

“The commercial world may change. The IPL might go global, and IPL matches staged here. Who’s to say that there won’t be other investors in the market? So, I don’t ever think that losing something means it’s the end of the world. Right now, the model we run this club by relies on two Test matches, but we’d have to adapt.”

To future-proof the ground, building work is ongoing with the renovation of the Allen Stand, which will be open to supporters this week but without facilities. The Tavern Stand will be next if the membership agrees to plans at a special general meeting later this year and the club has reopened talks after years of a fractious relationship with the property developer Charles Rifkind, who owns the lease on the tunnels below the Nursery End.

A development such as residential flats is years away with planning permission and costs all to be negotiated. Much more immediately relevant is the shape of the club and its membership. At present just 3.2 per cent are female, and Nicholas would like to see it rise to 20 per cent over the next decade, but that is tricky with a 30-year waiting list. A member consultation is ongoing.

“MCC’s membership has to reflect the modern world in a way that doesn’t invite criticism. One obviously is more women in the club. Diversity is important, and that only reflects the way the game is going. MCC has to reflect the power of women’s cricket in the last three or four years, so we’re trying to do something about it. We’ll see. Our members in the end will decide. It’s their club, but to me, common sense says we need to move on that. And actually, the mail we have is hugely supportive of it. It’s finding the way they do it, that doesn’t destroy the other mechanisms that make the club tick over.”

The Eton-Harrow debate was costly for the club, it opened divisions that Nicholas has tried to heal. Three years ago when the fixture was cancelled, a member revolt forced a U-turn. A survey of members was close: of 8,907 who responded, 44 per cent were in favour of keeping the fixture and 43 per cent opposed. A compromise kicked the decision down the road to 2027 when members will be consulted again but Nicholas, whose voice will be hugely influential, is keen to keep the tradition alive. Eton and Harrow have a role to play in the protection of the fixture such as support for the Barclays Knight-Stokes Cup for state schools that has been launched this year.

“If you’re ever going to argue for tradition and history, cricket played before the Battle of Trafalgar, as one of the first known organised cricket matches, is one you might stick to,” says Nicholas. “It’s always been played at Lord’s. Both Thomas Lord’s first ground at Dorset Fields, and now here. And so I think there’s an argument for it, in a way that is relevant. I’m not a great fan of history and tradition being used as an excuse. It’s got to be relevant. And the standard of the cricket’s okay. It’s valued by a lot of people. Over around about 50 per cent of the membership are in favour. The great thing at the moment is both schools want to give back, and we’re talking about shared ideas to make more of the day. And if we pull that off, I think the match is fine.”

Nicholas is a keen historian of the game and renovating and expanding the Lord’s museum is one of his ambitions. His own experience of Lord’s stretches back to watching Ted Dexter in the 1968 Gillette Cup final, and his first Test in 1973 when Garry Sobers and Rohan Kanhai scored hundreds. One of his guests in the MCC box this week played a very uncharacteristic shot in that match.

“I saw Geoffrey Boycott caught on the square-leg boundary in the last over of the day, hooking at a Keith Boyce bouncer. They set the trap, and he hit it straight down his throat. Geoffrey always says that the non-striking batsman should have taken a single the ball before but he turned it down. We always loved winding Geoffrey up about it. In the commentary box, whenever he criticised a player for a shot, I used to play him the YouTube footage of him getting caught deep square-leg.

“And the first time I came here, when I saw Dexter, my dad brought me here. When I went home, we had a game of bowling and batting at my dad. I was Dexter and John Snow. A week later, my dad died, so it was the last cricket thing I ever did with him, so that’s a fond experience, of Lord’s, in my life.”

There will be others in the crowd this week with their own Lord’s story to tell. It is that kind of place.