It is hard to imagine a less ostentatious or more important bit of sporting memorabilia.

The picture doesn’t really give you an idea how small it is, so here is a selfie, purely to give you a sense of scale of course.

The story goes like this. In 1882 a team of cricketers came from Australia, and defeated the English team in a close game. Being beaten by a bunch of colonials (and from a former prison colony at that) was a huge blow to the British psyche. So much so that one of the sporting newspapers published an obituary for English cricket.

Later that year an English team traveled to Australia in an attempt to regain some national pride. The captain declared that he was going to “bring back the ashes”. As a joke, the lady of the house where he was staying took the bails (a small piece of wood used in the game) from a friendly game played by the England team, put them in an old perfume bottle, and presented it to the England captain as the ashes he had come to fetch. On his death it was presented to the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) and it has remained there ever since, except for two visits to Australia. The winner of the latest England vs Australia test cricket series is said to have won the ashes, but they don’t actually get to take the urn with them. These days it is considered too fragile to travel.

I went on a tour of Lord’s cricket ground today. As well as the ashes, they also have W G Grace’s cricket bat.

Dr Grace was not the most slender of athletes, but he was the preeminent cricketer of the late Victorian era, and he played first class cricket into his fifties. There’s a statue of him behind one of the stands.

One end of the ground is dominated by the media centre (aka press box).

This won an architecture award as the best new building in the UK the year it was built. I think it looks like a 1950s vision of what the future was supposed to be like, except that it doesn’t have the landing pad for flying cars.

At the other end of the ground is the pavilion, realm of the elite members of the MCC.

There’s currently a 27 year waiting list to join the MCC, unless you are a head of state, play in fifty test matches, or buy them a new stand.