The spaceship is fine: it's modern, comfortable, convenient, and has all the facilities an itinerant cricket journalist could ask of a media centre. Why, even the wine comes free. So what if the glass enclosure makes you feel slightly caged and stifled, to crib about such trivial matters would be tantamount to whining.

Even outside a few things seem to have changed. You are still expected to wear a tie if you wish to set foot inside the most hallowed of these hallowed precincts, the members' pavilion. MCC's media man, who was generous enough to put a magic sticker on my media pass which instantly elevated me to the ranks of the utterly privileged, was seriously concerned with the deficiency of my attire. I pointed to my Nehru jacket and argued that it happened to be my national dress. Moreover, if I did attempt to wear a tie with it, not only would it look ridiculous, but it would be an insult to both the tie and the jacket.

The gentleman wasn't entirely convinced, but he let me go and wished me luck. Off I went, perfectly prepared to be thrown out, even though I had been in the Long Room just a few days before wearing the very same jacket for the Wisden Indian Cricketer of the Century dinner. But I had been in good company then: about 15 former Indian Test players, to be more specific. But here I was, on my miserable own, armed with nothing but a media pass - which I would learn a little later provides no security against suspicious stewards.

To my surprise and relief, my tie-free state wasn't an issue at all. The elderly stewards were more concerned about the authenticity of the small blue sticker on my media pass. A supervisor was summoned and, phew, I was in. It would perhaps be graceless to suggest that I was treated like a trespasser throughout my six-and-a-half-minute stay there. A kindly steward escorted me everywhere, and it was politely suggested that though I would be tolerated because of my sticker on my pass, it might be appropriate for me to do my business quickly and leave. "The members don't take too kindly to pressmen loitering in their territory," he told me in a mellow, fatherly tone. I had gone looking for Dilip Vengsarkar, and on being told that he had left, I was only too glad to follow him. Back in the media centre, there was general delight about my bucking the trend. For Lord's this was real progress.

But some things never change, it would seem. Fifteen years after Sunil Gavaskar was refused entry to the ground during a match he was playing in, last night it was his fellow TV commentator Harsha Bhogle's turn to face the music.

Bhogle and three colleagues had just stepped outside the North Gate at about 9.30pm last night when, as can happen to anybody, he received a call on his mobile phone. Since passing vehicles on a busy street aren't exactly conducive to a conversation carried over two different continents, he stepped back inside the ground - only to be accosted by a young steward who, according to Bhogle and his companions, had an unfinished bottle of beer in his hand.

Bhogle was asked what business he had inside the premises and, before he could reply, he was asked to leave. But before he threw the four men out, the steward demanded to see their passes. When Bhogle produced his, the man took a passing look at it and sneered, "What the hell is that? Get out of here anyway."

It all got more unpleasant when Gautam Bhimani, one of Bhogle's companions, reportedly was physically shoved outside, while the iron gate slammed on Harsha's face. The parting shot, according to Bhogle, was: "Go home, man. If you were in your country, you would have been beaten with sticks." How we must be grateful for small mercies.

The matter has been reported to the Lord's authorities. At the time of writing, they were examining the possibility of action after they view the CCTV recordings on Tuesday. And that's called speed.

But, honestly, Bhogle should not be affronted. He was only doing commentary in the Test, not actually playing at the ground. He hasn't scored a Test run, let alone 10,000 of them, and while he might be a household name in India, he isn't exactly Sunil Gavaskar either.

I caught up with Gavaskar at the media centre this afternoon. He shrugged his shoulders about the incident in 1987 when, as an invitee for the Rest of the World XI for the MCC bicentenary match, he stepped out of the gate to get his jacket back from the car after informing the steward, and wasn't let in by the same man, because he didn't have his player's ticket with him. "It's not worth talking about," he said.

Indeed, we should all be grateful that most of us manage to enter and leave cricket's headquarters unharmed every day.

Sambit Bal is editor of Wisden Asia Cricket and Wisden.com in India.

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