The top picture is Lord's cricket ground in St John's Wood, north London - also known as HQ, or the Home of Cricket.
The lower picture is Backwell Primary School's football pitch (you can see the dark coloured goal posts).
Perhaps the Lord's slope is somewhat more famous, and less extreme, than Backwell's - but the latter was more familiar to me - being where I attended school throughout childhood.
Backwell's strange conditions (a football placed on the grass would actually roll downhill if left unattended) provided us with much-needed home advantage due to familiarity, while playing other local schools. Few members of the opposition would be able to get over the shock and dismay at the sight of our pitch, before the game had been taken away from them.
Lord's, by contrast, seems to work to favour visiting countries and work against England; perhaps due to the excitement of playing in such a storied venue - plus the fact that the Lord's crowd are traditionalists who (sportingly) applaud and celebrate the opposition's successes, as vigorously (or more so) than those of the home team.
No comments:
Post a Comment