Sorry Stephen, but my day Lording it over the Poms has made this sheila an Aussie cricket convert

At Lord’s on Saturday for a thrilling Test match, the writer Kathy Lette had relied on her friend Stephen Fry to educate her in the finer aspects of the game. By Sunday, she had to go into hiding after that ‘dubious stumping’ made all Aussies public enemy number one. And now? Let the serious sledging begin

Go to Lord’s with Stephen Fry, they said. It’ll be pleasant, they said (Kathy Lette)

I was never a big cricket fan. Hell, I’ve had marriages that have lasted less time than a test match. It seemed like the sporting version of tantric sex where the only thing that gets sticky is the wicket. But that was before the Aussies started thrashing the Poms at this year’s Ashes. I became an overnight cricket convert.

No Aussie in Britain has been able to resist a little light gloating. I mean, it’s so rare that we get to feel superior to you locals; especially the British upper class who tend to see us as a recessive gene; the Irish of the Pacific. I’ve looked up so many noses since moving here – even people shorter than me.

When it comes to Antipodeans, many of the Gin and Jag brigade have a condescension chromosome. A snooty British book critic once explained to me that “condescension” means “talking down to”. So, when Australia pulled ahead it proved irresistible not to swan off to Lord’s to... well, Lord it over the Poms.

My dear friend Stephen Fry is this year’s MCC president and kindly asked me to his box on Saturday (I keep suggesting he get an office at the Oval, so that his letterhead can read “From the President in the Oval Office”, but our beloved national treasure is far too humble and discreet.)

Anyhow, it was a glorious day. I sat between Stephen and jeweller Theo Fennell as they explained the finer points of the game. What better tutors could a sheila employ? I soon started to appreciate the subtle, chess-like stratagems and psychological skills at play, as well as the physical prowess. My mother saw Bradman score his hundreth hundred, so no wonder this latent love of cricket has finally set in. Adam Hills dropped in for tea and we did a little light smirking, in stereo. We were feeling as effervescent as the bubbles in our celebratory champagne. By play’s end I think we’d exceeded the recommended daily allowance of smugness and risked seriously alienating our gracious hosts.

Of course, all this changed on Sunday morning when Stephen texted to tell me that there had been a “dubious stumping” and that the Lord’s crowd were booing my countrymen and heckling, “same old Aussies, always cheating”.

I felt a mortifying pang and immediately threw my kangaroo earrings in the bin. I live near Lord’s, so didn’t dare venture outside without shin pads in fear of getting LBW-ed (Lacerated, Bashed and Walloped). I ditched my Aussie accent and underwent a complete vowel transplant. Yep. My lips lost weight with the amount of vowel rounding I did. In the end, I decided to just pretend to be a Kiwi until the crisis passed.

The scandal conjured embarrassing flashbacks to the 2018 ball-tampering disgrace that cost Steve Smith his captaincy and the team’s tough-talking coach, Darren Lehmann, his job. That scandal sent seismic shock waves through the Aussie “fair suck of the sauce bottle” psyche and made us the butt of derisive jokes worldwide. As a nation, our reality cheque bounced. National mourning set in. Put it this way, if we’d been on a plane, oxygen masks would have been dropping from the overhead luggage lockers. (Although, like most women at the time, my secret thoughts were along the lines of: “MAN FIDDLES WITH BALLS” …is it really such a shock? I mean, seriously, what man doesn’t?)

But by Sunday lunchtime, I no longer had to give the impression of a duck’s back, as the pendulum of public opinion had now swung in favour of my team due to some very unsportsmanlike behaviour in the Lord’s long room at the lunch interval. Apparently, the Aussie players were given a very hostile reception. The comments dished out to Usman Khawaja and David Warner were so “aggressive and abusive”, it led to the MCC suspending three members.

But the controversial dismissal which saw Aussie wicketkeeper Alex Carey thrown down the stumps after Jonny Bairstow left his crease and meandered along the pitch to chat to Ben Stokes is now threatening to cause a diplomatic row between Australia and Britain. Rishi Sunak’s spokesman has confirmed that the prime minister feels the conduct of the Aussies in the Lord’s Test was not in the spirit of cricket.

And now Anthony Albanese has responded, by saying, “Same old Aussies, always winning”, stoking the diplomatic row. I feel sure our PM was quick to recall the Bodyline series in 1932-33, when the English bowlers took to deliberately targeting the bodies of the Aussie batsmen in an effort to dent Bradman’s dominance.

Before Sunak mounts his high horse and gallops off into the sanctimonious sunset, it might be worth also recalling the time British cricket captain Mike Atherton got caught cheating and was fined £2,000. At least we Aussies have an excuse to cheat. I mean, we are of convict stock, after all. Smith, Warner and Bancroft were clearly just following in their forefathers’ fingerprints. (Although my convict ancestors were guilty of one thing only – not running fast enough!)

But with the Aussies’ legal, but slightly unsporting piece of cricket and the MCC members’ rudeness, I think we can agree that when it came to dodgy behaviour this weekend, it ended up being a very level playing field.

I’m just so glad I can retrieve my kangaroo earrings from the bin, so that, just like said marsupial, I can bounce back on Saturday and head to Lord’s to watch the women’s match from the presidential box. One thing’s for sure, I doubt there’ll be any ball tampering. Because women don’t have um… Wait. Perhaps I need Stephen to give me another tutorial.

Kathy Lette is the author of 20 books