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This year, its reputation as a very special event climbed up another rung on the ladder with England playing unexpectedly well against a very decent South African side.

The showers stayed away, England's bowlers made regular inroads and the fascinating nuances of Test cricket proved a welcome distraction from the latest grim statistics about knife crime and the economy.

I met an old university friend at lunch in the Coronation Garden. His father had set up two picnic tables, around which a strange assortment of cricketing eccentrics had assembled.

I was soon introduced to the members of Cornel Cymraeg. I won't need to translate to fluent Welsh speakers, but it means "Welsh Corner".

One of its members, the splendidly moustachioed Keith Jones, told me: "There were three or four doctors from Rumney in south Wales who came up to watch in 1948. They had such a good time over the three days that they said we must come back here every year.

"They've all passed on now, but two of the sons still come and are regular attenders here, and we have a new generation of people who do the same thing, coming here for three days every year, and we always meet in this corner of the Coronation Ground."

They are such a part of the tapestry of the Lord's Test, in fact, that MCC secretary gladly accepted an official Cornel Cymraeg tie earlier in the day.

If you had time, between watching South African wickets falling and enjoying the other attractions at Lord's, there was a great deal of celebrity spotting to be done.

Ronnie Corbett, Stephen Fry, Michael Parkinson, Greg Dyke, , her boyfriend Piers Morgan and Jeffrey Archer were all in attendance.

While they spent much of their time in a sponsored box, I saw a certain ex-England and Arsenal defender walking by apparently unnoticed.

Bizarrely, he was in a small group with a cousin of mine, who I promptly stopped to say hello to. And a true giant of English football shook my hand and said: "Hello, I'm ."