Can a £160 day of Lord's Test cricket possibly offer value for money?

The first sight that greets the thousands of supporters ascending the escalators at St John’s Wood station for the start of English cricket’s international summer is not a complimentary one for the MCC.

'The Covers Are Off: Civil War at Lord’s', scream dozens of advertisements for a book that purports to lay bare a power struggle that has allegedly ravaged the MCC for the past two decades.

It has been a tricky week for the custodians of the ground heralded as the Home of Cricket, with criticism from many within the sport over high ticket prices resulting in thousands of unsold seats for this first Test against New Zealand and an acknowledgement from the MCC that it will review its costings next year.

With the majority of adult tickets costing in excess of £100, and the most expensive at £160, Telegraph Sport headed down for the opening day to see if it could possibly deliver value for money.

There was an inauspicious start to the day for many spectators, who managed to miss England’s new-ball wizardry because they could not even get into the ground.

By 10.30am, queues for entry had become so clogged that snakes of spectators lined most of the roads around the ground. “It’s absolute carnage,” moaned one person, who was not alone in suggesting they had queued for close to an hour. One native Australian insisted: “This would never happen at the MCG [in Melbourne].”

The backlog became so severe that the Telegraph can reveal Lord’s security staff were directed to abandon all bag searches about five minutes before the start of play.

Given that Lord’s is the only ground in Britain that allows punters to bring certain quantities of alcohol for international matches, there was no shortage of bemusement - eclipsed by relief at finally being allowed in - from spectators opening bags for the customary checks, only to be greeted with the words: “We trust you, we trust you”.

The MCC told Telegraph Sport that “in order to minimise congestion, and after consultation with the Met Police and the ECB Head of Safety and Security, we made the decision to relax the search operation”.

“I’ve always wanted to come to Lord’s, which is why I’ve paid the money,” said David, one of a group of six who had travelled down from south Yorkshire for the match. “But £130 is absolutely criminal. It’s a rip-off.

“How are they going to attract normal working-class people? Although maybe they don’t want to. It’s outrageous, but what choice have we got?”

Lord’s lustre remains its biggest pull. “This is the Home of Cricket so it’s an experience,” said New Zealander Andrew Dawson, who had driven six hours from Dumfries, Scotland, with his 11-year-old son Cory, for the game. “That’s why we got here at 9am.”

Those stuck in the queues outside did at least have the good fortune to miss a strange pre-match performance from soprano Lesley Garrett and West End baritone Rodney Earl Clarke.

Standing on the outfield just before the pre-match coin toss, the duo sang, 'We Thank You From Our Hearts', a specially-commissioned Platinum Jubilee song, which heralds the Queen as the “mother of this nation”.

With a struggling Lord’s sound system turning the rendition into an indecipherable cacophony of high-pitched noise, it was no surprise to see it greeted with almost total indifference.