Day 10 - Last day - The actual 'Ashes' urn, BME again and goodbye London

Though I had watched the Test at Lords, I still had to do the Lords Cricket Ground tour. There's a lot of trivia around the 'Mecca' of Cricket. Sometime in the 19th century, the owner Thomas Lords wanted to sell off the ground for real estate development so that he could live his retired life merrily until some gentleman whose name I can't recollect bought it from him so that Cricket continued to be played on it. If it was not for this guy, we would not be talking about this historic venue. The guides on the cricket tour were Cricket fanatics and they were steeped into history as is the case with most cricket fanatics.

The highlights of this tour were seeing the actual Ashes urn(yes the 150 yr old!), the new Lords Media centre and for me specially touching the Lords turf. I have promised myself to come back here and play soon.

We also went to the MCC room where the laws of cricket are decided. Though ICC looks after the player regulations, the laws of Cricket are still governed by MCC. So for example,the law of LBW is still governed by MCC. They take a call whether the switch hit (used by K.Pieterson) is legal. ICC looks after stuff like Power plays and UDRs etc.

There is a global committee of ex-players formed by the MCC who give recommendations on various aspects of Cricket. Its called the MCC World Cricket Committee. They have 2 of the best possible Indian players on it : Rahul Dravid and Anil Kumble (click on the MCC link for names of players from other countries.) It has some big names and its interesting to read the stuff they talk about.

Membership of the MCC has a waiting of about 25 years. I don't think I need to say anything beyond this.

The view from the Media Centre is awesome and its state of art. No one has yet hit a six at the Media Centre. Even if someone does it has to be at a speed of higher then 75 miles per hour to break the glass. I can go on and on. After all, its cricket!

Let me stop here. We had great lunch at the O2 arena at a restaurant called The Slug and Lettuce.

The last 10 days have been amazing and the London trip will remain as one of the most memorable of my life. I did a lot of things I always wanted to do. I am in love with London and feel extremely sad on leaving it. Maybe its not all that great for people who live here but for visitors like me it seems like an awesome place to be at. I have a feeling I am going to come back and come back very soon too. Maybe, I'll keep coming back!

And now, to Switzerland!............ and Europe!