MCC Spirit of Cricket Cowdrey Lecture

Kumar Sangakkara's 2011 lecture received widespread praise The MCC Spirit of Cricket Cowdrey Lecture was inaugurated in 2001 in memory of the late Lord Cowdrey of Tonbridge.

A past President of MCC, Cowdrey - together with another former Club President, Ted Dexter - was instrumental in the Spirit of Cricket being included as the Preamble to the 2000 Code of the Laws of Cricket.

It is held annually during the English summer and has been delivered by eminent figures from across the world of cricket - from Richie Benaud to Christopher Martin-Jenkins to Clive Lloyd.

Kumar Sangakkara became the youngest person to deliver the speech in 2011, and held the room captive with a poignant and impassioned lecture on the history of Sri Lankan cricket.

The speech captured worldwide headlines and received widespread praise from the cricketing community.

In 2008 MCC invited The Most Reverend Desmond Tutu to deliver the Lecture, making him the first man from outside the immediate cricket world to make the address.

Archbishop Tutu delivered the MCC Spirit of Cricket Cowdrey Lecture in 2008 Tutu’s lecture, given at the height of the Zimbabwe crisis, focused on the role that the sporting boycott of South Africa played in ending apartheid and the need for cricket’s notions of fairness, honesty and decency to apply to political sporting decisions.

Other subjects have included umpires’ use of technology, the possibility of four day Tests and cricketers’ behaviour.

All the MCC Spirit of Cricket Cowdrey Lecturers, irrespective of nationality, cricketing background or age, have been united in their reverence for the founding tenets of the Spirit of Cricket: fairness, honesty and respect.

Video, audio and full text transcripts of Cowdrey Lectures dating back to 2003 are available from the right hand side of this page.