MCC Bicentenary match

This article is about the match in 1987. For the 2014 match in honour of the bicentennial of Lord's Cricket Ground, see Bicentenary Celebration match.

The MCC Bicentenary match was a five-day first-class cricket exhibition match held at Lord's Cricket Ground from 20 to 25 August 1987 (with a rest day on 23 August). The match was in celebration of the 200th anniversary of the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), which had been founded in 1787, and was contested between an MCC team captained by Mike Gatting, and a "Rest of the World" team captained by Allan Border. It featured many notable international players: with the exception of Clive Rice of South Africa (who at the time were banned from international cricket), 21 of the 22 players had played Test cricket prior to the match.

MCC Bicentenary Match

M.C.C. Rest of the World 455/5d 421/7d & & 318/6d 13/1
Match drawn
Date	20–25 August 1987
Venue	Lord's Cricket Ground, London
Player of the match	Sunil Gavaskar (batting) Malcolm Marshall (bowling) Clive Rice (fielding)
Umpires	H.D. Bird D.R. Shepherd (Eng)

Teams

The pavilion at Lord's Cricket Ground, the home of MCC and venue for the match, seen in 2017

Marylebone Cricket Club	Rest of the World
Mike Gatting (c) Gordon Greenidge Chris Broad Graham Gooch David Gower Clive Rice Richard Hadlee Ravi Shastri John Emburey Malcolm Marshall Bruce French (wk)	Allan Border (c) Sunil Gavaskar Desmond Haynes Dilip Vengsarkar Javed Miandad Jeff Dujon (wk) Imran Khan Kapil Dev Roger Harper Courtney Walsh Abdul Qadir

The MCC team was chosen from players competing in the County Championship, either eligible for England or as overseas players. The Rest of the World team was formed of players from the other Test-playing sides.^[1] England all-rounder Ian Botham was unable to take part because of an injury, while West Indies batsman Viv Richards declined to participate because of commitments to his club, Rishton, in the Lancashire League.^[2]

Match

20–25 August 1987 Scorecard

Marylebone Cricket Club	v	Rest of the World
455/5d (133.1 overs) Mike Gatting 179 (272) Abdul Qadir 1/30 (16.2 overs)		421/7d (124 overs) Sunil Gavaskar 188 (351) Malcolm Marshall 3/53 (20 overs)
318/6d (88 overs) Gordon Greenidge 122 (223) Abdul Qadir 2/112 (36 overs)		13/1 (4.3 overs) Roger Harper 9* (16) Malcolm Marshall 1/10 (2.3 overs)

Match drawn Lord's Cricket Ground, London Umpires: Harold Bird and David Shepherd Player of the match: Sunil Gavaskar (batting), Malcolm Marshall (bowling), Clive Rice (fielding)

• MCC won the toss and elected to bat.

The match was drawn after no play was possible on the final day due to rain.

Notable performances in the match included centuries from Graham Gooch, Mike Gatting and Gordon Greenidge for MCC and Sunil Gavaskar (his first at Lord's, in his final first-class match)^[1] for the Rest of the World, as well as Roger Harper's run out of Gooch.^[3] Although the match did not have Test status, individual performances were recorded on the Lord's honours boards.^[4]