The Mouse Cricket Caper by Mark Trenowden

At one end of the World’s most famous cricket ground stands the Lord’s pavilion. For over a hundred years it has played host to some of the greatest names in the game. However, within its walls and beneath its floors live a collection of less celebrated cricketers and their families. Compo, Don, Gubby, CMJ, Mrs Heyhoe and others are members of the pavilion’s mouse colony. They live happily side by side with the visiting spectators, scavenging what they need. All this changes when one night when Willow, their master batmaker, goes missing. She has been intercepted by two members of the local rat population who have been displaced by the activites of ‘Pest Arrest’ from the disused Lord’s Tube Station. With their home made uninhabitable the rats are on the look out for a new residence. It is apparent that Willow is healthy and well cared for and they decide that wherever she lives they can live too. Bristle’s, the rat’s tough leader, decides that the mice have to go and they will take their place. At an anxious meeting the mice plead their case. It is decided that a cricket match between the two sides will determine who gets the right to live in the pavilion. The mice are spurred on by the exploits of their heroes, the England cricket team who are playing Australia in an Ashes Test Match on the main ground.