A portrait of Martin Crowe has been unveiled at Lord’s and added to the Long Room, giving the late New Zealand great a place among the ground’s most prized cricket artworks during the 150th Test to be played there.
The timing gives the tribute extra weight. Lord’s said the historic match is its 150th Test, and the portrait unveiling forms part of the celebrations around it, bringing Crowe back into the setting where he first made an impression almost four decades ago.
Crowe played 77 Test matches and 143 one-day internationals for New Zealand between 1982 and 1995, scored more than 10,000 runs in international cricket and was named one of the Wisden Cricketers of the Year in 1985. He died in 2016 at the age of 53, but his name still carries the kind of authority that makes a portrait feel less like decoration than recognition.
His best Test innings, 299 against Sri Lanka, remained New Zealand’s highest individual score for more than two decades. That is the measure that explains why Lord’s chose him, even though MCC does not usually commission posthumous portraits. This was an exception, and a deliberate one.
British artist Jason Brooks painted the work, using thousands of photographs, and kept it entirely in black so it would resemble a photographic print. The result fits the Long Room without trying to overpower it, which suits a player who was remembered as much for craft and control as for volume.
Crowe’s link to Lord’s was not new. In 1981 he spent the summer on the MCC cricket staff there while on a scholarship from New Zealand, and he also made a century for the MCC Young Cricketers against MCC at the ground. After retiring, he stayed close to the game as a writer and commentator, which helped make his influence broader than the numbers alone suggest.
The portrait is now part of the MCC collection, and that is probably the clearest answer to why this happened today rather than at some quieter moment. Lord’s wanted Crowe marked during a landmark Test, and the decision leaves him fixed in the Long Room long after the applause from this match has faded.
