Garry Sobers, one of cricket’s greatest all-rounders, once declared that no one could call himself a cricketer until he had eaten a ton of lettuce, a reference to staple cricket lunches of ham and salad. When Ted Dexter, the England captain, played at Lord’s against West Indies in the 1960s he told the cook to serve vichyssoise to make lunch more exciting. To a man, the players complained that the soup was not hot.

When the finalists for the ICC World Twenty20 arrive at Lord’s tomorrow and the great cricketers of the past visit for the second Ashes Test against Australia next month they will find that the menus in the pavilion have changed out of all recognition. Almost 100 chefs will be at work in the 14 kitchens around the ground.

Over the five days they will serve 600 lobsters, 560kg of beef fillets and 640 sides of salmon, bake 44,000 home-made scones, and 10,000 bottles of champagne and 273,600 pints of beer and lager will be consumed. So no recession in London NW8, then. The spectator is no longer prepared to drink from a Thermos and eat, well, lettuce, but desires breakfast, lunch and afternoon tea of the quality found in restaurants within walking distance of St John’s Wood.

When the masterplan now under consideration by MCC members is accepted and the £400 million redevelopment of Lord’s is completed, the intention is for food and drink to be served to spectators in the cheaper seats at the Nursery End in the style of baseball stadiums. The Thermos of lukewarm coffee will be superseded by the glass of champagne, ordered by pushing a button on the armrest of the seat. The chefs will move to new kitchens sited beneath the Nursery Ground.

“In the past, people went to Lord’s for the cricket and food was not a priority,” David Batts, the MCC assistant secretary who is overseeing the redevelopment, said. “Then I noticed that the catering at Wimbledon had changed and had become high quality.” And it is not just the crowd who are seeking improved fare. The players need it, too, for nutritional benefit in an age when they are expected to make slithering stops in the field and perform at unearthly hours under floodlights.

If you are wearing a jacket and tie and can outmanoeuvre the old retainers on the pavilion door, you can get a taste of what’s to come by looking at the menus prepared for the Long Room Bar and the players’ dining room. Steve Smith, who first worked at Lord’s when he was 15 and who 20 years later is head chef at the ground, sent members of his brigade to Devon earlier this year to examine the methods of rearing animals at Pipers Farm, the winners of the sandwich-of-the-year competition, held in Paris, for the quality of its red ruby beef. It is only one of the awards won by the farm over the past 15 years.

The upshot is that red ruby, a beef intrinsic to Devon, will be served during the Test and throughout the year at summer and winter functions in the Long Room and alongside the isotonic drinks in the players’ dining room. As will venison, pork, lamb, chicken, air-dried hams, sausages, turkey and salt beef. “When I started at Lord’s, the best food served was poached salmon, chicken chaudfroid and salads. Everything was cold and plated the night before,” Smith said. “Now we can serve red ruby, which is exactly what beef should taste like. The fat keeps it moist, I don’t need to season it too much and it can rest for 30 minutes in the top of the oven in tin foil before carving. I like to carve it quickly. It is not at all tough.”

Catering is highly lucrative to the MCC. The Long Room, perhaps the most famous setting in all sport, costs £6,500 to hire for a lunch (on non-match days) or dinner for 180 people. The average price for food and wine on top of that is £55-£60 a head. For such sums, high-class cooking is desired by spectators, committee members, administrators and sponsors. But what of the players? How could they stomach anything but lettuce leaves before returning to the field after a mere 40-minute lunch interval?

Smith, who used to climb over the fence at Lord’s to avoid paying at the gate as a boy, intends making full use of all cuts of an animal. “To braise oxtail takes four hours, but we have the staff to do that now. Then we can serve oxtail ravioli to the players.” The England team nutritionist provides a list of requirements at the start of a Test match, including fruit and energy drinks in the dressing room. “There are players who ask for ‘real food’,” Smith said. “Steve Harmison wanted a steak sandwich. Derek Underwood, the MCC president, told me he would like to be given a pork chop this summer, nothing too fancy, but players now do like to eat well.”

A consignment of beef will arrive each week from Devon. Pipers Farm, which prides itself on “farming the natural way”, keeps 400 red ruby cattle, which are slaughtered after three years and hung for a month. “They are native to Exmoor and almost cricketball red, matching the Devon soil. The meat will not be too heavy for players’ lunches because they will not need a lot of it. It is so different from industrial meat, which is all water. A fielder who has to chase a ball to the boundary one and a half hours after lunch will feel the nutritional value,” Peter Greig, the proprietor of Pipers Farm, explained.

“It is very exciting that Lord’s is breaking the mould of very ordinary, industrial, mass-produced food found at sports stadiums. I go to the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, Twickenham and Exeter City, my local football club, and the refreshments are awful.”

Pity, though, the chefs during Test matches at Lord’s. Smith treats himself by watching the very first ball bowled, at 11am, and then will be fortunate to see any more action until the fifth and final day, when there is less hospitality at lunchtime and no evening function.

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