ANYONE going down to St John’s Wood tomorrow is in for a big surprise. It is not that Bangladesh are playing their first Test match at the home of cricket, it is that archery is moving in on the outfield.

Leather and willow do not mix well with bows and arrows, so the targets will be set up only during the lunch interval. Great Britain’s Olympic squad will be doing the shooting, but somewhere behind the venerable pavilion will be an all-day “have a go” area.

It is the second time in four months that the target sport has hit Lord’s. If London’s bid to host the Olympic Games in 2012 is successful, it is where the archery competition will be held. The demonstration to the IOC delegates in February was, then, serious stuff — until some of the officials fired a few shots of their own and dissolved into fits of laughter in front of the nation’s cameras.

“They weren’t brilliant, put it that way,” Lynne Evans, chairman of the Grand National Archery Society and a former Olympian, said. “But it was a lovely atmosphere and the fascinating thing about archery is, most people want to have a go.”

It took only a glimpse through a crumbly wall in 1962 to inspire Evans at the age of 14. “There was an old manor house near where we lived in Bristol,” she said. “You could see through a broken bit of wall to where a lady was shooting on the lawns. It looked so lovely that my Mum said we should have a go.”

The family went to an event in nearby Thornbury and the teenager was hooked. Well, almost; Evans, who is right-handed, initially struggled. “So they checked my eyes and realised I was left-eye dominant,” she said. “They turned me round and it was like magic. I was away.”

Within five years she was in the Britain team and in 1970, in Poland, broke the world record. “That achievement is very dear to my heart,” Evans said, “but nothing compares to competing in an Olympic Games.”

However, the Munich Games of 1972 were not what anyone expected. The massacre of 11 Israel athletes after Arab terrorists broke into the Olympic village was a horror that haunted Evans. “Trying to cope with the emotion of that was indefinable,” she said. “We didn’t have sports psychologists then. When I came home I didn’t know where I was. I decided to try a normal life and walked away from archery.”

Two sons and 11 years later, a chance advert in the local paper ended her retirement. “We were living in Abergavenny and I read that the Olympic team were coming to Raglan,” Evans, who now lives with her husband, Keith, in Wells, in Somerset, said. “I put on my coat and went to see.”

Six years later she was back in the Britain team. Evans qualified for the Olympics in 1992 but decided against competing in Barcelona. “There was a lot of soul-searching,” she said, “but something inside told me not to go for it. By then I was getting into the administrative side and it had become more of a draw than competing.”

Evans was elected on to the sport’s International Federation in 1993 and by 1997 had become vice-president. On June 19 she will know if her ambition to become the president of Fita, the international governing body, has been successful. “I’m not the front-runner,” she said, “but the election is important to me. Being the president is not simply about shaking hands and being nice to people , it’s about delivering the sport globally and I’m excited about playing a part in that.”

No surprise, then, that the hierarchy at Lord’s was persuaded to welcome back archery so quickly. “Tomorrow’s demonstration is a wonderful opportunity to raise the profile of our sport,” Evans, who competes for her local club, said. “The main thing is for people to see that archery at Lord’s can be fantastic.”

So, too, of course, can cricket and Evans intends to soak up the atmosphere. “Lots of people take up archery purely because of its history,” she said. “There’s certainly plenty of that at Lord’s. I really felt it walking through the Long Room for the first time. It’s in the walls, coming out at you. It’s just extraordinary.” Which is what most of the cricket crowd will probably be thinking come lunchtime tomorrow.