Joys of cricket

When I told a friend that I was looking forward to the cricket season and watching Essex play, he replied: “Ah, cricket - that wonderful penumbra between doing nothing and something.”

Apart from being a rather pithy turn of phrase, it probably summarises very well what most casual observers think of cricket: Hours and hours of seeming inactivity and tedium punctuated by brief spurts of excitement. Actually, that sounds like life in general, doesn’t it?

However, I think most people would change their view of the game if they had to stand at one end of a 22 yard pitch with some brute juggernauting towards them from the other end, preparing to hurl a hard, leather-encased ball at them at top tilt.

They might even feel a slight frisson of excitement or fear as they realise they have around half a second to react from when the ball leaves the bowler’s hand before it makes contact with some soft or breakable part of their anatomy.

But if you don’t really know or love the game, it all must look like a rather idiosyncratic and anachronistic game full of unfathomable rules, strange rituals and long periods where nothing really happens.

After all, this is a sport where, when played at its highest level, a match can last five days... and even then there isn't necessarily a result.

The subtleties of field placements, of the ball spinning, seaming or swinging (or reverse swinging), of weather playing such a major part in the outcome of a match, must all seem rather absurd to those not enamoured of cricket.

But I love the way a game of cricket can be an unfolding combination of the sublime and the ridiculous, of the brilliant and baffling.

It is a sport that is as eccentric, ridiculous and magnificent as the very best English inventions (although it is now rumoured that the Belgians actually invented cricket).

So bring on the thwack of willow on leather, the smell of freshly cut grass, long summer days and warm beer. I don't like cricket... I love it.