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The Start of the Cricket Season

I'm shocked to realise that a considerable number of sport-related blogs on this page are about football - well, it is the climax to the season I suppose (the winter one that is) - but I'm going to correct that with some talk about a much more beautiful game.

I popped down to Chelmsford the other day to watch Essex play the New Zealand tourists. It was the first cricket match I'd been to see for nine months. The start of the season is like the dawning of summer itself, when you've been through the grim, damp, depressing winter, and the first warm light of optimism begins to appear at the end of the tunnel.

Standing at the River End at Chelmsford that morning, and getting a first magical view of the cricket, I was instantly taken back to 1981, when the Australians were the touring side at Chelmsford - that memorable year of Ian Botham's triumphant return to form in The Ashes after he was sacked as England captain.

As for the cricket today, the New Zealanders are a persistently underrated side, less celebrated than their illustrious Australian neighbours, but no less determined. They beat Essex in this match, by 92 runs, in their warm-up for the current Test series against England. The pundits say that England "should beat" New Zealand, but from what I saw of them, they're a no-nonsense, pragmatic side who should give Michael Vaughan's men a pretty good run for their money.

Good weather permitting!