Sports Photo of the Year - Flintoff consoling Brett Lee Ashes 2005
Those of you who think cricket is the most boring game in the world - look away now. I fully understand your view point because this is how I used to feel before I saw the light and realised that cricket is the most wonderful game in the universe. I was lucky to have a friend whose father, Bill, was a member of the Nottingham Cricket Club and when I used to stay with her family, he would take me to one day matches and explain it all to me. I was soon hooked but found Test Matches slow and boring in comparison. Yes, well I was young and foolish.....
One day Bill and I were stuck indoors at a time when the pollen count was off the radar and we could not sit in the garden and a test match was in the offing. We, therefore, spent from 11am to close of play at around 6 pm, in front of the TV. Bill was in his element, teaching me about field placings, why a certain field was set for a combination of a particular batsman and bowler, the names of all the positions and initiated me into the mysteries of an inside edge, batting off leg stump, what a yorker was and explained what the commentators meant when they said 'oh he's doing a bit of gardening' (batsman banging down the pitch with his bat); that is a 'useful innings' (nothing spectacular but keeping the show on the road). He also explained the role of the Night Watchman (only Night watchman I had come across then was in the second act of Die Meistersinger) so I was enchanted by this.
Thus, an addiction was born that came to full fruition on the occasion of Botham's Ashes in the 80's when I was superglued to the television throughout the Test Series and, perforce, my two daughter who were then about 5 and 7. I am pretty sure that both my children did well at school as they learned the art of sitting still and concentrating during these Tests and by the time they went to University they could discourse learnedly on the finer points of cricket. My elder daughter, Kathryn, told me that her street cred rocketed when she was able to sit up all night with a gang of lads in her Hall of Residence watching an Ashes series, and argue the finer points of cricket with them.
So now we are facing the Old Enemy again this winter and defending the Ashes. I have to say that the test series last year was, without doubt, the greatest I have ever seen since the Botham tests. Nail biting was not the word, knuckle gnawing was nearer the mark. I took a couple of days off work for the last Test as I knew I would not be able to concentrate - as it was I had had the score board in the corner of my computer screen at work for the entire series, and every time we took a wicket I would shoot down the corridor and bash into Allan, one of our cricket loving partners, who was racing down to tell me the same thing! It just got very silly and nobody could concentrate.
Kathryn was in Greece on holiday for the last Test which she was very annoyed about and I ended up sending her text messages every time we lost a wicket (which was shudderingly often on the last day) or calling her on the beach where she was waiting. The news I gave her was then broadcast to all around her (beach was full of anxious cricket lovers) and when I finally rang and told her we had won the Ashes I could hear the screams all the way from Paxos.
I have to admit that at one stage on the last day of the last Test, I actually turned the television off and 
went out for a walk as my nerves were in shreds. As the wickets fell, I began to think we were not going to do it and from the expressions on the faces of the crowd, they felt the same. Then of course, on came Kevin Pietersen, with his appalling skunk style hair cut, now happily no longer with us (the hair cut that is not Kevin!), took over, decided to tonk Shane Warne out the ground and the rest is history....
The Test Matches of course have now gone to Sky so people like me who do not have satellite TV, as we do not have coverage in my dip in the ground where I live (makes me sound like a Hobbit does it not?) were left furious and bereft, but at least we have the consolation that the Beeb has managed to come to an agreement to show the highlights each day. OK so it is at midnight but better than nothing and perhaps it is just as well I cannot sit and watch it all day. Not sure I would survive.
So next week it begins - at Melbourne. The Barmy Army are out in force, words of Jerusalem memorised, factor 33 at the ready.
LET BATTLE COMMENCE
