I will state here an now that the up coming Olympics leaves me stone cold and I don't suppose I shall be tuning in much, though I daresay there will be times when it is unavoidable. My sports interests are fairly limited to football, tennis and cricket and while Andy Murray seems to be a possibility now for a medal, such has been his progress since Wimbledon, cricket is not classified as an Olympic sport and probably just as well as the current state of the English test team would mean an early plane home.
I love cricket but did not come to the appreciation of this magnificent game until I was in my thirties. Sometimes the good things are enjoyed more as one gets older. And, yes, I used to belong to the school of 'You mean they play for five days and it is a draw and nobody wins?' school of thought and can fully understand this reaction. I came to Test cricket via one day matches which initially aroused my interest and thought they were so much more exciting, but now I am a total devotee of Test matches in any shape or form. For their five day length, they ebb and flow, the match can be finely balanced, or not, periods of quiet when digging in to hold onto your wicket is the best thing to do, then a batsman will hit out with wild abandon, wily spin bowling, fast bowling, bouncers hurtling past the batsman's ears, diving catches, dropped catches, it is all wonderful and unless one team is definitely wiping you out (sounds familiar 
anyone?), then the game is totally absorbing. I have sometimes likened watching such a match to a performance of Wagner's Ring Cycle where you have huge exciting bits, and then quiet thoughtful dialogues and then off we go again. And yes, when I have said this before non-cricket lovers have agreed with me and said that Wagner is boring and so is Cricket. I held my tongue and did not reply.
Now we have not covered ourselves in glory this summer, the Saffers have just won the test series, their first since being readmitted into the Cricketing world again, and nobody can begrudge this to them, but despite the result I have really enjoyed watching these matches (well perhaps we had better forget about Headingley), and the test last week at Edgbaston was a nail biter. In the end South Africa won fairly easily but this was not guaranteed until their captain Graham Smith came to the crease and just stayed there scoring a wonderful century. This test match included all I have mentioned above, moments where nothing much happened, then a simply stunning few overs from Flintoff in the evening removing two batsmen, and then the redemption of an out of form Paul Collingwood with a magnificent century, Kevin Petersen getting to 94 and then playing a daft shot and getting out. I could go on and on but will refrain from boring you any more. This test is living proof that it is the best form of cricket and that other pretenders such as the 20/20 matches will never reach this standard of play and enjoyment.
In the wake of this defeat, Michael Vaughan has now gone and KP takes over for the last dead match in this series and this is going to be very interesting to watch indeed. Lots of anti-KP in the papers and I shall be hoping that he can confound his critics and prove a good captain. The Ashes await next year - oh dear...
As a final note, in 1997 when Our Beloved Leader (in case of misunderstanding please note I am being heavily sarcastic here) Tony Blair fought his way through cheering happy crowds of ordinary Labour voters (turned out they were party workers from Labour HQ) after the Labour landslide, and John Major had packed his bags and left No.10, where did he go? back home to sigh over lost power, sell his story to the tabloids? Au contraire. He turned up on the balcony at Lords, beaming all over his face and sat down to watch the cricket for the rest of the day.
Now that is what I call getting your priorities right.
