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You can sit back from the edge of your seats, we stayed up.
We did it the hard way: lost, but got the points. So next year we will remain
in Regional Division One of what is generally thought to be the largest of its
kind in the world, The Hampshire Cricket League (HCL).
I guess that kind of thing is hard to measure, and it sort
of depends where you stop counting. There were, as far as I can tell, 342 men’s
cricket teams competing in the HCL this year. Weather permitting that’s 3762
blokes playing league cricket throughout Hampshire every summer Saturday.
That’s not counting kids, colts, women and girls, a thriving
disabled programme, or the 40 Southern Premier sides. Or of course the
countless groundsmen, umpires, coaches, scorers, treasurers, tea-makers,
secretaries and supporters. The point is, there’s a lot of us. All over the
country there are many many thousands of people whose leisure time and social
life revolve around recreational cricket.
Then all of a sudden, at the end of August, it just stops.
It’s an abrupt and cruel cessation. One minute you’re
playing Saturday and Wednesday league and seeing if you can get away with the
odd Sunday as well, the next minute there’s nothing but a couple of September
friendlies, a few chilly net sessions and the occasional indoor game between you
and a howling empty void, eight long months stretching ahead of you like a term
in solitary confinement.
Usually, there is at least a winter Test tour or two to keep
us going. But the England Test team now has a similar layoff to your average
English club side. Eight cricket-free months with only the scraps off the table
to be going on with.
By scraps off the table, I mean of course one dayers. After
India we’re off to Sri Lanka, then there’s a tri-series in Australia before the
World Cup. Because the World Cup is absolutely what this dearth is all about.
It’s the sole reason for last year’s back-to-back Ashes, and why this year’s
decks have been cleared.
No one else is having a Test detox. All the other Test
nations play the long game right up to the World Cup. But I guess if we’re ever
going to take ODIs seriously, we do need a run at it. As someone on twitter
said recently, England still treat them like short Tests, while everyone else
treats them like long T20s. We have until February to figure that out.
Next spring the Test drought is followed instantly by a
flood. When the dam finally breaks, England play a faintly crazy 17 Tests in 10
months. In the meantime it’s either a strict diet of maximum-bosh-wallop, or
watching the rest of the world play Tests. Until the first Saturday in May 2015
when the league starts up again, those are our choices. (Hint: Pakistan vs
Australia starts next month.)
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