Today provides one of the most beautiful, delicate feelings that I know and wait for, and first I have to provide some backstory.
I love cricket.
In particular, Test cricket. A match lasts 5 days.
So there’s room for back-and-forths, intense 20 minute periods of play forcing one team into sure defeat, then slow steady day-long grinds back into it against all belief – if they have the character for it.
All of life is in Test cricket.
I gave an overview, drew a lesson (do not keep your eye on the ball!) and waxed lyrical some time ago (2022).
Anyway.
So a match lasts 5 days.
And matches are played in a series, like a series of three or - better - a five match series.
So during the winter, England will travel, this year to Australia. They head off in November.
During the summer other teams visit England. For instance India have just completed a five match series in England, just today.
Which means Test cricket falls into two seasons, it’s all very weather dependent as you might imagine:
- in the winter, because of timezones, I leave the cricket on all night and listen ambiently as I sleep - or don’t sleep - or get up at 4am and doze in the dark with the TV on
- in the summer I have the radio on while I work or run errands (the cricket day is 11am till 6.30pm), or if I can’t then BBC Sport is the only notification I allow through to my Apple Watch, so the tap-tap on my wrist of wickets falling becomes a slow metronome over the day, and it’s incredible what a rich signal even that can become.
A five match series takes maybe 7 weeks. There are short breaks between games.
Today the result came down to the final day: will England win the series 3-1? Or will India win the final Test and draw the series 2-2? A draw is extraordinary for a touring side.
Actually it often comes down to the final hour of a match and even of a series.
Two teams mentally and physically slugging it out for over a month.
Sometimes players break and go home and maybe never play again. Bodies are on the line; bones are broken, players - as this morning - are making runs through the pain of dislocation just to let the team stay out for a few more minutes.
So I watch (and listen) and go to see matches live too.
My mood during a Test season is governed pretty much by how the England men’s team is doing (that’s who I follow).
I’m tense or ebullient or totally distracted or keep-it-calm, steady-as-she-goes hoping my watch doesn’t tap-tap for a wicket as England try to rebuild.
That’s how it has been over this summer.
(I know it’s only the beginning of August. Unusually England have no more Test matches this summer, so that’s it until the winter tour, though there will be other forms of cricket to watch.)
I was at the Oval yesterday for day 4 of the fifth test against India.
England had been on top at the beginning of the match, then India got back in it, then England, then India, then England had the remotest possible chance of climbing towards a heroic victory…
…and that’s what day 4 was shaping up to be, as unlikely as that would be, I was there to witness that climb, a tense brick-by-brick build to an England win that would be out of reach for almost any side, except this special side…
…then India, who are fighters too and also don’t know when they’re beaten - somehow with energy and endurance still after a whole day pushing hard - broke through when things otherwise seemed done and dusted and the game is wide open once again, the relentless drums and the obstinate chipping away and…
You see that’s how it is.
Bad light and then rain stopped play at the end of day 4. No matter, day 5. You wonder how the players sleep at night.
England lost finally.
There’s no fairytale ending guaranteed in cricket, though the force of narrative does often operate, carrying the impossible into inevitability through will and the momentum of story.
So my nerves are shredded and I lost an hour this morning, which is all of day 5 it took, staring at the radio, willing England to do it…
They didn’t. As I said, India won the match and drew the series 2-2.
It wasn’t quite up there with Australia in England 2023 which my god was the greatest series since 2005 – but, y’know, close.
Oh and in 2023 I was there on the final day there at the Oval and I could write a hundred pages on that day, it was exquisite, sublime, being there in that final moment, to sit there, to witness it.
Back to that feeling I was talking about.
You know, I could talk about everything else in life this is like, because there’s a lot, but I’ll let you think about that and meanwhile I’ll talk about cricket.
The last ball is bowled, the result is known, the series is over and –
it’s just a game.
That’s the feeling, that moment of transition where this drama which has been fizzing in the back of my head and the pit of my stomach for the last two months, and it means so much, just… slips away… and it was all just a game, it doesn’t matter.
It’s beautiful.
And sad.
And beautiful.
Traditionally the last match of the Test summer is played at the Oval in south London - not always - and the ground is up the road from me, so I try to be there if I’m lucky enough to get a ticket.
I wasn’t there this year because the game went to day 5. So I saw the last full day, but not the final hour.
And more usually the last Test would be in September too.
But.
There is something about the Oval in the early evening light, when the shadows are getting long and the blue sky has wispy clouds and it is headed towards evening, and you’ve been sitting there all day, emotionally exhausted from riding the waves of the day and the last couple of months, you willingly gave yourself to it all that time, when the tension slips away,
the dream of summer is done
and you feel lost because something has ended and simultaneously great joy to be able to look back at it and re-live moments in your thoughts, the transition from current experience to mere memory occurs in minutes.
You sit back and you gaze at the green field and the players still in their whites being interviewed, and the blue sky and the noise of people all around and the tension is gone, and the fists in the sky or the head in your hands from only seconds before ebbs away and in the end none of it matters and you were there, you lived it, and you soak it in that feeling.
I wasn’t able to have that this year, the stars didn’t align.
Which means that next time –
Today provides one of the most beautiful, delicate feelings that I know and wait for, and first I have to provide some backstory.
I love cricket.
In particular, Test cricket. A match lasts 5 days.
So there’s room for back-and-forths, intense 20 minute periods of play forcing one team into sure defeat, then slow steady day-long grinds back into it against all belief – if they have the character for it.
All of life is in Test cricket.
I gave an overview, drew a lesson (do not keep your eye on the ball!) and waxed lyrical some time ago (2022).
Anyway.
So a match lasts 5 days.
And matches are played in a series, like a series of three or - better - a five match series.
So during the winter, England will travel, this year to Australia. They head off in November.
During the summer other teams visit England. For instance India have just completed a five match series in England, just today.
Which means Test cricket falls into two seasons, it’s all very weather dependent as you might imagine:
A five match series takes maybe 7 weeks. There are short breaks between games.
Today the result came down to the final day: will England win the series 3-1? Or will India win the final Test and draw the series 2-2? A draw is extraordinary for a touring side.
Actually it often comes down to the final hour of a match and even of a series.
Two teams mentally and physically slugging it out for over a month.
Sometimes players break and go home and maybe never play again. Bodies are on the line; bones are broken, players - as this morning - are making runs through the pain of dislocation just to let the team stay out for a few more minutes.
So I watch (and listen) and go to see matches live too.
My mood during a Test season is governed pretty much by how the England men’s team is doing (that’s who I follow).
I’m tense or ebullient or totally distracted or keep-it-calm, steady-as-she-goes hoping my watch doesn’t tap-tap for a wicket as England try to rebuild.
That’s how it has been over this summer.
(I know it’s only the beginning of August. Unusually England have no more Test matches this summer, so that’s it until the winter tour, though there will be other forms of cricket to watch.)
I was at the Oval yesterday for day 4 of the fifth test against India.
England had been on top at the beginning of the match, then India got back in it, then England, then India, then England had the remotest possible chance of climbing towards a heroic victory…
…and that’s what day 4 was shaping up to be, as unlikely as that would be, I was there to witness that climb, a tense brick-by-brick build to an England win that would be out of reach for almost any side, except this special side…
…then India, who are fighters too and also don’t know when they’re beaten - somehow with energy and endurance still after a whole day pushing hard - broke through when things otherwise seemed done and dusted and the game is wide open once again, the relentless drums and the obstinate chipping away and…
You see that’s how it is.
Bad light and then rain stopped play at the end of day 4. No matter, day 5. You wonder how the players sleep at night.
England lost finally.
There’s no fairytale ending guaranteed in cricket, though the force of narrative does often operate, carrying the impossible into inevitability through will and the momentum of story.
So my nerves are shredded and I lost an hour this morning, which is all of day 5 it took, staring at the radio, willing England to do it…
They didn’t. As I said, India won the match and drew the series 2-2.
It wasn’t quite up there with Australia in England 2023 which my god was the greatest series since 2005 – but, y’know, close.
Oh and in 2023 I was there on the final day there at the Oval and I could write a hundred pages on that day, it was exquisite, sublime, being there in that final moment, to sit there, to witness it.
Back to that feeling I was talking about.
You know, I could talk about everything else in life this is like, because there’s a lot, but I’ll let you think about that and meanwhile I’ll talk about cricket.
The last ball is bowled, the result is known, the series is over and –
it’s just a game.
That’s the feeling, that moment of transition where this drama which has been fizzing in the back of my head and the pit of my stomach for the last two months, and it means so much, just… slips away… and it was all just a game, it doesn’t matter.
It’s beautiful.
And sad.
And beautiful.
Traditionally the last match of the Test summer is played at the Oval in south London - not always - and the ground is up the road from me, so I try to be there if I’m lucky enough to get a ticket.
I wasn’t there this year because the game went to day 5. So I saw the last full day, but not the final hour.
And more usually the last Test would be in September too.
But.
There is something about the Oval in the early evening light, when the shadows are getting long and the blue sky has wispy clouds and it is headed towards evening, and you’ve been sitting there all day, emotionally exhausted from riding the waves of the day and the last couple of months, you willingly gave yourself to it all that time, when the tension slips away,
the dream of summer is done
and you feel lost because something has ended and simultaneously great joy to be able to look back at it and re-live moments in your thoughts, the transition from current experience to mere memory occurs in minutes.
You sit back and you gaze at the green field and the players still in their whites being interviewed, and the blue sky and the noise of people all around and the tension is gone, and the fists in the sky or the head in your hands from only seconds before ebbs away and in the end none of it matters and you were there, you lived it, and you soak it in that feeling.
I wasn’t able to have that this year, the stars didn’t align.
Which means that next time –