Good old-fashioned

"May you live in interesting times" is reputed to be an ancient Chinese curse, and a very accurate one as well, if the current fiasco surrounding the Olympic Torch is anything to go by. To describe cricket's current climate as "interesting", however, would be a damnable understatement. The lure of India's megabucks has turned the game into a dairy full of cash-cows, and whatever the pros and cons of the upheaval that's in store, the one thing that's certain is uncertainty.

And yet, you wouldn't believe it to observe the current languid state of English cricket. Beneath the surface, administrators' feet are paddling frantically as challenges spring up from every corner of the game, but so far as the public eye is concerned, the status quo is being maintained to the point of stupefaction. At the season's official launch at Lord's on Monday, the ECB chairman, Giles Clarke, was robust to the point of self-parody in his defence of England's interests, but throughout an anachronistic week, his message of "don't panic!" has been unexpectedly easy to swallow.

On Wednesday, for instance, we had the launch of the 145th edition of the Wisden Cricketers' Almanack. The Bible of cricket has been reborn for another year and the occasion, as ever, dripped with pomp and circumstance. Cricket's finest scribes dusted off their dinner jackets, retreated to the opulent environs of the Inner Temple Hall in Blackfriars, and considered the health of a game that has changed beyond recognition since 1947, the year in which the oldest man on show, Sir Alec Bedser (90 in July) was unveiled as one of Wisden's Five Cricketers of the Year.

Then, on Thursday, many of the same characters returned to Lord's to witness the first day of the season's curtain-raiser between MCC and the Champion County, Sussex. Fourteen wickets fell on a bitingly cold day, and to call the 100-strong crowd a smattering would be an exaggeration, but all the same, it felt like the start of something - something threadbare, maybe, but something familiar and undeniably reassuring. Everything that is cricket in the last six months has been obsessed with novelty and opportunity, but for a fleeting five days, dignity and tradition have been restored to centre stage.

For an overwhelming proportion of the game's followers, however, such traits aren't exactly reassuring - of the world's mainstream sports, only golf has a greater propensity to disappear up its own backside than cricket, and just as Tiger Woods came barnstorming into the clubhouse to deliver a few home truths at the end of the millennium, so the IPL is seen by many to offer a similar brand of deliverance.

For the time being, however, the IPL is - to all intents and purposes - an irrelevance to England. Such a state of affairs cannot and will not last. Dimitri Mascarenhas has led where other bigger names would dearly love to follow, and on Wednesday Jeremy Snape joined him in a low-key but not insignificant coaching appointment. For one season only, however, it's all off-limits to England's stars. They have been forbidden from going to the ball, and instead they must knuckle down for the latest installment of cricket's own never-ending story.

By the time hostilities finally cease in late June, England and New Zealand will have faced each other in 19 consecutive international fixtures - two Twenty20s followed by five ODIs, then three Tests, three more Tests, another Twenty20 and finally five more ODIs. That sort of an itinerary would be overkill even for the ratings junkies who demand that India and Pakistan play each other on a tri-annual basis - let alone for two sides who, on the rare occasions they meet, have not been renowned for baring their teeth at one another.

But circumstance has pitched England and New Zealand together for a four-month sparring session, and who's to say that, in 12 months' time, when the implications of cricket's new world order are clearer, these few weeks will not be looked upon with a certain wistful fondness? For, if one thing is clear from the past week's activities, the tempo at which England likes to play and ponder its cricket is several notches below breakneck speed. It is why Test cricket remains king in this country, despite the global stampede towards the 20-over game.

New Zealand is a land that prefers to do things slowly as well, but it was only when England came across for their Test series last month that they recalled their love of the languid. By common consent - from the CEOs of the host venues at Hamilton, Wellington and Napier to the groundstaff who partied the night away after the series had been won and lost at McLean Park - the England Tests were the best advert for the game that their country had been exposed to in years.

It didn't matter that the series was lost in such a disappointing fashion, despite New Zealand's memorable win in the first Test at Hamilton. What mattered was the atmosphere in the grounds and the sense of inclusiveness that was fostered during each match. For this, the Barmy Army deserves an immense amount of credit for their wit and good humour, as well as their stoicism in the face of more disasters than can realistically have been expected in such a low-key series.

But really, the New Zealand series worked because it was a throwback to a more peaceful era. Money was not of the essence, hence NZC's wonderful decision to do away with their concrete stadia and host their Tests in the picturesque, grassy-banked "boutique" venues of the North Island. The quality of the cricket was pretty average as well - two flawed sides made basic errors in each game, though in doing so, they actually increased the spectacle ten-fold.

And then there was the crowd control - which was almost non-existent at times. The Barmy Army, in fact, were so well-behaved that, at one stage of the Napier Test, one of the flourescent-vested security men lent his jacket to a member of the public so that he could try out the job for himself. It's hard to envisage the Green Team at Lord's dropping their guard to quite the same extent, but it's equally impossible to imagine any disturbances marring the return visit. Perhaps one might classify the New Zealand leg of the summer as boring, but then boredom is an under-rated aspect of the cricket-watching experience. One-thousand-six-hundred-and-eighty pages of Wisden will testify to that. Interesting times, after all, aren't always a blessing.