It had me at “Hello”

I’ve loved the game of cricket ever since my father invented ‘roof-catch’. He would stand in the back garden of our house and send me to the front garden to wait expectantly for a tennis ball to appear in the skyline. The challenge was simple. Catch the ball.

I would hear his cricket bat thwack with a sound that I still love today and look up in wonder at how high that tennis ball could climb. I would spend an eternity shuffling my feet while the ball was in flight to have the best chance of getting my small hands to clasp around the ball as it thundered towards me after sailing over the roof of our house. A caught ball was a magnificent feeling.

From these early roots a love for cricket sprang. Inevitably, Botham was my hero and Willis was the subject of my bowling impersonations. A mini marathon of a run up that would leave me exhausted by the time my flailing arms would windmill wildly in emulation.

In many ways, I feel as though my early love of bat and ball, came to a kind of climax in September of this year. I had heroes once again. The test matches I watched in the Ashes series rekindled a very childlike idolisation of the game that I hadn’t realised had been missing for many years.

In my youth, Botham would hook a fiery Lillee for repetitive sixes with barely open eyes. Each swaggering swipe of his blade a minor miracle of instinctive ability. Fearless displays of match turning heroics. As an adult now, and with only slightly more maturity, I watched a new breed of heroes take to a new Australian attack in such a reminiscent way as to heighten my adrenalin and prickle my nerve endings. That Ashes cricket was just magical and it turned me from a fan back into a child.

I’ve enjoyed (nearly) all the cricket I have watched in the twenty odd years since Botham reigned magnificent. But the Ashes were different. I was immersed in the series to the point of obsession. It lived with me not just during games but in between. It owned me for that time. From the first ball bowled at Lords I was captivated. It had me at “Hello”.

And now there is a small empty place, that somehow I know won’t be filled for a long time to come, perhaps ever, and as a cricket fan I find that a touch sad.

I’m back to just enjoying cricket. A pre-ashes state that I was quite happy in, having forgotten how magnificent a feast this game can serve up. But knowing now, the extraordinary heights to which this game can elevate, all other matches by comparison seem flat.

The current Australia – South Africa series has been pretty good so far. The first test has ebbed and flowed until at the time of writing, Australia asserted themselves and look set for victory. All good stuff. Good test match cricket. Good game. But hollow.

England took a thumping in Pakistan and if I am truly frank, I didn’t really care. They lost a couple of ranking points, lost the series but despite being an England fan I was not too bothered at all. There was simply no emotional rope to tie me around the series.

In twelve months time I’ll enjoy the Ashes in Australia, not least because I’ll be in the same hemisphere and able to watch the games without matchsticks in my eyes. With a bit of luck I’ll cross the Tasman Sea and spend some time at The Gabba or The WACA and I know that if my credit card can stand the strain it will be a great experience.

But I also know it will disappoint. Even if the games are close and even if England retain that preposterous little urn, I will be disappointed, because so many of the ingredients of this year’s ashes cake will be missing. There won’t be the sixteen years between drinks to set the scene. There won’t quite be the same level of greatness should England win.

Three months have passed since the Ashes and I realise that for all the summer gave me, it took away slightly more. Its concentrated spectacle has diluted all other cricket to thinner viewing. Watching cricket now is like dancing in an empty ballroom. The music’s great and dancing feels good, but there is an empty echo inside the deserted venue.

I still love the game. I still wish my knees weren’t aging a decade ahead of the rest of my body and I had something to offer a club with low standards. I will of course, still play cricket on the beach with my son because that’s what Dad’s do, because it’s great fun and because sand is more forgiving on my joints.

I will no doubt rekindle ‘roof-cricket’ to keep a family tradition alive. But for now at least, all cricket is lifeless by comparison and I miss the feeling of being captivated and engaged in a way that no sport should really have a right to do.

In a month of record breakers, with Lara, Warne and New Zealand all scribing their various achievements in the chronicles of history, nothing has yet come close to reigniting that passionate affair with the game.

For me at least, unless something drastic changes it, cricket will always be a beautiful game. I find so many aspects of it fascinating and entertaining. Perhaps by the time my son is old enough to look back and reflect on any fondness he may have for its intricacies, there will be another season of magic, and if that is the case, then I hope I’m still around to let it cast its spell over me one more time.