Life of a globetrotting cricket journalist

Something in the rhythm of cricket – whether the hurly-burly of a T20 or the less frenetic, sometimes plain slow, pace of a first class match – promotes conversation, that wonderfully natural exchange of thoughts that relies on one’s generosity to let another speak and then to take another’s point. So it’s no wonder that cricket has produced some of the best writing on sport – words seem woven into the game. The words started to appear differently in the late-90s, as screen replaced paper. We’d become used to ceefax clicking over every two minutes – “There’s Gooch’s 300!” – but now Cricinfo gave us ball-by-ball coverage of matches in heart-stopping F5 action!