A day's grace

15th April

English cricket’s County Championship begins today. Ever since I turned on to following the daily cricket scores in the next morning’s newspaper (May 11th 1961 to be precise) it’s been for me the living, beating, at times over-stressed heart of the game. Today ten of the eighteen county teams will be playing variously at Taunton, Southampton, Leicester, Chelmsford and south London’s Kennington Oval.

Now, these aren’t necessarily places the average American tourist is likely to take in, given a precious fortnight on vacation from the drudgery of real estate or due legal process in Cleveland, Charlotte or Chattanooga. Yes, of course your priorities are to take in the Tower of London, Oxford, Bath, Edinburgh, even Stratford upon Avon. But if you had a fifteenth day, and you found yourself unaccountably drawn to Grace Road in Leicester or the Rose Bowl in Southampton, what would you find?

Well firstly, this isn’t going to be an expensive day out, compared with a night at the London theatre, where a single ticket will easily set you back sixty quid. You’re unlikely to pay a third of that – and this show lasts longer than a Springsteen gig! Secondly, the very good news is that for most of these grounds the weather forecast today is good, and in south London a sunny 70 fahrenheit’s a possibility, though I’d still advise taking some sweaters and a waterproof. Some preconceptions about England really need subverting, but the meteorological ones can’t be totally denied. Expect the unexpected.

You’ll want to arrive at about a quarter to eleven in the morning. The greeting at the turnstile may be nearer dour than effusive. The guy selling you the ticket may not look like he gives a damn, but he loves you really, baby: he just has a funny way of showing it. You’ll probably be able to choose where to sit around the ground, and your actual point of view will be significant. Most likely you’ll want to change it during the day, chasing the sun and out of sheer curiosity.

At about the time you arrive the two captains will walk to the middle of the ground and flip a coin for the right to choose whether to bat or bowl. They’ll carefully inspect the pitch, if they haven’t already done so, looking for tell-tale signs of dampness or too much grass, which might aid the bowling team. The pitch is a strip cut from a carefully laid and protected square of turf in the ground’s centre. The composition of that area is a dark art. The way the pitch will play will be central to the fortunes of the game, and the poor groundsman will take the blame for preparing it wrongly if the players struggle. From side on, watch for the way the ball bounces. Is there a high bounce with the ball carrying through with a smack into the upward-pointing gloves of the wicket-keeper? Or does he have to sweep up the ball by his toes? Is the bounce consistent? The batsman’s reactions will give you clues too. How suspiciously does he prod the pitch after a few balls received? Does he take one hand away anxiously from the bat as it makes high contact with the ball?

As the fielders walk on to the ground at eleven o’clock to a rallying cry from the Tannoys there’ll be no more than a polite ripple of applause. There couldn’t be more than that. There are, after all, only a few hundred in at best. The ground looks wonderful: freshly painted, adequately staffed and appointed, and already you’re thinking, ‘how do the economics of this work?’ The answer is that they barely do. Catch this experience while you can. It’s an endangered species of entertainment.

Check out your fellow-watchers. Find some of the old boys and sit near them if you want local flavour, though you don’t have to go very far out of London for what they say to be fairly impenetrable. My local team is Northamptonshire, and after thirty-five years living there I sometimes have to strain to catch the sense - and it only takes 48 minutes by the fastest train to get to London from Northampton! Whatever these seniors say is likely to be pungent, but not necessarily well-reasoned, and may refer to moments of cricket history now long gone. It’s a good place to learn English vernacular, but hesitate before you reproduce some of the choicest phrases in polite company.

Since it’s still the school Easter holidays, there’ll be some schoolchildren (probably male). If they have glasses and a notebook, you may also hear them giving a make-believe ball-by-ball radio commentary on proceedings. This is an ancient tradition: a subject I can’t believe we won’t return to later in the summer. As lunchtime approaches there may be some walk-up from business people, if the ground is within striking distance of a town centre. There’ll be a scattering of women, sometimes younger rather than older. Since this is early season, they may be wives and girlfriends of the players. In Leicester today as in Northampton, they may speak with a marked South African accent: both teams have suffered criticism for the number of their imports. However don’t assume the WAGs bit. More women are knowledgeably supporting male team sports than once was the case. This is very obviously the case in rugby and soccer, but it’s also true of cricket to a smaller degree. More women play all three of these sports than was true even ten years ago.

Like listening to a symphony orchestra in a concert hall, I personally find the experience of watching live sport these days excitingly hyper-real. All that telly-watching has somehow habituated me to the idea that ‘real’ experience is two-dimensional and mediated through a box in the corner of the sitting room. Here in the stadium the grass seems impossibly green, the whites of the players whiter than any detergent could plausibly render them, the action closer. On this last point, taking a walk around the boundary edge of the ground is a good idea. Depending on where the pitch has been cut, one watching side may be distinctly nearer the action than another.

Observing the game side-on can be un-nerving. A fast bowler can run up, the batsman can play a false shot, the ball may be caught by a fielder close to the wicket, and the untrained eye may see nothing but the batsman turning to make his sad way back to the pavilion. Blink and you’ve missed it. So, take your courage in your hands, and try watching from behind the bowler’s arm to see the ball as the batsman night see it (though 65 yards further away). Watch it swing and cut off the pitch. But don’t dare move. If you do, you may find yourself unintentionally involved in the game as a batsman or umpire gesticulates rudely in your direction, and all one hundred and twenty three of your fellow spectators turn to glare belligerently. Batsmen come over all temperamental when the smallest thing can be alleged to have disturbed their concentration.

Play will continue until one o’clock, when lunch will be taken. At 1.40 the players will re-emerge and a further two hours play will ensue. At 4.00 pm they’ll come back a third and last time. Providing the weather holds you’re guaranteed to see 576 balls bowled in the day, less time deducted for a change of innings. Runs may be scored: perhaps 300/350 might be a par score. Wickets may fall. There will be periods of intensity and periods of apparent torpor. Around you, if it’s warm enough, people may fall asleep. Or read the paper. You may overhear the strangest conversations. But savour it. Think of each ball bowled as a little, fierce, person to person contest within a larger collective one. Traveller, you will never pass this way again.

A touch of the Irish

Cricket has its own World Cup, you know. Granted, it’s inconceivable that the winner of the next tournament (or even the one after that) could come from outside a little group of eight elite countries – England, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the West Indies, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and considering the panoply of states present at the United Nations I guess that may seem a bit pathetic to you, but at least it’s a start. Until the early nineteen-seventies the idea of a Cricket World Cup was completely unheard of, although at the time cricket was still rather an amateurish sport in terms of organisation and remuneration, and world travel was less developed.

Now there’s even a qualifying tournament, with some surprising countries slugging it out in the South African sunshine. Namibia you might expect – South African neighbours after all, and showing a fair few Voortrekker-like names in the batting line-up. Scotland perhaps. But would you have expected Denmark to figure? Or The Netherlands? Or Uganda? Or Afghanistan.

Yes, you heard correctly. Afghanistan. Remember that place?

The Afghans are the surprise package of this tournament, and considering what’s going on back home, isn’t that just a thing? In the pre-qualifying tournaments they swept all before them, and here they’ve just beaten the much-fancied Irish. Between them the Afghans mustered just 218 runs in their allotted 300 balls. (That’s 50 ‘overs’ in cricket-speak, an over being the six balls one bowler is allowed to deliver in succession.) The talented Irish batters wouldn’t have considered this too challenging a target, but they failed to make it by 22 runs. The Afghan fast bowler, Hamid Hassan, took five wickets, shattering the stumps four times, and according to his blog, was pretty overwhelmed. To think, he said, that only two years ago they’d lost to Singapore (which probably has about three cricketers) in Division 5 of the World Cricket League, and now this…

The e-mails from Afghan supporters are flooding in. Typical is one from Wali Jalalzai. ‘Congratulations to all my Afghan heroes’, he writes, ‘You really made us proud. Keep it up. We are all praying for you.’ Reading the messages is quite an emotional experience. The affirmation this win brings them carries real significance in a world where sporting success is often venal and/or trivial.

The Irish have suffered an embarrassing reverse. But in the past it’s been their role to dish it out to others, and considering their rugby and football teams are having rather a good year, if there are any good Catholics in their number perhaps they’ll see it as God’s way of keeping them humble. The best Irish cricket story concerns the 1969 West Indian team touring England. The West Indians were in the process of rebuilding a squad and lost their series of games with an unremarkable English team. But in the middle of the tour, there came a moment for what was really just a goodwill trip over the water to Ireland. The gap in class should have been unbridgeable. The Irish should have come nowhere. Instead the West Indians were caught on an unpredictable pitch and bowled out for a total of 25. This is folks, as I’m sure you recognise, a very low score indeed. In fact it’s the lowest score ever recorded against an Irish team, surpassing even the paltry 29 a New York team once managed about a hundred years ago. I’m sorry to mention that.

Was Irish hospitality to blame? Or were the West Indians just too relaxed. Or recovering from seasickness? Whatever, when they next visited Britain four years later, the itinerary mysteriously omitted a trip to the Emerald Isle. And when they returned in 1984, they took no chances and batting first scored almost 600 in their only innings. That’s sport. Up one moment, down the next. But for now, let’s hope the Afghans keep winning. They need it more than anyone else, even the Irish, despite the latter’s basket-case economy.

The curtain rises

The first-class (major league?) cricket season has begun, with what sports writers sometimes call the pipe-opener. It’s a four day match – you’re getting used to this idea, right? – between the Marylebone Cricket Club and last year’s county champions, Durham. This all needs some explanation.

First the day thing. Test Matches, between different countries, are scheduled to take five days, but may end in less if one team can force a win. They often do, sometimes in as little (!) as three days. Major regional matches within a country are often scheduled for four days. Shorter practice games sometimes take place over two or three days. But games that take one day or only a portion of one day with a limited number of balls to be bowled have become the contemporary thing. One-day matches may be played between local amateur teams or international ones. Crowds like them, because they require less attention-span, and in theory they allow for more concentrated excitement. In this sense they’re more like baseball matches, although we Brits have been slow to take to cheerleaders.

Now for the Marylebone Cricket Club. Marylebone is an ancient part of London, named after a church. It’s the home of a rather beautiful rail station, not much used now unless you’re travelling through the lovely Chiltern Hills in the direction of Birmingham, and there’s still a High Street with rather expensive shops. This road bends around a bit - unlike most straight London streets - thus revealing its ancient origins as a country lane. Just to the north of Marylebone in the leafy and exclusive suburb of St. John’s Wood lies Thomas Lord’s cricket ground which in 1814 became the home of the Cricket Club. Because this was so geographically close to the seat of power and government, the M.C.C in time became the governing body of cricket, and remained so until relatively recently. It sent British teams to tour abroad, and membership of the M.C.C. is still a cherished, fought-over, possession. I was at school with the only man I have known who became a member and wore their sartorially-challenged custard and plum jam tie. He was indicted for fraud, and subsequently committed suicide. But don’t think you can ever become an M.C.C. insider. They’ve only just let women in, and as for Americans – well, forget it. Unless your name’s Getty, of course. For the purposes of this match, the M.C.C. have selected an invitation team of eleven, all of whom are players it’s hoped may sooner or later figure in the English national team. In many ways you see, the M.C.C .and the interests of English cricket are still identical, still influenced by the same cabal of individuals. You may think this charming or exasperating. Or just what you’d have expected of the English.

If you’ve been to the UK you’ll know that the country is divided into fifty or so counties, whose origins may be more or less ancient. For instance the county of Kent can trace itself back to the pre-Roman tribe of the Cantii who roamed the extreme south-eastern part of England two thousand or more years ago. The counties remain part of the division of administration in Britain to a limited extent – for example some police forces are related to individual counties – but to many it seems rather an anomaly that cricket loyalties should still divide this way. You’d think that cities would be a more logical way of doing things, as is the case with soccer or with leading US sports, but though the idea gets tentatively floated from time to time, it has yet to properly set sail.

Durham is a latecomer to cricket’s elite levels. Its small county town should be on the ‘must-see’ of English tourist sights, with a university set high above a pretty encircling river valley. Its cricket ground in the neighbouring Chester-le-Street is overlooked by a charming, but hokey castle, which looks much older than it really is. In fact it’s a slightly musty hotel.

At the time of writing two of the four days have passed and the match isn’t a third way finished. It’s the weather, of course. The cold has to be coped with at this time of the year, but rain renders cricket impossible. The ball is wet, and can’t be controlled, the grassy outfield becomes outwith health and safety parameters, the spectators are few and miserable, and straightforwardly the whole thing stops being any fun at all. Insofar as the match is set up to be a trial for stars of the future, this one is a failure. The only man to score many runs (and the first to record a century – 100 runs in a single innings –this season) is a cheerful fellow now playing for Durham called Ian Blackwell, who was briefly tried in the England team a few years ago and found wanting. Blackwell is an honest cricketer, ruddy and cheerful of face, more rounded of body than is fashionable or thought to be athletic, and strong of forearm. He can hit the ball a long way and often on his day, but it’s said that nerves have prevented him showing his best on the biggest occasions.

Today other matches of even less significance are scheduled to begin, between counties and universities, players feeling their way into form, some finding that the game has astonishingly become far easier than it was at the end of the previous season, others feeling the shape of the ball in hand to be strangely foreign, the feet reluctant to move in the right way in addressing the ball. Many will have a pack of cards in their cricket bag: the forecast isn’t good for the next day or two, and it’ll be chilly for a month or so yet. A major tournament was due to take place in India over the next few weeks, but was cancelled because the Indian government said security couldn’t be guaranteed at the same time as a general election was to be held. There were two candidates as replacement venues. One was South Africa, the other England. So which do you think they chose? But if it rains hard in Cape Town or Johannesburg during the next week or two, my, how we shall laugh.

Pakistani touring team

A dozen young men of Pakistani origins have been arrested in confused circumstances, which do little credit to the street sense of Britain’s head of counter-terrorist policing. The man in question, Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick, was photographed going in to see the Prime Minister with a sheaf of papers under one arm, which when ‘blown up’ (a somewhat unfortunate photographic phrase in the context) revealed the nature of the intended arrests there for anyone with a long lens to see. The operation against the suspects was accordingly brought forward by ten hours, and may have been compromised, the presumption being that these kind of things usually require intense and to-the-second planning. However, as far as anyone is telling us, all the suspects were in fact brought into custody, Great Britain is as safe as it ever has been, and it now remains to be seen whether the evidence for the young Pakistanis’ participation in any possible intended terrorist outrage will be forthcoming.

All but one of the suspects were in Britain on visas which allowed them to be here for named educational purposes. It’s a surprising system which seems to offer potential evildoers a loophole, and in future weeks much may be made of this both here and abroad. All of them came from the North-west province of Pakistan where, it is suspected, Al-Qaeda, now has its base of operations.

Each year, at this time, a remarkable book is published. It’s called Wisden, and in its pages the previous year’s doings in world cricket are methodically set down. It won’t surprise you to learn that it’s a sizeable tome, running to well over a thousand pages. I made it into Wisden just the once, in 1969, under the entry for the modestly posh school I then attended. I’m one of many thousands who feel that even if we didn’t get a knighthood, or become a millionaire, well at least we achieved that.

Each year there are many jolly, sad or interesting things to be gleaned from what my wife describes as the ‘brick’ (the colour of its cover is a brick-like yellow, and when it’s wrapped up, in the guise of my annual birthday present, it could be taken for the same. Always assuming you had a family cheapskate enough to load you with building materials as a gift! ) One of the more workaday things to which the 2009 edition draws attention is that Pakistan has failed to play any long-form international matches (‘Test’ matches) this year. There are a variety of reasons for this.

One is that the five-day form of international cricket is waning in its appeal in some parts of the world, and one of them is Pakistan. The shorter the game, the better, many people (particularly TV executives?) feel. This is a Big Subject. Partly it’s about perceived entertainment value. Already I can hear you saying ‘Jeez, five days, to play one match?’ I understand the incredulity. But think about other things you like doing a lot, and ask yourselves whether necessarily shorter makes for better. I thought you’d get my point.

And of course where Pakistan is concerned, security is also an issue. Just a month or so ago, there was an attack on a Sri Lankan team playing in Lahore. The team escaped without fatalities, although some leading players were wounded. A number of policemen, there to guard against exactly this kind of possibility, were killed. It’s hard to see other teams travelling to Pakistan to play in the forseeable future. And Pakistani teams touring abroad haven’t always made themselves popular either.

Recently coaches of the Pakistani team have had to contend with not only the traditional rivalries which seem endemic to the game there, but a religious ethos within the team, a by-product of which may have been the conversion of one of its leading players from Christianity to Islam. Yousuf Youhana became Mohammad Yousuf, and started scoring a lot more runs than he had before. It’s hard to know what to read into that.

How does radical Islam see sport? Exactly how important is it that we maintain our cricketing links with Pakistan, including the playing of their matches in Britain as a ‘neutral’ venue. Or is that also too risky in security terms? Simply in cricketing terms, they’ve produced some of the world’s finest players over the last thirty years. It will be a great shame if they’re seen no more. On the other hand many non-Pakistani English feel threatened, puzzled and hurt by an ‘enemy within’. Some more sensible immigration and visa procedures would help.

A tale of two fast bowlers

Whatever your sport, one of the fascinating and pointless speculations is always about the great players who might have been, but never were. What I mean is that perhaps the greatest pitcher who ever lived, in terms of physique and natural ability might now be living in the Amazonian rain-forest, destined never to be discovered. In advance of the 2012 Olympics, we in Britain have recently caught onto this, and this very week an initiative has been publicised whereby individuals who’ve been so-so at a particular sport, say soccer, reaching a solid but unspectacular professional level, are put through the sports’ scientists mill to see if they should really have taken up track cycling or archery. I’ll get back to you in 2013, to evaluate the success of that one.

The ability to propel a five and a half ounce cricket ball, made of leather and cork, at over ninety miles an hour down a pitch twenty-two yards long, is reasonably rare, in terms of the number of people who actually get to do this as means of earning a living.

Let’s put a context on this. Imagine you’re the person standing there waiting for the ball to arrive with the intention of trying to hit it, or avoid it hitting you. In the near distance, maybe forty-five yards away, stands an evil-looking unshaven man armed with said ball. It’s coloured red or white, and the background has been painted in such a way that in theory the ball will stand out against it when it’s delivered towards you. The unpleasant man runs the first twenty yards, gathering momentum, and at a certain pre-agreed point lets go of the projectile in a whirl of arms and legs. Unlike in baseball, the passage of the ball will acquire additional uncertainty because the man will probably be intending to bounce it on the ground somewhere in front of you. Depending on the place it bounces it will come at you at groin height, or chest height, or alternatively it will zero in at a point right between your eyes. And until thirty years ago, no one thought to wear a helmet to do this stuff (although abdominal protectors were always advised!) At seventy miles an hour the average uninitiated person, your mother-in-law, for example, will find this un-nerving, but will have time to take avoiding action. At eighty miles an hour, reflexes have to take over, and good amateur park players of the game will have sweaty palms, and be glad to get home intact. At ninety miles an hour only the finest survive. It’s just possible that you may not actually see the ball before it hits the gloves of the man who’s supposed to stop it, standing another twenty yards or so behind you. The world record speed is one hundred miles an hour, give or take, and I shouldn’t think anyone would have wanted to be in batsman Nick Knight’s shoes facing the Pakistani Shoaib Akhtar that day. But somewhere in the Amazonian rain-forest…

Today there are mentions in the press of two English bowlers who are provenly capable of this plus-ninety mile-an-hour standard, both apparently pleasant and physically gifted young men. You’ll appreciate that with a view to their possible participation in international matches, followers of English cricket will be glad to know about their prospects for 2009.

For one of them, Simon Jones, it’s a case of yet another false dawn. Jones has good provenance, the son of a man who played for England with success, though he was Welsh through and through. Simon has played for his country too, and at times very well, notably in the grudge series against the Australian team four years ago, when he formed part of a battery of fast bowlers who the Australians, against cultural stereotypes, appeared to find rather intimidating. This was the highlight of Jones’ career, which to that point had been blighted by injury. Two years previously he had been in Australia with the English team, and had been chasing down a ball hit into the outfield by an Australian bat. One gain from baseball in recent times has been the sliding stop and throw technique, and a thrilling sight it is too, when executed perfectly. This time it went badly wrong. Simon Jones’ booted foot caught in the turf half way through the slide, and all the big man’s weight was suddenly concentrated on his leg, with disastrous results. Hence, his recovery to play with distinction after the ruptured cruciate ligament was widely hailed, additionally because he came back a more cunning and skilled bowler, able to dip the ball unpredictably and late in towards the toes of the batsman, or away from the bat such that it might catch the edge of the bat and be caught by one of the waiting fielders before it bounced (and that’s ‘out’!)

And now, despite teasers in the press suggesting he might be back to fire away at the Australians again this summer, it’s reported that in pre-season training under sunny foreign skies he’s been unable to bowl in any of his county’s five matches. Injured yet again. By all accounts he’s worked tirelessly at his fitness, but for most of the past six years, in the prime of his sporting life, he’s been unable to ply his trade. It’s a hard life, being an athlete at the highest levels. Let’s hope he has something to fall back on.

Is it inadequate method which has proved his undoing? Certainly he’s always seemed ungainly in his bowling action, as if his whole-hearted physical commitment wasn’t properly backed up by technique. But then there will have been many experts on hand to advise and correct, and maybe it is just that the stresses on the body are too great, when it comes to extracting the effort required for 90 mph. And at a lesser pace, the effectiveness won’t be there, unless it’s you or me, or mother-in-law batting. Simon Jones may play again, but not for England, I think.

However the other man, Sajid Mahmood, may yet do so. But he too, when he delivers the ball does so with an action which seems less than precise. There are some bowlers from recent history who afficionados hold in their memory as an ideal. One was an Australian, Dennis Lillee. Two others are the West Indians, Michael Holding and Andy Roberts. Their actions seemed infinitely repeatable, impeccably cadenced to release the ball with accuracy and menace. Holding was famous for the lightness of his footfall. Each time he would run into bowl maybe thirty five yards, accelerating into the bowling crease on tip-toe. I’d have loved there to have been a speed-camera to time him as he destroyed a technically inadequate England in 1976. From the wrong side of the TV screen I’ve never seen anything as quick.

By contrast with these cricket greats, Sajid has basic speed, and lots of intelligence in the way the thinks about what will unsettle batsmen, but at times no idea where the ball is going. What he does have is an agent. I’m presuming this because there he is today in most of the quality newspapers, telling us that this year it’ll be different, and old habits have been discarded. The ball will come out of his hand well and consistently. Will it? I doubt it very much. I think Sajid may occasionally have his day, but is probably destined to be the latest in a line of inconsistent, ultimately ineffective English fast bowlers.

One thing seems unresolved. What is the secret of good coaching: is it to say ‘this is the way to do it’, or is it to work on what comes naturally and accept the limitations that come with it? Just asking.

Begin here...

This is the story of a summer in England. Think of it as a travelogue with a particularly strange slant. Where will we be at the end of it? Will we all still be here? Maybe it’s the peculiar English seasonal cycle, the well-rehearsed vagaries of the weather, which make the annual beginning of the cricket season such a moment of hope, and simultaneously, reflection on mortality. And this year the new season coincides with Easter, which for the few of us this side of the Atlantic who still exist within the remnant of faith, gives the added resonance of rebirth. The temperature is only 10 degrees centigrade, hands feel as if they should be in mittens, if you were going to stand outside all day you’d want five or six layers on, the sky is lowering, but on a famous cricket ground a few miles from Buckingham Palace, men dressed in white are walking out to enact their allegedly puzzling cricket rituals for the first time in 2009. This ground is known as ‘Lord’s’ after the man who brought it into existence, nearly two hundred years ago. And this year for the first time, you’ll be allowed in to watch wearing fancy dress, if you so wish.

Why should you care, American citizens? Why should you make time in your busy lives for yet another trivial way of wasting precious hours? How can I persuade you to take a deep breath and push open the door of the cricket pavilion? Here are some reasons. But look, let’s get one thing straight, I’m not looking for conversions. You can like baseball and cricket. I’m sure of it. It must be possible.

Reason one.You should care for the characters who play it. A great writer and broadcaster, the late John Arlott, an H.L. Mencken of cricket, once said that he had only met one really bad person in a lifetime hanging out with cricketers (though as a rather old-fashioned English gentleman, he would have poured excoriating scorn on the phrase ‘hanging out’). That sounds a tad boring, but Arlott’s experience half a century ago might be different now in 2009’s frantic media-obsessed world. Nevertheless cricketers are an interesting and often eccentric bunch of folks, particularly if you take a whole world view - high and low, rough and smooth, men and women, white, black and many shades between. There are crooks among them – matches have been thrown and bribes taken. At least one ex-international cricketer has been arrested on suspicion of terrorism. However PC-wise, it has to be admitted that to date the relationship between sexual orientation and cricket remains largely unexplored. For instance I couldn’t name you a high profile gay cricketer, though clearly I just don’t move in the right circles.

Secondly, fundamentally it’s simple stuff. I throw (‘bowl’) the ball, though with a straight arm. You try to hit it with a lump of wood (‘bat’). Trust me, this is much more difficult than it looks on TV. Yes, there are a lot of complicated rules, which can be investigated gradually and later if you want to, but basically that’s it.

Thirdly, it’s an intensely mental game. In all but the shortest, most violent form of the sport, there’s a fair bit of hanging around, and during those quieter moments the mind plays strange tricks on the players, sometimes encouraged by the opposition’s extremely devious, sometimes very personally-directed gamesmanship. If you have an interest in psychology, you ought to like cricket.

Fourth, though this is much in the eye of the beholder (or the believer?) it’s a beautiful game. Adherents of other sports claim the same adjective – notably soccer. I know I find the arc of the ball, the swing of the bat beautiful, but if I’m pressed I don’t know quite why. Is it the joy of watching precise human movement? Or the inch-perfect transference of will to action? Or the angles and shapes described?

Number five. Cricket has a rich history, and if your past and future travelling to Britain, in person and on-line, has entertained and fascinated you, then so should this game, every bit as much as the Royal Family or the ancient buildings.

Six, there are elements of science and track and field to be explored here. Why does a ball swing and curve in the air? How can a ball be made to spin and bounce most disconcertingly off the ground? How far can a ball be hit or thrown? What does the weather do to the events on the ground?

Seventhly, in the contemporary world, cricket is now acquiring political significance, in a way many sports don’t. This is a lot to do with the Asian sub-continent, its money and its rise to power. And also to do with the failing state of Pakistan where there are fanatics for many reasons, and not just cricketing ones. ‘We are the masters now’ the Indians seem to be saying, and as fellow ex-colonials with them, now threatened by the inexorable rise of The East, you’d want to take a look at this, wouldn’t you? However the good news is that the Chinese haven’t caught on yet, although since they admire the British education system (why?) I wouldn’t bet that they won’t soon.

Eight, and this is worrying, it’s a game so obsessed with stats, that many people seem to devote their whole lives to them. But if that’s your thing, your secret’s safe with me. My name’s Vince Cross and yes, I’m a recovering stat-head. But I can still tell you a shed-load of things that happened in 1934, if you’ve a few hours to kill...

Ninth, if you like baseball, you’re half way there already.

And number ten, cricket has an honourable history in the US. Once upon a time, more than a hundred years ago, you were quite good at it. You just happen to be going through a somewhat prolonged bad patch. Even Canada can beat you right now. Don’t you think this needs putting right?

OK, I’ll stop now. Let’s move on. There’ll be no talking down here. You’ll just have to pick it up as you go along. Rather like arriving in a foreign country, actually.