In 1845 the poet Robert Browning was in Northern Italy and wrote a very famous poem 'Home thoughts from abroad' which starts off ' O to be in England now that April's there'.
I appreciate we are not yet in April but it's not really far away and we can look forward to cricket in England during the last week in March anyway. I have transposed Browning's poem to my own thoughts from home about cricket abroad, and lots of it too.
In the early and mid nineteen nineties I had the pleasure of watching England play abroad, twice in Austalia and once in South Africa. Sadly the advent of the ubiquitous Barmy Army soon put a stop to that.
Since then I have watched anyone but England abroad and enjoyed Australia again, when India were the visitors, Sri Lanka and even U.A.E. and Jersey when lesser know countries were involved. Now I have give up overseas travel altogether and am content to watch action from afar on television. That also has it's problems, often involving turning off the sound either to get rid of the Barmy Army's endless chanting or the so called commentators and summarisers who just talk and talk, hardly pausing for breath, flogging the topic of the moment to death.
It is a far cry from the days of the great commentators, like Arlott and Benaud, who would let the picture tell the story and pause for breath from time to time. They could also string words together in a proper format and come out with memorable phrases which caught the mood of the play exactly, unlike the present band of former players. People tell me that Atherton is the best of the bunch, but unfortunately I cannot help recalling his rather negative attitude as England captain on the tours which I followed.
Never mind, I still enjoy watching Test cricket from a distance and welcome the return to form of the West Insides side, temporary or not. They have produced some of the most gifted players I have ever seen in the past and I am sure they will again. Hopefully Sri Lanka can also turn the corner on their present tour of South Africa. However the most disturbing feature yesterday was the very sparse crowd watching the Test Match in Durban - hardly anybody there!
The most pleasing thing for me from England's win in St Lucia was the performance of Mark Wood. I have watched this young man's career at Durham with great interest and am delighted to see him hopefully back to full fitness after so many setbacks. I have just been reading Duncan Hamilton's excellent book on Harold Larwood and feel that there are similarities between the two of them. Larwood being quite slim and not very tall when his career began. However I trust Wood's lunchtime will be somewhat different from the great man, who apparently had up to four pints of beer, a fag and a cheese sandwich!
Things have also sprung to life at home with the eventual issue of full fixtures for Minor Counties and County second eleven games. This means that we now have a full draft fixture list of cricket to watch from the last week in March to the last week in September, plus a couple of weekends in october. Nearly every Friday is a day off to deal with domestic matters, but otherwise our programme for the season is more or less complete.
Still waiting for the MCC out match programme, but we have most forms of cricket covered during the season with the exception of T20, World Cup and Test Matches which we happily leave to the hurrah Henrys, the beer swillers and the Barmy Army.
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