Look, I never claimed to be cool.
As a a cliched middle aged male, I have a number of interests which, if not exactly niche, are perhaps not freighted with glamour. Not exactly ones to set the heart racing. I yearn not for wakeboarding, my cocaine with minor celebrities days are well and truly behind me, you are unlikely to catch me writing graffiti under a motorway bridge. I do cycle, but only as a way of getting from point A to point B, you are unlikely, you will be relieved to hear, to see me purchasing lycra and or/doing triathlons.
I like going for a nice walk. I'm fond of a good book. I have a deep attachment to county cricket.
Yes, that's right, county, not even the international stuff which briefly captures the nation's fleeting attention once in a blue moon. County cricket. Somerset CCC to be precise, though I'll watch / listen to any of it. The unpopular part of an unpopular sport.
Well, that's the public perception, the much maligned two men and a dog. Nobody watches it. Nobody cares. This, I am pleased to say, like so much public perception, is equal parts horsefeathers and codswallop. There are quite a lot of people that care about county cricket, it's merely that, by and large, we're an undemonstrative bunch.
The BBC's online coverage, making all the games being covered by local radio available, and the counties own streaming services have helped open the game up and make it more accessible. It's still hardly headline news, but it bubbles along nicely enough.
But I'm not writing this to sell you on the joys of the Champo, these are pleasures one has to arrive at under one's own steam, at one's own pace. Given time, its rhythms, it's peculiar mix of gentle chatter and elite sport, its atmospheric grounds and its general air of good natured competition masking steely determination to win (the sporting story of the summer? Tom Banton coming out to bat against Surrey when his ankle was so fucked he couldn't stand on it, much less run, you can keep your Olympics) will work their magic, but it's not the sort of thing one can force down people's throats (one of the reasons that most of us loathe The Hundred).
No, the point of this piece is more to mark the passing of the season, for last Sunday was the last day of it. A full stop to what we laughingly refer to as summer, deep in the chill clutches of a quite remarkably brisk autumn. What summer there was, of course, ended long ago, but its part of county cricket's strange magic that you can hold onto it sometimes almost into October (Likewise, no matter how frigid the conditions for the opening games of the season in April, it always feels like right, that's it, summer is, if not here as such, then imminent). Because the intimacy of County Cricket, the players and commentators all knowing each other, the chat with spectators at the boundary's edge, all of this is a ward against autumn. You might still get the odd jag of sunshine, there might be days to bask in, you might be able to kid yourself it's summer, for just a few more days.
There is an elegiac quality to the last couple of rounds of Championship cricket, it's very much an end to things. Whereas the end of the football season means summer is icumen in, the last of the cricket plays out amid shortening days, worsening weather, it's hit and miss whether you get much play in. Thoughts are turning to Christmas, to New Year, to the dank slog of January and February.
And the old boys in the crowd tell each other to winter well, with the unspoken acknowledgment that they're reaching a point where they might not, and the BBC local radio commentators turn their attentions to football (this is another reason for my fondness for it, its locality, its accents, its presenters breaking off commentary to do reports for their local stations, it's glorious), the players head off to international duty or the seemingly never-ending T20 franchise leagues (which, ah, I can't get into, my heart lies with the counties, the IPL, the Big Bash, the SA20, these are all impressive enough, spectacle wise, but there's no soul, it just feels like inter-corporation exhibitions, too much glitz, too many streamers, some of them have got cheerleaders for Goodness' sake) and we pack the whole curious circus up for another few months.
But the world turns, and the much maligned championship keeps on keeping on. Unloved by money men who'd prefer us to consume our sport in tiny, monetisable chunks rather than let the story play out over four days, largely ignored by most media (sadly, only the Times, which I can't read because Murdoch, and the Telegraph, which I can't read because quite, quite mad, give it much coverage) but still beloved by a lot more people than you'd think, this relic of very different sporting times somehow still going, adapting, remaining relevant and producing quality players.
And the days will get longer, and winter will loosen its grip, and at some point next April someone will put some bails on some stumps, and an umpire will start play. It's okay that some things stay, more or less, the same.
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