The cricket season is upon us.

The cricket season is upon us.

Wouldn't you know it? The cricket season is upon us again and the football season is approaching its end. You can tell when the cricket season is about to begin. Suddenly the blackbirds and chaffinches are in full melodious mode outside your bedroom window and cricket pavilions around Britain begin to clatter with the sound of  bats, pads and that post box red ball that swings away from the batsman, turning, seaming, nipping back and then flying away to the wicketkeeper. You can almost sense the drama, the nervous tension, the five day Test Match that seems to last for ever and never seems to lose its hold on the public imagination.

Here we are at roughly the mid- point of April and while footballers around Britain are nervously looking over their shoulders at relegation from their League, the cricketers of Britain are swinging their arms, adjusting their standing positions at the crease and then digging their bat at the crease ready for that relentless ammunition from the bowler's end.

Cricket's birth place of course goes back much further from the now well established County Championship battles between Lancashire and Yorkshire, the War of the Roses, Surrey and Sussex, that South East skirmish, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire locking horns in the middle of England's richly green countryside, Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire fighting out their bragging rights in the mellow Midlands and then Durham, the relative newcomers but now very much part of cricket's wide geographical sweep.

But how the game has changed over the years. For years most of the County Championship gave the whole of England its very own picture frame of springtime familiarity. There are the rows of deckchairs next to the boundary, fluttering tents and marquees, elderly folk sitting contentedly next to third man with the Daily Telegraph on their laps and a prominent white hat drooping over their eyes. It is England at her happiest and most discerning. These are the cricketing purists, the people who have been following the game since the halcyon days of Compton, Hutton, Truman, Botham, Boycott, Amiss and Edrich. They know their cricket and are deeply in love with the game.

Now though cricket has moved into another world, another generation and another mindset, another culture and another century. From its earliest days at Hambledon where local farmers took on the landed gentry. cricket has come a long way. Cricket is now big business, a rapidly expanding commercial proposition with sponsorship, colourful shirts, helmets, multiplying one day competitions and a duck that waddles across the TV screen when players are out with nothing to their credit.

So here we are my friends. There's the T20 blast one day game that's played from morning to late at night when the floodlights come on and cricket assumes a completely different complexion. The T20 and all of its subsidiary one day slogfests have given cricket a far more dynamic set of dynamics. The one day game in cricket is a brand new marketing product that grows spectacularly with the passing of every cricket season.

It's hard to believe now that the cricket that used to be played over five days has now been reduced to the smash, bang and wallop of the one day game where the game is now confined to 20 or 30 overs for both batting sides and even the colour of the ball is now white. The ball itself  looks more like an American baseball but for those who like their cricket to be fun and exciting, this doesn't seem to matter.  Cricket has now got rainbow coloured shirts, dancing girls, cheerleaders, bold and brazen advertising boards and huge wheelbarrow loads of money from Sky TV and all of its media associates.

Then there's the Indian League which seems to overlap with the final weeks of the football season. Now the seasoned cricket fans become torn between football and cricket which to the outsider must seem awkward. Still cricket is cricket whenever it's played and this cricket season England will once again turn their attention to the Test Match format. It's enough to whet any cricketer's appetite. Cricket, the game for the local club and the national side. There can be no boundaries quite literally.

 You can almost see those hazy, sun dappled village greens where vicars trundle past sleepy post offices on their bikes and the crack of ball against willow is one of the most rousing sounds of the summer. Cricket is part of the summer sporting vocabulary, where Wisden, vital cricketing literature, is studied at all levels of the game, both at national and club level.

This summer is a non Ashes summer which means Australia will have to sit back and just observe their famous Pommie rivals challenging South Africa. Thankfully cricket has completely forgotten about those bad, old crusty days of discrimination, prejudice and the sickening Apartheid issue that divided and scarred the game for so long. At long last cricket can get back to doing what it does best. England and South Africa will be very much the flavour of the summer, the warm breath of summer blowing gently and sinuously over Lords, the Oval and Headingley. Now  batsmen and bowlers of truly international class slug it out brilliantly for victory and cricket's shining jewellery gleams forever brightly.

In recent years England and South Africa has made for compulsive viewing. South Africa are no longer the poor relations of international cricket and have announced themselves to the cricketing community with a vociferous voice on the world scene. Years ago the likes of Basil D'Olivera and Mike Proctor overpowered teams with the sheer force of their character and a whole repertoire of their cricketing gifts. But because of Apartheid and exclusion everybody got very heated and bothered about nothing in particular.

Now though the Test match format does seem the most endangered species and cricket followers everywhere will hope and pray that the Test Match will not fall into rack and ruin and just become obsolete. England are no longer under the clever and thoughtful captaincy of Alistair Cook but the likes of Joe Root, who seems to be England's new skipper, Ben Stokes, Stuart Broad and hopefully the marvellously talented Jimmy Anderson will be straining at the leash ready to engage on the same competitive terms as a South Africa side that will be surely be at their sharpest, fittest and organised best.

But for those who like their cricket commentators to be poetic and lyrical we shall look back on summers gone by and think of John Arlott, Jim Laker and Richie Benaud. When the BBC Test Match team were at the peak of their powers cricket was a game to be grammatically cherished, a game that cried out for description, a game that was almost waiting for its amusing observations, lively verbal exchanges over a glass of wine and chocolate cake eaten by the likes of Brian Johnson and Henry Blofield. Cricket was more or less a movable feast, a game to be salivated over and appreciated rather than just forgotten in the rain.

Yes this is Test Match Special on BBC Radio 3, that comfortable and reliable radio friend who always had to plenty to say about cricket and was always forthcoming with its very perceptive views on the game. Cricket once again will unfold its summer enchantments and charms, its dreams and visions of a golden future and then we'll think of those long, lazy and leisurely days when batsmen cracked the ball for six and then watched it sailing into the boozy tavern or maybe a high street butcher.

 Then they acknowledge the cheers of the appreciative crowd with a slow wave of the bat and a kindly smile. It is all very prim and proper, a game of manners and protocol, a game that is never hurried, worried, flustered or ruffled by anything or anybody. Cricket has its very own stamp of simplicity and subtlety that very few sports can lay claim to. When Geoff Boycott came to the crease it was a game of cunning and strategy, of measured assessments rather than wild misjudgments. But then Boycott was just one of cricket's great technicians , a player who crafted and carved out runs rather than simply threw the bat recklessly.

There is a sedateness and enduring serenity about English cricket that very few other cricketing nations can boast. Nothing seems to matter and everything seems to be restful and easy. No need to hurry, scurry, rush, hustle or bustle. It is a game that unfolds dramatically and melodramatically but then that's the essence of cricket and we wouldn't have it any other way.

So it's time to run down those final Premier League football fixtures of the season and begin to look forward to that unmistakable scent of summer where the hedgerows and fields await those big, beefy cricketers with their elegant cover drives over the Lords tavern and the spacious Oval, the equally as friendly and accommodating Headingley and Trent Bridge before Manchester's Old Trafford opens up its welcoming gates. Cricket is slowly making its way onto the sporting radar and some of us are just longing for that first hook for four and that raucous shout for lbw. We shall miss that wonderfully eccentric umpire whose name is Dickie Bird because he made cricket the game that made you laugh. Sport has never lost its capacity to make you giggle or smile so it's time to take the covers off that cricket strip and await the summer game. Anybody for a piece of chocolate cake? Yes please.