No Boat Race. Oh how we yearn for sport's joyous sporting pleasures.

No Boat Race. Oh how we yearn for sport's joyous sporting pleasures.

You do know what today was meant to be. Amid all the misery and heartache of recent months you may have known that it was still there at the back of your mind but could never be sure of the time and the date. You knew that it was at roughly this time of the year but couldn't recall the date in April. You knew that it was one of sport's most eye catching and compelling of events but it had gone and therein lies the crux of the problem. Sport is in cold storage, frozen out, left to kick its heels and in the case of what would have been today's spectacle, looking at its oars in complete frustration.

The annual Boat Race, one of Britain's most endearing and lovely of sporting races, had to be postponed or cancelled which ever way you look at it. The students and hard working undergraduates of Oxford and Cambridge university were due to be flexing their arms, shoulders, and feet in readiness for that yearly slog up the River Thames before finally rounding the bend of the river to Putney.

It could be described as one of the oddest sights of the whole sporting year and yet year after year, two of Britain's most famous universities, plonk themselves into a boat, easing their way slowly into their rightful position before hunching their bodies and then embarking on four miles of some of the most gruelling rowing ever seen. But then fate intervened because it does that from time to time and here we are late on a balmy spring day in Britain and dear old Father Thames is beginning to look forward to next year because this year it won't be graced with the Boat Race. It really doesn't seem possible.

You suspect  that the handsome and sparkling stretch of water that threads and winds its way through the heart of London and beyond had not been informed that the two boats that it could normally be relied on to give it its customary splash of colour and vibrancy, had just gone missing. In retrospect this is not a disaster since sport doesn't really need to bother with such trivialities in a climate where the health of the world figures rather more prominently than a rowing race between two academic powerhouses.

But it would have been nice to observe the rich cultural heritage of Britain's past, thrill to its sense of ceremonial pomp and pageantry while all the time cheering for either white or blue. There they go the next generation of barristers, lawyers, scientists and professors, heaving and pulling, gritting their teeth, pulling all manner of imaginable faces and stretching every sinew in the hope of a momentous victory.

Over the years of course both universities have shared domination of the race in equal measures, monopolising the race for years on end before one year either Oxford or Cambridge just take it in turns to win it. TV cameras have always given the clearest perspective and then invariably given us an aerial viewpoint, hovering above the Thames as the race snakes its way attractively down the river, both sets of rowers reduced to tiny figures desperately thrashing their way through the water, the foam of the water trailing behind them faithfully.

This year though the agonised grimaces on faces will not be on show, that collective esprit de corps that normally exists between both universities will have to go back in the rowing shed and they will instead have to be content with perhaps virtual reality games on their I-Pads. Those red faces of health and fitness, glowing with athleticism and tons of guts, will, you can only guess, be turning their attention back to their legal books, cramming for exams that may also have to be postponed and then wracking their heads in some heart rending search for something constructive to do.

Of course we should have been celebrating either Cambridge or Oxford leaping out of their boats with unashamed delight but that'll never happen. My late and wonderful dad, fiercely anti sport, would always pin his colours to the Cambridge mast and to this day it remains a mystery but how I'll always love him for that reason alone. Still there's always next year for the Boat Race. Land ahoy and splice the mainbrace me hearties!