No more cricket for a while.

No more cricket for a while.

There was a time when a man, and most certainly now, a woman's thoughts would usually be turning to cricket. Cricket is that lovely summertime sport of sedateness, leisureliness, beauty, grace, village green games of picturesque artistry, schoolchildren during their summer holidays constantly scampering around the boundary, always restless and tireless but somehow emotionally connected.

Out there on England's lush playing fields most of those energetic youngsters used to sit by the boundary with scorecards in their hands, meticulously noting wickets taken and the healthy harvest of runs that the batsmen had collected with their strong, supple arms and shoulders. But here we are at the beginning of April and not only has the football season been suspended indefinitely owing to the coronavirus disease, but cricket has now been locked away in an empty pavilion and we may never find out when somebody will give them permission to play again.

For many of us cricket is the game for middle aged and elderly gentlemen and women, a game designed for mathematical and intellectual minds, reserved clearly for all classes, backgrounds, religions, thoughtful temperaments, knowing eyes, patience and concentration of the highest order. It is a game for the appreciative aficionado and the milkman, postman, baker, taxi driver, lorry driver, engineer and  train driver. Cricket cuts across all class barriers, detests prejudice and loves a run chase.

But for the time being cricket is no longer considered to be even a remote possibility because there are some things that quite naturally take complete precedence to sport. Football still obsesses with playing games behind closed doors and that continuous narrative of players wages and players wage cuts. Cricket, not nearly as flush with money, just wants to get on with the business of playing its summertime rhapsodies against its traditional backdrop of churches, cathedrals, gas holders and that onion shaped media centre at Lords.

And so it is that the likes of Lords, Trent Bridge, Old Trafford, Headingley, Sophia Gardens, the Oval and a thousand other rural, urban and suburban playing fields tucked away in the middle of nowhere but quite certainly somewhere will have to go without its white flannelled cricketers. It will have to just pine for upright umpires with thick sweaters wrapped almost ritually around their waists. It will just have to miss those lively gatherings of birds at deep backward square leg, pecking and possibly squabbling away, fluttering briefly away and then watching the giants of the game heaving their imposing sixes onto a hotel balcony or into some distant shopping mall.

We shall miss them all. Summer is just synonymous with cricket. For some summer just won't be the same without cricket. It'll seem like England without its saintly vicars shaking the hands of devout parishioners, vicars riding their favourite bicycles, warm beer in an inviting pub on the corner of a vicar's rectory, an England stripped bare of its Sunday decorum, its peace and tranquillity, its shimmering streams on idyllic days but then life is always idyllic.

But then we'll wake up on a June morning when the sweet voiced crows have finished their breakfast and the men of England and the women of England won't know what to do because cricket has been abandoned, postponed and, perish the thought, cancelled. They'll be staring at their pads, varnishing their bats, endlessly practising their forward defensive prod or the much more adventurous reverse sweep.

There are those who are probably looking at their Wisden, the cricketers handbook of all handbooks and wondering if there's any point to it at all. What's the point of comparing Leicestershire's run rate, the number of Surrey's County Championship victories, reading about the timeless greats such as Denis and Leslie Compton, Len Hutton, Patsy Hendren, Bill and John Edrich, Denis Amiss, Sir Geoff Boycott, the remarkable Ian Botham, the clever Basil D'Oliveira, the schemers, the endless run makers, the blistering bowlers running in endlessly, shirts flapping and billowing on blustery summer afternoons?

For now we will just have to content ourselves with the memory of TV broadcasters, the poets of the game including John Arlott and Neville Cardus who painted landscapes and portraits with their sweetly mellifluous words. For those who listened to the magical Test Match special we will always cherish the inimitable Brian Johnson with his fruity dialogue, mischief making and a million chocolate cakes from their discerning listeners. A summer without cricket. It just doesn't seem possible.