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Robert Wilson speaks for all most of us
This is bliss. It’s actual, no-messing, by-any-standards bliss. I’m almost embarrassed by what cricket can do to me. I have the mother of all legal, respectable and hi-def feeds and a free day. In my ecstasy and gibbering glee, I’m having flashbacks to wonderful youthful days lost to all-day Test coverage that made you think you would always be fifteen or twenty one and would definitely one day get round to reading Pushkin. Too often, we forget the simple rapture cricket can bring. I have actual goosebumps.
And yet I missed the first day completely because I simply didn’t know it was on. Big Paper – like everywhere else – was definitely not selling it to the max. This year you can feel the irritated general contempt for the world’s least promising spectator sport (and yes I know the Guardian ran an op-ed about the last game). I’m not frothing with manosphere rage or anything but the fact remains that this lovely, generous thing is being thoroughly and unmistakably ghettoised. It’s tiddlywinks for posh people (you could get a Blue for that at Oxbridge).
