The Ashes - Cricket at its finest

The first day of The Ashes.

The most glorious manifestation of the most wonderful game, gods game.

The series itself might last 6 weeks, which can either be hell (see 2007) or simply bum clenching terror (see 2005).

In between 2005 and 1981 (Botham'a Ashes) there was nothing for England to be cheerful about.

The game itself hopefully is a friendly rivalry between what amounts to global cousins. Certainly there is no reason to get aggressive about the game, but it does mean everything.

My life is measured in Ashes series in a much more direct manner than ever it is by other sporting events..

My introduction to cricket came about by reading the Jennings novels

And later it was my favourite sport to participate in as a schoolboy as it involved doing nothing more than sitting about in the sun waiting to bat, or standing in the sun on a lush outfield with no real thought the ball would come my way. Most of the rules were a mystery to us and our cricket master was a war veteran with a wooden leg, and by the age of him the rumour was, it was the Boer war. Cricket umpire being a perfect sport for someone not able/willing to move much.

Cricket is a game that knows its history and could well have been created by statisticians.

The next few weeks I am sure to go through all the sporting emotions and no doubt this blog will record a few of them. I will be watching it on Sky Sports (not HD, stuff your endless adverts where the sun dont shine), when that is not feasible, Radio 4 LW, Test Match Special, will more than fill in the gaps for me.

Actually TMS is the very essence of The Ashes series for me, in much the same way Heavyweight boxing has to be heard on the radio, just to get back to the "old days" when that was how it was done coz there was no choice.

Add to this the avalanche of feeds and analysis which will come, this represents my biggest sporting indulgence, which is saying something.

Perhaps at the end of this series with the help of this blog I will be closer to understanding my love of this game and what it means to me.