It is a pleasure to welcome you back to The Cricket Paper’s coverage of our summer sport and we’re delighted to be with you earlier than ever before!
SECOND THOUGHTS before you don your overcoat, some watery sunshine hitting your skin, and those half-forgotten sensations running through your body, up and into your brain, which still can’t quite compute what is happening.
But yes, as I write this on what is officially the first day of Spring, all the signs are there that the season is just around the corner.
And as ever, that fills those who love our summer game with feelings of barely suppressed excitement. Never mind kids at Christmas, those who like their cricket are walking round with a real spring in their step.
Sure, cricket never stops these days but it is the smell of fresh-cut grass, and the news of surprise county signings, that are the real harbingers of joy.
We loved bringing you last season’s cricket – and with a Men’s World Test Championship final, the Men’s and Women’s Ashes and the Men’s World Cup, it was quite some summer. But this year, with the lack of such marquee Test fixtures, along with England Men’s underwhelming showing in the World Cup and then their Test team’s defeat in India that shook Bazball to its foundations, the spotlight is firmly on the county game.
There is jeopardy everywhere and a more existential question about how the red-ball game should and will be played this summer (although we know that Durham, pictured belo
