END OF SUMMER....

To Canterbury for the first day of the last game of this season`s domestic cricket.  The game between Kent and Hampshire at the sanctuary of the St. Lawrence Ground drew some mixed emotions and some divided loyalties between the county of my boyhood and that of my adulthood so it was just as well that the only thing riding on this game was which team would finish the season in the highest place in Division One of the County Championship.

Yesterday we had almost a full day`s play but the weather and - despite some hugely effective floodlights - bad light brought play to an end with something like 30 overs still to be bowled.   But we saw Kent dismissed for a mere 147 and, in reply, Hampshire reached 80 for 3 and that might be it for the season really as this morning the rain is teeming down and the prospects for the next couple of days of this four day game look distinctly bleak.  

But after a truly remarkable summer of cricket I can have no complaints.  The World Cup, the Ashes, the 20-20 finals and the fact that even now the final outcome of both divisions in the county championship are still to be decided has made it a summer to remember.   So I am unashamedly sad that it is all coming to an end - not only the cricket season but also the summer itself. 

I don`t `do` winters or cold or dark and so with the passing of every summer my persona slips into a little melancholy - our old friend seasonal affective disorder, aka SAD, returns together with a longing for the return of the sun, of cricket and of those lazy, hazy days at Canterbury where the rest of the world drifts into a kind of  irrelevance and where at least an illusion of peace can be found amongst an increasingly bonkers world.