Don't douse my flame

My current excitement at the start of the new domestic season will soon pass; experience tells me this. Ramps, it is good to know, completed his 98th first-class century yesterday, but not too long after he’s passed his 100th, I shall have tired of trawling the on-going season averages, grown bored of reading reports on runs scored or wickets taken by players long ago proved to be insufficiently equipped to make the Test grade and simply stopped caring whom it is that is leading whichever competition I fail to recognise from all the others: there is too much domestic first-class cricket

I look forward to the new season of Test cricket, I really do, but I look forward, so much more, to playing again after so long a winter. Part of cricket's appeal is entrenched in its delicate, precarious nature; a flame of summer so easily put out by the shedding of tears that other games, other activities of the season can easily endure