“ON THE ONE HAND, I CAN SEE THIS INDO-ANGLO 10-TEST MARATHON DESCENDING INTO LISTLESS CRICKET. BUT THEN I CHECK MYSELF, AND PICTURE A RAMMED TRENT BRIDGE ON AUGUST 4, 2021, CHOCKFULL OF LIGHT-BLUE FLAGS AND SECOND-GEN FAMILIES AND PAINTED FACES AND IT ANALYSTS DRESSED AS NUNS AND BEER SNAKES AND OVEROFFICIOUS STEWARDS AND PACKED TRAINS AND SILLY SONGS
EDITOR’S LIST
When news came through of Graham Cowdrey’s death from a short illness aged just 56, English cricket shuddered and fell silent for one of its most colourful and genuine characters. A much-loved cricketer for Kent who made 21 rambunctious first-class centuries, Cowdrey fell on hard times after he retired, at one time sleeping in his car when his post-retirement business plans unravelled along with his marriage. The PCA stepped in, and he eventually moved back into the game as an ECB cricket liaison officer in 2015. His former teammate Matthew Fleming said: “I am numb with shock and sadness that the brilliant, generous, funny and complex friend who lit up so many cricket grounds, on and off the pitch, has slipped away.”
I’d just woken up and, as you do, checked my phone, inhaling the grimness before another day in my bubble of two. The headline on the BBC cut through the fug: ‘Lockdown plus autumn sends loneliness soaring’. It told me that 4.2 million UK adults say they’re always or often lonely, that 2.6 million have not left their homes for any reason in the past week, and that we now appear to have an official Minister for Loneliness. Daylight fades. Winter bares its teeth. With nowhere to go and nothing to see, we cast for glimmers of light: vaccines, Rashford, the restoration of American democracy (pending), the IPL.