It has been a vintage season for England’s men despite empty grounds – but a hard financial winter looms
The way Douglas Adams told it in Life, the Universe and Everything, the world ends right after England win back the Ashes on a glorious late summer day at Lord’s. “The sun was shining on a happy crowd,” Adams wrote. “It shone on white hats and red faces. It shone on ice lollies and melted them. It shone on the tears of small children whose ice lollies had just melted and fallen off the stick. It shone on the trees, it flashed off the whirling cricket bats.” If the last few months have taught us anything much, it’s that there would be worse ways to see out the end of days than from a seat at the back of the Tavern Stand.
When the England and Wales Cricket Board first announced the season would be postponed in April, the only obvious comparison was with the last time that had happened, during the war years. One of the many differences being that back then the worry was whether and when they ought to stop playing, rather than when or whether they would ever be able to start. They finally did this year in July, eight weeks late, against West Indies in Southampton, the first Test in what would turn out to be one of the more remarkable summers of English cricket, as memorable as the one before it and better, surely, than the one it replaced.
Written by Andy Bull
This news first appeared on https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2020/sep/17/crickets-glorious-condensed-summer-ends-with-a-grim-coda under the title “
“. Bolchha Nepal is not responsible or affiliated towards the opinion expressed in this news article.
