The English summer is time for cricket and so it has been since the eighteenth century. For a long time this year, though, cricket bats and balls lay untouched. The fear was that the recreational game, time consuming and expensive as it is, might be diminished forever by a lost season.
A few weeks ago, however, the season got underway, belatedly, and today the Idle Skiers enjoyed a day beyond the boundary for the first time since September last year.
At 1.30pm this afternoon, under a threatening sky, the umpires called “play” at Arundel Castle cricket ground. The lunch tent was busy, the tea hut and bar were open and all seemed well with the world.
It was a short respite from a benighted year. Moments after this photograph was taken, in the mid afternoon, the skies opened, the rain poured down and lightening flashed through the sky briefly.
Our season is underway though and with a few fixtures left in the summer, the Idle Skiers will be found in West Sussex more often than not.
Idle thoughts from a mountain 