It has long been seen as being synonymous with fair play

Sep 1 2006 By Nicholas Craig, The Journal

Cricket has been a lifetime love of mine. The current chaos and confusion surrounding the game is sadly out of character.

The pettiness that presided over many of the parties concerned in the current fiasco meant that for the first time in 130 years of Test cricket a match was called off because players and officials could not come to agreement.

Only the week before, I was at Lords where another record was being broken. Northumberland's 111-year wait for a trophy came to a triumphant end. In a fantastic encounter Northumberland had a decisive win over Dorset in the final of the Minor Counties Knock-out Trophy. It was a classic match with the best possible result for us. David Barrick's great 97 runs were the decider in establishing a thumping eight-wicket victory.

The play was brilliant, but the atmosphere at the match was even better. We were all delighted and excited to be there. You could hear the Blaydon Races being sung from one end to the other as the runs racked up for Northumberland. Both sides and their supporters were in the best of humours, and as a result we all had a day to remember for many years.

The Test match is turning into an altogether different kettle of fish. Passions and ambitions run high, and the rules of the game and decisions of the umpires are questioned with as much fury as that commanded by the most hot-headed, self-obsessed footballer or tennis player.

All sports have their eccentrics, their highs and lows, and their emotion-fuelled rows. Cricket, however, deserves more days like the Northumberland v Dorset match. For many of us, the game still evokes the epicentre of Englishness, the sound of willow on leather, tea being served, and white-clad players on sunny village greens. It has long been seen as being synonymous with fair play. Anything else is just "not cricket".

Although it continues to be seen as part of the fabric of English life, the game is now followed with much greater passion in India, Pakistan and Australia. Last year's Ashes win by England restored mass popularity to the game for a few months. This year's fiasco threatens to undermine that. I hope the game recovers.

In 1944 George Orwell wrote that: "Cricket is one of the very few games in which the amateur can excel the professional."

How true.

Give me Northumberland v Dorset any day.