introduction, or the end.

So we stumble towards The Ashes.

By 'we', I mean the England cricket team...hopelessly unprepared (will Flintoff be fit?..will Vaughan be selected?...does Onions cut the Mustard?...what's the point of Collingwood?...can anyone bowl against Hughes?) and me...hopeless unprepared as I don't have Sky, don't have tickets and don't have any significant leave to take.

Four years ago this didn't matter. I wasn't that bothered about cricket. I loved it when I was growing up, I was a big fan of David Gower (which is how I came to follow Hampshire, more of that later)for example but I lost interest during the Gooch years and never regained it until 2005. On the morning of the first test, despite not knowing who half of the England team were, I became hooked and I have only got more addicted since.

Whilst the Ashes of 2005 was fantastic, I quickly learnt that it was not a true representation of following English cricket and if anything I have enjoyed most of the series since then even more. For I discovered Test Match Special and the absolute joy of listening to Aggers, Boycs, CMJ, Vic Marks etc talking about every subject under the sun and sometimes even cricket. It is the most relaxing way to spend some time and even if I can only listen for 20 minutes or so on my lunchbreak, it makes the day a little bit better. I recall sitting in Gloucester Road Starbucks on a lunchbreak last Summer and hearing Aggers interviewing Lesley Garrett....very little mention of cricket but so enjoyable.

So, I don't have Sky and I won't be subscribing to it in time for the Ashes. I spent some time at my mum and dad's during the recent series in the West Indies and watched some of the test match on TV. It wasn't the same. The commentators were taking it all so seriously and I ended up turning the sound down and listening to Aggers and Boycs instead.

This Summer I'll be listening to TMS when I can and when I can't, I'll be at work desperately trying to pick a moment when my boss isn't looking so I can minimise Excel and maximise Firefox and press F5 quickly enough to try to glance at the score. My boss isn't very understanding of such things and he doesn't like cricket. I thought I would use this blog to record my struggles, trials and tribulations in attempting to the follow the ashes, minus Sky TV, tickets and a cricket loving boss.

I'll also probably be wittering on about county cricket, which I have grown to truly love. That's the thing that marks cricket out from every other sport for me, you can gain enjoyment just by following statistics and scores. For example, yesterday Marcus Trescothick (probably my favourite cricketer right now) was out for 62, which was a bad thing...but then I noticed that he was caught and bowled by Shaun Udal, who is an ex-Hampshire boy and also a favourite of mine, so that was good at least. Every stat tells a story and every bit of information leaves you wondering. Right now, Michael Vaughan has scored 27 from 36 balls for Yorkshire and I'm hoping he'll go on to score a century.

So, I follow Hampshire but I also have plenty of players that I root for who play for other teams. I'm not sure if Hampshire would consider this appropriate behaviour or not?!

I'm hoping to attend some county cricket this summer. To date I have only attended one match...Surrey v Lancashire. I found it incomparably relaxing and peaceful, for this reason I think I am more suited to four day county games, with people reading newspapers, spilling tea and falling asleep than I would be to international matches or 20/20 which seem much more like a football match.

Anyway, I have said enough at this stage. I shall now post this and then flick back to my BBC SPORT tab to see how Vaughan is getting on.

Then I might think about doing some work.