Hello, Beautiful

"Something is added to cricket by the angle of the sun as it stands at four o'clock in early September. 

The shadows are longer, there's a suggestion of colder days approaching, of Circular Time, of aspects of our lives dying away and returning. 

The other sort of time is called Linear Time -- Life is hard and then one dies.... if that's something one is liable to do. 

Cricket, to me, seems to stand for The Former and against The Latter. 

It's something that dies but returns and writes mortals into History, in stories and statistics. Perhaps that's why it appeals to me. 

I also die and return, like a hardy perennial. 

However, Linear Time is currently impinging on the Hampshire town of Stockbridge in the form of an end-of-season struggle to avoid relegation from the top-most league of village cricket. 

They're raging against the dying of the light, they need wins not draws. They need umpires to take the brightest possible view of those stormy skies overhead. 

They need to play in horizontal rain if they have to. I've seen them do just that in the last couple of weeks, but I've joined them so late this year that I may not be much help."