I've always loved cricket

Okay. So maybe I was a little hasty in my damnation of the cricket on Friday. But as David Gower said to me during the break of the Super 14’s rugby match I was a guest at last night. Nobody could have predicted what happened in that stunning evening session.

There is a warning at the top of the page about shameless name dropping. Anyway, with the game drifting towards a New Zealand declaration they suddenly lost six wickets for only 20 runs in 11 reckless and wonderful overs. And that included the first hat-trick I’ve ever had the pleasure to watch. Ryan Sidebottom somehow conjured up a magic show. While some of the catching was a joy to behold.

It’s a shame that while Sidebottom was achieving only the 11th hat-trick in England’s Test history I wasn’t capable of recording it properly. The umpire took so long to raise his finger when he did I reacted by hitting ‘stop’. But I quickly regained my composure to take a jumpy shot of various people celebrating. Great stuff.

But in a cruel twist the New Zealand collapse coincided with one of our party’s departure. Jane, a friend of Mark’s from back in the days when he lived in Manchester rather than Germany, had sat through the tepid first three and a half days. She had to get back to Sydney and therefore wasn’t present when the wickets started tumbling. Neither, for that case, was Mark. Who managed to miss four dismissals in the fifteen minutes it took to walk Jane to the bus station. He then looked away during the fifth to complain to me that he’d missed the previous four.

It’s unlikely that if Jane had stayed the joyousness of the last session would have made much difference. This being her first ever Test match it is also certainly to be her last. After the third day she declared that she would never ever watch Test cricket again in her life. She had a glint of madness and more than a little anger in her eyes as she said it. I felt it best not to try and change her mind. We can't all be devoted to followers to such a marvellously entertaining sport.