I'm a two-timer

	Intrinsically, cricket retains the notion of genuine sportsmanship which football lost long ago

You might wonder what’s going on here given I’m – for better or worse – one of the UK’s more well-known football hacks. I confess, I was so struck by Ashes fever that the start of the Premiership season left me a bit cold. Given the empty seats at football grounds around the country, I wasn’t the only one, either.

I won’t join the brigade of sudden converts who declare (pardon the pun) cricket the new football. No it’s not. It never will be. That’s just one of those poseur phrases, like ‘brown is the new black’. Without the cash generated by the international side, county cricket could not exist as a professional sport. Football players in the Ryman League earn more than most of the trundlers on the cricket circuit.

Yes, of course at the pinnacle there is plenty of corporate money floating around. And, much to the chagrin of many in the game, there’ll be lot a more soon when it becomes exclusively part of Sky Sports’ empire. Yet what we witnessed this summer during England’s colossal tussle with Australia was a sport which still has a soul. The competition was fierce, yet throughout players and fans displayed decency about the conflict.

The handshake that football forgot

For goodness sake – the punters applaud the opposition and rival players offer each other genuine respect. They don’t swap shirts, but the handshakes are firm.

The game is not without its Machiavellian streak. Over the years there have been match-fixing scandals, ball-tampering, and in the heat of the combat gamesmanship comes into play. Intrinsically, though, cricket retains the notion of genuine sportsmanship which football lost long ago.

If it all sounds a bit romantic or as if I’m having a mid-life crisis and harking back to the lost innocence of youth, then maybe I am. You see, although football was and always will be number one – despite some of things I don’t like about the game these days, such as calling it a product or describing fans as customers – some of my fondest memories as a kid came watching cricket.

It’s difficult to believe, but there was more live cricket than football on the box when I was growing up. It wasn’t all about the Test matches – the John Player Sunday League was essential viewing in my house. And I got the chance to witness live action, too.

In 1971 the Aussies bowled into my hometown of Ilford. The local Valentines Park staged an Essex week and one afternoon I marvelled at sitting by the boundary ropes and watching a bloke called Dennis Lillee start his run from virtually underneath my nose. I couldn’t really see what was happening until a West Indian called Keith Boyce came into bat. Suddenly the ball was flying all over the place. It was pure theatre.

I was hooked and, while I know that Southampton beat Manchester United in the 1976 FA Cup final, what really sticks in my mind of that long and hottest of summers was Clive Lloyd’s West Indies side making Tony Greig’s England grovel.

Booker T and the MG’s theme tune to the coverage was every bit as resonant as the Match of the Day tune. The following year I even recorded every ball of Geoff Boycott’s 100th hundred secured with a boundary to mid-on off the bowling of Greg Chappell. Yes, I had an anorak in those days. Then, of course, came the Ian Botham era, climaxing in the impossible Ashes win over the Aussies at Headingley in 1981.

Like a phoenix from The Ashes

By the time I learnt Lillee and wicketkeeper Rod Marsh had put cash on England to win that game from nowhere at 500/1 I’d lost a bit of faith. More likely, though, it just wasn’t cool for the soul boy I’d become to confess to liking cricket to the girls at the local disco.

Cool, though, is what the game has become thanks to the exploits of Freddie Flintoff, who is 1/16 to win BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year, and Kevin Pietersen.

And, while England’s footballers seem more consumed with their latest advertising deals, the cricket boys, while not averse to cashing in on their fame, genuinely seem to enjoy what they are doing.

The Ashes series made an ageing hack like me feel young again. For that alone I can’t thank them enough. I suspect there are plenty of fortysomethings who feel the same.

Football won’t go into the decline some of the doom merchants are predicting, but it will be no bad thing if some of the hype and hyperbole about the game is deflated and cricket starts to hog the back pages next winter and the following spring.

But the bookies aren’t convinced England’s cricket team are about to embark on an all-conquering era. They make the Aussies evens to win the 2006-07 Ashes Down Under, with England best-priced at 2/1. The Aussies remains favourites to win the 2007 World Cup in the West Indies at 9/4, but after what I’ve seen I’ll have a flutter on an England at 5/1. That seems to me a far sounder bet than our footballers prevailing in Germany next summer at 7/1. Such good betting opportunities are few and far between – get on.