Another season, another agonised spate of worrying about the state, fate and weight of the game of test cricket. (By 'weight' I mean its importance in the sporting scheme of things, but I'll admit that the lure of neat rhyming was irresistible.)
It is, paradoxically, a sign of the health of test cricket that it invariably triggers detailed, distant and affectionate memories of other years, other famous encounters between the flannelled fools.
One Day Internationals have been too numerous, too swift and ephemeral, often — but not always — too inconsequential to be remembered one from another. Whereas test cricket is a distinct culture. It has engendered a substantial literature and inspires the kind of religious fervour, the profound sense of cricket as part of the flow of existence, that led legendary commentator John Arlott, for example, to refer to the Second World War as the 'Second Great Interruption'.
Remembering the particular details of individual test matches is like knowing where you were and what you were doing when President Kennedy was assassinated: these are events that are part of life, not simply discrete moments. Which reminds me ...
In January 1961 I became part of that phalanx of Australian students who took off for Europe at the end of their undergraduate university days and in July of that year my three friends and I thrashed our Kombivan — bought brand new six months earlier in Munich but now decrepit and tired — in a mad dash that began in Marrakesh and ended at historic Old Trafford.
Arriving in Manchester late on Wednesday 26 July, the eve of the fourth test, we drove straight to the ground expecting to find queues and perhaps even all-night campers poised to claim the best spots when the gates opened the following morning. We were probably influenced by our many experiences of AFL Grand Finals and the rigours of trying to get a ticket on the last Saturday in September. No problem at Old Trafford though. There was not a soul to be seen.
Just as we were about to leave, however, to hunt for some cheap accommodation, a bloke emerged from one of the gates and came over for a chat. Fascinated to discover that we were Australian, had made an exotic journey to get there in time, and were running out of cash, he offered some help.
'There's a pile of cricket matting in there,'