Hi Crazycanukl,
I've never played it properly, just as a kid around the edges of the field while my Dad played for Postals - the club team of the Post & Telecommunications Corporation - in what is now Zimbabwe..

Then when I met my partner in England (she got her cricket half-blues at Oxford - women don't get full blues for cricket there) she took me to the Taunton ground where they play first class cricket and she taught me how to score (kind-of) and what once seemed like a slow sort of game became so fascinating and complex that I could never get all the possible score marks right for more than ten overs at a time. Things happen so fast, even if they do take five days to happen!! And the psychology is so crucial, team and individual. The bowler/batsman duels, the run partnerships.

Latent interest just blossomed.

And now England have gone 3 nil against the West Indies.

OK I know the WI aren't the force they were, but what a pleasure to watch Shivnarine Chanderpaul bat anytime.

Roll on India. They're touring here next. We're not due back for another ashes battle until 2009 I think. By then our spinner Monty will be so damn hot. And the Aussies won't have Warne.......