Let cricket cheer us

Not like a fan. We don't want cricket to give us an ovation or anything. We mean 'cheer us up'. We could have written that as the title, but we opted for a more Dickensian tone. The adoption of a Dickensian tone will hopefully make up for the shortfall in class.

We're sad. Football made us sad. We're not going to go into details, but suffice to say that it was the World Cup final yesterday and we only like one footballer. Cricket never makes us sad. It makes us annoyed sometimes; it makes us despair; but we can't really recall it making us sad. So what better place to look for something to cheer us. We're going to make a short list.

1. Andrew Flintoff took 3-4 in a Twenty20 match. This means that he's still ace and also that he can run around. This is good news.
2. Pakistan are in the country. That means that Shahid Afridi and Inzamam-ul-Haq are in the country and we'll get to watch them play cricket. This is also good news.
3. Ian Bell's back in the Test team. Pretty much nobody outside of the Bell household (he looks like he lives with his mum, doesn't he?) will be happy about this, but we are. Ian Bell's good and still needs a little bit of time. He's younger than you think. Give him a chance. This is good news really.
4. Monty Panesar will be playing and not some 'capable' spin bowler who just happens to be a batsman really. This is great news.
5. Despite all the injuries and losing and everything, England's squad really isn't all that bad. This is good news.

Writing this list has actually cheered us up a bit. It's thinking about cricket that does it. Cricket is just fundamentally happy.
We promise we'll never leave you again, cricket. We're sorry. Football wasn't all it was cracked up to be and the stories didn't have happy endings. There's a Test match this week and it doesn't get any better than that.