Is a summer without cricket truly summer at all?

I suppose most of us have a hole or two in our lives right now. This is a time of absence; a hollow period in which time seems congealed. Every so often we receive a fresh reminder of all that’s missing. One such came to me this week as Cricket Scotland confirmed there will be no league cricket played here this summer.

Perhaps some local mini-leagues or knock-out cups will be organised in late summer and perhaps it will be different, and happier, elsewhere in the cricketing realm but, as matters stand, right now and right here, this feels like a strange kind of bereavement. Speaking for myself, I had been looking forward to playing in Perthshire and Derbyshire and the County Kildare and many points in between. Most, perhaps all, of that is gone now; the annual pilgrimage to Lords or Old Trafford or the Oval looks equally in doubt. A lost year beckons.