I have spent more time actively following my cricket team’s progress than it took for Francis Drake to circumnavigate the earth

People tend to consider football fans the most passionate and committed consumers of sport on the planet, because they make the most noise and are, at times, frankly scary. But no one stops to think how many hours of the day we cricket lovers have to devote to our sport. Our games are epic in scale. Test matches – the highest, noblest form of the game, played only between a handful of the best teams in the world – can last five days. Even the one-day international, invented in the 1970s to be a faster-paced format, takes seven hours. There have been 254 England Tests since I started following them. Assuming these managed an average of three days’ play – factoring in early finishes and time lost to rain, and erring on the mean side – that’s at least 762 days of cricket. Which is a little over two years. That’s not even counting England’s one-day games, of which there have been more than 400. I have spent more time actively following my cricket team’s progress than it took for Francis Drake to circumnavigate the earth.

E. John, Following on (2016), 8