It's the same every year. Players return enthusiastically from sunny foreign camps and climes, seduced by the prospect of the new season in the same way as Bloke pursuing New Bird. Stimulation and anticipation mask apprehension, urge banishes doubt. The old gripes about always having to bowl into the wind or girlfriends habitually using your razor to shave their legs are temporarily forgotten. It's an addictive drug, and regardless of previous disappointment we keep coming back for more.
A sudden blast from the Arctic, this year accounting for dozens of spring lambs, acts as an instant passion crusher. ``Jeez!'' a four-sweatered Jeff Thomson exclaimed at one of Middlesex's early-season matches a few years ago, ``it's not even as cold as this in my fridge back home.'' Carl Hooper made his point succinctly at Canterbury on Saturday, uncharacteristically excluding himself from the Kent team for their first championship match against Middlesex. ``Bit cold man,'' he muttered through the window of his swanky BMW, and drove off. What an indictment of our major domestic competition, but will anything be done to tart it up? Do pigs fly?
Apart from the playing staffs sheltering in the pavilion, the St Lawrence Ground was more or less deserted at 11 o'clock on Friday, the match's scheduled start. Rain fell, puddles lay on the outfield, an old-fashioned slip cradle sat forlorn near the boundary. On closer inspection there were a few elderly spectators huddled in the Colin Cowdrey stand, in barbours and tweeds and those comfy, beige shoes that only pensioners know where to find. Some were consulting laminated, colour-coded fixture-planners. ``We must be mad to come here today,'' said one man, ``but we can't help it. We just want to see who's about, which of our mates is here, have a look at the new scoreboard.''
They stared out wistfully at the desolate outfield, and this, I realised, was the essence of county cricket. There it is every year, ebbing and flowing like the sea at Lowestoft. It's a tranquillising alternative to parking by the ocean and staring out at the waves rising and sighing. If you nod off it's OK, nothing much will have changed when you wake up, and to some it doesn't much matter whether the play is interesting, boring, or non-existent. A beautifully manicured grassy swathe will do. Don't knock it. You might be glad of it one day.
Upstairs in the pavilion, times have changed a bit. Instead of card schools or Nintendo consoles there is mind expansion. Some players were discussing motivation with their new lateral-thinking coaches, others popping in and out of consulting rooms for a spot of one-to-one analysis. Kent, the 1990s nearly-men, have hired sports psychologist Peter Cohen to try to find that elusive extra 10 per cent. The response has been enthusiastic all-round, with Cohen stressing the need for positive thought and teaching players the route to a state of relaxed-alertness.
``Instinct happens when there's an absence of thought,'' he says, ``like the sort of mood you're in when you're driving a car. People perform best when they're relaxed. I try to help them unlearn bad experiences, make them visualise things going well. Key words help.'' Mark Ramprakash is a convert to this kind of approach, reminding himself constantly to have ``aggressive intent'' after work in the Caribbean with England's psychologist Steve Bull.
Eventually the rain relents and the teams emerge, Kent for a throwing drill using the ``Fieldwell'', which looks from a distance like an overturned table draped with a battenburg cloth. It's a large frame hung with coloured plastic squares designed, by Alan Wells, for target practice. The squad are divided into two groups, and points are awarded for hitting certain colours. Wells arouses hoots of derision by missing altogether.
The rain returns, play is called off for the day and by 2pm the Middlesex players are back in their city-centre hotel to play brag or shoot the pot or have a short back and sides from Paul Weekes. Their new Australian coach, John Buchanan, has decreed that, for team bonding purposes, all players must share rooms. Even Mike Gatting.
Things look more optimistic on Saturday. The covers are off and the groundstaff are drying the wicket with two large hairdryers. Players excitedly wielding new bats in the middle have their hopes dashed by a sudden shower, but at least there is braised steak for lunch. Although on a diet, Gatting ventures to the table with renewed enthusiasm, knowing that June, the cheerful waitress who accidentally tipped scalding tea down his front a few years ago, is presently employed elsewhere as a lollypop lady.
Graham Cowdrey is walking Humbug, a Jack Russell, round the boundary when a 4pm start is announced. Long winters of hope and two intensive weeks of preparation are condensed into the next half-hour, as final team selections are made, unfortunate 12th men appeased, the coin tossed. Ramprakash has lost it and the slow walk back suggests he is not best pleased to be batting first.
The handbell is rung, Kent, somewhat deflated by Hooper's absence, take the field purposefully followed by Middlesex's new opening pair, the Australian Justin Langer and the Yorkshireman Richard Kettleborough. The old pair, Paul Weekes and Jason Pooley, stand disconsolately by the dressing room steps.
Martin McCague's cold fingers let fly a full toss first ball, his fifth is sliced by Kettleborough through the slips for four. A neat tuck for two from Dean Headley's second delivery opens Langer's account, to cheers from the Middlesex balcony of ``Go on Justin!'' Having been here less than a week, Langer's nickname hasn't yet materialised.
When Langer takes the last ball of the seventh over in the ribs, the umpires offer the batsmen the light and they accept to groans from the sprinkling in the Frank Woolley stand. It was ever thus. Later, I spy Langer driving out of the ground. ``Welcome to county cricket,'' he grunts. ``Got a few bruises to warm me up . . . Is this the way to Dover?'' Bolting for the Continent was he? ``Nah mate. This convict's gonna make a shed load of runs in the next few months.'' Sure he will. Shame hardly anyone will see them?