It happened about five o'clock, though it may have been later. Evening shadows over the grounds are a trope of cricket writing, but shadows are supposed to be of church steeples. In this case it was the mass of the huge Vauxhall End stand at The Oval. But shadows there were and, suddenly and implausibly unexpectedly, we had entered my favourite part of watching the cricket. We were sitting in, give or take, the same seats that I first watched test cricket sixteen years ago for an overcast Ashes securing day, and again, four years later where watched us actually win the Ashes themselves.
Yesterday wasn't one of those successful days for England, though - thankfully - nor was it a repeat of this test in 2007, where I watched Dravid score 12 in 96 balls and seemed to spend an hour getting each run. But it didn't matter. We were amongst cricket people, at the cricket, and very little else mattered. I'd brought a set of people who didn't know each other at all at eleven, but by the afternoon had developed their own in-jokes. To our left was a ten year old whose excitement was matched only by the sharpness of his eyesight and his understanding of the LBW rule. We didn't need the replay to tell us Jadeja was out and they had wasted a review, he'd already talked us through it. At lunch we took the admiration of the group behind us because one of us had managed to bring a large pie; after tea we managed a full cheeseboard. I personally continued my unbroken run of smuggling drinks into the ground in defiance of the absurd ban on bringing alcohol in, though the lack of effort they put into bag searching did rather demean the outcome.
And the cricket, well, it was exactly why only test cricket really counts. I don't really think anyone was superlative, but it didn't matter. It was enthralling, while allowing time for conversation (and more drinks. There were a lot of drinks). Early England inroads made us hopeful that we'd limit India to a manageable lead before a hundred run seventh wicket partnership rather drained us of all optimism. My low case prediction of a 350 target with some big batting after tea came rather depressingly true. It was shortly after that that the shadows fell, and this time my low case predication was entirely wrong. We didn't end four wickets down at the close of play. Somehow, we avoided subsiding like, well, England, and we watched Rory Burns hold out on his home ground and Haseeb Hameed write the next lines of what will hopefully be a deeply satisfying redemption story this summer. 291 to get today with all wickets in hand is possible, if unlikely.
And we drank in the summer evening, talked novels, and watched that slow patient cricket, and - pausing briefly after the cricket itself to have a further drink - I walked home listening to the only known popular music act to entirely specialise in cricket songs singing about sleeping on the boundary.
I fully expect us to lose today, but it doesn't matter. It was marvellous, and by that I truly mean that it is a marvel. None of this should work, but it does, almost every time. I had missed the cricket far more than I realised, but no longer. Marvellous indeed.
