"England take charge in Mount Maunganui"

"Being a February baby doesn’t tend to afford you that rarest of luxuries of watching Test Match cricket on your birthday. Cricket may be a year round tussle of leather on willow these days and I’m sure the grand old game has been played on my birthday many times, but I can’t ever recall watching it on the celebratory day itself, and certainly not with England involved.

Last night or, strictly speaking, a cold and dark very early morning, I became 51 not out in the game of life whilst commencing the celebrations early with tea, chocolate biscuits, and Test Match cricket from the cloudy sunshine of Mount Maunganui on the north island of New Zealand 11,000 miles away.

Tea and chocolate biscuits at 1am on a Thursday morning in the middle of a February English winter?

And why not?

It was my birthday after all".

The above is a brief extract from a much longer chapter read here and begins the 5th and final section of my second self-published book and first on the grand old game of Test Match cricket.

Here's a link for a book I'm immensely proud of together with other ways and means of supporting me, if you are able, to thumb the eye of the traditional publishers who refused to read my original manuscript!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C5Z3FVYC

https://www.patreon.com/TheBlackfordBookClub
https://www.paypal.me/TheBlackfordBookClub
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/steveblackford

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