I have always loved sport. All my boyhood and youth I delighted in games. An important part of my active adult years was taken up in tennis competition and to a lesser extent in squash. And I have never wavered in my opinion that cricket is an endeavour to be appreciated on the same level as good literature and great drama. Now I sit and watch sport in front of a television set, I read as much as I can get about sport – still turning to the sports page first when I pick up a newspaper, and I put writing about sport, especially cricket, on a par with writing about anything else.