Calamity. Disaster. The end of the world.

At 11am yesterday morning, I rang the Durham County cricket ground and spoke to Brian Rose, Somerset's Director of Cricket. He sounded quietly confident. Yorkshire wickets were falling at Headingley, so they were unlikely to win their game against Kent, and the only way Nottinghamshire could stop Somerset winning the County Championship for the first time in 132 years, was to score 400 runs in one day and take three Lancashire wickets. Like him, I felt confident. The Championship was surely ours. Brian's prediction for Yorkshire turned out to be accurate, because although Kent only needed 90 runs in their final innings to beat Yorkshire, they managed to scrape home with 90 for 6. After a lunch with those doyens of theatre production, Duncan Weldon and Paul Elliott, I jumped in my car to travel up to Cambridge to listen to Mike Brearley, the former Captain of England, address Cambridge University Hospitals (Addenbrooke's) on leadership and narcissism. I looked forward to celebrating with him my joy at finally winning the County Championship. But the fates had other plans. Every 30 minutes on Radio 5 they were telling us that Nottingham were back in the hunt. They got the 400 runs for 9 wickets, that gave them 6 points, but they still needed to take 3 of Lancashire's wickets to get them the extra 3 bonus points they were after to capture the trophy. They managed it at literally the last gasp. Both teams ended up with 214 points, but Notts were the champions as they had won the most matches. As I drove into Addenbrooke's, that great West Indian batsman, Chanderpaul, lost his wicket in the fifth over, and the good burghers of Nottingham went berserk. Well I nearly crashed into a lamppost.

Mike Brearley's comment to me not only shows what a fair man he is, but reminded me that however much I wanted Somerset to be the champions, on the day, Notts had performed a remarkable feat. "If they scored 400 in one day," Mike said, "and then captured 3 wickets with only minutes to spare, perhaps they deserved it, Jeffrey." How old fashioned those words sounded, and served to remind me how Middlesex and England were led when he was captain. His speech, incidentally, was outstanding.

While Mike went on to dinner with Mary at the Old Vicarage, I travelled back to London to conduct an auction for the Royal Flying Doctor Service at Claridges. The deputy High Commissioner, a man of insignificant knowledge, told me that Australia would win the Ashes, and that Mark Webber would be F1 champion. Somerset losing the championship was a big enough blow in the afternoon, so I reminded this damned Aussie of two men called Hamilton and Button, and told him to keep his eye on Andrew Strauss, who had other plans. A generous lot those Aussies though, for a pretty inferior bunch of items (with one or two exceptions) raised £79,000 for this very good cause, and I left for home, still sad, but feeling a little better.

Somerset were always bottom of the county cricket table in my youth. We couldn't even win in the days of Botham, Richards and Garner. We were second for the 4th time yesterday. Will I live to see Somerset win the Cricket Championship? Yes of course I will. Next year.