Why lunch is off the menu for we cricketing scribes - Chris Waters

Not least the fact that there is no catering for the press at county cricket matches this season as a result (I’ll pause for a minute while you get your violin).

As Professor Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, almost said at the latest Downing Street briefing: “Unfortunately, Chris Waters will have to make his own sandwiches and bring his own coffee to games for the foreseeable future.”

Alas, it is deemed too risky to provide food, drink, cutlery, etcetera, to the journalists and broadcasters attending the fixtures behind closed doors.

To say that this has been a shock to the gastronomic system is an understatement.

I’m having to make my own damned packed lunch, for goodness sake, and trying to work out how many spoonfuls of coffee to put into a flask so that it does actually taste like coffee.

Do you put the milk into the flask as well, by the way, or is it better to take the milk along separately?

Thank goodness for Alexander Graham Bell. “Hello mum, I was just wondering…”

No, this is no laughing matter if, like me, you have rather grown accustomed to at least receiving the odd soggy sandwich and the odd cup of coffee at the nation’s cricket grounds – basically in return for not writing anything too detrimental about anybody.

A day at Emerald Headingley, for example, would not be a day at Emerald Headingley without the pre-packed cups of Bovril in the press box which, year after year, are steadfastly ignored as people fight instead over the pre-packed cups of coffee and drinking chocolate, the sugar content in the latter enough to ensure that you leave the venue three stones heavier than when you arrived.

From Chester-le-Street to Canterbury, from Trent Bridge to Taunton, we are routinely fed like kings or at least given a lunch voucher that entitles us to something from a kiosk.

Trent Bridge, for instance, where Yorkshire are playing today in the Bob Willis Trophy, is usually one of the culinary highlights of the cricket-writing year, the only dilemma being which dessert to choose after the voluminous roast dinner.

The intolerable impositions placed on me and my fellow freeloaders from the Fourth Estate were brought home last week when Yorkshire played Durham in their opening match in the tournament at Chester-le-Street.

Usually, the soup at Durham is a veritable delight, even though no-one has ever quite managed to work out what flavour it is - carrot and coriander, perhaps, or some such hybrid?

No matter, it does the job, and its absence last week was like returning to the venue to discover that one of the stands was no longer there, or that the pavilion had disappeared into thin air.

Be gone with you, damned virus, be gone.

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