I've not yet had many chances in life to exercise the Old School Tie, but today I met one of the very few England test batsmen to have gone to my school:

That's Aftab Habib - member of Wills West house, Taunton School, in the early 1980s - departing the field of play having scored 12 runs for his new team, Berkshire. He played for England against New Zealand back in the late 90s without much success, then disappeared back into the depths of county cricket. After leaving Leicestershire at the end of last season, he's rejoined Berkshire (he was born in Reading despite his time at TS) and this was his first game back, a friendly against fellow minor county Wiltshire.

Berkshire lost by a fair margin, making 228 all out at Henley CC in response to Wiltshire's 313. At the time the photo was taken Habib had spent just under an hour at the crease, but the score on his departure was 98 for 6, far from healthy for a side which rates its batting above its bowling. Only Paul Carter, batting number 7, put up any resistance with 57 off 51 balls.

Having completed my umpiring course back in March I now know a fair few people associated with cricket in Berkshire - when I turned up to this game, my first ever in the county, I knew about four spectators, the scorer and one of the umpires. Here's my former instructor Errol waggling the finger of doom at a Berkshire batsman:

And the good news is it looks like I could be spending most of my summer doing this. I'm on sports bulletins duty each Saturday afternoon but have carte blanche to find a decent sporting fixture from which to present them, and the cricket looks odds on to win my vote since it's one of very few sports which can sustain a match from 1pm til 6pm on a Saturday, with something new to say each hour. Plus I'll take my trusty camera and put together a 'grand tour' of Berkshire's finest grounds - that's Henley in the can already, and possibly Thatcham to come next week.

I've really missed cricket, you know. It's good to have it back and even better to be paid to watch it. Plenty of photos and an interview with Aftab to follow on the Berkshire website tomorrow.