Cricket has lost the role it had in 1939 but it's still far more than a game | Kevin Mitchell

For those of us waiting for old certainties to waft again on the summer breeze, there is almost certain disappointment. So we must rely on sporting nostalgia

Sport means nothing if it is not about passion and connection and nowhere is that more sharply defined than in football, as we have witnessed since coronavirus ripped it from our lives in recent weeks and days. Once, though, it was cricket, the summer game, deeper in history, richer in symbolism, that held the national sentiment in its gentle palm.

As Derek Birley relates in his excellent A Social History of English Cricket, when Sir Gordon Home wrote in the September 1939 issue of The Cricketer, he went straight for a contemporary metaphor. “England has now begun the grim Test match against Germany,” he said. “We do not wish merely to win the Ashes of civilisation. We want to win a lasting peace with honour and prosperity of all.”

Related: Cricket could use its enforced pause to find a way forward | Vic Marks

This is our war cloud. Not only football and cricket. The lot. Including the Olympics