THE weather during the last cricket season was at best moderate, but as soon as it ended we had successive Saturdays of sunshine. Was someone taking the celestial p***?

But the gloom still hovers over Durham County Cricket Club: players leaving, second bottom of the league and the financial uncertainty.

As the stand-in Chairman Sergeant Fraser (Dad’s Army) would say: “We’re doomed.”

However during the season there were some brave performances, and a few games were drawn with victory in sight.

On the field, Paul Collingwood was outstanding, but in the dressing room his influence must have been immense: a young team engulfed in all that uncertainty and negativity must have been difficult to motivate, but he certainly succeeded.

You could argue that this was his finest season for Durham.

In local cricket, the mood has also been downbeat.

Matches conceded have become more common even in the most traditional clubs.

Visiting them on a weekly basis has been like visiting a loved one in a care home, you look around the lounge, everyone smiles bravely trying to conceal their problems.

I detect that doing this over the years has finally got to club officials and they can’t see a future with the struggle to turn out teams.

When the ECB reorganised the traditional leagues this has meant more travelling to games.

In this Durham Cricket League when Evenwood play Marsden it is an hour’s travel. (Now ‘Monarch’ has gone bust and there’s another problem!) Cricket doesn’t fit into the modern family life: it is just too time consuming.

Regrettably, I think the future league cricket will adopt the Twenty-Twenty format.

It does go against the grain for me to suggest that, but I really don’t think there is any other choice.

H B McLaren, Brancepeth, Durham