World Twenty20 Day One

Ga Nederland! Stop the tournament right now. There is no point carrying on. Anything that happens from this point onwards can only be a mere imitation of the nerve jangling, stomach-churning and rather sweaty tension that gripped a damp corner of North West London and several million homes around the globe.

It had seemed so unlikely. We had tuned in to be greeted by what we thought was ill-mannered precipitation on our parade. But the weather gods have much wisdom. The rain lasted just long enough to see off the much-threatened opening ceremony which was replaced by a stand-up routine from the Three Stooges. David Morgan droned on for a while, like a Welsh Methodist preacher warning us of the perils of enjoying ourselves. Giles Clarke, the silent one in the bad suit looked on gormlessly. Then His Venerable Eminence the Duke of Kent, in his best 1930s accent, regaled us with an account of his school days or possibly his shopping list. I can’t be sure, because, to be honest, your Dukeship, I wasn’t really listening.

Enter the clowns. England’s comedy show took some time to get going, with many of Luke Wright’s hilarious straight-up-in-the-air heaves falling inexplicably short of the fielders. But once Ravi Bopara had holed out, the old routine fell into place and they followed up some cheeky little getting out shots with a slippery slidey fielding performance as the grass grew greasier and the game kept popping out of their grasp like an errant bar of soap in a bubble bath.

No comedy in the Sky studio but there was an intriguing game of good cop, grumpy-cop-who-hasn’t-had-his-coffee-yet. Clean cut new boy Nick Knight thought Wright’s recent performances amounted to green shoots of improvement. Scowly Mike Atherton winced his disagreement. Knight read out a sonnet of his own composition on Paul Collingwood’s inspirational leadership. Atherton threw up in a bucket. Still, they were unanimous on one thing: the Netherlands couldn’t possibly win. “A bunch of butchers, bakers and candlestick makers,” chuckled Atherton, inordinately pleased with himself.

However, it appeared that the Dutch hadn’t got the memo informing them of the futility of their plight. They set about chasing down their target with bravery and gusto and the crowd seemed to grow more orange by the second as everyone’s eyes began to widen to the possibilities. Orange hats, orange flags and orange wigs bobbed up and down in the steamy rain as their supporters went respectably crazy in a very Dutch way. Then that final ball and I, like millions of others around the world, leapt right off my chair.