This part of the cricket year is often known as the dead end since it lies between the conclusion of the northern season and the start of the crowded southern campaigns.
Not this year however. Instead of a quiet month we have had some of the most controversial moments of 2014.
It simmered towards a boil when the Pakistan off-spinner Saeed Ajmal, a quiet, modest giant of a bowler, was declared a chucker and sent back to the classroom to learn his trade again. One of the umpires who made this declaration was Ian Gould, an old friend of this column since the days when we toured with England.
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I met up with him again a few years ago and asked him how his new job — he was a wicket keeper with Middlesex and Sussex — suited him.
(He is apt to tease me because I have walked past him without so much as a nod of the head. I plead fading eyesight; he taunts me with a superiority complex. Underneath is the same old straightforward and honest Ian Gould, known as Gunner because he played for Arsenal Football Club, the Gunners.)
“Like every umpire I fear being made a fool of by the technology and I long to retire in good time, before anything too disastrous has happened,” he said. He’s a likeable Londoner, still enjoying life despite his worries.
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I will bet my last dollar he lay awake many a night before he joined the commonly held opinion about Ajmal’s bowling; i.e. that his doosra is dodgy.
Sometimes I feel that what is chucking today will be mainstream in the future. Cricketers hate change but the game has shown in the past that it is capable of accepting the way forward.
Ever since Muttiah Muralitharan tore up the rule book 20 years ago I have felt that we were on the verge of a major change, that if cricket was to be a force in America it must allow an action closer to baseball and agree to follow that mighty game’s subtle ways.
Whatever next? Fielders with gloves? That might easily be the next step and I see nothing wrong with it, especially now that there is a greater emphasis on health and safety, especially for kids.
I know a dozen cricketers who have had operations to heal their hands — it is an operation made famous by the late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, although her injury came from writing through the night, not fielding at silly point — and that is an unsatisfactory state of affairs.
On top of that we have had the walk-out by the West Indies midway through their series against India. Argue the rights and wrongs for the rest of your days, but the truth is that their action has no benefit for the game.
Mediation is the answer. It has worked in that tumultuous industrial nation of Britain where strikes have crept away into a corner and such practices as working-to-rule have vanished because there is now a trust in the independent body called ACAS — the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service — which invites all sides to think before they act.
If ICC could set up an independent body intent on settling disputes they would do the game a great service. There must be enough former players without ties to official bodies who could be found to serve on such a council of sporting peace.
That could put a stop to the nonsense of bowlers being called when they feel their action has passed muster and players being driven to go home because they feel they have suffered an injustice. Not before time, I am sure you will agree.