One of Duncan Hamilton's favourite writers on cricket, Edmund Blunden, wrote how he felt going to watch a game: 'You arrive early, earlier even than you meant . . . and you feel a little guilty at the thought of the day you propose to give up to sheer luxury'.

In 2019, Hamilton became convinced that the therapeutic “slow trot” of cricket’s sparsely attended but charmingly nuanced county championship was at the point of unwelcome change, with the new white-ball competition the Hundred about to trample all over it. So to capture the quirky, kind and stoic people who characterise this receding community, he spent last season luxuriating in cricket at Sookholme in Nottinghamshire, Clifton Park in Yorkshire and Hove’s county ground in Sussex. Hamilton admits to “nostalgically summoning ghosts”, but with no cricket at all at the moment, his work makes for a welcome substitute, for all those nostalgic.