Sporting weather

It always amazes me how Britain, and the British, flounder so spectacularly with a little bit of adverse weather. 'Snow blizzard' (think a light sprinkling) in the winter or 'heat wave' (a couple of degrees' rise) in the summer and you hear all the stats about number of school and work days missed, with significant financial consequences.

Sporting events are perhaps the weather's biggest victim. The oldest tennis tournament in the world - The Championships, Wimbledon - has famously suffered atthe hands of midsummer rain showers since 1877. But not anymore. Centre Court's new £80 million retractable roof got its competitive debut on Monday night. Of course, Sod's Law dictated that The All England Club was unable to show off its new toy as the first week remained dry. Amelie Mauresmo and Dinara Safina were the first to play under the roof just before 5pm, but even the meeting of former champion and World No.1 was only a warm-up for the main event. Andy Murray's fourth-round five-set victory over Stanislas Wawrinka- the Swiss nineteenth seed who I predicted as a tricky opponent - was aWimbledon classic. The first match ever played entirely under the roof was also the latest ever finish to a Wimbledon contest as Murray, battered inthe first set, won through 6-3 in the decider. 12.6 million watched on the BBC, as the young Scot re-awoke the passionate vicissitudes of the Tim Henman days. He had been making things look a little too easy at times.

Murray afterwards moaned about the humidity of an indoor Centre Court, whilst the purists mourned the end of the rain breaks that were as much a part of Wimbledon folklore as strawberries and cream. Players had to play the weather as well as their opponent - as Tim Henman found out in his 2001 semi-final with Goran Ivanisevic. Annoyances for spectators ranged from a whole day holding your expensive tickets without seeing any play, to the sound of Cliff Richard singing.

Of course, not too much has really changed. Of the 20 grass courts at Wimbledon, covers stayed on on 19 of them on Monday evening. The big cover over Centre does seem to have provided a 'go on then, if you think you're hard enough' to the weather gods, resulting in a sunny fortnight. Michael Eavis from Worthy Farm down in Somerset may be ringing to thank the Wimbledon staff for keeping the rain away from his Glastonbury festival too.

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Watching a new sport unfold and take shape is a very rare privilege. It's one that twenty-first century sports fans have enjoyed over the past six years with Twenty20 cricket. Since the first Twenty20 Cup matches were played, in England, in June 2003, the new sport has progressed massively in the popular glare. And it is a new sport. New target audiences, new entertainment techniques, and most interestingly, new, innovative playing techniques.

During work experience with sports journalist Mark Baldwin, I went to the County Ground, Chelmsford, 2nd July 2004, to see the day/night Twenty20 between Essex and Hampshire. It was only the second season of the new format in Britain, and many players on both sides were making their Twenty20 debuts. Essex posted 135, 7.5 an over off the 18 they were restricted to. I remember Mark saying to me that it was a very getable score, the Hampshire batsmen just needed to make sure they got in, before they could start launching the big shots. Nobody had told the away side that though, the Hampshire batsmen trying to hit everything without consolidating. They found themselves 36 for 5 and 95 all out after 15 overs, seemingly completely lost with the subtleties of the new game. Despite this, I continued to hold the belief that Twenty20 was a bit lopsided, essentially a batsman's game. But this summer's World Twenty20 - a competition which marked the coming to full maturity of the shortened format - showed me a balanced game. Ingenuitive bowling is far more complex than just keeping the run rate down, highlighted by Umar Gul's standout 5 for 6 against New Zealand. Successful teams were characterised by consistently sharp fielding, speckled with touches of radical brilliance. Looking at the short game's influence on its longer, traditional counterparts - which of course, should not be the sole way of judging Twenty20's success - and the return of fielding as cricket's third discipline, in need of similar attention as the batting and bowling, can only be good news. With the summer ahead, it also augers well that the Aussies suck at the shorter game!

So, with the IPL and World competitions behind it, how had Twenty20 at home progressed by 2009? We went along to the Riverside to see Durham - Lancashire last Friday. Looking forward to seeing Freddie - who had hit 93 off 41 balls the day before - showing he was fit to take on Australia, and Harmy trying to rejuvenate his Ashes chances with a strong display. But we didn't see any cricket, only some cheerleaders. It rained.