FOR me, the holiest part of the year is just starting. I mean of course the cricket season. For nigh on 50 years this has been my religion - a religion with many gods.

These days, the exalted ones are Michael Vaughan, Ricky Ponting, Matthew Hayden and the incomparable Brian Lara.

But the pantheon stretches back in my memory to enchanted days at Headingley and Old Trafford when I saw Trueman, Statham, Hutton and Washbrook strutting their stuff before packed grounds on Bank Holidays.

I saw Fred Trueman do the hat trick against Nottinghamshire at Scarborough. And I marvelled to see Brian Close get smacked on the head by the ball while fielding at short leg - only to shout, "Catch it!"

The game of cricket miraculously survives despite the efforts of its administrators. I heard an interview on Radio Four last week in which one of these admin wallers said that the game has been "sexed up" - but he added, "There's still a long way to go." Can you just imagine what Fred Trueman would say to that sort of drivel? Most of it would be unprintable in any case.

Of course, when these morons who run the game talk about sexing up, they really mean dumbing down. The one day game nowadays resembles nothing so much as a pop concert. All right, we can stand a bit of nonsense here and there, but the relentless plunge downmarket is making cricket all but unrecognisable. The argument that modern folk can't concentrate for the long stretches that we used to concentrate back in the 1950s is nonsense. The fact is that the five day Test Match is still the biggest crowd-puller in the game. Thousands were glued to the recent series in the West Indies, with millions more watching on TV.

Unbelievably, the ten o'clock news each night on BBC1 never even gave us the score. And now the Corporation has ditched cricket from its schedules almost completely. I wish they would ditch that thugs' game soccer - a foul-mouthed collection of overpaid yobs whose chief aim seems to be to cripple their opponents and put them out of the game for good.

Cricket is the perfect combination of body and mind - I would even say body and soul. Physical skill is only a part of what goes on on the cricket field. Really, the art of it is psychology, as Mike Brearley showed, and as Michael Vaughan seems to be demonstrating. Take that last series in the Caribbean: the Windies were not as bad as they played; but they lost because Vaughan and his men overawed them, sapped their confidence and psyched them out. Football's violence is artless and crude but the superior aggression in cricket is part of a subtle mind game.

And mind games are not reserved for use on opponents alone. I remember in that celebrated series against the Aussies in 1981 when Bob Willis took all those wickets to win the key match at Headingley. Brearley started off by bowling Willis up the hill and into the wind. Bob wasn't at all pleased and he asked, "Why are you doing this to me, Skipper?" Brearley replied, "To make you angry." It worked and he went on to take eight wickets down the slope.

The fiercest aggression in cricket is conducted under the outward appearance of extreme politeness. I recall when Colin Cowdrey went out to Melbourne and Jeff Thomson looked as if he was trying to kill him with bouncers. After four of these, Colin went down the pitch, proffered his hand and said, "Good morning. I'm Colin Cowdrey. I don't think we've been introduced." Perfect!

* Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.