THIS column comes to you from Taunton, where - surprise, surprise - the start of the cricket season has signalled the end of the drought.

Durham's temporary overseas man, Javagal Srinath, has gone back to the hotel to try and get warm, leaving the usual scattering of eccentrics with their anoraks and bags of butties waiting for the rain to stop.

But while the rest of the world might think they are barking mad, they are at least peaceful souls happy to be at the opposite end of the madness spectrum from those tormented by football mania.

There are no surprises any more in the depths to which football people can sink. The most talented youngsters can hardly fail to be tainted by the world in which they are engulfed, so that Wayne Rooney becomes just another spitting image and Joe Cole becomes so enraged by West Ham's looming relegation that he lets fly with his fists.

While I have no sympathy for any club that signs Lee Bowyer, nor would I have shed tears for Bolton had they lost to the Hammers and faced the drop themselves.

What would Nat Lofthouse make of a Bolton line-up in which Englishmen are an endangered species?

At least it can be claimed that Rooney and Cole have proved that tribal loyalties still exist in a world which is now everyone's oyster.

If an old Lancashire mill town can field a cosmopolitan football team then Real Madrid really can sign up all the world's best players.

Whether David Beckham quite fits into that category appears to be irrelevant. Madrid are prepared to pay £38m for him because they reckon he would generate £60m from the Asian market.

Remember how the Japanese girls swooned over him at the World Cup?

Well they would apparently all be rushing out to buy Madrid shirts with Beckham on the back, and he'd be good for business whether he enhanced the team or not.

I have no doubt he feels great loyalty to Man United, but he's also a dedicated family man and if he has to suffer the nonsense of kidnap threats in this country I wouldn't blame him for getting out.

United will be able to buy two or three players with the proceeds, but will this global market spell the end of the youth system which spawned Beckham and several of his teammates?

FURTHER to my tirade last week about Phil Tufnell leaving Middlesex in the lurch to pursue a media career, the point was underlined by his column in the Daily Telegraph on Wednesday.

He asked who will be the next England one-day captain then listed the four candidates first mentioned two months ago and followed up by saying: "Who knows?"

There were 500 words of this sort of stuff, neither entertaining nor enlightening. Had he been better informed he would have known that Durham's Paul Collingwood, one of the four listed candidates, has been ruled out by injury. So for goodness sake, Tuffers, get back to bowling left-arm spin.

THERE is much talk here in Somerset about Yeovil's promotion to the Football League, with predictions that they will go straight through the Third Division.

It's only a couple of seasons since West Auckland drew 2-2 at Yeovil in the FA Cup before losing the replay, but it's no surprise that the Somerset club have finally made it to the big time as they've been claiming cup scalps for more than 50 years.

Arsenal are among them, as are Sunderland on a day when so many were shoe-horned into the ground that no official attendance figure has ever existed.

Perhaps Yeovil will pass Hartlepool on the way down unless the Poolies can arrest the decline which brought about the extraordinary situation which saw them gain promotion while some fans were calling for the manager's head.

Mike Newell inherited an almost impregnable situation from Chris Turner, who inherited a pretty hopeless one at Sheffield Wednesday and might have turned it round had others at the foot of Division Two not scrapped equally effectively.

I'll wager that Wednesday will finish some way above Pool next season.

THERE has been outrage this week because Wisden has a picture on its front cover. It's of Michael Vaughan, who I can tell Phil Tufnell will be the England one-day captain.

We can dismiss this change of tradition as a sign of the times, just as we can with the far greater outrage of Wisden's delayed publication.

It's coming out next Tuesday, at least two weeks behind normal schedule with the season well underway.

It's enough to make those anorak-clad eccentrics choke on their butties although they now have some cricket to entertain them because the rain's stopped. It's probably heading your way.