For only the second time in my career, I get the impression that the nation is talking about cricket in a positive way.

I recall England beating the West Indies at The Oval to win the 2000 summer Test series and regain the Wisden Trophy that had been in West Indies' secure possession for 27 years, and watching the scenes on television as Nasser Hussain and his players were showering themselves with champagne on the players' balcony, cheered by thousands of elated spectators.

The following day I saw people playing cricket on Hove Lawns. These patches of grass on the seafront are usually exclusively used for football and so I saw it as vastly significant that people had swapped the big white ball for a little red one.

While England have had a relatively successful time of it since then, their abject failure to win back The Ashes the following summer and again last winter, had led to apathy from the general public in respect to our national summer game. The footballs had well and truly returned to Hove Lawns.

Whether it was intentional or not then, the ECB's timing of the introduction of Twenty20 cricket in England has proved inspirational, if crowd numbers are anything to go by that is. Our five group matches have seen total crowds of about 24,000. I am certain that figure would have been higher had two of the grounds (Esher and Hove) held more people. Although I do not have the figures to back it up, I would contend that this is more people than watch us for an entire Championship season.

Having witnessed the phenomenal success of Twenty20 cricket, the ECB must surely now be considering introducing a league next year.

It is a shame that, despite winning our three home games and coming second in the group (fifth best in the country), we will not play another game this year.

In hindsight, a quarter-final at least would have satisfied the punters' thirst for more action.

One suggestion I have heard would see us playing Twenty20 League games on Friday nights (for those who have floodlights), Saturdays or Sundays. This would mirror the successful staging of League football games.

Fans could then come to every game and a real sense of following could be built up over the course of the season.

Whether this could be accommodated into an already packed fixture list is a moot point and one of the other competitions might have to be sacrificed.

Another shortcoming of this idea is that it might lead to overkill, diluting both the spectators' and players' enthusiasm for what is very much a novelty at the moment.

For now, though, we must enjoy the new-found publicity and lap it up. I had people asking me for tickets to Tuesday night's game who had never watched a cricket match before.

They all said they would come again. The club had to close the gates at 8.30pm for goodness sake!

There were so many people on the ground that cricket games were not allowed to be played on the outfield at the interval due to safety fears. Malcolm, the safety officer, actually had something to be worried about for once.

And I've just been down to the seafront to see if people are playing cricket again. Are they? Well no, actually, it's just started raining. I guess there are always some things you can't control.

Thursday June 26