I was stuck in a bog, just like English cricket in the 1990s

It was the Ashes. We always tried to get test match tickets when the Australians were England’s summer opponents, with a preference for visiting the grounds outside London.

Trent Bridge in Nottingham was our favourite but this year we had travelled to Leeds for the second day of the fourth test, with the intention of driving on to the Yorkshire Dales after play had finished.

After leaving Headingley we stopped at Harry Ramsden’s in Guiseley (the original branch), eating fish and chips with white bread and butter as a pianist tinkled the ivories in the corner of the restaurant.

We stayed at a B&B in Linton – a neat trick by my dad since we lived in a village of the same name in Cambridgeshire – sleeping solidly after a day in the sun and full of Harry’s battered cod.

It helps to have interests in common with you parents. It means you have something to hold on to when you have the inevitable fallings out.

Cricket and hiking were mine and my father’s shared passions and we set out in good spirits in the morning, heading for Buckden Pike, up above Wharfdale.

The hill is well-known in part because of a memorial there to Polish aircrew, who died on the moor when their Wellington bomber crashed in bad weather during the Second World War. It is also an important site of blanket bog.

Reaching the top of the ridge, with a stone wall to our left, we were suddenly enveloped in cloud which rushed up like a wave from the valley below. Hoping that it would clear as quickly as it came, we huddled behind the wall and tuned our radio to Test Match Special. The weather was better in Leeds – but it wasn’t helping England.

The cloud failed to lift and we walked on, missing the war memorial in the murk. Maybe the poor visibility was to blame too for what happened next, as I put my best foot forward directly into a patch of bog, sinking quickly well above the knee.

I threw myself forward in an effort to get out – or at the least to spread my body in a way that would prevent further sinkage. With a bit of help from my dad I hauled myself out, thankful not to have lost a boot or been swallowed whole by the peat.

The rest of the walk was moderately miserable as the wet sludge which clung to my trousers seeped through and left my legs soaked.

As a final indignity, when we finally dropped back into the valley and found somewhere to eat my dad even questioned whether we should sit inside for fear of my muddy appearance. He relented in the end.

Back in Leeds, England’s struggles continued. It was 1993, the year of Warne’s ball of the century and of thrashing after thrashing for the home side, until a consolation win at the Oval. They were stuck in a cricketing bog of their own – but unlike me, they stayed there for the rest of the decade.