Opinion: The cricket tea could be heading the way of the dinosaur. No wonder, says Sharon Griffiths.

So goodbye cricket teas – and good riddance.

Cricket teas are under threat because they cost too much to prepare and take too long to eat – often up to forty minutes. This makes a long game even longer and young chaps less inclined to play. They have better things to do than eat cake, even on Saturday afternoons, so some clubs are thinking of cutting rations and cracking on.

Amazing, really, that cricket teas still exist. They seem part of an almost mythical past.

Many, many years ago I did my share of making them.

When I was about 15 and madly in love with a successful batsman. I was besotted enough to spend Saturday afternoons buttering my way through loaves of Mother's Pride and pouring gallons of tea. The rest of the time I sat on the grass and gazed adoringly at him. Well, I was very young… Other girlfriends were there too. And wives and children.

The men played, the women fed them and admired them and the children got bored and everyone waited until the men were ready to come home. That's what passed as a family outing.

Well, that wasn't going to last long. The Sixties were beginning to swing. Bras were being burned. Women found they had other things to do with their time than spend entire Saturday afternoons watching their menfolk standing round not doing very much.

Thirty years later I had a brief stint of turning up with platefuls of sausages when the boys were playing in village teams. By then, mothers swooped in with their offerings and out again sharpish. No one expected us to actually stay and watch the entire match.

The idea of cricket teas is delightful, of course, especially after last week's bombing. Redolent of a gentler, traditional England where everything stopped for tea and cake and women in pinnies had all the time in the world to butter and bake and preside over tea urns.

At a wedding once I met a lovely lady who'd won a competition for cricket teas and had been invited into the Test Match Special box at Lords. Wonderful. She was rightly proud.

But that was then. No one starting from scratch now would put a great big tea in the middle of a sporting match. Pretty bizarre, really. Other sports get by with nothing more than a slice of orange and an energy drink.

Anyway, now the boys play cricket in the sort of leagues where they all go to the pub.

Which probably seems a much better idea all round.