There comes a point in the life of every man when he has to be true to himself. A time when he reaches that turn in the road and realises he can't go on living a lie. There are inner demons to be confronted and until an honest face is presented to the rest of the world he can never be the well-rounded human being he so desperately wants to be. That time is now. My name is Des and I am a cricket fan.

There. It's done now and the load is a lot easier to carry. For years it looked like such a public and frank admission would be impossible. What would the man at the gate in Clones say when I arrived to take my seat at the Ulster final? How could I look the boys in the eye on the way to the All-Ireland final? What derision would await me in the changing rooms before the following week's five-a-side? These were not things to be taken lightly so for years a lie had to be lived.

Then I discovered there were others like me, with the same life-forming experiences. To a man we had been reared on a diet of late 70s and early 80s television when, with the exception of the now departed Match of the Day, sports did not extend far beyond horse racing, stock car racing and wrestling on Saturday afternoons. For burgeoning young addicts to the sporting cause these were slim pickings.

Live football was a rarity but this was a sporting contest that didn't just last 90 minutes. If you were lucky and England weren't playing it could sometimes go on for five whole days. In the limited life experience of a na∩ve 10-year-old this was an absolute eternity. There was something so appealing about the ritualistic aspect of it all and even if it took years to build up an even rudimentary understanding of the rules it felt like it would be worth the effort.

It was also something that seemed a whole world away from the Gaelic football and hurling we were immersed in. With the obvious exceptions of Dublin-Kerry matches these were distinctly glamour-free days for the GAA.

Television did not seem to impinge on the games beyond the All-Ireland finals and so there was not the same patina of celebrity and star quality that had attached itself to cricket and football.

Cricket was also a game that seemed intimately in touch with its past and was never afraid to recognise the importance of tradition. This was palpably not the case with English football whose sense of history did not extend back beyond 1966. Nor was it a feature of GAA life at the time. The arrival of the superb new museum at Croke Park and wealth of literature that has sprung up in the last decade or so has begun to address that now.

There was also an air of the forbidden about the whole cricket thing, the sense that you were fraternising with the enemy. The Ban, of course, was in those days a raw memory and while cricket might not have been perceived as representing the same threat as football there was still a sense of lingering resentment towards it.

At times the two sporting worlds would become intertwined. As far as I could see there was no reason why some of the cricketers I was watching couldn't turn their hand to Gaelic football and help out Tyrone in their hour of need. Joel Garner, the six foot something West Indian fast bowler was a particular favourite and he was earmarked to play full back on the basis that he would be tall enough to mark Bomber Liston, who was the tallest human being I had ever seen.

There were other obvious candidates. Viv Richards, another West Indian seemed to have the wherewithal and the timing to play at centre half forward while there was not a full back in the country who would be comfortable at the sight of Australia's Merv Hughes and his unfeasibly large moustache jogging in to the edge of the square. For obvious political reasons no England player ever made the cut but there was always the nagging suspicion that Ian Botham would have made an excellent, rampaging centre half back.

That, though, would have been a bridge too far.

And so the fascination continued through the days of West Indian dominance and then the emergence of the Australians with their unshakeable winning ethic. Straddling over all of this were the increasingly frantic efforts by a succession of clearly inferior England teams. There was also a vague awareness that they even played cricket not far from where we lived but we never went. Family days out to the cricket, complete with picnic baskets and deckchairs, would not really have been our thing.

Over the years it has become just about acceptable to nurse an affection for the game and it is an altogether more understanding environment for people like me to come out and say who we really are. There were about four thousand of us gathered together on the lower Ormeau Road last Sunday. Ostensibly we were there to see Ireland play Australia but in reality it was to pay homage to what is now being touted as the best Test side in history. Just now they appear all but untouchable and it may be that their likes will never be seen again.

Not that we got to see much of them on Sunday either. The morning had started promisingly enough as Matthew Hayden and Justin Langer came out to bat just after 11 a.m. The clouds were high in the sky at that stage and there were even splashes of sunlight that promised a full day's play. Australia's approach seemed fairly contained. Bat conservatively for an hour or so to get the pace of the pitch and assess the strength or otherwise of the Irish bowlers and then provide a bit of entertainment and cut loose towards the end of the innings.

Up until 12.30 or so it was all going to plan. Hayden seemed set for a big score and was starting to play more and more expansively. Then it started raining. Just a bit of drizzle at first and they played on through that for 10 minutes or so with that optimism so beloved of cricketers at every level. As usual it proved to be disastrously misplaced as the drizzle was replaced by a downpour that continued through the afternoon until the game was abandoned at 3.30 p.m.

It was disappointing but then again a life-time of supporting Tyrone and Celtic prepares you for that. But there has been one positive spin-off. I'm out and I'm proud. Life will never be the same again.