Every cricketer wonders what will happen when the body packs in. The money that players earn might have improved but we all have to work once either Father Time or the chairman of cricket catches up with you. That P45 is eventually delivered to everyone's door. When an offer that interests you comes along you have to grab it with both hands. I was lucky. When I got the opportunity to write for the Independent the job was too good to turn down, even if it did mean retiring early from county cricket and jumping the fence to the area where the poisonous pen flows. I mean the press box.

I wanted to stay in the game. I love being at cricket grounds and enjoy watching and talking about the game. I've always found spells doing Test Match Special or Sky TV are a pleasure. Having written for the Sunday Telegraph, the Mail On Sunday and the Guardian over the last six or seven years I had some sort of idea of what I was letting myself in for. But the last six months have been more challenging than I ever imagined. We used to give Derek Pringle plenty of stick when he made the same jump nine years ago. "I wouldn't mind your job," Mike Atherton and I used to say. "It's a piece of cake sitting there and watching cricket." Unhappy at our frivolity, `Pring' used to snap: "I work harder now than I did when I was playing. You just wait." After my first full summer as a cricket writer I know what he meant.

Physically it is less demanding, obviously, and I don't need to take anti-inflammatory tablets any more to get me out of bed and to work in the morning. But the trousers are getting tighter and the gym looking less attractive by the day.

In some ways the new job feels similar in that I turn up at a cricket ground almost every day, but walking through the Grace gates at Lord's as a freshman again, hoping that everything will turn out OK, is a strange experience.

After 20 years of playing I knew my job inside out. I understood what worked, what was expected of me, how well I had done and what time belonged to me. Now I am no longer quite sure where I stand and I have to learn as I go along. I have never had four weeks' annual leave before and have not got a clue when to take them or what to do with them. Being new to the job means worrying about everything and I've found it hard mentally. Sheep-like, you tend to follow others who have been around for years. To some extent you take your lead from them. Lack of confidence means everything takes longer. During each day of last summer I would watch enviously as the seasoned hacks got up and left knowing I had another hour or two of work ahead of me. Even the bin men, when they had completed tidying up the ground for the next day's play, started to tell me to turn the lights out when I finished.

Never being content with what you have written means you change your piece constantly, unless of course the deadline is tight. That gets the adrenaline flowing. Once you are aware that there is a hole in the paper that will remain blank until you file your copy it does wonders for the speed at which your fingers move on the keyboard.

The relief at seeing your copy go down the wire is huge. Once it leaves my laptop I can relax at last. After a check call for any queries the evening is mine. Only when I wake in the morning do I experience paranoia as I dash to the newsagent to see whether I have missed a story.

Mingling with the players feels different. They are a bit more wary of me than before, knowing that I may have to write something critical of them at some stage. This does not bother me if I can explain and justify their mistake and, anyway, not many of the current England team belonged to my era.

It has all been made easier though by the sports desk at the Independent where my new colleagues have been sympathetic to my naivety. I have also been made very welcome in the press box by my fellow journalists. I was aware that there has been some animosity shown in the past towards ex-players who walk straight into a job when they have finished playing. But apart from a piece by Michael Henderson in the Spectator I have experienced none of this. And being savaged by Henderson is a rite of passage.

Why do we put ourselves through this? Well, as I write this in Perth they are clearing up after the gales in England. The sun is shining, Nasser Hussain has just completed a century, the day is drawing nicely to a close and after work I am off to eat some seafood, drink something chilled and enjoy the company of my new chums.

It is a dirty job but someone has to do it.

Angus Fraser is cricket correspondent of the Independent newspaper.

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