Two separate Chris Tavare references in this blog, you lucky, lucky things © Getty Images

England and Australia renew a rivalry older than time itself today in a bizarrely scheduled and/or financially advantageous series of one-day internationals, perhaps the least eagerly anticipated England-Australia showdown since the Sydney and London offices of accountancy firm Scraghound, Flude & Prink met for an Ashes year-end ledger-off in 1984.

Nevertheless, with the national football team concocting some brilliantly inventive ways of embarrassing itself, and with the government about to announce an emergency budget that could involve selling all first-born children to the highest overseas bidder in an effort to balance the Treasury’s trembling books, Andrew Strauss’s team has the chance to provide the country with some light relief.

Besides, we can categorically predict that the winner of this series will gain such an insurmountable psychological advantage that they will absolutely certainly win this winter’s Ashes (and do not believe any Australians who try to hoodwink you into believing that the Ashes are taking place “this summer” – the run from late November to early January, which is, in my experience, definitely winter).

It will be a good test of England’s recent improvement in limited-overs form, selection, tactics and recruitment, which all point to them successfully avoiding a repeat of their 2007 World Cup tactics, which seemed to be based on attempting to trick the opposition into thinking they were playing a Test match by trying to score 35 for 1 off the first 15 overs, then praying for rain and hoping the patriotic Duckworth-Lewis method would finish the job.

Having won last year’s Ashes and defeated the Australians in the World Twenty20 final, if England can prevail in this one-day series, they will complete a clean sweep of their oldest cricketing enemy, and therefore, under international law, be entitled to force Australia to become a colony again.

In the Caribbean, another entry in the Encyclopaedia of Pointless Test Matches is being painstakingly inscribed, as West Indies, in a revolutionary inversion of traditional tactics, first pushed for a possible win, before then consolidating to make sure they could not lose. Habitually, teams tend to go through this process the other way round, but one down in a three-match series, and having reached 400 for 4 at a fraction under 4 runs per over, West Indies then took 61 overs (regrettably, that is not a misprint) to score their next 100. In terms of not finishing a job well started, it was eerily reminiscent of when Shakespeare, writing the first draft of Hamlet, fired off three sensational acts of drama, before scrawling, “Acts 4 and 5. Blah blah blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda, bit of a fight, euurghhh, The End.” Before nipping to the tavern to see if Christopher Marlowe had left any manuscripts lying around.

Chanderpaul must have set a new all-time record for slowest progress from 150 to 166 (95 balls, after his previous 100 runs had come off 148, a perhaps unique case of having his eye in, then carefully playing his eye out), whilst Bravo, one of the more stylish batsmen in world cricket, stodged 53 off 215 to register the fourth-slowest recorded innings of 50-plus by a West Indian in Test history.

The only rational explanations for Bravo’s innings are:

(A) Bravo and the traditionally cautious Brendan Nash (114 off 148 balls) had their bodies secretly swapped by a rogue scientist before going out to bat; or

(B) Bravo’s was a tribute innings, part of the official worldwide celebrations to mark the 30th anniversary of Chris Tavare’s landmark five-hour 42 at Lord’s against West Indies. I imagine Tavare would prefer to have faced Bravo’s 119 balls from Paul Harris than the 202 hurled at him by Roberts, Holding, Garner and Croft. (And maybe a few from Viv Richards by way of humanitarian respite.) The 30th-anniversary festivities continue in Covent Garden today with a three-day non-stop ballet based on the career of Tavare, and a gala dinner at which surviving members of the Lord’s crowd from 1980 tearfully share their reminiscences of watching the innings unfold.

Here, as promised, are some more Answers to your Questions. Well, three Answers to three Questions, because I got a bit carried away with the first one and now it’s past my bedtime.

Question (posted by “Craig lbw bowled Kirsten”):
Could you give your Test XI for Insomniacs v your Twenty20 Test team, the sort of match that would have 210 all out (206 overs) plays 250 for 5 declared (32 overs), 150 for 2 (208 overs)?

Zaltzmanswer:
I covered the Insomniacs XI a while ago in my All-Time Dullest XI, but here instead is a Least Appropriate International Twenty20 side, comprising some of the slowest batsmen and most expensive bowlers in international cricket’s great history (and comprising only players from the pre-Twenty20 era), to take on a World XI in a Twenty20 match:

1. Bruce Edgar. You cannot argue with statistics, particularly not statistics as conversationally aggressive as these ones: 1814 ODI runs at a strike rate of 49 (more than 1000 runs more than anyone else scoring under 50 per 100 balls in the format); and 1958 Test runs at 32 per 100.

2. Sunil Gavaskar. Included purely on the basis of his legendary 36 not out off 175 as he led India’s chase in reply to England’s 334 for 4 at the 1975 World Cup. India fell tantalisingly 203 runs short of victory with only seven wickets in hand. A work of perverse majesty. In mitigation, limited-overs cricket was new and unfamiliar, but if the great man adapted to Twenty20 with similar obduracy, he could be relied upon for a solid 12 not out.

3. Chris Tavare. First name on the team sheet. Ignore the fact that he was a very effective limited-overs player at county level. He’s still the first name on the team sheet. Could he carry his form in Tests (strike rate 30) and ODIs (48) into the shorter format? Yes. Yes he could.

4. Kepler Wessels. An ODI strike rate of 55 is not great, but the aura of dourness that accompanied the South-African-Australian-South African-again grindmeister whenever he took the field would be of great use in Twenty20. Could also chip in with a few expensive and unthreatening overs (ODI economy rate of 5.33).

5. Mike Brearley (capt). The lowest run rate of anyone who has scored 300 ODI runs – 45.53. It would be fascinating to see this captaincy genius finesse his way to victory in a Twenty20 game with this team around him.

6. Mark Dekker. Zimbabwean blocker with truly Tavaresque run-rate numbers allied to handily low average. Could share fifth-bowler duties with Wessels, but would be looking at least to double his ODI economy rate of 5.01.

7. Brendon Kuruppu (wk). Although his Cricinfo biog states that he had “a reputation as a one-day slogger”, his ODI strike rate of 51 suggests that this reputation was no more founded on fact than the rumours that Michael Holding is a woman, or that Steve Waugh catalogues every egg he ever eats and keeps the shells in a special locked vault, in which he sleeps at least three times a week. Also responsible for a 13-hour Test double-hundred.

8. Ian Salisbury. England’s greatest legspinner of the last three decades, narrowly ahead of Mike Atherton. Guaranteed to keep the boundary stewards in fear of their safety whenever he bowled in internationals, and a usefully slow lower-order batsman too.

9. Henry Olonga. Operatic anti-Mugabe hero is out on his own as the most expensive ODI bowler with more than 50 wickets to his name. His run rate of 5.79 puts second-placed Dilhara Fernando (5.19) to shame, and he also scored his very few Test runs at under 25 runs per 100 balls.

10. Devon Malcolm. Although the very-occasionally-devastating quick man ended with a relatively respectable Test economy rate of 3.35, much of this was due to bats being too short to reach his jauntier deliveries, and you feel that Malcolm at his worst could be spectacularly expensive in Twenty20. He might blast out a couple of wickets, but would more than make up for that with his old-style ineptitude in the field.

11. Heath Davis. New Zealand tearaway is one of only three bowlers to have taken 10 wickets in ODIs and gone for more than a run a ball. Reports suggest mid-90s Kiwi wicketkeepers still need counselling after attempting to stop his errant missiles flying away for four byes more than once an over.

QUESTION (posted by “kgvenkatesh”):
Who is the better bowler, Steyn or Ambrose? My vote goes to Ambrose, he can bowl anywhere on any wicket.

Zaltzmanswer:
Steyn. His record-breaking strike rate and millennium-leading average put him on the way to becoming a truly great fast bowler, alongside the best of any era. Ambrose, however, although a dapper batsman and neat wicketkeeper in his 11 Tests for England, has understandably never bowled in international cricket, and his one over of first-class bowling did little to suggest that he could eclipse Steyn’s achievements.

QUESTION (posted by “Mick”):
Do you think you could present a good case for Statsguru to become the first World Heritage-listed website?

Zaltzmanswer:
Yes. As far as I am concerned, Statsguru is of equal significance to human culture and progress as the Pyramids, the Taj Mahal and the works of US rock leviathans Whitesnake put together. In my mind, it is already listed. It may also become the first sport-statistic-calculating website to be cited in divorce proceedings. I hope not, but there are, unquestionably, three of us in the relationship now.

Comments (60) |

Benn, Gayle and Co realise how funny their achievement is © AFP

In the first Test in Trinidad, which followed to 100% accuracy an unofficial ICC computer-generated ball-by-ball prediction of what would happen, Chris Gayle’s West Indies came within one Dwayne Bravo delivery of history. Until Bravo dismissed Boucher to conclude South Africa’s first innings – a grave tactical error, as it transpired, which served only to unleash Steyn and Morkel onto a poor, defenceless batting line-up – all nine wickets had been taken by spinners.

Benn, Shillingford and Gayle himself had tweaked themselves to the brink of obscure statistical immortality. One more wicket would have resulted in them becoming just the third West Indian spin attack to dismiss an entire team, and the first to do so without containing both Sonny Ramadhin and Alf Valentine (the former must be close to a recall, at the age of 81, as the West Indies seek greater penetration in their bowling; even the latter, some years after his death, might be worth a squad place).

They would also have become the first spin team to take all 10 wickets in a Test innings outside Asia since Warne and May thoroughly bammed England’s collective boozle at Edgbaston in 1993, and, by my and Statsguru’s reckoning, the first all-fingerspin attack to bowl out an entire side since 1968. Sleep well, Bravo. You have denied Shane Shillingford his slice of immortality.

As it was, it was the most profitable return by West Indies slow bowlers for nearly 40 years. How times have changed. West Indian spinners took more wickets in this single hypothetically five-day Test than the combined might of Caribbean tweakery managed in five years between March 1979 and March 1984. This statistic comes from no less a source that the all-knowing, all-seeing Statsguru herself (although, the great goddess who knows all does classify Viv Richards as “mixture/unknown” rather than “spin bowler”) (but the point basically stands) (and it completely stands if you chuck the word “specialist” in as the third word of the second sentence of this paragraph, before the word “spinner”).

This was also the second time in little over a year that the West Indies opening bowlers took no wickets in a Test match. The previous occasion, last February in North Sound, Antigua, was more excusable, as the match lasted just 10 balls, due to the minor inconvenience of the entire playing area having been constructed entirely out of sand.

Dale Steyn became the 57th bowler to pass 200 wickets in Tests. He sits 11th in the averages on that list, just ahead of Shaun Pollock, Waqar, Wasim, Holding and Lillee, so he is doing quite well for a someone who took 14 wickets at 60 in his maiden stint in English county cricket, outbowled in the Essex attack by, amongst others, Ravi Bopara and James Middlebrook. To this day he still cannot get back into the Essex team – some selectors have long memories − but his Test match strike rate of 38.9 is way out in front of Waqar, and makes legendary spearheads such as Jeff Thomson and Curtly Ambrose look like Derek Pringle and Martin Snedden.

Here is a stat for you that illustrates the state of world bowling. Chew it carefully, and then draw a picture that expresses what you think about it. Of all the bowlers who have made their debuts since 1999, only two – Steyn and Mitchell Johnson – have taken more than 100 wickets at an average of under 30. Of those who launched themselves into Test cricket between 1992 and 1998, 16 achieved that feat, beginning with Warne and ending with Ntini.

In an imminent future blog, I will speculate wildly on the various causes of the Great Great Bowler Drought. It is certainly a shame that Warne has not presaged a deluge of champion legspinners as was hoped. That is because being the greatest legspinner the universe has ever seen is not easy. Believe me, I tried. Briefly. I was, without question, the greatest legspinner in the Zaltzman family for a couple of heady years in the early 1990s, but when my googly started landing with unerring regularity half-way to third man, I decided to focus on becoming the greatest pogo-stick rider of all time. But I didn’t own a pogo stick, so I gave up and started reading books about 1950s Ashes series. There are now no known legspinners in my family, although my 18-month-old son does occasionally stick his belly out, throw his hands into the air and bark something that sounds a little like “Howzat”, so there is hope.

Copying Warne has proved impossible – similarly, when people visit the Sistine Chapel to have a look at Michelangelo’s pretty pictures on the ceiling, they do not, generally, whip out an easel and start painting feverishly whilst muttering: “I could do better than that, no problem.” They tend to take a photo, or buy a postcard, and say to themselves: “Fair play to the lad, he’s done me on painting. One-nil to him. But I’ll get him back at table tennis, the dead-for-446-years little rascal.”

All this panning for statistical gold has delayed my latest Question and Answer session, which I will post instead over the weekend. Please leave any further queries in the comments below.

Comments (38) | West Indies

Basil Butcher: cleverly ensured there aren’t any pictures of him bowling © The Cricketer International

Over the last few days, the roads of England have been inundated with joyous cars sporting flags of St George, the red cross fluttering proudly in the English air in honour of its sporting heroes, as the nation, coming together as one, celebrates its cricketers’ 2-0 series victory over Bangladesh.

The football-obsessed media would have us believe these flags symbolise support for the impending World Cup. They would, of course, be wrong. Football World Cups come around every four years – but there will not be another home Test series against Bangladesh for a decade. The public, understandably, wishes to mark this once-in-a-relatively-short-lived-dog’s-lifetime event. And there is no more potent display of patriotism available to the 21st-century consumer than attaching a small flag to your car window.

In the three previous Tests against England, Bangladesh had, in accordance with their team moniker, fought like Tigers, albeit inexperienced tigers, and when bowling, tigers who had yet to grow teeth. But tigers nonetheless. They had lasted at least 90 overs in each of their six innings, averaged a wicket lost every 11 overs, and when 126 for 0 at Old Trafford, with Tamim Iqbal again tearing into England’s bowlers like a lovestruck teenager into a promising-looking Valentine’s Day envelope, they were well on course to extend their team record of nine consecutive innings of 280 or more.

Bearing in mind (a) that their previous best sequence of 280-plus innings scores was a less-than-world-beating one in a row, and (b) that as recently as 18 months ago they completed a run of 18 successive sub-280 efforts, progress was undoubtedly being made.

It was, therefore, a serious disappointment for all fans of vaguely competitive Test cricket that they then seemingly transported themselves five years back in time and hurled away all 20 wickets in 64 overs (including at one point 11 in 123 balls), fighting like cornered tigerskin rugs as they subsided to a first-innings defeat in a year and a half.

There is an old saying in showbiz, “Always leave them wanting more.” Bangladesh certainly did that, in a frenetic cascade of understandable technical shortcomings and avoidable lapses of attention that was eerily reminiscent of too many of their earlier Tests. It was also spookily similar to England’s rancid capitulations in Leeds, Johannesburg and Kingston within the past 18 months. One of the supposed purposes of Bangladesh’s Test status is for them to learn from better, more established teams. At Old Trafford they demonstrated that they had perhaps been watching videos of the wrong England matches.

Looking ahead to the rest of England’s Test year, they will need more consistent penetration from their bowling attack. They again prospered in favourable conditions, continuing a trend of intermittent threat dating back some years. Since the demise of the 2005 Ashes-winning four-prong-pace-plus-one-prong-containing-left-arm-spin attack, England have struggled to dismiss opponents twice when unaided by conditions or limited opponents (whether they have picked four or five bowlers).

Excluding Tests against Bangladesh and the early-season series in England, they have done so just 10 times in 43 attempts, including just five in 27 overseas Tests (two of which were in New Zealand). This suggests that if they are going to retain the Ashes, they will have to win 1-0, or draw 1-1, and cling on for three or four draws. Bearing in mind that in the past six Australian seasons there have been only three drawn Tests out of 34, this may require Jonathan Trott to extend his pre-delivery routine to heroic levels of time-frittering complexity. Perhaps he could indulge in a full glove-twiddling interpretation of Swan Lake before settling down to face each Nathan Hauritz bombshell, reducing each day to four or five overs. (I am sure that during his Lord’s double-hundred I saw Trott make the bowler wait whilst he checked his emails on his laptop and phoned his gas supplier to see if someone could take a look at his faulty boiler.)

With the Ashes looming, Pakistan’s two forthcoming series against Australia, then England, will be fascinating. All Pakistan series are fascinating. Even if all 30 scheduled days of play were to be washed out, I am sure that some intriguing behind-the-scenes subplots would emerge from nowhere to keep us entertained. And Shahid Afridi is captain. It is not often that one watches cricket primarily to see what the captain does. But this will be one of those rare occasions.

The bans on some key players have already been lifted, and the concern for Pakistan supporters must be that, with the first Test against Australia still almost five weeks away, there is ample time for a new set of bans to be randomly imposed before the Test matches begin (plus at least two changes of captaincy, three major feuds, five retirements and six retirement reversals).

Time for one question and answer from your submissions (more to follow in a few days’ time).

Question (submitted by Themistocles): Inspired by your last piece about Mudassar Nazar, what do you consider to be the most underwhelming feat of greatness?

Zaltzmanswer: Interesting question, Themistocles (and how good to discover that you are alive, well and on the internet, despite having died in 459 BC).

Figures of 6 for 32 suggest a devastating pace blitz or a wily spell of mystery spin on a crumbling fifth-day pitch, not some slow-medium wobblers wreaking havoc amidst the cream of English batsmanship. That Mudassar should have carved those numbers into cricketing history, rather than Imran Khan or Abdul Qadir, who between them took 4 for 178 in 79.5 overs in that innings, is one of those strange quirks that illuminate the annals of the sport.

Mudassar followed up his Lord’s triumph with 4 for 55 a fortnight later at Leeds, his second-best Test analysis – he did not take more than five wickets in any other series in his 13-year Test career. I prefer to think of such unexpected and isolated outbreaks of quality in otherwise mundane careers as flabbergastative rather than underwhelming.

Perhaps the finest example is Basil Butcher’s 5 for 34 against England in Port-of-Spain in 1968. Butcher had been a stalwart of the West Indies batting line-up for most of the previous decade when Garry Sobers tossed him the ball with England coasting along serenely at 370-odd for 5. In that time Butcher had bowled once, nine years previously, a tidy six-over spell of 0 for 17 in Delhi. He was not so much an occasional legspinner as an entirely hypothetical one.

As he stood at the end of his run-up, Butcher must have thought to himself: “I’ve got a round red thing in my hand. What on earth do I do with it now?”

The answer he gave himself was, evidently: “I suppose I’d better take four wickets in three overs.” After dismissing Colin Cowdrey for 148, he skittled the English tail, before bowling Jeff Jones to take his fifth wicket.

One can only imagine the stunned silence in the West Indies dressing room after Butcher completed his spell, as his 10 team-mates stared at him, as if to say: “You should have mentioned you could bowl at some point in the previous 10 years, Basil. You really should have mentioned it.”

Butcher preferred to retain his cloak of bowling anonymity, however. He never took another Test wicket. As individual, unexpected peaks of performance go, this was the cricketing equivalent of Inzamam-ul-Haq hauling himself out of his special chair, slightly stretching what is left of his hamstrings, lolloping towards a sandpit, and breaking the world triple-jump record. Or of George W Bush standing up in front of the UN, clearing his throat, and giving a faultless rendition of the Queen of the Night’s aria from Mozart’s Magic Flute.

The fact that Butcher waited so long before revealing his hand makes his feat particularly special. Michael Clarke famously took six Indian wickets for nine runs in 38 balls in his fourth Test, in Mumbai in 2004-05. This, however, merely raised expectations that have never been met (other than when he took out three more Indians in 11 balls in Sydney three years later – excluding these combined schoolboy analyses of 9 for 14 in 8.1 overs, Clarke has tweaked out just 11 batsmen at 70 runs per wicket in 58 Tests).

Butcher, by contrast, skilfully created his extravagant element of surprise by not bowling at all for the previous nine years. And retrospectively heightened it by barely bowling ever again. A work of pure genius.

Comments (24) | England

	Mudassar Nazar: master of the fearsome blitztrundle © Getty Images

England has reaffirmed its status as the greatest nation in the history of the world with its third consecutive intermittently-unconvincing-but-ultimately-comfortable victory over Bangladesh. It was a good, competitive Test match. Whilst Bangladesh were batting. When they were bowling, it was another pointless exercise in zero-intensity average-inflating net practice for England’s batsmen, although only Jonathan Trott and Andrew Strauss took full advantage.

Trott took the opportunity to bump his Test average up from 37 to 53, mutating from a Neil McKenzie to a Virender Sehwag over five days of ruthless accumulation. It would take six consecutive ducks for Trott to re-McKenzify his average. Ian Bell’s average remains 2.5 runs better off five years after helping himself to 227 unbeaten runs in the two-Test series of 2005. Word is he still sends Tapash Baisya and Anwar Hossain Monir a box of chocolates every Christmas.

Bangladesh’s bowling “attack” currently poses the offensive threat of a broken toy zebra in a lion enclosure. They average over 60 runs per wicket this year, and it is traditionally difficult to win Tests when you are conceding 600-plus per innings. Not impossible, admittedly, but reliant on the presence in your dressing room of a high-quality hypnotist to hoodwink the opposition captain into two rogue declarations.

The Tigers, for all their recent improvement, continue to lack both penetrative bowlers and, more importantly, top-notch hypnotists. Until one or both of these understandable problems is resolved, they will continue to strive for draws rather than victories.

Nevertheless, their excellent top-order batting confirmed that they have now improved sufficiently to officially become a team that is not ritually humiliated in every Test it plays. Progress towards becoming a team that has an ice-lolly’s chance in a volcano-surfing competition of actually winning a Test remains negligible, however: Bangladesh’s bowlers remained as incisive as baguette. And, just as you can’t perform an appendectomy with a stick of French bread, so you cannot win a Test without taking wickets.

Their batsmen, however, provided another good examination for England’s bowlers, which only Steven Finn passed. Bangladesh extended their record run without an innings defeat to 10 Tests, and have now scored over 200 in 16 consecutive Test innings since January 2009. They had been skittled for less than 200 in 15 of their previous 25 innings, and 61 of their first 116 since an elevation to Test status that was not so much premature as before conception.

To maintain these sequences at Old Trafford on a potentially bouncy pitch, they will need more from their middle order, which failed to support Tamim, Imrul and Junaid’s respectively dazzling, determined, and also determined efforts.

Tamim Iqbal again showed himself to be a rampant entertainer of rare brilliance, whose willingness to intersperse his vibrant strokeplay with failed attempted smears over midwicket gladdens the heart of all village players, who can aspire to match at least the latter part of his repertoire. How appropriate that Tamim should have illuminated the old ground so close to the 20th anniversary of another immortal Lord’s innings by a visiting player, back in 1990 – I refer of course to New Zealand opener Trevor Franklin’s almost-equally iridescent 101, which Tamim eclipsed by two runs from 210 fewer balls over four and a half fewer hours.

The MCC announced yesterday that, as part of their planned expansion of Lord’s, a 30-metre high bronze statue of Franklin will be erected at the Nursery End, its base adorned with sculptured reliefs of the Auckland Awkwardian playing a series of obdurate forward-defensives, whilst spectators are resuscitated in the background.

Lord’s has long inspired foreign batsmen. Tamim joins Franklin on an illustrious list that now includes, amongst others, Don Bradman, Martin Donnelly, Mohsin Khan, Gordon Greenidge and Jonathan Trott.

Sadly, the great old ground failed to exert a similarly motivational effect on Mohammad Ashraful, who clocked up his 48th single-figure dismissal in just 54 Tests. He remains some way behind the record for most single-figure scores by a top-order batsman, held by Alec Stewart – the top six in this list make a useful batting order:

Stewart (66 scores below 10), Atherton (65), Border (64), Tendulkar (64), Lara (62) and Steve Waugh (61). Serial failers to a man.

One suspects Tendulkar will extend his career until he has claimed top spot from Stewart. A record is a record. Expect the little master to deal only in centuries and singe-figure failures from now until retirement – he will want to leave a legacy of records that no one will ever match.

Ashraful, aged just 25, has plenty of time to break into this elusive club and claim his place amongst the all-time elite, and to do so he will be hoping Bangladesh play all their Test matches away from Asia – his average in his 18 Tests elsewhere in the world is 12.7, which puts him on a par for non-Asian Tests with batting legends such as Curtly Ambrose, Joel Garner, Colin Croft and Ian Bishop.

The statistics suggest unarguably that Ashraful is a 6’6”-plus West Indian paceman trapped in the body of an underachieving 5’6”-minus Bangladeshi batsman. Perhaps he could be the answer to the Tigers’ new-ball troubles. If only the aforementioned hypnotist was on hand to swing his pocket watch to and fro, and bring out the lethal Caribbean quickie that is the real Mohammad Ashraful. “You are getting sleepy. You are getting sleeeeepy. And... gone. Right. When I click my fingers, you will charge in from a 30-yard run, bang it in short of a length at over 90mph, follow through to within an inch of the batsman’s still-twitching nose, and glare at him like he’s just stolen your mother. And... click.”

Despite the promise of Finn, England should be concerned by their failure to take wickets when the sun, unpatriotically, shone. Four late-summer Tests against Pakistan and an Ashes tour in Australia are looming, and if the solar system’s number-one-ranked heat-and-light source betrays England consistently, their four-prong bowling attack may regret its lack of fifth prong, especially if the key prong, Swann, remains as uncharacteristically unprongy as he was at Lord’s.

Tamim became the 150th batsman to score a Test century at Lord’s, and celebrated with a joyful if bizarre piece of physical theatre and/or modern ballet, which experts interpreted as a demand to have his name rapidly inked onto the pavilion honours board. Many greats of the game are absent from the board at the Home Of Cricket. And some certifiable non-greats of the game have carved their names indelibly into Lord’s eternity.

I have compiled a couple of similarly structured XIs for you. Tell me who you think would win. Bearing in mind that the match will be played at Lord’s.

Not on the Lord’s Honours Board XI
MA Atherton, SM Gavaskar, SR Tendulkar, ER Dexter, CH Lloyd, Imran Khan, APE Knott (wk), Wasim Akram, SK Warne, DK Lillee, CEL Ambrose.

On the Lord’s Honours Board XI
CWJ Athey, TJ Franklin, MJ Horne, MH Richardson, AB Agarkar, Nasim-ul-Ghani, SAR Silva (wk), DR Pringle, RG Holland, ESH Giddins, Mudassar Nazar.

(Note that I have selected Ajit Agarkar as a specialist batsman for his mind-bending 2002 century, and Mudassar as a specialist bowler for his low-pace 1982 blitztrundle, arguably the most devastating display of dibbly-dobbling in cricket history. His tail-end runs could prove crucial – you would back him to chip in with a few more than Ambrose. And this contest could prove once and for all who is the greatest Australian legspinner of all-time – Shane Warne, or Bob Holland.)

There will be another Confectionery Stall Q&A later this week. Leave any queries you want me to answer in the comments below, and I will intensively research and/or completely fabricate responses shortly.

Comments (90) | Bangladesh