Clarrie Grimmett: the first-choice spinner for Australia in Sri Lanka if not for his "foreign" status © PA Photos

I am fairly confident that there were not any actual champagne corks popped in the England dressing room at the sight of Zaheer Khan limbering up in practice so gingerly that a Nottingham Chinese takeaway reportedly inquired whether they could use him in a stir-fry with some spring onions, or at the news that India’s lynchpin would, as expected, miss the second Test due to his misbehaving hamstring. However, England’s batsmen must have been mentally high-fiving themselves at the prospect of not having to face the man who tormented them on the same ground four years ago. Seven of England’s current team played in that series-deciding 2007 defeat, in which Zaheer took 9 for 134, with eight of his victims being top-six batsmen.

Lord’s was a very good Test, richly speckled superb individual performances and driven by a fluctuating narrative, but it could have been a great one had Zaheer stayed fit (or at least not injured). England’s bowlers applied remorseless pressure, led by Broad’s extraordinary and brilliant renaissance – after 18 months of largely ineffectual toil, he found his 2009-Ashes-winning length, took 7 for 94 in the match, had three catches shelled off his bowling (including a Strauss blooper so simple that he could, should and probably would have taken in his sleep, as the ball would likely have lodged in his pyjama pocket), and had two lbw appeals refused that were so plumb they were last seen heading off in overalls with a tool-kit to fix some broken piping in the Lord’s bathroom. It was a startling performance, and vindication for England’s selectors. Slightly belated vindication, perhaps, but vindication nonetheless.

Broad’s bowling might have touched perfection at times at Lord’s, but he still needs to do some major work to refine his appealing technique which remains a counterproductive caterwaul of almost Viking intransigence, and it seems a bizarre oversight that England have not invested in a backroom appealing coach. England are famously well prepared by their large and well-honed support team. Zaheer’s injury – to add to the ones suffered by, amongst others, McGrath in 2005, and Steyn in 2008 and 2009-10 - suggests that amongst that backroom staff is a high-quality voodoo practitioner, who has been working overtime to give England that crucial extra edge.

India’s bowlers, by contrast, released England at crucial times in both innings, and ended up twiddling their thumbs until the declaration came, and generously donating runs to the Matt Prior Century Fund (a worthy cause, given how well he played at the start of his innings, but allowing him to negotiate the supposedly-nervous 90s against the fearsome two-prong attack of Dhoni and Raina was surely taking well-meaning charity a step too far).

The current world No. 1 team habitually improve as series progress (none more so than Harbhajan Singh, as discussed in last week’s Multistat), but the lack of depth in their bowling is a concern. England may be without the outstanding Chris Tremlett, who has taken to Test cricket like a duck to a Chinese pancake. Should he fail to recover, England will replace him with either Steve Finn, their youngest bowler to take 50 Test wickets, or Tim Bresnan, who took 11 tight-fistedly cheap scalps in the final two Ashes Tests in Australia. India will have to replace Zaheer with either Sreesanth, who since his last tour of England has taken 33 wickets at 44 in 13 sporadic Tests, or Munaf Patel, who seemed to have given up on Test cricket, a form of the game in which he has harvested just 11 luxuriously expensive wickets in the last five years.

It will be fascinating to see how India go about trying to retain their No. 1 status after such a disappointing defeat, in which they mixed penetration and listlessness with the ball, and dogged resistance and careless errors with the bat, into a bizarrely inconsistent cricket cocktail that few would order on a night out. It would have been more fascinating to see them try to do so with their best bowler in action, but such is the way of modern cricket. I think India will do well to win a Test. But then, I and many others thought the same after their first-Test griddling last winter in South Africa.

Whatever happens in Nottingham, Lord’s provided further proof that one three-day game is insufficient preparation for a touring Test team. Of course, the days are long gone when a touring side would begin the first Test after a solid six to 12 months of warm-up matches, with various players having changed marital status since leaving home, or written epic novels.

It should be said that, in days gone by, a long build-up was not always a guarantee of hitting the ground running in the Test series. Len Hutton’s ultimately victorious 1954-55 England Ashes side prepared for the first Test with six four-day matches, and promptly hit the ground stumbling like a drunken pensioner trying to go the wrong way down an escalator – they were hammered by an innings and plenty, before fighting back to clinch the Ashes 3-1 in the fourth Test. Two months after their Brisbane battering. They had fun for another month, drew the final Test, and then hopped on the boat home at the beginning of March, wondering whether their families would still remember them.

Nevertheless, one warm-up match to prepare players who had either been playing somewhere else in completely different conditions, or not playing at all after a three-month binge of limited-overs cricket, was clearly insufficient. India at Lord’s reminded me of England in Pakistan in 2005-06, when, after scaling their greatest peak and achieving their ultimate ambition, and weakened by a couple of important injuries, they suffered a post-Ashes anti-climax, a disappointing fishfinger sandwich to follow some mouth-explodingly high-grade sushi.

Extras

The one question on the south hemisphere’s lips this week has been: for their forthcoming tour of Sri Lanka, should the Australian selectors have recalled Clarrie Grimmett? The pre-war legspin legend has admittedly not been at his best since departing Test cricket in 1936, retiring from the first-class game in 1941, and dying at the age of 88 in 1980.

However, in the absence of any cast-iron contenders on the Sheffield Shield scene, Grimmett was probably worth a selectorial punt. After all, as sports pundits – the wisest of all philosophers, according to the Massachusetts Institute Of Sports Punditry - often say: “There is no substitute for experience.” Before adding: “Form is temporary, class is permanent.” With 127 five-wicket hauls in first-class cricket, Grimmett is ahead of Michael Beer and Nathan Lyon by, respectively, 127 and 127 first-class five-wicket hauls. (Although both Beer and Lyon can boast superior Twenty20 records.) (And Grimmett was born and raised in New Zealand, so for Australia to select him now, after all the carping about England’s various imports over the years, would be to slug deep from the thermos flask of hypocrisy.) (The late great Bill O’Reilly was ruled out with a calf strain.)

Comments (22) | India in England 2011

The number of Test double-hundreds scored by Kevin Pietersen - putting him third on the all-time England list, behind the useful pairing of Wally Hammond (7) and Len Hutton (4).

A quick multiple-choice quiz question for you. Pencils ready? You may begin. Who has scored the most Test double-hundreds, with 12 in 52 Tests, at a rate of one every 6.66 innings? (a) Don Bradman; (b) Monty Panesar; (c) North Korean President Kim Jong Il, the self-proclaimed scorer of the world's lowest ever golf round (38 under par), and presumably therefore quite handy at cricket as well; or (d) film actress Zooey Deschanel.

Also: The number of double-hundreds scored in Lord's Tests between 1950 and 2002. There have been five since 2003. There were five from 1938 to 1949, in just six Tests. Shortly after New Zealand's Martin Donnelly scored the last of those, Mao Zedong proclaimed the People's Republic of China. No double-century was scored in a Lord's Test for 33 years after the communists took hold of China. In March 2003, Hu Jintao became the Chinese president. In July that year, Graeme Smith brutalised England at HQ for 259 aesthetic abominations of runs. Is president Hu behind the recent spate of docile pitches at Lord's? Was the MCC the real force behind the Chinese Communist Party? Was Gubby Allen the mastermind of the Cultural Revolution? I am not willing to answer any of these questions for fear of what potentially life-threatening political machinations the truth might unleash. I merely present the facts. Draw your own conclusions.

Also: The number of Test double-hundreds England players scored between September 1985 and February 2002. Since then, there have been 10 England 200s. Here is another multiple-choice question: Why? (a) Because England have become better at batting since 2002; (b) Because the bowlers of the world have become less good at bowling since 2002; (c) Because pitches have become increasingly batsman-friendly, verging at times on batsman-amorously-flirtatious; or (d) all of the above.

(Answers to the two questions will be posted on this page in 50 years' time)

Comments (0) | Multistats

The average of spin bowlers in opening innings of Lord's Tests since 1975, as generously contributed to by Harbhajan Singh's 0 for 152. Indian fans should not be excessively concerned by the failure of their 400-wicket tweaker. The last time a spinner took five wickets in the first innings of a Test at HQ was when Bishan Bedi looped his way to six for lots and lots and lots in 1974. That October, I was born. And I have clearly been bad news for slow bowlers operating in the first innings of Lord's Tests. Before I reluctantly entered this world, spinners had taken their first-innings-of-a-Lord's-Test wickets at a respectable average of 32.3. Since then, they have collectively taken just 73 wickets in the 60 opening innings of Lord's Tests, at an average of 58.2. And the best innings return has been Iqbal Qasim's unforgettable 3 for 101 in 1978.

In the second innings of Lord's Tests during my lifespan to date, spinners average 30.4; in the third, 39.2; and in the fourth, 30.7. (By comparison, for pace bowlers at Lord's, the respective innings averages are: 33.52; 29.50; 32.03; and 33.26.) At all other English Test grounds combined, the respective innings averages for spinners are: 44.37; 39.55; 31.92; and 31.65.

In fact, since my evidently influential birth, of the 29 grounds to have hosted 20 or more Tests, Lord's has been the worst for spinners bowling in the opening innings of a Test. However - hold on to your scorebooks, abacuses and thermos flasks, stats fans - it has been the third-best of those grounds for spinners in the second innings of Tests.

Explain that, Captain Science. You can't, can you? No. You can't. Lord's is 23rd best of the 29 for tweakers in the third innings, and 17th best in the fourth innings.

If anyone can explain those stats, they will win a Nobel Prize, a job as Allen Stanford's accountant, and a lifetime seat on the UN Security Council. What the hell happens to Lord's in the second innings of Tests? And how on Zeus' intermittently good earth does Edgbaston leap from 17th best for spin in the first innings and 19th in the second, to the best of all in the third, before settling back to 11th in the fourth? What is going on? Are there no certainties in the world anymore? And, more pertinently, what am I doing finding all this out at 1.30am when I am supposed to writing jokes for my alarmingly-imminent-and-far-from-nearly-finished Edinburgh Fringe show? Should I tell my wife about it, or is it best that she doesn't know? Help.

Furthermore, Harbhajan is seldom at his best in first Tests. Over his career, he has averaged 39.8 in first Tests, 30.2 in second Tests, and 26.4 in third, fourth and fifth Tests combined. And the Punjab Prober's first-Test phobia has become distinctly more pronounced over the last two years - in which time he has taken 15 wickets at 77.9 in eight first Tests, a Quasimodically ugly duckling of a stat to compare with his relatively swanlike (and almost Swann-like) 59 wickets at 29.5 in twelve second and third Tests.

In summary, (a) Harbhajan will probably improve as the series goes on; and (b) it's my bedtime.

Also: I said, it's bedtime. And may Statsguru have mercy on your souls.

Comments (0) | Multistats

Will India miss Sehwag like the deserts miss the rain? Or merely like a child with attention-deficit syndrome does an uncle who occasionally pops around with a bar of chocolate? © AP

Greetings, Confectionery Stallers. As a preview before the salivatingly anticipated first England v India Test at Lord’s, here is a multiple-choice quiz for you. No conferring. No looking up the answers on the internet. No hacking into my telephone, computer or brain to see if you can gain an unfair advantage on other readers.

Question 1: Who is going to win the England v India series?
(a) England. When the ICC Reliance player rankings for both teams are totted up, England have an advantage in batting (mostly arising from Sehwag’s absence), and bowling (mostly through Anderson’s superiority over Sreesanth/Praveen). They have not lost a series for two and a half years, and have in Cook a batsman in form so prime you could griddle it and serve it as a steak in a Michelin-starred restaurant. They are confident, settled, in form with bat and ball, and ambitious.

(b) India. Lord’s looks set to be rudely rained on, and – brace yourselves, stats fans ‒ India have not lost anything other than the first Test in a series in England since being unceremoniously splattered like a catapulted tomato on a granite snooker table in 1974. India have not been overwhelmingly impressive in Tests in the last year, but they are tough. They won two tight Tests against Australia, recovered from a first-Test flambéing by South Africa to draw an away series, and won in West Indies without several first-choice players. They won a World Cup under unprecedented pressure of expectation. They won here in 2007. They have lost only one of their last 10 Tests against England, and only three of their last 30 against anyone.

(c) No one. It’s going to be a draw. They are both very good but not flawless teams, and both are hard to beat. Besides, it is going to rain solidly for the next six weeks. It will be snowing by the time of the Oval Test. It’s the end of the world, I tell you. Alastair Cook turning into the world’s most unstoppable batsmen is one of the cast-iron signs of the apocalypse. It’s in the Book of Revelations. If you read it backwards after a couple of bottles of whisky.

(d) Cricket. Six of the world’s current top-11-ranked bowlers against six of the top 13 batsmen (once Sehwag is fixed). Legendary batsmen against the world’s best bowling attack. India’s best-ever team against perhaps England’s strongest in decades. It could be magnificent. As long as the captains don’t just meet on Thursday morning and decide to call it a draw at the toss.

(e) Technology. The continuing search for the perfect version of the DRS is being conducted with the scientific ruthlessness of a blind lion at a supermarket checkout trying to find the barcode on a zebra. The latest scheme is to remove one of the bits that seemed to working the best, and replace it with other bits that no one seems quite about. It’s crazy, but it might just work. Although more likely it won’t work, and the lion will soon enough poke his scanner at another part of the increasingly irritable zebra.

Question 2: Who should England pick: Broad, or Bresnan?
(a) Broad. He turned the 2009 Ashes single-handedly in England’s favour, and his selfless injury in the 2010-11 series opened the door for the fire-breathing renaissance of Tremlett. He has a dreamy cover-drive.

(b) Bresnan. He took 11 wickets at 19 in the Ashes. Broad has taken 10 wickets at 55 in five Tests since the start of the Ashes. Bresnan has taken at least four wickets in each of four of his last five Tests. Broad has done so in two of his last 13. Admittedly Bresnan does not have a dreamy cover drive.

(c) Both. It is a tough selectorial call, but it can be avoided by making the two allrounders play jointly, dressed in a pantomime horse outfit. This solution, whilst contrary to the usual Flower-Strauss era game plan of not picking two players in a pantomime horse outfit, remains more likely to be adopted than dropping a batsman and playing five bowlers. (They could alternatively play in a pantomime Ian Botham outfit. Whichever is more readily available in the MCC costume shop.)

Question 3: How much will India miss Virender Sehwag until he returns from injury?
(a) A huge amount. India will miss Sehwag like a picnic would miss gravity. He scores more runs, faster, than any other opening batsman in history – averaging 55 off 66 balls when he has gone in first for India. He is a certifiable immortal of the game with previously inconceivable statistics.

(b) A small amount. He struggled against the moving ball in South Africa, and has not scored a Test run in England for nine years. Largely through lack of opportunity, admittedly.

(c) Not at all. He makes absolutely no difference to the side. In Sehwag’s 86 Tests, India have won 35 (40%), and lost 19 (22%). In the 21 Tests he has not played in that time ‒ when he has been omitted either through injury or because the selectors ate a poisoned mushroom and convinced themselves that he was not nearly as good at hitting cricket balls with cricket bats as Dinesh Karthik or Wasim Jaffer (neither of whom, it must be said, currently averages 55 off 66 balls each time he has opened in Tests) ‒ India have won eight (38%), and lost four (19%). So India win, draw and lose an almost identical proportion of games whether the Delhi Dazzler is playing or not. The same applies to Tendulkar – India have won 34% and lost 26% of the Mumbai Mathematical Mammoth’s 177 Tests. In the 17 games he has missed since his debut (albeit without the selectors ever tucking into the mushrooms and deciding he was not as good as Dinesh Karthik or Wasim Jaffer), they have won 35% and lost 24%. All of which suggests that the result of a Test match is completely unaffected by the players playing in it, and the Indian selectors might as well pick Bollywood starlets, random names out of the phone book, or Dinesh Karthik and Wasim Jaffer. You cannot argue with statistics.

Question 4: How significant is the 2000th Test milestone?
(a) It is the greatest moment in the history of cricket, and therefore, by logical extension, the greatest moment in the history of civilisation. When Dave Gregory and Jim Lillywhite marched out to toss the coin at the MCG in 1877, it is fair to assume neither said to the other: “This is going to be the first of at least 2000 Test matches.” Shakespeare only wrote 38 plays, but people still witter on about him all the time, almost 400 years after he popped his drama-obsessed clogs. Test cricket therefore has proved itself at least 52 times better than Shakespeare, and the moment deserves to be celebrated accordingly.

(b) It is nice.

(c) It is irrelevant. The currency of the Test match has been devalued like a Zimbabwean dollar, with too many featureless series, inadequate teams, and the idiotic Australia versus Half-Hearted World XI being inanely and pointlessly upgraded from “a bit of a jolly” status to Test match status. If you keep scheduling lots of Test matches, mathematics suggests that you will pass mathematical milestones for how many Test matches have been played. The greater concern is: will there be a 3000th? And if so, will anyone know what you are talking about when you say: “Hey, folks, it’s the 3000th Test match today”? Or will you have to explain: “It’s like two really, really long games of Twenty20 joined together. Still no? Bit like football but with sticks and no goals?”

Question 5: Does the fact that Sachin Tendulkar has thus far scored fewer Lord’s Test centuries than Ajit Agarkar mean that the latter is a greater batsman than the former could ever dream of being?
(a) Yes. You cannot argue with statistics.

(b) No. You can and should argue with statistics. And you should keep arguing with them until they back down and start talking some sense.

(c) Too early to say. We should not rush to judgement on such matters. Let us wait until both players have retired and then judge their batsmanship careers objectively.

You have eight seconds to complete your answers. If you get all five correct, you win your choice of Yuvraj Singh or Kevin Pietersen to keep (subject to availability). Enjoy the game. And if you are a rain cloud reading this and thinking of heading to Lord’s to see what all the fuss is about, please stay away and follow the match on TV.

EXTRAS
The news in Britain has been dominated by a murky swamp of subterfuge, falsehoods and half-truths of late, so the occasional incontrovertible fact is a source of both solace and excitement. Sachin Tendulkar has had a long career. That is a fact. He is only the fifth man to play Tests in four separate decades. And only the second to have done so without having played before the First World War. And the first to have done so without being English.

Tendulkar played his first Lord’s Test 21 years ago, against an England team containing moustachioed offspinster Eddie Hemmings, who had made his first-class debut in 1966, when Wilfred Rhodes was still alive and well and with a few more years in the tank. Rhodes made his Test debut in WG Grace’s final international match in 1899, and went on to become the only man in the history of civilisation to play Test cricket in five different decades. Could that be Tendulkar’s next challenge once he has notched up his 100th international hundred? To equal, and then surpass, Rhodes’ Most Different Decades Played In Test record? He looks in good enough shape. He probably does not have much else in the diary for the next two decades that cannot be put off until the 2030s. He might as well give it a go.

Comments (69) | India in England 2011

75

The average duration, in number of balls faced, of Indian opening partnerships in which Virender Sehwag has been involved.

Also: The average duration, in number of balls faced, of Indian opening partnerships since 2000 in which Virender Sehwag has not been involved. Thus, whether or not the Delhi d'Artagnan is playing, the first Indian wicket falls on average in the middle of the 13th over of an innings. When he is playing, the average score at the fall of that wicket is 54-1. Without him, it is 34-1 - and the opening partnership run rate drops from 4.3 per over to 2.75 per over. (And bear in mind that Sehwag had to open with Sanjay Bangar ten times, so those figures could be even more divergent.)

Also: The percentage of the 12 fastest recorded Test innings of over 100 by Indian openers which has been scored by Sehwag - nine of the 12, including the fastest five. He has also blasted three of the four Test innings of over 200 to have been scored at more than a run a ball (the other being Nathan Astle's Krakatoan 222 against England in 2001-02).

Also: The number of times per day Andrew Strauss whispers "yippee" under his breath when thinking about Sehwag missing at least the first two Tests due to injury. From a cricket-lover's perspective, could the entire series not be postponed until he is better? Sehwag hasn't played a Test here for nine years. Come on, cricket. In that time, Simon Katich has played 12 Tests in England, Imran Farhat nine and Devon Smith eight. Is that justice, cricket? Must England-based cricket supporters be deprived of at least two Tests of Sehwag just because of some pre-arranged schedule or other, so-called "TV contracts" having been signed, and tickets having been foolishly sold without checking whether one of cricket's greatest ever entertainers and risk-takers was going to be fit?

Comments (0) | Multistats

12

The number of consecutive ODI innings in which Kevin Pietersen has been out caught. During this sequence he has passed 25 on eight occasions, but his 59 against Ireland in Bangalore is his solitary half-century. Nine of these dismissals have been lofted shots ‒ he has been caught at long-on twice, deep midwicket, mid-on, midwicket, mid-off, point, extra cover, and by the bowler (somewhat unfortunately in that case, as Munaf Patel pulled off an act of literally face-saving self-preservation in the World Cup). Pietersen has also been caught reverse-sweeping against Ireland, and edging a forcing off-side shot in the final ODI against Sri Lanka on Saturday; only an edge off Robin Peterson in the first over of England's titanic World Cup encounter with South Africa in Chennai was not an attacking shot. If this proves nothing else, it demonstrates that Pietersen can play all round the wicket. In the air.

Also: The number of sixes Pietersen has thwacked in his last 34 ODI innings, dating back to November 17, 2008, at a rate of one every 83 balls faced. In his first 26 ODI innings, he planked 34 sixes - clearing the ropes once every 38 balls faced. Pietersen is equal 57th in the chart of Most ODI Sixes Hit Since November 17, 2008 (and only the seventh-highest England player). It is admittedly a niche chart, but a chart nonetheless.

Comments (0) | Multistats

MS Dhoni collects the Healthy Hearts Association’s Man of the Year award for prudently having shielded millions of spectators and 22 players from the damage a tense last session could potentially have inflicted © AFP

Dominica’s first-ever Test match was an old-style twister, a game that wound and ground an undulating course towards a tense climax. With 15 overs remaining – more than 4% of a rain-interrupted match ‒ India were well set to press on for victory, to confirm their pre-eminence in the world game by ruthlessly completing a 2-0 series triumph, 86 runs required from 90 balls. Two greats of the game at the crease. Two World-Cup-winning batsmen still to come, plus a useful tail, but they would have to make those runs on a slow-scoring pitch against a defiant West Indies striving to suggest their latest improvements might have more longevity than other recent false dawns. All was in readiness for a rousing conclusion to an intriguing series, which had had a touch of the 1950s about it in terms of scoring rates, but which tested the batsmen throughout, and saw the welcome return to form of Ishant Sharma and Fidel Edwards. A titanic hour’s cricket was imminent.

And then everyone just wandered off.

As anti-climaxes go, this was not quite as disappointing as it would have been had Hillary and Tensing reached 50 metres from the summit of Mount Everest in 1953, then simultaneously pulled hamstrings and decided not to risk aggravating their injuries by going any further, potentially ruling themselves out of mountaineering for between four and six months; nor as much of a let-down as when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin opened the door of their magic space rocket in 1969, took one look at the moon, and scuttled back inside muttering something about being scared of rocks. (Fortunately they were persuaded by Houston ground control to “have another go, or find your own way home”.)

However, it was a dismal end to a cricket match, a wasteful, negative, dispiriting cop-out, using a needless and bone-headed loophole in the sport’s regulations to chicken out of a potentially thrilling endgame. India were content not to run a miniscule risk of defeat in exchange for a highly possible victory. West Indies were content to have their brave batting rearguard of Chanderpaul and the Edwardses rewarded with a drawn match and a series defeat by an acceptable margin of just one Test to nil. Cricket was unquestionably the loser. And cricket should be asked some stroppy questions in its post-match press conference.

This was the second time in little over a month that one of the world’s leading Test teams has bottled out of pushing for victory with a sizeable chunk of cricket remaining. England pulled the plug on June’s Lord’s Test against Sri Lanka when needing six wickets (or seven if the injured Dilshan batted again) in 15 overs, having, in the previous two innings in the series, taken their opponents’ last six wickets in 7.2 and 22.5 overs respectively. Why? There is a time and a place for rest and recuperation in modern international cricket, and it is not during the last hour of a Test match.

India bailed out yesterday with less than a run a ball needed, with seven wickets left. Still to bat were MS Dhoni – that’s MS Dhoni, the man who had grasped the World Cup final as if it were an errant puppy and made it bark his name in Morse code ‒ plus established ODI star Virat Kohli, plus dangerous lower-order smiter Harbhajan, plus first-class-batting-average-of-24 Praveen Kumar, plus batted-for-three-hours-in-two-innings-against-Australia-in-the-Mohali-Test-last-year-and-dismissed-on-average-once-every-44-balls-in-Tests Ishant Sharma. I know Munaf Patel is unlikely ever to win a Nobel Prize For Batting, but did he need that much protection? On a pitch on which Fidel Edwards had just survived for two and a half hours? Defeat was not impossible, but it would have taken major and prolonged ineptitude.

There is no satisfactory answer to the question of why England and India both bailed out from potentially winning positions - oddly tremulous decisions by teams striving to be the world’s best. But perhaps the more pertinent question is: why were they even allowed to? I assume that they did not have to catch the last boat home, which provided England an excuse in the timeless Durban Test of 1938-39, when they aborted their pursuit of 696 to win tantalisingly short at 654 for 5 (after 291 overs’ worth of batting – if ever there was an accelerator pedal that could have been pressed a little more firmly, a little sooner, it was that one).

Why does Test cricket permit its captains – seldom the most adventurous of beasts ‒ to leave their public like so many Tony Hancocks furiously realising the last page of their novel has been ripped out? Did Shakespeare get to the end of Act IV of his smash-hit platinum-selling turn-of-the-17th-century rom-trag Hamlet, think to himself, “I deserve some quality me-time,” and scribble: “Act V: And they all lived happily ever after”? No, he did not. He knuckled down and he finished the drama. And that is why his plays are still wowing the crowds 400 years later. Test cricket will be a footnote within 20 years if it keeps cheating its supporters like this.

Does any other sport allow this kind of artificial shortening of play? This was not like the concession of an 18-inch putt to share a matchplay golf contest. It was like two players standing on the 18th tee, with the match all square, and the golfing world watching with bated breath, and saying to each other: “I can’t be arsed with this. Call it a draw? Deal. Let’s go and sing some karaoke instead. I do an amazing “Love Lift Us Up Where We Belong.” Imagine the reaction if Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, in the Fight Of The Century at Madison Square Garden in 1971, had staggered out at the bell for the final round, exhausted after 14 rounds of brutal pugilism, had a cuddle in the middle of the ring, said, “Come here, buddy, violence doesn’t solve anything, let’s be friends,” and started dancing a slow waltz.

The regulation allowing captains to agree to end a game early presumably exists in order to allow an aimlessly meandering match to be humanely put out of its misery when a positive result is an impossibility. This was not the case at Lord’s, and it was even less the case in Dominica. Spectators were cheated, the game was cheated. It must not be allowed to happen in future.

Players should not be allowed to make these decisions. They have shown they cannot be trusted with this responsibility. The result of a Test match should not be decided by negotiation. Players can no longer decide when a game is suspended due to slightly bad light (as it should be officially renamed), and they should not be permitted to decide to terminate a game when a positive result is still a live possibility. Not only is it potentially open to abuse by the unscrupulous, it is a nonsensical insult to Test cricket’s supporters. Let the umpires decide when a game has become pointless. The evidence suggests that many Test captains would happily shake hands on a draw after three overs on the first morning, just to be on the safe side.

At a time when the five-day format is widely acknowledged to be fighting for its future under sustained assault from various angles, Test cricket has punched itself in the face. Again.

Comments (300) | India in the West Indies 2011

98

The number of batsmen from current Test nations who, in the last five years, have batted in the top seven in 25 or more ODI innings. When these 98 are ordered by strike rate, only one English player is in the top 20 - Eoin Morgan, scraping in at No. 20, with a strike rate of 90. Of the rest of the current England side, Kevin Pietersen is 43rd (SR 80), Jonathan Trott 58th (78), Ian Bell 77th and Alastair Cook 78th (both 72). When the 98 are ordered by average, again only one English player is in the top 20 - Trott, in fifth, averaging 51. Morgan is 27th (average 39), Cook 46th (35), Pietersen 50th (34) and Bell 55th (33).

Also: The position, in the list of Fastest ODI Innings Of Over 100 Since January 1, 2010, occupied by Alistair Cook's defiant but unsupported 119 off 143 balls at Lord's on Sunday. A hundred and nine ODI hundreds have been scored this decade, and only 11 of those innings have been scored at a slower rate than Cook's 83.21 - a fraction under five runs per over. Since 2000, when a batsman has scored a century at under five runs per over in the first innings of an ODI, his team has gone on to win in half of the matches. When a batsman has scored a first-innings hundred at between five and six per over, his team has been victorious in 68% of the matches; and when a player has smashed a ton at more than a run a ball, his team has defended successfully in 80% of the games. If this proves anything, it is that when an opening batsman scores an ODI hundred, it helps if his Nos. 2, 3, 5, 6 and 7 hit more than two boundaries in 108 balls, and if his No. 4 doesn't crack after a few tight overs and spoon one to deep midwicket after making a good start.

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Lily-livered MP Debbie Abrahams decided she’d rather kiss babies than front up to Malinga at The Oval © Getty Images

MS Dhoni has had little to complain about of late. If he had eaten a fried breakfast every time he had received a trophy, an accolade or a blast of public adulation this year, he would now be the size of 18 Inzamams. However, he received a minor setback in the current Barbados Test, when a blooper in the TV umpiring box led to him being dismissed on the rogue evidence of the wrong ball.

As an Englishman, I cannot help but regret that this new strain of dismissal was not available to umpires during my nation’s dark days of Ashes humiliation in the 1990s and early 2000s. “That’s out, Hayden. Technically, you smashed that wide long hop for four, but I’m going to judge you on the evidence of the ball Warne bowled to Hussain yesterday afternoon. Out. Plumb in front. Hitting the middle of middle. On your way, sunshine. 0 for 1.”

The prancing stride of technological progress is supposed to be ridding the cricketing world of the vicissitudes of umpiring error, yet it frequently adds an entertaining element of random injustice to proceedings. Players are given out or not-out when technology suggests they were in fact respectively not-out and out, on the grounds that they were only marginally not-out and out, and therefore should remain out and not out. Players are given not-out despite technology suggesting they were definitely out, because someone in a suit somewhere doesn’t like one of the bits of technology used. Players are given out when they were clearly not-out, because one of their team-mates had earlier pretended he was not-out even though he must have known he was out. Catches are denied because the tip of an unusually curious blade of grass could theoretically have been protruding through a fielder’s fingers. And now Dhoni has been despatched back to the pavilion because someone put the wrong roll of cine film into the projector in the TV umpire’s private cinema (I admit I am not entire up to speed with what technology the ICC is using these days).

The spirit of randomness at large in the adjudication of cricket could and arguably should be extended further. The Confectionery Stall fervently believes that there should be scope within the game of cricket for a fielding team, once an innings, to decide summarily that an opposition batsman is out. This would add another fascinating level of tactical intrigue to the great game – do you save the AutomaticOut^TM to dismiss the opposition’s best player as soon as he walks to the wicket, or do you wait to see whether or not he is in form, in case you need to get rid of a lesser player who is proving more dangerous on the day? In a tight game, do you hold on to your AutomaticOut^TM as long as possible, saving it for when one or two wickets are left and just a few runs are needed to win, or do you play it early in an effort to turn the momentum of the match at a critical juncture? Does a captain merely use it to settle his own personal vendettas against opposition players – in a game meandering towards a draw, a fielding captain could wait until his nemesis is on 99 before calling the AutomaticOut^TM and depriving his loathed opponent of personal glory, whilst running around punching the air and shouting, “Got him, got him, yes, he’s gone.”

Throughout cricket history, some umpires appear to have unilaterally applied their own version of the AutomaticOut^TM, triggering innocent and baffled batsmen with a proud waggle of the finger and an internal giggle. For the sakes of consistency and fairness, the system must be formalised, and the AutomaticOut^TM is clearly the best way to do this.

Of course, the AutomaticOut^TM, whilst providing huge interest for spectators, players and pundits alike, would further undermine the authority of the umpire. Amidst the squibbling squabbling over the DRS, with both sides claiming to have emerged victorious and having clung on to their precious principle that some decisions should remain wrong, no matter what system is used.

Ultimately it seems inevitable that umpires as we know and intermittently love them are an endangered species. In time, they will be replaced either by omniscient robots or by grim-faced, shaven-headed, bicep-twitching, tattoo-headed nightclub bouncers employed to stop players scuffling through a mixture of intimidation and growling. Or, in an ideal world, by omniscient robot nightclub bouncers armed with flamethrowers and an overriding sense of justice.

Aside from the Dhoni controversy, the second Test has been another intriguing low-scoring game on another pitch whose jaunty behaviour might have been annoying if it was a noisy teenager on a crowded train carriage rather than a cricket pitch, but which makes for good and interesting cricket. Such surfaces may be an unintended and happy by-product of the pitifully low crowds that attend Test matches in most parts of the cricketing universe these days. Ground authorities no longer need to worry about losing gate money on non-existent days four and five if no one is coming through that gate on days one to three.

In fact, the evidence of this game suggests that, for the good of Test cricket, administrators should do absolutely everything in their considerable powers to dissuade spectators from attending Test cricket. Thus freed from the constraints of financial necessity, the groundsmen would be free to prepare pitches that produce the kind of Test cricket that spectators would happily pay to watch.

Meanwhile Alistair Cook’s England established themselves as odds-on favourites to win the 2015 and 2019 ICC World Cups by thrashing Sri Lanka in the Sanath Jayasuriya Testimonial match on Tuesday. If they can replicate the form they showed at the rain-splattered Oval – decisive and positive batting, followed by incisive bowling and sharp fielding, all leading to a thumping victory ‒ in every match of the tournament in Australia in just 45 months’ time, they will fly home with a sparkly new trophy.

New captain Cook set a blazing tempo, clattering away at a super-Sehwagian 160 runs per 100 balls at the start of the innings. Admittedly he blazed and clattered for only three balls, but he evidently inspired his troops. If he can maintain that scoring rate for the rest of his captaincy career, and, ideally, rectify the getting-out-third-ball problem that has bedevilled him throughout his current one-match tenure as ODI skipper, he will silence any press-box sceptics.

It might be a little presumptuous to draw too many conclusions from any one game – as England’s World Cup campaign proved on a match-by-match basis ‒ but it was a good beginning, particularly given that, in the Colombo quarter-final at the end of March, England had been unceremoniously heffalumped by Sri Lanka, after curiously deciding not to risk disturbing any rare birds that might have been nesting in the proximity of the boundary rope. They were aided by the fact that, unlike in the World Cup, key bowler Jimmy Anderson is no longer running in to bowl as if he has just finished a 36-hour-shift as a junior doctor in a busy hospital’s accident and emergency department.

Sri Lanka were perhaps encumbered by the fact that, whilst they showed their support for the ICC’s democratisation drive by selecting a member of parliament to open their batting, England, by unsporting contrast, did not send Cook in alongside Debbie Abrahams, the Labour MP for Oldham East and Saddleworth.

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