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.

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	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.

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