If the tattoo sleeve doesn't scare batsmen, some gentle ribbing will © Getty Images

I promised in the last Confectionery Stall to share some of the cricket-related questions that have been occupying me of late. Arguably, there have been too many cricket-related questions occupying me of late (and by “of late”, I mean “since the age of six”), but if they perform the useful function of helping me not think about, for example, the state of the global economy, the international response to the Syrian crisis, how my parenting skills are likely to fare when my children are teenagers, or the future of Test matches, then so be it.

Here they are. Write your answers on a piece of parchment, and bury them in your garden to confuse future archaeologists.

● Kevin Pietersen’s ODI hundreds are like London buses – you wait three years and three months for one, and then two turn up in the space of four days. (I admit that I did the empirical research for this joke years ago, waiting at a bus stop in La Paz, Bolivia.) (And that the two that eventually turned up were in fact not London buses, but my parents asking me to come back home.) (But the point stands.) Why the delay? (a) essential maintenance work; (b) Pietersen had been batting in the wrong position, at 3 or 4, for too long – most of his best ODI innings have now been played either early in his career at 5 or 6, coming to the wicket when his run-scoring task was quite clear, or, more recently, opening, when he can shape England’s innings from the start; (c) Fate; (d) rogue planetary alignments; (e) Pietersen wanted to disprove the fears expressed when he was appointed England skipper that the captaincy would affect his batting, by not scoring an ODI hundred for three years and two months after having the captaincy taken from him; (f) a combination of luck, form, injury, technical glitches and the opposition insisting on getting him out; or (g) I don’t know.

● Why does a team lose a DRS referral when the replay returns an “Umpire’s Call” verdict, proving that the referring team was either essentially right, or only infinitesimally wrong, to refer it, but either not quite right enough to overturn the decision, or wrong by a sufficiently small margin as to raise the very real possibility that the ball shown to be shaving the stump by a millimetre might not have actually knocked the bail off? Does this not penalise them twice?

● And, whilst we are on the subject of the DRS, why do teams only receive one referral in an ODI innings, despite the fact that they are allowed to lose the same number of wickets as in a Test innings? Does this suggest that the entire system, far from aiming to eliminate umpiring “howlers”, is in fact designed simply to make them even more annoying?

● Was Dr Faustus employed by the BCCI as part of their secret How To Win The World Cup panel? If so, does India now regret having implemented the naughty Doctor’s plan to trade World Cup glory for Test meltdown?

● If Jade Dernbach bowls more than 50% of his deliveries as slower balls, will he be officially be reclassified as a spinner? Albeit a spinner with a useful much-quicker ball?

● Is the success of Dernbach’s seemingly unfathomable and recently match-winning slower ball due to the fact that, when his heavily-inked arm rotates at the required velocity to deliver it, an optical illusion is created whereby the tattoos blend to create an animation of WG Grace biting the head off a squirrel, thus distracting the batsman?

● Given that Saeed Ajmal took 39 wickets at an average of 15.9 in the Tests, ODIs and T20s against England, and that amidst that run of scheming tweak wizardry, he took 0 for 32 in an ODI against Afghanistan, should England be sending their players to spend a year in Afghanistan to work on their techniques against mystery spin?

● Does Eoin Morgan realise that a batsman having a pronounced duck amongst his trigger movements could be risking bad karma?

● When, why and how did Shahid Afridi persuade himself that he couldn’t bat properly anymore, despite considerable evidence to the contrary? He was praised for his “maturity” in scoring a fine half-century in the third ODI – when he was an immature, hot-headed 18-year-old, he scored an ultimately match-winning five-hour 141 when opening the batting in a low-scoring Test match in Chennai. If only Pakistan had selected him at the age of six, he could have been one of the most immovable grinders of the modern age.

● What does Azhar Ali ‒ of whom this column is an unashamed admirer as a Test player but who had only played four List A one-day matches anywhere in the world in the
22 months before his recall to the green pyjamas ‒ think when he goes out to bat in a one-day international? Is it the same as what prominent miserablist songsmith Leonard Cohen would think if forced to take part in a World Heavyweight title fight, i.e.: “I am good at what I do, but I am seriously out of my comfort zone”?

● How good will Steven Finn prove to be? In the recent ODI series, he has looked as if he could become one of England’s best since Freddie Trueman. If he can get into the Test side. And not get injured. And keep bowling at an out-of-form Mohammad Hafeez. His 13 wickets for 134 runs (at an average of 10.3, the best by an England bowler with 10 or more wickets in an ODI series or tournament), mean that he has taken 20 wickets at 16, with an economy rate of 3.8, in his last seven ODIs. In his first eight ODIs, he took eight wickets at 50 and went for 5.5 per over. In his 12 Tests to date, he has 50 wickets at 26.9. If he can directly replicate his proportional ODI improvement in the Test arena, then, in his next 10½ Tests, he will take 125 wickets at 8.6. That will not happen, but, if it does, which it won’t, it will be worth watching. As will fast bowling in general in the next few years, if the last six months have not been an elaborate hoax.

● Ravi Bopara scored two half-centuries in two innings in the ODI series, but could, and probably should, have been out for 1 three times in those two innings, reprieved by a missed stumping, a botched lbw decision and a blooped run-out. So, for any philosophers out there, was Bopara batting well or badly?

● Why is it so hard to find decent statues of umpire Daryl Harper these days? My garden feels empty without one.

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”What do you mean, no backbone?” © Getty Images

A few quick thoughts and numbers arising from the Pakistan v England series (I will do a full review of it in next week’s World Cricket Podcast). Some people are outlandishly claiming that the series ended in a 3-0 whitewash of the Universe’s Number One-Ranked Cricket Machine by a side that recently was not merely plumbing depths of on-pitch ineptitude and off-pitch naughtiness, but was fitting a basin, bath and power shower in those depths. This story is so far-fetched that it must be discounted. It cannot have happened. It cannot have happened. It simply cannot have happened. I checked the rankings this morning. England are still the Universe’s Number One-Ranked Cricket Machine. It must have been a hoax.

Nevertheless, until the hoax is conclusively proved and accepted by the ICC, we must reflect on what allegedly happened. And what allegedly happened was one of the most extraordinary collective batting failures in cricket history, and one of the finest series wins of recent decades. England averaged below 20 runs per wicket for only the second time since Archduke Franz Ferdinand had his clogs controversially and unhelpfully popped, and registered their lowest team series runs-per-wicket figure since shortly after Tchaikovsky premiered his smash-hit ballet Sleeping Beauty, and shortly before the birth of professional French President and eight-time European Nose Of The Year winner Charles de Gaulle (in 1890 – thank you, Wikipedia).

England’s numbers 4, 5 and 6 (Pietersen, Bell and Morgan, with one innings at 6 by Prior) averaged 11.94, a figure that, since the First World War, has only been out-ineptituded once in a three-Test series ‒ by a motley collection of Indians against New Zealand in 1969-70.

The people I feel most sorry for, with regard to this historic disintegration of England’s stellar batting line-up, are the poor, unfortunate bat sponsors. For the last year they had got their money’s worth. In their previous 13 Tests over three series, England bats had been waggled in celebration on 93 occasions – 54 times on reaching 50, 22 times to mark a century, ten times for 150, six times to celebrate double-centuries, and once by Alistair Cook to mark England’s first 250 since Gooch clomped India all around Lord’s in 1990. These had been unprecedented times for English bat-waggling. But in the three UAE Tests, those same bats remained eerily unwaggly.

The five half-centuries England mustered in the series, none of which was converted into a hundred, represents the fewest times England batsmen have waggled their bats in celebration in a series of three or more Tests since the Ashes of 1888. Only once in that time have they scored fewer than five 50-plus scores – in the 1986 debacle against India, when England’s elite batsmen managed to pass 50 just three times. However, one thing you could not criticise England for in that series was failing to build on good starts. Of those three fifties, one became a century for Gooch and another a 183 for Gatting. It was the other 63 innings England’s batsmen played that were the problem.

This was also only the third series since the First World War in which England have mustered only one score above 75. The two previous occasions were the three-match series with India in 1946, when the third Test was heavily curtailed by rain, and the five-Test 1985-86 series in the West Indies, when England’s batting was heavily curtailed by the West Indian bowlers. Curtailed, and, on occasion, facially rearranged.

As wake-up calls go, for England, after a year in which they touched extraordinary heights against some far too ordinary opposition, this series was the equivalent of being whacked in the face with a live barracuda at 3.30am by a man dressed as a cross between Freddie Krueger and Richie Benaud. Bracing, unexpected, and hopefully not to be repeated.

Extras
● Azhar Ali justified his pre-series selection as The Confectionery Stall’s One To Watch with another innings of throwback craft and an almost medieval determination. Pre-medieval, perhaps. He gave the impression that, had he been a Roman gladiator facing up to a dangerously peckish man-eating lion in the Coliseum, he would have calmly blocked the lion with his sword, and kept blocking the lion with his sword until the lion got bored and tootled off to buy a hot dog from the fast-food stall outside. His partnership with Shafiq turned the Abu Dhabi Test, and his stand with the masterful Younis Khan effectively won the final match in Dubai. Both partnerships began with Pakistan trailing and having already lost second-innings wickets. Ajmal fractured England’s confidence in the first Test, and Abdur Rehman shattered its flimsy remnants in Abu Dhabi, but, in a bowler’s series, Azhar arguably had as much impact on the final scoreline.

● Rehman finished the series with 19 wickets at an average of 16.7, and, by the end of the series, some of the English pundits were even beginning to acknowledge that he is a useful bowler. I heard it said of him during the series that “he is no Derek Underwood”. However, nor has anyone else been, since Derek Underwood, other than Derek Underwood himself, and even he is not the bowler he was. Rehman currently has the best Test average of any left-arm spinner to have taken 30 Test wickets since the Kent Conniver ended his 297-wicket career, and the third best of any left-arm tweakman to have debuted in the last 50 years (behind Underwood and Pervez Sajjad).

● The ICC has rebuffed calls in the British media that they should step in and investigate after Saeed Ajmal appeared to admit in a TV interview that he was a French spy during the Napoleonic Wars. The Pakistan Cricket Board leapt to Ajmal’s defence, saying his comments had been misinterpreted, whilst the ICC confirmed that it had definitively cleared Ajmal of being an early-19th-century secret agent. One British journalist, who did not wish to be named, commented: “Well, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen him in the background of a painting of the Battle of Austerlitz, wearing a distinctly French-looking hat and waving a baguette around. I don’t care what the evidence suggests.”

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Azhar Ali, pictured here in Uncharacteristically Unseemly Haste mode © AFP

As I write, Pakistan and England are hours away from resuming a rivalry that has sparked some of our great sport’s most cantankerous cricket and least savoury squabbles. This time, hopefully, tempers will be tempered, and the cricket will not be an incidental curtain raiser to the controversy.

Provided that the Gulf pitches are not unremittingly somnolent ‒ and they have had a tendency to display the spritely vigour of a hypnotised and hibernating walrus ‒ the cricket should be compelling. Pakistan have been stable and steady, if not resurgent, and are unbeaten in six series since the legal blooper at Lord’s, although of those series, only one was against a team ranked in the top five in the world (a not-especially-thrilling nil-nil draw with South Africa in the Gulf late in 2010, the highlights of which have not been challenging the top of the DVD bestseller charts).

England, meanwhile, have had a prolonged Test break after a nine-month period in which they annihilated two of their greatest rivals. For the previous couple of years, England had veered between brilliance and debacle, as if they had read Rudyard Kipling’s smash-hit poem “If”, taken on board his suggestion that they should seek to treat the two impostors Triumph and Disaster just the same, and therefore attempted to spend plenty of quality time with both of them in turn. They then decided that Triumph was the preferable impostor to hang around with, and have since scaled peaks of performance dominance untouched by English cricketers for generations.

This dominance has been founded principally on high-class swing bowling ‒ which will be a less potent force in the billionaires’ sandpit that is Dubai ‒ supported by a batting line-up that has pulled off one of the most startling collective improvements of recent times, feeding off each other’s successes and confidence like lions at an all-you-can-eat zebra buffet.

Some stats: In England’s three major series before last winter’s Ashes (v Australia in 2009, South Africa in 2009-10, and Pakistan in 2010), only Jonathan Trott averaged over 38, with Alastair Cook and Kevin Pietersen below 30. In England’s three major series after that (Ashes 2010-11, and against Sri Lanka and India last summer), five of England’s regular top seven have averaged over 50, with Cook and Ian Bell close to 100. Were they underachieving wildly before, or are they overachieving wildly now? Probably a little bit of both. This year should provide a reasonably reliable answer, and Pakistan in the UAE should offer a stern challenge for a side that is reaching for greatness.

The official Confectionery Stall series prediction: England to win 1-0, provided they are not distracted by wondering how and why Dubai came to be full of so many empty skyscrapers. Or scuppered by the wiles of Saeed Ajmal. Or neutered by the heat and pitches. Or about to embark on a startling collective dis-improvement. Or possessed by a sudden urge to abandon the seven-batsman-four-bowler strategy that has served them so well. In which case, they will win 2-1. Possibly. Or it might be 1-1. Depending on what happens, and who does what, and when they do it.

One to watch (England): Monty Panesar
He has been out of the England side for so long that it is easy to forget that Panesar was once much more than a bizarrely (and very intermittently) stylish No. 11 batsman, who in effect won the 2009 Ashes single-handedly. He was for a couple of years, against everyone other than India, a bowler of skill and penetration, and England’s most consistently effective spinner since Derek Underwood. He was then surpassed by the new England’s most consistently effective spinner since Derek Underwood, Graeme Swann.

Panesar is 29, with 125 Test and 500 first-class wickets under his specialist belt. With away series in the UAE, Sri Lanka and India, 2012 is a good year for him to be entering his tweaking prime. (Although his record in Tests in Asia is hopeless.) (But those Tests were quite a long time ago now.) (And England might not pick him anyway.) (Predictive punditry is pointless.) (What am I doing with my life?)

One to watch (Pakistan): Azhar Ali
Azhar Ali is a throwback, a one-man war against 21st-century batting fripperies, a defiant protector of the coaching manual. Of the 55 top-seven batsmen who have played ten Tests this decade, Azhar has the second slowest scoring rate, behind only Tharanga Paranavitana. Throughout his 18-Test career, Azhar has shown defiance, patience, and a willingness not to edge the first available outswinger to the slips that some more celebrated batsmen around the world would do well to emulate. He has the classical style and methodical approach of a 1950s cricketer (although it should be noted that his strike rate of 39 runs per 100 balls faced would, by 1950s standards, have made him something of a reckless cavalier). I find him quite fascinating to watch. I would not want all batsmen to play like Azhar Ali, but I do want some batsmen to play like Azhar Ali. Including Azhar Ali.

(Warning for neutral spectators: four of Pakistan’s current top six are in the Eight Slowest Test Batsmen of the Decade list. Whether that is a negative warning or a positive warning is up to you.)

Extras
I will write more about India’s statistically staggering disintegration next time. I have not enjoyed watching this cricketingly-macabre series, for all Australia’s excellence with the ball, and Warner’s thermonuclear innings in Perth. For a man recently viewed as a Twenty20 specialist, he has played two of the best innings of the decade in his first five Tests, which he, the baggy green selectors, and the whole of Baggy Greenland must be quite excited about. Maybe Pakistan should unleash Azhar Ali in their next T20s.

Most players and teams eventually decline before finally departing the scene, but few have done so as precipitously as Dhoni’s India. A year ago they had won several Tests by chasing down testing totals with skill and resilience. They had won in England, drawn in South Africa, and beaten Australia twice. They were about to successfully withstand arguably the most-high pressure cricketing campaign of all time. They were a good team, and a tough one. Now they are neither of those. They have responded to adversity in England and Australia by fighting like cornered tigers ‒ but tigers which, once cornered, have been shot at point-blank range and turned into fetching fireside rugs.

At least if India want to seek inspiration from a team that has emerged rapidly from an apparently long-term slump, they need only to knock on the home dressing room door and ask for a cup of tea and a chat.

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