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.

Comments (12)

”Watch closely children, this is how you manufacture an allegation out of thin air” © AFP

Finally, after weeks catching snippets of cricket on highlights programmes, intermittent blasts of radio commentary, morsels of Cricinfo’s text commentaries, and infinitely more news bulletins than would have been ideal, I actually sat down to watch a cricket match, live, on a television. During that accursed cricketless time, I have conclusively proved that work and family commitments can seriously impinge on a man’s fundamental human right to watch more televised cricket than is medically advisable, and that seven weeks without live cricket is more than flesh and blood can stand.

The media outrage has continued. Earlier this week I heard a radio sport commentator who specialises in boxing and athletics bemoaning the fact that, due to the alleged spot-fixing, the action on the international cricket field was no longer believable. He may be right, at least partially, but to hear a boxing and athletics commentator make this complaint was rather like listening to famous flamboyant cooking starlet Heston Blumenthal whinge about overcomplicated recipes, or paint-splattering art wiz Jackson Pollock grumble at a picture not being realistic enough.

The Lord’s game yesterday began under the now-traditional shadow of match-fixing allegations, as England responded to the latest inane witterings of PCB Chairman Ijaz Butt with furious threats of legal action, damnation and teeth-gritting. A slowly extended middle finger would probably have done the job more promptly and equally effectively.

Butt, a man who has evidently not fully mastered the delicate arts of diplomacy, claims that he merely claimed that he had heard some bookmakers claiming that England threw the Oval game. This claim about claims that may or may not have been claimed in itself raises a number of questions:

1) Why was Butt talking to bookmakers? At this time, of all times, you would have thought he might have made an excuse for not talking to them – dinner with the wife, or polishing his new Kawasaki 750cc motorbike, or translating The Iliad into Australian. Let us cut him some slack – perhaps he was eavesdropping like the ace private detective he has always dreamed of being.

2) Does Butt think every England collapse in history has been prompted by bookmakers? If so, he must imagine that all England cricketers of the mid-80s to late-90s live on enormous yachts and smoke gold-plated cigars.

3) Is Butt trying to start a rumour in the hope that, in accordance with the rules of the modern media, if that rumour is repeated in more than four newspapers, and/or printed in unusually big letters on a front or back page, it becomes a fact?

And 4) Is Butt unaware that attempting to play the “no smoke without fire” card is less convincing when you are obviously holding and operating a smoke machine?

It was, therefore, in the circumstances, a delight to watch an excellent cricket match break out amidst the morass of allegations, counter-allegations, garbage, counter-garbage, assorted bickerings and the general sensation that cricket is not merely going to the dogs but actually arrived at the dogs some time ago, and is now operating undercover as a dog.

Both teams played intermittently well and not well, which is often the recipe for an exciting game, and Pakistan won largely thanks to Abdul Razzaq catablasting 40 from 10 balls in the last two overs of his team’s innings, and Jimmy Anderson failing to do the same for England.

Both teams are potential World Cup winners, if only by virtue of the fact that they might win three games in a row against other teams of roughly equal ability, which is, in essence, what will be required to triumph in Mumbai in April. The final 10 days of the six-week tournament should be thrilling – all of the top eight-ranked teams have displayed potentially fatal flaws, and all possess the capacity to lose at least one of those three matches.

With a longer group phase, it is likely that at least seven of those eight will progress, and a three-game hot streak from a couple of key players, or even a three-game lukewarm-streak of not doing anything idiotic, could be enough to win it, or at least not lose it. Who knows what the format will be next time – probably something at least a bit silly – or whether Australia will have recovered their previous dominance; 2011 offers a golden chance for a team from outside the Big One of 50-over cricket to win the trophy.

The series, and this most bizarre of English cricket summers, reaches an unexpectedly exciting climax at the Rose Bowl on Wednesday. Whatever happens will always be a footnote in a cricket season that will, sadly, not be remembered for cricket. Even if Tim Bresnan rips through the Pakistan batting to take 9 for 13 in a spell of fast bowling unmatched since the halcyon days of Alan Igglesden, even if Mohammad Hafeez follows up his second ODI fifty in seven years and 42 matches with a blazing match-winning 65-ball double-century reminiscent of a young Asif Mujtaba in his non-existent pomp, even if a spaceship lands on the outfield and deposits a fully padded-up WG Grace to smash England to victory with his magic beard, the cricket will always be a footnote.

This is, to everyone apart from inveterate cricket-haters or lifelong lovers of the impact of illegal gambling, a great shame. It has been among the lowest-scoring English summers since 2000, and the fourth-lowest in the last 50 years. After a decade in which bowlers have been increasingly reduced to jelly, this was (even allowing for the landmark ineptitude of Pakistan’s batting) a refreshing change.

Mohammad Amir should have been the unquestioned star of 2010 – 30 wickets in six Tests at 19.80 gave him the biggest haul ever by a left-arm fast bowler in an English Test summer. No teenager had previously taken more than nine wickets in an English season, and of bowlers under the age of 22, Amir’s total was second only to Alf Valentine’s 1950 record of 33 scalps. Cricket is full of stories of unfulfilled promise, careers cut short by injury, politics, war, underachievement, or the misfortune of having been born before cricket was invented (how good at cricket might Shakespeare or Joan of Arc or Jesus have been?). If Amir’s career is ended, or severely curtailed, by his being caught up in a piddling if highly illegal little no-ball scam, it would rank amongst cricket’s stupidest wastes.

I had the unquestionable pleasure of watching the first half of yesterday’s match in the company of the fine, cricketous gentlemen of TestMatchSofa.com, a noble battalion of cricket nuts who seem to have, rightly, decided to devote their lives to watching, commentating on and talking about cricket and related subjects, such as, for example, life and more cricket. Whilst sitting on a sofa. And intermittently complaining about a lack of beer. Heroes. I commend their highly entertaining live commentaries to you.

Comments (90)

Giles Clarke: clearly a stranger to the concept of irony © Getty Images

Hello Confectionery Stallers. I have been tied up for the last few weeks attempting to entertain the masses at the Edinburgh Fringe festival (if you will excuse a numerically inappropriate use of the word “masses”), and latterly with unexpected family commitments, and to be honest I could not have chosen a better time in which to be almost fully distracted from cricket.

Cricket has itself been fully distracted from cricket, buffeted about in an inevitable typhoon of outrage and sanctimony, as the latest unfolding gambling farrago batters the sport like a cheap sausage, all amidst the queasily sinking suspicion that this particular Titanic has not quite finished ramming into what may be a distressingly large iceberg.

Here are the official Confectionery Stall thoughts on the most cricketingly depressing story of recent years.

1. It was slightly odd to see ECB chairman Giles Clarke being so affronted by Mohammad Amir that he simply could not bring himself to look at the bowler when presenting him with the Man Of The Series Award after the Lord’s Test-match-cum-debacle. Whilst all cricket fans are, without doubt, disgusted by the alleged spot-fixing, and saddened that it should have involved the most exciting young player in the game, it should be remembered that Clarke himself has not proved immune to the allure of taking easy money from dubious sources.

Just two years ago Clarke and the ECB prostituted the England cricket team to Texan billionaire and current resident of the Federal Detention Centre, Houston, USA, Allen Stanford, who pitched up at Lord’s in a fake helicopter with 20 fake million dollars in mostly fake dollars bills.

Merely hearing the words “Texan tycoon” and “cricket” in the same sentence should have set alarm bells twanging. The helicopter and Perspex-coated wodge of cash should have made them go off like a hungry-monkey enclosure at a slightly delayed feeding time. But the ECB willingly bent over and pimped out the national cricket team to such an extent that they might as well have made them all go out to bat up in fishnet stockings and push-up bras, whilst a threatening-looking gangster stood by the scorebox taking 90% of their runs away and counting them for himself.

Months later, after one toe-curlingly awkward and flirtatious cricket match, Stanford was accused by no less an authority than the United States Securities and Exchange Commission of one of the biggest frauds in human history, and the ECB emerged from the whole humiliating episode with egg not just on its face but stuck in its hair, caked all over its once-woolly jumper, and dribbling apologetically down its cash-stained trousers, a walking omelette of a sporting organisation.

For Clarke, the man who sold his nation’s cricket team to be a tycoon’s plaything, to refuse to shake hands with someone accused of accepting cash from someone dodgy for doing something he patently should not be doing, perhaps shows the lack of self-awareness required to be a successful businessman and sports administrator.

Clarke is not alone. One cursory glance at the ICC international schedule reveals that organisation’s pathological inability to say “No, thanks” to money, its steadfast refusal to protect the soul of cricket from commercial interference.

None of this is intended to justify the alleged actions of the accused players, but to highlight the fact that few at the highest level in cricket have shown much ability, willingness or effort to spurn the attractions of money and place the integrity and welfare of the game ahead of financial acquisitiveness.

2. Nevertheless Clarke deserves credit for calling for a proper, communal effort to aid Pakistani cricket in its seemingly endless Hour Of Need, an hour which has now stretched some way beyond the standard 60 minutes, and which, for various reasons, shows no signs of being interested in taking a breather and being at least temporarily replaced with an Hour Of Stability, or a Few Minutes Of Hope, or even a Quick Tea-And-Biscuit Break of Normality.

As they have proved again this summer, Pakistan’s cricket team is generally the most fascinating, irritating, compelling and frustrating in world cricket. Their bowlers, in particular Amir and Mohammad Asif, have regularly made budget porcelain mugs of both England and Australia’s batting line-ups, whilst their batsmen have made a strong, prolonged and resolutely determined statistical case for being the most inept to have visited England in more than 50 years.

Cricket needs Pakistan, and whilst it is true that Pakistan cricket has not traditionally been the most reliable friend to itself, the world of cricket must set aside its various vested interests and strive to ensure that Pakistan cricket remains alive in the international arena.

3. Human history shows that, in general:

• many humans throughout history have found easy money far more attractive than hard money (for examples, see, for example, the recent history and current state of the global economy, the MPs’ expenses scandal in Britain, the existence of the Cayman Islands, the IPL);
• financial inequality leads to wrongdoing (it must be much easier to spurn the offer of a few thousand pounds if you are already earning a few hundred thousand);
• where gambling is legal, legal gambling thrives; where gambling is illegal, illegal gambling thrives; where illegal gambling thrives, people become aggressively naughty; people like gambling (witness the popularity of religion – what greater punt can there be in life than betting for or against an afterlife?);
• teenagers thrust rapidly into the public spotlight frequently balls things up; and
• when a British tabloid newspaper starts taking the moral high ground, you know things have gone very, very badly wrong.

4. The ICC has, evidently, not adequately decapitated the particularly snakey Medusa of cricket corruption. ICC chief executive Haroon Lorgat, has, however, stated unequivocally: “We will not tolerate corruption in this great game.”

It is reassuring to know that there is at least one thing in the universe that the ICC will not tolerate. Amongst the things it will tolerate are:

• the potentially terminal decline of cricket in some once-great Test playing nations;
• the premature elevation to Test status of nations due to political and commercial vested interests;
• large amounts of money from TV companies in return for artificially and soullessly elongating one-day tournaments;
• shamelessly pricing local cricket fans out of attending said tournaments, leading to embarrassingly sparse attendance at showpiece events;
• international schedules, pitches and regulations designed to break bowlers;
• infantilically draconian restrictions on what paying spectators are allowed to wear or consume inside cricket grounds;
• being held to ransom by various other organisations with three- or four-letter acronyms;
• needlessly snoozy over-rates;
• umpires leading players off for bad light whenever they get a bit peckish;
• idiotic implementation of an untested and patently-unready TV umpiring system;
• Daryl Harper being allowed control of said system;
• sundry other bloopers.

Still, it is nice to know that the ICC will draw the line somewhere. And that line is at corruption (of the on-the-field variety, at least).

5. Amir, if found guilty, deserves another chance. Who knows what pressures he was under and from whom? If he was being urged by some or all of his captain, team-mates, his agent, gambling gangsters, the Pope, and/or the FBI to bowl no-balls and he caved in to those demands, with minimal impact on the game, whilst simultaneously obliterating England’s batting in one of the finest displays of bowling seen at Lord’s in years, is that surprising? His brilliance with the ball and determination with the bat were not indicative of a man unconcerned by the performance of his team.

If and when the full story emerges, it may be that Amir is seen to be a naive pawn in a game beyond his control. It may emerge that he was a fully willing participant. Either way he deserves both an appropriate period of punishment and a second opportunity. And it will help, if and when he is afforded that second chance, if the PCB does more to prevent the tentacles of temptation winding their way into the dressing room. Its tactic of sticking its fingers in its ears and singing 1980s rock ballads at the top of its voice does not seem to have worked.

6. Spot-fixing is a curious beast. The fraud of the kind and scale that seems to have taken place at Lord’s has far less influence on the game than, for example, the widening gulf in finance and facilities between different Test-playing nations, batsmen not walking, incompetent umpiring, or poor pitches. As Amir’s performances have shown, it is possible to be fully committed to helping your team win and to break cardinal rules of sporting fairness and honesty at the same time.

If spot-fixing ever migrates into stand-up comedy, I and my fellow comedians will be permanently under the spotlight. Was that joke about the International Monetary Fund simply not funny or did I deliberately flunk the punchline? It would be almost impossible to tell. I have had gigs during my career in which audiences seemed to think I had purposefully tanked every single joke in my set.

7. Until scientists stop piddling around trying to find out why dogs bark at cats, and what happens if you feed nothing but pastrami and gherkin bagels to a laboratory orangutan, and instead focus on developing a cure for people with an unquenchable urge to bet on when no-balls are bowled in cricket matches, these controversies will continue to occur.

Meanwhile, in the cricket, England are playing well in a series of training matches.

Comments (91)

Kamran Akmal wonders if his baby-eel pals have become tonight's dinner © Getty Images

Pity me, Confectionery Stallers, for I have been locked away in Edinburgh at the Festival with no internet access in my flat. And no internet access means no Statsguru. It is incredible to think, in this day and age, that a man can be forced to live without Statsguru for more than 24 hours without the law or the human rights brigade intervening and righting this obvious wrong, but such is the life I have been leading. A life devoid of purpose, hope, meaning and, above all, statistics.

My one-man show in Edinburgh runs from 4.20pm to 5.40pm, roughly, and has more than once coincided with major flurries of wickets. At my show yesterday, a minute in, I received one of the oddest but most informative heckles of my stand-up comedy career, when an audience member, unprompted shouted out: “Alistair Cook has made a hundred.” As a comedian, I am well used to being heckled with personal abuse, or brusquely phrased criticisms of my act. Being furnished with a point of cricketing information was a rare treat. On went the show, during the course of which six England wickets fell. The show went well – if the game is still active at 4:20pm today, I may deliberately do the worst show possible, just to see if that makes England play better.

This has been a brilliant Test match, garlanded with outstanding play, intriguing subplots and tidal fluctuations, the kind of game that makes you want to fly a light aeroplane around your neighbourhood trailing a banner reading “I Love Cricket”.

The series had previously contained passages of brilliance, but the drama that is generated by bowler-dominated Test cricket was undercut by the knowledge of Pakistan’s dismal vulnerability with the bat. Werewolf films would be less scary if you knew in advance that the beast suffered from a fatal congenital heart defect.

Now, visibly maturing and reinforced by the craft and steel of Saeed Ajmal and Mohammad Yousuf, and with Kamran Akmal having jettisoned the gloves made of live baby eels that he had been using earlier in the summer, Pakistan are poised for a second Test victory of their compelling, undulating summer. “Poised for victory” of course, has a slightly different meaning for this Pakistan batting line-up than it does for most cricket sides.

Watching the highlights on Thursday, a couple of Azhar Ali’s back-foot drives made me put my cup of tea down and tap the table with my fingers in appreciation, his weeks of largely unsuccessful struggle blossoming into a potentially match-winning innings of style and stature.

Alistair Cook played his finest Test innings, which rivals Collingwood’s Edgbaston hundred against South Africa two years ago in the contest for the Best England Hundred By A Player Facing The Selectorial Chop In A Critical Match Situation 2008-2010. Cook, I thought, should have been dropped for this Test. His run of just-about-adequate form against the stronger international teams stretches back to the 2006-07 Ashes, camouflaged by healthy, century-laden hauls against Bangladesh and West Indies which have bumped up his average in that period from low-30s to low-40s. He had fully earned a “rest from the front-line”, but the selectors have proved to be amply justified in not granting him one.

Bearing in mind that England’s batsmen have not faced a bowling attack of this all-round quality for some time, and have been unsettlingly exposed by it regularly during this series (as were the Australians in July), Cook’s innings becomes even more impressive.

England thus remain vulnerable should one of their openers be injured, out of form, abducted by aliens, overwhelmed by a sudden desire to give up cricket in favour of accountancy or the priesthood, or otherwise indisposed, but Cook’s innings has resolved matters for the foreseeable future. His Ashes record suggests that Australia will not exactly be quaking in their baggy-green boots at the prospect of having to bowl to him, but perhaps this innings will mark a turning point.

His decisive approach and strokeplay were in notable contrast to the tentative proddings of his recent performances (which were also in notable contrast to his much improved technical performance in South Africa last winter (which was in notable contrast to his tentative proddings of last summer’s Ashes)). The innings that first brought him to the attention of the broader English cricketing public was a double-hundred in a day for Essex against the 2005 Australians, so he has clearly possessed the ability to dominate. It has seldom been unleashed in Test cricket, where, after his stellar start, he has – without, until this summer, properly failing − serially underachieved.

This excellent, surprisingly stylish hundred may prove to be a springboard for the remainder of his career – after all, Michelangelo had painted many rather drab, humdrum ceilings (largely in a bland, neutral creamy colour) before he nailed the Sistine Chapel, and went on to become 23-time Italian All-Round Art Champion. This is not true, but the point stands.

Comments (41)

James Anderson: top class and toothless by turns © Getty Images

The evidence of the last two Pakistan Tests would seem to suggest, incontrovertibly, that England will win this winter’s Ashes by at least 10 matches to nil. Pakistan beat Australia; England beat Pakistan; that is a two-win per Test difference between England and Australia.

Of course, cricket does not always pan out as statistics suggest it should, and trying to divine what might happen in the forthcoming Ashes from this summer’s two series involving Pakistan is a task as futile as trying to predict whether a champion boxer will win his next fight based on how many wasps he swats at a picnic.

England played a good, decisive match, but scored the bulk of their important runs in each innings against some fairly dismal back-up bowling, and were aided by fielding that was borderline appalling (and that borderline was not between appalling and acceptable, but between appalling and catastrophic). Strauss’ team bowled well and caught magnificently, but against a batting line-up that looked as confident in their technique against swing bowling as their ability to play Beethoven’s piano sonatas on an ironing board.

On current form, Pakistan’s batsmen, a poorly conceived salad of proven adequates and total novices, will do well to match in this entire four-Test series, the 708 runs they scored in one innings at The Oval in 1987. They looked vulnerable on paper at the start of their tour, and that assessment now looks like eye-gougingly blind optimism. Obviously, these are not useless batsmen, but they are flawed and inexperienced, and their collective confidence is now more shattered than a stunt motorcyclist’s porcelain piggy bank.

Statistically, it is hard to overstate quite how completely, historically inept, Pakistan were. Following on from almost snatching defeat from three-quarters of the way down the oesophagus of victory at Leeds, their top order put on a 19th-century display, the worst combined match performance by a top five against England since 1907.

Pakistan were six wickets down for 47 and 41 in their two innings, thus becoming only the ninth team in Test history to lose its first six wickets for less than 50 in both innings of a match, and the first since England sank like an impatient Titanic to one of its most humiliating ever defeats in Christchurch in 1983-84. Then, Hadlee, Boock, Cairns and Chatfield double-scuttled a decent-looking England top seven of Fowler, Tavare, Gower, Lamb, Gatting, Randall and Botham, whose performance in that Test was so bad that the Queen was rumoured to be on the point of abdicating.

Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Aamer, constantly threatening again, must go to sleep every night dreaming of bowling at their own batsmen. In fact, a leak from within the Pakistan camp has revealed that Aamer has a tour bowling average of 3.5 against his team-mates in the nets, even when using the net as a boundary.

Umar Akmal, after a stellar entry onto the world cricket stage, has had a particularly disappointing summer. His debut series in New Zealand less than a year ago included innings of 75 off 174 balls and 77 off 144, so he clearly is capable of not batting as if he has to simultaneously catch an extremely imminent train, file an overdue tax return, pop back home to check whether he left the refrigerator door open, and avoid turning into a pumpkin if he bats for longer than 15 minutes.

It is hard to imagine a worse match performance than that by Umar’s brother Kamran, a spectacular array of wicketkeeping howlers neatly interlocked with a pair of noughts with the bat, comprising perhaps the worst individual performance in any medium since novelty children’s entertainer Mr Chicken’s dismal effort at playing King Lear, which consisted of a three-hour chicken impression in which he persistently called all of his daughters "Eggie".

It was almost as if the cricketing gods allowed Kamran a couple of excellent catches to dismiss Strauss and Pietersen (who continues to look every inch a man who doesn’t play much cricket any more), solely in order to dash the beleaguered gloveman on the rocks of destiny by making him shell a simple edge by Collingwood. They then further punished him, as his brother’s wasted referral led to Kamran being unable to refer his own obviously-missing-the-stumps lbw dismissal. If Kamran’s Test career had been a racehorse, his owner would by now surely have done the decent thing.

Clearly, there is not just room for improvement for Pakistan’s batsmen; there is a luxury eight-bedroom house for improvement. But they are having to cope not only with the difficulty of unfamiliar conditions – and, as England and Australia have themselves shown this summer, few teams play swing bowling well even with experience – but also with an impolite schedule that is allowing them no time to rebuild their broken techniques and confidence between Tests.

It has led to a bizarre role reversal, in which England are sticking with an unchanged squad, while their visitors have packed off a failing player to county cricket, and summoned up an ageing old star from the county game. How times have changed.

James Anderson was at his intermittently fluidly brilliant best once he started pitching the ball up. He has been promising for seven and a half years now, his occasional top-class outbreaks offset by periods of toothlessness. The winter will show whether he now has the resourcefulness of his England swing predecessor Hoggard, who was less naturally dangerous but developed a range of crafts that made him a successful bowler around the world. The Lancastrian now averages 27 at home and 43 away, whereas Hoggard’s equivalent figures were 30 and 30.

Anderson has never taken 20 wickets in a series before. If Pakistan continue to bat as they did at Trent Bridge, he could bowl underarm for the rest of the series and still be confident of taking another 15 wickets.

On to Edgbaston on Friday, with Pakistan’s one and only trump card, their seam attack, about to go into its fourth back-to-back Test, weighed down by the knowledge that, even if they bowl with their now customary excellence, their fielders and batsmen have an almost unstoppable range of options for contriving to lose games anyway.

For any Confectionery Stall readers in the Edinburgh area wishing to see me doing my “day job”, my new show at the Edinburgh Fringe − Andy Zaltzman Swears To Tell The Truth, Half The Truth, And Everything But The Truth − begins on Friday 6th August, at The Stand on York Place, daily at 4.20pm, until 29th August (except 16th, when I have a day off to think about cricket).

Comments (130)

Lady Luck has huge crushes on these two © AFP

A new Test batting star emerged for England yesterday, to go with the new one-day batting star and new Twenty20 batting star, who also emerged over the last year. Eoin Morgan’s highly attractive three-for-the-price-of-one offer has added to the growing competition for places in a Test side that should soon start to impact even on the seemingly undroppable.

The calmness, timing and variety of run-scoring capabilities that Morgan displayed in his excellent and stylish performance bode well for his and England’s future, but his innings also illustrated the BruceReidically slender margins that separate the vintage champagne of success from the budget processed grape juice of failure.

A better wicketkeeper than Kamran Akmal (any volunteers? – no previous experience required; candidates should ideally possess their own gloves and, preferably, a willingness either to watch the ball all the way into the those gloves, or to move their feet, preferably both; apply to PCB by next Thursday) would probably have been standing in the right place to catch an edge when Morgan, on 5, played away from his body to another good ball by the brilliant Aamer. He later survived what appeared to be a fairly conclusive lbw appeal when missing a sweep off Shoaib Malik on 35.

Hawk-Eye suggested the ball would have hit the inside of leg stump, but, to compound the umpiring error, Pakistan had blown their two referrals trying to get rid of Kevin Pietersen, who seemed to be busy trying to get rid of himself anyway, as Kamran expanded the range of known methods of wicketkeeping ineptitude by demanding a referral for a rejected caught-behind appeal after a ball that had barely passed within conversational distance of the bat.

Had Morgan been caught on 5, questions would have been asked about his Test-match technique and his footwork against the swinging ball. Had he been given lbw, he would have failed to convert three consecutive 30-plus scores into half-centuries. Instead of proving his Test credentials, he would have raised further questions about them. Instead of delivering under pressure, he would have failed under pressure. Instead of a “magical maiden ton”. He capitalised brilliantly on his luck, and some low-grade spin bowling, to kickstart his Test career in spectacular style. Pietersen had plenty of good fortune in his innings, but looked like a man who doesn’t play much cricket these days, and did not capitalise.

Luck has always been and will always be a fundamental, and fascinating, part of sport, particularly in batting, where a batsman’s bad luck is final (how many centuries would I have scored in my career if I hadn’t been unlucky in 99% of all my innings?), and a batsman’s good luck can make the different between an unremarkable failure and a career-defining success.

Some examples: Lara, dropped by Durham wicketkeeper Scott on 18, powerdrills his name into the record books by blasting 501 not out. Gooch snicks Prabhakar at Lord’s in 1990, but Indian keeper More Kamrans the primary-school-level chance, and Gooch goes on to score another 297 runs. Pietersen at The Oval in 2005, on nought, edges Warne – but Gilchrist’s glove deflects the ball away from the waiting Hayden at slip; then after 15, nervous in one of the most pressurised periods of play in all Test cricket, he edges Lee to slip, where Warne fluffs a relatively simple chance. On each occasion, the batsman was, essentially, provisionally out. They had made their mistakes, and were merely awaiting confirmation of their dismissals. Before being reprieved, and capitalising to achieve cricketing immortality.

Pietersen’s luck was particularly transformative – it probably won the Ashes for England, and he became a cricketing hero over the course of one staggering afternoon. History shows that he played one of the great modern Test innings, one of the most brilliant and important in England’s Test history, an expression of individual cricketing bravery and daring that just about justified a brave and daring hairstyle, and elevated himself to the cricketing A-list. History could have shown that he failed, technically and temperamentally, thus concluding a debut series in which his early promise had faded into a run of costly failures, whilst sporting the most ridiculous haircut in Test history.

Similarly, there must be many of one-, two- and three-cap Test players who ended their careers thinking, “If only that usually incompetent fielder hadn’t pulled off that uncharacteristic one-handed diving catch”, or “If only that umpire hadn’t been certifiably blind”. Scorecards do not record luck.

Perhaps 1920s batsman Jack MacBryan would have turned out to be a surprise Test-match great. He had an unlucky Test career. In his only Test, in 1924, it rained for much of the first day, then for all of the rest of the match. MacBryan did not bat. And failed, in his 66.5 overs of fielding, to convince the selectors that he had what it takes to succeed at the highest level. Perhaps they spotted some flaw in his technique whilst he was playing pretend shots in the covers in between balls.

For Morgan, then, the future looks bright. The cream generally rises to the top. But sometimes, it needs a helping upward shunt from the capricious hand of Lady Luck, a fickle woman whose hand can tenderly stroke or unforgivingly spank.

Pakistan have had little luck with umpiring this summer, particularly with lbws, and could have had England in even deeper trouble yesterday. As it was, with Gul and Kaneria off form, only Aamer - fast becoming the world’s new favourite cricketer - and Asif applied pressure, and the fragile confidence of Salman Butt’s side visibly dissipated. At Headingley against Australia, they seemed to become nervous in the field when it became clear they would have to chase more than one run to win. As it was, Farhat and Azhar nervelessly took them close enough that even a top-quality collective choke could not deprive them of an excellent victory. Their inexperienced top order and dangerously long tail will do well to avoid defeat in this game.

(A quick comment on the Umpire Decision Review System. It seems to me to be unfairly weighted in favour of the batting team. Generally, more appeals are given not out than are given out, so statistically the fielding side has more occasions on which it is likely to want to use their referrals, and are thus more likely to run out of referrals. If a not-out lbw decision turns out to have been fractionally out, it remains not out. If an out decision transpires to have been fractionally not out, it becomes not out.

Whilst this maintains the traditional balance of doubt in favour of the batsman, there is a double punishment when, as happened to Pakistan yesterday, Pakistan referred a not-out appeal, the technology suggested that it could/should have been given out, but only marginally, so the “Umpire’s Call” stood.

Thus, Pakistan, despite essentially having correctly referred an appeal that was shown to be out, lost a referral. I suggest that if a team refers and appeal that results in an “Umpire’s Call” refusal, it should not lose one of its referrals. I also think the fielding side should have two appeals, but the batting team should only have one.)

(And finally, commiserations to all those who had to watch the Colombo Test match. I can only imagine what you have just been through. It sounds awful.)

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