The author poses with yet another satisified celebrity customer at his cricket clinic © Andy Zaltzman

It is unlikely that, if asked what single luxury they would take with them to an isolated desert island, many people would excitedly respond: “Oh, well, that’s a tough question, but of all the things in the world, I’d have to go with a copy of the commemorative DVD containing extended highlights of the 2011 England v Sri Lanka Test series. Yes, I would definitely choose that, ahead of other possible luxuries and life-enhancements, such as a vintage gramophone equipped with the complete works of Mozart, or a cast of Rodin’s smash-hit sculpture The Thinker, or a lifetime supply of high-class milkshakes, or a rocket pack like the one that guy flew into the stadium with at the opening ceremony of the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles in a moment that really should by now have presaged an age of universally available rocket packs for all, or an illustrated teach-yourself-to-pole-vault book, or an Aleem Dar Hair Care Kit, or Aleem Dar.”

It was an autumn-weekend-in-Aberdeen-with-your-in-laws of a series ‒ damp, grey and frustrating. There was plenty of good cricket, but The Weather came away with two wins out of three, and will be disappointed that it did not claim a 3-0 series wetwash, after having done all the hard work in Cardiff before leaving Sri Lanka a tiny window of opportunity from which to tumble to defeat, a window out of which England promptly defenestrated them.

Sri Lanka were never close to forging a winning position in any of the three Tests, against an England batting line-up that, after a couple of years of individual and collective inconsistency, has hit a rare and statistically mind-bending tranche of form. Strauss apart, they were seldom inconvenienced by a game but limited bowling attack. Ian Bell has reportedly commissioned a set of curtains depicting Sri Lanka’s bowlers to make himself feel invincible when he wakes up in the morning. England mostly played well, consolidating their stellar Test winter, but cricket – like most sports, as well as arguments, divorce proceedings and space races ‒ is seldom at its best when only one side has a realistic prospect of victory.

Nevertheless, three important things have been learnt from this series.

1: A six-week 50-over World Cup, followed by another six weeks of Twenty20 in the IPL, is not ideal preparation for a Test series in England.

Sri Lanka’s bowling always looked wafer-thin, and England’s in-form batting juggernaut duly gobbled it up like a hungry child munching its way into an ice-cream. This left the tourists depending heavily on their four experienced top-order batsmen. Of the two who played both warm-up games, Tillakaratne Dilshan left the IPL early and prospered, and Thilan Samaraweera, who is not most IPL owners’ idea of a dream DLF-Maximum-blasting batsman, did well enough; but Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene, who arrived in time only for the second warm-up game, in which they both failed, each reached 30 only once in six attempts, and, despite the former eventually finding his game in his outstanding match-saving final innings of the final Test, each recorded his lowest series average for several years.

Perhaps they failed to make technical and mental adjustments to their games, perhaps they were suffering physical or psychological fatigue, perhaps it was merely coincidence, perhaps it was all of the above, but a key factor in Test series nowadays often seems to be which side’s players arrive at the start line less knackered.

2: All Test matches should be played in giant underground bunkers.

Rain is boring. Almost all cricket fans agree that a cricket ground with giant tarpaulins all over it and a grumpy-looking groundsman in a waterproof jacket peering at the sky is less interesting to watch than a cricket ground with cricketers on it, playing cricket. Umpires cannot be trusted not to use any marginal dimming of the light as an excuse to scuttle everyone back to the pavilion so they can check their emails, finish their game of online Scrabble, or practise their karaoke.

The giant underground bunker would, of course, remove the weather from the equation. But it would have other benefits for the spectator as well. Crowds at Tests around the world are often barely discernible, but the acoustics of a giant underground bunker would mean that even a few hundred spectators could create a decent atmosphere. It would also help with over rates. If the authorities could threaten players and umpires with being locked overnight in a giant, and ideally haunted, underground bunker if they did not complete their allotted 90 overs in a reasonable time, I am convinced that we would swiftly see a return to a brisk 1950s tempo. (And to make sure, there should be an ICC-trained man-eating tiger in a cage just beyond the boundary rope. The computerised door of the cage should be programmed to open automatically whenever the over rate falls below 15 per hour. No one likes being eaten by a tiger. This scheme would be 100% successful. As well as helping out an endangered species.)

Of all the potential Test-improving innovations being trialled – pink balls, floodlights, a Test championship, supermodel umpires, rocket-powered bats, the development of Sehwagium (a new chemical element derived from Virender Sehwag’s DNA, which, when ingested, gives a cricketer a remorselessly cavalier approach to batting) ‒ it beggars belief that playing all Test matches in giant tiger-infested underground bunkers has not even been discussed.

3: Stuart Broad needs to learn to take wickets again.

His Test bowling career is in a slump. He has taken more than two wickets in a Test innings only once in the last 18 months, and after playing a decisive role in the Ashes victory of 2009, and an important one in the drawn series in South Africa that followed, he has since been marginal to England’s continuing successes.

It was often said in the past that Broad did not know what type of bowler he was trying to be – was he a McGrath-style prober, nagging away like a deeply regrettable girlfriend, or a hostile paceman armed with fire, brimstone, a range of wicket-taking options, and some volcanic vocabulary to back it up? At the moment he is neither. Many pundits suggest that Broad generally bowls too short. In his two best spells in Test cricket – his Ashes-winning five-wicket blast in the first innings at The Oval in 2009, and his 4 for 43 in the Durban second innings to help Graeme Swann bowl England to victory the following winter – he took seven of his nine wickets either bowled or lbw, and another to a mistimed drive, and all were top-seven batsmen in two of the world’s stronger teams.

Of course, this does not mean that, were Broad to bowl every ball on a full length, he would slice through any top-class batting line-up like a hot chainsaw through a tree made of butter. But he is probably more likely to do so than he is when banging it in at a brisk but seldom bone-shuddering pace.

Broad took up bowling relatively late, and had a rapid ascent to the international team. Perhaps a spell in county cricket honing his craft and rediscovering his penetration – and getting some regular batting ‒ would help him complete his journey to becoming a world-class Test allrounder. Perhaps not. A little under a year ago, I was convinced that Alistair Cook needed a spell in county cricket to re-find and refine his game. I stand by that. If he had had that spell in county cricket, he would definitely have averaged over 200 in the Ashes. Without question.

Extras

A fascinating Test in Jamaica will reach its conclusion tomorrow. India remain favourites, after a nostalgia-fuelled century by the ageing master craftsman Rahul Dravid, a throwback innings on a throwback pitch. Dravid’s career has seemed to be in decline, but in his one Test since posing for a photo with my cuddly woollen WG Grace during the World Cup, he has averaged 76. In his previous 46 Tests over five years, he had averaged 39. You cannot possibly argue with cold, hard statistics like that.

[Any other Test players concerned about their form are welcome to rent WG Grace for a photograph at a cost of just £9995 per hour.]

[Disclaimer: posing for a photograph with a cuddly WG Grace is not guaranteed to ensure long-term cricketing success.]

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”Well done Trottsky, you well-shorn little communist, you” © Getty Images

Watching the Sri Lankan bowlers struggle in this series – 21 wickets at 61, aided by a late flurry of slog-induced dismissals as England cut loose in an attempt to make sure the game was at least 101% safe before declaring, rather than a risky 100% safe – it is hard to be optimistic about their team’s prospects as a Test force in the near future.

Life after Murali is proving to be as difficult as everyone had thought it would be. It was, of course, obvious that Sri Lanka would miss the great tweakster very much, in the same way that a champion racehorse would miss one of its legs, or Sebastian Vettel would miss his steering wheel, or Michelangelo would have missed his paintbrush.

In the seven Tests since Murali bid his spectacular and victorious farewell last July, bowling his team to victory and himself even further into statistical immortality, in Galle against India, Sri Lanka’s bowlers have dismissed their opponents for under 430 just once, and have collectively averaged 50. Four of those seven Tests have been against the formidable batting line-ups of India and England, on some fairly unforgiving pitches, but they are inauspicious figures nonetheless.

ESPNcricinfo’s undisputed Jimi Hendrix of Stats, S Rajesh, compiled this excellent comparison of Murali and Warne when the former retired last year. The numbers suggest, strongly, that both men were very good at bowling a cricket ball.

No team has ever been as reliant on one bowler as Sri Lanka were on the Kandy Konjuror. Over the course of his career, Murali took 41% of his team’s wickets, and bowled 33% of their overs – so he was bowling a third of the time that Sri Lanka were in the field. For nearly two decades. (By comparison, Warne, in a much stronger Australian attack, took 28% of Australia’s wickets, and bowled 28% of their overs.)

Sri Lanka have played 190 Tests since being admitted to Test cricket in 1982. Murali played in 132 of them; and they won 54 of those games. He was his team’s leading wicket-taker in 43 of those 54 wins, including 37 of 41 between September 1996 and December 2007. Sri Lanka have won just seven of the 68 Tests that Murali has not played in. History suggests Sri Lanka were four times as likely to win with Murali than without him. And that the Sistine Chapel would have 25% of the current number of tourists visiting it if Michelangelo had had to paint it with his fingers.

The closest equivalent in terms of importance to a Test team is probably Richard Hadlee, who over the course of his unstoppably moustachioed career bowled a quarter of New Zealand’s overs, and took 35% of their wickets. His country had won seven out of 102 Tests before he made his debut. They won 22 of the 86 in which he played, with Hadlee top wicket-taker in 16 of those. They won none of the 14 Tests he missed during his career, and only seven of the next 55 after he retired. Until a new generation emerged in the late 1990s, New Zealand without Hadlee were like steak and chips without the steak. And often without the chips.

In all, it was a decent but ultimately unsatisfying Test match, decorated by Dilshan’s brilliantly ballsy 193, an innings of mental and physical courage against a strong if misfiring attack whose pace bowlers looked increasingly one-paced and one-heighted as the Sri Lankan skipper unfurled his masterpiece.

Dilshan is a captivating player, a risk-taking strokeplayer who has become increasingly daring and attacking as he has become older and moved higher up the order. Since being shunted up to open two years ago, he averages almost 54 – the highest of any Sri Lankan opener – with a strike rate of 80. As a younger middle-order player, he scored significantly fewer runs significantly less quickly, which suggests that, by traditional standards, Dilshan is living his Test career backwards, a cricketing Benjamin Button. And also suggests that, when he is 75, he is going to be one hell of a player.

Extras

The closing stages of the match, and indeed the entire modern history of Test cricket, were overshadowed by the Smashed Window Incident, which threatened to plunge the international game into a crisis from which it may never have emerged. Thankfully this seems to have been averted after a swift apology and an explanation that proved to be disappointingly mundane and suspiciously plausible.

As soon as the sound of shattering glass was heard, the rumours abounded - had a passing Graeme Smith popped in for a chat with his English pals, casually picked up a bat, and watched himself play a cover drive in a mirror? Or was it Jonathan Trott’s attempt to recreate a rather grisly scene from the 1970s horror classic The Omen? Or perhaps Steve Finn’s lucky pelican had escaped from his kit bag and flown beak-first into the window in an attempt to make it to the fish-and-chip van at the Nursery End before they had sold out of fresh herring? Or had a local burglar chosen an extremely inopportune moment to try to furtively break into the England dressing room?

A story then emerged that Matt Prior had been so incandescent with rage at falling an agonising 96 runs short of becoming the first wicketkeeper to score hundreds in both innings of a Lord’s Test, that he marched up to the window and growled at it until it smashed itself in fear. Or put his bat through it.

This was soon contradicted by the rather prosaic official explanation proferred by the England management, who blamed that convenient old scapegoat, Physics. They claimed that Prior’s bat had simply fallen down and broken the window in a freak accident.

England’s numerous back-room team fortunately includes a glazier, who replaced the shattered pane with some very fetching stained glass depicting Alistair Cook nurdling a single to fine leg.

(Incidentally, the last recorded instance of a window-smashing at Lord’s was when a hung-over Denis Compton was woken up from his traditional pre-innings snooze whilst in the middle of a dream about being attacked by a giant wasp. He attempted to swat Peter Parfitt with his bat, which smithereened the window. Compton then went out to the middle using a shard of glass as a bat, and promptly scored a brilliant century against a Yorkshire attack featuring Freddie Trueman, Johnny Wardle and Bob Appleyard. Compton later claimed he preferred playing with a glass bat to a wooden one, as “it gave me a great incentive to wait for ball and stroke it, rather than trying to hit it too hard”. Here endeth the lie.)

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