In the 2015 previous Test matches that have adorned the history of the universe, few, if any, passages of play can have matched the barking-mad cricketing melodrama that unfolded in the 2016th in Cape Town on Wednesday. On a lively but scarcely fire-breathing wicket, mayhem reigned as the moving ball and the DRS ran amok like a porcelain-loving bull in a well-stocked china shop.

Australia, from a position of total dominance, lost, in quick succession: a few early wickets; their marbles; and control of the game. Haddin, in particular, seemed to be spooked by the scoreboard (which read an admittedly alarming 18 for 5), and forget the match situation, which was, effectively, 206 for 5. Philander and Morkel took full advantage, and the game was not so much turned on its head as flipped into an impromptu quadruple somersault, before staggering groggily to its feet, muttering: “Who am I and what am I doing here?”

Australia had history and an immortal entry in the annals of sporting ineptitude within their grasp – at 21 for 9 after 11.4 overs, they were within one more inept waft of registering the lowest-ever completed Test innings (New Zealand’s 26 against England in 1954-55), and the shortest-ever completed Test innings (South Africa’s 12.3 overs at Edgbaston in 1924). Siddle and Lyon stapled a small fig leaf of dignity to Australia’s obvious embarrassment with a last-wicket stand of 26, and History mopped its brow and toddled off. But it did not leave empty-handed. Here then, is a multiple-choice quiz about the unforgettable day two of the Newlands Test. Each question has multiple answers. Do not attempt if you are (a) an Australian batsman, or (b) an Australian of nervous disposition.

1. What did Nathan Lyon do on Thursday that no other human being has ever done?

(a) He walked out to bat in a Test match with his team at 21 for 9. The previous worst score facing a No. 11 was 25 for 9, when Lyon’s baggy green predecessor Tom McKibbin marched to the wicket at The Oval in 1896 thinking, “Oh dear. This is a disappointing score. I bet no other Australian will ever come to the wicket with a worse score than this on the board.” He smote a defiant 16 before being caught, taking Australia’s score up to 44 all out, leaving Hugh Trumble chuntering into his moustache at the non-striker’s end that he had taken 12 for 89 in the match and still been on the wrong end of a shoeing.

(b) He broke the 300-mph barrier on a unicycle. Unicycling has been introduced to the Australian training regime by their new coaches, as a means of improving balance and self-confidence. Lyon took a morning pedal up to the top of Table Mountain, lost his balance whilst looking for a yeti, and careered down to Newlands at breakneck speed.

(c) He became the eighth No. 11 to top-score in a Test innings.

(d) He walked on the moon.

ANSWERS: (a) and (c). (b) has not been ratified by the World Unicycling Federation, as it took place outside of official competition.

2. What do WG Grace and Philip Hughes have in common?

(a) Both men are no longer as effective as Test Match batsmen as they once were.

(b) Both have been played by Hollywood actor Val Kilmer in films.

(c) They have each taken part in one of the only two Tests ever played in which 23 batsmen have been dismissed in single figures in the first three innings of the match – Hughes at Newlands this week, Grace in the Lord’s Test of 1888.

(d) Both have featured prominently in German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s dreams in the past week.

ANSWERS: (a), (c) and (d).

3. What has Australia as a nation experienced three times in the last 16 months?

(a) An infestation of pterodactyls.

(b) It has watched in gaping-mouthed astonishment as its once-mighty cricket team has been bowled out for under 100, on three separate occasions – 88 all out against Pakistan in Leeds in July 2010, the Boxing Day MCG abomination against England (98 all out), and now 47 at Newlands. Three times in 12 Tests. They had posted a two-figure score just once in their previous 277 Tests over 25 years. They had not been skittled for under 100 three times in two years since 1887 and 1888 – when they had to regroup and take the positives after eight different sub-100 totals. In six matches. It is fair to say that Australian batsmanship improved thereafter.

(c) A creeping sensation that Silvio Berlusconi’s behaviour might not be entirely prime ministerial.

(d) It has seen its cricket team win a Test match – in their previous four series, they won three, drew three and lost six. The previous time they won three or fewer games in a run of 12 Tests was between December 1987 and June 1989. At which point, they ground England into a fine pulp, kick-starting a decade and a half of unremitting Ashes dominance. Is this all part of Cricket Australia’s masterplan?

ANSWERS: (b) and (d).

4. Why might Vernon Philander and Shane Watson have spent Thursday night discussing plans for a massive 30-foot-high commemorative bronze statue of themselves to be erected on the concourse at Newlands?

(a) Because they had just overheard Peter Siddle and Morne Morkel discussing erecting a 29-foot-high commemorative bronze statue of themselves on the concourse in Centurion.

(b) Because they had just become the first pair of bowlers from opposite sides to take five-wicket hauls for fewer than 20 runs in the same Test.

(c) Because 18 wickets had fallen in 23 overs of Test cricket, and they had been the principal agents of batting doom – both took five wickets in 20 balls. Eighteen wickets tumbled for 68 in 138 balls. Think about that. Have you thought about that? What do you think about that? This included 16 for 44 in 115, as South Africa lost their last seven wickets for 23 (their lowest such total since their first Test after readmission in 1991-92), and Australia lost their first nine for 21 (unprecedented at least since before the dinosaurs were still at the crease). Holy smokes. The apocalypse is coming. No doubt. Look at the Eurozone. Then look at the scorecard from Newlands. Then look at Alastair Cook’s Test average over the last 12 months. There is no other conclusion to draw.

(d) Because, during the tea interval, they discovered a method of converting the noise of lbw appeals into electricity, thus solving all the world’s energy problems, and rightly believe that their breakthrough should be recognised in artistic form.

ANSWERS: (b) and (c)

5. Before the Newlands Test, what had happened only twice since the First World War?

(a) Another World War.

(b) Both teams had been dismissed for under 100 in the same Test. It happened when India and New Zealand went head-to-head in a loser-loses-all collapse-off in Hamilton in 2002-03, and when South Africa and Australia span each other silly in Durban in 1949-50, and it has happened in Cape Town this week.

(c) A member of the Bush family had won a US Presidential election.

(d) Australia had lost a Test Match after taking a first-innings lead of 188 – their Newlands lead after skittling South Africa for 96. Those two occasions are quite highly regarded matches – Headingley 1981 and Kolkata 2000-01. If Australia lose this match, it will be the eighth highest first-innings lead to have resulted in defeat (excluding the Hansie Cronje’s Magic Jacket match in 1999-2000, when the middle two innings were forfeited and England technically won after conceding a 248-run lead).

(e) A Test team had lost eight wickets for 10 runs or fewer. Australia collapsed like a narcoleptic house of cards on a bobsled going down the Spanish Steps in Rome as they subsided from 11 for 1 to 21 for 9. Only twice before had eight wickets fallen for as few runs in a Test, and both times New Zealand were the untriumphant team involved – when Saqlain and Sami carved them up in Auckland in 2000-01 (121 for 2 became 131 all out); and when, on the first day of post-war Test cricket, in Wellington in 1945-46, the Kiwis celebrated the return of peace by slumping from 37 for 2 to 42 all out. They followed this up by losing 6 for 6 during their second innings, and Australia, so appalled that such ineptitude should be allowed on a cricket pitch, did not play another Test against New Zealand for almost three decades. Will they be hoist by their own petard?

ANSWERS: (b), (d) and (e). And (c). And (a). If you count the international dispute over the UDRS as a World War. Which you should not.

Here endeth the quiz.

What a day. I think cricket needs a cup of tea and a sit-down. For mercifully different reasons than it needed a cup of tea and a sit-down last week after the spot-fixing trial. The third day may provide yet more twists, and after the excellent Test matches in Zimbabwe and India, these crazy Cape Town capers have been a further reminder that cricket is generally far more enjoyable when it is being played and watched on the pitch rather than in a courtroom.

After a prolonged sabbatical spent worrying about its future whilst watching its younger siblings charge around like banshees, Test cricket roared back into life with a low-scoring thriller between West Indies and Pakistan. Admittedly, that roar raised the age-old philosophical question: if something roars in an empty cricket stadium, and no one is there to hear it, does it still make a noise?

It was a gripping match of 19th-century-style scoring, played out in front of a 17th-century-style crowd, in a 21st-century-style stadium – nicely made but pointlessly remote. One day, a high-ranking scientist or Nobel Prize-winning genius will work out on a high-powered computer that if you build soulless modern stadiums, without history or character, far from civilisation, you may on occasion struggle to attract crowds to watch cricket in them. It will take a brain of formidable power to reach this conclusion, a thinker of rare perspicacity, who is prepared not only to think outside the box, but to set fire to the box whilst his head is still inside it to accelerate the thought process.

Low-scoring games have provided some of cricket’s all-time classics, from the umbrella-chewing mayhem of The Oval in 1882, when the 19th-century proto-Lillee, Fred Spofforth, demonised the Ashes into existence with brilliant bowling and an intimidating moustache, to England’s back-from-the-dead-but-with-hindsight-still-feeling-quite-ill World Cup group win over South Africa in Chennai in March.

Misbah’s 52 was the highest score in the Providence Test (which itself sounds like something the cricket community should insist wealthy tycoons pass before being allowed to land at Lord’s in a helicopter with a Perspex box full of cash). This is the sixth-lowest highest score, if that makes sense, in a completed Test match since the First World War, and enabled the game to narrowly avoid becoming only the third Test since the Second World War to produce a positive result without featuring any half-centuries.

The previous fifty-free Test was in Hamilton in December 2002, when New Zealand dismissed an Indian batting line-up containing Sehwag, Dravid, Tendulkar, Ganguly and Laxman for 99 and 154, with Daryl Tuffey taking 8 for 53 in the match. It seems scarcely conceivable now, and that sentence might read as if it has been generated by a seriously malfunctioning internet automatic translation programme trying to convert a Swedish recipe for salmon fishcakes into English, but it is in fact 100% true.

Before that, there had only been one other such match since before Neville Chamberlain was waving his piece of paper around, declaring “peace in our time” – a declaration that now looks dodgier than Hansie Cronje’s at the Centurion Test in January 2000, and proves that there was a precedent for high-ranking English officials being duped by confident men with moustaches long before the Stanford debacle. The game in question was Edgbaston 1981, when Botham swung England to victory by marmalising Australia’s tail, spreading them on toast, and eating them in one mouthful, with 5 for 1 in five overs of legend-solidifying brilliance.

There is something deeply engrossing about a match in which an innings of 25 is a potentially game-winning contribution rather than a frustratingly wasted start. I find there is also something nostalgic about such games, as they recall early school matches when runs were scarce and boundaries seemed like hypothetical barriers halfway to the horizon. In the second game I played, my school Under-9 team bowled out the opposition for 63. I remember thinking: “That is an imposing total. Not many teams in world cricket could hope to chase that down.” Despite the loss of totemic opening batsman Zaltzman, harshly adjudged bowled first ball, my school battled bravely, but fell short. Thirty-nine all out. A match-winning total in some games, but a 24-run thrashing on the day.

It ended with a good win for West Indies, and a personal triumph for Darren Sammy. West Indian cricket has had more false dawns than an insomniac schoolkid waiting nervously for his exam results to arrive in the morning post. The standard of Pakistan batting – historically, almost heroically, inept in their six Tests in England last summer, and little improved since then - means that we cannot be sure whether this is a genuine dawn, another bogus one, or just a car passing in the street outside with its headlights shining through the bedroom window. After all, the previous apparent new dawn for West Indies cricket, when Jerome Taylor skittled England like a tray of wobbly milk bottles in Jamaica in 2009, turned out barely even to be that. However, after a World Cup marked by brief periods of promise inevitably scythed down by an onslaught of incompetence, at least this was a welcome and hard-won victory, the highlights being Devendra Bishoo confirming his promise and captain Sammy sealing victory with his fourth five-wicket haul in Tests.

Sammy is not yet on many people’s Great Bowlers Of The 21st Century shortlist, but he now has more five-wicket innings notched into his bedpost than Andrew Flintoff, Colin Croft, Lasith Malinga or Stuart Broad, and the same number as Harold Larwood and Frank Tyson. He has played just 12 Test matches, in which he has taken more wickets than the legendary Picasso Of Pace, Malcolm Marshall, did in the equivalent period of his career. In fact, Sammy has taken as many five-wicket hauls in his first 12 Tests as Holding, Garner, Marshall, Ambrose and Walsh managed between them in their first 12 Tests. The logical conclusion to all this is that Darren Sammy is (a) the greatest and (b) the fastest bowler of all time. Ignore the speed gun. It lives only to deceive.

Extras

The ECB have announced that they are working on a new fourth format for international cricket to enable England to appoint a fourth captain. A spokesman explained: “Having three skippers is proving to be a nightmare – whenever we have an England Captains Table Tennis tournament, Strauss always insists on getting a bye directly into the final. This understandably causes resentment amongst the other captains. With four, we can either use a straight semi-final-to-final knockout structure, or a four-prong round robin followed by a first-versus-second final. It has to be resolved, and fast, before Cook and Broad start throwing their toys out of the pram.”

With the world’s top eight-ranked Test nations all in, or soon to be in, action,
I sat down in front of a mirror and interviewed myself about the current spate of Test cricket.

Confectionery Stall Hello Andy, thanks for talking to The Confectionery Stall.

Andy Zaltzman It’s a pleasure. A lifelong dream fulfilled.

CS It’s all happening on Planet Test Cricket. The unofficial quarter-finals of an as-yet-still-non-existent World Championships – top-ranked India against eighth-placed New Zealand, world Nos. 2 and 3, South Africa and Sri Lanka, against sixth-ranked Pakistan and seventh-ranked West Indies. All whetting the appetite for one of the all-time classic mid-table confrontations – fifth-ranked Australia against their statistical nano-superiors, fourth-placed England.

AZ What? Are you telling me, and the rest of the English media, that this is not the ultimate clash of the two greatest teams in the history of cricket, with the eyes of the universe fixed immovably on it?

CS It’s fourth against fifth. Out of, basically, 8.

AZ Well, can you perhaps explain why, given that Australia (340) and England (312) have both won more than twice as many Tests as any other nation, they are not ranked 1 and 2?

CS I think it’s because the rankings don’t take into account how good teams were in the 1890s.

AZ I prefer to look at the big picture. It’s One versus Two.

CS Let’s start with batting. If it has been a good month for fans of engagements in the British royal family, it has been an even better one for the world’s batsmen.

AZ Sure has. What is going on with all these triple-hundreds in Test cricket? Correct me if I’m wrong, but Chris Gayle’s against Sri Lanka was the ninth in just 380 Tests since May 2002. There had only been eight in the previous 44 years and 1148 Tests.

CS You are wrong. You meant there had only been only eight triple-centuries in the previous 44 years and two months and 1149 Tests. But your point basically stands. Three hundreds are being scored at a breakneck rate of one every 42 Tests. Instead of once every 143 Tests in that 1958-2002 period you keep prattling on about.

AZ Crumbs. If that rate of increase in triple-hundreds continues, by the year 2643, roughly, every single Test innings will be a triple-hundred.

CS It’s what the advertisers want. This millennium has been like the 1930s all over again, but less so – there were five triple-hundreds in just 89 Tests, all of which lead inexorably in 1939 to the start of the most devastating conflict in the history of the world. The ICC needs to clamp down on big scoring, or the world at large could suffer.

AZ Are you claiming that, if South Africa had not declared with AB de Villiers on 278, the world would have been shunted closer to Armageddon?

CS Yes, I am. Can you prove otherwise?

AZ No.

b>CS Point proved then. De Villiers and Morkel posted the 21st tenth-wicket century partnership in the history of history. Harbhajan and Sreesanth put up the 20th just a week before.

AZ
So you’re telling me that almost 10% of all 100-plus last-wicket partnerships have been scored in mid-November 2010, whilst, as all schoolchildren know, there were only two such stands between 1903 and 1952 – the same number as there were World Wars in the same period.

CS Precisely. So a lack of century last-wicket stands is clearly linked to global war. De Villiers apparently asked his captain to declare even earlier than he did. So by deliberately avoiding scoring a triple-hundred, and by coaxing Morne Morkel to play his part in a 100-partnership, de Villiers has made himself hot favourite for next year’s Nobel Peace Prize.

AZ Wow. What a man. The Henry Kissinger of South African batsmanship. Have you got any more statistics on rates of high scoring in modern cricket?

CS
Yes. But I’m not telling them to you now. You’ll have to wait for another blog.

AZ
Oh shucks. That’s ruined my week.

CS
Good stats come to those who wait.

AZ Hey, here’s a question for you. What do the three Test double-centurions of November 2010 – Gayle, McCullum and de Villiers − have in common?

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CS Do they all…

CS Are they all pre-op transsexuals?

AZ Not that I know of. One more guess. I’ll give you £50,000 in non-sequential banknotes if you get it right. Don’t tell the ICC.

CS Did they all endure prolonged century-less spells earlier in their careers, all beginning in 2005 and lasting for more than 20 Tests? At a guess, I’d say Gayle did hit a ton for 24 Tests from April 2005 to December 2008, McCullum didn’t trouble the honours board for 26 games between August 2005 and March 2009, and de Villiers specialised in single- and double-digit scores for 23 Tests in the two-and-a-half years to January 2008.

AZ Bingo. Good guess. Did you look that up on Statsguru?

CS No.

AZ Promise?

CS Yup.

AZ Okay. I’ll trust you. Here’s your money.

CS Thanks. Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty-seven, seventy-seven...

AZ Can you count it out later? We’re mid-interview.

CS Sorry. No problem. Was that a 17-pound note?

AZ Let’s move on.

CS Did you draw that yourself?

AZ Let’s move on.

CS It had Graham Gooch’s face instead of the Queen’s.

AZ He’s the rightful King of England. The point is, just because a player doesn’t score a hundred for over 20 Tests, it doesn’t mean he won’t spank a double-hundred a few years later.

CS So England should pick Monty Panesar for Brisbane. He’s clearly got a massive innings stored up inside, just waiting to burst out.

AZ And the other point is, three simultaneous high-scoring drawn Test matches in a week makes Jack a dull boy. And by “Jack”, I mean “Test cricket”. Especially when “Jack” is conducted by unadventurous captains on stodgy pitches.

CS So, Andy, who do you think will win the Ashes?

AZ None of your business.

CS Actually, I think it is my business.

AZ Is it? Fair enough. I think England will win the Ashes. Or at least not lose the Ashes, which is more important.

CS Really? What makes you think that?

AZ Don’t know. Bit of a hunch. Plus they are mostly in form. Even Alastair Cook, who so often bats like a visit to the doctor about a gastric disorder − awkward and only occasionally effective − has found some form, whilst the batsman formerly known as Ian Bell has been playing with a dominance befitting the official new name the ECB has given him to make him sound more intimidating for this series: “The Sledgehammer Of Eternal Justice”.

CS Yes, Eternal Justice could be an absolutely crucial player in this series. Surely as a long-standing England follower, all this must make you extremely uneasy.

AZ I admit it does feel slightly like the opening scene of a horror film, when everything is obviously too idyllic, and you know that inevitably something absolutely terrible will happen. In this instance, instead of a chainsaw-wielding maniac leaping out of a cupboard and starting to chop American college students to pieces, I’m worried that Mitchell Johnson will suddenly leap out of a cupboard and find a tidy line and length on day one in Brisbane.

CS Or that Xavier Doherty will emerge from the pavilion wincing in pain, with bloodstains all over his shirt, having just had Shane Warne’s arm surgically grafted onto his shoulder.

AZ That’s a possibility, certainly, but the way things have been going for Australia recently, they would probably balls it up and graft Warne’s left arm onto Doherty, not his right. Mind you, looking at Doherty’s first-class figures, that may still be worth a punt. With a bowling average of 48, he could prove to be to spin bowling what 93-year-old wartime singing sensation Dame Vera Lynn is to heavyweight boxing.

CS Sounds like a bit of complacency might be creeping in to your Ashes preparations, Andy.

AZ Far from it, Confectionery Stall. I’m fully focused on what I have to do on Wednesday night – sit down in front of the television and watch cricket. I’m not thinking beyond that. Besides, after the disasters I’ve experienced watching the last five Ashes tours, I’m taking nothing for granted. And I think the Australians would be mad to play a debutant spinner with no track record in the first Test of an Ashes series on a potentially seam-friendly wicket in Brisbane. That would be the tactical equivalent of eating your goldfish for dinner because you once had a fantastic fillet of sea bass in a Michelin-starred restaurant.

CS I’ll take your word for that, Andy.

AZ I’ve researched it extensively. The comparison stands.

CS Unless Doherty is much better than everyone in England seems to assume.

AZ Good point, Confectionery Stall.

CS Anyway, I think you’re wrong. I think Australia will win the Ashes.

AZ What makes you think that?

CS Don’t know. Bit of a hunch. Plus they have much greater experience in Australian conditions, particularly the bowlers. England’s have struggled overseas for years. And the Aussies have points to prove. And unwanted places in the history books to avoid.

AZ What do you think the key areas will be?

CS England’s batting, Australia’s bowling, both sides’ fielding, Strauss’s captaincy, Australia’s batting, Ponting’s leadership, and England’s bowling. In no particular order of preference. Plus luck.

Mrs Zaltzman Andy. Come and help me make dinner for the kids.

AZ Can’t Confectionery Stall do it?

Mrs Z No. You’re their father. Besides, Confectionery Stall frightens them.

CS They can’t handle the truth.

AZ But we haven’t finished previewing the Ashes yet, dear. Or analysing the strengths and weaknesses of India and South Africa as they prepare for their table-topping showdown.

Mrs Z I’ve heard what you have to say about India’s bowling options and South Africa’s lack of killer instinct, and, frankly, it can wait. If you’re not in that kitchen in 60 seconds, I’m confiscating your Denis Compton autographed snuggle blanket.

AZ I’ll be there in 59 seconds. Better go, Confectionery Stall. Lovely talking to you.

CS What are you doing? No, no, don’t shut me in the attic again. I promise I won’t wake you up with queries about how much tail-end batting averages have improved in recent years, or players who have emerged from prolonged career slumps to re-find their best form, or whether teams are statistically better off with an inferior spinner and better balance or a superior fourth paceman and reduced variety, or whether Harbhajan Singh is the greatest batsman of all time, no, not the attic, please, not the att...

AZ Good boy. I’ll bring you a sandwich on Wednesday.

Muttiah Muralitharan’s incredible Test career is almost at an end, and, as I write, he is in the process of attempting to become the first and last man to take 800 Test wickets.

Given the nature of modern international cricket, I think I can predict that no one else will reach 800 with a similar level of confidence as someone announcing that John Wilkes Booth will always retain the world record for Most Assassinations Of Abraham Lincoln, or that 1924 Olympic sprint champion Harold Abrahams will never again break his own personal best for the 100 metres. Murali’s mark will stand for all time. Unless Sajid Mahmood discovers both the elixir of eternal youth and the DNA of Freddie Trueman lurking in his garden shed behind a tin of creosote and a broken lawnmower.

Murali, the Jimi Hendrix of offspin, and surely Peter Such’s only serious rival as the greatest spin bowler of the late 20th century, has just two more days before he joins the ranks of former cricketers, alongside Grace, Bradman, Sobers, Warne, Capel, Igglesden and the rest. Seven more Indian scalps lie between him and a final statistical cherry on his cherry-laden multi-layered career cake. He already has Tendulkar in the bag for the eighth time, the Mumbai Master presumably weakened by spraying litres of his magic blood all over copies of his biography.

Disappointingly, Murali’s first innings of his final Test was brief and contained no sixes. One of the lesser-trumpeted stats emerging from his 18 years of Test cricket, but one worth a quick brassy toot nonetheless, is that he stands fifth on the all-time list of Sri Lankan Test match six-hitters, with 29, behind Jayasuriya, Aravinda de Silva, Jayawardene and Ranatunga, and some considerable way ahead of the likes of 83-Test interest void Hashan Tillakaratne, and 1980s teenage one-Test-wonder Sanjeewa Weerasinghe, who has hit the same number of Test sixes as I have.

Of all Murali’s Test runs, 13.8% have been scored with maximums (impressive, but some way behind surprise all-time leaders Shoaib Akhtar [24.3%] and Michael Holding [23.7%], both bowlers who could swing the bat with the confidence that only a certifiable lunatic would attempt to curb their mayhem with a bouncer). Murali also has the fifth-highest recorded batting strike rate (70.28) of those with over 1000 Test runs. He should be the role model for all tailenders. No blocking and nudging, no eating up valuable bowling overs scrimping the odd single and exasperating the watching world. See it, whack it, giggle when you hit it, giggle when you miss it.

Whether the fireworks that accompanied Murali out to bat were to mark his final Test, or in recognition of Abhimanyu Mithun having just become the 17th Indian to take four or more wickets in his debut Test innings, must remain open to question. I have not seen the relevant paperwork.

And the fireworks when Sri Lanka later took the field could easily have been a tribute to Herath and Malinga registering respectively the fourth and the equal fifth highest scores by Sri Lankan numbers 8 and 9, whilst jointly becoming only the first eighth-wicket partnership in all Test history to add exactly 115, and only the 40th combination of 8 and 9 to score half-centuries in the same innings. All of which are surely more worthy of fireworks than a man walking onto a bit of grass. Let History be the judge.

Murali made his debut in August 1992. It was a landmark year for bowling. Warne debuted on 2 January, Murali in August, and Kumble, after a solitary Test in 1990, was recalled by India in October. And, lest we forget, Ian Salisbury turned in the greatest debut by an England legspinner in over 60 years, taking five wickets, as many as Warne amassed in his first four-and-a-half Tests.

In one year, spin, perceived by many to be a dying art of decreasing value in top-level cricket, had simultaneously launched three of its greatest ever exponents on the unsuspecting batsmen of the world.

All cricket-worshipping parts of the world should be thankful for these titans of the game, and Sri Lanka most of all. Murali has taken 40% of all his country’s wickets in his Test career, and bowled a ludicrous 33% of all their overs, ratios unmatched in cricket history. He has also been their leading (or joint-leading) wicket-taker in 42 of the 53 Tests they have won with him in the team, including 37 of 41 from September 1996 to December 2007. They have won only seven of the 61 Tests they have played without Murali, compared with 53 of 131 with him. He has not merely held the key to Sri Lankan success, he has built the entire house.

One-man-New-Zealand-XI Sir Richard Hadlee is the only modern player who comes close to matching Murali on the Maradona Scale Of Absolutely Critical Importance To A Team. He took 35% of the Kiwis’ wickets, bowled a quarter of their overs, and was leading wicket-taker in 16 of the 22 wins New Zealand achieved in his 86 Tests. They won none of the 14 Tests he missed during his career, which suggests that Hadlee was as important to his country’s cricketing victories as Muhammad Ali was to Muhammad Ali’s triumphs in the boxing ring. New Zealand won only 14 of the 170 Tests they played without Hadlee up to 1997. He was, without question, a useful cricketer for his country.

So good luck, Murali, in your quest for those final seven wickets. Cricket will miss you, your whirling wizardry and your grinning competitiveness. I was fortunate enough to have been at The Oval on the final day of the famous 1998 Test when the full extent of Murali’s magnificence slapped England full in the chops like a 200lb haddock.

England, after generously deigning to play a piddling one-Test series against the now world champions for the first time since 1991, and fresh from brilliantly stealing a Test series from under the noses of a strong but fatally cautious South Africa, were delighted to be put in by the scheming Ranatunga on a flat pitch. The home team made a solid 445, as Murali twirled away defiantly to take 7 for lots. Ranatunga chuckled inside. The masterplan was in action. While the great spinner took the rest he needed in between bowling England out single-handedly twice, the batsmen would gorge themselves on a pristine surface − if Murali had had to work for his wickets on that pitch, then Ian Salisbury would have to get on his bended knees and pray for his. And pray hard. And probably sacrifice at least 100 head of oxen.

Jayasuriya, in his flamboyant pomp, treated England’s bowlers as a Victorian teacher would have treated the winners of the Top Five Naughtiest Boys competition. He whipped them mercilessly. After Murali had helped Suresh Perera add 59 quick and important runs for the last wicket, Sri Lanka had a lead of 146, and a day-and-a-half remaining.

Seamers Wickremasinghe and Perera fulfilled their contractual obligation of helping the batsmen hit the shine off the new ball, then Murali began to spin England into a paralysis of confusion. England, frankly, bricked it. The spell Murali cast over them is not entirely revealed by his own incredible figures − 9 for 65 in 54 overs of ceaseless mesmerism. Such was the strokeless rigor mortis that England contracted from him that, at the other end, Dharmasena, Jayasuriya and de Silva between them bowled 58 overs in support for just 58 runs. Had England been able to score at just two per over against these three less-than-demonic back-up tweakers, they would almost certainly have saved the game.

I was sitting near a large group of Sri Lankans who were, as Benaud said of the Edgbaston crowd in 1981, “going noisily berserk” as Murali carved himself into cricket immortality. It was a great day to be a cricket fan.

Well, it appears that, once again, I have stayed up past my bedtime truffling around for stats and writing this overlong blog, so the latest Q&A and more thoughts on Pakistan v Australia will have to wait a few days.

Instead, to conclude this spin-obsessed blog, here is a trivia question. Don’t look it up. That would be cheating. And besides, I’ll tell you the answer. So guess. Or telephone your friends and family to discuss the matter before settling on your final answer.

In the 1980s, only three spin bowlers took more than 50 Test wickets at an average of under 30. Who were they?

Think about it. Don’t look down the page yet.

Here comes the answer. If you get it right, you win today’s star prize, which is the right to jump around whatever office/train/bedroom/operating theatre you are reading this blog in, noisily celebrating your phenomenal rightness.

The answer is: Iqbal Qasim (131 at 24.99), Bruce Yardley (89 at 28.64), and Tauseef Ahmed (87 at 29.57).

If you answered correctly without being a close personal friend of at least two of Iqbal Qasim, Bruce Yardley and Tauseef Ahmed, you have my undying respect. Incidentally, thirteen spinners managed that feat in the 1950s, six in 1960s, five in the 70s, and eight in the 90s. Only three managed it in the 2000s – Warne, Murali and Swann − but with five more averaging below 31.3.

At ease.

Graeme Swann's maverick streak has inspired England to ludicrous heights © Getty Images

Hello Confectionery Stallers. Having had time to digest another intriguing but baffling England series, I have come to the conclusion that Andrew Strauss’s team is one of the oddest in cricket history.

Since the Middlesex Mastermind inherited the team a year ago, as a supposedly steady hand on a confused tiller after the Pietersen Project ended in predictably disarray, England have played 16 Test matches. They have lost only three of these games, but each of those proved unmitigated drubbings by an innings. They have also twice won by an innings, as well as registering three more thumping victories (by 115 and 197 runs, and by 10 wickets). Thrice they have concocted a last-wicket escape with an alchemic cocktail of incompetence and resilience, and once allowed their opponents to wriggle off their last-wicket hook. They lost a series in which they averaged six runs per wicket more than their opponents, and won and drew series in which they averaged respectively six and eight runs less per wicket than the opposition.

This must constitute one of the most ludicrous sequences of Test cricket ever compiled. And yet the team is largely made up of apparently steady, reliable, not-especially-temperamental players, operating under practical, sensible leadership. England are the cricketing equivalent of a church choir who smash up their pews at the end of their gigs before setting fire to the vicar, or an accountancy lecturer whose talks contain subliminal but explicitly lascivious reveries about Queen Victoria.

The skipper and coach Andy Flower may externally give the impression of calm, assured direction, but underneath their focused, frivolity-free exteriors, they are presiding over an England era of barking inconsistency, almost surreal fluctuations, and frankly unfathomable results. The self-styled but militarily-useless ‘army’ of England’s most vocal supporters have long and loudly proclaimed their barminess. Perhaps, over the years, their barmy contagion has worn off onto the players.

Alternatively, it could be argued that this descent into cricketing insanity coincided with the entry to the team of the maverick Graeme Swann. In fact, the more I think about it, the clearer it becomes that Swann has had an almost supernatural influence on this recent bizarrification of England’s often mundane Test team. From his very first over in Test cricket, when he winkled out Gautam Gambhir and Rahul Dravid in Chennai, it was obvious he possessed the capability to bring about the unexpected.

Within weeks, both captain and coach had been overthrown. Since then, the team’s all-round icon, Andrew Flintoff, has retired, its leading batsman, Kevin Pietersen, has been a shadow of his once dominating self, and Swann himself has seemingly ended (for a good while at least) the Test career of his spinning rival Monty Panesar, who had been regarded as England’s best spinner since Derek Underwood.

Thus, a player almost written off as a county journeyman has risen to the top echelons of the world rankings, and become his country’s leading wicket-taker, best-averaging bowler, fastest-scoring batsman and most important (and popular) player.

If all this had happened 500 years ago, Swann would have been sitting on the end of a seesaw waiting to be tried as a witch. If it had happened 40 years ago, we would simply have assumed he was a Soviet agent sent to destabilise the cricketing establishment.

As it is, we can only pay homage to the formidable, unknowable power that Swann has harnessed to take over the England team and remodel it in his own now-sacred image. Is it a Faustian pact – five years of legendary Test success (by off-spinning standards), followed by eternal yips? Time will tell. Or, if you prefer to take a less occultish approach to late-flowering cricketers, you could simply mumble to yourself about the value of bringing rounded, experienced cricketers into your Test side, and announce: “I never thought I’d say this a couple of years ago, but English cricket needs Graeme Swann like a racehorse needs its legs.”

(An alternative school of thought is that the strange patterns that have enveloped England began with the birth of my own son, whose entry into the world on the last day of that Chennai Test − described in an early Confectionery Stall entry − coincided with England subsiding from a winning position as labour began, to a spectacular defeat minutes after he slithered out into the world. Since then, as described above, English cricket has been turbulently nutty. As the boy’s father, this phenomenon keeps me awake at night. I love my son, but I cannot help but ask myself: has he been sent to this planet to turn my country’s Test team weird? He seems like a normal little lad, but then they always do, don’t they?)

As promised in last week’s World Cricket Podcast, here are some Swann statistics.

In the recent South Africa v England series, Graeme Swann took more wickets than any other person on the entire planet (albeit that most of the roughly 7 billion people eligible did not even get the chance to bowl). Swann’s 21 scalps mean that he has passed a barely-noticed milestone – he has become the first England spinner to take 19 wickets or more in two separate Test series since Derek Underwood (who hit the magical, mystical 19-wicket mark three times in his illustrious career).

Swann, the first England offspinner to winkle out 20 victims in a series since Geoff Miller in the 1978-79 Ashes against Australia’s reserves, also became only the third England off-spinner of all time to twice take 19 wickets in a rubber.

Let that sink in for a maximum of three seconds. Now, can you guess the other two?

I’ll have to hurry you.

Jim Laker and John Emburey? Wrong, and wrong. Try again.

No, one of them must have been Laker, surely? No. It wasn’t, try again.

Ray Illingworth? Nope. Not even close.

Lance Gibbs? Doesn’t count, wrong team.

Gareth Batty? It’s your own time you’re wasting.

Jim Laker? Still no.

Vic Marks? Get out of my blog.

You’re out of guesses. The two tweaksters in question are Roy Tattersall and Fred Titmus. (Meaning that Swann is one of only two people in the entire world who has twice taken 19 series wickets whilst bowling off spin for England, and still has ten toes.)

Laker’s absence from this never-before-compiled list (19 wickets not being considered an especially significant series landmark in a sport obsessed with numbers ending in 0) is something of a surprise, given that England’s greatest offspinner famously took 19 in a single Ashes Test, on his way to a ludicrous 46 in the 1956 series. But those 19 immortal Old Trafford scalps constituted more than he took in any other complete series.

There you go, stats fans. Put that one under your pillow, sleep on it, and then when you wake up in the morning, see if the stat fairy has left you a copy of the Playfair Annual. And well bowled Swann, one up on the great Laker. But 11 behind the great Muttiah Muralitharan. Who is level with the great Shane Warne, on 13 19-wickets-or-more series. Admittedly, this is not one of cricket’s keynote statistics. But it is one that you now know. Use it wisely, my friends, and tell it only to people whom you trust.

Two additional Swann In South Africa statistics in case those ones weren’t enough to slake your insatiable Swann-stat thirst:

• His 21-wicket tally was the highest series wickets tally for any spinner in a series in South Africa since Jack Alabaster, the Michelangelo of New Zealand leg spinning, took 22 in 1961-62 (coincidentally, both men’s surnames are things you should not try to eat, allowing for the spelling mistake in Swann’s name);
• And it was the third-highest by an England spinner in South Africa since Johnny Wardle in 1956-57, and the highest by any offspinner in SA since Hugh Tayfield’s 37 in the same series.

Wake up. You, the guy and/or girl who was still reading this blog a few paragraphs ago. Wake up. It is now safe to read on.

I will finish with a quick Jim Laker digression... whilst Laker’s playing career finished long before cricket and I first met, via a television set in 1981, he was a BBC commentator at that time. In that summer’s Old Trafford Test, he was responsible for one of my personal favourite lines of commentary, as Ian Botham reached his spectacular century by bludgeon-sweeping Ray Bright for six.

“What a marvellous way to bring up a six,” blooped Laker, mixing the words “six” and “century” in his understandably fevered excitement. This minor verbal slip perfectly encapsulated the pandemonium that Botham had unleashed that day, in a barrage that took him from 5 to 102 in 53 balls (the last 81 of those coming from 36 balls, of which the sweep off Bright was the fifth to clear the ropes).

Reality had departed the cricketing universe, and, bearing in mind (a) that no Englishman had ever hit four sixes in an entire Ashes innings, let alone 5 in under an hour, and (b) that Chris Tavare was making time stand still with a heroically strokeless vigil at the other end, you can forgive Laker for confusing his words. Particularly as he was probably thinking to himself at the same time: “Holy living mackerels, I took 19 wickets in a match here once. 19. In one match. That is absolutely bloody incredible. I must have been a seriously good bowler. High five, Jim? I’ll not leave myself hanging on this one. 19. For 90. Beat that, Ray Bright. Beat that.”