I sat down this morning to write about the phenomenal conclusion of the Mumbai Test. However, a trawl for some tasty statistics sent me a little off-piste. I could have returned to the piste, but I did not, and I will therefore discuss the match not in this blog, but in the relaunch episode of my World Cricket Podcast, due out later this week.

Instead, I have another Confectionery Stall XI for you, arising from investigations into R Ashwin’s Wankhede hundred – a historically momentous innings which means that Sachin Tendulkar and Ashwin between them have now scored 100 international centuries. No wonder the crowd went noisily berserk.

Ashwin became the fifth frontline Indian bowler this millennium to score a Test hundred, after Harbhajan (twice), Irfan Pathan, Kumble and Agarkar. In the two previous millennia, the only Indian bowler to have scored a hundred batting at No. 8 or lower was Kapil Dev, who scored two of his eight Test tons there.

Ashwin’s was far from the most unexpected of these lower-order successes. Ajit Agarkar can safely claim that honour. He might have had one first-class hundred under his belt when he walked to the wicket at Lord’s in 2002, but he also had nine runs in his previous six Test innings under the same belt, plus a shining belt-buckle engraved with details of a frankly heroic eight ducks in 18 Test innings to date.

Half of that quacky flock of eight ducks constituted a world-record-breaking sequence of four consecutive first-ballers in Australia in 1999-2000, a run of instantaneous ineptitude broken when he defiantly stodged out for a marathon two-ball duck in his next innings, enabling him to complete back-to-back pairs totalling five balls at the crease. It takes something special to record a King Pair. It takes something almost divine to follow it up with a three-ball pair.

At Lord’s, the game was already lost, but Agarkar defied both a useful England attack and his own career average of 7.4 to plank a statistically gobsmacking 109 not out. It remained Agarkar’s only Test score of more than 50. Few Test hundreds can have emerged so unexpectedly from a seemingly inescapable swamp of statistical precedent.

He later launched a similarly ingenious cricketing ambush with the ball. In the Adelaide Test of 2003-04, having lulled the Australians into a mathematically-justified sense of false baggy-green security by never having taken more than three wickets in an innings in 17 previous Tests over five years, Agarkar kebabed his way through them with 6 for 41, to set up one of India’s finest victories. He never took more than three wickets in an innings again – in fact, after that series, he never took more than two wickets in a Test.

Agarkar, a consistently effective ODI performer, thus established himself as unquestionably the greatest all-round one-off-flash-in-the-pan Test player of all time: 26 Tests – one major success with the bat, one major success with the ball. Of the 41 cricketers who have converted their only Test fifty into a century, Agarkar played more than twice as many Tests as the next man on the list. And of all the bowlers who have taken 50 wickets or more in Tests, only Agarkar can claim that on the one and only occasion on which he took more than three wickets in an innings, he turned that success into a six-wicket masterclass.

Agarkar’s hit-and-run Test career, and in particular his monumental, gravity-defying run of rapid-fire ducks, has inspired the Confectionery Stall Players Of My Cricket-Watching Lifetime Who Have Been Out For Pairs Lasting A Total Of Just Two Or Three Balls XI.

(I have selected the batsmen based on the quality of their careers, and the bowlers for their all-round ineffectiveness of the specific match in which they harvested their double-quick-time pair. At its best, this is a well-balanced XI that could challenge most teams, particularly with the bat. At its worst, it would be all out for 0 in 2.2 overs in both innings.)

Mike Atherton: 3 balls, v South Africa, Johannesburg, 1999-2000

Four years earlier on the same ground, South Africa had failed to dismiss the Lancashire Limpet in 10 hours 43 minutes and 492 balls of match-saving resistance. This time, they did so twice in nine minutes of batting, encompassing three balls, only one of which did not result in Atherton trudging off to the sound of Fate giggling to herself about what a neat line in irony she can peddle when the mood takes her.

Virender Sehwag: 2 balls, v England, Edgbaston, 2011

An uncharacteristic match strike-rate of 0 for the Delhi Devastator proved one of the most immutable rules in the scientific universe: if you are thrown straight into a Test match after four months out of the game following a major operation, against the world’s strongest pace attack in swinging conditions, in a crumbling team, you will probably struggle, even if you are, in different circumstances, capable of hitting a run-a-ball triple-century off Steyn, Ntini, Morkel and Kallis. And Harris.

Kim Hughes: 3 balls, v West Indies, Melbourne, 1984-85

It is fair to say that resigning the baggy-green captaincy did not help Kim Hughes rediscover the twinkling form that had helped him score an eye-popping undefeated hundred against Holding, Roberts, Garner and Croft, scored whilst Australia were being skittled for 198 at the MCG on Boxing Day 1981. In his first Test after his tearful departure from high office, Garner and Marshall dismissed him for a golden duck and a seven-ball 2 (a perfectly respectable innings against the mid-1980s West Indians, to be fair). In the next match, back at the scene of his previous triumph, Walsh snared him second ball, and Garner condemned him to another first-ball blob, and Hughes’ Test career was over.

Mark Waugh: 3 balls, v Sri Lanka, Colombo, 1992

Probably the most elegant three-ball pair of all time. The marginally younger Waugh bounced back in the following Test in Moratuwa, improving considerably to register an equally elegant nine-ball pair.

Alec Stewart: 3 balls, v Australia, Brisbane, 2002-03

England began the 2002-03 Ashes with miniscule hopes of victory, after a generation of baggy-green pummellings. By the end of day one of the series, those hopes were barely visible with an electron microscope, and England’s humiliation was complete when Stewart, one of England’s doughtiest servants through those lean Ashes years, suffered a Warne-induced golden duck to complete his three-ball pair.

Adam Gilchrist: 2 balls, v India, Kolkata, 2001-02

The world’s most destructive bat hit the ball two fewer times than its owner’s pads managed to in the momentous Eden Gardens epic. After a characteristically annihilative hundred in the series opener, Gilchrist was trapped in front in the middle of a hat-trick by Harbhajan late on day one. Four wild and crazy days later, he was pinned again, this time by Tendulkar, as the little Master ‒ who has averaged two Test wickets a year over his 22-year career ‒ took three in 13 balls. I was following the drama on Ceefax in my flat in London. Despite the drawback of only being able to see the scorecard change every five minutes or so, it remains one of the most exciting cricket matches I’ve ever watched.

Gilchrist was out lbw for 1 in both innings of the final Test. He had only been leg before once in his first 15 Tests before Eden Gardens. He was not out in this manner again for another 34 Tests. He had clearly learnt the valuable lesson that hitting the ball with his bat was a better tactic than hitting it with his legs.

Andrew Flintoff: 3 balls, v India, Headingley, 2002

Having ploughed through 27 overs for the solitary and distinctly unglamorous wicket of Sanjay Bangar, the Lancashire Leviathan would have hoped for more than three balls’ worth of batting. But Flintoff was still some way from cracking Test cricket, and he became another Harbhajan first-ball lbw victim, before, in England’s follow-on, being snaffled second ball by Zaheer Khan to register his eighth duck in 21 Tests. It would be almost a year before Flintoff reappeared in the Test arena. In the interim, he had acquired some crackers. And he started cracking things.

Justin Kemp: 3 balls, v West Indies, Jamaica, 2001

Not only did Kemp somehow contrive to be comfortably out-batted by Courtney Walsh in his final Test, but he also picked up only one wicket in 34 overs on a seamer-friendly pitch. Kemp was promptly dispatched into the Test match undergrowth by the South African selectors, whence he would emerge only four-and-a-half years later, for a solitary valedictory Test.

Ajit Agarkar: 3 balls, v Australia, Sydney, 1999-2000

Selected for his three-ball Sydney double-bloop rather than his king-pair pratfall in Melbourne on the anti-strength of his SCG bowling – 0 for 95 in 19 overs of persistent uselessness as Australia clonked their way to 552 for 5. Next time he faced the Baggy Greens, Agarkar backed-up his five-innings-in-six-balls nano-batting heroics with another pair of quacks in Mumbai, although this double dud took a stately 27 balls to complete. He finished his career with eight ducks in 16 Test innings against Australia – no one has scored so many noughts in so few innings against any opposition.

Rangana Herath: 3 balls, v Pakistan, Galle, 2000

In his third Test, Herath gave the cricket world one of its least impressive all-round personal performances – his one-ball first innings and two-ball second sandwiched a 36-over trundle of 0 for 115, making him the only player ever to score a pair with the bat and concede a wicketless century with the ball in the same match. The Sri Lankan selectors took note of the history being made before their eyes, and did not pick Herath again for almost four years.

Maninder Singh: 3 balls, v Pakistan, Karachi, 1982-83

In a strikingly ineffective debut, Maninder began as he meant to go on – on a mission to become statistically the worst batsman ever to play 20 or more Tests. Sadly, his average of 3.80 in 35 Tests has since been eclipsed by a man with an even greater devotion to being unable to hit cricket balls, the immortal Chris Martin (2.47 in 60 matches), but Maninder’s international bow also featured 23 wicket-free overs as India were mercilessly pounded by their arch rivals.

Remarkably, Maninder was batting as high as 10. The selectors, understandably, had assumed that they could not possibly have found a less capable batsman than the 4.6-averaging Dilip Doshi. They were wrong. Doshi outshone his tail-end compadré. His pair lasted four balls.

Welcome to Part 2 of the Official & Unarguable Confectionery Stall All-Time Great Series Performances In Comprehensively Defeated Teams XI ‒ The Bowlers. Please note that, for the sake of clarity, I have added the word “comprehensively” to the team name, thus ruling out, for example, Warne’s mesmeric 2005 Ashes, Imran Khan’s brilliance in narrowly failing to haul his Pakistan team to victory in England in 1982 (17 wickets at 14, 200 runs at 67, in the two defeats in a 2-1 loss), and Courtney Walsh’s 34 wickets at a nostalgia-fuelled average of 12 in a close-fought 3-1 defeat to England in 2000. All brilliant performances, all ultimately unsuccessful. But none for teams that were being battered like a suicidal haddock in a chip shop.

There was much deliberation around the family breakfast table over the make-up of the bowling attack. My four-year-old daughter eloquently put the case for Alec Bedser’s 1950-51 Ashes heroics earning him a place in this most illustrious of XIs, but was shouted down by my two-year-old son, who thought that having the 1924-25 Maurice Tate alongside his team-mates Hobbs and Sutcliffe would help engender a suitably defiant team spirit, and made his point forcibly, and with projectile baked beans. The final selection, to add to England’s long-dead opening legends, Dravid, Lara, Walcott and Flower (wk) is as follows:

No. 7 and captain: Kapil Dev, India v West Indies, 1983-84

The stats: 29 wickets in six Tests, average 18. Next highest Indian wicket-taker: Shastri (12 at 47); next best average: Maninder Singh (10 at 33). Result: clonked 3-0. In the three defeats, Kapil took 18 wickets at 18; no other Indian bowler managed more than six. In the West Indies batting line-up: Greenidge, Haynes, Gomes, Richards, Lloyd, Dujon, and more.

As a bowler, Kapil Dev was often magnificent in defeat – 10 of his 23 five-wicket Test hauls came in the 31 matches he lost with India (placing him third on the all-time list of five-wicket innings in losing causes, behind Murali (15) and Richard Hadlee (11)). By comparison, Kapil took five wickets three times in 24 wins, on 10 occasions in 75 draws, and a forgivable zero in one tie. (Hang on, Dr Fact, that is a large number of draws, isn’t it?) (What was cricket trying to do to itself at that time?) (Was there a curious belief that the best way to nurture Test cricket was to slowly pile-drive spectators into a numbed torpor of listlessness, whence all they could think about was the endless glories of their team not losing and the ultimate pointlessness of life?) (75 draws in 131 Tests.) (That is utterly ridiculous.) (I digress.)

He never galloped down a more magnificent road to defeat than when leading India to a 3-0 home clubbing by the mighty West Indies in 1983-84, most especially in the third Test in Ahmedabad. With India 1-0 down in the series and 40 runs behind after the first innings, Kapil took 9 for 83 in an unbroken 30-over spell that winched his team into contention. Any fast bowler attempting a 30-over spell in the current 21st-century science-enhanced era would be surrounded by physios, coaches, agents, psychiatrists, biomechanical gurus and mothers screaming at him to pull himself together and feign a chin injury in order to escape the field of play for a rubdown, a chinwag and a cup of tea. But Kapil bowled West Indies out for 201, and India were left needing just 242 to win.

Unfortunately for Kapil, the key missing words in that last sentence are (a) “off the bowling of Marshall, Holding, Daniel and Davis”. And (b) “on a pitch so spicy even a drunken British stag party wouldn’t eat it”. Meaning that the word “just” had no business appearing in this blog. India duly sank to 39 for 7, then 63 for 9, before Maninder Singh’s greatest day as a batsman – scoring 15, holding out for 81 minutes against a barrage of high-octane mega-pace, heroically bumping his career average up from the disappointing low-to-mid-3s to solidly into the entirely respectable high-3s, and being described by no less an authority than Wisden as being “relatively undaunted”) ‒ edged his team over 100.

Kapil was left with some sore legs, a princely moustache, the consolation of having pocketed the best Test innings figures by a losing player, and the comforting knowledge that, in the next Test, his opening bowling partner would be the fire-breathing bouncer-flinging monster that was Ravi Shastri.

No. 8: Maurice Tate, England in Australia, 1925-25
The stats: 38 wickets in fiv Tests, average 23. Next highest England wicket-taker: Kilner, 17. Bowled 316 eight-ball overs in the series (equivalent to 84 six-ball overs per Test) – next most overs by an Englishman: Kilner, 179. Result: marmaladed 4-1. In England’s four defeats, Tate took 31 wickets at 23, with four five-wicket innings. Of England’s other bowlers in those losses, only Kilner (12 at 27 in two Tests) took more than 10 wickets, averaged under 50, or bowled more than half the overs Tate bowled.

The third member of this team to emanate from England’s comprehensively clouted Ashes losing 1924-25 team, Tate reignites his statistically fruitful but resultistically disastrous combination with Hobbs and Sutcliffe. The Sussex schemer, in his first year of Test cricket, was a staggering mixture of incisive and durable, shouldering the burden for English bowling like a dutiful conservationist carrying an aqua-phobic elephant across the Serengeti.

He was never quite as lethal again, with only one more five-wicket innings in the rest of his Test career. Perhaps there is a reason that most modern doctors that I have consulted now advise that bowling over 2500 balls in a series on hard pitches is not necessarily beneficial for your long-term fitness.

In his next two Ashes series, Tate took far fewer wickets at far higher cost. And England won them both. A true losing-heroically legend.

No. 9: Rodney Hogg, Australia v England, 1978-79
The stats: 41 wickets in six Tests, average 12.85, including five five-wicket innings and two ten-wicket matches. Result: donkeyed 5-1. Next best Australian bowler: Hurst, 25 wickets at 23.

Bowlers relished this Packer-neutered series – non-legendary England tweakman and now selectorial overlord Geoff Miller took 23 wickets at 15 in the 6 Tests, but could harvest only 37 (average 40) in his other 28 Tests. Hogg had some able support, but England fielded a decent batting line-up, and, in his debut series, the Melbourne Motorarm obliterated it with some unremittingly baggy-green pace. Sadly for him, his own batting line-up counter-obliterated itself similarly unremitting persistence, and Hogg emerged with a soaring reputation, a starring role in Australia’s biggest ever Ashes defeat, and a nagging sense that he probably deserved better.

Like Tate, his kettle never boiled quite so bubblily again. He too took only one more five-wicket haul, and never more than 11 wickets in any other series.

No. 10: Muttiah Muralitharan, Sri Lanka v Australia, 2003-04
The stats: 28 wickets in three Tests, average 23. Next best Sri Lankan bowler: Vaas, 11 wickets at 34. Result: kneaded, baked and eaten 3-0.

Statistically, this selection should be non-contentious – 28 wickets at 23 in a 3-0 home series whitewash. But this whitewash did not wash quite as white as some whitewashes. Three times, Murali bowled his team into a first-innings lead (15 wickets at 15 runs apiece in the three first innings). Three times he was trumped by Warne in the second ‒ Murali took 13 at 32, Warne 14 at 16 to power-whirl Australia to victory on his spectacular return to Test cricket after his diuretic blooper.

Nevertheless, anyone who takes 28 wickets in three Tests deserves better than a 3-0 blooting. And Australia were very good at batting in those days. The Kandy Konjuror is in.

No. 11: Courtney Walsh, West Indies in South Africa, 1998-99
The stats: 22 wickets in four Tests (missed one match through injury), average 18. Next highest wicket-taker: Ambrose, 13. Result: ritually disembowelled 5-0.

Walsh is selected not only for his sterling bowling against a strong South African team during one of the innumerable disastrous away series that have come to characterise modern West Indian cricket, but for his sterling bowling in several other disastrous away series as well. Before this series, he had taken 14 wickets at 21 in a 3-0 horror-show in Pakistan (two defeats by an innings, one by 10 wickets, next highest West Indies wicket-taker: Dillon, with five). After it, he reached even higher peaks of defeated magnificence with the aforementioned 34 at 12 in England (when only Ambrose, with 17 at an average of 18, also took more than eight wickets), before rounding off his career with 25 more victims at 19 in a 2-1 defeat in a five-Test home series against South Africa.

As West Indies became progressively worse, Walsh seemed to become progressively better. In all, he took 186 wickets at 25 in 43 Test losses (more defeats than were suffered by Roberts, Holding, Marshall, Garner, Croft and Patterson combined), making him one of the greatest losers in sporting history. In a manner of speaking.

That is the final XI. A useful team, I think, albeit one with a slightly collapsible tail, and perhaps rendered more vulnerable by the undeniable fact that Hobbs, Sutcliffe and Tate would all struggle to pass a fitness test these days. And a team that I am confident would score multiple centuries and average above 70 with the bat, and skittle their opponents cheaply and repeatedly. And still find a way to lose.

A rather bizarre English international summer concluded with a nostalgia-fuelled display of English incompetence at The Oval, skittled by a rookie West Indian team amidst a flurry of schoolboy errors – a curious bookend to a season in which they had often struck perfection and seldom dipped below excellence. England’s cricketing present and future have seldom seemed rosier. Helped by the fact that several other countries’ cricketing presents and futures, in the Test arena at least, seem as rosy as a concrete car park.

My personal highlight of the season was the colossal showdown between England’s unceasingly incisive pace attack and the majestic throwback batsmanship of Rahul Dravid, who presented the only significant barrier to one of the finest team series bowling performances of recent years. The Bangalore Bulwark became the sixth man to score his team’s only three centuries in a series, and the third to do so in a losing cause, after Lara in Sri Lanka in 2001-02 and HW Taylor for South Africa against England in 1922-23.

It is often said that in professional sport winning is the only thing that matters. This is patently rubbish. For fans, if not for players. In tribute to Dravid’s heroics in a team that was so conclusively routed, therefore, here is the Confectionery Stall Great Series Performances in Defeated Teams XI.

Criteria for selection: candidates must have performed wonders over the course of a losing series, ideally with minimal or non-existent support, and even more ideally whilst his team was being ground to a pulp like a piece of garlic in a recently divorced French chef’s kitchen.

Part one: Batsmen and Wicketkeeper

Openers: Jack Hobbs & Herbert Sutcliffe, England in Australia, 1924-25.
The stats: Hobbs: 573 runs in 5 Tests, average 63, three centuries; Sutcliffe 734 runs, average 81, 4 centuries. Series result: trounced 4-1. Next highest England run-scorer: Woolley, 325. Centuries by other team-mates: 1.

England’s legendary openers are selected as a proven magnificent-in-defeat partnership for their heroic efforts in a 4-1 series drubbing. By the end of the third Test, each man had scored three centuries, and between them they had scored 1063 runs at an average of 88, and added 739 in six partnerships. And England were 3-0 down. Which must have been almost as annoying for them as it was for the designers of the delightful interior décor on the Titanic. “Well, we did our bit,” they must have gruntled, “and they didn’t ask us to make it all waterproof.”

Another century partnership, and Herbert Sutcliffe’s fourth hundred, followed as England won the fourth Test, before both failed in the fifth, and the Baggy Greens completed a 4-1 clouting. If man cannot live by bread alone, cricket teams cannot live by immortal opening partnerships alone either.

No. 3: Rahul Dravid, India in England, 2011
The stats: 461 runs in four Tests; average 76; three centuries; average balls per dismissal: 160. Series result: flambéed 4-0 (including two innings defeats). Next highest Indian run-scorer: Tendulkar, 273. Centuries by team-mates: 0. Combined series average of other top-seven batsmen: 22. Combined balls per dismissal of other top-seven batsmen: 47.

Before Dravid came to England this year, he had scored only one of his 32 Test hundreds in the 41 matches he had played in and lost. In the space of little over a month, he did so three more times, each innings a timeless monument of technical, temperamental and aesthetic mastery, each in the first innings, and each against a rampantly remorseless swing attack that reduced his rightly vaunted team-mates to a smouldering pile of confused and disorientated rubble.

It ranks as one of the great acts of solitary cricketing defiance. In India’s four first innings in the series, Dravid scored 388 runs, faced 789 balls, and was dismissed only twice – once striking out for quick runs with the tail, once by a Bresnan outswinger that would have cleaned up Zeus or Bradman at their very best ‒ whilst the rest of a theoretically magnificent top seven, sprinkled with undisputed greats of the game, combined to average 20. It is hard to imagine Dravid losing his temper in the dressing room. He seems no more likely to smash a television with a cricket bat than Chris Martin is to score a dazzling match-winning double-hundred. But he must at least once have looked at the rest of his team with a “Does anyone else fancy a game?” look in his eyes.

No. 4: Brian Lara, West Indies in Sri Lanka, 2001-02
The stats: 688 runs in three Tests; average 114; three centuries (including one double). Series result: splattered like a steamrollered hedgehog 3-0 (including two losses by 10 wickets). Next highest West Indies run-scorer: Ramnaresh Sarwan, 318. Centuries by team-mates: 0. Combined series average of other top-seven batsmen: 22.

No one has scored more Test hundreds in defeat than Lara. Admittedly no one has had quite the range of losing-hundred-scoring opportunities as the Trinidad Titan, who scored 14, including three doubles and five more over 150 – which is 14 more defeated hundreds than Wally Hammond, Geoff Boycott, Graeme Smith, Sourav Ganguly, Everton Weekes and Alec Stewart have managed between them in 167 losing Tests.

In 2001-02, against Murali and Vaas at their considerable peaks and on their home turf, West Indies were at their hapless post-decline-and-fall worst, and Lara was at his peerless and mesmeric best, a Yehudi Menuhin fiddling out perfect Mozart sonatas to the backing of a low-grade school thrash-metal band. He scored 688 runs in the three Tests, including 351 in the third, the record match aggregate by a batsman on a losing team. Aside from Sarwan, who contributed three half-centuries, Lara received as much support as a plate of foie gras at a vegan cooking competition.

Against Murali, Lara scored 286 runs and was out twice; his team-mates managed to hammer the Kandy Konjuror for 250 runs whilst losing 22 wickets. Facing Vaas, Lara hit 148 for 1. His colleagues defiantly tonked the left-arm schemer for 230 runs in exchange for 25 wickets.

No. 5. Clyde Walcott, West Indies v Australia, 1955
The stats: 827 runs in five Tests; average 82.7; five centuries. Series result: chewed 3-0. Next-highest West Indies run-scorer: Everton Weekes, 469.

Walcott became the only player ever to hit five centuries in a single series, and still contrived to end up on the wrong side of a 3-0 series hammering. In the three Tests West Indies lost, this particular 33.3% of the Three Ws scored 493 runs and three centuries – 300 runs more than his most productive team-mate, and 144 more than the other 66.6% of the Three Ws combined.

No. 6 and wicketkeeper: Andy Flower, Zimbabwe v South Africa, 2001-02
The stats: 422 runs in two Tests; average 211; two centuries. Series result: 1-0 (marmaladed in the first Test, drew the second). Next highest Zimbabwe run-scorer: Masakadza, 153.

Flower became the only wicketkeeper ever to score two centuries in a series in losing Tests, and he did so in one match – the first of a two-Test rubber against a powerful South Africa team, in Harare. Flower began by keeping wicket as South Africa plundered 600 for 4. After conceding precisely zero byes in 10 hours of unrewarding glovework (and having to endure the spiritual heartache of witnessing a Gary Kirsten double-hundred at soul-endangeringly close quarters), he soon came to the wicket at 51 for 3, to face a five-prong pace attack of Pollock, Nel, Kallis, Ntini and Klusener, plus the slightly less stomach-rumbling tweak of Henderson. Almost five hours later, he was last man out for 142 as Zimbabwe were dismissed for 286.

Following on, his top-order team-mates gave him even less respite – Flower barely had time for a cup of tea and a crack at the cryptic crossword before he was on his way to the crease again, at 25 for 3. He proceeded to bat undefeated for 10 hours, before last-man Hondo was irritatingly out, stranding Flower on 199. Which must have chafed a little. South Africa romped home by nine wickets. Flower had scored 341 for 1. His team-mates collectively had managed 301 for 19. He followed it up with 67 and 14 not out in the drawn second Test, for a series average of 211.

The previous year, he had averaged 270 in another series loss in India – but he is selected in this XI for the South Africa series due to the almost total lack of support received in Harare, the quality of the bowling he defied, and the comprehensiveness of the defeat. If only he had joined the England set-up in the early 1990s. We could have done with someone who couldn’t help averaging over 200 in a series.

That is the top order of the Great Series Performances in Defeated Teams XI. A bunch of total losers, I’m sure you will agree.

It is a subjective selection, of course, and some magnificent if ultimately futile efforts missed out – Michael Vaughan in Australia in 2002-03, when he scored three mellifluous centuries against, variously, McGrath, Warne, Gillespie, Bichel, MacGill and Lee. However, he only passed 50 once in the first seven innings of the series, by which time England were 3-0 down and following on in the fourth, so he loses out to Hobbs. Plus, I think Hobbs should still be in the England team. There is no substitute for experience.

Shivnarine Chanderpaul has played two phenomenal series in a thrashed West Indies team – 446 runs against England in 2007, 442 against Australia in 2008, in both of which he was only dismissed three times; making 50-plus 10 times in 11 innings and turning four of those into centuries. All whilst his team mates mostly looked on politely and tried to work out which end of their bats to hold. On reflection, he should definitely have been selected, surreally crabby stance or not. But I’ve written it now, and it is well past my bedtime. And there was a contractual dispute with the team’s sponsors, Walcott’s agent said he was available and he got the nod instead. And I didn’t want three left-handers consecutively in the batting order. And Walcott took four wickets in the 1955 series. And could keep wicket if Flower hurt his finger. The selector’s decision is final.

Your own submissions would be warmly welcomed, and discussed at length with my wife, who is fascinated by such matters. The bowlers will be revealed next time.

As the cricket world digests the big cricket news of the cricket week − that Alastair Cook still has some work to do to earn inclusion in ESPNcricinfo’s all-time XI; that Australia remain very poor at forcing wins in games that are completely washed out (a shortcoming England, as holders, will be looking to exploit in the Ashes); and that Michael Clarke not only thinks that Ricky Ponting should captain Australia in the Ashes, but said so out loud in an interview, thus proving it − the time seems right for another Confectionery Stall XI.

This is the first Confectionery Stall XI for some time, and as the highly enjoyable season of ESPNcricinfo XIs draws to a close (taking with it the even more enjoyable season of readers’ reactions to ESPNcricinfo XIs), I felt it was time to jump on the XI-selecting bandwagon before it is driven off to the ESPN scrapyard and the pieces sold off to another website.

I particularly enjoyed Suresh Menon’s Elegant XI − a useful team, without question, but heavily biased in favour of all-time greats of the game. I feel this is deeply unfair to the stylish underachievers of cricket history, players who have looked great in action but less great in the scorebook. I therefore submit the Confectionery Stall Elegant But (Relatively) Ineffective XI, a team of the not-so-great-but-nonetheless-pleasing-on-the-eye who have intermittently entranced but more often frustrated the international-cricket-watching universe.

It should be remembered that elegance is not always a reliable hallmark of quality. When I was at school, there was a seam bowler who used to flow into the wickets with the ease of a thoroughbred racehorse, then bowl with perfect rhythm and an easy athleticism, reminiscent of a slow-motion Michael Holding. The last time I saw him play, he was bowling quite well in the West Kent Village League. He had a prettier action than Curtly Ambrose but was, by other conventionally accepted measures of bowling quality, not as good.

In my own village team I used to open with a player who was, in almost every aspect of batsmanship, useless. He struggled to keep good balls out. He struggled to keep bad balls out. He struggled. But every now and again – perhaps twice or three times a summer – he would unfurl an extra-cover drive so majestically perfect that it seemed as if Viv Richards had momentarily invaded his body, as if Wally Hammond’s handkerchief should have been fluttering from his trouser pocket. Next ball he would play down the line of leg stump and see his off peg splattered, or attempt a pull shot and spoon-plonk it to extra cover, or be trapped lbw trying to square-cut a full-toss. But those cover drives were worth a whole summer of single-figure failures.

Perhaps the most elegant English batsman of recent years has been no-Test wonder Vikram Solanki, whose contribution to international cricket comprised 51 ODIs and three Twenty20 matches, in which he averaged in the mid-20s. The first of his two hundreds for England was a magical innings against Pollock, Ntini, Kallis et al at The Oval in 2003. The Wisden verdict: “Solanki finally arrived as an international batsman... few players can demand drooling admiration for an innings. Solanki is one of them.”

His England career, however, generated a disappointingly small pool of drool. He passed 10 once in his next eight innings, was dropped, and departed international cricket three sporadic years later as the latest in an illustrious cavalcade of What-Might-Have-Beens of modern English cricket.

But how good was Solanki? Because he could play shots from the cricketing heavens, there is a tendency to think he underachieved. Paul Collingwood, by contrast, is often regarded as an overachiever who has made the most of his relatively limited talents. His batting has the flourish of an egg sandwich and the elegance of a steamrollered hedgehog. But his fielding reveals phenomenal hand-eye co-ordination and athleticism, and his timing is often extraordinary. But because he nudges the ball for four rather than strokes it, he generates no drool. Plenty of admiration, but none of it drooling. The only drool Collingwood prompts slowly dribbles from the snoozing mouths of opposing fans whilst he is compiling one of his famous match-saving rearguards.

Here, then, is the Confectionery Stall Elegant But Ineffective XI – a personal selection of players in my cricket-watching life (1981 to the present day) who have played the game with style, panache, flamboyance, and above all, limited top-level success. Qualification: must have played Test cricket. Maximum batting average: 38. Minimum bowling average: 30.

1. Gerhardus Liebenberg (five Tests, average 13.00)
I have written before about the soul-crackingly harrowing experience of watching Gary Kirsten stodgegrind his way to what Cambridge scientists have confirmed as the dullest double-hundred in human history, at Old Trafford in 1998. Two days of unremitting misery for which I am still awaiting an apology. Opening the batting with Completely Tedious Of Cape Town was Liebenberg. Statuesque, stylish and rubbish – the polar opposite of his opening partner − Liebenberg stroked a couple of imperious boundaries, one leg-side flick finessed to the boundary with the confident flourish of a born batsman. He was then thoroughly bowled by Darren Gough for 16, and spent the rest of the summer being one of England’s key players, a guaranteed early breakthrough. His and Kirsten’s respective career statistics disprove the existence of God.

2. Sadagoppan Ramesh
India has produced many great stylish batsmen. In his first seven Tests, studded with two centuries and five half-centuries (including 60 and 96 in a match against Wasim, Waqar, Saqlain and Mushtaq Ahmed), Ramesh languidly caressed his way to an average of 55 and seemed well on the road to becoming another one, albeit that he was travelling down that road without moving his feet very much. Sadly, that road diverted straight into a ditch. Twelve more Tests brought no more scores over 61, and an average of 26, and Ramesh was consigned to the selectorial shredder in August 2001. Over the next three years Das, Dravid, Dasgupta, Bangar, Jaffer, Patel and Chopra opened in 43 Tests between them, and generally poked about to no good purpose, collectively averaging 26. The latter part of Ramesh’s career suggests that he might not have done any better. But he would have done just as badly in a considerably more attractive manner. And more quickly. Life is full of contrasts. Seeing Sehwag open with Bangar was like seeing Beethoven team up with Miley Cyrus for a charity single. Wrong and confusing.

3. Xavier Marshall
Included on the basis of one off-drive against Australia that I saw him play on the telly a couple of years ago. It was beyond perfect. Unlike his Test, ODI and first-class averages (20, 17, 24), which are beyond belief.

4. Greg Blewett
After Mark Waugh, and possibly Damien Martyn, the most graceful Australian of his era. The panache of his back-to-back career launching hundreds against England in 1994-95 suggested Australia had unearthed a new world-class stylist. The rest of his career suggested they had unearthed a prettier version of Bruce Edgar.

5. Carl Hooper
Hooper made batting look simple and majestic. He seemed to have enough time to write a letter home whilst waiting for the ball. Sadly, he often batted as if he was thinking of what he was going to write in it. He could hit forward-defensive shots for six, and get out to almost any bowler in the world given the chance. Not a total failure, but after 50 Tests he averaged 31, which was a sick joke by the same cricketing gods who allowed Gary Kirsten to average in the mid-40s. A hybrid of Hooper’s style and Chanderpaul’s concentration would have been one of the greatest batsmen of any era. A hybrid of Hooper’s concentration and Chanderpaul’s style could have led to cricket being outlawed.

6. Chris Lewis
The allrounder who had it all – explosive, round-the-wicket strokeplay, and athletic, sometimes rapid, bowling. All that was missing were the performances to back it up. And the sense not to catch sunstroke on the eve of a Test match. And the ability not to be convicted of drug smuggling. Currently in jail, not looking quite as brilliant as when he smashed a century in India in 1992-93, or when he clean-bowled Tendulkar at Lord’s in 1996.

7. Geraint Jones
Intermittently competent behind the stumps, taker of the most important catch in modern English history, and stroker of some of the purest off-side shots you could wish to see. Did not stroke as many of them as you would wish to see, admittedly, but on his very occasional day, he was an old-school stylist mixed with a modern improviser.

8. Alex Tudor
Looked like a natural in all departments when he emerged in the late 1990s – a smooth action that generated pace that frightened the all-conquering Australians, and a flamboyance with the bat that immediately raised the suspicions of the England selectors. Tudor dismissed both Waughs, Ponting and Langer in a potent debut in Perth, then in his first home Test flayed his way to a match-winning 99 not out in the most brilliant night-watchman’s innings ever played by an Englishman, playing shots that many had assumed Geoffrey Boycott had officially outlawed from the English game. Then fizzled out like a once-promising sausage on a rain-hit barbecue. One of the lost talents of world cricket.

9. Brendon Julian
Lithe left-armer with a sweeping action, and all set to be the long-awaited New Alan Davidson. Took a stunning caught-and-bowled to dismiss Robin Smith in his debut series in 1993, prompting no less a judge than Richie Benaud to eulogise (if memory serves): “That is the mark of a very fine young cricketer.” Unfortunately Benaud was wrong. Julian proved to be only a quite fine young cricketer – 15 Test wickets at a shade under 40, and 128 runs at 16, in just seven Tests.

10. Phil Tufnell
His average was little different to Ashley Giles’. His action was from a different universe. Ashley Giles bowled like a broken combine harvester trying to restart itself. Tufnell had a natural fluency and rhythm that touched perfection on his occasional great days for England. Ashley Giles won the Ashes. And could bat. And field. Tufnell loses out in those three categories.

11. Mohammad Akram
Richie Benaud said that Mohammad Akram reminded him of Michael Holding. Enough said. Mohammad Akram agreed. Michael Holding was unavailable for comment.

There is my XI. Apologies for the slight English bias, but many elegant but ineffective players from the rest of the world never have made it to these shores, so I could have missed the chance to appreciate both their elegance and their ineffectiveness. Please nominate your own suggestions for this XI.

	Shahid Afridi has taken unpredictability to and beyond its logical extremes © AFP

After much deliberation, and the resignation of half of the selection panel (the nought-year-old Zaltzman junior), here is the remainder of the post-1980 World Unpredictable Test XI.

6. Shahid Afridi (Pakistan) (honorary captain)

The first name on the team sheet. Gives this team excellent balance, as he can be devastating with both bat and ball. To both his opponents and his own team. On and off the pitch.

Afridi – “the maddest of Mad Maxes” according to his Cricinfo profile – has taken unpredictability to and beyond its logical extremes, to the extent that the most unpredictable thing he could possibly do in the rest of his career (other than claiming that Asif Mujtaba was his role model and inspiration) is nail down a place in the Pakistan Test team and string together a steady run of solid performances.

Thus far, he has had a genuinely baffling Test career. Despite batting and bowling averages of 37 and 34 respectively, and despite scoring more centuries in his first 22 Tests than any of Ponting, Tendulkar, Lara, Inzamam, Dravid, Gooch, Yousuf, Gower, Kallis, Jayawardene, both Waughs, Saeed Anwar, Sangakkara or Hayden, Afridi has played fewer than one in three of his country’s Tests over the course of his career.

His average Test innings lasts for the same length of time as Jimmy Anderson’s, but contains more runs than Hussain’s, Cronje’s or Ranatunga’s. And with the ball, he dismissed Tendulkar three times in two Tests in 2005, which is as many times as Warne managed to snare the Mumbai Maestro in his entire career.

Afridi arguably had the potential to be Pakistan’s Sehwag and Kumble rolled into one explosive package, but it has proved impossible to predict whether he will blast an incredible hundred, swipe a less-than-incredible nought, spin out the world’s best batsman, get smashed about by Matthew Hoggard, retire, unretire, almost hit a spectator with a ball, almost hit a spectator with a bat, or audition for a part in the PCB’s annual charity ballet by pirouetting in the middle of the pitch.

Afridi therefore is honorary captain of this team. This XI would need little captaincy, if only because even attempting to mould it into a coherent, focused unit would be an act of wilful futility.

7. Kamran Akmal (Pakistan) (wicketkeeper)

In his short career to date, Kamran has veered from being a top-class keeper but underachieving batsman, to being the new Gilchrist with the bat and the new Coco The Clown with the gloves. After scoring five brilliant centuries in two months in 2005-06 (three in Tests, two in ODIs), he sunk into a fallow period in which his ineptitude with the bat often matched his seismically shaky wicketkeeping, in which he remained flawless apart from his glovework, footwork and headwork. At times, he has not so much been ham-fisted, as appeared to be keeping wicket with two live pigs strapped to ends of his arms.

His recent re-emergence suggests that he could have a long career of wildly undulating form, and cement a reputation for being both breathtakingly brilliant and utterly useless.

Kamran sneaks in to the team because MS Dhoni, who appeared to have the unpredictability world at his mercy, has disappointingly used the responsibilities of captaincy as an excuse to become disturbingly consistent and reliable, and ahead of Brendon McCullum – how did it take such an obviously extravagant talent with the bat four years and 35 matches to score a century against a major Test nation?

8. Craig White (England)

White was a curious cricketer. For the first six years of his sporadic Test career, he appeared to have been selected by mistake, or as one of the Australian double-agent players which the ACB intermittently plants in county cricket to undermine the England team. Then he emerged as an occasional master of reverse swing and a occasional player of brilliant innings.

He took 14 wickets in his first 10 tests, then back-to-back five-fors, then, after four more in his next test, took no more than two in an innings for 14 tests, before wrapping up his career with 12 in three innings in Australia. With the bat, he twice put together impressively inept sequences of eight single-figure scores in nine innings, but also played masterfully on turning wickets in Asia. By the end, it was hard to work out if he had overachieved or underachieved with both bat and ball. Or done exactly as well as he should.

9. Shoaib Akhtar

The man who puts the ‘liability’ into ‘unreliability’.There is a wealth of out-and-out pacemen from which to choose – Devon Malcolm, Patrick Patterson, Fidel Edwards, Lasith Malinga to start with – but the Rawalpindi Roller-Coaster is out on his own for both performance and behaviour.

On form, Shoaib has been the most spectacular sight in world cricket. At Colombo in 2002, he blasted out Ponting and the two Waughs in four balls, then Gilchrist and Warne in the next two overs – five legends of the game blasted out without requiring the assistance of a fielder in perhaps the greatest fifteen-ball spell in Test history.

With 178 wickets at 25, and a strike rate of 45, Shoaib clearly could have been one of the greats, if only his mood had not swung further, faster and more consistently than his yorker. The three Fs – form, fitness and focus – have been intermittent and reluctant travelling companions on his madcap journey through cricket, and he has played fewer than half of Pakistan’s Tests since his debut. He has not – how should I put this? – always taken a fast bowler’s tummy with him onto the field of play, and has broken down on the field more often than a cheapskate farmer’s home-made tractor.

He faced allegations of throwing, before his action was cleared due to natural hyperextension of the elbow. He has, however, been found repeatedly guilty of throwing tantrums, due to unnatural hyperextension of the ego.

Occasionally, amidst the controversies, injuries, bans, strops, drops, comebacks and court cases, there have been outbreaks of cricket. Against England in late 2005, Shoaib was a controlled, mature, focused match-winner, seeming to presage a vintage autumn to a turbulent career – since then, he has taken just 17 wickets at 34 in seven Tests. And tested positive for nandrolone, hit a team-mate with a bat, and faced a legal action from the chairman of his own country’s cricket board, amongst other escapades. He does not drink in Last Chance Saloon. He lives in it, has repainted it in his favourite colours, and is about to buy out the management and rename it after himself.

As Irving Berlin once said, “There’s no business like Shoaib business.”

10. Steve Harmison (England)

It is often said that England never know which Steve Harmison will turn up – the one who almost took Langer’s, Hayden’s and Ponting’s heads off on the first Ashes morning of 2005, or the one who almost took second slip’s kneecaps off with his first ball of the 2006-07 rematch with a delivery that challenged humanity’s assumptions about the laws of physics? Or the one who nibbles it about in the low-80s mph, trying to keep an end tight until Collingwood comes on to try to force a breakthrough?

Statistically, the Durham Dilemma’s career divides up into three distinct phases – not very good (28 wickets at 39 in his first 10½ Tests), very good (146 at 25 from his breakthrough second innings at the Oval in 2003 to his last triumph against a terrified Pakistan at a bouncy Old Trafford in 2006), and not very good again (47 at 46 in 18 Tests since then).

But even in his good phase, the wrong Harmison would pop up with alarming regularity (especially in South Africa in 2004-05), and in the midst of his struggles, there have been moments when he has looked a skull-shuddering world-beater once more (notably at the Oval last year). As the England selectors gaze lovingly at the fading, sepia-tinted photographs of the Australian captain dripping blood, and of a Jamaica scoreboard emblazoned with the figures 7 for 12, will they give this difficult marriage one last go?

11. Stuart MacGill (Australia)

This team has to have a front-line leg-spinner – until Warne spoilt the reputation of leggies by being persistently brilliant for almost his entire 15-year career, wrist-spinners had unpredictability written into their contracts. MacGill seemed like a throwback leggie, veering between unplayable and flayable, mixing genius with garbage like a drunken Einstein.

He failed to live up to his brief, brilliant early period of Warne supremacy – excluding relatively facile wickets against Bangladesh and in the so-called ‘Test’ against the ICC XI, he averaged 44 in his final 17 Tests with only one five-wicket innings − but remained one of cricket’s most compelling variables, with a fuse as short as some of his long-hops, and a glare as devilish as his googly.

MacGill narrowly edges out Abdul Qadir, who at one point followed up a spell of two wickets for 300 over five Tests by whirling out 40 victims at 16 in his next four matches. He then took only one more (expensive) five-wicket haul in the remaining three years of his career. Qadir’s Test average unsuccessfully tried to escape from both ends of the 30s throughout his career (excluding a one-match breakout to 29.64, after which it was recaptured and sedated back up to the mid-30s), but MacGill takes the main spinner’s spot in the team because the look on his face always suggested that something was about to explode, whether it was a fizzing leg break out of the rough, or, more likely, his own temper.

This then, is the full line-up:

1. Virender Sehwag (IND)
2. Marvan Atapattu (SL)
3. Aravinda de Silva (SL)
4. Kevin Pietersen (ENG)
5. Carl Hooper (WI)
6. *Shahid Afridi (PAK)
7. †Kamran Akmal (NZ)
8. Craig White (ENG)
9. Shoaib Akhtar (PAK )
10. Steve Harmison (ENG)
11. Stuart MacGill (AUS)

That is a team that I guarantee could win or lose any match by an innings and 400.

Try as I might, I couldn’t find a place for a South African – for all Herschelle Gibbs’ mercurial efforts, unpredictability does not seem to be in the their South African players’ cricketing soul (was this the real reason for Pietersen’s defection?).

Perhaps in selecting three England players, I am guilty of national bias, of wishing that English cricket was more flamboyant and exciting than it really is, but the application of personal bias is historically one of the perks of being a selector.

Having promised the World Unpredictable XI a couple of blogs ago (the ‘blog’ now being the only unit of time I officially recognise), I have since found myself in prolonged and agonising internal selectorial discussions. So many players from the last 30 years have thrust themselves into contention through capricious form, majestic peaks and incompetent troughs, or a simple refusal to embrace the warm, comforting slippers of consistency. What, the selectors (The Confectionery Stall and his three-month-old son) debated long into the night, constitutes genuine unpredictability? My Dull World XI could be backed up with simple statistics, but how can one measure unpredictability?

True unpredictability must include considerable amounts of both success and failure. One-off out-of-the-blue triumphs are not sufficient – Ajit Agarkar, for example, played 26 Tests, scored one century but no other 50s, and took more than three wickets in only one innings – a match winning 6-41 against Australia in Adelaide. Aside from these flashes in an otherwise inept pan, Agarkar was almost entirely predictable.

Andy Caddick was often dubbed an unpredictable talent, but, after a nightmare first series, he was, statistically at least, a steady performer whose failures and success broke down simply into whether it was the first innings (average 37) or second innings (average 20) of a match. (Darren Gough by comparison averaged respectively 29 and 26.) Overall Caddick was Manoj Prabhakar at the start of games, and Malcolm Marshall at the end, a curious combination which possibly explains Nasser Hussain’s hairline.

What about Brian Lara? Probably the most vulnerable and flawed of all batting’s certified greats, Lara caused the selectors more headaches than any other player.
He compiled many of modern cricket’s greatest innings and series, yet failed amazingly often – he played 26 series of three or more Tests, and averaged 33 or lower in 10 of them (including 5 out of 11 series of five or six matches). Lara narrowly misses out on the final XI. Much of his failure can be attributed to one of cricket’s most notable career slumps. For a five-year period between the ages of 27 and 32, when many batsmen are at their peak, Lara averaged 40. Either side of this, his average was 60.

In essence, the truly unpredictable player must generate the feeling that, as he takes guard or stands at the end of his run-up, no-one in the stadium knows what will happen, least of all himself.

In all, I have set myself an almost impossible task selecting an Unpredictable XI from my Test-watching lifetime (1981 onwards), and one which I am unlikely to fulfil without contradicting some of my own unpredictability criteria, but here, nonetheless, it is. (And, just as I resisted the temptation to pick 11 New Zealanders for the Dull XI, so I have rejected the opportunity to choose 11 unfulfilled Pakistani geniuses and be done with it.)

Part 1: Batsmen

Virender Sehwag (India).

A frankly ludicrous, almost surreal, player with an approach to batting that, according to all received cricketing wisdom, ought to give him a Test average of around 30 at best, but whose shameless brilliance has turned him into a modern great. Sehwag only sneaks into the team. He is, essentially, predictably unpredictable. Everyone knows what he will attempt to do, and how he will attempt to do it. The only question is whether or not he will succeed (1 in 10 innings he passes 150), or fail (in half of his innings he fails to pass 25). Either way, he goes down, or up, in a blaze of glory.

Marvan Atapattu (Sri Lanka)

Not the classic epitome of daredevil unpredictability, Atapattu defied his orthodox technique to become one of the most statistically unpredictable players of his generation. Bouncing back from amassing one run in the first six and a half years of his Test career for a less-than-Bradmanic average of 0.16, intermittently-marvellous Marvan scored six double-hundreds (fourth equal on the all-time list) yet still heroically managed to keep his career average below 40.

Atapattu endured more slumps than a champion narcoleptic on a very comfortable sofa. He passed 50 only once in 26 innings between 1998 and 2000, but that once was an unbeaten double-hundred. Shortly afterwards, he followed knocks of 59 and 207 not out against Pakistan, and 54 and 120 against South Africa, with a run of just 270 runs in 14 innings, including six ducks – and 207 of those runs came in one undefeated innings against England. The game of an orthodox grinder, the statistics of a temperamental, bat-hurling, tortured, tantrum-throwing genius.

Aravinda de Silva (Sri Lanka)

At Lord’s in 1991, the Colombo Curiosity marched out to bat with half an hour remaining of the day’s play. He marched off 30 balls later having flayed 42 unstoppably perfect runs to his name, before marching back out the next morning, getting out, and marching back off. In the second innings, he stodged 18 off 91 balls.

In 1997, he emerged from a three-year slump to hit seven centuries in 12 innings. Capable of coming in at 1 for 2 in a World Cup semi-final against India in Calcutta and blasting 66 off 47, but also of scoring 27 in nearly four hours in a Test against Zimbabwe. In Tests, he averaged 25 between 1984 and 1988, 53 between 1989 and 1993, 20 between 1994 and March 1997 (in which time he won Sri Lanka the World Cup with one of the greatest innings in cricket history), 74 between April 1997 and February 2000, and 36 between March 2000 and the end of his career in 2002. A properly odd career.

Kevin Pietersen (England)

Swerving between the slalom gates of success and failure like a drunken Olympic skier, Pietersen has had one bad series in the 14 he has played, but, arguably, not a single great one. Between the last Ashes and the start of the recent West Indies series, Pietersen scored nine centuries in 22 Tests, but still averaged only just over 50, alternating between the golden underpants of triumph and the dank jockstrap of failure with no apparent link to current form.

Increasingly capable of painstakingly over-careful accumulation, or tub-thumpingly reckless aggression, Pietersen has at times demolished Warne and Muralitharan, but is vulnerable to club-standard finger spin. As captain, he even managed to coax an outburst of baffling unpredictability from the stolid old ECB. Anything seems possible with Pietersen. Would it really be a surprise if he came out to bat dressed as Elvis or scored a 60-ball hundred whilst batting with a dead ferret instead of a bat?

Carl Hooper (West Indies)

Depending on mood, or form, or prevailing winds, or horoscopes, or the will of the fickle cricketing gods, Hooper could look like an undisputable all-time great or a total novice, sometimes in consecutive balls. At his best, he could stroke a ball over a far distant clump of trees whilst appearing hardly even to move his bat. At his worst he could hit any bowler in the world straight to cover point for no apparent reason. Enchanting and frustrating, the ultimate in unpredictability. Let himself down with antiflamboyantly steady off-spin.

Those, then, are the batsmen. So many players have been unlucky to miss out, from Srikkanth to Ashraful, from Astle to Cullinan. Maybe Ross Taylor and Phil Hughes will demand selection in a few years’ time. Your reactions and rival selections are, as ever, welcome and appreciated.

Next time: Shahid Afridi, and the other five members of the team.

Confectionery Stallers, the waiting is at an end. Here is the remainder of the post-1981 World’s Dullest XI. (Part 1 | Part 1 appendix)

The selection process has become no easier. Finding bowlers of the requisite level of tedium is not simple – to be a truly dull bowler, you first have to be a good bowler, in order to have the capacity to drive the game into a near-vegetative state. First, however, the wicketkeeper...

7. Jack Russell (England)

	Jack Russell: the slow man's slow © Cricinfo Ltd

I include Russell with a heavy heart (and only after foolishly including Tillakaratne as a special batsman), as he was a favourite player of mine, and his batty quirkiness as a cricketer and hat-wearer transcend the boundaries of statistical dullness. Russell’s minimalist scoring rate was, objectively, unimpeachably tedious, so I have tried to view this from the perspective of non-English cricket-watchers, for whom enduring the Gloucestershire Gremlin as he poked, prodded and persevered must have been inexorably irritating.

Other glovemen made strong applications – including every single pre-Dhoni Indian since Kirmani – but few have bored over a sufficiently elongated career, and none has played an innings remotely in the negativity class of Russell’s great masterpiece – 29 not out off 235 balls in almost 5 hours as he saved the Johannesburg Test with a comparatively explosive Atherton in 1995-96. This was the slowest recorded Test innings of over 20, and, had it been played 500 years earlier, videos of it would have been used by the Spanish Inquisition to extract confessions from even the most blameless cricket watchers.

Career Highlight: Johannesburg 1995-96.

Some South African cricket watchers still curl up into a ball and start crying whenever they see a small man with a moustache. Of the traumatised bowlers, Meyrick Pringle could never bring himself to play Test cricket again, and Clive Eksteen took almost five years off, played one more wicketless Test, and promptly disappeared.

8. John Emburey (England)

Choosing a partner for the great Shastri in the spin-bowling defence was one of the toughest tasks facing the selection panel (namely, me and my 6-week-old son). Many will press the case of Ashley Giles in the most vocal and febrile terms available, particularly those who saw him ‘bowl’ in India in 2001-02, whilst Kumar Dharmasena (who has already created more excitement in his one-match international umpiring career than he did as a player merely by signalling a leg-bye) bowled as if he thought that displaying a semblance of either flight or turn would give him an incurable lifelong ear infection, and also plinked a few useful runs at a pitifully morose rate.

In the end, however, I have been swayed by statistics. Tauseef Ahmed’s numbers are impressive, but his moustache was quite exciting, and Emburey just has the edge, or lack of it, to nail down the spinner’s spot. He had a pleasing, classical off-spinner’s action, but the highest strike rate of any specialist bowler with more than 50 Test wickets in the 1981-to-now period (a wicket every 108 balls), and the third best economy rate, at 2.24. If he had ever bowled unchanged at both ends through a full day of Test cricket, the close of play score would have been a stadium-clearing 200 for 5.

The Middlesex Miser also adds valuable depth and immovability to the lower middle order – he used the least flamboyant batting technique ever developed in the history of the British Isles to jab his often critical runs away at just 35 per 100 balls.

Career Highlight: The entire Test summer of 1987. Bowled through 4 entire Tests without taking a wicket. whilst constricting the Pakistan batsmen to just 2 runs per over. His 0 for 222 off 107 overs series figures showed the control of a tantric Casanova, but the penetration of an inebriated eunuch.

9. Craig Matthews (South Africa)

Of all the South African seamers who have sent down over after over 18 inches outside the batsman’s off stump waiting for their adversary to chase one out of sheer boredom or smack their own stumps to pieces just to make something happen, Matthews was the dullest. Tediously effective from the tip of librarian’s haircut to the hooves of his workhorse feet, the Cape Constrictor ran to the wicket as if he was about to photocopy directions to a municipal rubbish dump for a public safety inspection officer, eyes set firmly on the maintenance of his career 2.26 economy rate.

Career Highlight: Debut v India, Johannesburg, 1992-93. Match figures of 4 for 64 off 49 overs of unmitigated nagging. Admittedly aided by an Indian batting line-up featuring Shastri, Jadeja, Amre, Manjrekar, Prabhakar and More – all of whom spanked it around at fewer than 40 runs per 100 balls over their Test careers.

10. Ewen Chatfield (New Zealand)

Again, it has been hard to narrow it down to one New Zealander from a veritable Pacific Ocean of possibles. How can one ignore the claims of Martin Snedden, for example, who not only bowled the least exciting medium pacers of all time but also once scored a three-day duck with the bat? But the perennially tidy Chatfield was the most economical seamer of the relevant period (2.23 per over). A tearaway fast bowler in the sense that spectators wanted to tear their eyeballs away from their sockets whilst he was in the middle of a long spell, the Manawatu Mogadon took a wicket roughly every two hours of bowling, yet still averaged only 32. Rumour has it that, when facing Chatfield, batsmen would smash themselves on the toes with their bats so that the pain would keep them awake at the crease.

Career Highlight: 1988-89 Wellington Test v Pakistan. A 53-over marathon of probe which yielded 82 runs and 1 wicket. A 1950s spinner trapped in the body of a fast bowler.

11. Alan Mullally (England)

Comically inept batting cannot outweigh his tireless pounding of the corridor of unreachability. The Leicestershire Lolloper gave his captain some control by refusing to aim anywhere near the batsman, let alone the stumps (which he hit approximately once every 70 overs of bowling), and enabled spectators to take regular toilet, refreshment or snooze breaks without fear of missing anything resembling action. Also made groundsmen feel that it had after all been worthwhile mowing the edges of the pitch. They gave Mullally the facilities. He used them. To a fault.

Career Highlight: Any time he heard a commentator utter the words ‘Alan Mullally’ without immediately adding the words ‘wasted the new ball by giving the batsmen too many balls they could comfortably leave alone’.

12th man: Asif Mujtaba (Pakistan)

	Asif Mujtaba: a fine 12th man © John Dawson

Statistically, the dullest middle-order batsman of the modern era, with a strike rate of 28 runs per 100 balls over a barely-believable 25 Tests in which he averaged 24. After his promotion from the surprisingly intensive job of being Pakistan’s specialist substitute fielder, Mujtaba found the boundary boards with the regularity of a derailed Antarctican train ploughing into a queue of polar bears. Whilst it would be harsh to lay all the blame for the paltry attendances at Tests in Pakistan at his unspringy bat, it is scientifically provable that he did absolutely nothing to reverse the trend.

Career Highlight: 1992 series in England. The only time the Sind Sedative (a) did anything remotely useful against a major Test team in his 11-year career, or (b) scored at more than 2 per over in a series. His 33.55 strike rate constituted a positively Gilchistian onslaught by Mujtabatic standards.

So, the final post-1981 Dull XI is:

B.A.Edgar
G.R.Marsh
G.Kirsten
C.J.Tavare (honorary captain)
R.J.Shastri
H.P.Tillakaratne
R.C.Russell (wicket-keeper)
J.E.Emburey
C.R.Matthews
E.J.Chatfield
A.D.Mullally

12th Man: Asif Mujtaba

I look forward to your personal world and national Dull XIs. Congratulations to all those selected, and commiserations to the many grinders and trundlers who can feel rightly aggrieved to have missed out (of whom Sanjay Manjrekar, as many of you have forcefully pointed out, is probably the most unfortunate).

This is a team of players who have proven themselves dull over long and often distinguished Test careers. Anyone can achieve momentary dullness – Aravinda da Silva, a certified magician described by this very site as “one of the games’ best entertainers” and “an unrepentant attacker”, once clobbered 27 off 191 balls against a mighty Zimbabwe attack consisting of Streak, Rennie, Guy Whittall, Jarvis and Peall. It takes a steely force of personality to accumulate an entire career of almost unbroken inertia, and I defy any person to concoct any team that could force either a win or a defeat on a flat track against this agglomeration of the adhesive, this procession of the prudent, prosaic and parsimonious.

Tomorrow (here it is, Ed.) will bring the long-awaited announcement of numbers 7 to 11 in the Confectionery Stall Post-1981 All-Time Dullest World XI, putting tedious cricketers and lovers of tedious cricket out of their misery at last.

In the meantime, this is clearly an issue that has stoked the fires of Confectionery Stallers throughout the universe. Many thanks for your responses to this most emotive of topics, and I fully understand the uproar generated by the omission of some of the most negative players of the modern era: men who have driven you to hair-rending, eye-poking frustration with their refusal to countenance the idea of a full follow-through.

Here, therefore, are explanations for the exclusion from the Dull XI batting line-up of some of those you have nominated.

Geoffrey Boycott: excluded purely because this is a 1981-Ashes-and-after team. Boycott therefore only had the final few months of his Test career in which to press his claims. And press them he did, grinding along merrily at 34 runs per hundred balls. Were this a 1964-1981 team, he would be the first, second and third names on the teamsheet.

	'A soporific scoring rate is not sufficient in itself to qualify for selection'. Even for Dravid... © Getty Images

Rahul Dravid, Sir Michael Atherton, Jacques Kallis: too classically orthodox and stylish for this team of the awkward, inelegant and pokey. Although each has had innumerable moments of spectacular unspectacularity – Dravid’s 61-ball 3 against England in Bangalore in 2001-02; Atherton’s 11 off 90 against New Zealand in 1999; Kallis’s six-hour unbeaten 85 as South Africa powered towards a declaration against England in 1999-2000, to pick just three especially turgid cherries from a smorgasbord of strokelessness – a soporific scoring rate is not sufficient in itself to qualify for selection. You must be fundamentally unwatchable on every level, even when making your rare sorties into attack. If Kirsten had ever scored a 130-ball double century, it would still have felt like you had taken cricketing Mogadon.

Shivnarine Chanderpaul: too quirky and too good. Disqualified for scoring a 69-ball century against Australia. Reinstated for 11-hour 136 against India. But redisqualified for ethereal timing and heroic defiance of the orthodox.

Jimmy Adams: too influenced by injury. A man who had the patience, nerve and sheer unadulterated rudeness to score a 370-ball century against Zimbabwe (let me confirm that: against Zimbabwe) would appear to be a shoo-in, but it should be remembered that, before having his cheekbone squished by an Andre van Troost bouncer in 1995, Adams rattled along at a relatively jaunty 45 per 100 balls in Tests. After his appalling injury, he squirreled out his runs at a joyless 31 per 100 (and his average sunk from 62 to 29).

Wasim Jaffer: Test strike rate of 48 per 100 balls. Cut the guy some slack.

	Kepler Wessels: exciting when he was semi-Australian, less so as a Protea. Quite a lot less so, in fact © Getty Images

Kepler Wessels: unarguable contender on grounds of his sub-zero-frills style, but tonked it around at 50 per 100 in his Australian incarnation, before returning home to South Africa, and winding himself back down to an acceptably Protean 40. What does this reveal about the cricketing cultures of the two nations? Everything.

Mudassar Nazar, Shoaib Mohammad, Mark Richardson: selectorial whim. Formidable candidates, but there is no shame missing out to grinders of the dullness of Edgar, Marsh, Kirsten, Tavare, Shastri and Tillakaratne.

Grant Flower: up against Shastri. Could have done little more to convince the selectors with his unthreatening but tidy left-arm spin and unthreatening but tidy right-handed batting, but up against Shastri.

Brendon Kuruppu: possible flash-in-the-pan. One innings of unimpeachable dull greatness – a 777-minute double-hundred on debut – cannot compete with the years and years and years and years and years of creasebound inactivity which the members of this very special XI have demonstrated. Kuruppu also spanked England around Lords for an hour in 1988, raising doubts about his true grinding status.

I hope this has quelled the seething resentment that your own particular least favourite blockers and nudgers have not received the recognition they deserve. Being a selector is a difficult job at the best of times. When honing down a team of world-class snooze-inducers, with so many outstanding candidates to choose from, it becomes impossible to please everyone.

The wicketkeeper, bowlers and twelfth man will be unveiled tomorrow.

The ICC’s much-maligned Best-Ever Test Match ratings, which have provoked typhoons of outrage and howls of misunderstanding across the cricketing universe, have fired the millennia-old debate about how best to assess a cricketer’s quality. Even the mathematically ingenious Babylonians and the wise old Ancient Greeks were unable to concoct a definitive equation for this deeply important matter, hindered as they were by an unfamiliarity with cricket. It is therefore unsurprising that the ICC (who often seem to suffer the same hindrance) have also failed.

In many ways, such rankings are, theoretically at least, a more reliable indicator of a player’s current standing than career averages, being more reactive to form, opposition, era, conditions and the other variables that can skew a players average so beguilingly. Perhaps an average of a player’s ranking after each Test he played would give a clearer measure of the overall magnificence, adequacy or rubbishness of his career, and return Matthew Hayden to his rightful place in the all-time batting pantheon – in other words, in that pantheon, but not eating at top table whilst Tendulkar, Lara, Headley, Compton and Boeta Dippenaar look on enviously, picking at their food and muttering, “I was better than him,” before four of them add, “Boeta, what are you doing here? Have you stolen Graeme Pollock’s membership card again? Leave, Boeta. Just leave.”

However, cricketing achievement is only one measure of a player’s contribution to the game. Another is dullness. Dull cricketers have played just an important part in the development of our beloved sport as exciting ones – whose genius and flamboyance is only noticed by comparison with the porridge-like drudgery of their less gifted colleagues.

To many in this Twenty-20 era, dullness is not a quality to be prized. The Confectionery Stall’s first exposure to cricket, however, was in the summer of 1981, famous principally for Ian Botham’s ludicrous feats of swashbuckling heroism, but equally noteworthy for some grindingly turgid batting by both sides (no bowler who played more than two matches in the series conceded more than 3 runs per over).

Botham’s 118 off 102 balls at Old Trafford may have shocked and intimidated the Australians (particularly after he had scored 3 from the first 30 balls he faced), but it was Chris Tavare’s 78 off 289 in 7 hours that broke their spirits, obliterated their love of cricket, and crushed their will to live, rendering defeat inevitable. It also inspired the young Zaltzman to strive for great feats of elongated scorelessness in his cricket career – my greatest achievements including playing the dominant role in an opening partnership of 1 in 10 overs in an under-11 match, and being out for 17 in the 31st over a 40-over West Kent Village League game for the mighty Penshurst Park CC.

Tragically, there are no official dullness rankings for fully appreciating the game’s less exuberant performers, so the Confectionery Stall would hereby like to honour the unsung heroes such as Tavare – the Behemoths of Boredom, the Titans of Tedium, the Grand-Masters of Grind – by announcing its post-1981 Dullest World XI.

This hypothetical team of dullards to take on the proverbial Alien XI would be required not merely to play for a draw from ball one, but also to put the invading extraterrestrials off cricket for good, leaving the sport unsullied in its rightful home – Planet Earth.

Dullness as a cricketer is of course somewhat subjective, and is not measurable purely by statistics. Batsmen must not only score slowly, but do so with a lack of style that renders them unwatchable to all but their closest family and most dedicated team-mates. They must also be aggravatingly good enough to stay at the crease sufficiently long to send spectators into a deep coma. Bowlers must be skilled and patient enough to contain and restrict, without threatening the excitement of a wicket by any other means than a mental capitulation by the batsman, brought on by overwhelming frustration and an uncontrollable consideration for the paying spectator. Thus, we are looking for the crabby, awkward stubbornness with the bat, and trundling negativity with the ball.

The obvious temptation is simply to pick 11 New Zealanders at random – a team of Edgar, Franklin, Wright (capt), Richardson, J. Crowe, Coney, Blain (w-k), Bracewell, Snedden, Chatfield and Watson would challenge the enthusiasm of even the most ardent cricket lover (and if Jacob Oram could bat like Chris Martin, he would walk into the team as a specialist bowler). But that temptation must be resisted, if only because other nations must be rightly recognised for their contributions to tedious cricket.

Here, then, is The Confectionery Stall's Post-1981 Dullest World XI.

Part 1: Batsmen

1. Bruce Edgar (New Zealand)

Just one of a seemingly endless production line of sleep-inducing Kiwi openers (Wright-Franklin-Hartland-Pocock-Young-Twose-Horne-Bell-Richardson-Papps-Cumming-Redmond-McIntosh, the list goes on, and will continue to go on as long as cricket is played in the land of the long white cloud). With a strike rate and average of 31, Edgar batted like the professional accountant he is.

Career Highlight: Wellington Test v Australia, 1981-82. After his team were put into bat, Edgar batted until well into the fifth and final day of the match. For 55 runs. Admittedly, rain had intervened, and intervened a lot, so Edgar faced a mere 259 balls and had clubbed an average of one boundary per day, but a five-day half-century is not to be sniffed at.

2. Geoff Marsh (Australia)

	Geoff Marsh dulls himself to sleep © Getty Images

Perhaps the closest Australia have come to replacing Alec Bannerman since his retirement in 1893, Marsh scored at more than a run every other ball in only 7 of his 93 Test innings (and only once in his first 35 Test Matches). Dogged it out with the flamboyance of a road cone, making partner Mark Taylor look like Adam Gilchrist.

Career Highlight: Bicentennial Test v England, 1987-88. Contributed to the joyous celebrations and party atmosphere of his nation’s 200th anniversary by blasting his way to 5 off 49 balls in the first innings, then thrashing a 215-ball 56 in the second.

3. Gary Kirsten (South Africa)

An intensely personal selection. Kirsten has haunted my every cricketing nightmare since I took a week’s holiday to go to the England v South Africa Old Trafford Test in 1998. Kirsten spent the first 11 accursed hours of this match grinding out 210 grindingly ground-out runs in a manner that rendered previously sane cricket watchers insensible with boredom. Even his team-mates and blood relatives must have been drinking fearsomely aggressive espresso coffees every half hour to endure the vigil. Not wishing to waste a moment of my precious holiday time, I dedicatedly sat through every single ball of that innings. I have suffered flashbacks ever since, the deep psychological scars have seriously affected my family relationships, and I have never quite been able to see the sunny side of life as I had before. I survived the ordeal, but have never truly been the same cricket fan again. There have been statistically duller batsmen, but figures alone cannot express the anti-joy of watching Kirsten bat.

Career Highlight: Entire career. But especially Old Trafford 1998.

4. Chris Tavare (England)

See above. Outshone Boycott in 1981, averaged a boundary every 51 minutes of Ashes batting over his career, a strokelessness record that probably will and certainly should surely never be broken by a front-line batsman. The Bradman of Block.

Career Highlight: Perth Test, 1982-83. Backed up an 8-hour first innings 89 with his stonewalling masterwork – an incurably constipated 9 in 127 minutes.

5. Ravi Shastri (India)

A genuine dullness all-rounder. Scored and conceded runs at little more than 2 per over. If he could have bowled at himself, cricket would have died.

Batting Career Highlight: South Africa v India series, 1992-93. On the momentous occasion of South Africa’s first home Test since readmission, and the first ever Test between the nations, Shastri showed South Africa what they had been missing by clobbering 14 off 81 in his first innings of the series – and then slowing down in his subsequent efforts. In all, faced 412 balls in the 3-match series. For others, this might have been sufficient for a healthy 250-plus runs. Shastri bludgeoned just 59, at an average of 11.8 and a scoring rate of less than one run per over. Heroically dull.

Bowling Career Highlight: India v England, 1984-85. Sent down more than 1100 balls in the series, 7 of which took wickets, whilst England flayed him for 2.1 per over.

6. Hashan Tillakaratne (Sri Lanka)

Featureless accumulator, the very antithesis of Sri Lankan batsmanship, it was often impossible to believe he was from the same planet as Jayasuriya and de Silva, let alone the same country. Rumour has it that even Tillakaratne himself cannot remember any of his innings.

Career Highlight: Asian Test Championship Final v Pakistan, 2001-2002. Bounding to the crease in Sri Lanka’s first innings with his team strongly poised at 447 for 5, more than 200 ahead with 5 wickets in hand, having scored at almost 4.5 per over to that point, Tillakaratne rammed home the advantage by plundering 19 not out in almost 3 hours. Still, red ink is red ink.

It appears I have got a little carried away with this blog, so, in the interests of domestic harmony in the Zaltzman household, as well as of my other professional commitments, the announcement of the uninteresting wicketkeeper, stultifying bowlers and yawnsome 12th man will be delayed until the next blog. Who will join the Wellington Wall, the Perth Plug, the Cape Town Clogger, the Orpington Obstacle, the Bombay Blockage and the Colombo Crawl in this union of the unspectacular?

Time permitting, I will also suggest Dull XIs for all the Test teams, for which your nominations are welcome. Until then, let us remember the words of Sir Geoffrey Boycott, the Sultan Of Stodge himself: “You can’t score runs in the pavilion.”