How many people are in on the sting? © Sky Sports

I'm in the middle of a bad dream; Like Jekyll & Hyde, Romantic and Pragmatist share my cricketing soul whenever I think of anything to do with Pakistani cricket. Perhaps Beauty & The Beast is a more appropriate analogy, such is the magic of their style of cricket when everything is above board and the witchcraft that is now doing the rounds of the rumour mills once more.

When I heard of the latest allegations involving match-fixing, the romantic in me refused to believe that such dastardly deeds could possibly happen. Surely no one could be that greedy, that stupid or that mercenary to risk a nation's morale at a time when the whole world was rallying around Pakistan in its time of crisis. Last Friday, my local ABC radio station in Brisbane ran a concerted appeal to raise money for flood victims and by 3 pm, the tally was already pushing the $1.4 million mark. It was as if the darkest hour had passed and the rain clouds were about to slip over the horizon, only for this latest storm to engulf a nation for whom cricket might have been the source of some comfort during a period of pain. For that reason alone, the silly romantic in me refused to believe that any Pakistani cricketer would countenance any form of deception at a time when so many of his countrymen were facing ruin and collapse on a much larger scale than anything that cricket has to offer. Yet, cricket and life in Pakistan are almost too hard to separate at times. I recall the pain in the words of the bloggers at the time of the Sri Lankan team's shooting incident last year and it's clear that for many Pakistan citizens, the two are bound together in bonds of honour and national identity.

And yet, the cold, hard pragmatist in me felt ashamed to admit that this latest revelation did not shock me to the core. There was almost a sense of "here we go again". We've all heard the innuendo, taken some of it with a pinch of salt, swallowed what was left with an uneasy gulp and wondered if there could be this much smoke without a smouldering ember in someone's conscience. I remember the day when a Pakistani friend who was a professional in one of the English leagues told me in 1999 that Pakistan would lose to Bangladesh in a World Cup match. I just laughed at him and told him not to be so pessimistic until I realised (in hindsight) that he was speaking in pain and shame rather than with nerves or pessimism.

That was when I first started to question whether the players themselves were in on the game. I did my dough a few months later when I checked the long range weather forecast and backed a draw in Centurion, only to wake up and discover that Hansie Cronje had allowed England to chase down 249 to win on the last day, after forfeiting his second innings. I put that down to a sporting declaration gone horribly wrong until the truth emerged a few months later, honour washed down the drain along with Cronje's halo.

Since then, I've wavered between romanticism and pragmatism in equal measure. As a cricket purist, I've taken great pleasure in watching Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir these last 8 months or so, swerving the ball around corners and bringing the artistry of swing bowling right back into focus. Geniuses, both of them.

As a keen punter, the pragmatist in me has learned his lesson from bitter past experiences. In Sydney earlier this year, I backed Australia about an hour into the Hussey/Siddle partnership because I had this uneasy sixth sense that a miracle (or dark deed) was about to unfold. The bookmaker who took my bet laughed at me and said "mate, there's only one team that can win this game", to which I casually replied (not realising how poignant it would appear in hindsight), "I know but when that team is Pakistan, it's worth having a little flutter the other way". After the game, the same bookie called me and asked me if I knew anything. I laughed and told him that it was nothing more than a lucky guess with just an instinct for something that was not quite kosher.

A few weeks later, when Pakistan were chasing a low total in the Twenty20 game in Melbourne, when the two Akmal brothers were batting together for the first time all summer, I again backed Australia to win the game at long odds. Coincidentally, the same bookie took the bet and his sarcastic comment was "not another conspiracy theory again is it, mate?" I gave him the same logic, arguing that at these prices, it was worth losing a few dollars just in case the unbelievable happened. An hour later, the bookie called me and was no longer convinced by my genuine promise that I was relying on nothing more than gut instinct.

Winners are grinners of course. Just to prove I have no crystal ball, I backed Pakistan in that semi-final of the World Twenty20 a few months ago and lost my money when Mike Hussey smeared Saeed Ajmal out of the park. To be fair though, it's pretty hard to deliberately lose a game when someone bats as brilliantly as Hussey did that day. How can you fix that sort of result when you rely on someone else's brilliance to that extent?

I thought of backing England at 6/102 a few days ago but it was late at night in Australia, I fancied my warm bed and I didn't quite have that same gut instinct gnawing away at me. Looking back now, imagine the odds of England winning by an innings at that point?

Which brings me back to my source of confusion. If any of these latest allegations are true (and I'm still hoping that it's all a bad dream), how can it be possible for just a few players to be in on the scam? Surely it's all in or nothing, isn't it? If you look at the Sydney Test for example, it takes more than one fielder to drop catches to manufacture a result like that. It requires the batsmen not to miss a straight ball or get hit on the pads or lob a catch to another fieldsman or drag an inside edge onto the stumps. For that reason alone, I'd like to think that there was nothing sinister in that game, just an amazing innings from Hussey, some confused captaincy under pressure and a bit of panicky batting in the chase by Pakistan. To come to any other conclusion would be to necessarily believe that almost everybody was in on the sting and I simply cannot bring myself to believe that. And yet, my instincts kept telling me to have a little flutter on the rank outsider!

Way back in December 2008, I wrote a piece on 'live betting' that attempted to highlight the dangers of cricketing authorities becoming too close to the whole betting industry. I make my point again, this time with the benefit of hindsight. If this unholy alliance continues, some of the mud that is being thrown around will eventually stick. This time around it may be a hoax or a scam involving just one or two desperate individuals but if you sup with the devil, you will sip his poison too. And that's why I think it is irresponsible for national cricketing bodies (and broadcasters to a certain extent) to be in partnership with live betting agencies. Even if there is no fire, it may be perceived as a game of smoke and mirrors. Unlike Amir and Asif, they cannot even claim to have accidentally overstepped the line. They can't say they weren't warned!

In my dream, Romantic looks wistfully at himself in the mirror and recoils in horror at Pragmatic staring back at him, fistful of dollars in one hand, the other arm outstretched and the call of "no-ball" clearly heard above the drone of a betting company's blimp circling Lord's like a giant vulture, waiting to pick the bones of cricket's carcass.

While Trott's shotmaking rarely transcends the functional, the selection is good and the execution clinically efficient © Getty Images

Our esteemed editor Sambit Bal has already said everything I would want to say about the betting scandal, so I'm going to write about cricket, if that's all right with you.

It has not been all that easy to make any judgements about the progress of the England Test side this summer, since the first series was against the relatively unchallenging Bangladesh and the second against a Pakistan side which contained several unknowns and whose performances ranged from sublime through substandard to, unfortunately, sub judice. Saying anything about how well England players have done therefore has to be hedged round with caveats.

One long-standing issue, though, has probably been settled: Jonathan Trott looks to have nailed down the No. 3 spot which has been a problem for most of the last thirty years, if not longer. There has been something of a campaign this summer to promote Kevin Pietersen to three, spearheaded by some of the lamer brains in the Sky commentary box using the argument that it is a well-known principle that your best batsman should bat in that position. It's such a well-known principle that Brian Lara, Sachin Tendulkar and Viv Richards enjoyed their peak periods batting at four, so the best batsmen in their sides on the beefy argument must have been Ramnaresh Sarwan, Rahul Dravid and Larry Gomes.

Even though I've taken fewer Test wickets than Botham (his standard challenge to anyone who disagrees with him, including wine waiters, is to ask how many wickets they took), I think I can see the flaws in his proposition.

What you actually need at No. 3 is a batsman with sound defensive technique who can cope with coming in at 15-1 and seeing off the new ball but who has the flexibility to be able to keep up the momentum generated by 153-1, if necessary just by rotating the strike until he gets going himself, and has the strokeplay in his armoury to dominate an attack if he's still there at 245-3.

The best No. 3 I have seen, or at least the one who has best fulfilled that job description, was Greg Chappell, who could block or blockbuster to order. England haven't really had anyone like that in thirty years, although Mike Gatting came close in the mid-1980s. The only other reasonably successful three was Mark Butcher, who fell somewhat short on the domination bit – even when he was scoring freely, he never looked in command. David Gower's average in the position was good, but he failed too often at the primary task of collapse-prevention: the first duty of a No. 3 is to make sure that 15-1 does not swiftly become 19-2, and Gower wafted early to third slip too often in those situations.

Trott is probably not going to do all that well on the domination front either but that is the least essential quality of a first drop batsman, as demonstrated by current masters Dravid and Hashim Amla, to whose school of batsmanship Trott obviously belongs.

He was badly unsettled by the sledging he underwent in South Africa, but the first Test of that series was only his second and he was being made acutely aware that he had been born in Cape Town and grown up playing age-group cricket with most of his opponents, so special circumstances applied. The Australians will naturally give him heaps, to use their vernacular: if Trott weathers the verbal assault, it will completely settle his place.

I cannot say, though, that the prospect fills me with gladness. Anyone who supports a team has favourites within it; when one of them scores a hundred or takes a five-for, there's an added glow of satisfaction because your boy was the hero. But if you like some more than others, it follows that there are also those you like less. Fortunately for me, most of the England players I've disapproved of haven't been much good and so I've only had to endure them for a brief span, but just occasionally someone appears whose results mean that he is completely undroppable but whose style of play or personality is teeth-grindingly annoying, and Trott looks very likely to take over the spot as the England player I can't stand vacated some years ago by Alec Stewart.

Stewart combined irritating mannerisms at the crease with yelling appeals for things which were obviously not out and an interview style reminiscent of an obtuse police sergeant explaining that you have to park your car somewhere else because the space has to be kept clear for the Duke of Edinburgh's visit in three days' time. Grateful though I was when he did the business on the field, part of me always wished it wasn't him.

Unless Trott is an ICC plant designed to raise revenue by making sure that any team which has to bowl at him can be fined for a slow over-rate, I can see no excuse for his interminable preparation rituals. I hope some Australian close fielder has the wit this winter to smuggle a ferret on to the field, feed it up Trott's trouser-leg and claim that Trott unearthed it with his archaeological digging. That would at least bring a bit of life to someone who looks like a corpse peeved at being revived.

But his Test performances this summer have been solid and dependable, and while his shotmaking rarely transcends the functional, the selection is good and the execution clinically efficient. In other words, he looks the goods. I just wish it were someone else.

Once you are committed to spot-fixing, you are distracted © Getty Images

Another cricketing scandal is upon us.Well, the incorrigibility of Pakistan cricket is not new, so let us stop flogging that particular dead horse (after all, we know the usual round of bans, cover-ups, appeals, and reinstatements awaits us down the line) and move on to thinking about why spot-fixing is even more dangerous than match-fixing in many ways.

Most importantly, spot-fixing promises a wonderful two-fer for the morally wavering cricketer: a chance to get rich while preserving one’s sense of integrity. For in spot-fixing, you don’t throw the game. As Cricinfo’s helpful guide to spot-fixing points out,

Spot fixing is about getting players/officials to act in a specified predefined manner at a particular time or during a particular session of a match, with or without adversely affecting the overall outcome of the game.

A player can easily reassure himself that he won’t compromise his team’s result; all he’ll do to clean up a little pocket money for himself is take a small action that should have no bearing on the overall outcome. That done, he can get back to normal business.

But of course, it doesn’t work that way. Once you are committed to spot-fixing, you are distracted. Rather than thinking about line, length, and dismissal strategies, you are thinking about the number of balls bowled, the no-ball that has to be delivered, the fat pad of bills waiting for you. When warming up before the start of play, a player’s thoughts aren’t exclusively concentrated on limbering up and hunkering down, they are thinking back to the precise nature of the deal that was struck, on thinking about the next phone call that might show up with a new deal for the morning session, for the post-tea bowling change. When the player is back at the hotel, he might have more business to attend to, more details to be sorted out.

Spot-fixing isn’t about fixing the outcome; it is about micro-managing the little atoms that make up a match, the individual deliveries. As such, while it is ostensibly about staying away from global reach, it pervades the entire proceedings, especially if many players are involved in it. The smaller the fixed event, the more numerous their occurrence, until the rot is pervasive. And indeed, given the micro-managed state of affairs there is a greater logistical overhead.

In the end, the game’s outcome becomes irrelevant, because it has been transformed into a placeholder for all the various “spots”, all the little “fixes”.

For the players, the temptation is tremendous: do what you do normally with just a few exceptions and clean up handsomely. But like all Faustian bargains, this one takes a great deal more from the players than it gives. They might imagine that their integrity has not been compromised; but in fact, it has been, even more fundamentally and invidiously than ever before.

Fixing hasn’t gone away; fixers haven’t; and neither have players who succumb to temptation. But most sadly, what also remains constant are managerial entities that are determined not to clean their Augean stables.

A new potential great on our hands © PA Photos

Another day, another collapse. Time to panic about the England middle order and how they will fare in the forthcoming Ashes. Or perhaps not.

A few weeks ago, after Pakistan collapsed at Lord's in their ‘home’ Test against Australia, I offered the opinion that had their bowlers had the opportunity to bowl in similar conditions, they would have skittled Australia for under a hundred. Though I was pooh-poohed by several commenters, mostly presumably Australians, Ponting's men proved me triumphantly right at Headingley later that week. Twice now in similar circumstances, England have at least managed three figures, which clearly proves that they are a better batting side than Australia and are therefore hot favourites to retain the Ashes. QED. And if you believe that, you'll believe anything.

In fact, all the intelligence we have gained about the Ashes is that if the conditions are heavily overcast and damp and Mohammad Amir turns up to bowl with a shiny red Duke ball, whichever side has picked him is going to have a huge advantage. Since none of those circumstances will obtain, what we have learned about the series to come is precisely nothing.

What we have learned about the series in progress, though, is that I was wrong about Jimmy Anderson being the world’s No. 1 bowler whose primary weapon is moving the ball in the air. (Those who commented along the lines of “What about Dale Steyn?” can perhaps recognise that Steyn's primary weapon is pace and that if he moves the ball in the air, it's a bonus.) I can only plead that Amir is so new on the scene that I thought it premature to promote him to the top spot, but what I've seen this summer has wholly convinced me that we have a new potential great on our hands. ‘Potential’ because so much can happen to a player during a career - particularly a pace bowler, a breed permanently at risk of injury or burnout – but right now he is as splendid a bowler as you could wish for.

I like a bit of strokeplay here and there in a Test but as a contrast to the all-too-common tedious run-fests in which the bowler has no chance, this series has been wonderful cricket. Both teams have spent most of each Test battling their way back into the game: during the last Test, Cricinfo's end-of-day headline every evening was ‘X, Y put Pakistan on top’ but they were nowhere near as dominant as that might imply. Just before they collapsed on the third afternoon, England were set fair to put up a target of well over 200, which Pakistan's pursuit of just under 150 showed would have been hard indeed to chase down.

As I write, Jonathan Trott and Stuart Broad are bringing some semblance of respectability to England's first innings – and it is a pleasure to see Broad recovering his batting even if his antics in the field give little to approve of – so there is still all to play for. Travails with a dishwasher (you don't want to know) have prevented me getting to the ground today, but I'm eagerly looking forward to the weekend's play. And may the team which plays best win.

Salman Butt's leadership of a young side holds promise for the future © AFP

Going into the final Test at Lord's, Pakistan find themselves in a position they have never been in before. On only four previous occasions have they bounced back to win a Test match after being 2-0 down. These were all unexpected victories, and most fans will be able to recall them without much mental effort. It happened in West Indies in 1958 (where the deficit was actually 3-0), in Australia in 1981 and 1995, and at home against Sri Lanka in 2000. Neither of these can be considered a genuine comeback, however, because in each case the series was already lost and the contest had been reduced to a dead rubber.

Now ask yourself, how many times has Pakistan bounced back to win a ‘live’ Test after being 2-0 down? The answer is never - until last week at the Oval. Coming from behind is surely the greatest achievement in any battle, including sporting ones. Of all the things that made Oval 2010 special for Pakistan - rise of new blood, return of a legend, emergence of a healthy captain-coach combination, and psychological exorcism of a forfeit - it is this statistic that is perhaps the most special, and it conveys the scale of the accomplishment.

It isn’t that Pakistan haven’t bounced back before. No less than sixteen times have they recovered to win a Test after being 1-0 down. But keeping a series alive after being 2 Tests down is at a different level altogether. You find yourself flat on the mat, shoulders pinned down and your breath squeezed out. Even raising your head from that position is a huge effort, let alone getting back on your feet and delivering a knock out.

More impressive still are the non-cricketing factors that were surmounted, foremost of which is the negativism that has taken hold of Pakistan’s cricket-following public. Coming on the heels of hard times in Pakistan’s economy, society, and politics – not to mention the worst floods in anyone’s memory – this is no ordinary negativism but a fevered and deafening chorus of naysayers to which even the most diehard optimists have fallen prey. To be sure, the sense of doom and gloom is not unwarranted – Pakistan’s spineless batting performances and preposterous posturing from the PCB have certainly been a very trying combination for the fans – but it does underscore the deep confidence deficit that the team overcame.

Will this newfound momentum count for something at Lord’s? There are some encouraging indications that it will. Mohammad Yousuf’s presence has served as a potent batting tincture that is finally providing the bowlers with some decent scores to bowl at. Meanwhile the bowling is skilled enough to overpower any opposition so long as there are runs on the board. If the catching also comes off as it did at the Oval, then Pakistan could well tie the series after being 2-0 down – a feat that has not been performed in Test cricket in over 50 years.

England are armed with arguably the best side in the world, supported by a stable administrative infrastructure, an astute coach, a retinue of assistants and analysts, and a tradition of method and application. Pakistan's assets are less tangible – raw talent, the innocence of youth, and an internal rhythm whose psychology and chemistry defy logic. They must also draw inspiration from Pakistani heroes known for English exploits in decades past. Fazal Mahmood, Zaheer Abbas, Imran Khan and Javed Miandad are names they have grown up with. Then there is Waqar Younis sitting as coach in the dressing room, and Wasim Akram sitting inside their heads as a publicly embraced idol.

Perhaps most important of all is Pakistan’s stealth weapon – the sane and stable captaincy of Salman Butt, and his productive equation with Waqar. Butt has now captained his team to two wins from four Tests, playing against top opposition away from home. He is obviously doing something right. If the intelligent and articulate manner in which he conducts himself during the post-match conference is any indication, he is headed for a long and fruitful tenure. This would normally be great news for the fans, but in Pakistan it evokes fears that the PCB bosses, with their reverse-Midas touch of turning gold to dust, will get to him before long. One can only hope and pray it will not be so.

If all this is new territory for Pakistan, it is also a highly unexpected spot for England. Confirmation of England’s discomfort came from coach Andy Flower, who gave a testy response to Salman Butt’s endorsement of Australia as Ashes favorites. Throughout the summer, England have viewed Pakistan as merely a savory appetizer before the grand feast of the Ashes is tackled Down Under. Now the appetizer has released an acrid taste at the Oval and is threatening to get stuck in the throat at Lord’s.

John McEnroe loses his temper at Wimbledon in 1980 © Getty Images

I’m writing a follow-up to my article on Stuart Broad to respond to a contrary note struck by a few readers in the comments section. In doing so, I will briefly stray from cricket but I think the exercise is worth it, because it will illustrate a point of relevance to cricketers: the relationship between temperament and on-field performance.

Recall then, that in response to my claim that “Sportsmen, mediocre ones especially, have a tendency to get frustrated when they are under pressure from their opponents”, some readers said that even champion sportsmen were prone to petulance. The poster child for this claim is John McEnroe.

First, it should be noted that I was not suggesting expressions of frustration under pressure are the exclusive province of mediocre sportsmen. Rather, my claim was that what distinguishes the mediocre from the great, by and large, is that the former have failed to master the art of grace under pressure. The Zidane, Cantona, and Ponting examples provided by readers are all instances where the player’s behaviour was an aberration that cost him and his team dearly, and they will be the first ones to acknowledge that their behaviour was deeply counterproductive. In each case, the player’s behaviour was a sign of weakness, not strength.

But what about McEnroe? He smashed rackets (and would have done the same to umpires given a chance), cursed (at himself, other players, umpires, linesmen) and generally raised hell on the court, didn’t he? Of course, most but not all, of the time McEnroe’s outbursts were directed at himself; his rage was in equal parts self-loathing and petulance. Still, he won seven Grand Slam titles. Perhaps this petulance was a kind of “good aggression”?

There is a problem with this thesis. It is that McEnroe almost always played badly when he was indulging in an on-court meltdown - most famously during the 1984 French Open when he blew a two-sets-to-none lead against his arch-rival Ivan Lendl. When most people think of McEnroe’s behaviour, they are, in general, thinking of matches that he was either: a) playing in the early stages of his career (admittedly, his famous “you cannot be serious” outburst came during an early-round game at the 1981 Wimbledon, which he eventually won) or b) losing or c) losing in the later stages of his career i.e., after his 1985 loss to Kevin Curran at Wimbledon, including his infamous default at the 1990 Australian Open.

But when McEnroe was at his 1980-84 peak, and playing his finest tennis, he was also at his coolest. It is no coincidence that McEnroe never lost the plot during his epic encounters with Bjorn Borg. And neither is it a coincidence that McEnroe never went overboard during the finals of any of his seven Grand Slam wins. What McEnroe’s temper and temperament did was to hang like a millstone around his neck and prevent him from fully realising his genius. Seven Grand Slams for a man whose talent outshone that of any other player in the modern era seem like slim pickings. McEnroe did as well as he did in spite of his temper; it was not a focusing device, it was a distraction.

Returning to cricket, the laundry list of counterexamples to my claim included plenty of fast bowlers and yet if the record of their temper tantrums is examined closely, most of them occurred during a bad spell of play, either for them, or their team (c.f Holding’s stump-kicking heroics). What makes the hot-headed great really great is that he is able to transcend this weakness most of the time. When a player is involved in too many of these incidents in their career, the suspicion is entirely justified that this is a cover-up for incompetence. Great players master the public display of temper and turn it into a steely resolve; rather than the loud tantrum, they seek out an icy rage that retains their focus. That is why sledgers the world over know who lets opponents get under their skin and who plays better when taunted.

A common confusion in this argument is to conflate an aggressive attitude with displays of temper. But the two have nothing to do with each other. A captain can, by field placings, toss decisions, bowling changes, and other moves, show his unbridled aggression without raising his voice. A batsman can show his aggression by his strokeplay, a bowler with his control over line and length, with the artfully directed bouncer followed by a yorker. That is aggression, the business of keeping relentless pressure on your opponent, not letting him relax at any time.

The public tantrums are a sideshow and a distraction. And even the occasionally hot-headed greats know it.

A deliberate no-ball denied Virender Sehwag a ODI century against Sri Lanka © Getty Images

For a non-gifted sportsman like myself, frustratingly, golf and cricket seem to have diametrically opposed plans for me. Despite my best intentions, I tend to finish a round of golf having played far more strokes than is ideal. A regular round of 18 holes has me consistently beating Bradman's famed batting average, whereas in cricket I rarely ever fulfil the plan to play lots of shots or post a big score. I justify the golf score by convincing myself that I'm actually getting value for money by playing as many shots as possible but I can't quite come up with a good enough excuse for my all-too-regular low scores with bat in hand.

I've always felt that golf has so much to teach us about life and about cricket. What is most remarkable about golf is that it is utterly unremarkable that players are expected to police themselves, even when the truth is only between themselves and their conscience. It is a game that is entirely founded on integrity, honesty and manners, much like the way cricket was allegedly played in a bygone era. In golf, you count your own strokes, play the ball where it lies, penalise yourself even if you're playing alone or nobody's watching, bad luck is accompanied by a philosophical shrug, bunkers are raked, players keep quiet whilst their partners are playing - the list of good manners and etiquette goes on.

In the last week, where international cricket confronted a few unusual and delicate issues around the spirit of cricket, golf has just continued doing what it always does best - playing fair without even expecting accolades for it. We've had the Sehwag/Randiv/deliberate no-ball incident and it is to the credit of Sri Lankan cricket that they acted so swiftly to punish their own, even when the cricket world was split down the middle about the heinousness of the crime. I've read many of the blogs on the topic, including Sambit Bal's excellent piece a few days ago, and it's clear that whilst most people agree that it was a mean-spirited thing to do, it hardly ranks up there amongst the worst excesses on a cricket field in recent times. Yet, Sri Lanka Cricket, regardless of their motives (as some bloggers were keen to allude to), were proactive in salvaging some pride from an incident which they felt tarnished their reputation as upholders of the spirit of cricket.

This same week, a golfer at the PGA event in Whistling Straits penalised himself for an offence that no one else may have witnessed. It barely rated a mention - such acts of honesty are replayed hundreds of times every day on golf courses around the world, hackers and professionals alike. There is no allowance made for a major event as compared to a weekend thrash around some overgrown golf course. It's just taken for granted that this is the minimum expected of you when you walk up to that first tee, alone on a bush course in the outback or on front of a packed gallery at Augusta. It doesn't matter if the stakes are for the Ryder Cup or a quiet beer with only yourself for company - golf has managed to create a code of ethics that requires nothing more than a look in the mirror.

We've also had the unusual situation where Kyle Mills was given a "30 minute ban" for bowling a warm up ball on the pitch, a technicality which may have some good reason for existing but is hardly the crime of the century. If that constitutes a temporary 'red card', golfing enthusiasts must indeed wonder why some of the vicious sledging, head-butting, shoulder charging, spitting, ball-throwing at batsmen and appalling manners on the field is allowed to happen with a token slap on the wrist at a post-match hearing with the Match Referee. Whilst golf is essentially a singular pursuit, one still wonders why cricket can justify outright boorishness solely on the basis of pathetic excuses like "pressure, competitiveness, man's game, heat of the moment". Life itself is full of such pressures but we generally don't condone crude, rude and obnoxious behaviour because of it.

Can you imagine a golfer whispering to his playing partner that his wife/mother/sister etc was less than virtuous last night and then taking pleasure in the duffed shot that follows? That would be seen as tantamount to cheating, let alone the complete abrogation of honour and decency. Golfers would view that as a hollow victory, a moment not worthy of revelling in, their reputation on the 'circuit' damaged beyond repair.

Yet cricket often legitimises such gamesmanship, even go so far as to celebrate the exponents of these practices as being "hard men" who can mix it with the toughest of competitors. Their reputation on the circuit actually is enhanced because of it! I suspect that serious golfers, hardened men amongst that lot too, would be appalled that a sportsman could actually derive any pleasure from winning under those circumstances. What's even more ironic is that many cricketers who play their game with this so-called 'uncompromising' attitude can actually play outstanding golf as perfect gentlemen, thereby negating the very essence of their own argument that they need the adrenalin surge of the 'niggle' to bring out the best in them.

No one doubts that cricket and golf are totally unique and will naturally bring out very different physical and mental skills. Even allowing for that, it is almost a shame that the two sports, both of which are now hyper-professional (in fact, the money at stake in golf makes cricket look like a joke) have diverged so far from common values that were rooted in olde worlde manners and courtesies. It probably boils down to a cultural value set that is now so firmly entrenched in golf that it is now second nature to anyone playing that sport, at any level. It's almost become an unwritten rule of the game where to observe the rule is merely your duty whereas to transgress it would be a shameful act of treachery. And that's probably where cricket has moved away from its original reputation as a true gentleman's game - it is now the case where batsmen who walk when they nick it or keepers that don't appeal when they know it missed the edge or fielders who refuse to claim dubious catches are now celebrated as wonderful sportsmen worthy of special mention. In golf, that sort of behaviour is a moral obligation.

In the 1925 US Open in Massachusetts, the great Bobby Jones called a shot on himself for a moving ball. He went on to lose by a single stroke but was genuinely surprised by the fuss that was made of his honesty. "You might as well praise a man for not robbing a bank" he said.

That's just not cricket! Not today anyway. Perhaps in village cricket but not at the top. And I think the game is all the poorer for it.

Mohammad Amir always provides a grand visual feast with his bowling © Getty Images

In February 1999, as the Asian Test Championship got underway, India took on Pakistan in Calcutta (now Kolkata). On the very first day, I found out, much to my delight, that a Bangladeshi restaurant in Manhattan was showing the game live - on a large screen television, no less. The timings were still inconvenient though; New York was in the grip of a typically freezing winter, and my venue of choice was a half-hour walk from home. Company would be nice in my cricket watching endeavours.

So, I asked my good Australian friend and housemate, David, if he’d like to join me for the first session of play on the second day. He sounded unenthusiastic in his response: he didn’t have a dog in this particular race, and why would he want to go out on a cold winter’s night? Sensing his hesitation, I played my trump card: “You know, there’s a new Pakistani quick that's playing - I’ve heard he’s bloody fast”. At this, David’s ears perked up, and a few minutes later, loaded down with heavy jackets, scarves and gloves, we stepped out to make that long walk. (Shoaib Akhtar did do a lot of damage that day)

Eleven years on, a new Pakistani quick is still occasion for excitement. Wahab Riaz’s debut was spectacular all right, but to be honest, I’m writing because in all the cricket I’ve watched this year, some of the most thrilling moments have been provided by Mohammed Amir, Pakistan’s latest production from its mysterious factory dedicated to producing pacemen (its location hasn’t been reliably ascertained, but there is some suspicion it is located in the Punjab).

Amir does all a left-arm quick could and should do: he bowls genuinely express deliveries; he cuts and seams the ball; he can reverse swing; he can bowl yorkers and short-pitched deliveries with ease. And to cap it all off, he has amazing body language: besides the electric smile and the aeroplane celebrations, he possesses an action that conveys the power and dynamism of pace bowling in ample measure (and like that of some greats of years gone by, is whippy and muscular both).

Fast bowlers are sometimes called the showponies of cricket, those that aim to the provide the supposedly most thrilling sight of all, that of a stump sent cartwheeling. Amir always promises a grand visual feast in that sense, but he also prompts admiration at the sight of a young man dealing in the advanced skills of his trade with consummate mastery (he conceals the ball in his run-up as well as anyone out there).

I don’t know where this young man’s career is headed, but for his sake and for the sake of cricket spectators the world over, I hope he stays fit. Batsmen the world over might not appreciate my attempts to get the gods of fate squared up behind Amir, but even they, when standing at the non-striker’s end, might find the generosity of spirit to appreciate this budding maestro’s skills.

Surviving long enough to make big runs, even against weak bowling, is a skill in itself © Getty Images

Some time ago, on this blog, I'd written that one of the aims in my posts was to pay tributes to (what seemed to me) unheralded cricketing achievements. Another of my plans was to try and provide counter-arguments to claims commonly made in the heat of a cricketing debate. Here is one example: “this innings by batsman X is worthless because it was made on an easy pitch against a substandard attack.”

The sentiment at the heart of this claim is admirable. It is typically made in the context of comparing two players' records, and the intention is to establish a distinction between innings made in more trying circumstances and those made in situations where the batsman is, to put it mildly, not taxed excessively. That sort of difference is often crucial, and it is an interesting example of how the numerical marker of an innings is not enough to judge its quality.

There are times, however, when this claim shades into a more extreme claim, one that would want to completely discount all large scores made in this fashion, to the extent that they are taken to not provide any evidence whatsoever of the batsman's abilities.

That, I think, takes matters a little too far.

The simple fact is that making a very large score is a difficult business and it is not really made any easier when dealing with pie-chuckers and roads. One little cricketing fact gets in the way, encapsulated in the sage advice given to young batsmen over the years: “Make one mistake and you're back in the pavilion.” And one thing pie-chuckers and roads do very well is induce a false sense of confidence, which leads to that optimistic drive down to long-on, resulting in, well, that long walk back to the pavilion.

I realized this thanks to a batting experience of mine many years ago. In backyard cricket, no less. My fearsome opponent was my kid cousin, a young lad who was dutifully serving up a mixture of full-tosses, half-volleys, and delectable short-and-wide ones. The boundary was barely 20 feet behind him. I had just seen Zaheer Abbas lay the Indian attack to waste, and I was keen to emulate his feats. I had also never scored a century in any form of the game (my highest score, in any game where scores were kept, is a paltry 38). The stage was set.

I started out promisingly. Boundaries were there for the taking; Sandeep Patil and his five consecutive fours off Bob Willis had nothing on me. I was lashing them straight, over the bowler’s head, wide of his despairing reach (did I mention that there were no fielders?).
But somehow I couldn’t get to a hundred, no matter how many times my cousin and I repeated this little slaughter. Invariably I dismissed myself; I would be bowled aiming an ambitious drive, or would hoick the ball over the back fence (an automatic out as everyone knows). It was all a little too easy. Carelessness and hubris got in the way.

Those twin demons take down batsmen all the time. Sometimes boredom does the trick. Whatever it is, the business of making a large score requires at the least, a batsman to survive long enough to make it.

And that survival still needs to be sensitive to the danger that lurks behind every delivery sent down by a bowler, a sensitivity which requires concentration and batting ability in equal measure.

So, by all means, do take claims of cricketing deification with a large spoonful of salt when you notice that a batsman has racked up runs on a featherbed. But don’t write it off completely. That batsman still knows how to not lose his wicket. And that is most definitely one part of being a great bat.

Time to grow up © Getty Images

I’m not huge fan of coaches, and I have said so on this blog. Part of the reason is the
mind-numbingly inane remarks that pepper most of their conversations with the press. After reading Duncan Fletcher’s pronouncements on the latest tantrum thrown by Stuart Broad, I think I've been entirely justified in the snappiness of my remarks (ok, he is an ex-coach, but you catch my drift).

Consider for instance, Fletcher’s claim that, in throwing the ball at Haider, “Broad was responding to frustration, not pressure. They are completely different things.” This sounds like a very sophisticated distinction but in point of fact, it’s a sophistical one. Broad was frustrated precisely because he was under pressure. Sportsmen, mediocre ones especially, have a tendency to get frustrated when they are under pressure from their opponents. That’s why they slam rackets, curse umpires, or pick fights with spectators and/or other players. It's a sign of weakness, not aggression and it is what distinguishes the greats from the also-rans.

Even more confusing in some ways is Fletcher’s suggestion that we not judge Broad on the basis of his on-field displays; that indeed, a “true” picture of his character will be better formed by having access to his dressing-room demeanour. This is again, a vacuous claim couched in the garb of a seemingly holistic approach. Why spectators, who only have access to a player’s public performances, and who are engaged in critiquing a player’s publicpersona should be be concerned with a player’s dressing-room behavior is beyond me. We are critiquing a player's public behavior, aren't we?

I personally don’t care if Stuart Broad doesn’t call his mum every week, or helps old ladies across the street, or sends his yearly earnings to Oxfam. I’d simply like him to stop behaving, on a cricket field, like a school-kid who keeps begging for six of the best. But the match referees haven’t obliged until now, and even then, given his recidivist inclinations, “Broady” got away lightly.

But it is not all Duncan Fletcher’s fault. The biggest culprit is the partial acceptance in the cricketing world of the incoherent claim that rudeness, petulance, and plain old immaturity are somehow equivalent to aggression. So long as that piece of idiocy continues to make the rounds, we’ll continue to be treated to the spectacle of grown men throwing their toys out of the pram.

That brilliant take from Zulqarnain Haider © Getty Images

Some players are reportedly not very happy with the UDRS. If he wasn't one of them before, I imagine Kamran Akmal will be joining their ranks any minute, when he realises that UDRS has probably killed his Test career.

Had Zulqarnain Haider not been reprieved by the UDRS in the second innings at Edgbaston, his king pair would have undermined any confidence in him as a batsman, and would have left him very nervous for the subsequent games even if the selectors continued to back him. Unless Haider did something important under those handicaps, Kamran could have seen his way open for a return to the national side.

As it was, Haider proceeded to play the classiest as well as the biggest innings by a Pakistani in the series so far. There were powerful drives, delicate strokes and sound defence. Given what else we've seen from Pakistan, Haider looks a perfectly credible No.4 or 5 in this team.

The runs he scored in partnership with the admirable Saeed Ajmal gave their team the ghost of a chance to win the game, a chance which Andrew Strauss and Jonathan Trott promptly sat on, but which also gave Haider another chance to show off his skills. A rank bad ball from Mohammad Asif flew high and wide over Trott's shoulder and though he was obviously unsighted, Haider leapt up and caught it, preventing four byes that it would have been grossly unfair for him to be debited with. It was a piece of high-class wicketkeeping to which Akmal could never even aspire, let alone achieve.

We know that nothing is beyond the PCB's selectors, but Haider's performances in the second innings should have sealed his spot for the next five years (unless it turns out that it was just a magic few hours which he never repeats).

Saeed Ajmal's performances will have also blighted Danish Kaneria's life without the help of the UDRS, although the legspinner at least has the consolation that there are occasions on which Pakistan will want to play two spinners and he ought to be first in the queue for such a spot given his previous record.

How good Ajmal is as a bowler is yet to truly emerge. He is clearly a pretty good offspinner and has a reasonable doosra (even if I'm deeply suspicious that the doosra can ever be a legal ball), and the England batsmen were clearly all at sea against him in the first innings. Before rushing to judgement, though, let us see what happens in the rest of the series when he is no longer a surprise novelty and England have a chance to work him out.

We can, though, make a judgement about his batting, which is extremely courageous. Not many tail-enders (oh, all right, lower-order batsmen) would have taken the short-pitched pummeling he received and made their maiden fifty into the bargain. It was a somewhat fortunate half-century, as Umar Gul's had been in the previous game, and it would almost certainly be a mistake to expect repeat performances on any regular basis, but it showed the kind of spirit which the top order sadly lacked. But it means that as a package, Ajmal offers much more than Danish Kaneria.

Without Haider and Ajmal, Pakistan would have been beaten out of sight, totally justifying my mishearing of Ramiz Raja talking (I thought) about Pakistan's “badding”. Because apart from some of the bowling of Mohammad Amir and Asif, none of what else Pakistan served up at Edgbaston could have been called “gooding”.

Either implement the UDRS across the board, flawed as it may be, or do away with it completely © Getty Images

Recently the just-retired Rudi Koertzen opined that the Umpire Decision Review System (UDRS) should be implemented world-wide in all Test cricket. I personally don’t like the UDRS (as it stands) for a variety of reasons: the technology does not work as well as it should; it has been introduced prematurely into the highest form of the game without adequate trials at lower levels; and more sentimentally, it injects a form of second-guessing into the game that robs one of the elements that makes the game what it is - the dreaded finality of the umpire’s raised finger. But I agree with Rudi anyway.

For if the UDRS is to be implemented, and certainly, as matters stand, it will be, then I suggest that it either be implemented in every single test played anywhere in the world, or not at all. This piece-meal implementation, subject to the whims of individual boards and the local availability of technology, is an incoherent state of affairs for a very simple reason. When the UDRS is used in a game of cricket, you simply aren’t playing the same game as one in which it is not used.

A game is constituted, and more strongly, defined, by its set of rules. To call a game basketball it is not enough that you play on a court, which has nets on both ends, and is of the right dimensions; the players' activities must be constrained so that what they do on the court is recognisable as ‘basketball’. Otherwise (say if contact with the foot was allowed), they are playing some variant, possibly an interesting game in its own right, but it has lost the right to be called basketball.

What the current implementation of the UDRS does is to introduce a variance, and a significant one at that, into the very heart of the game. Nominally, batsmen are out when the umpires say they are out. With the UDRS, the batsman is out when the umpire says he is out, and provided an appeal against the decision has not been overturned; or the batsman is out in case a successful appeal against an earlier decision of “not out” is made. In both cases (UDRS and non-UDRS), the umpire on the ground has to raise his finger but the decision-making process is significantly altered.

Surely, I’m not the only person who thinks this radically changes the nature of the game? What was out in Trent Bridge was not out in Galle and vice-versa. A batsman or a captain playing in a Test with UDRS appeals to spare is playing in a very different set of circumstances than one playing in one without it: the dismissals of batsmen proceed according to a very different set of constraints.

My contention that the introduction of the UDRS makes the game a different one is a rather strong claim, but I make it because the UDRS interferes with batsmen’s dismissals and not just things like boundary calls. A batsman’s dismissal is a singular event in cricket; if there is one thing in any version of the game that should be globally uniform it is the definition of a wicket. And it is precisely that that the UDRS alters.

Such would not be the case if the UDRS was used in all Tests the world over. All teams would proceed with a uniform understanding of what constituted a valid dismissal. All of the system’s glitches and built-in human idiosyncrasies would be everyone’s cross to bear.

But the current state of affairs is simply incoherent: we are being treated to the spectacle of the highest form of the game being played according to different sets of rules depending on the location of the game and the identity of the participants.

It's bad enough that versions of the game have proliferated; do we really need two versions of Test cricket as well?

James Anderson destroyed Pakistan with 11 wickets at Trent Bridge © AFP

While Pakistan remain in exile, they could do a great deal worse than make Trent Bridge their headquarters. Since the opening of the Fox Road stand in 2003, the Trent Bridge micro-climate has been a virtual guarantee of swing. If you are sceptical about how so simple a thing as a stand can have this kind of effect, consider that the MCC specified that all schemes for redevelopment at Lord's had to maintain the present gap between the stands because their computer modelling had shown that without it the ball would no longer swing.

Pakistan may have been flattened in this Test, but that's because Ijaz Butt got it slightly wrong in his pre-match touting of Mohammads Asif and Amir as the best swing bowlers in the world. The best swing bowler in the world is James Anderson, and has been for a couple of years.

While Ijaz Butt understandably went over the top about the Mohammads' world standing, they are probably second and third on the list. The only other real contenders are Zaheer Khan and Ben Hilfenhaus, so it's a limited field. Amir and Asif are streets ahead of Hilfenhaus and at least a few metres ahead of Zaheer. Trent Bridge is Pakistan's ideal Test ground given their current attack - so long as they aren't up against England.

When properly executed, swing bowling is a delight to watch, especially as there are so few batsmen who can play it well; at its best, no batsmen can, and what we saw in Nottingham was almost as perfect an exhibition of top-class swing bowling as can be imagined. The only real blemish was that Pakistan do not back up their brilliant bowlers with even halfway-competent catchers. (They also have some bloke standing around behind the stumps wearing pads and gloves but it's not altogether clear what he's there for, since he’s definitely not a wicket-keeper.) England, on the other hand, have bred a flock of predatory magpies who will snatch anything which flies in their general direction.

Despite the huge margin of victory, it was the fielding that decided the match. England would probably not have passed 180 in the first innings if Eoin Morgan had been snaffled when on 5, and the match would have taken a rather different course, I fancy, if the first-innings lead had been closer to 20 than 200. Every team will miss the odd chance, so whether you can take twenty wickets depends on how many chances you have to create to take them. England needed about 22 to get their 20 successes, whereas Pakistan created about 35 and still only took 19.

That imbalance shows that this series can still be a lot closer than one might expect after such a lopsided result in the first Test. Pakistan were beaten out of sight by Australia at Lord's as England were in 2005, yet Australia won neither series. Should Pakistan give up coating their hands in oil before going out to field, we could well be in for that rare thing in modern Test cricket, a series dominated by the ball.

And what a relief that will be. The ludicrous “Test” played by India and Sri Lanka last week is the kind of farce we have far too much of these days, and Trent Bridge was a welcome antidote to the overpowering sedative of the Colombo SSC.

But, for reasons hinted at in my opening paragraph, I would not have given the Man of the Match award to James Anderson. The company's brochure does not name him, but the true hero was the man from Maber Associates who oversaw the design and construction of the Fox Road stand.