If it was the First World War, England's batsmen would have been lined up against the wall for gormlessness © Getty Images

As Senna the Soothsayer used to say in Up Pompeii, “Woe, woe, and thrice woe!” Except that she was usually wrong, whereas it is the only sensible reaction to England's dismal performance in the first Test against Pakistan, in Dubai.

The bowlers have little to be ashamed of: on a pitch of that quality, keeping Pakistan to under 350 was a pretty decent showing, and most of them showed at least some fight with the bat.

But the batsmen! In the first innings, Matt Prior showed what could be done by someone prepared to be watchful and play with care – which doesn't mean no boundary-hitting, just that you only attempt the biggish shot when it is properly on and there aren't fielders where you want to put the ball. Jonathan Trott in the second innings looked to have the right idea but was not able to keep it going.

Those glimpses apart, the top seven can be glad this is not the British Army in the First World War, or they would have been lined up against a wall today and shot for gormlessness in the face of the enemy. Granted, Umar Gul and Saeed Ajmal are very good bowlers, but there is little need to help them out by wrapping your wicket in fancy paper, tying a ribbon round it and presenting it to them in a gesture of wild generosity.

However, I am not yet drawing any conclusions. England not only talk the talk about bouncing back, but have been walking the walk as well. They have won the Tests immediately following each of their last four losses, at least two of which have been as abject as this one. It is an impressive record of reaction to defeat: any assessment of their likely chances in the next game have to take that into account.

And it is hard to believe that they will be quite as bad next time round. They have all played enough cricket to know what they are supposed to be doing, even if only a couple of them even gave a hint of such knowledge on this occasion. This is whistling to keep one's spirits up, to be sure, but eternal optimism is the hallmark of the cricket fan – at least until it becomes horribly apparent that the team is in fact dreadful and one just has to start finding humour in their haplessness.

Don't get me wrong. I am in no way trying to belittle what Pakistan achieved, nor am I suggesting that they don't go into the next match as deserved favourites. This was my first viewing of them since the unfortunate events in England and they look a good unit. They are well led and have some outstanding bowling. I wouldn't say that their batting line-up is world-beating, but it is equally apparent that it isn't short of character or competence.

But, as with England, I'm not going to draw firm conclusions from one match. There is no way of knowing how Pakistan will react to thrashing the world No. 1 team until they play the next game. I am not talking about Pakistan's famed inconsistency – there is not all that much recent evidence of it, after all – but they are talking up the victory in a way ominously familiar to England supporters. England have been known to exhibit cup-final syndrome, following an outstanding win with a lax, overconfident performance next time out, and there's no guarantee that Pakistan won't succumb to the same complacence.

If you want to crow about how brilliant Pakistan are and how a team as awful as England does not deserve its ranking, it might be as well to have the grace to wait until that suspicion is confirmed by the match in Abu Dhabi.

Chris Tremlett has acquired an aura of genuine menace © Getty Images

Tim Bresnan's injury is a big problem for England in only one respect: they lose their mascot. Every Test in which Bresnan has played has been an England victory, so whatever talismanic luck he brings will be gone. It's also fair to say that none of his potential replacements offers as much with the bat, but England bat pretty deep even without him.

From the two warm-up games – and how pleasant it is to see England carrying on with playing properly competitive games of cricket in the lead-up, Duncan Fletcher's 14-a-side two-day net affairs being properly consigned to the dustbin – we know that Steven Finn is the fastest, Chris Tremlett the awkward-bounciest, Graham Onions the swingingest and Monty Panesar the spinningest of the candidates and that they are all in pretty good nick. So it's going to be down to the captain and coach to decide what they want, and that will presumably depend a bit on what the pitch looks like.

In the absence of detailed acquaintance with the surface, I shall plump for Tremlett. I am very well aware that there are strong cases for Finn and Panesar, but I think Onions is a couple of yards behind them in the queue.

As a bowler, Tremlett is the most likely of the England bowlers to produce the nasty bouncer – the one that rears up from a fairly full length into the ribcage. And the best thing about it is that he doesn't do it all that often: somewhat unusually for a very tall bowler, he spends most of his time threatening the stumps rather than send the ball whistling spectacularly but generally harmlessly past the batsman's head. He knows the value of making the batsman play.

However, I think his greatest quality now is his scariness.

It was not always thus. When he first played for England against India in 2007, it wasn't that he didn't bowl decently but that he didn't look as though he believed he ought to be there. He seemed like the fellow who was surprised to get an invitation to an exclusive party and then spends his time doing his best to look inconspicuous. There was nothing about him which made a batsman quake.

The most obvious change in him when he returned to the colours on last winter's Ashes tour was that he had acquired an aura of genuine menace. There is nothing shy about this big, quiet man: he is obviously quite composed, a serious man going about serious business. As he patrols his part of the field, he has the air of someone for whom crowds instinctively part because it does not look at all wise to get in his way. Tremlett does not have Curtly Ambrose's glare, but there is much else which is very similar in his demeanour.

I sometimes thought he was an escapee from a mafia movie, in which he would be accompanying Don Strosso as the godfather politely informed someone that it would be appreciated if they would settle their debt otherwise Tremmo here would be paying them a visit, an outcome which would be most regrettable. [Cut to close-up on face of debtor as all the colour drains out.]

This is not a case of “working on his body language”, as the saying goes. Body language is simply a physical expression of a mental state: of course one can act for a time, but no-one can keep up an act for a whole day in the field. His demeanour is simply evidence that he is now completely comfortable with being a top-class pace bowler.

If he gets the nod, he will no doubt be determined to do well enough to make himself the incumbent who won't be dislodged. I'm betting that he can do it.

Andrew Strauss may have to rest James Anderson or Stuart Broad for a game in the UAE © AFP

It looks like I picked the wrong time to come back to Test cricket. I took a break from keeping a detailed eye on it, and a whole rash of close and exciting Tests broke out. Now that I'm back in cricket-obsessed mode, though, we have two Tests going on where the excitement, such as it is, lies in personal milestones: as I write, neither Sri Lanka nor India stand an earthly chance of winning their games and it's merely a question of whether they can stave off defeat.

There is some talk of the visitors being at a great disadvantage because of the unfamiliar conditions, but in India's case it just won't wash: Virender Sehwag, Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, and VVS Laxman have been to Australia often enough before. Sri Lanka have somewhat more excuse, but they have already won a match in the series, so they haven't failed dismally.

Of course, one reason I'm not very sympathetic is that this is going to be the year of unfamiliar conditions for England.

They will be playing nine of their 15 scheduled Tests in 2012 in the UAE, Sri Lanka and India. Should they succeed in their endeavours, it will be impossible to deny that they deserve to be World No. 1; should they fail, we can all start pointing fingers and talk about them being home-track bullies.

It is unfamiliar territory for the fans, for sure. It has been over 50 years since England have been the top Test team for any length of time (they were probably No. 1 briefly at the end of the 1970s when most top players were contracted to Kerry Packer), so it's very odd to have to contemplate each series as one they are supposed to win rather than worrying about how they will frustrate the huge threat posed by the opponents. From the behaviour of Australian and Indian fans during their periods at the top, apparently it is required that England fans indulge in lots of chest-puffing and blowhard declarations of eternal supremacy, but most of us are so out of practice that we have little idea how to go about it. Forgive me if what follows has insufficient braggadocio.

On paper, certainly, England ought to trounce Pakistan in Dubai and Abu Dhabi (I have a horrible temptation to think of these places as Flintstone-land and just call them all Yabba-dabba-doo, but I'll try to resist it). However, as India have been finding these last few months, Test cricket is played on surfaces composed of varying quantities of grass and mud rather than paper, which puts a rather different complexion on things.

While plenty of attention is being paid to England's batsmen's alleged weaknesses against quality spin, to me the real question is how they intend to manage the fitness of their pace bowlers.

The head-to-head match-up between Graeme Swann and Saeed Ajmal ought to be a real treat, but neither of them can bowl from both ends, and England's second spinner is exceedingly likely to be Kevin Pietersen, at least until he discovers an injury which prevents him from bowling. I simply don't see them picking Monty Panesar and dropping a batsman – because the logical one to leave out is Jonathan Trott, as he is the least proficient against spin, and they are not going to do that.

So there looks like being a great deal of work for whichever three of James Anderson, Tim Bresnan, Stuart Broad, Steven Finn and Chris Tremlett get picked for any one game. A great deal of work on bounceless pitches with no hope of swing assistance from a heavy atmosphere, in temperatures which pasty Europeans find most uncomfortable.

Consistency of selection has served England very well this last year or so, but I think they are going to have to be very hard-nosed about resting pace bowlers. The Two Andrews, Strauss and Flower, enjoy enough respect from the squad for them to be able to rest Anderson or Broad or whomever without causing major resentment, but expect a lot of transparent flim-flam about bowlers picking up minor niggles while taking five-fors: 5 for 132 is a lot more exhausting than 5 for 48.

Whoever plays for England, I expect an entertaining series. Pakistan know they are underdogs but their pre-series talk has been all about being up for the challenge of exceeding their previous bests, which bespeaks a confidence that was entirely lacking in most teams' hopeful noises about giving the Australians of the last decade a good game.

The general advice in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, apart from “Don't Panic!”, is “Expect the unexpected.” In my copy, the entry for Pakistan Cricket Team repeats that advice in upper-case bold underline. I'm looking forward to it.

England are playing 50-over cricket as if it were a speeded-up Test match, while India play as though it's the stretch-limo version of Twenty20 © AFP

The India v England ODI series has seen the boot not just on the other foot, but planted firmly up England's backside. They might possibly have won at Mohali if they had been sharper in the field, though even that is pretty doubtful, but otherwise they have been hopelessly outclassed.

This is hardly surprising. Other than changing the captain who opens the batting, there is essentially no difference between the current team and the one that wasn't good enough to get beyond the World Cup quarter-final. It was clear even then that the team was not really up to the task of winning ODIs on South Asian pitches, especially against India.

One can pick apart the various flaws in certain players, which are in several cases partly explained by their lack of experience, but the main problem is strategic: England are playing 50-over cricket as if it were a speeded-up Test match, while India play as though it's the stretch-limo version of Twenty20.

The most obvious indication of this is the persistence with Jonathan Trott at No. 3. This is not meant as a criticism of him – his job is to hang around all through the innings and give the strike to the hitter at the other end, and he does it very well indeed – it is the job description itself which is at fault. It is a strategy that assumes that too many wickets will be lost too quickly unless there is an anchor keeping one end safe, which implies that they do not believe in all-out attack, or at least that they have little confidence in their ability to carry such a policy off.

Despite this, Alastair Cook and Andy Flower have both gone out of their way to praise Trott and have made it very clear that he is an integral part of their ODI strategy, even if Flower slightly qualified that by adding the rider “unless and until a better player comes along”. England fans can therefore look forward to more gloom and despondency during the rest of the winter's away ODIs against Sri Lanka and Pakistan (wherever “Pakistan” is actually situated).

One possible explanation is that the England management are stupid.

However, stupidity is not one of Flower's most obvious qualities. Quite the opposite: he gives every impression of being someone who thinks deeply about the England team's needs and how they should reach their goals.

While the way Trott plays is not ideal for Asian conditions, it makes a lot of sense in English conditions where it's not uncommon for a side to lose three or four wickets in the first ten overs. England's recent home ODI record is pretty good, and Trott has featured well in many of the wins, as he did in the series that England won in South Africa two winters ago. Conditions in Australia and New Zealand are similar to those in South Africa and England respectively. England's record in ODIs in Australia is pretty poor, including on the last visit, but since those series have been at the fag-end of a mentally and physically tiring Ashes series, they have probably not been ideal for assessing the ODI team.

The point being that what matters in ODI cricket is the World Cup. Australia may be top of the ODI rankings by a country mile, but who cares? It's India who are World Cup champions, and that's all that people really recognise. The rankings only cause any interest in the months leading up to a World Cup when people want to make some assessment of who are the potential winners of the main tournament.

Since the next World Cup is in Australia and New Zealand, what England need to do is to develop a team which can play well in Australasia. Nothing else matters. Having a team that plays poorly in Asia means that they spend a lot of time getting laughed at as well acres of hand-wringing press comment about how useless the ODI team is whenever they get thrashed by India from here to breakfast time, but for the next decade or so, until the World Cup circus returns to southern Asia, that's just a distraction.

Depressing though the current series has been, Flower is gambling in pursuit of the prize in 2015. We England fans have to hope he's right.

The fielding from both sides during the Twenty20 international at The Oval was of the highest class © Getty Images

England have at last managed to lose a cricket match, and a good thing too: it was getting monotonous. One catastrophic batting collapse is no cause for panic: Sri Lanka managed one in the summer's first Test, in Cardiff, back in May and everyone was suitably amused or embarrassed, but the world did not fall in for them. Similarly, I doubt that England are going to bat quite that badly on any kind of regular basis; there is no obvious reason to consider it as more than a blip.

Nevertheless, one might as well attempt to draw some wider lessons from the loss to West Indies.

First off, England's fielding continues to be high-class. There were a couple of fumbles and a couple of wild throws, so West Indies got half a dozen runs more than they should have, but generally speaking the ground fielding was sharp and the catching first-rate. That fielding was backing up some very satisfactory bowling by a correctly-selected bowling unit.

When Graeme Swann said that Swann the captain would not pick Swann the kid, he was incidentally confirming that it is still the skipper who makes the final decision on which ten allies are going to come out and play alongside him – and leaving James Anderson and Steven Finn on the bench while giving plenty of overs to Samit Patel, Scott Borthwick and Ravi Bopara showed an excellent appreciation of what was required on the Oval pitch on that day. I wonder whether Stuart Broad, the official captain, would have the same nous in either selection or on-field management of the attack.

The batting, though ….

Inexperience is perhaps a partial excuse. Ravi Bopara's 90 previous international caps were more than the rest of those selected primarily as batsmen had amassed together. When he failed, there was no-one with the experience of arresting a slide in the heightened atmosphere of representing the country at a packed ground – even if most of the young guns have done it in domestic games for sides in which their places are basically secure. There was a fair amount of experience lower down the order, though, not that it helped. When Tim Bresnan walked out, I thought that at least here was someone with the common sense to nurdle through at the required run-or-so-a-ball, but it only took him a couple of minutes to heave one unnecessarily down long-off's throat.

But inexperience is an inadequate excuse for being incapable.

Jos Buttler has not yet played an eye-catching innings in an international game, but I suspect it's only a matter of time: with Ben Stokes coming to the party on Sunday (even if he left early), all the other youngsters have proved that they are just as capable of hitting the ball several miles for England as for their counties. However, they also seem to be roughly as idiotic as some of the younger India players, holding to the ludicrous belief that if a delivery can't be hit over the boundary, it's not worth bothering with at all. Some of them will no doubt get chances to play limited-overs cricket for Engand in Asia over the next few months, mostly the 50-over variety where they will at least rub shoulders with senior players who know how to nurdle, from which one hopes they will learn.

But all of them, senior and junior, are less than expert at conjuring even the odd run, let alone boundaries, from balls which don't arrive at a decent pace and don't bounce to an inviting height.

The eventual returns of Kevin Pietersen and Eoin Morgan will improve matters slightly, but I reckon we England fans should watch the winter's ODIs through the tolerant eyes of the early adopters of technology. The first Blackberries or iPads didn't work all that well, but they were fun to get used to for those who didn't mind glitches and understood that they weren't going to get universal network coverage.

Turning to West Indies, they deserve great credit for doing what India couldn't in nine attempts this summer even though they face very similar problems with their own young batsmen, most of whom look even more clueless than the England boys.

But what will give them, and especially their coach, great heart is their superb outcricket, which gave England a very heavy dose of the medicine they have been dispensing themselves all summer: parsimonious bowling backed up by very sharp fielding. Darren Sammy's run out of Buttler was brilliant, but that was merely the star at the top of a bauble-festooned Christmas tree of fine fielding. The bowling was ideally suited to the conditions in terms of pace and length, and that England's top five were all bowled or lbw is eloquent testimony to its accuracy.

Pride, commitment and purpose when in the field is probably the most accurate barometer of a squad's morale and togetherness. That always comes from the leadership provided by the coach and, even more importantly, the captain: unless the players really want to play under them, there is no team – just eleven blokes turning up for something to do.

The turnaround in West Indies' fielding between the first and second games brought to mind the difference when England took the field for the third Test on their last tour of the Caribbean. It is now part of English cricket folklore that after the humiliating defeat in the first Test of that series Andrews Strauss and Flower, both very new in their respective roles, did an amazing job of getting their errant charges to think very seriously about how they were disrespecting the game, the country and themselves and what they were going to do about it.

Going on, Flower and Strauss had the advantage that they had a board and management structure which had been honed into supporting the international side as its top priority over a period of ten years, which is sadly not the case for Ottis Gibson and Darren Sammy. But the partnership they are developing looks to have the potential to do immense good. Let's hope they get to continue.

There have been false dawns from Ravi Bopara before, but maybe his recent performances will convince him that he can trust himself in international cricket © Associated Press

At last. The London ODIs produced interesting cricket, matches which could not be summed up in the five brutal words “England bowled well, India didn't.” And in such a high-profile series, once the professional vultures had swooped on the carcase of a match there was precious little else for an amateur England fan to find anything of interest to write, let alone read.

What with the overwhelming win in Australia, the beating of Sri Lanka and the crushing of India, it's pretty clear that the England Test team is in very good shape. There are some issues about backup spinner, wicketkeeper and opening bat, but otherwise it's the same task as faces a leading Formula One team: how to tune the mechanism to make it work even better.

The ODI team, though, is very much a work in progress – with “progress” being a highly apposite word. Alastair Cook has won his first two series as official England ODI captain against the runners-up and winners of the 2011 World Cup: pretty credit-worthy for the poorest of that tournament's quarter-finalists. I'm sure that World Cup fatigue, the IPL and favourable home conditions have been factors which undermined the visitors, but it's still more than a decent effort by England. For those of us inured to perpetual mediocrity, it's even possible to be mildly encouraged.

One very obvious encouragement is that this has not been the customary going through of motions following a brilliantly successful Test series from England. They have shown commitment and energy and an overpowering will to win. Messrs Duckworth and Lewis have probably been of considerable assistance in keeping the scoresheet clean, but even irritated Indian fans can probably allow that England's lower order put in heroic end-of-innings efforts which showed they were very serious indeed about these games.

Another big plus for England is that the Lord's tie and Oval win were achieved without any assistance from Kevin Pietersen or Eoin Morgan. Of course India were depleted too, but KP or Morgan or both have been mainsprings behind almost every win achieved in the last couple of years. Given the surrounding talent, Morgan is an even more important component in England's team than Sachin Tendulkar in India's, so for England to win games without them is a little more than surprising.

Doing something of the job Morgan normally does has been Ravi Bopara. I marked him as having England potential about five years ago and have been moderately in favour of his inclusion in Test and ODI teams, a faith which has been only semi-requited so far.

In these matches he has batted intelligently, manoeuvring the ball around the gaps with a close eye on the required D/L targets, in both cases guiding the team to within a couple of yards of the finish line. It would obviously be better if he didn't get out just before the end, but it's certainly better than getting out before he has reached double figures.

What has upped my rating of him considerably is the way he reached his fifty at Lord's. He had virtually committed himself to playing the paddle sweep, but was able at the last split second to adjust and glide it down to fine third man when he realised the ball was on the wrong line for his original shot.

That is true improvisation. A lot of nonsense gets spouted about how KP's unorthodox shots are terribly inventive, as though he thought them up on the spur of the moment when in reality he spends months trying them out and practicing them in the nets before essaying them in a real match. The same is just about true of Morgan, though I think a few of his shots are played entirely reactively.

But that one moment from Bopara convinced me at last that he has the spark of magic in him. It's a similar spark to that clearly possessed by the likes of MS Dhoni and Suresh Raina. I find Raina's style, if you can call it that, pretty ugly to watch, but it's extremely effective: it seems to consist of deciding where he's going to play a ball from and then bringing the middle of the bat into contact with it as hard as possible without much interest in the method of achieving it. In other words, almost entirely improvisational. No England batsman will ever be quite that free-and-easy because survival on English county pitches and the English weather require some attention to be paid to technique, but we need a few more batsmen not too restrained by orthodoxy.

With Morgan unavailable for some time, I would hope that Bopara will retain his place. There have been false dawns from him before, but maybe his recent performances will convince him that he can trust himself in international cricket. My theory is that his obvious nerviness has been down to a sense of puzzlement that his international performances have largely failed to live up to what he believes himself capable of rather than because he doesn't believe himself to be good enough. I'd like to hope that he is just about to deliver the return on all the investment that has been made in him for 60 previous ODIs.

However, the upcoming series in India is likely to expose rather painfully the major problem with England's ODI team. They are pretty good at bowling in the first half of the innings, but they have very little idea of what to do once the opposition start teeing off. Ryan ten Doeschate's and Kevin O'Brien's spectacular assaults during the World Cup have now been matched by the devastating hitting unleashed by Dhoni, Raina and Ravindra Jadeja; it is clear that Cook has no more idea about what tactics to use or what fields to set than his predecessor had and that even if he did, he doesn't have much in the way of bowlers who can follow the plan – at least, not with any useful effect.

The other big worry is how the batsmen will cope with the lack of pace in the subcontinent pitches. They are pretty good at working the ball around for the ones and twos but neither Ian Bell nor Jonathan Trott, in particular, are used to putting the muscle into their shots usually required for boundaries in India.

It's going to be a long climb for England to become a seriously respected 50-over outfit outside their own back yard.

Dale Steyn leads a clutch of current bowlers seeking greatness © Associated Press

For my birthday, my mother sent me a copy of “Not In My Day, Sir”, a collection of letters on cricket published in Britain's most traditional newspaper, the Daily Telegraph. The book amply bears out the implication of the title, that there is nothing so constant in cricket as the complaints of the middle-aged and elderly that the sport is going to the dogs because it was so much better when they were younger.

Being middle-aged myself, I adhere to this to some extent: I don't care what you say or what statistics you produce about any other player, I'm not going to change my opinion that IVA Richards is the greatest batsman I've seen. And I very much suspect that when I'm an old man I will annoy young whippersnappers now being born by droning on about none of the future's current leg-spinners being a patch on Shane Warne.

But only to that extent.

One of the currently fashionable moans is that there are no good bowlers any more. All the great ones of the last couple of decades have retired and there's no-one to replace them.

Really?

Is Dale Steyn going to end up as South Africa's best-ever fast bowler, or will that title remain with Allan Donald – and if it's still going to be Donald, by what margin?

Have India ever had a better pace bowler than a fit Zaheer Khan?

With the exception of Wasim Akram, which left-arm quicks have been better than Zaheer, who swings both the new and the old ball and was chiefly responsible for the wins which elevated India to the top spot in Test cricket?

What did Michael Holding do that Stuart Broad did not do while taking five for none at Trent Bridge?

Would Suresh Raina or Yuvraj Singh have been any more uncomfortable being worked over by Andy Roberts than they were by Tim Bresnan?

What extra weapons does Chris Tremlett need to be comparable with Joel Garner?

After a winter of success in swingless Australia and a similar performance on the fifth day at Lord's against India, while still retaining the ability to hoop the new ball both ways at 88mph, which England team from any point in history would the 2011 version of James Anderson not walk into? Getting Sachin Tendulkar out seven times in eight matches isn't bad going for someone who isn't top-class, either.

Those of you scurrying to Statsguru to drag up a lot of boring career averages to try and prove that I'm asking very silly questions indeed need not bother commenting unless you have a substantial point to make. Simply showing that fast bowlers who had the chance in the 1980s to bowl on the ultra-fast wickets at Perth or The Oval, on the terror tracks of Headingley or on West Indian pitches as lively as the discos in the stands have better averages than bowlers sentenced to toil away on pitches designed to make sure that corporate guests will have some very dull cricket to watch on the fifth day of a Test is not, to my mind at least, particularly convincing.

Right, the greats I've mentioned did their stuff over a long period – but Zaheer is the only one for whom the end of his career is even a cloud on the horizon, and there's no obvious reason to suppose that the rest are going to get worse over the next few years: Anderson, Bresnan and Broad are visibly better bowlers than they were a year ago.

More promising, perhaps, is the line that the Robertses, Garners and Akrams were pioneers. They showed people what could be done, and the present generation are simply benefiting from their invention. It's certainly true that there are many more bowlers around nowadays who bowl at West Indian quartet velocities: thirty years ago, the only English bowler at that level was Bob Willis on a good day; now almost every county has one. And reverse swing is no longer a Pakistani mystery but a skill which a lot of the best bowlers have to some degree even though the journeymen can't manage it at all. Internationally, apart from those I mentioned earlier, Morne Morkel, Fidel Edwards and Kemar Roach have the pace if not necessarily the skill, and one must presume that there's at least one to be found in the dozens that Australia are picking.

But it's a funny old argument that the game is going to the dogs because there are now a lot more bowlers who bowl like the greats of the 1980s than there were in the 1980s themselves.

Of course only some of the current contenders will have lengthy successful careers. Some will get injured, some will get so far and no further and we will shake our heads wistfully in years to come and mutter phrases about wasted talent. And whether any of the ones who do have long careers will end up on anyone's list of great bowlers, let alone everyone's, we cannot yet know. But I'll bet that some will and that when they have retired in 10 or 15 years time, there will be another wave of people telling us that the era of great players is over. And they will be wrong again, because the supply of great players is never-ending.

The difficult bit, apparently, is spotting them when they are right under our noses.

Praveen Kumar will run through brick walls for his captain © AFP

Dear Mr Strauss and Mr Dhoni,

Thank you for my birthday present of an excellent Test match at Lord's. It was very kind of you to give me such a lavish gift, which I was able to share with my good friend Bharat, a gentleman originally from Hyderabad who now runs a research lab in Pennsylvania and has said that he will be in the Warner Stand for England-India Tests at Lord's until either one of us is too decrepit to manage it. Even though he didn't care for the result as much as I did, he too says that it was a very enjoyable match.

I particularly appreciated your arranging that two of my favourite batsmen should score centuries.

The one by Kevin Pietersen was very unexpected. Not so much that he got one – I've seen him get several before – but the way he got it was most unusual. I hadn't known that he had it in him to play so carefully for so long. He often goes slowly for the first three-quarters of an hour or so, during which time he usually gets the chance to have a look at most of the main bowlers before deciding how he is going to approach the serious business of destroying them, but I've never before seen him play himself in until he reaches 130.

Of course the main reason I like watching him is his power to devastate bowling attacks, and I don't really want to see him block, leave, prod and nudge for hours on end; however, it is very gratifying to know that he can do it when that is what the situation and the quality of the bowling demand. We all know he wants to be the world's No. 1 batsman, and with this innings he has taken a giant step towards realising his ambition one day.

And then there was Rahul Dravid's hundred. He has always been my favourite among the phalanx of marvellous batsmen India have had these last 15 years or so, and this was a classic example of why. His batting is wonderfully serene and effortlessly economical. Without any fuss, he calmly treats every ball with appropriate respect, good ones defended or left, bad ones gently dismissed towards the boundary. You hardly ever see him hurried into a shot, even by the fastest bowlers, and he plays late enough to incur library fines. How reassuring it must be for his teammates when they are under pressure to see him contentedly grazing runs out there in the middle.

You also gave me a new hero to watch out for in the future.

Praveen Kumar looks like the kind of cricketer Nasser Hussain once described as being prepared to run through brick walls for his captain, and thus a captain's dream. When one of your main bowlers breaks down mid-match, the others have to shoulder more of the burden to make up for it. In England's first innings, Harbhajan Singh and Ishant Sharma with their combined 130 Tests conspicuously failed to take up any of the slack whereas Praveen the Lionheart, a young man in only his fourth match, performed titanically.

Pietersen was the only one of England's strong middle order who succeeded in preventing him from getting them out, and even KP did not find him easy to cope with. He may not be quick and he may be pretty much cannon fodder if the ball won't swing for him, but when it does move around, his lack of pace is irrelevant.The England backroom staff are going to have to do some very minute examination of the videos to see if there is any reasonable way of detecting which way a given delivery is likely to swing, but I doubt they will come up with anything helpful. Ian Bell seems in particular need of assistance: even though he managed to get 45 runs, he was completely at sea when Praveen was bowling to him.

And Praveen also batted appropriately in both innings. He is obviously not very good, so chancing his arm with a few lusty blows to try and boot the total over the crossbar of the follow-on target was a perfectly reasonable approach in the first innings. Second time around, he did his best to hang around for Suresh Raina by dead-batting deliveries. It didn't work for very long, but at least he was doing what the team wanted him to do, unlike Harbhajan's ridiculous skyer. (Remembering the little contretemps Matt Prior's bat had with a dressing room window earlier this season, I was rather expecting to hear that Mr Dhoni had had to go down and apologise to the MCC members who were hurt when they had a spin bowler dropped on them from the balcony after he returned to the dressing room.)

Gentlemen, I could go on for a lot longer about the various delightful nuggets I found in my present but you no doubt have practice to supervise and fitness reports to digest before you pick your teams for Trent Bridge so I'll just leave it at those three highlights.

Thanks again,

Michael

Should anyone have been surprised by Alastair Cook's one-day form against Sri Lanka? © Getty Images

Mission accomplished, and then some. Rarely has a newly-appointed England captain achieved so much in his first series in charge. Not only did the team beat the World Cup runners-up 3-2, but he was the outstanding player from either side and shattered the preconceptions with which he had been saddled. Quite something for someone people had been queueing up to denounce as an impostor.

Very few people outside the inner circles of the England management or, presumably, Alastair Cook's family and friends had been enthusiastic about his appointment.

Some were openly hostile and pointed to his career ODI strike-rate as proof that he was not and could not be an effective opening batsman in limited-over cricket. Following the disappointing World Cup campaign, the last thing that the ODI squad needed was a lame duck captain who had clearly only been given the job so that he could gain some captaincy experience before taking the reins of the Test side. I had considerable sympathy with that view, but was prepared to wait and see.

I had had exactly the same reservations about the appointment of Andrew Strauss two years ago, saying that he should not be allowed within a hundred miles of a limited-over team. If anyone had then tried to tell me that Strauss would win a Man-of-the-Match award for his batting in a World Cup match in which Sachin Tendulkar scored a typically-classy hundred, I'd have laughed myself silly. As we all now know, though, he did precisely that. It may have been his only good innings in 2011, but he had played quite a number of similar ones during 2010, thus affording me several fine dinners of roast words with all the trimmings.

If Strauss could expand his game that dramatically, it would have been daft to assume that Cook was incapable of doing the same. He at least deserved a chance to show what he could do.

He failed at the Oval. At Headingley, 48 off 52 balls was encouraging even though the game was resoundingly lost. Then came Lord's, where his innings did a lot to convince me.

The write-ups the following day made much of his slow scoring in the first half of his innings, citing it as evidence that he was still basically the plodder he was suspected of being, but that was not the innings I'd seen.

There were indeed a lot of dot balls, but there are several ways in which a dot can occur. If Cook were plodding, they would indicate blocks and leaves, but in reality a large number of them were balls which had been hit powerfully to fielders or which he had attempted to heave over the boundary but had missed completely. This was not a man trying to hang around but one who was trying very hard – though failing – to get on with it as fast as possible.

The sensible criticism of his play was that it was unwise: with Kevin Pietersen going well at the other end, Cook might well have done better to nudge and nurdle the singles to get off strike. I suspect, though, that he was playing to his critics rather than properly playing the situation. Strike-rotation would not have convinced anyone that he had the power game people thought he lacked: they wanted to see him slogging, so that's what he attempted to give them.

The difference in the second half of his Lord's effort was not that he changed his approach but that he started to connect with his big shots – and then the runs flowed freely. As they then did at Trent Bridge and Old Trafford, with the result that it will be a long time before anyone again questions his suitability for the role of ODI opener.

The thing is, the many with low expectations of him (including me) had been guilty of ignoring the evidence that had been there for all to see.

His ODI record was pretty old. He had been dropped, rightly, in 2008 because his scoring-rate of 68.15 was pathetic.

But he was then 23 years old, still a relative baby in international terms and it was rather early for an ambitious young man to accept that his ODI career was over. So he went back to Essex and worked on his limited-over game.

In 2009, he went to The Oval for a Twenty20 match against Surrey and hit 100 not out off 57 balls. In the 2010 Friend Provident t20, he hit 51 off 36 against Kent, 73 off 53 against Gloucestershire, and 63 off 44 against Sussex. In the domestic 40-over tournament, he hit centuries in both 2009 (against Hampshire) and 2010 (against Yorkshire), and a 96 this year against Nottinghamshire, all at strike-rates in the 90s or higher. These are not the performances of a plodder.

Also last year, he stood in for Strauss as both opener and captain for England's ODI series in Bangladesh, where he scored 156 runs in three innings at a strike rate of 90.69, again hardly evidence of plodding.

Why did we all fail to register any of this and continue to pigeonhole him as a Test-only classicist?

Perhaps because Team England did not see fit to bring him back on a regular basis. How many comments on his recent appointment, for instance, made reference to the fact that he was not in the World Cup squad?

The trouble with that superficial analysis is that it ignored a pretty significant question: whose place should he have had? Pietersen's? Collingwood's? Go back to that Bangladesh series, though, and the answer makes everything plain: his slot was Strauss', and it made no more sense to pick him as well as Strauss as it would have done to pick two wicketkeepers in the XI.

And then there was his Test play: his marathon performances in the winter's Ashes were models of patience and discipline, the complete antithesis of Powerplay batting. For those with eyes to see, though, there were hints to pick up. After all, it's not as though it's unknown for class players to be highly methodical in Test cricket while being free scorers in the shorter forms - Jacques Kallis and Shiv Chanderpaul to name but two.

Cook may not have blazed away at Brisbane, but the attacking shots he did play were a lot more natural-looking than they had been in previous years. I noticed that his knee was bending when he drove, making for a more-flowing as well as a more-powerful shot, but I failed to make the connection.

This is why we have selectors and a continuous England team management, of course. It's now obvious that they have been carefully monitoring and grooming Cook for his new role for a good couple of years and have known precisely what they were up to.

The moral is that those of us who have been astonished by Cook's performances against Sri Lanka have only got ourselves to blame.

Hoping for a hat-trick of centuries at Lord's © Associated Press

The best sort of cricket match to watch is one which your team wins and your favourite player on the other side gets a hundred or a five-for. I am therefore hoping that Lord's will bring another England win and another century for Mahela Jayawardene.

I can't say that I noticed him on his first visit to England in 1998. Sri Lanka only played the one Test, in which Muttiah Muralitharan and Sanath Jayasuriya were so dazzling that a 21-year-old with no record who scored very few passed under the radar.

But when England went to Sri Lanka a couple of years later, it was very different. In the first Test at Galle Jayawardene came in at 5 to join Marvan Atapattu, who was on his way to a double hundred, following the dismissal of Aravinda de Silva for a typically stylish hundred of his own. In such a healthy position, he obviously had a bit of licence to play his shots, which he proceeded to do – and I was captivated.

Such economy of movement, such timing, such precision, such delicacy. A Swiss watchmaker would have been very proud to have constructed a mechanism which functioned so perfectly.

He did even better in the second Test at Kandy. Sri Lanka were in a bit of trouble at 80-4 when he was joined by Russel Arnold, who had the sense to keep his head down and keep his end going while Jayawardene set about the bowling. Wiseacres might have called it irresponsible, but he had resolved to counter-attack – and it worked. No-one could bowl to him as he scampered to a brilliant three-hour hundred. So pleased was he with reaching three figures that he fatally lost concentration and was out almost immediately, but I was now prepared to predict a very bright future for him.

Not realising how long Sachin Tendulkar would go on, I thought Mahela would succeed Sachin as the best batsman around, and I looked forward to his visit to England in 2002.

In the first Test at Lord's, he twinkled his way to a ton in the sunshine, with Marvan Atapattu again playing straight man on his way to another huge score. Mahela was at his entertaining best, playing beautiful wristy shots off all and sundry. Atapattu's 185 was a larger part of the Lankan's imposing 555, and Aravinda de Silva's 88 was typical of the man, but it was Mahela's champagne-style innings which captured the heart as well as the eye. It was probably at this point that the career trajectories of de Silva and Jayawardene crossed; from there on, Mahela became Sri Lanka's marquee batsman as Aravinda gradually faded.

But there was a slight suspicion that he was a froth player: he wasn't then well-known for being able to put his head down and graft when the going got tough. Things could not have been much tougher, though, when he came out to bat at Lord's in the second innings in 2006. Sri Lanka were 250 behind in their follow-on with more than two days remaining; it was going to take something quite heroic to pull the game out of the fire, and captain Jayawardene produced it. His patient hundred took up day four in as boring a way as he could manage. Which isn't all that boring: his impregnability meant that he did not wave that magic wand of a bat as often but when he did, the crystal flash lit up the gloomy grey.

Although it depends on what the next Future Tours Programme comes up with, it is very likely that this will be Mahela's last Test tour of England, which means that Lord's will be my last chance to see him bat in a Test. I don't care in what manner he gets it - he is one of those batsmen who cannot play a horrid innings whatever he does – but I really hope he can complete a hat-trick of centuries at HQ so I can stand and applaud him while wishing him farewell. I'd just rather he didn't end up on the winning side.

Ian Bell deserved his ton, and Andrew Strauss did the right thing by allowing him enough time to get there © Getty Images

Before play started on the fifth day at Cardiff, I was thinking what a prosaic Test match it had been. Until Ian Bell arrived at the crease, we had seen a great deal of very worthy batting from Tharanga Paranavitana, Prasanna Jaywardene and the seemingly unstoppable Alastair Cook and Jonathan Trott, but there had been little to dispel the rainy gloom and lift the spirit.

Bell's 98* on day 4 was a welcome introduction of poetry. Its colour and adventure had the same effect on me as those daffodils when Wordsworth came across them on his walk. Since nothing was likely to happen on the fifth afternoon, I thought it only right and proper that he be given the chance to finish off the hundred before a declaration.

Bell clearly deserved the cachet of a Test century, and it would have stored up untold resentment if Andrew Strauss had denied him the few balls he needed for it. The England squad are genuine fans of each other and would all have wanted him to get it.

For a captain to declare with a batsman on 98*, there had better be a damn good tactical reason for it. Even though Michael Atherton later admitted he got it wrong, his declaration when Graeme Hick was on 98* at Sydney in 1995 was made with the intention of having two bites with the new ball before and after tea; it had a tactical logic to it, and one could easily argue that it was designed to give the team the best possible chance of winning a match which was there for the taking. Had Darren Gough and Devon Malcolm been only half as effective as they had been in Australia's first innings, England would have gone on to win and Hick might have been able to forgive the captain.

That did not apply in Cardiff. It's all very well saying that England would have a better chance of winning if they had 53 overs of play rather than 50, but no one in their right mind would have thought there was better than a one in seven chance of knocking Sri Lanka over with enough time left to get any runs required, especially with a three-man attack on a wicket which they had found pretty easy to bat on. It would take something utterly extraordinary to pull off a win, and three overs was not going to make any real difference to that. And if both batsmen are in on the plan, it's pretty difficult to stop one of them getting two runs in three overs.

So I approved of Strauss's decision, clapped at the TV when Bell's hundred came up and the batsmen came back in, and began to write about Wordsworth and Trott and Jayawardene (P) so that I would have something ready to fire off when the match was over. I assumed Sri Lanka would make about 140-3 and there would be handshakes almost as soon as the last hour was called, and I could talk of moral victories and who would be taking most heart from the game.

The first couple of wickets made little impression on me. It's not at all unusual for the new ball to take out the openers, and I knew the likes of Mahela Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakarra were old enough hands to know how to play out time.

Then Mahela fell. Suddenly I realised the win was on, and didn't even bother to save what I had written because I felt that something else was going to be necessary. When Sangakarra edged Graeme Swann to slip, it was no longer just on: it had become a question of when rather than if, for Sri Lanka have no Paul Collingwood or Shivnarine Chanderpaul unless it's Thilan Samaraweera, and he had already departed for the single-figure score (0 being a single figure) which is his habit in England.

If a tail is going to hang around to save a match, it needs inspiration, and that can only come from a senior player who coolly calms things down and shows that he isn't going to be moved. Without his example, feeble collapse is inevitable once the fielding side smell blood and go on the charge.

I know how Sri Lanka fans must be feeling today. Shell-shocked, stunned, and wondering when they are going to wake up from this dreadful nightmare which surely cannot be real. I remember it oh so well from the time England were routed for 46 by Curtly Ambrose at Port of Spain. Black despair. Shame. Wondering how your friends who don't like cricket are going to mock you when you see them.

Thing is, though, that in the next Test England stormed fortress Bridgetown, inflicting a first defeat on West Indies at the Kensington Oval in 60 years. As we have just seen at Cardiff, anything can and does happen in Test cricket.

Steven Finn: Improving all the time © AFP

I had hoped for more from my first live match of the season, but I didn't even get three days because I couldn't be bothered to trek up to the ground to watch Middlesex knock off 54 runs to win on the third morning. The ball swung, it must be said, but even so Middlesex's batting on the first day was mediocre and on day two Essex really stank the place out.

From such a match there are few highlights to remember. Oddly enough, both the events that caught my eye involved Steven Finn.

The second of these was on the second afternoon, when Alastair Cook had seemed to be making a rather better fist of things than in the morning but popped up a half-chance to which Finn tumbled and completed the caught-and-bowled. It was a surprisingly gymnastic effort from the gangling bowler.

What had been even more surprising, though, was Finn's batting on the first afternoon.

Ravi Bopara had come on to bowl after tea, presumably to help spin things out for the new ball, and had obliged with the quick dismissal of Tim Murtagh, bringing Finn to the crease at number 10. He has previously demonstrated an ability to block and help a proper batsman through to a hundred or to graft out time for a draw but there was little evidence that he could score runs for himself. In 19 innings last season, nine of them not out and most of them for Middlesex, he averaged a princely 4.70 and had a career-best of 26.

In his bulletin for the day , ESPNcricinfo's Sahil Dutta mentioned the ninth-wicket stand as one in which Finn and Ollie Rayner “swung merrily”, which was not inaccurate but risked giving a slightly false impression of tail-end slogging. For at least the first half of his career-best 32, however, Finn did a very passable impression of a proper batsman. There was a sweet on drive which would have made Michael Vaughan happy if he'd played it and a cover drive as crisp and efficient as anything Jonathan Trott produces along with the solid defence which we already knew about. He has adopted the raised-backlift stance which England batting coach Graham Gooch used to employ and approached his batting very positively rather than with mindless aggression. The case which Bopara is trying to assemble in favour of his replacing the retired Paul Collingwood in the England set-up rests partly on his handy bowling, but it will have been set back considerably by his being hit out of the attack by a tail-ender, however improved.

Taken together, these two passages of play show that Finn has profited immensely from his winter tour despite losing his Test place. It would be pushing it to describe Finn as an incipient all-rounder on this scant evidence, but he has returned from Australia a much better cricketer than he was.

It is good to see that even with today's schedules which mean that touring teams play very few games outside the international fixtures, it is still possible for cricketers to continue their development.

James Anderson had little to shout about during his bowling towards the end of the match agsint Bangladesh © Getty Images

Amid all the lists of top players, teams, innings and what have you of the World Cup, I haven't noticed any booby prizes being handed out, and that is a serious omission. No World Cup can be complete without its share of goofs, howlers and blunders.

I can only make a few nominations because I didn't watch that many matches all the way through and there were several of which I saw none at all, so there will be many worthy contenders I have missed and I would be grateful for anyone else's accounts of incidents which made them laugh out loud or squirm in agony (if perpetrated by the team you support).

My favourite of all the gaffes I saw was the Missed Catch of the Cup. Not “dropped catch” because it was not even touched, relatively easy though it was. Netherlands' Ryan ten Doeschate had started to cut loose in their match against England when he skied one high and deep over the bowler's head. Kevin Pietersen and James Anderson were fielding at long-on and long-off, and both set off to try and catch it. Either of them could have made it, but they saw each other coming and both stopped and looked at each other as the ball fell harmlessly between them. It was straight out of a cartoon, and I whiled away the boring bits of some other games imagining how it would have looked in a Bugs Bunny or Pink Panther short.

Partly because of my limited selection of games, Anderson also wins my Worst Bowling award, although I'm sure there are plenty of other candidates. Bangladesh had looked to be cruising home until a tight few overs pushed the rate back up so that they needed 33 off the last 5 overs. Time for the batting Powerplay, and Anderson to bowl its first over. The first delivery was five wides down the leg side, and he went on to bowl another two legside wides which Prior managed to take. Only three were scored off the six legitimate deliveries, so it might have been precisely what was required, but those wides just handed the game to Bangladesh on a plate.

The Worst Batting can also be looked at as an example of superb bowling, but for me Lasith Malinga's demolition job at the end of Sri Lanka's match against Kenya was an exhibition of comedy batting. It is of course a bit unfair to mock the tail-end batsmen of an Associate having to try and deal with lethal yorkers from one of the best bowlers in the business, but I could not suppress the giggles. They looked like Stan Laurel trying but failing to avoid a soaking from a fire hydrant.

Limited-over cricket is bound to cause some mishaps in running as batsmen get desperate. In my view of this World Cup, idiotic running reached its zenith in India's quarter-final against Australia. Gautam Gambhir had just reached his half-century when madness took hold of him. He was absolutely desperate to get the strike back, for reasons unclear, and set off for impossible runs from the non-striker's end. Twice he survived, once when Ricky Ponting's throw uncharacteristically missed the stumps and a second time when the throw went wrongly to the keeper's end, but on his third attempt he finally succeeded in running himself out. Yuvraj Singh hadn't even moved as Gambhir raced three-quarters of the length of the pitch and then halfway back before David Hussey calmly removed the bails.

Umpiring is a fiendishly difficult job and it should be no surprise that umpires make the odd mistake. The DRS now corrects most of the obvious ones – and it shows that the umpires generally do a very good job indeed. Only one in five reviews resulted in a reversal, and few of those had been obviously wrong in real time. Except, that is, in the Pakistan v Canada match, where Daryl Harper managed to have three consecutive reversals during Canada's innings. It made me think that ICC need to make another adjustment to the Daryl Review System protocols: that no team will lose a review just because it turns out that for once Daryl Harper was right the first time.

Those, then, were my Golden Goofs for this World Cup. What were yours?

England may not be welcomed back with quite the pomp they entered the tournament with, but they have no reason to hang their heads in shame © AFP

At least they weren't embarrassing. They arrive home as disappointed losers rather than hopeless chumps. There is no need to put bags over their heads and smuggle them out of the airport in an unmarked coach; cricket fans spotting them in the arrivals hall are more likely to smile sympathetically and mutter “bad luck” than to hurl abuse, as they might have at the national jokes which England's previous three World Cup parties became.

In their matches against India and South Africa, they showed that they belonged on the world stage; had the groups led on to a Super Eight stage, they would have carried forward more points than anyone else since they did not lose to a major team until the quarter-final.

However, the quarter-final was always the realistic limit of their ambitions. They may well have been weary after a long tour of Australia with no real break before the World Cup. They were certainly unlucky with the succession of injuries, which meant that they never had the same squad to choose from for consecutive matches.

But the bottom line is that England are poorly equipped for one-day cricket on subcontinent pitches.

They lack power hitters. They are generally nervous against spin, allowing themselves to be tied down by second-rank part-timers who should at least be milkable, even if they bowl tidily enough for whacking them out of the park to be too risky. And they don't really have those second-rank part-timers themselves. Apart from Graeme Swann, their full-timers are second-rank spinners at best, at least in one-day terms. Selecting Adil Rashid rather than Michael Yardy would have been an improvement, but I still don't think he's really up to international standard yet.

If we wave a magic wand and give them a fully-fit, adequately-rested squad, it's still hard to see England going any further. The first-choice XI for the game against Sri Lanka at the Premadasa would have been Andrew Strauss, Kevin Pietersen, Jonathan Trott, Ian Bell, Eoin Morgan, Ravi Bopara, Matt Prior, Tim Bresnan, Graeme Swann, Stuart Broad, and James Tredwell. Perhaps they would have made a more competitive 263 or so and Sri Lanka would have lost four or five wickets on the way to overhauling it, but the result would have been the same.

Which isn't to say that the selectors did a perfect job with the limited pool available.

Picking Paul Collingwood was entirely understandable. Most World Cups feature two or three seasoned campaigners who have, as it turns out, reached the end of the road: in the present tourney, Shoaib Akhtar is the other obvious example. Jimmy Anderson's selection was also understandable, given that he has been dubbed the leader of the attack, but it betrays a failure of analysis. He is a potent bowler when armed with two slips and a gully, but when all he has is backward point and third man there is nothing to stop enterprising batsmen looking to heave his length balls over long off.

However, without wishing to add to the man's troubles, the selection of Michael Yardy was a horrible mistake. His forte is restricting batsmen to singles, and while there is some value in a Twenty20 bowler whose four overs will usually go for 26 and rarely for over 30, ten overs for an almost guaranteed 0 for 68 is pretty much useless in the longer game.

Of course, there are lessons to be learned and taken into account when the planning starts for the next World Cup - and I agree with Andy Flower that now is the time to start – but there is no need for the slash-and-burn approach rightly taken after the humbling exits of the previous three England World Cup rabbles (“teams” being rather too kind a description of them).

This was certainly a team; it took a great deal of collective willpower to pull the fat out of the fire against South Africa and West Indies; the individuals also seemed to have roles they understood, usually looking as though they knew what they were trying to do – and it was usually the right thing even if they didn't do it as well as they might.

They did not show themselves off to their best advantage and there is no justification for congratulating them on a job well done - but they need not hang their heads in shame. They got as far as they should have, unlike South Africa. They are only guilty of not playing better than anyone expected, like New Zealand or Pakistan.

Six out of ten overall for me, with a gold star for the thrill-rides which lit up what was otherwise a pretty humdrum group stage.

England continued to thrill with their narrow win over the West Indies, but their fans would appreciate the occasional sedate march to victory © Getty Images

When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping - so that's what I did.

As far as I was concerned, England's 243 would not be enough and when Chris Gayle smashed Tim Bresnan's first over for 18, it all looked pretty inevitable. Gayle is usually one of my favourite batsmen to watch, but this time I wasn't in the mood. Had it been an ODI in a bilateral series, I could happily have sat back and wallowed in some extravagant strokeplay, but watching him hammering nails into the coffin of England's World Cup was just going to be too painful. I wandered out to buy food for dinner and have a relaxing cup of coffee.

When I got home and checked the score on ESPNcricinfo, it was 204/6, which was still hopeless for England. I opened another tab and caught up on the news. Then I noticed that the score had flicked round to 223/9, which made it bearable to turn on the TV and watch the end. Knowing the result made it essential to watch the highlights later on to find out how the drama had unfolded.

What a relief! It's not that I care too much about the World Cup - to me, and to a large number of other England fans, retaining the Ashes was far more important than winning a one-day tournament, however prestigious – but I still don't want England eliminated embarrassingly. I generally like seeing Bangladesh do well, but on this occasion I think I can be excused for hoping that South Africa thrash them and put English qualification beyond doubt. After all the tensions of England's actual matches, the last thing I need is to be on tenterhooks all weekend waiting on India beating West Indies.

At least the management have rid themselves of their superstition about the need for Jimmy Anderson's run-leaking and have acknowledged that Paul Collingwood's form has been left down the back of his sofa at home. I'm also pleased that they have seen sense and stopped believing in Michael Yardy as a second spinner: Yardy is a very useful cricketer whose slow-medium bowling works quite well in T20, but he is not worth ten overs in the longer format.

England have a pleasantly large pool of quality bowlers, which made replacing Anderson easy. Collingwood's bowling has always been extremely handy, though, and Strauss has hitherto shown little confidence in Ravi Bopara as a fifth/sixth bowler. This was a tougher decision, but when Bopara removed Darren Sammy he probably inked his name on the team sheet for some time to come.

Whether these personnel changes will bring any more consistency to the team's performance remains unknown. The only constant so far, to my chagrin, has been Jonathan Trott, whom I nominated a while back as my least favourite England player.

I suppose his lengthy stays at the crease have had the saving grace that they have afforded me the opportunity to refine my dislike. At least he acknowledges the shorter format by being not quite as meticulous with his crease excavations, but now I know why I wish he were someone else.

I don't have a problem with his strike rate. His job is to keep the runs ticking over while he acts as an anchor, a job which Rahul Dravid did with considerable success for India. Dravid was frequently blamed for India losing an ODI, the contention being that he was putting too much pressure on the other batsmen – once memorably described as “using up all the hot water” and adopted as group-speak ever after - which always pained me because I am a big fan of his. That I dislike Trott should not prevent me allowing him the same latitude, and it does not.

One may well feel after his regulation half-century that it would be better if he had scored another ten in the time he had at the crease, but criticising his strike rate is rather like criticising a driver who keeps to the speed limit. If the team's game plan revolves around a reliable backbone, then it's the rest of the batsmen whose job is to hit the big shots, and you can't blame the anchor for them not fulfilling their part of the bargain any more than one can blame Graeme Swann for not bowling more maidens if the pace bowlers foul up.

I now know that what irks me about Trott is that he plays everything possible, and quite a bit of the improbable, into the leg side. There are fine strokes to the leg: the on-drive and hook can be magnificent. But they are played with the batsman standing tall while Trott hunches his shoulders over the ball for the nudge, the push and the nurdle. It's undeniably effective and he is very successful with it, but attractive it isn't.

In the grand scheme of things, this is no more significant than my detestation of parsnips or a feeling that the Mission Impossible movies would have been better with Johnny Depp instead of Tom Cruise, and I shall be very happy if Trott crabs his way to a match-winning hundred in the World Cup final. Just don't ask me to enjoy it.

The look on Andrew Strauss's face makes it clear even he doesn't understand England's Jekyll and Hyde performances © Getty Images

The cricketing gods are merciless on those of us who pontificate about the game. When I, an England fan, moaned gloomily before the World Cup started that the long group stage was likely to be an interminable bore, they clearly took note and delivered the most thrilling group stage an England fan could possibly have wished for. Only to England fans, mind you, as matches not involving them have nearly all gone the way one would have predicted and the finishes have mostly been anything but close (note “nearly all” and “mostly” - the India-SA game was an absolute classic), but there's an omelette big enough for ten waiting to be made with the egg streaming off my face right now.

The paradox of England's performances is that if they manage to qualify for the quarter-finals, they will probably do so in fourth place without having lost to any of the top three in their group, which takes some doing.

Obviously it's their fallibility against the minnows that has caused the hair-tearing, rendering many young England fans prematurely bald, but it's as though they have decided to match their performance to the quality of opposition. Were we to have seen Andrew Strauss nodding in satisfaction at a handy five wides when Bangladesh were falling behind the rate, we'd all be suspecting the mother of all betting scams was in progress, but the looks of total bewilderment on the faces of everyone are utterly convincing evidence that they are as baffled as us spectators.

It is not easy to explain it because their matches against India and South Africa have shown that they possess much of the quality batting, bowling and fielding that they need.

But if you put me up against a wall and threaten to make me watch Neil McKenzie and Deep Dasgupta batting to save a Test against an attack spearheaded by Paul Collingwood and Ashley Giles bowling over the wicket, if I don't give you an answer, I'm going to have to put it down to superstition.

Superstition, because that is the only reason I can think of for the faith that successive England captains have placed in Jimmy Anderson as a bowler who can contain batsmen who are intent on hitting out, especially when the ball is pitched on what is usually called a good length. I've lost count of the number of matches in which Anderson has been called on to bowl at the death, when the only death that ensues is that of England's chance of winning. I have enormous respect for Anderson the Test bowler, but if England must pick him for 50-over games, why can't captains learn that he is only going to be effective in the middle overs?

Of course it's invidious to single out one player in what is obviously a collective failure, but I was answering under hypothetical duress.

Should England fail to progress, it will continue the team's embarrassing run of World Cup failure, but it will at least have been qualitatively different. In the past, their failures have been because they were woefully inadequate; basing their strategies and tactics on outmoded ideas that would have worked in the World Cup before last, but this time round it has been a failure of execution rather than intention. Choking, in other words.

But whatever else we can say about England's performances, they have been anything but dull – and for that at least they deserve everyone's thanks.

The World Cup opening ceremony might be the extent of the entertainment until the quarter-finals © Getty Images

I know we are all supposed to be terribly excited about the World Cup, but I am having some difficulty summoning up the enthusiasm. Partly, of course, because the injury to Eoin Morgan makes it highly unlikely that my team will get past the quarter-finals, but I think mostly because of the interminable time it will take to reach that stage.

One of the advantages claimed for the limited-over formats over Test cricket is that at least there is always a winner and a loser (unless there is a washout), but surely that is only an advantage if the result actually matters? The 2011 World Cup format means that we face five weeks of matches in which it largely doesn't. Unless one of the eight seeds has a horrible run and one of Ireland, Zimbabwe or (most likely) Bangladesh has a very good one, we already know who will be in the quarter-finals. This does not augur well for drama: it's just about certain that by the time we get to the group match between Sri Lanka and Australia in three weeks time, for instance, there will only be bragging rights at stake.

I understand the commercial imperative of making sure that India cannot repeat their embarrassment of getting knocked out as early as they did last time with the consequent disastrous effect on global viewing figures, but it means that we are going to need some really scintillating cricket if we are not all to be sound asleep by the time the quarter-finals loom into view.

And I'm not very optimistic that there will be very much, I'm afraid. India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and South Africa have at least three players each who can light up a 50-over game, England and West Indies have Kevin Pietersen and Chris Gayle, neither of whom are reliable entertainers these days, Australia and New Zealand have a bunch of efficient players with little magic about them, and Bangladesh have Tamim Iqbal. (I haven't mentioned any bowlers because the history of 50-over cricket in South Asia suggests that they will mostly range from fairly expensive to cannon-fodder on pitches which will give them too little to work with to even up the contest between bat and ball.)

And that means that there are a lot of matches which either don't involve the entertainers or feature them playing against teams which will probably lose and are unlikely to afford them the opportunity to soar.

It's a great pity, because the likely consequence is that the 50-over format will end up looking totally redundant as a form of cricket entertainment. Now, I'm not a great drum-banger for 50-over cricket – I prefer the T20 and Test forms – but I've come to realise that I would miss it if it disappeared.

There is a certain magic about a batsman reaching three figures ingrained into cricket's DNA. The lower foothills of the Century Mountains are conquerable by plenty of 50-over climbers, whereas only the amazing (even if only for a day) can reach those heights in T20. 60 or 70 off 38 T20 balls is spectacular but it just doesn't have the enduring cachet of the ton. The limitation of overs per bowler means there is much less scope for the kind of hair-raising devastation a Test bowler can wreak, but it's not that uncommon for one bowler to produce ten brilliant overs and dominate a match, at least when the pitch has a bit of juice in it.

Where 50-over cricket really scores over T20 is that there is a fair chance of pendulum swings of fortune. There is time to rein back a side which gets to 84-0 in 10 overs, and time to recover even from 33-4. As with tons, it is just about possible for heroic match-turning narratives to occur in T20, but they are so rare as not to be worth hoping for.

These are pleasures worth preserving. I can only hope that the marathon upon which we are about to embark won't entirely kill off any desire to bring them to an end.

Andy Flower picked the right men to form an excellent support staff © Getty Images

The more I think about what went on in the Ashes, the more I appreciate what a brilliant job the England back-room crew did. It is no surprise at all that the players have gone out of their way to praise them and their contribution. Andy Flower. modestly, though quite rightly, says that the credit should go to the players because they are the ones who have to make the right decisions at the right time on the field, but the guys who prepared them for the fight clearly gave them everything they needed to do so.

Perhaps the best illustration is the way the England bowlers dealt with Ricky Ponting, Michael Clarke and Phil Hughes. Time and again, Ponting and Clarke were out to balls bowled to reach them about waist-height a foot or so outside off stump, and they received almost none of the balls directed at their bodies which both of them love to send to the on-side boundaries. Hughes, on the other hand, received almost none of the balls waist-high outside off because he would have clattered them to the fence, and was instead served a diet of body balls which tangled his non-existent defence up completely. The analysts who study the videos of the opposition clearly found the weak spots.

That encapsulates England's attention to detail in preparing for each batsman. What it further shows is the trust the bowlers have in their leadership, because none of them ever seemed tempted to stray from the plan currently in operation, whether it was plan A, B or C. They were exemplary in bowling to their fields, even when a couple of Australians had got themselves set and the temptation to try and find a magic ball to disrupt them must have been overwhelming.

Contrast this with the Australians who spent a great deal of time bowling straight balls at Jonathan Trott to work gratefully into his favoured leg side hour after hour. What on earth were they thinking, or were they thinking at all? And why did no-one tell them to do something else? Shouldn't someone in the Australian camp have known?

Speaking of Trott, how did this fairly ordinary fielder turn into a superb run-out expert, able to make a sharp one even after having batted for several hours? Flower himself gave credit for that to the fielding and fitness coaches.

Batting for several hours is something about which batting coach Graham Gooch holds very strong opinions. Alastair Cook has worked with him for a long time, and his phlegm and unstoppability came from absorbing the lessons: throughout his double-hundred, he said later, Gooch's mantra of “make it a daddy” was constantly running through his mind.

And then there is Flower himself, who runs the whole show. Part of his triumph is to have picked the right men to fill those technical coaching spots, but more lies in the lengthy preparation and planning which brought the team to a peak in late 2010. Periods of rest were prescribed for various players during the year, along with sending some away to do strength and conditioning work rather than playing international cricket. Comment at the time was mostly adverse, but is it not now apparent how sensible it was for the players concerned?

Similarly derided were the boot camps and field trips, but the extraordinary togetherness of the team has to have been built somewhere. This is a squad which clearly bonds well: I can't think of a previous England party which would have embraced the sprinkler dance so enthusiastically and unselfconsciously. Somewhat childish though that dance may be, it has been noticeable that they have been treated like adults. They have gone out to dinner in restaurants rather than huddling in the team hotel bunker, and they have talked with relish of getting the beers in after a win.

But the real masterstroke came in picking the team for the MCG Test. England had the courage to drop Steven Finn, the bowler who had taken the most wickets until then, because Flower reckoned he had shot his bolt. In came Tim Bresnan to bowl the maidens Finn had been incapable of delivering at the WACA. The contrast with the Australian selectors who thought it a good idea to select a patently unfit Doug Bollinger for Adelaide could not be starker.

It was the players who went out on the field and did the business while the coaching staff sat and watched, but that back-room crew can be justly proud that they had done everything they could to make sure that the team could perform at its best.

The failures of Harmison and Johnson are not entirely their fault: we the public are partly to blame too © Getty Images

Reading a lot of the English coverage following the Melbourne Test, you'd have thought that England had achieved an overwhelming victory, but all they have managed so far is to guarantee that they will not lose the series. Granted, it's a major advance on getting thrashed every time they visit Australia, but the euphoria in the media on retaining the Ashes has been way over the top. Even the Australian press, from what I can gather, has been of the total gloom and doom variety even though Australia have not yet lost.

So far, England have outclassed Australia sufficiently to make it more than likely that they will at least not lose at Sydney and thereby win the whole series, when they will deserve all the encomiums currently being showered, but it's all a bit premature right now.

As is the hailing of Tim Bresnan as the new match-winning hero. He did indeed bowl well, but the real match-winning bowling came from Anderson and Tremlett on the first day: Bresnan simply hastened the inevitable.

The point is important because it would be unreasonable to expect Bresnan to carry on taking hatfuls of wickets. His real contribution will best be measured in future by the maidens column of his analysis, because his actual job is to maintain a suffocating control over the batsmen. If he's bowling at the likes of Cook and Trott or, more to the point, Kallis or Dravid, he isn't going to get them out because they are entirely content to let the scoreboard stand still while they bat if that's what it takes to keep their wickets intact. He is only a danger to good batsmen if they are willing to take the risk of trying to hit balls which are not there to be hit.

But having spear-carriers who can steal the scene relieves some of the burden of the leading players, which has not been a luxury afforded to the Australians as yet by their substitutes and late call-ups.

So unthreatening has Australia's bowling attack been that the burden of expectation on Mitchell Johnson is huge, and if he fails to live up to it, there is huge disappointment.

And it's my theory that it's that burden which weighs him down and prevents him bowling well with any regularity.

I see a great deal of similarity with Steve Harmison. Both he and Johnson burst to prominence with a series of outstanding performances which almost no-one had expected. But then, thrust into the spotlight as the standard-bearers, they found themselves under scrutiny the like of which they had never previously experienced, with every minor flaw and mistake endlessly dissected.

Both had a fair amount to dissect. Neither have a stable, easily repeatable bowling action, but one which has to be precisely right for things to work. Well-meaning attempts to help them with a bit of coaching simply serve to make them conscious of all the things which can go wrong. No longer can they bowl as instinct tells them, which was how they got to be selected to start with: now they worry about whether it is going to come out right, so they are tensed up with the inevitable consequence that it often does not.

And yet, because we know how brilliant they can be when they do get it right, we keep hoping that they will finally remember how to do it in the next match and all the ones which follow.

It is a catch-22. They can only succeed if they are not expected to, which means that you can only afford to pick them when you reckon you can get along without them – because if their first couple of overs reveal that the action is not in rhythm today, the captain will be best off ignoring them until tomorrow.

The failures of Harmison and Johnson are not entirely their fault: we the public are partly to blame too, because we invest our hopes in them and expect too high a rate of return, and they go broke trying to meet the payments we demand.

Well, that's a depressing thought with which to start the New Year, but may I wish everyone a happy one anyway.

Ian Bell is the successor to Michael Vaughan as the premier exponent of classically elegant batting. © Getty Images

Dear Santa,

I hope I've been good rather than bad and nice rather than naughty this year, and that you will therefore look kindly on my Christmas wish.

What I want is a series of five-day cricket matches between my team and yours. Obviously there will be some difficulty fitting it into the international calendar, so what I suggest is that you simply give the World Cup to India and then we can have the matches when that bloated waste of time was scheduled. In South Asia if you like, but only if you can find a couple of pitches there that will assist the pace bowlers: there needs to be a decent variety of conditions for the five-match rubber.

My team is a pretty good one, though by no means unbeatable. The basic criterion for selection has been that I really enjoy watching these players, and I hope you'll enter into the spirit of it by picking players who are at least interesting if not necessarily as attractive as mine. So that means no Bangladeshi pace bowlers or Australian slow bowlers, and above all it means no Jacques Kallis because even thinking about him makes me yawn.

My first opener is Tamim Iqbal because his Lord's hundred was the most enjoyable innings I saw all year. He paid no respect to the solemnity of a Lord's Test match and simply went out there and had fun, which annoyed the England fielders no end. And a good thing too.

Partnering him will be Chris Gayle. The way he uncoils to launch the ball over the boundary reminds me of a bear swatting away buzzing insects which are disrupting his attempts to get on with some serious sleeping. Admittedly the middle of a cricket pitch isn't a very sensible place to try and have a good kip, but then I'm not going to try arguing with a bear, especially not a grumpy one.

Since we're liable to be 36 for 2 by the end of the fourth over as often as we reach 180 for 0 by lunch, we'll probably need a bit of rebuilding. At number three will therefore be Rahul Dravid, the calmest of today's defensive batsmen. Where most defenders make it obvious that the bowling is dangerous, Dravid plays his forward defensive and looks down the pitch slightly puzzled, as if wondering why they are making things so easy.

At number four comes the captain, Mahela Jayawardene. He has to captain because he is one of those, like Graham Gooch, who is transformed by captaincy from a pretty good batsman into a world-beater – he averaged 67 during his stint leading Sri Lanka. He can play the long rearguard innings when required, but it's really for his twinkling feet and jewel-precise stroke-making when in the ascendant that I'm picking him.

The most compelling of today's batsmen is Kevin Pietersen, who will slot in at five. Watching him fills me less with pleasure than with awe, but no other Test player astonishes more often with the audacity of his hitting; although the shots are quite deliberate, you weren't expecting him to hit that ball in that direction.

The only thing missing from Fidel Edwards' aggressive approach to the crease is smoke coming out of his ears © Getty Images

My current favourite batsman comes in at six. Over the last year, Ian Bell has shown that he doesn't lack bottle and that he can score hundreds even if no one else does, thus nullifying the two major criticisms previously levelled at him. To me, he is the successor to Michael Vaughan as the premier exponent of classically elegant batting. He has the strength to give the ball a good, solid clout but relies far more on pinpoint timing and excellent placement to keep the runs flowing like champagne at a tycoon's party.

I was going to be really stuck for a keeper until a few days ago, since I don't think a great deal of any of the current crop of international stumpers, and Kamran Akmal is offensively bad. But then Mark Boucher demonstrated his trick of running people out with his back to the wicket and earned himself a spot in this XI.

Graeme Swann will be the main spinner, because of his attitude. He is an attacking spinner rather than one who relies on boring batsmen out, and he has an engaging personality. He knows that playing a game as a job is inherently ridiculous and refuses to take it too seriously – until there's a batsman standing thirty yards away as he starts his run-up. And just as it was once thought that legspin was destined to become a type of fairly useless bowling practiced only by weird Asians until Shane Warne proved the opposite, so Swann is doing his bit to show that conventional finger spin is not obsolete and can be fairly tricky on any wicket, not just a dustbowl.

Dale Steyn is the obvious choice to lead the pace attack. He is in the line of fast bowlers stretching back through Michael Holding, Dennis Lillee and Fred Trueman, with a controlled run-up which seems to expend little excess energy and a beautifully clean action unleashing highly accurate lightning bolts.

First change will be Fidel Edwards. His run-up is anything but economical, being a full-tilt charge, the only thing really missing being smoke being blown out of his nostrils before the explosion at the end. What gets down to the batsman isn't quite as frightening as the run-up might suggest, but he's still a pretty lively customer.

He won't be opening with Steyn because Chris Martin does swing the new ball a little. I've always felt that Martin is slightly underrated as a bowler; not that he's an unsung genius, but he's a cut above the average hack and a worthy Test match competitor. However, I will admit that what gets him into the side is his batting. Though you know in your heart that he is more than likely to add to his large collection of ducks, there is an exquisite suspense in waiting for the inevitable.

So that's my preferred playing XI. Obviously for a five-match rubber I'll need to have a squad, but you can have first pick of the rest. I'll just say that if you don't want them, my backups would be Graeme Smith, Andrew Strauss or Gautam Gambhir as openers, Younis Khan, Michael Clarke or Jesse Ryder for the middle order, Suleiman Benn as backup spinner and Jimmy Anderson and Ryan Harris as reserve pace men.

Santa, I realise that this is a pretty tall order and you probably won't be able to deliver. But could you (or some of my readers) at least say who you would pick as the opposition so I can at least fantasise about the games?

Best wishes,

Michael

"Whatever else happens during these Ashes, Adelaide will provide a cherished reminiscence for years, even decades to come" © Getty Images

Adelaide was a wonderful victory. It is very rare for England to dominate a match so totally from beginning to end, playing so well as a team, and making so few mistakes.

The last occasion I can remember was against Sri Lanka at Edgbaston in 2002. However, in that game England had major help from the weather. Batting conditions were horrible when Nasser Hussain put Sri Lanka in, and Andy Caddick put in one of his rare, top-quality first-innings spells to skittle the visitors for 162. The weather improved greatly thereafter, and England posted over 500 with the sun on their backs, facing a Murali who bowled 64 overs despite having been unwilling to play because of a very sore left shoulder. This was before he had perfected his doosra and was easy meat for left-handers such as Marcus Trescothick and Graham Thorpe, who both scored superb hundreds; Thorpe getting there with the aid of Matthew Hoggard, who scored 17 out of a last wicket partnership of 91 before going on to take a five-for in the second innings as the Lankans subsided.

But to find anything similar, I think you have to go back 25 years to two matches in 1985.

The first was in January at Chennai. There must have been something in the pitch or the atmosphere because England captain David Gower inserted India, who were quickly undone by some splendid swing bowling from Neil Foster. When England batted, Tim Robinson departed for 74 before Graeme Fowler and Mike Gatting became the first pair of English batsmen to make double-centuries in the same innings to allow Gower to declare at 652 for 7. Foster then removed Gavaskar, Srikkanth and Vengsarkar with 22 on the board, before Mohinder Amarnath and Mohammad Azharuddin put on 190. It was Azhar's second Test and he went on to become the only batsman, till date, to score a hundred in his first three Tests, after he made a hundred in the next Test in Kanpur. England had to bat again and lost Fowler for 2 on their way to 35 for 1 and a win by nine wickets.

The other was against Australia at Edgbaston, where Gower once again decided to field first. When Allan Border and Kepler Wessels had made good progress to reach 189 for 2, it looked to have backfired, but then Richard Ellison stepped in and took three wickets in rapid succession as Australia slid to 218 for 7. The tail now wagged effectively to reach a decent-looking total of 335, which still looked good when Graham Gooch went for 19. But then came one of the most enjoyable stands in England's history. Tim Robinson did the donkey-work, making 148 at a merely respectable tempo while David Gower played the most glorious innings of his career. He still had his golden curly hair then, and it shone in the sun as he reeled off effortless hooks, drives, cuts and glides. It was how Adonis would have batted. Mike Gatting provided the belligerent coda to power England up to almost 600 for 5, following which Richard Ellison was again the main destroyer as Australia lost by an innings.

Adelaide combines elements of both of those: India were on the ropes quickly at Chennai, but there neither Fowler nor Gatting played the kind of masterpiece innings that Gower and Pietersen produced. Gower at his elegant best was more to my taste than KP's imperious domination, so I wish I could award the palm for best victory to Edgbaston, but I can't.

Whereas at both Chennai and Edgbaston, England's chief bowler in both innings was a paceman, Adelaide had Anderson leading the attack in the first innings and Swann spinning England to victory in the second. Thus Strauss's win was a more complete allround performance than either of Gower's games in 1985, and must be accounted England's most impressive victory for at least a generation.

Whatever else happens during these Ashes, Adelaide will provide a cherished reminiscence for years, even decades to come. England could not have found a more perfect way to erase the horrors of four years ago.

With a double-hundred in Adelaide, Kevin Pietersen has put his form woes well behind him © Getty Images

For the dedicated fan back home in England, an Ashes series Down Under is always somewhat disorienting. Those of us with conventional day-jobs tend to have to choose whether to miss the beginning or the end of the day's play, so one always wakes up wondering what happened while one was in the land of Nod.

And since the third morning at the Gabba, what one has woken up to, has been so surprising that it's hard to believe one is not still dreaming. After all, we know what to expect for a series in Australia: the Aussies will bat forever and take wickets for fun; whenever England look as though they might be getting their act together and competing, something disastrous happens and it's back to the depressing old routine. What we are seeing conforms to the correct pattern – except that the hapless team with the wheels coming off are wearing baggy green caps, which is surely the stuff of either fantasy or the ravings of the mentally imbalanced.

More fantastic about this illusion is the list of England heroes. Kevin Pietersen and Alastair Cook spent the English summer making sure we knew they were horribly out of form and are really only in the side because the selectors can't think of anyone better, and it's a well-known fact that Jimmy Anderson is hopelessly ineffective unless he has a Duke ball in his hand and low clouds overhead to make it hoop around. Yet Cook and KP have notched double-hundreds and Jimmy's been the most consistently dangerous bowler on either team.

Even stranger is the Australian bowling attack. They did not do particularly well in England in 2009 or 2010 (against Pakistan), but the explanation given on both occasions was that they weren't all that well-equipped for English swinging conditions; since they were used to taking wickets with Kookaburras on hard wickets, things would certainly be different when they got back to home territory. Inured as we are to the dangers of underestimating Australian bowlers of whom we have seen little, that seemed the sensible view to take. Of course they wouldn't be as potent as Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne – that would be a bit much to expect even for the legendary Aussies – but they would surely be threatening on their own grounds with their own crowds. That they could be just about completely toothless was inconceivable but at their present rate, they will struggle to take twenty wickets in the series, let alone a match.

Which is why I have found it so difficult to write anything about this series so far. Using the head for logical analysis leads one to the conclusion that England's good balanced attack, in-form batsmen and excellent fielding makes them considerably superior to an Australian outfit who are doing their best to live down to the tag applied to Mike Gatting's team 25 years ago, with the exception that Mike Hussey and Brad Haddin can obviously bat. But the heart rebels against such ludicrous over-confidence against Australia in Australia, and the fingers won't hit the keyboard if you try to write sentences like “England are now clear favourites not only to retain the Ashes, but administer a comprehensive drubbing” as though you actually mean them.

Unbelievable. Utterly unbelievable. Surely this is far too good to be true. Perhaps there was something extra in that Lem-Sip I was taking for my cold a week ago.

But while this lasts, I'm enjoying this dream, hallucination or whatever it is.

A repeat of 2009 is far more likely than a repeat of 2005 © Getty Images

I have avoided speculation about the Ashes all year, for a number of reasons. First is my hatred of looking a fool, which is why I try not to make too many predictions. Second is that I find it depressing to witter on about future series when there is actual cricket being played: I'm a great believer that if you take good enough care of the present, the future will look after itself. Obsessing about the Ashes rather than concentrating on beating South Africa, Bangladesh or Pakistan seems to me a stupid way of proceeding.

My third reason was that the series was being ridiculously over-hyped, and I had no desire to add to the billowing clouds of pointless theorising. A prime example of the over-hyping is Cricinfo's poll asking readers to predict the result. I can't honestly pick any of the four alternatives on offer, but by some distance the silliest is the one which is leading the current standings, that it will be a 2005-type classic.

I very much doubt it will be the walkover for Australia that the last half-dozen series Down Under have been, but even that is more likely than “2005: The Return”.

Of course I'd like to be surprised, but I simply can't see where a 2005 repeat would come from. What lifted 2005 into the stratosphere was that it was played by one unquestionably great side and another playing the kind of cricket that great sides play.

England had assembled the mightiest pace attack seen since the West Indies heyday of the 80s, including an all-rounder of the explosive power of an Ian Botham or a Keith Miller, were brilliantly led by Michael Vaughan, whose batting, along with Kevin Pietersen’s, had demonstrated at least the potential for greatness. It may all have fallen apart with embarrassing rapidity afterwards, but for that series we watched two of the most outstanding teams you could wish for playing outstanding cricket. And that is just not going to happen over the next couple of months.

If Pietersen recovers his pre-surgery powers, that will make three world-class players on show in 2010, Ricky Ponting and Graeme Swann being the other two, whereas in 2005, there were only about three players who weren't world-class during the series. It may very well be a close series, and there may well be twists and turns with the result uncertain until the last day of the last Test, but this is a clash between two teams in the middle of the ICC ranking table who are not capable of much more than middle-ranking cricket.

It is, however, likely to be the best Ashes series played in Australia for many a long year, but that's because the others have been such non-contests that even moderately interesting with the losers playing at recognisable Test standard would be sufficient to take the title – and the shared series alternative in the Cricinfo poll is by no means unlikely: it's actually what the rankings would predict.

But my fourth reason for not saying anything was the view I formed immediately after the 2009 series, which was that it was all going to come down to who turned up fit and in form.

Six months before the 2002-3 and 2006-7 series, I thought that England would lose while making at least a decent fight of it, but those ideas were on the basis of what I thought the team was going to be. As it turned out, on both occasions the team landed in Australia carrying a couple of key players who were unlikely to get fit in time, and in fact never did, which uncertainty and dithering was a major factor in the abject capitulations the series ended up being.

This time round, though, it's England with the settled XI who are used to winning things and seem to be match-fit and in decent form and Australia who apparently don't know what their preferred team is (a squad of seventeen - I ask you) and even if they do, most of them seem to be struggling for fitness or form and haven't won a game in ages, let alone a series.

Logically, then, I should pick the England-at-a-canter option but I can't believe in this cantering bit. Even if they win, it's much more likely that they will crash into Australia in the final straight and fall backwards over the line. The most disappointing aspect of England's play these last two or three years is their inability to deal with being in front. Give them a lead and it's just about guaranteed that they will play their worst cricket until the other side have drawn level or, preferably, gone ahead. (It even applies at the personal level: established players seem to make a habit of notching up a succession of mediocre results until it dawns on them they are about to lose their place and turn in a career-saving epic.)

So instead I pick option five, which wasn't on the original poll, which is “England to win a close but undistinguished series, like in 2009.”

Always up for trench warfare - Collingwood © AP images

After my piece on Owais Shah a lively debate ensued, which included this gem of a comment from Sunny Singh: “Some place on earth, a local government has banned mentioning Paul Collingwood and Sachin Tendulkar in the same sentence if batting is being discussed. “

Now, there aren't many current batsmen who merit being mentioned in the same sentence as Sachin Tendulkar, but I suspect Sunny was being rather more disparaging about Collingwood than merely pointing out that he is not one of the all-time greats. His implication seemed to be that Colly isn't even really a Test batsman, let alone a good one, and even if that was not Sunny's intent, there are quite a few fans who subscribe to a view pretty close to it, which got me wondering how fair an assessment it is.

His international debut was as an ODI player. He was able to knock the ball around constructively in overs 20-40 with the bat and deliver some reasonably economical overs of medium-pace in the corresponding period with the ball, and rounded the package off by being an electric fielder at backward point. Bits-and-pieces players rarely do well in Test cricket, and little was expected when he made his Test debut as an emergency backup for an unfit Nasser Hussain in the first match of the 2003-04 series in Sri Lanka.

His first innings of 1 was disappointing but the second innings held promise of things to come, had we known it at the time. At 38, it was numerically unimpressive, but it took 153 balls in just under three hours as England battled, eventually successfully, to save the match against Murali bowling on his favourite ground in Galle. Collingwood was rewarded with another cap in the next match even though Hussain was fit to return, and he obliged with another couple of long-drawn-out 20-odds as England staved off another defeat. He was dropped for the third match, which Sri Lanka promptly won by an innings and 200 to take the series.

It was a mixed beginning. No one had expected the ODI specialist to show such adhesiveness, but equally no one had expected him to be virtually strokeless. He looked like a fox warily trying to escape a pack of hounds, every ball being treated as a potentially fatal thrust, the relief as each was survived evident on his face. The view quickly took hold that he was a batsman of very limited ability who had found Test cricket extremely difficult.

His next appearance did nothing to change that impression. 7 and 10 in a total of 77 balls was hardly an Ashes-winning effort, but he still collected an MBE for being part of the squad. Australians guffawed and confected some synthetic outrage, despite it being no more absurd than the World Cup winners medals collected by Adam Dale, Shane Lee or Jimmy Maher.

Collingwood paid them back for disrespect by scoring a double hundred at Adelaide in the return series, and made good on the MBE this year by being the first England men's captain to lift an ICC limited-over trophy, which would have made him a shoo-in for a gong if he hadn't already got one.

From 2006 to 2008 he was permanently on notice as being liable for the axe if he didn't perform, and would certainly have been sent back to county cricket if he had not made a lively century against South Africa at Edgbaston. Over the next twelve months, though, he dug in for several match-saving innings, particularly in the 2009 Ashes, which earned him much kudos as well as gratitude from the supporting public, standing him in good stead for his slump in this summer's Tests.

I fancy, though, that he gained more credit in team circles for his more anonymous performances as support to the stroke-players. Like Herbert Sutcliffe supporting Jack Hobbs, his function was to give as much strike as possible to Kevin Pietersen or Ian Bell or whoever else was going to play a pyrotechnic solo while he kept the rhythm going on the bass.

In the meantime, he was racking up more ODI appearances than any other England player – and also racking up more ODI sixes than anyone else. In terms of sixes per match, there are bigger hitters, but the sheer number of them puts a big hole in the theory that he is a very limited batsman. He has never lost that rather hunted look, but if you view him positively rather than trying to find fault, it could simply be intense concentration.

Having fully subscribed to the conventional theory in the past, I am changing my mind. Collingwood's strength is that he plays the innings that the team wants from him at any given time, adapting his style to the needs of the moment. Particularly in Test cricket, it would not usually be great tactics for him to play all the shots he knows: he is far better off playing second fiddle to the virtuoso when things are going well and blocking away when the situation is dire.

This does not put him in the SR Tendulkar class, of course, but he can perhaps be seen as following the path of someone like SR Waugh. He is never going to be regarded as one of the greats, but reviewing his career has convinced me that he deserves more respect than he has generally had.

Owais Shah still looks like a richly-talented youngster with a bright future – except that he is now 32 and that future is largely behind him © Getty Images

It was a surprise when Middlesex announced that they were releasing Owais Shah at the end of the season.

A few days later I went to Lord's for my last sight of him as a Middlesex player, and he obliged with a typical Shah innings. Coming in with the team behind the rate in the chase, he put his foot on the accelerator and knocked some powerful boundaries to bring home a rare victory in the CB40, leading the teams off with 56 not out to his name. It was the sort of innings he has played many times for Middlesex as well as several times for England.

There was naturally much muttering from members to the effect that they couldn't understand why the county were getting rid of the side's best batsman, who had served the club loyally for eighteen years, never let the club down, etc. It turned out that the sticking point had been money, not form or performance – at least, not specifically. But when a club is prepared to offer a contract and the player thinks the money is insufficient there is a difference of opinion about how valuable the player is, which has to be a comment on form, performance or both.

Broadly speaking, I'm with the club on this. My admiration for Shah has been pretty limited for some years now.

I was very enthusiastic about the young Shah: in his late teens and early twenties, he looked to be a richly-talented player with a very bright future, quite likely as the mainstay of England's middle order for several years. But Shah has since become an object lesson in how far talent alone can take you – quite a long way, in fact – but also how much further you have to go to become a top-class player.

The big difference between the talented youngster and the accomplished senior professional is that the senior man makes far fewer mistakes. Over time, he has worked on his game and come up with methods of not getting out by making adjustments to his technique and solidifying his defence as well as developing his attacking strategies along with the actual shots. But in Shah's case, I can see very little evidence that much of that development has happened. He still looks like a richly-talented youngster with a bright future – except that he is now 32 and that future is largely behind him.

He never had much polishing to do on his attacking shots; he emerged from his teens almost fully-formed as a stroke-maker – which was why we were all so excited by him – but his shot selection has always been a little shaky. He has often got out playing the wrong shot from the wrong position, which is the sort of incident one is supposed to learn from so as not to do it again.

One can often get away with losing one's wicket stupidly in one-day cricket because it can just look like getting on with it and playing unselfishly, but in multi-day cricket it is rarely forgivable; because there seemed to be little progress on the eradication of such errors, I became increasingly disenchanted with Shah. I hoped that I was wrong after his sprightly 88 on Test debut against India, but it was not to be.

Relatively few players reach the heights that Shah has, despite constantly working on their games because they do not possess Shah's talent. Shah is by no means a failure, but yet I remain disappointed that he has not made more of his gifts. Which leaves me asking myself what right I have to criticise him for what he isn't rather than gladly appreciating what he is.

I have some inchoate thoughts about it being undesirable to have a player around a dressing room who manages to be a leading player despite setting a poor example to the up-and-coming players who then get the idea that they don't have to work hard on their games, but that is a matter for the captain and team management. Which brings us back to where we began: Middlesex are no longer prepared to pay top money to someone who does not display a whole-hearted commitment to excellence. In today's game, talent alone no longer suffices.

Steve Davies starred in England's ODI win over Pakistan © Getty Images

It was a relief to have an ordinary game of 50-over cricket on Friday. (All right, 41-over cricket, but you know what I mean.) Neither England nor Pakistan played particularly well or particularly badly, and the team which played a little better than their opponents ran out the winners. That the winners were England was not very surprising: they've become a very good one-day team over the last 12 months, and the present Pakistan squad are probably only capable of being a good team rather than a very good one.

The absence of the alleged spot-fixers clearly weakens Pakistan's playing strength, though it goes a long way towards re-establishing their moral strength, especially with Shahid Afridi as their leader. All the gossip points to his having absolutely clean hands with regard to shady dealings with bookmakers, which is unsurprising given that shadiness has never been one of his characteristics: here is a man who cheats extravagantly in public, whether it be eating the ball or dancing in the middle of the wicket, so it seems very unlikely that he would waste his time committing crimes without an audience.

He was unable to work any leadership magic on the shell-shocked team for the Twenty20s, which were appalling games of cricket as a result: Pakistan were physically present but their minds were obviously elsewhere. But with the suspected villains on their way home and the news reporters congregating at Heathrow rather than Chester-le-Street, they managed to get round to concentrating on cricket and played tolerably well.

I'm not sure why anyone other than the authorities would be scrutinising these games for evidence of corruption: even illegal bookmakers know when to lie low, and I can't believe any player would be stupid enough to try anything with the spotlight on full glare. (Not that I have any high estimation of international cricketers' intelligence when Kevin Pietersen and Dimitri Mascarenhas have been exemplifying the “twit” in Twitter.)

But you'd have to be extraordinarily suspicious to find anything amiss with Friday's game. There were certainly fumbles and dropped catches by both sides, some batsmen got out to silly shots and some bowlers delivered some rubbish balls, but the same players also usually managed something approaching excellence on other plays. The no-balls were mainly by England, and Stuart Broad's irritation with being called was all too obvious, as is so often the case with England's nominee for Obnoxious Cricketer of the Year, an award which ICC should establish as soon as possible.

The game actually turned on one duel: Steve Davies had an exceptionally good game, largely because he was able to take full toll of Umar Gul having a very bad one. Gul was bowling the lengths and lines which have been very effective for him against most batsmen, but he didn't seem to notice that Davies is about as likely to come forward when batting as he is to volunteer to have his eyes poked with sharp sticks, and thus served up a menu which was entirely to Davies' taste.

Other than those two, though, what we got was ordinariness. In other circumstances, one might well complain about the flaws in both sides's performances, but on this occasion it was comforting to see little more than decency speckled with evidence of normal human frailty. It could quite easily have been a mid-season game between mid-table counties.

We can certainly hope that the remaining matches will be better exhibitions of international-class cricket, but Friday's routine mediocrity was just the sedative the game of cricket needed.

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.

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.

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”.

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.

Experience on the county circuit has definitely helped Andrew Strauss in his role as England captain © PA Photos

In the course of his entertaining tour round the captaincies of national cricket teams, Michael Jeh asked for my thoughts on the England captaincy, a request from my vulpine friend to which I'll gladly accede because I've been meaning to write a bit about Andrew Strauss for a couple of months.

One of the reasons I think Strauss has been quite a success is that he is in a way a traditionally-selected captain, which some of his immediate predecessors certainly were not.

The English view has always been that the captaincy is just as much a specialist position as opening the batting or bowling leg-spin, and that it makes more difference to the performance of the team to have the right man in place than for any of the other positions. With the possible exception of the mid-1950s, England have not had a team packed with superb players since before WW1. There have been times, though, when they have achieved much better results than they looked on paper to deserve - and those times have been when they have had fine captains.

It is the captain who decides what strategy is to be followed and what tactics to employ in carrying it out, and he needs to be given the kind of tools he is comfortable with using. The selectors therefore have to know what tools he wants, so it is pretty pointless deciding on what tools he is going to get before knowing who he is. That doesn't mean the selectors simply let the captain nominate his team, but if he says he intends to neutralise a certain left-handed batsman by bowling off-spin outside his leg stump, the selectors better provide him with an off-spinner or two.

The players also have to be enthusiastic about following their leader if the team is to get anywhere. He thus needs to command their respect, partly as a player and cricket tactician but much more as a man. Particularly on tour, a captain has a lot to do off the field, gauging morale and fitness and putting in train actions to improve both as well as dealing with a load of official nonsense.

It's quite a job description, and it's quite a gamble pitching someone into it unless you have strong evidence that he can fulfill it.

So the traditional way was to make sure that potential England captains spent a season or two as county captains, if necessary by leaning on certain counties to give them the job, which used to be fairly simple because it was quite possible to play two-thirds of a county season as well as playing for England until about the 1990s. Nowadays, however, becoming an England regular just about rules you out of county competition and therefore obviously out of county captaincy. In order to get county captaincy experience, you need to be at a county which has an urgent need for a captain but be a late enough bloomer or have enough competition as a player not to get picked up by England.

Strauss was a good county opener who had been made captain early by Middlesex in the wake of Mark Ramprakash flouncing off for more money south of the river. He was doing a pretty good job as captain as well as scoring quite a few runs as an opener but seemed unlikely to play for England other than very occasionally, given the obvious permanence of the new Vaughan-Trescothick pairing. Then an injury to Vaughan and a spectacular debut put him on the path to England regular-ship, and eventually the captaincy, for which his county captaincy had been useful preparation and shown him capable of the job – and he has had the success which largely eluded the two of his three predecessors with no previous experience of captaincy, let alone that of a county, Andrew Flintoff and Kevin Pietersen.

They were made captains mostly because they were the team's star player of the moment, and there were thoughts that they would get huffy if they didn't get the job and stop performing well. Duncan Fletcher has since admitted that he was quite wrong to push for Flintoff rather than Strauss on those grounds, and frankly I can't see it ever being right to confer the captaincy as some sort of reward for being the best player in the team.

There's nothing wrong with the team's best player being captain, but he has to possess both a cricket brain and a fair old ration of people-management skills to go with his playing ability. Flintoff could manage people but was as likely to lie awake at night thinking of field settings with which to dismiss Jacques Kallis as he was to refuse another beer. Pietersen thinks a lot more about the game than he's probably given credit for, but he is gauche and tactless and so desperate to be loved that being the kind of leader who can take hard decisions and have them willingly accepted is way beyond him. Both failings would have been exposed much earlier if they had attempted to captain counties.

As to the Australian perception that England are somehow weird because former captains regularly play under their successors, it is actually Australia who are the weird ones. I can't think of any other country where it isn't perfectly normal for ex-captains to play on: currently Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Mahela Jayawardene, Shoaib Malik and Shakib al Hasan are playing for their predecessors along with Pietersen. And Shaun Pollock played on for some time after the appointment of Graeme Smith. (I'm not going to rake through New Zealand history for an example, though there must be some, and there's little reason to suppose that Stephen Fleming would have had any difficulty playing under Daniel Vettori if he had wanted to carry on.)

Strauss will not be the last ex-county captain to get the England job: there will always be the odd county which has to appoint a promising young player, and the odd such captain will later make it as an international; currently Yorkshire's Andrew Gale is a Lions regular and must therefore be at least tapping on the selectors' door and Surrey have appointed Rory Hamilton-Brown, who is certainly a promising talent though not yet obviously destined for higher levels.

But more and more England are going to have to develop their captains in what ways they can, like Michael Vaughan, who captained the U-19s and then the Lions (in their former guise as England A). The selectors have twigged that Alastair Cook is probably going to be opening the innings for the next ten years and is likely to have to be captain at some point because there is no-one else with the seniority or experience, so they have been giving him as many opportunities as possible, including the recent tour of Bangladesh which Strauss sat out.

On the field, Cook's inexperience definitely showed – but with any luck he learned enough from his stint to have an idea of what he will have to improve on if he is to be a decent England captain. As always, though, experience will be the key.

Shahid Afridi has had enough of Test cricket © Getty Images

I am sorry that Shahid Afridi will not be appearing in the Test series against England which starts next month. He is one of those players who lights up a cricket field and guarantees that a match will not be dull, at least when he is taking an active part. He himself had not really wanted to come back to Test cricket, but he was prepared to give it a go when pleaded with by the folks back home. Having given it a go, he has shown that his original view was right.

I was sceptical of the view that he only knows one way to bat, but he has proved it correct. That it's a way which has its place in Test cricket there is no doubt, as my defence of his second-afternoon assault attempted to show, but there are plenty of times when it is highly inappropriate, such as on the fourth afternoon. The situation when he came to the crease for the second time was again not at all good for Pakistan, but after he had holed out it was considerably worse, which had not been the case on Wednesday.

I did not think Wednesday's innings was stupid, reckless or irresponsible in the circumstances, but Friday's was utterly gormless.

It won't stop me being a fan, though, especially as he has taught me the true meaning of “larger-than-life”. I happened to be walking through the Long Room when he went out to bat on Wednesday. As we passed, I murmured “good luck” to him, then while I carried on to my seat, it struck me that he was a couple of inches shorter and rather slenderer, particularly in the arms, than I had thought he was. Perhaps he inflates as he crosses the boundary rope, but he does look bigger out there (to me, anyway) than he is in real life.

Since Afridi had only been brought back because the Test team needed a captain, his departure means someone else will have to don the fireproof suit and learn to swim through the oceans of ordure which are the sorry lot of any Pakistan skipper. The rumours suggest it will be Salman Butt, though the fact that he is currently the vice-captain means it will probably be someone else. Nothing is ever as it seems where the PCB is involved.

I have no idea whether he would make a good captain, but Butt was the only Pakistani batsman to emerge from the Test with real credit. He kept his cool in the first innings while the wickets cascaded at the other end. In the second innings he set about the task of building the kind of platform from which a victory push could be made with considerable skill. He really ought to have had a ton, but he made a rare mistake when within sight of it. The idea of his shot was sound but he messed up the execution, which is a pity, but not worthy of criticism. It was not a failure of temperament, since he has amply demonstrated his credentials as a Test match opener in challenging situations.

The rest were awful in the first innings but mostly adequate the second time round – though nothing more than adequate.

What did for Pakistan was being the team who were batting when conditions were at their worst. The way the Pakistani pacemen bowled, Australia would have been all out for under 100 if they had been in on Wednesday. After that calamitous session it was always going to be incredibly difficult to get back into the game but they did not give up until Umar Akmal had his Ian Bell moment, lazily gifting his wicket to the nondescript spinner on the stroke of lunch.

The limp subsidence to defeat after lunch was a depressing anti-climax after what had been a fascinating and highly enjoyable Test. If this is what we are going to get from neutral Tests at Lord's, I for one, want more.

Attack is often the best form of defense © Getty Images

The Pakistan v Australia Test has confirmed that I live in a different universe to the one Henry Blofeld inhabits. As I sat atop the Pavilion on Wednesday evening with the radio commentary on my earpiece, I heard him describe Shahid Afridi's cameo earlier on as “a quite disgraceful innings.”

In my world, “disgraceful” implies some breach of decency or morality, and I fail to see how an innings of thirty in ten minutes is a breach of either. Had he cover-driven the bowler rather than the ball or spent ten minutes audibly and obscenely haranguing the umpire, “disgraceful” would certainly be appropriate, but there is no moral turpitude in hitting sixes or holing out at mid-off. Anyone who thinks there is has, at least in my view, a badly malfunctioning moral compass. Where I come from, the worst you can say of Afridi's innings is that it was stupid or reckless or irresponsible.

Not that I would, as a matter of fact. I have already pleaded guilty to holding Shahid Afridi in high esteem – I am, if you like, a Boom Boom Boy biased towards seeing his actions in the best light – but I thought his innings an entirely rational choice in the circumstances obtaining at the time. I am perfectly willing to listen to an argument that it wasn't, but it had better be a convincing one.

When he came in, Pakistan were still 170 behind with only the tail to come. Five out of the top six had already failed. While Kamran Akmal's dismissal in particular was down to total incompetence on his part, two or three of the others had certainly succumbed to balls which were almost unplayable. The ball was swinging around and seaming, so that good balls were made dangerous and excellent balls close to lethal. Survival for any length of time demanded a solid defensive technique and a decent helping of luck (both of which Salman Butt had displayed).

Knowing that he is not a defensive batsman in the Rahul-Dravid class, Afridi would surely have realised that it was likely to be less than an hour before some holy terror of a ball arrived to end his innings. The question for him, therefore, was how best to use what little time he had.

Presumably the morally-approved choice on Planet Blofeld would have been to attempt to dig in and play cautiously, blocking here, nudging there and hitting the odd, very bad ball for four. If he did well, he could have hung around and scored 25 off 60 before the inevitable jaffa sprayed its juice over him. For most batsmen, it might well have been the only sound option.

But Boom Boom Afridi had another course open to him. He is one of the very few people who could try mounting an all-out assault like Ian Botham's at Headingley in 1981 or Nathan Astle's at Christchurch in 2002, and have a modest chance of success. Granted, reaching a hundred or two as they did was very unlikely, but in the circumstances Afridi was facing, where he could expect to score no more than about 25 anyway, reaching even 20 would leave his team no worse off. And if he could get 70 or more, he would have changed the game's momentum. Only if he failed completely would he have done real damage to his side's cause.

Had things been different, I might have much more reason to criticise. Were he batting ahead of the English or South African tails which contain the likes of Swann, Steyn, Morkel or Bresnan, there could well have been more mileage in trying to hang around. If Pakistan had been 17 behind rather than 170, digging in until they were about 20 ahead and then launching an assault would have been my recommendation.

But things were not different, and so I am entirely content with his choice.

And that, my friends, concludes the case for the attack.

Monday's innings against Bangladesh gives us a strong clue about how Strauss is reinventing himself © PA Photos

“I guess how Strauss reinvents himself for 50-overs ODI will decide how compelling a case England makes for World Cup glory. Right now, it is hard to see the purist shine in a difficult ODI situation … Strauss will need to go the Martin Crowe way (1992 World Cup) to take this side all the way," says Kunal Tageri, commenting on my piece "The joke's no longer on England"

Monday's innings against Bangladesh gives us a strong clue about how Strauss is reinventing himself. In posting the third-highest individual score by an England player in an ODI, he surpassed his own 152 against the same opponents five years ago. He actually scored slightly faster in that 2005 game as England rattled up 391, but the big statistical difference is in the sixes column: none in 2005 and five in 2010. And it's not just against weak Bangladeshi bowling that he's been doing it: he cleared the ropes a few times during the recent series against Australia too.

The wagon wheel of his innings yesterday is revelatory. In his early years, fielding captains could leave the arc from extra-cover round behind the bowler to midwicket completely empty and have nothing to worry about because Strauss so rarely played in the traditional V. Yesterday, the sixes were all in that area, and a good fifth of his other scoring shots were down the ground too. Captains are going to have to think harder about how to contain and dismiss him. Strauss was already a successful Test player, so it shows that the good can get better by assiduous practice and working on things in the nets.

Even the excellent can do it: eight or so years ago, Muttiah Muralitharan made right-handed batsmen lie awake all night worrying about how to deal with him, but left-handers like Brian Lara and Marcus Trescothick could pick him off with relative ease since he always bowled over the wicket and lbw was not a consideration. Then, after some unknown time in rehearsals, he unveiled his doosra and started bowling round the wicket as well. Right-handers who had difficulty before were now totally lost while the Laras and Trescothicks could manage only modest scores before perishing. The superb had become supreme.

While Strauss the Test expert has made himself a proper ODI player, the next couple of weeks will show something of whether Shahid Afridi has managed the reverse.

Where Strauss and Murali expanded their technical skills to become better players, “Boom Boom” will have to develop his mental arsenal. There were signs of it in the World Twenty20 Final (of all events) last summer. Afridi played one of the most measured and responsible innings you could wish for; it was calculated and controlled in a way which one had never previously associated with the flamboyant slogger who first burst on the scene.

We have always known that he possesses talent in abundance. Time has meant that he has grown up somewhat – though I hope he never loses his impish streak – and being given the responsibility of captaincy demands that he grows up even more. It is important to any team's success that the captain sets an example of commitment and focus, but when it comes to Pakistan, it is probably the single most important factor in which of their various teams turns up on the day.

If he can discipline himself to be a Test player, Afridi has the talent for eventual greatness. He is the kind of player whose good performances are majestically inspirational, and his on-field demeanour suggests the generosity of spirit shown by Fred Flintoff or Adam Gilchrist.

It may be apparent that I am something of an Afridi fan. Well, your Honour, I'll plead guilty to that: I've always liked watching him. What I would like to do by the end of his career is admire him.

Bangladesh beat England for the first time in any format on July 10 © Getty Images

Congratulations to Bangladesh on their first win against England! Now they have completed the set by beating all the top eight teams; presumably they can take their stamped bingo card to the prize counter in Dubai and get a lifetime supply of falafel or a giant fluffy rabbit.

As with their previous wins against the senior teams, the Tigers caught their opponents having a bad day (I was going to say “caught them on the hop”, but that would have been in poor taste given Ian Bell's unlucky injury). England's catching was poor, their bowling lacklustre and their batting as ghastly as it's been in quite a while, and Bangladesh were competent and cool-headed enough to capitalise. But it's a measure of how far they haven't come that their celebrations were so ecstatic: they will have truly advanced only when they are merely quite pleased rather than flabbergasted when they win.

Bangladeshi ODI wins are still rare enough that each prompts the odd reflection on their previous ones. I immediately recalled their last victory on a tour of England and Wales, when they beat Australia at Cardiff in 2005. That was based around a magnificent hundred by Mohammed Ashraful, who then seemed on the road to stardom.

As we now know, though, Ashraful has hardly scored an international run in ages and is one of the biggest disappointments of the last decade. The moaners who insist on disputing the Tigers' credentials will no doubt suggest that one couldn't expect anything better, but I doubt that it has anything to do with him being Bangladeshi and everything to do with him being a cricketer. If anything, the decline of Ashraful is an indicator of progress, albeit somewhat perverse. The growing chorus that he should be dropped because Bangladesh now have better batsmen who don't fail all the time is what you don't hear from emerging nations with no self-confidence.

Every country brings forward the odd player who has a spectacular rise and looks like a potential world-beater but fades almost as fast, for reasons no one actually understands although they spend forever debating them. Vinod Kambli and Steve Harmison were both going to become legends, and are now only legendary for their failures. Though they are obviously young enough to come again as Ricky Ponting did, JP Duminy and Ajantha Mendis have lost places which seemed to be theirs for the next decade and are nowhere near their predicted superstardom. These at least put Ashraful in reasonable company.

It underlines how uncertain sporting predictions are, and that the only sensible advice about them is contained in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: “Expect the unexpected”.

Which is what I was driving at in my last piece when suggesting it plausible that England could win the ICC World Cup final in a few months' time. I am thoroughly convinced by Michael Jeh's view that although West Indies are probably outsiders and New Zealand would have to undergo their customary World Cup transformation, any of the other six top teams can win without it being a huge surprise. Those commenters who earnestly mounted elaborate arguments to show my suggestion was utterly silly because of how marvellous other teams were are invited to consider how well similar pre-tournament punditry panned out with regard to the FIFA World Cup, in which England were supposed to lose their semi-final to Brazil.

However, despite their win yesterday, I am pretty confident that Bangladesh will not be a finalist: the interesting question is which of the fancied outfits they will fell.

England have improved enough to be taken seriously as ODI competitors © Getty Images

Despite the strenuous efforts of those who have to find something to say or write every day to convince me that the ODIs between England and Australia had some relevance to the Ashes this winter, I remain firmly of the belief that the series was largely superfluous and meant very little beyond avenging the 6-1 result last summer.

Half of the England side will have very little to do with the Test series in a few months time, after all. Neither Luke Wright nor Mike Yardy have any business near a Test squad and Craig Kieswetter's wicketkeeping is not good enough to recommend him as the backup to Matt Prior. Eoin Morgan will almost certainly be in the squad but will only get to play if there are injuries to the specialist batsmen, and Tim Bresnan has no obvious qualifications to be in the first-choice XI. If there was one thing we learned from the series against Bangladesh, it was that Bresnan is not a Test-class new-ball bowler, and that Ajmal Shazad is a better old-ball bowler to boot. Bresnan may be a marginally better bowler than Jacques Kallis, but Kallis doesn't get into the South African side on the strength of his bowling, and Bresnan offers rather less than Kallis with the bat.

Admittedly, most of the Australian ODI XI would be in serious contention for places in the Test team but the one who would be of most significance is Shaun Tait, who doesn't play first-class cricket.

Tait's opening spell at Lord's was a fearsome piece of fast bowling in any type of cricket, and one can easily see why people will be trying to persuade him to change his mind and make himself available. I'd like to join those efforts, although perhaps not with the best of motives. I'd strongly urge Australia to build him up as their talismanic match-winner and get him fit and firing for the first Test, so that he can break down mid-Test and Australia can spend the rest of the series dithering about their selections and eagerly scrutinising fitness reports, just as England spent a good couple of years hoping that Fred Flintoff would turn up fit for a match or two, thus destabilising the team and making life difficult for themselves.

What the series was more relevant to was my colleague Michael Jeh's piece about prospects for the World Cup. Fully embroiled in the English season myself, the World Cup is a long way down my list of things to think about but Fox has made me sit up and realise that something extremely weird has happened.

At this stage in a World Cup cycle, it is traditional for England to be wringing their hands and wondering where they are going to get eleven convincing 50-over practitioners, let alone a complete squad. The summer's ODIs and the series following the Ashes see a parade of unlikely candidates with strangely impressive domestic records getting runs in the side which they use to prove their mediocrity, and we end up going into the tournament without much clue as to what side we will pick or what they will do on the field.

Today, though, and barring a string of major injuries between now and then, England have no such uncertainty. It is quite conceivable that the England XI which just played against Australia could turn out in the World Cup final, and they would stand a reasonable chance of winning it. And on the evidence of the series we have just had, it is entirely possible that their opponents would not be Australia.

Those are not predictions, of course. It is merely an arresting way of saying that England have improved enough to be taken seriously as ODI competitors instead of being regarded as jokes, only there to make up the numbers and that Australia have declined sufficiently that they aren't the white-hot favourites they have been for the last two.

The world has been turned on its head. I think I need a lie-down.

The England-Australia ODIs are "a pointless irrelevance and should not have been staged" © Getty Images

The cockles of an English cricket fan's heart can always be warmed by seeing England beat Australia at cricket. I suppose that if it were inevitable that an England win in such a game would mean the outbreak of global nuclear war, or the massacre of the hostages taken in reprisal for a previous victory, there might be some twinge of concern but otherwise I cannot conceive of it being unwelcome.

And yesterday's game was an entertaining one, with some unexpectedly good batting from Michael Clarke, who has not always shone in limited-over cricket, what is fast becoming characteristically good batting from Eoin Morgan to outdo Clarke for the Player-of-the-Match award, and the result remaining in doubt until about the last eight or ten overs. All in all, pretty much what the doctor prescribes when someone complains of not having seen England beat Australia often enough.

But what on earth is the point? Why is this five-match series being played at all? Yes, I know the answer is that it makes money, but if ever there was an example of pointlessly adding to the international schedule, this is surely it.

Australia are only here at all because Leeds is dressing up as Lahore and London doing its best to be Karachi for Australia's tour of Pakistan, just as movies set in New York are often actually filmed in Toronto. They were here last year for the main event and we're off to their place this winter for the return bout, so this is just redundant - international cricket for international cricket's sake.

True, the England football team may be out of the FIFA World Cup by the time you read this, but if they manage to squeeze through, that's where the nation's attention is going to remain focused, and if they don't the sports media are in any case going to spend at least the next two weeks on the post mortem. Nobody except rabid cricket fans is going to even notice these ODIs are taking place.

And rabid cricket fans already had a juicy item on their menu as an alternative to the football in the shape of the Twenty20 Cup, the competition which usually guarantees full houses at small grounds and crowds of 15,000-plus at the big ones. This would have been the ideal opportunity to let fans see their England heroes in their county colours and thus promote the Twenty20 Cup as the premier event the ECB keep telling us it is and give it a serious chance of surviving the deadening effect of the soccer. In fact, Middlesex were promoting the Twenty20 as an opportunity to see six internationals playing – Adam Gilchrist, David Warner and Owais Shah are appearing, but Andrew Strauss, Eoin Morgan and Steven Finn have been removed from the fray by their England commitments. There is surely a case to be answered about truthfulness in a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority should anyone care to lodge one.

Of course I shall continue to watch the games, turning up in person to the one at Lord's, and with any luck be generally entertained by them. There is a novelty value in the fact that it is no longer inevitable that England will lose unless their opponents make a horrible mess of things – which is perhaps all the tweaking that was necessary to redeem the format for English audiences – and England v Australia is, as I said at the beginning, never entirely devoid of meaning.

But it is still a pointless irrelevance and should not have been staged.

Tamim Iqbal's savage century at Lord's highlights just how much Bangladesh cricket has improved © Getty Images

I enjoyed the Lord's Test more than I was expecting to. Even if when Bangladesh fielded, it was the predictable routine of the class side treating the hopefuls with something approaching disdain, when they were batting we watched real competition quite worthy of the designation “Test cricket”.

Shahadat Hossain was the first Bangladeshi ever to get his name on the Lord's honours board, which is certainly a huge achievement. That he picked up his five-for largely through the generosity of careless batsmen or, in the case of Alastair Cook's dismissal, a careless umpire does not take away from its significance in Bangladesh cricket history. It was a reward for persistence and being the bowler who looked least out of place: he looked like a county bowler finding the step up difficult while the others looked like local amateurs volunteering to give net practice.

Tamim Iqbal, the other Bangladeshi to get his name on the boards, however, got there by playing one of the most dazzling innings ever seen in a Test on the old ground. On the one day of the match when the sun shone brightly, Tamim produced an innings which beautifully matched the weather. There have certainly been bigger Test hundreds scored at Lord's, and at least one was scored quicker - Mohammed Azharuddin's century in 1990 came off fewer balls, and it is possible that Percy Sherwell's in 1907 did too in the absence of a reliable count of balls faced for matches back in his era - but I doubt that any have been played so joyously. So carefree looked his batting that he could have been having a casual thrash with his mates on a tipsy Sunday afternoon a couple of hundred yards away in Regent's Park rather than opening the batting for his country in a Lord's Test.

Not that it was stupid or mindless: as he said afterwards, his main aim was to hit the ball where the fielders weren't and he largely succeeded in fulfilling his plan - such as it was. Slip fielders placed traditionally for the opening overs are largely redundant since he is not a great driver and hardly ever edges behind, and he hits it so hard that even those he does edge usually go way over the head of any pertinent fielder in a close catching position, which means there are usually acres of space for him to send the ball towards. It is by no means as risky as it looks to the conventional eye.

Test captains and new-ball bowlers still treat this type of opening assault as an offence against nature: it is so far away from what is “supposed” to happen that they usually flounder in response. The bowlers get angrier and more frustrated and the captain has to cope with trying to set a field which might have some people in the right places while making allowances for bowlers bowling less reliably. For someone like Strauss, it is obviously a nightmare. But with the likes of Chris Gayle and Virender Sehwag as well as Tamim on the circuit, it behoves captains, coaches and think tanks to devote some serious attention to finding a method to contain these explosions.

Supporting Tamim, Imrul Kayes finally managed his maiden half-century and Junaid Siddique showed the solidity which had started to become evident when England visited Bangladesh earlier in the year. Taken overall, the Tigers' batsmen fully justified their Test status. Even tittering about or being embarrased by Bangladesh's bowling, the Lord's Test was no more or less of a mismatch than Nasser Hussain's youthful England side taking on Australia in the 2002-03 Ashes. Bangladesh weren't able to draw, let alone have a chance of winning, but this performance in overseas conditions shows that they have truly graduated.

Will Eoin Morgan's methods work in the longest version? © Getty Images

The headlines said that Paul Collingwood and Stuart Broad are being “rested” from England's first Test against Bangladesh later this week. True enough, if they aren't in the squad, they won't be playing, but it's a funny old defintion of “rest” which means that Broad will be pumping iron pretty intensively in the gym to build his strength up while Collingwood does rehab on his shoulder. The basic message is that 90% fit is not fit enough: they would rather have eleven fully-fit players than the eleven theoretically-best with a couple of them unable to perform to their maximum.

It takes a bit of getting used to, but it is the logical result of year-round international cricket. The old-timers would have raised a stink rather than an eyebrow at “resting” a first-choice player from a home Test, but in their day a player who was getting jaded would take the winter off to get recharged after too much cricket: the only tour it was impermissible to sit out voluntarily was an Ashes. (Well, you could sit it out if you chose, but it would put a big blackmark in the selectors' notebooks.)

The immediate consequence is that Eoin Morgan is set to make his England debut in the long form of the game, which will be fascinating.

Since I tipped him for success a year ago, Morgan has amply demonstrated that he is one of the most exciting limited-over players in the world, but picking him for Tests represents quite a leap of faith by the selectors.

Morgan's first-class record is pretty modest. His career amounts to 2500 runs at 36, including 6 centuries, one of them a not-out double. Not exactly screaming for Test selection. Nor has he been distinguishing himself in the first half of this year's championship: what with the ODIs against Australia, the IPL and the World Twenty20, he last played a first-class match last August, when he scored 16 and 17 against the might of Glamorgan.

And it's a well-known fact that there are players who are geniuses against a white ball but rather less than overwhelming when it comes to Tests. Michael Bevan was known as the greatest finisher of them all in ODIs – and left-handed rocket power at the end of an innings is also what Morgan is good at – but he never established himself as a Test player. Despite having played the format for seven years, Yuvraj Singh has yet to really convince as a Test player while being one of the game's most dangerous one-day batsmen.

England will be hoping that he does not follow in their footsteps but instead treads the path marked out by Michael Vaughan, who had a similarly uninspiring first-class record when picked for England but blossomed into (briefly) the number one ranked Test batsman in the world.

Morgan could not be much further from Vaughan in terms of style. Vaughan was perhaps England's most classical batsman since Peter May while Morgan's range of shots has yet to be fully documented by researchers into new species. But what both of them have is extraordinary phlegm: one of Morgan's more impressive traits is his obvious calm at the crease whatever the situation – a coolness which Vaughan was required to show on his Test debut, finding himself standing there with the responsibility of digging England out of the hole of being 2-4.

It has to be said that it will be a major surprise if Morgan faces anything similar when he walks out to bat against Bangladesh. Nor is he all that likely to have to do the job with which Collingwood, whom he nominally replaces, has become most associated - that of remaining strokeless for hours trying to stave off almost inevitable defeat.

The suspicion is that if the scoreboard isn't clicking up the runs at a regular rate, Morgan will become frustrated and start playing silly shots and get out. With Morgan, of course, one has to be quite careful when describing a shot as “silly” because what is unconventional and unorthodox for a Vaughanesque batsman may be one of Morgan's most well-practiced strokes – but that probably won't stop people labelling a safe-looking backward flip which is impossibly caught by a salmon-leaping fielder as irresponsible.

Whether Morgan is a Bevan or a Vaughan is the question the selectors are appointed to estimate the answer to. And it can only be their best estimate: the beauty of this sport is that none of us, not even Morgan himself, can possibly know how he will fare until he goes out and tries.

	At last, England has left the club of never-won-anythings © Getty Images

I had expected to get more excited when England won the World Twenty20, but as it was all I felt was a mildly warm glow. I don't think it was because it was “only Twenty20”, though, but because the final was so undramatic.

I punched the air and cheered as the first three Australian wickets went down, but from then on the match took on a peculiar inevitability. Australia never looked like getting a really challenging total, and when England had got through the Powerplay with only one down, it never really looked as though they would not get there. It was a thoroughly efficient and professional performance, the proverbial but run-of-the-mill good day at the office. But without the tension of will-they-won't-they permeating the match, there was no explosion of relief and joy as they got over the line, just quiet satisfaction.

A world title is a world title, though, and at last, we have left the club of never-won-anythings to join South Africa, India and New Zealand in the haven't-won-muches.

If a single player had to win the Player of the Tournament, then Kevin Pietersen was a good choice. His most un-English characteristic is a love of praise and adulation; most Brits at least affect humility and embarrassment when showered with praise, but KP positively radiates joy. Unlike a lot of people, the best way to motivate him is to tell him how brilliant he is: he is not a man to rest on his laurels but to eat them for nourishment. And as several people from various squads and fan-bases have said, it is excellent for world cricket that KP is back on song, since he provides some of today's most compelling spectacle in any form of cricket.

But if the rules had allowed it, I would not have given him the award. The real engine of England's success was the five-man bowling attack who bowled all but about three overs of the team's entire campaign.

Each of them had a game where they were the pick of the unit and, with the possible exception of Graeme Swann, they each had a game where they did not do quite as well as the others, but as a whole they were fantastically consistent. No team ever looked like taking the bowling apart and launching themselves into the stratosphere, whether they were batting first or chasing whatever target England had set. There was variety in pace and angle, but what was truly impressive was their quick assessment of how to bowl to the conditions and the specific batsman and execute their plan with aplomb.

Of course, that has always been England's strength in limited-overs cricket: the team's lack of success over decades has been because the batting was not adventurous enough,not because the bowling was particularly inadequate. The volume of limited-overs cricket on the county circuit means that most bowlers have a pretty good idea of how to bowl to keep the runs down, in which most county batsmen cheerfully acquiesce – and that acquiescence has shaped the feeble batting at international level.

Triumph whets the appetite for more, so speculation has already begun about what this means for the future of Andrew Strauss in the 50-over side, of which he is still nominally captain and whether England will retain the Ashes, but to me those are issues to be thought about later. Now, we can say that England are the best international Twenty20 side and start laughing at someone else.

	England are not just winning matches, they are playing highly attractive, watchable cricket © Getty Images

It is a week of wonders. Following an inconclusive general election, Britain now has her first-ever Conservative-Liberal coalition government while in the Caribbean, the England cricket team have cantered through to the semi-finals of an ICC limited-over tournament and give every appearance of being genuine contenders. Anyone who bet on either event happening a month ago can probably afford an IPL franchise now.

This is not the place to be discussing British politics, however fascinating, but it is a very strange feeling indeed to be an England fan who can seriously entertain thoughts of his cricket team winning a men's World Twenty20. Australia have appeared so powerful that it's hard to see past them as eventual winners, but England look at least as well-equipped to topple them as either of the Asian teams left in the semis, and we know anything can happen in Twenty20.

The natural pessimism of the England fan forces one to pick holes, but it is surprisingly difficult to find the opening. Paul Collingwood's form with the bat seems to have gone west, but his captaincy is now at least competent, a major advance from when he was ODI captain against New Zealand a couple of years ago and obviously had no clue about how many overs his bowlers had, let alone when to put them on or what field to set. The only real under-performer has been Stuart Broad, who seems to be shedding braincells at an alarming rate. So well is the team functioning, in fact, that it is even possible that the next Twenty20 international England play after the World Twenty20 will not see a new opening partnership.

And glory be, they have been playing highly attractive, watchable cricket. In the last 15 years, England have occasionally made a decent showing in a limited-over tournament in terms of winning some games, but you wouldn't have recommended their games to neutrals as enjoyable exhibitions. In this tourney, however, we have seen both Pietersen and Morgan play innings of considerable style, power and invention and the likes of Lumb, Kieswetter and Wright clouting the ball to all parts. (Well, in Wright's case it's not to all parts because he only has the one shot to cow corner, but you know what I mean.) The bowling has been varied, intelligent and adaptable and the catching quite often spectacular. Nothing has showed the vast improvement in the team as a whole to better advantage than Ryan Sidebottom, something of a fielding donkey, and butter-fingered Kevin Pietersen both taking spectacular running catches in the deep.

Whatever happens in today's semi-final against the Lankans, England can go home feeling they've earned some respect and done themselves somewhere near justice. Of course, if they win today and then go on and win the Final they will have done themselves more than justice and earned as much respect as others are prepared to give them (which, it being England, won't be a great deal), but it's probably worth saying that to have got even this far is a huge step forward for England's perennial disappointers.

I'll now put the mockers on their chances by wishing them good luck, but even so they've had a good run.

It has been good to get back to watching cricket live, even if it was perishingly cold for the first two days. It would be pleasant to record that it was also a fine match, but one cannot have everything, so a few random reflections will have to suffice.

I arrived for the summer's second day at Lord's just as a Middlesex wicket fell. As is the modern way, out trotted the Glamorgan twelfth man with the drinks for the fielders. Usually the drinks waiter is a lowly young hopeful but on this occasion it was the former Test player and captain of the county, Robert Croft. It was a poignant reminder of the passage of time, of how the end of a lengthy career can often resemble its beginning.

After sixteen years of being picked whenever fit and available, Croft is no longer Glamorgan's number one spinner, a title which has now devolved on this year's beneficiary Dean Cosker. Croft is back to where he started, hoping that conditions will favour him getting picked – which may well depend on who is injured and who isn't, or who has been called up for England duty.

This is part of the attraction of watching domestic cricket: you get to see the whole story of a career, the rise through the ranks, a peak possibly involving international recognition, and then the gradual decline and fade before more or less voluntary retirement.

Some take offence at being dropped and retire almost immediately, others recognise that you are a very long time retired and seek to hang on for as long as possible: we will find out over the next few months how Crofty will react to this early portent.

At the other end of their careers are Middlesex's Sam Robson and Adam London. Both made their championship debuts last season but neither would have been playing if it were not for the IPL, which has stolen Owais Shah and Eoin Morgan.

Last season, both Robson and London made their maiden first-class centuries but between them they have managed 92 runs in eight innings so far this season. With Scott Newman, the experienced opener signed from Surrey over the winter, having scored only 16 in four attempts, the Middlesex batting has basically failed so far, leading to two comprehensive losses.

Unsurprisingly, then, Middlesex members could be heard grumbling all round the ground. Traditionalists expostulated about Shah and Morgan's lack of loyalty while pragmatists could not blame the players for seeking to maximise their incomes but would happily have shot Lalit Modi for his selfish scheduling.

Of course, the real problem is that Middlesex's bench strength is more like bench weakness. While one does not expect stand-in batsmen to produce double centuries, it should be taken for granted that they will at least reach double figures. The only comfort to be taken from the youngsters' failures is that Robson was playing for Australia's U-19 team a couple of years ago and if he's representative of the cream of new Australian cricketers, England will be regaining and then holding the Ashes for many years once we've got over the pain of losing them again this coming winter.

Though we won't be losing them if Steve Finn has his way. His opening spell on the first day was extraordinarily impressive to those who had watched him last year. In 2009, he could bowl good balls but interspersed them with regular loose deliveries of uncertain direction, and he tired easily. This time, he opened with eight overs of superbly disciplined bowling, just about every ball on the stumps and on an unhittable length. That he got only one wicket was more down to ill fortune than any great competence on the parts of Powell and Rees. Finn at least has used his winter profitably.

	The county championship is underway © PA photos

This is the first year that the IPL has been available on a channel in my satellite package, and it has been fun to watch it. It has also been enlightening: I have learned that for me, watching cricket is essentially partisan.

If England, Yorkshire or Middlesex are playing, then I am already hooked and know which side I want to win (Yorks to beat Middx when they meet). If Surrey or Australia are playing, then I know which side I want to lose. If anyone else is playing I generally want the result which will be of most benefit to one of the sides I actually support - although if it's international cricket, I'm usually in favour of West Indies or Pakistan with the proviso that I don't want the result which will put England out of the tournament.

But none of those considerations apply when I watch an IPL game. It makes no difference to any of my teams whether Delhi beat Chennai or Bangalore lose to Kolkata - except perhaps in some roundabout way involving the availability of players when the Champions League is on.

This is not a criticism of the IPL, just a recognition that in my psyche Mumbai v Rajasthan is of less emotional significance then even Derbyshire v Northants, two counties to which I am basically indifferent. When watching the counties play, I can at least do some scouting for potential England players among the supporting cast of players I know little about, but in the IPL, the support cast are up-and-coming Indians and I simply don't have enough time or interest to maintain a mental log of potential Indian internationals as well as English ones.

Of course I can get caught up in the drama of a close finish, and I can easily appreciate a virtuoso display by a master of the game, but a lot of cricket involves neither a maestro nor much in the way of tension, so I need to find something else to hang my hopes on.

I need to hope for something from the next ball. To put it crudely, if my side is batting I want a boundary (or simple survival in the latter stages of a Test which needs saving), and if we're bowling, I want a wicket. And if I couldn't care less which happens, then my attention can quite easily wander; if there is something more interesting to watch on another channel or something more interesting to do, I don't feel any regret about turning the cricket off.

Sport is at one level simply a display of athleticism and in a yonks-ago post, Michael Jeh effectively said that display is why he watches cricket – so he can watch neutral games with just as much enjoyment as any. But for me, sport is about conflict and competition, and watching it is about taking sides, about being elated or depressed as fortunes swing.

With the IPL, I find that all I want to do is watch certain players. If an English player is on show, I want him to succeed personally; I always enjoy seeing Dwayne Bravo, Anil Kumble or Ross Taylor doing well and Yuvraj Singh or Jacques Kallis doing badly (not that I've been much rewarded for that latter hope). But cricket is a team game, and if you're only watching a few individuals, you are not appreciating the whole event.

There may be less immediate action and it isn't on the telly, but now the county championship has started I've got cricket to get my teeth into – and, next week, to go and watch. So it's thanks very much to the IPL for filling in some dead time, but now the real thing is underway....

"Bangladesh - catching up with the big boys in Test cricket" © Associated Press

Bangladesh v England was a very boring Test series, which represents a triumph, if perhaps a modest one, for Bangladesh.

Five years ago, a Bangladesh Test involved far more action than it should have. There would be a day and a half of their opponents gaily bashing their way to 500-6 or so, surrounded or followed by a day and a half of Bangladeshi batsmen throwing their twenty wickets away like confetti, and the whole ritual would be over in three days.

Now it takes five days to beat Bangladesh. They have enough batsmen with enough gumption to bat extremely boringly in the name of crease occupation and enough bowlers who may not be threatening but can at least bowl a line and length which keeps the runs down for them to have chances of drawing a game. Another fifteen overs batting at Mirpur and England would have needed 250 off 40 overs, which ought to have been possible to defend, which means Bangladesh came quite close to achieving a draw, which is by no means bad. If they had been luckier with the umpiring, England could well have had to bat for more than a day to get 350, which would have been an even more interesting prospect.

Five years ago, Mohammad Rafique was their only Test-class player; Habibul Bashar was thought to be, but he rightly acquired the nickname “Habitual Basher” and was soon shown to be nothing but a slogger. Now they have three definites and a couple of probables.

Shakib is that rare beast, the genuine Test all-rounder: with the possible exception of Sri Lanka, who might not have room for a slow-left-arm-bowling all rounder, and New Zealand who already have one, any Test side would be happy to pick him, and he would be worth his place in either discipline.

Tamim Iqbal will spend his career being criticised for throwing his wicket away, but since he is liable to have scored at least fifty runs before doing it, the criticism will miss the point. In the time he is at the crease, he can wreak havoc. Alastair Cook was clearly thrown badly off-course during his first-morning assault in the second Test, and such impact can make it easier for his batting partners. Well, some of them at least, because there is no helping Imrul Kayes, who is clearly not up to batting at Test level. But Tamim's ambition is clearly to be Virender Sehwag when he grows up, and there's little reason to suppose that he can't do it.

Mushfiqur Rahim is another class batsman with a rather more admirable temperament for Test cricket. He has some nice shots but also showed his tenacity and ability to bat for long periods. On the other hand, his wicketkeeping leaves much to be desired, being no better than that of Rahul Dravid or Marcus Trescothick, stand-ins who kept in ODIs in order to accommodate extra bowlers.

Junaid Siddique gained a lot of confidence from his maiden Test hundred at Chittagong and played very nicely at Mirpur, but I'm still suspicious that he can only cope with Test-class bowling on pitches which have been drained of all life. Mahmudullah, or “Armadillo” as my wife calls him, may have some talent too, but much more evidence is needed.

That is at least the nucleus of a team.

In cycling terms, they have still not caught up with the peloton, but the peloton is very much in view. One boost, and they will be there. That boost needs to be the discovery of a new bowler, preferably a quick, who is at least as good as Mashrafe Mortaza was before he broke down, seemingly irretrievably.

Without such a bowler, they have almost no chance of bowling a decent side out twice, which means that they are very unlikely to win any matches, but the coming years should see them drawing on a fairly regular basis. Bangladesh are no longer a hopeless joke team who should not be playing Test cricket, but a weak team who still need to do a lot of work, much like New Zealand in the 1930s. Achieving that milestone is a triumph.

"Monty's problem, actually, is that he isn't Indian enough and is only an English spinner" © Getty Images

I don't know what headline has attracted you to read this piece: I don't do headlines. I occasionally suggest a title, but always with the understanding that the excellent Cricinfo sub-editors will substitute their own if they can think of something better, which they invariably can. Occasionally, it has to be said, their headline strikes a note slightly out of tune with the text, after which I can expect to receive a number of comments arguing more with the headline than the words for which I was responsible.

After reading Samir Chopra's response to it, I suspect something similar has happened with Mike Atherton's Times article about British Asian cricketers. Atherton has never given me the impression that he has some kind of downer on Asian cricketers, and the phrase to which Samir objected, “culture of failure”, appears nowhere in the text. On the other hand, the Times is not notably foreigner-friendly, and perhaps the sub-editor was putting his own spin on things.

Ignoring the headline and looking at the text with the expectation that the author did not believe in a culture of failure, it reads to me as a fine debunking of the idea which has begun circulating among the backwoodsmen and newspapers of the Little Englander persuasion and to which this article is mostly replying, though he also attempts to deal with the counter-view proposed by the odd Asian advocacy group that they have been dropped because the English establishment wishes the Asians would go away.

Dutifully he examines the cases of each of the British Asians who have fallen from the selectors' favour recently and assembles as much evidence in favour of either view that he can find. Stepping back to look at the resultant piles, they are pitifully small, amounting to cases with more holes than a worn-out string vest. Some are sociable, some aren't, some are very anglicised, some aren't. There is no common factor, no pattern, nothing that would lead a rational person to believe that British Asian cricketers are somehow doomed to disappoint.

The most extreme reaching comes when considering Monty Panesar, when he digs up a sociological study which shows Indians to be more deferential than Brits and pulls in his traditional Indian wedding as additional ballast, and while you might just be able to spin something out of it, it's very little when one considers the earlier question, is Graeme Swann just a better bowler?

Monty's case is an interesting one, because it was the Anglos who had the most extreme hopes for him. Here was a left-armer who wore a patka and had a beard, just like Bishen Bedi, so presumably he was Bishen Bedi reincarnated. When picked he had a brilliant stock ball – few spinners have as powerful a leg-break as Panesar's customary delivery – and we all assumed that since he was still pretty young, he would soon develop the other balls he would need to succeed as a Test cricketer. However (as I start whistling “Colonel Bogey”) it turns out that Monty has only got one ball, while Swann has several. Monty's problem, actually, is that he isn't Indian enough and is only an English spinner.

But Atherton shows that all the other cases are extremely prosaic – Saj Mahmood and Owais Shah not good enough, Samit Patel not fit enough, Ravi Bopara unable to withstand a verbal working-over, or Adil Rashid by no means ready for selection. Space restrictions imposed by the printed media (by which we Different Strokers are not strictly constrained) probably prevented Atherton from making the point that it is in any case absurdly early to be writing Bopara and Rashid off.

Bopara was dropped because there was the Ashes to win and Jonathan Trott came in and saved the day, which means that he isn't going to be dropped for the Tests against Bangladesh despite failing against South Africa in exactly the same way for exactly the same reasons. That doesn't mean Bopara's career is over: he just has to wait his turn to get another chance – a chance which will surely come.

I was amazed when Rashid was picked by England last year: I've long thought he will have an important future as an England all-rounder, but he was down on my list as ready to be picked in about 2011 or 2012, not now. Trouble is, England selectors start frothing at the mouth and slavering when they hear that a leg-spinner has taken a few wickets, and so Rashid has to endure the stigma of early failure before he takes over from Swann as the No.1 spinner.

Unfortunately, those who espouse the extreme views mentioned above tend to be slightly unhinged and will point to the undeniable fact that the players have been given chances and then been dropped as proof of their case. Only when one (and then another and another) British Asian makes the grade as a picked-if-fit England player will it be possible to quite shut them up, so Ajmal Shahzad, as the next cab off the rank, would do us all a favour if he could be persuaded to be successful.

Craig Kieswetter ought to feel offended to have to confess to English loyalties after being picked to play for England © Getty Images

Craig Kieswetter is no doubt going to get thoroughly sick of being asked whether he feels English, even though it's the wrong question. Like me, he has one British parent and one foreign, which makes him as British by descent as I, though since his mother is a Scot and my father was English, I'm English and he isn't. He can hardly sit there at a press conference unveiling him as an England player and say he doesn't feel "English", but he ought to feel offended to have to confess to Sassenach loyalties. Robert Croft, the former England Test player, used to make a big point of not being English but Welsh – but then he had been born and raised in Wales, so nobody expected him to pretend to be English.

When someone has a choice of which nationality to adopt, in cricketing terms it makes sense to opt for British nationality: unless you can get on to the international circuit or get offered an IPL contract, county cricket is the most lucrative source of employment available. They decide to go through a qualification period not because they believe they will be selected for England more easily than for the country where they did most of their growing-up, but because it is the passport to fifteen years of being able to make a comfortable living playing cricket rather than stacking supermarket shelves.

Once they are qualified, though, it makes little sense for the England selectors to ignore them just because they were born abroad. And if it seems that too many immigrants are turning up in the England side, it's hardly the immigrants' fault that they're so good: the question, if any, is why people growing up in England don't seem to develop into top-level players, especially batsmen. It's a pretty complex question, but that most people in Britain now live in densely-populated cities with very limited space given over to playing fields, parks and so on, particularly in comparison to people-poor, land-rich Australia or South Africa, must be a major contributing factor – and there is little the ECB can do about that.

But at the bottom of the question lies an assumption that performing well in international cricket requires that a player is suffused with national pride, that unless he is utterly committed to Queen and country, he will inevitably disappoint.

This is a big assumption to make. I am sure that there are quite a few players for whom the thought of representing their country is a powerful motivator, but I doubt that it is universal among international cricketers. Enough of them talk about it being the ultimate physical and mental challenge available in the sport for it to be clear that many are most motivated by proving their excellence, whether to themselves, their peers or the press and public. Some are quite blatant about their desires to break records or be rated number one – that their team benefits from their statistical achievements is taken as read, and there is nary a mention of it being good for the country. Others just want to make their parents proud of them, and yet others want the glamour of celebrity.

I also doubt whether every callow young man even understands “representing his country” in any serious way. For quite a few, it has been a fairly overwhelming experience to suddenly find that they are not just playing a game of cricket but carrying the hopes and dreams of millions of people they have never met. Some have found that too heavy a load and have failed to perform.

What is important about a player is the fact that he is motivated to perform to the best of his ability. If nationalist fervour is what does it, fine, but questioning someone's selection simply because he doesn't wear Union Jack pyjamas to bed shows remarkably little understanding of professional sportsmen.

The highlight of Makhaya Ntini's career - a ten-for at Lord's © Getty Images

My last post was decorated with a picture of Makhaya Ntini looking tired enough to justify my remark that he had lost his zip. Since he didn't even make the squad for the India trip, it would be a brave gambler who would bet on his playing for South Africa again unless there is a disastrous string of injuries. So this is a good time to remember what he was like when in full possession of zip, mojo and other attributes of successful Test bowlers.

He first played for South Africa in 1998, and his first few appearances were not especially promising. He was fit, energetic and bowled fast, but he bowled from far too wide on the crease, his action was inelegant and awkward, and he had little command of length or direction. It was impossible to avoid the suspicion that politics had played a part in his inclusion.

He was persisted with, and gradually he improved. The action never got tidied up and he continued to bowl from an exceptionally wide position, but more and more balls travelled in the general direction of the stumps. What one could never fault was his enthusiasm and commitment; whether his team-mates could understand his constant shouts of encouragement in his first language must be debatable, but they certainly got the drift.

The breakthrough came at Lord's in 2003. England were in some disarray following Nasser Hussain's surprise resignation at the end of the previous Test, but someone has to take the wickets of even disconcerted batsmen and Ntini took ten of them, two five-fors as England were routed by an innings. He became the second South African to take ten in a Test in England, Peter Pollock having done so in 1965 at Trent Bridge, and the second South African to get on to the Lord's honours board twice after Allan Donald. No longer was he merely the biggest fish in the small pond of black South African cricketers – he had become an all-South African match-winning hero.

For the next four years, until the emergence of Dale Steyn, Ntini dominated South Africa's attack. People easily misled by those pernicious career average figures drooled over “the great Shaun Pollock”, but if he'd ever existed, he had stopped playing years before. The Shaun Pollock of the mid-noughties purveyed little to threaten batsmen, especially patient ones. True, he had the control to deliver six identical balls which passed four inches wide and six inches above the top of off stump, but canny batsmen realised there was no need to play at them. Pollock was given his wickets when batsmen got frustrated and hit out at balls which were not there for hitting.

Ntini, on the other hand, went out hunting for wickets and grabbed great bagfuls. He had gained the precarious control of a trucker piloting a fully-laden 18-wheeler down a steep hill, and that was enough. Pitch maps showing where the ball pitched looked like random paint-splatters, but at high speed it was very difficult for batsmen to pick up the line, especially for right-handers who had to come a long, long way across to see it before it was upon them. They played at balls they should have left and vice versa, only to see the ball balloon to gully or hear the crash as their stumps fell over. It was artless bowling, but supremely effective.

Over those four years, Ntini took 203 wickets at a strike rate of 49 against non-Zimbladesh teams, Pollock 128 at 68. Ntini had 15 five-fors and four ten-wicket matches, Pollock two five-fors in 2003 and none thereafter. Pollock did a decent enough job, but Ntini was a serial destroyer. I've laboured the point rather, but I don't think Makhaya ever really got the credit he deserved as a world class-bowler in the mid-decade. Not quite a great, perhaps, but a hugely important match-winner.

Criticism that he had no variations, no slower ball, no cutters rather missed the point: he had so much natural variation that to try anything fancy was fraught with risk. On the other hand, the lack of guile in his bowling left him entirely dependent on maintaining his pace. Once the speed dropped off, batsmen began to have the time to spot balls which were easy to hit given the extra fraction of a second to play; as it drops further, his lack of precise control becomes more handicap than advantage.

And that is why I'm not keen that Middlesex should sign him. I can easily understand why he would want to come and play at the ground where he played his defining Test, but if he can only bowl to the standard he displayed at PE and Kingsmead, I fear that he would not be an automatic first XI pick, and only IPL owners can afford the luxury of shelling out for expensive overseas bench-warmers who are largely past their pick-by date. I don't think the Ntini of 2010 would significantly strengthen Middlesex's bowling, and he is anything but the answer to the pressing problems with the top-order batting.

But end-of-career footnotes are hardly the point. South Africa know all about finding rough diamonds and then cutting them and polishing them into precious jewels: Ntini started as a dull pebble and ended as a national treasure.

"It was painfully apparent at Port Elizabeth that Ntini had lost his zip" © Getty Images

Established players' careers end (or take a long break) either through retirement (whether for personal reasons or injury) or because the selectors think someone else can do the job better. Retirements take the decision out of the selectors' hands – they only have to work out how to replace what is lost; the harder call is when a dip in form signals terminal decline, or who has to be omitted to accommodate someone whose form and ability simply screams “pick me!”. Getting those decisions right is what justifies a selection panel.

England's selectors have done quite well at this recently. Andrew Flintoff's retirement was met with a lot of worry about how he would be replaced, but he was hardly missed in South Africa. There is no one specific player who replaces him, but what he brought to the team is being covered. Super Fred, the great all-rounder only really played between 2004 and 2006; thereafter, Flintoff's value to the team was as a mid-innings specialist.

An hour and a half's batting would bring 60 or 70 quick runs, demoralise the opposition bowlers and buoy the England tail so that what had looked like being a mediocre 264 turned into a healthy 380. The lack of five-fors shows that he was no destroyer, but his special gift was coming on with a 58-over-old ball and nabbing three middle-order wickets to start a slide, cutting what had bid fair to be 480 to a manageable 305.

Matt Prior, Stuart Broad and Graeme Swann have all shown themselves capable of the rumbustious cameo with the bat, and Swann and Broad are now regularly chipping in with those mid-innings spells. Between them, they usually now produce the impetus which Flintoff provided. What the selectors got right was predicting that would happen, allowing them to pick Ian Bell – much criticised at the time – whose batting was crucial to winning at Durban and drawing at Newlands.

The transition between specialist swing bowlers was also pretty smooth. When England lost the first Test on their tour of New Zealand in 2008, they took the tough decision that Matthew Hoggard should be replaced by James Anderson, who responded with a five-for and England went on to win the series. Hoggard complained bitterly for months that it had been one bad match that did for him, but the selectors have to be praised for getting it right.

South Africa's selectors, on the other hand, got it wrong in a similar situation. They really had little choice but to pick Makhaya Ntini for the first Test. Steyn was injured, and an attack of Morne Morkel, Friedel de Wet and Wayne Parnell would have been horribly inexperienced and what Ntini certainly has is experience.

However, although it was painfully apparent at Port Elizabeth that Ntini had lost his zip, his 390 career Test wickets tempted the selectors to give him the nod ahead of de Wet for Kingsmead. Strauss made mincemeat of him and set up England's big first innings total, and thus South Africa prevented themselves from winning the series as they should have.

To be fair, they have recognised that whatever fine qualities Ashwell Prince has as a No. 5 or 6, he can hardly open a beer can, let alone a Test innings, and Alviro Petersen's debut hundred has rewarded them.

For the future, the big question is how the Indian selectors are going to deal with the inevitable loss of Dravid, Laxman and Tendulkar. Will they have the courage to wield the axe when it becomes necessary, or will they leave it to them to retire? Of course, there is no point in dropping legendary players unless and until there are players ready to take over and as yet there is little sign of any serious challengers emerging, so perhaps it will not matter. But if their constant dithering about what would be a good bowling attack is anything to go by, it will be chaos.

It was inevitable that Alastair Cook would be an England captain © Getty Images

England's forthcoming tour of Bangladesh is going to offer several players an opportunity to make an impression. The Tigers' fans will be hoping for the big upset, but the interest for English fans should really lie in what is revealed about the bench strength.

The main window is the one opened by the absence of Andrew Strauss, or rather the two, since he has one job as captain and another as opening batsman. There has been some adverse comment on his absence but it seems misplaced to me. No one bats an eyelid at Jimmy Anderson missing the tour because of the knee strain which was affecting his bowling, yet Strauss is not supposed to recover from the brain strain which was causing his batting to get flabby towards the end of the tour [of South Africa].

And he's entitled to a brain strain: he started 2009 by being hastily installed as captain, then had to form a relationship with a new head coach, win the Ashes from the underdog position and lead the team through a creditable series in South Africa, and in the meantime succeeded in transforming the ramshackle nonsense of the ODI side into a moderately competitive international 50-over team. After a year like that, any captain could do with a breather.

So that gives Alastair Cook an outing in his first attempt at captaining England. It was inevitable that he would be an England captain: he is expected to open the batting until at least 2020 and it would be unheard of, for an England player to last 15 years in the top order without being captain for some of them. Strauss is liable to be around for another three years or so, by which time Cook will be 28 and in his prime, so he makes a pretty logical choice as deputy.

Michael Carberry is unlikely to get that many opportunities as the reserve batsman behind a settled opening pair, but I hope that they decide to use him rather than shuffle the established batsmen around so that both Ian Bell and Jonathan Trott can play with at least one of them having to play out of position because playing in Asia usually demands two spinners. James Tredwell is probably the player with the most to gain from this tour because the position of second spinner is definitely up for grabs. He does not seem to be more than a conventional county off-spinner, but that's what most of us thought about Graeme Swann 18 months ago, and we've had to revise our opinion since then.

And it is not really an option to go into Tests in Asia with only two frontline pace bowlers. Broad is a given, but Graham Onions is the only one I'd be even vaguely happy with as a sole second paceman. Ryan Sidebottom has the seniority but looked to be well off the pace at the Wanderers, much as Makhaya Ntini had done in the first two matches, and I'm not sure that he deserves to be picked. If they have the sense to leave Sidebottom out, then we ought to get to see whether Liam Plunkett or Ajmal Shahzad have any prospects. The other option is Luke Wright, but what England do not need right now is a batsman who bowls a bit, whereas Plunkett and Shahzad are bowlers who bat a bit. Plunkett's a big hitter like Swann while Shahzad is a proper batsman like Broad, but the real interest is their bowling. Plunkett is probably the better bowler now, but Shahzad is improving rapidly and may well offer more for the future.

So, even if England don't have any dramas and put their opponents to bed in an orderly fashion, there should be a fair amount of interest in the newcomers (or, in Plunkett's case, old-comers having another go).

As at Centurion, the Newlands Test was hardly a feast for the eyes until the final hour. © Getty Images

In the latest twist to the cheating row, South Africa have asked the match referee to conduct an examination of the England team's teeth in order to determine whether the skin of the said gnashers has been artificially enhanced with Velcro, superglue or some similar substance which allows England to unfairly save Test matches. Paul Collingwood will be first into the dentist's chair, since he is serially implicated in these draws by one wicket which England are specialising in. Following him will be Graham Onions, whose nickname of Bunny is allegedly short for “bunions” but actually describes his batting pretty well, so how he survived demands closer investigation.

Collingwood's chief accomplice on this occasion was Ian Bell, playing the kind of innings we have not come to expect from him. I have always loved his hundreds, even if they have always surfed a wave started by someone else, but I had grown impatient with his repeated failures when the side was in trouble. This innings on its own would not have convinced me to stop doubting his temperament, but taken with his ugly 72 at The Oval in the Ashes decider, the evidence is now there: he will never be as good at grafting as Alastair Cook or Jonathan Trott or Collingwood, but he is now, at least adequate.

As in Centurion, the Newlands Test was hardly a feast for the eyes until the final hour. Both matches featured one really forceful innings by a batsman – Graeme Swann at Centurion; Graeme Smith at Newlands – and one woefully unrewarded spell of superb bowling – Onions at Centurion, Dale Steyn at Newlands – and there has been the odd successful spell from Morne Morkel, James Anderson, Swann or Paul Harris, but mostly what we have had to watch have been Jacques Kallis and Collingwood in 'they-shall-not-pass mode'. I greatly appreciate the batting slowcoach – and wrote a piece before Christmas extolling the breed to prove it – but those two are so dull while standing firm that enjoyment of the match for those watching migrates to the abstract plane.

Whole books are regularly written about Test series. If they weren't filed under “sport”, they would appear on the thriller shelves alongside the Ian Flemings and Robert Ludlums.

A Fleming or a Ludlum writes thrillers which make superb movies. In a Bond or a Bourne film, action dominates over character and people do not spend their time musing over the difficulties of life or the moralities of conflict; there is plenty to hold the eye's attention but not much need to engage brain.

This series for the D'Oliveira Trophy, though, seems to have been written by John le Carre. Little actually happens in his novels; events move slowly - the course of the narrative changed by small incidents whose significance emerges only later. They are novels about character and motivation, about choices made and unmade by imperfect people with imperfect information. The clashes are of wills rather than forces, since the forces are largely fairly ordinary people – how effective they are depends on how well they are organised and how they co-operate rather than on superhuman derring-do.

In the 1970s, the BBC did a marvellous TV version of le Carre's “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” for which they hired a cast of outstanding actors who could convey many of the novel's subtleties and nuances, so that a couple of old men having a quiet conversation was riveting. Most other screen adaptations of le Carre novels have been less successful as visual events: you'd always be advised to read the book rather than watch the movie.

With only two or three really high-class players on each side, and most of even those showing only sporadic form, I'm afraid that I'm finding this series a bit wearing to sit through. I'm really looking forward to when the book comes out, though, because that should be a humdinger.

	Stuart Broad's magic touch accounted for three crucial dismissals in South Africa's capitulation© Getty Images

It's only one game and South Africa can still win the series; when they start again at Newlands, the scoreboard will show 0 for 0 and anything can happen over the following five days; England should not start getting ahead of themselves and believing that it will be a cakewalk from here on in. All that is true, but there is no reason why any England fan out in the streets today shouldn't have at least a little dance about the result at Kingsmead. Only a few weeks ago, South Africa were the number-one-rated team while England bobble around in mid-table, and yet they were utterly crushed. Victories that comprehensive and impressive need to be celebrated.

But they also need to be explained, and explaining this one is a toughie. Of course South Africa can be beaten in a Test match, but they don't get beaten by an innings that easily. Australia did it during their period of dominance, now happily ended, and Sri Lanka did it a couple of times when Muttiah Muralitharan ran amok, but ordinary sides – and England are definitely an ordinary side – do not thrash South Africa like that.

South African batsmen, when in trouble, get their heads down and block for hour after tedious hour. It ain't pretty, but it's effective. They may still lose, but it's after at least a day's batting and they don't get rolled over for 133. No-one exemplifies this better than Jacques Kallis.

So, in company with Sherlock Holmes, we come to the curious incident of the shot which Kallis played at Stuart Broad. And when we point out that he played no shot at all, Holmes replies that that is the curious incident: why would a batsman of Kallis's calibre play no shot to a ball which was going to knock his stumps over? If we can work that one out, then it is probable that the same will apply to AB de Villiers and J-P Duminy, who also failed to offer shots to balls bowled by Broad and departed as a result.

Some will no doubt talk of the pressure caused by having to bat with no prospect of winning the game or of the superb length, direction and movement of Broad's bowling, but these are not factors which would normally cause Kallis' brain to freeze.

Now, if you watch the replay of the whole delivery, it is apparent that Kallis simply did not see the ball until it was too late: after hearing the death rattle he took a long, hard look at the spot where the ball had pitched, as though the ball had suddenly emerged from there without warning.

My theory is that Broad has somehow acquired the ability to make things temporarily invisible to specific people. Most of the time he has to use it on the umpire at his end to hide his ridiculously petulant antics and thereby avoid being reported to the match referee – a far more satisfying explanation for his lack of a ban so far than Sunil Gavaskar's conspiracy allegation – but occasionally he takes the risk of being seen by the umpire in order to bamboozle batsmen. After tea on day four Kallis, de Villiers and Duminy were successively blinded so that they played no shot, with the results we all saw.

The alternative explanation is that the South Africans were simply batting abysmally, and that is so unlikely as to be ruled out by anyone sensible.

Well, that's my theory and even if you think it's baloney, here's wishing you and yours as happy and prosperous a New Year as is possible in these troubled times.

	Graeme Swann is the second-highest wicket-taker this year© Getty Images

In the recent Australia-West Indies series, Suleiman Benn was the joint leading wicket-taker for the visitors. Nathan Hauritz took the same number of wickets as Benn, though he was outdone by teammates Johnson and Bollinger. As I write, the leading wicket-takers in the South Africa- England series are Graeme Swann and Paul Harris.

There was a theory floating round in the early part of this decade that the conventional finger-spinner was an endangered species, and that fairly soon he would be confined to Asian habitats. Wrist-spinners, and weird finger-spinners like Muttiah Muralitharan, would survive and even thrive elsewhere, but the common or garden tweaker was destined to die out. Yet here we are with series in Australia and South Africa with the spinners in rude health and doing very well.

And it's not as though these four are particularly special. Neither Swann nor Hauritz is a Jim Laker or Erapalli Prasanna, neither Benn nor Harris are a patch on Bishen Bedi or Derek Underwood. They don't have mystery balls, they don't turn it square, they don't try doosras. They are merely good bowlers, with Swann perhaps verging on the borders of very good by dint of having the wit to exploit what he has learned in a dozen years on the county circuit.

It is most heartening to see them being decently successful, especially since I have been watching these games on TV. When the fast men are on, you can perhaps see the keeper, first and second slip in the far distance and it is not visually obvious that the batsman is in serious danger, whereas when a spinner is on and there are four or five fielders crouched round the batsman, you can feel the steam building up in the pressure-cooker - and these last few weeks, we have had gratifyingly extended views of batsmen being boiled like sponge puddings. (At the ground, it is all too likely that the crowd of close catchers serves mostly to obscure one's view of the batsman and all you see of a wicket is a hand emerging from a heap of fielders, clutching an Excalibur which has suddenly become small, red and round rather than long and steely.)

The key is that those fielders are crouching round the bat. Harris and Benn are not really any better as slow left-armers than the likes of Ashley Giles or Nicky Boje who were plying their trade in the early years of the decade, but they have the benefit of captains who think they have a chance of taking wickets and give them the fields to do it with. You can generate all the bat-pad chances you like, but the wickets column will remain empty unless there is someone there to snaffle them, and far too often in the '90s and early '00s, perfectly respectable spinners were presented with fields which indicated that the skipper just wanted them to keep the batsmen quiet for a bit.

Mike Atherton was good player of ordinary, rather than extraordinary, spinners and therefore did not think that they would get anyone else out and set Phil Tufnell almost exclusively defensive fields.. Saurav Ganguly the batsman used to view slow left-armers much as a hungry man views an all-you-can-eat buffet and treated any of the breed unfortunate enough to be sent along to play for India with barely-disguised disdain.

Andrew Strauss and Graeme Smith, on the other hand, have both had periods of being found out by spin bowlers and Ricky Ponting's inability to play more than an over of Harbhajan Singh without getting out is the stuff of legend. Captains who have had trouble batting against spinners are obviously more likely to repose their confidence in them as bowlers.

But it is still up to the bowlers to perform, and Benn, Hauritz, Swann and Harris - with the help of their captains – are doing a fine job of proving the doomsayers of a few years ago wrong.

	Rahul Dravid has a style that is even more reassuring than the Kallises and Gavaskars © AFP

While Tim McIntosh was painstakingly putting his 74 together on Saturday, a few of the people mailing the Cricinfo commentators were moaning about his slow scoring. Then one of McIntosh's mates piped up that it was a five-day Test and this is how Test cricket should be played.

That “should” needs considerable qualification, but first-class and Test cricket are indeed the only forms of the game where long periods of defensive batting make good tactical sense – and McIntosh certainly did a useful job for New Zealand: building a platform and wearing down the bowlers on the way to an imposing team total.

I was brought up, so to speak, on batting like that. When I started watching, the England openers were very likely to be John Edrich and Geoff Boycott, who were both masters of the craft. Indeed, I'm not sure I've yet seen anyone better than Boycott at the pure business of batting for as long as possible – but as I grew up in Yorkshire, he was a childhood hero and that may introduce a certain bias.

The legacy of idolising Boycs is an enduring appreciation for the stonewaller in his various guises, though it has to be said he does not always make for riveting viewing. Often one is admiring patience, restraint, courage and stubborn determination more than the actual batting.

The sheer class of some asserts virtual supremacy – only someone who bowls as superbly as Boycott, Jacques Kallis or Sunil Gavaskar bat is going to get them out. You are watching a supreme technician at work, and even against the top bowlers, it is a tussle of equals. Every so often though, along comes a bad ball, and they play it to the boundary with a stroke of similar class. Boycott's cover drive, when he played it, was one of the finest you'll ever see; my enduring memories of Sunny include the sudden punishment of the cut or sweep after three solid overs of soft-handed killing of the spin. Shiv Chanderpaul follows roughly the same methods as those three, with about the same result, but without the functional elegance of their classical technique.

Then there are those who do not give off quite the same air of permanence: top-class bowling could easily dislodge them, one feels, although in practice they often stay in for ages. Michael Atherton, Marvan Atapattu and Dilip Vengsarkar all played great defensive innings, but somehow just weren't quite in the Boycott-Gavaskar class.

But they still had attacking strokes they could play. Gary Kirsten may have had them, but his main trait was invisibility. I know I sat in the stands and watched him compile at least two centuries, but I cannot remember a single scoring stroke. Even at the time I couldn't remember them: glancing at the scoreboard, there was 64 against his name, but I had no idea how he had accumulated them. Perhaps people just awarded him the occasional run without him actually having to hit the ball.

Then come those who really do just drop anchor and don't play any shots at all. Neil McKenzie, Brendan Nash and Thilan Samaraweera are prime examples of this wholly introverted style, but at least they seem to be doing it deliberately.

There are a few, however, who are teeth-grindingly tedious to watch. They may well have done a job for their team, but did they really have to do it like that? Zimbabwe's Trevor Gripper was awful. Worse still was Deep Dasgupta, whose hundred at Mohali in 2001 has to be the most mind-numbing I've ever seen – but he would surely not have earned that dubious distinction if Chris Tavare had ever reached three figures. Fortunately, Tav's career came fifty years too late for the timeless Test he would have needed to reach the mark. (There is, by the way, no truth to the story that umpire Gothoskar became so concerned by Tavare's immobility at Bangalore in 1981 that he insisted on checking his pulse to make sure he hadn't died at the crease.)

My favourite, though, is Rahul Dravid, who has a style even more reassuring than the Kallises and Gavaskars. The aforementioned masters would always make it clear that what they were doing was difficult, beyond the reach of mortal men. Dravid, however, seems to treat the most challenging conditions like a crossword puzzle which he is enjoying figuring out. He looks vaguely amused that the last ball was a real screamer which almost cut him in half; when a bowler delivers a relatively easy ball, Dravid peers back quizzically, as if asking why he bothered. That does not make him the greatest – my suspicion is that the title belongs to Len Hutton – but it does make him the most entertaining to watch.

I was going to say “long may he continue”, but it would be redundant. It's just what he does.

	Iain O'Brien will be a great tonic for Middlesex © Getty Images

In a few days' time, Iain O'Brien will be a former Test cricketer, since he retires after New Zealand's current match against Pakistan. Barring exceptional figures like 0 for 250 or 18 for 80, he will finish his career as a Test bowler with about 70 wickets at about 34 apiece. He may improve on his tally of one five-for in 21 Tests, but his career figures will even then be unimpressive. But the figures tell only a part of the story: much of his contribution over the last two or three years of being a regular in the side is less tangible than is recorded in scorebooks.

New Zealand will always need a bowler who can bowl into the teeth of the howling gale at the Basin Reserve even though the main reward for doing so is exhaustion, and every team needs someone to bowl on flat tracks against well-set top-class batsmen when the best hope of a wicket is a run out. Those are the really hard yards, and Iain O'Brien will run them all and still be disappointed when he is finally taken off. Captains dream of commanding soldiers like O'Brien.

Not only does he do the jobs no-one else wants to do; he always does them with a huge smile on his face. He appears to be just so thrilled to be on the field at all, and the enthusiasm he exudes cannot fail to lift flagging spirits. Bundles of energy like him spur the top players on – if he is still charging in, they have no excuse for slacking even when things look grim.

He has therefore been an important cog in the New Zealand machine even though his tally of wickets has been somewhat smaller than one might have hoped. His announcement of retirement did not exactly depress an entire nation the way Freddie Flintoff's did in England, but that does not mean he won't be missed.

New Zealand's loss, however, is Middlesex's gain. A bowler who is only just good enough for Test cricket ought to be very much a top-ranker in county cricket, particularly at the bottom of Division 2 where Middlesex currently languish, so I'm delighted that Angus Fraser has signed him up. And we get him for the whole season, fitness permitting, rather than just have him flit in and out between serious engagements. Someone with his outlook on playing cricket will be a great tonic in a dressing room which has been rather deflated whereas on the field, his straight-ahead bustle will nicely complement Tim Murtagh's swing and the very promising Steven Finn's height and awkward bounce. With the experienced spin of skipper Shaun Udal, that's the nucleus of an attack which can win promotion - if only the batsmen could string a few good innings together, which almost none of them did in 2009.

It is a one-year deal, with a view to making it three years if his body can stand it – which is as yet unknown because 33 is a fair old age to be embarking on a gruelling county career playing more cricket than he has ever done in his life. But, if one reads his character aright from his blogs, he will just say “Bring it on. I'd play every day and bowl at both ends if I could.”

So, while congratulating him on a worthwhile Test career and wishing him all the best for his final international game, I'll lay out the welcome mat for his entry to the Middlesex fold and hope that his best is yet to come.

	Andrew Strauss has been positive with the bat and his captaincy © PA Photos

Maybe one day we will look back on the South Africa v England ODI series and think “This was where it all began.” We probably won't, of course, but should England win the 2011 World Cup, the roots will be traceable back to South Africa 2009.

They will not be the best team in the world by then, but it is entirely possible to win the World Cup without being the best team in the tournament, as India showed in 1983, by being the best on the day - several times, if need be. That's the nature of tournament play. And what England have managed, when the weather allowed, is to beat a superior team by being better on a couple of days.

As against Australia during the Ashes, they grabbed hold of some key moments and never let go. It is not the holding on that is the difficult part, though, so much as the creating of key moments to grab. The difference about England in this series is that they now have a number of players capable of doing it.

Kevin Pietersen is one, according to past experience, and so is Fred Flintoff if he's ever fit enough to play, but neither of them made any contribution at all, whether or not they were physically present, so we can now see Jimmy Anderson, Stuart Broad, Eoin Morgan, Paul Collingwood and even Tim Bresnan as blokes who can play a momentum-grabbing innings or bowl a critical spell, whether wicket-taking or strangling, and in Strauss see a captain with the acumen to think on the hop and capitalise on opportunities.

Few previous England one-day captains would have had the gumption first to bring Anderson back in the 21st over at Port Elizabeth and then to bowl him out rather than holding an over or two in reserve. Most of Strauss's predecessors would have carried on fiddling around with lesser bowlers for another ten or twelve overs, by which time the middle order could easily have recovered some equilibrium and South Africa gone on to make 211/9, sub-par but a score which England would probably have found challenging.

His batting is still pretty hit or miss by international standards but it sets a moral example to the team. If the skipper is prepared to push himself to play more aggressively than he is naturally comfortable with, the rest of them have no excuse to hang back, and one can sense the feeling of freedom as the middle order come out to bat.

Because of Strauss's leadership, England are now playing optimistic one-day cricket: they have no idea whether they are going to win the next game but they will give it a decent shot because – at last – they believe in themselves.

This does not make England a team to be feared in one-day cricket. They still deservedly inhabit the lower parts of the ranking table, and will very likely lose a lot of games as well as winning some. But long-suffering fans of the team can, with any luck at least, now sit down to watch an ODI without that awful foreboding that it is all going to go horribly wrong over the next two or three hours and can even expect England to provide some of the day's entertainment rather than just be the stooges for an exhibition by a team which really knows what it is doing.

It is only a start, but if things go on like this, Andrew Strauss may yet be remembered as the captain who made a sought-after designer handbag out of the sow's ear of England's one-day team.

	Can Joe Denly do the job Marcus Trescothick used to? © Getty Images

One of the great puzzles about South Africa since re-admission is why they have performed so poorly against England. The last time England toured, in 2004-05, England brought the side which won the Ashes a few months later and may just have had a slight edge which they duly converted to a series win, but on every other occasion South Africa's team has been obviously miles better - until you look at the scoreline and find that if they managed to win at all, it was only by the odd Test, and that they even contrived to lose in 1998. In one-day cricket, at which South Africa are known to be good and England known to be hopeless, the score between the sides in the 2000s is 10-all with one tie and two no-results.

I have no wish to know why South Africa underperform against England -- and would rather no-one found out, because the consequence has been fascinating cricket with ding-dong battles and it would be a shame to dispel the magic.

And although it would be amazing if the ODI series which is about to begin will consistently emulate the last match these sides played, at Centurion a few weeks ago in the Champions Trophy, we can hope.

As an exhibition of 50-over cricket, that was probably the best game of the tournament. Entirely against the trend of performances going back as long as one can usefully remember, England batted positively and effectively throughout, with a text-book rocket boost at the end of the innings courtesy of Eoin Morgan. South Africa's gallant reply was led by Graeme Smith's century, which was as epic as Tendulkar's hundred against Australia on Thursday, with the same heartbreaking result. It was one of those games neither side really deserved to lose but someone had to.

I'm hoping that the one-day series will be played as that game was. In particular I want to see England taking that aggressive approach with the bat. I want to see more England batsmen playing like Bangladeshis, hitting out as often as possible even if they get out while doing it. I'd prefer it if they didn't lose their wickets quite as quickly as Bangladeshis, but it's the thought that counts here.

Their performance in the first warm-up game against Boeta Dippenaar's Eagles is therefore generally encouraging. Only Joe Denly and Paul Collingwood failed to deliver, and Wright, Broad and especially Morgan had strike rates well over 100. (Wright's was higher, over 200, but Morgan played the more substantial innings, starting well before the end-of-innings charge.)

I hope Denly starts to do better soon, since he is the new England recruit who most fascinates me. He has not so far achieved much in the way of scores but he does something which very few England batsmen do, which is advance down the wicket to turn fast bowlers' good length balls into half-volleys and tee off in the early overs. It's not the only way of scoring runs at the top of the order, but it is the most effective demonstration that the batsman is intent on dominating the bowler – and that kind of intent has been missing without trace for years from England's one-day side. He is also a superb fielder in the deep: in that game against South Africa he scored only 21 runs, but he took two catches and saved a good couple of dozen runs in the field.

The likelihood has to be that England will fail more often than not by taking the aggressive approach in the short term. But they aren't going to get better at playing the aggressive game by going defensive as soon as anything goes wrong: they have to keep trying until they get it right. Denly as much as anyone, and if he breaks through and starts recording the big scores, we will at last have found someone to do the job Tresco used to do.

	The ideal county limited-over allrounder © Getty Images

In a January 2000 ODI at Kimberley, Mark Ealham took five wickets for eight runs in 24 balls. Five of Zimbabwe's top seven were struck on the pads, and each time umpire David Orchard responded by raising his finger. It was the first time anyone had got five lbws in an ODI innings.

It is the perfect example of his bowling strength. The spell was during the dreaded middle overs of an ODI when nothing much usually happens, and his line was deadly accurate. The Cricinfo profile labels him medium-fast, but that “-fast” suffix risks contravening the Trade Descriptions Act: he might have tried to justify it in his early years, but he soon settled down as a straight medium-pacer. Ealham's control of line was impeccable, he could often wobble it in the air, and he could vary his pace enough to unsettle batsmen committed to trying to score.

In the MCC v Champion County match which opened the 2006 season, Ealham smashed eleven fours and seven sixes on his way to a 45-ball hundred, which went on to win the Walter Lawrence Trophy for the season's fastest. Forty in thirty minutes rather than a hundred in three hundred was what his county sides usually wanted from him, which explains why he passed fifty 80 times in first-class cricket but only converted 13 into hundreds.

In short, he was the ideal county limited-over allrounder, a part he played with distinction from 1995 to 2003 for Kent (having debuted in 1989), and then for Notts until 2008. In 2009, he was not quite a first-team regular and his bowling average shot up from its customary 27 to 36 in both the long and short games, so he has called it a day at the age of 40.

Ealham was not quite the ideal ODI allrounder, though he did a reasonable job in his 64 appearances. His bowling was more than adequate, bordering on pretty good, but his batting was more skittish than forceful. To be fair, England lower orders were regularly faced with dire situations to which panic was a fairly rational response; even so, he rarely did himself justice with the bat.

But Ealham should not be blamed for his eight disappointing Test matches. He could in fact be said to have performed a useful service by helping to explode the muddled theory held by the England selectors in the late 1990s that someone who could bat better than the bowlers and bowl better than the batsmen while not being adequate in either discipline was a useful addition to a weak Test team.

Martin Saggers also owed his Test selection to selectorial desperation, but given his trouble getting on to the ladder at all, just winning three Test caps was a triumph.

His was a mildly romantic story. He had tried out in the second XI for a few counties in the early 1990s, but by 1996 had given up and was playing for Norfolk. Picked for the Minor Counties, his opening spell in their Benson & Hedges match against Durham was impressive enough for the county to offer him a contract. He was effectively competing against Steve Harmison for a place, a contest he was bound to lose, but when Durham inevitably released him, Kent snapped him up and he became one of the best swing bowlers on the circuit. He took 64 wickets in 2001 and 83 at 21.5 in 2002, occasioning a lot of serious suggestion that he should be picked for England.

Perhaps that was Saggers' moment, but he was up against Gough, Caddick, Hoggard, Flintoff, Harmison and Jones (at least) and therefore too far down the pecking order. He finally got picked in a Test in Bangladesh when most of them were injured and Gough had retired, and then again the following summer in similar circumstances against New Zealand, bowling Mark Richardson with his first ball in a home Test but otherwise achieving little. Like many Test failures. he was compelled as the junior member of the attack to demonstrate his weaknesses as a change bowler with the old ball rather than his strengths as a dangerous customer with the new one.

His England episode over, he remained a useful member of the Kent attack and 2009 was a well-deserved benefit year. Unfortunately a knee injury brought his season and career to a premature end and the circuit will miss his sunny personality.

Alex Wharf was another who needed great persistence before eventual recognition.

He started in 1994 as a pace bowler at his native Yorkshire, who also had Gough, Peter Hartley, Chris Silverwood and Hoggard, which considerably limited Wharf's opportunities. He moved on to Nottinghamshire, where he got more first-team cricket but he was not the strike bowler they were after.

A big, burly man, his run-up exuded aggressive energy but the ball only travelled at 78mph rather than the 88mph the run-up advertised. Notts did however give him the chance to develop as a power-hitter, sending him in early in limited-over innings, but Paul Franks already had the job Wharf was suited for.

He found his niche at Glamorgan, who had a vacancy for a lower-order hitter and aggressive bowler, especially for their one-day side. Wharf's rumbustiousness with bat and ball were key ingredients of the county's winning the 45-over league in 2002 and 2004. That 2004 campaign included a quite remarkable Wharf performance, albeit in a losing cause: in a weather-affected match, Kent's relatively simple Duckworth-Lewis target was 143 off 25 overs, which they managed to scramble with one wicket to spare off the last ball despite Wharf's amazing spell of 5-3-5-6.

Such efforts earned him a run in the England one-day side that winter, the selectors being ever on the hopeful lookout for someone who could inject a bit of life into the flaccid international ODI team. Like Ealham before him, his bowling held up to international scrutiny but his batting failed to ignite and the selectors moved on to the next bright-looking toy in the shop.

His career had already begun to wind down by 2009, his Glamorgan first-team place no longer assured, but now his knees have called time on him too.

So that concludes the goodbyes for 2009. Thank you, Mark Butcher, Andy Caddick, John Crawley, Mark Ealham, Jason Gallian, Martin Saggers, Michael Vaughan and Alex Wharf for what you have done, and good luck for the future.

	Jason Gallian was more of a bruiser; he was a slender version of Mike Gatting, sharing his appetite for runs though not for food © Getty Images

Eight former England players announced their retirements during the 2009 season. I have already written about Andy Caddick, Mark Butcher and Michael Vaughan, who all had substantially successful Test careers, but the others have received little in the way of public appreciation for their efforts over many years.

In the first Test of the 1989-90 Under-19 Ashes, Jason Gallian made an impressive 158 not out and 14, while John Crawley made 52 and 44 not out. They both made their first-class debuts for Lancashire a few months later but in the youth game Gallian, having been born and brought up in Sydney, was captaining the young Australians. He also qualified for England through his parents and was enticed back by Lancashire's offer of a contract.

Crawley was the earlier to become successful in first-class cricket. He impressed in 1993 and it was no surprise when he was picked for England the next year. He was an exceptionally good player on the leg side and a more than competent player of spin, but he never quite clicked as a Test player.

He scored 106 at The Oval against Wasim and Waqar in 1996, and 156 not out in Muralitharan's famous demolition job at the same ground two years later. He also hit a hundred in Bulawayo when Zimbabwe still had Andy Flower and were a good match for England, but his weaknesses outside off stump were repeatedly exposed by Ambrose and Walsh for West Indies and by any number of Australians and South Africans.

No longer in England's favour, he began to fester in county cricket, but was rejuvenated when Rod Bransgrove recruited him for the new, go-ahead Hampshire. Lancashire refused to release him, so he had to buy out his contract after an acrimonious legal tussle.

In his first match for his new county in 2002, he scored 272, which led to an England recall against India. He was one of four centurions in his comeback Test, the others being Nasser Hussain, Michael Vaughan and Ajit Agarkar, but thereafter it was back to the middling scores of 30 and 40 and he played his last Test on the 2002-03 Ashes tour.

Until very recently, he continued to rack up the runs for Hampshire, phenomenally so against Nottinghamshire, his scores in five matches from 2004 to 2006 being 301*, 39 & 6, 311*, 106 & 116, and 148 & 23. He finishes his career with over 24,000 first-class runs at a highly-respectable average of 46.5, as well as four Test centuries. He's more than earned his keep.

The captain of Notts when Crawley notched up the first of those triple hundreds was once again Gallian, whose career had been more chequered. Where Crawley was stylish, Gallian was more of a bruiser; he was a slender version of Mike Gatting, sharing his appetite for runs though not for food.

Picked for England largely on promise in 1995, he was not ready for the big time and swiftly returned to county cricket. His response to being dropped included a match against Derbyshire in which England captain Mike Atherton recorded a duck while Gallian went on to make 312, numerically at least the peak of his first-class career.

Perhaps hoping to revive his England career, he moved to Notts for the 1998 season, and was promoted to the captaincy halfway through that campaign. Over the next six years, he did for Notts what Nasser Hussain was doing for England: turning a poor side into one which could win games, only for someone else to take over and win the glorious prizes.

He had inherited a bowling attack largely incapable of taking wickets, so results were very poor in the early years, but as the youngsters gained experience and overseas players like Chris Cairns and Stuart MacGill were signed, things looked up, even more so when a South African lad with English parents by the name of Pietersen turned up to try and make his fortune much as Gallian had done a dozen years earlier. And as the team's fortunes improved, so did Gallian's personal contributions. He enjoyed his richest form in his early thirties: perhaps if he had not been pushed too far too early in his career, he would have reached his batting maturity somewhat earlier and ended with more impressive figures than 15,000 runs at 37.6.

Despite these personal and team improvements, Gallian was sacked as captain. He and KP had not got on well at all, with the result that the Notts dressing room became fractious, and though Pietersen jumped ship to join Crawley and Shane Warne at Hampshire, the county decided that a new captain was required and appointed Stephen Fleming for 2005. Back in the ranks, Gallian had his best season ever, making 1200 runs at 53, in the course of which he was twice run out for 199 – and Notts won the Championship.

But it was his last success. Over the next three seasons he averaged just under 31, and then moved to Essex for 2009, where a meagre 245 runs in seven matches told him it was time to quit.

These were substantial careers. They did not fulfil the optimistic dreams their early displays of talent encouraged, but they have certainly not wasted the last twenty seasons.

Enough for now. I will wave goodbye to the other retirees in my next post.

	As yet, at least, fans haven't decided that the Champions Trophy is a prestige tournament. © AFP

A lot of people took me to task after my last post, in which I suggested that it was a bit odd that most cricket fans don't rate the Champions Trophy very highly, many accusing me of English sour grapes. I was clearly underestimating Asian interest in the tournament, but Chris from Australia commented that there was zero interest in Australia, and when I checked the Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne Age websites immediately afterwards, they still had the Ashes logo on their cricket pages - which still devoted far more attention to deconstructing Australia's Ashes loss than to prospects for the CT. And Australia are the holders.

Some people suggested that ICC needs to give the CT more prestige. I get the idea, but I'm not sure that prestige can be magically bestowed by the powers that be. ICC tried that with their idea of a Super Series of ODIs and a “Test” between the top-ranked country and the Rest of the World, at which the world's cricket public blew a resounding raspberry. Throwing oodles of cash into the prize pot doesn't do it either, as Allen Stanford found before he was arrested. The point is that prestige is not in the gift of the authorities: it is we, the fans and supporters, who confer prestige on tournaments and series. And as yet, at least, we haven't decided that the CT is a prestige tournament.

I think the problem is that we don't know what it's for. We have a 50-over World Cup already, and we're very happy to think that World Cup is a huge deal.

A World Cup happens every four years – as it does in many other sports, especially those involving inflated leather balls. Four years is a good interval because it basically ensures that there will be a different cast of characters even if the team names remain the same. Last time's Grand Old Men have retired, the then-established stars have moved into GOM-hood, some of the up-and-comers are now the leading players and there are some new faces just making their way. Each World Cup is a whole new adventure.

Contrast this with the CT going on three months after the World Twenty20; Tendulkar, Dravid and Strauss are playing in this after not being included in the Twenty20, but otherwise the differences between the teams which were in England and these ones have mostly come about through injuries (or, in the case of West Indies, total meltdown). Yes, it's a longer format and the results haven't always gone the same way, but it's felt awfully like the slo-mo replay taken to a whole-tournament level.

It's not that it hasn't been entertaining, or that we haven't learned anything. No-one had previously had any inkling that England had any idea how to play 50-over cricket, so their performance against South Africa was a discovery on a par with finding a new planet orbiting the sun. Nor, at a less mind-boggling level, had most of us realised that the final authority on run-out decisions is the fielding captain.

But was it really necessary to mount a whole tournament for the same old eight teams to make these additions to the sum of human knowledge?

In football, when England fail to win the World Cup, they can go off and fail to win the European Nations Cup, a tournament obviously smaller than and different to the World Cup but still big enough to garner its own level of prestige. India can finish out of the medals at the Olympic hockey and then make a mess of the Commonwealth Games, a lesser but still obviously significant event. But cricket's problem is that there aren't enough top teams to have a multiplicity of top-team tournaments without inducing terminal deja vu.

Perhaps what we need rather than the Champions Trophy are two quasi-regional tournaments. One would be for Asia-Pacific, involving India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Australia, New Zealand plus Afghanistan and UAE, while the Atlantic Cup could be for West Indies, England, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Ireland, Netherlands, Namibia and Kenya (or such other European, American and African countries as qualified).

Obviously the Asia-Pacific one would be far more prestigious and have a much larger audience, but the Atlantic Cup would give more of the emerging nations serious competition, which might make future World Cups even more interesting. Most of all, though, it would be fascinating to see how South Africa could contrive to get knocked out at an early stage.

Now, I really must get back to eating those sour grapes.

Over the next couple of weeks, I expect I shall watch at least some of the Champions Trophy coverage on TV. After all, I'm a cricket junkie and the English season finishes this week, so I've nothing else to watch until April. And, since you are enough of a cricket junkie to be reading a blog on a cricket website, it's pretty likely that you will also be tuning in at some point.

TV companies know that there are many people round the world like us who will watch any international cricket, almost whatever it is, and are therefore willing to part with money for the broadcast rights, and the ICC then spends that money on what it considers to be worthy causes. Slaking our appetite for the game provides money to help develop the game around the world (though why they pour money into salvaging Zimbabwe when West Indies are in danger of collapse passes my understanding), so it seems beneficial all round.

But nobody seems to care very much about who wins it.

This may simply be the perspective of an England fan who knows that his team don't stand an earthly chance and will be doing exceptionally well if they win any of their three games, but I don't detect any groundswell of anticipation amongst the fans of other teams I see on my travels round the net. A 50-over World Cup always stimulates a pre-tournament buzz, but the Champions Trophy generates a tidal wave of indifference.

Like a lot of people, I can tell you which country won any World Cup and where (though not necessarily which ground the final was at). But apart from West Indies winning in England in 2004 which I remember because I was giving daily bulletins to my father as he lay dying in hospital, I have no idea which team won any of the other editions of the Champions Trophy, or even when they were.

Which is odd, if you think about it.

It is a much more efficient way of determining the top team at 50-over tournament cricket than the World Cup with its Scotlands and Bermudas. Adding all the no-hope teams to the World Cup simply expands it without changing the destination of the winners' trophy but allows for the possibility of embarrassment in the early rounds. Just as it is (or would be) amusing if Manchester United exit the FA Cup by losing to a semi-pro team or Roger Federer gets beaten in the first round at Wimbledon by a British wild-card entrant currently ranked 793rd in the world, we can all have a good laugh when one of the major teams gets knocked out in the group stage of a cricket World Cup. If nothing else, it relieves the tedium of the early stages which seem to consist mostly of mismatches.

But the Champs Trophy is what the final stages of a World Cup would look like if none of the major teams tripped over the banana-skin in their qualifying group. It's the business end, the nitty gritty, the chase which is cut to when we start paying close attention to a World Cup instead of just checking that nothing out of the ordinary happened. It's the World Cup without the boring bits. If there were any justice, we'd take a lot more interest and give a lot more weight to the Champions Trophy, but there isn't and we don't.

Instead, we treat it more as an inconvenience, a distraction from whatever the real business of our teams is supposed to be at any given time, and we want it over and out of the way as soon as is practical. What a strange lot we cricket fans are.

There is always a wistful tinge to the last game of the Lord's season, as Saturday's ODI was; as I leave the ground, there is the gloomy realisation that it will be next year before I next hear the five-minute bell and then see the umpires walk out to start the day's play, but still, I'm at one of my favourite places in the world. I always enjoy going to Lord's on a warm summer's day, even more so if there is cricket being played. Though I've been coming regularly for only thirty years and am thus a relative newcomer, I feel at home at the home of cricket. Even if the cricket is dreadful, I am sure to see some friends and have some pleasant conversation.

Thousands of the cricket-besotted turned up for similar reasons and will have taken equal satisfaction from another day at HQ, happy just to have been there.

However, when the BBC radio commentators inform their listeners that the crowd “are enjoying it” or “purring contentedly”, they seem to be saying more than that people like being at Lord's: there is a definite implication that they are taking some pleasure in the actual cricket.

Hearing those remarks, I wondered where they were dreaming it up from, because there was no evidence of people enjoying the cricket anywhere near where I was sitting in the Warner Stand. Nor was there any in the Pavilion or any other part of the ground I went to.

The cricket was simply awful, apart from the spectacle of Brett Lee knocking stumps over at the end of England's feeble batting effort. When Australia batted, they merely went efficiently about their business. I don't mean to suggest they were under any obligation to try and entertain the crowd with spectacular fireworks, but it would have been more fun if they had.

Some were angry, a few outraged, but most were just disappointed - to a greater or lesser degree, depending on what their expectations had been. Mine had been pretty low and England only sank narrowly below them, so it was no worse than seeing the bus leave the stop just as I left the ground and having to wait a few minutes for the next, but I think all of us would take exception to the allegation that we had enjoyed it.

My companions and I agreed that enjoyment would have been entirely inappropriate, anyway. We were here as punishment. This was the penance we had to do for winning the Ashes, for the joy we had felt when we had beaten Australia at Lord's for the first time in 75 years, for the fun we had had at the World Twenty20 (especially as England had won a World Cup), for thinking that Ravi Bopara's hundred against West Indies had signalled the arrival of a major new talent – in other words, for being English cricket fans at Lord's. I hope the cricketing gods accepted our collective sacrifice.

Another friend I bumped into said he had come to practice supporting Australia before doing it for real when they come back to Pakistan's new home ground, which rather surprised me: I cannot conceive of supporting Australia, and particularly not against Pakistan, who rank third in my affections behind England and West Indies. Well, so be it: he and I will be on opposite sides during the second of next season's Tests.

Ah, yes. Next season. We'll be back at Lord's again next season. That sounds good.

Michael Jeh's piece about the number of talented-looking players who appear for England but fail to produce the goods when things get difficult is timely, since those he mentions have all just been granted contracts by the ECB for the coming year.

Not that Ian Bell and Ravi Bopara are actually failures. They have each scored a healthy number of Test hundreds. Yes, they have been against West Indies, New Zealand, a Pakistan side depleted by injury and player bans or a South Africa who were bowling very poorly on a flat track, but they were in Test matches all the same. They have only failed against the very best, but there are plenty of those from everywhere. (Owais Shah is in a different category: I have long thought of him as Owaste of Space at the international level.)

I don't think it's because the standard of domestic cricket is too low. Most of the Division One counties could give New Zealand a pretty good game, and Durham have a better bowling attack - or at least had, depending on how much difference the return of Shane Bond makes. Demanding that the county championship be of a higher standard than the Test cricket played by the bottom half of the rankings table (where England reside anyway) is surely over-optimistic.

Nor are Australia immune. Phil Hughes succeeded majestically in Sheffield Shield, county cricket and in Tests against South Africa, who now admit that they bowled badly at him. Then, when he came up against Steve Harmison (for the Lions) and Andrew Flintoff armed with both a plan of bowling fast leg stump throat balls and the ability to execute the plan consistently, he was found wanting. No amount of domestic cricket can entirely prepare you for the very top.

But Fox (Michael Jeh) was talking more about one-day cricket, and there the problem is more likely to be systemic. England have been rubbish at ODIs since the early 1990s no matter who has been picked but their main fault has been that they have so few batsmen able to play the aggressive game. The successful Test batsmen tend not to score fast enough in ODIs so instead they pick domestic strokeplayers who don't know how to graft, at least when under run-rate pressure which requires scoring as well as blocking.

In suggesting that it is a peculiarly English problem, however, Fox has not been paying sufficient attention to the Indian team. How often have Rohit Sharma or Suresh Raina gritted out a match-winning 70 in testing conditions?

The old adage says that form is temporary and class is permanent. It may well be that that is true, but only if you correctly define “class”.

Both England and India have selectors who define class as elegant technique and great timing, and believe that players possessing them are more likely to succeed than batsmen who look to be struggling. I can understand that: when I watch a county game, the batsman who plays beautifully is far more likely to catch my eye. I learn to appreciate batsmen who play solidly for the counties I follow much earlier than those I see only occasionally for an opposition.

An Australian selector going to watch a domestic game has fewer matches to choose from than his English or Indian counterpart. He will inevitably see players more often and notice much earlier that the same ugly bloke keeps getting 75 while the fancy dans get out for 3 against the better bowlers at least as often as they glide to 123 in less challenging circumstances. Such a selector may well acquire a different definition of class.

Where having large numbers of teams may hurt both England and India could lie less in lowering the standard of play than in preventing any given selector seeing enough of the unattractive players to tell the Allan Borders from the genuinely incompetent. What it then amounts to is class prejudice: the selectors favour those who bat like aristocrats rather than artisans – and snobbery is a recipe for decadent failure.

Strange though it is to remember now, there was a time when Fred Flintoff was not the darling of English cricket and his omission from the England side was seen as a reason to praise the selectors for finally seeing sense rather than as an excuse for the team's dismal performance.

He had attracted a lot of attention as a young player with Lancashire. He was a huge and hugely powerful middle-order batsman who was a pretty good bowler, allegedly of the fast variety. England, so desperate for a new Botham that they had been picking players like Mark Ealham, Adam Hollioake and Ronnie Irani, could not resist the temptation and picked him for both the Test and one-day sides. Over the next couple of years, though, it became apparent that he was too fat to bowl fast and too indisciplined to offer anything more with the bat than the occasional lucky explosion. England sent him back to Lancashire with the stern message that he need not worry himself about future selection unless and until he was fit enough to bowl as fast as his early billing had suggested – and, as history now records, he went off and shaped up with fairly dramatic results.

The point is two-fold. One, is that, what a player is like when he first plays for England may bear very little relation to the cricketer he eventually becomes. The other is that the gulf between English domestic limited-overs cricket and the international variety is far greater than between the four-day championship and Test match cricket. What makes you a very useful allrounder in the county 40 or 50-over formats, is nowhere near what is required to fulfill a similar role internationally.

Over the last two to three years Tim Bresnan has been building a considerable reputation in county cricket, but his nine ODI appearances for England have given little hint of why. His bowling has been tidy enough but has posed no problems for batsmen, and even though he has had several opportunities to do some whacking in a death-or-glory bid to rescue yet another dismal England batting performance, one struggles to remember him even playing an aggressive shot in an ODI. Though the England management are presumably being encouraging, it must have dawned on him by now that he is going to have to improve considerably if he is to have much of an international career.

That it can be done is shown not only by Flintoff but also now by Luke Wright, to whose presence in the England team I am now warming. Nor am I the only one: the gentleman who sat next to me on Sunday morning was also pleasantly surprised by how good Wright's bowling now is. After some discussion in which Barry Knight's name surfaced, we agreed that Wright is the reincarnation of the young Darren Gough. That's the Gough who was a quick but not very subtle bowler and a cheerful biffer capable of hitting Shane Warne and Craig McDermott all round the Sydney Cricket Ground. He was also a great trier; one who would always go down fighting because he didn't believe a game was lost until the last ball was bowled or the last wicket fell.

Gough's batting fell away after he was hit later on that 1994-95 tour, but Wright has played higher up the order often enough to suggest that the batting he clearly learned at an agricultural college is likely to remain a permanent feature, so if his bowling gains some of the guile that Goughie acquired, he could yet become an important part of the set-up.

The big change since Wright's debut is that he has moved up from being a 75-80 mph bowler to an 85-90 mph speedster with a dangerous, skiddy bouncer – that lifts him from being a county all-rounder to an international-class bowler-batsman. It will be interesting to see how he progresses from here. It will also be interesting to see whether Bresnan can effect a similar improvement.

	The tactically astute Richie Benaud will lead Rest of the World © Cricinfo Ltd

In my last post, I selected an Old-Timers Twenty20 XI for England, old-timers being defined as those whose international career finished before 1970. India, Pakistan and New Zealand had too little history by then to pick reasonable teams, so I went for Rest of the World as England's opponents.

Before we go any further, Don Bradman does not make the team. Many will protest that he could adapt himself to anything, but the successful Twenty20 batsman is comfortable with hitting the ball in the air to clear the infield or the boundary and accepts that he will sometimes lose his wicket cheaply because of the risks he takes. Neither of these can plausibly be seen as traits of Bradman's batting. Maybe he could have adapted, but it would have been through gritted teeth at the gross offense to his principles, and I'd rather pick players who are going to relish the thrill-ride of a Twenty20 batting career.

The first two names are obvious. Twenty20 could have been invented for Learie Constantine. Tearaway fast bowler, whirlwind batsman and a strong candidate for the greatest fielder of all time, he was born 80 years too early to be the Maharajah of the IPL he would have become rather than the king of the Lancashire League that he was. Of course, he would have been in competition with Keith Miller, tearaway, whirlwind and superb fielder in the deep, taking running catches the way Constantine ran batsmen out.

As Les Ames was for England, there is a standout batsman-keeper in Clyde Walcott, who might as well open the batting because he would be excellent in Powerplay overs. Unlike England, though, one of the great Australian openers will be ideal as his partner. Victor Trumper, the legendary stylist, was quite happy to send the first ball of a Test match back over the bowler's head if he thought it deserved such treatment.

Charlie Macartney, the Governor-General, is mostly remembered as the great Australian batsman between Trumper and Bradman, but he was really an all-rounder, since his left-arm spin took over 400 first-class wickets at under 21.

Number three looks like his berth, and six and seven for Miller and Constantine, so I want a four and five. Stan McCabe in particular will be disappointed, but I'm picking Everton Weekes and CK Nayudu. It's just about arguable that Nayudu's big-hitting 153 for the Hindus on MCC's 1926-7 tour of India tipped the balance of persuasion that India were ready to join the ranks of Test-playing countries.

Now things get difficult. We will have a leg-spinning all-rounder as captain, but I change my mind hourly on whether it should be the great South African Aubrey Faulkner or Richie Benaud. At the moment, I favour Benaud as the more tactically astute.

We will want a couple of medium-pacers. Fazal Mahmood will be one, moving the ball both ways and being highly economical, but then there is a choice between Amar Singh and Alan Davidson. Amar was the better bat, but Davidson is a left-armer and will add variety.

Finally, we need an off-spinner, and here I shall plump for Hugh Tayfield, the South African spinner of the Fifties who bowled maiden after maiden after maiden, and who will strangle the England batsmen into false shots just as he did in Tests.

So here is the Rest of the World XI I have finally decided on:

Victor Trumper
Clyde Walcott (k)
Charlie Macartney
Everton Weekes
CK Nayudu
Keith Miller
Learie Constantine
Richie Benaud (c)
Alan Davidson
Fazal Mahmood
Hugh Tayfield

Now let battle commence as you tear this side to shreds and propose a whole load of people I didn't even consider!

	Fetch that: Fifteen of Gilbert Jessop's first-class centuries were scored in under an hour © The Cricketer International

As the rain washed away the first T20I between England and Australia, I started to ponder how the old-timers would have done at Twenty20, and fell, as one does, into constructing imaginary XIs for England and Rest of the World selected from those who finished their international careers before 1970, so as to exclude anyone who ever played an ODI. It is more of a jigsaw-puzzle than picking an all-time Test team because of the need to cover all the angles. You want at least eight batsmen who are unafraid of taking the aerial route, six bowlers covering every speed from 50mph to 90mph and a couple of really good fielders you can put in key positions.

Beginning with the England XI, SF Barnes is always the first name on the sheet for any team I select for which he is eligible since he was the best bowler ever, a master of swing, swerve, spin and pace.

Next for Twenty20 comes Gilbert Jessop, one of the most amazingly fast scorers ever seen. Fifteen of his first-class centuries were scored in under an hour. He was initially regarded as a bowler, of fast-medium pace, and was also a brilliant fielder.

The other two certainties for me are Denis Compton, whose talent for batting improvisation remains unsurpassed, and Frank Woolley, a man capable of peppering the roof of the football stadium at Bradford against the powerful Yorkshire attack. Furthermore, Woolley was an almost Test-class slow left-armer and Compton's leg-spin was good enough to bring him 622 first-class wickets.

So, with Woolley, Compton, Jessop and Barnes as the nucleus, who else?

Of the three great H's, only Wally Hammond seems cut out for this team. Hutton spent his career worrying about the weakness of those coming in after him and curbed his aggressive talents, and Jack Hobbs was a timer and placer as well as a great stealer of singles and would, I fancy, have been as unsuccessful a Twenty20 player as Michael Vaughan. Hammond, however, crunched the ball through the off side with immense power and frequency. That he could (if reluctantly) bowl fast and was a brilliant close catcher are also useful add-ons.

The obvious batsman-keeper is Les Ames, who can also open the batting. But with Hobbs and Hutton ruled out and most of England's openers before 1970 being a stodgy lot, his partner needs some selecting. I will go for Colin Milburn, whose England career finished when he lost an eye in 1969, but who had broken the mould of English openers with his blitzkrieg style.

Still room for one more specialist bat. My choice is Percy Chapman, who will also captain the side. A batsman who hardly knew the meaning of defence and a brilliant cover fielder, he was appointed captain for the fifth Test of the 1926 Ashes and won them back, and then went to Australia and rested after the fourth Test because England were already 4-0 up.

Three places left. We have no off-spinner and no top-quality fast bowler yet, and we can give those spots to Jim Laker and Fred Trueman, whose credentials hardly need further elaboration. The last place goes to Maurice Tate, the great medium-pace bowler between the wars who also opened the batting rumbustiously for Sussex.

So here is the final XI in batting order, with the proviso that Jessop might well be sent in early if it seemed like a good idea:

C Milburn
LEG Ames (k)
FE Woolley
DCS Compton
WR Hammond
APF Chapman (c)
GL Jessop
MW Tate
FS Trueman
JC Laker
SF Barnes

My Rest of the World Old-timers Twenty20 team will appear in a couple of days.

The English counties voted this week to scrap the 50-over and retain a 40-over competition from next year, and were quite open that the decision was made on the financial grounds that 40-over cricket gets better gates than 50-over.

This may not be because 40-over cricket is more appealing than 50-over: the Pro40 is mostly played in July and August and the 50-over Friends Provident mainly in May and June. For Pro40, normal dress is shirtsleeves but for the FP it's three layers, at least one of them waterproof; the Pro40 is in school holiday time and the FP is largely played on midweek days when kids are at school and dad is at work. Swap them over, and maybe 50-over would be more popular than 40. I doubt it, however. A 40-over game is a longish afternoon out, whereas a 50-over game takes up the whole day.

Chief selector Geoff Miller and Paul Collingwood, pro tem one-day captain, are saying that is very bad from a cricketing point of view because we ought to be playing domestic one-day cricket that exactly mirrors the international form in order to prepare future England ODI players.

But, if playing the same length game is so essential, should not Test cricket's training ground, the county championship, be a five-day rather than a four-day competition?

Test matches expanded over time from three days to four and then to five because top-class batsmen would not obligingly surrender their wickets in time for games to be resolved. And all the batsmen in Test cricket, just about, are top-class. Domestic teams do not in general have line-ups consisting entirely of top-class players. They have some pretty average players mixed in with the two or three who might catch a national selector's eye. Give them five days to play their games and they will usually be over in four. It therefore makes sense to schedule it as four-day from the outset.

Playing 50-over cricket domestically in England does not do anything to train people for the international 50-over game. In fact, far from giving people experience of tactical situations they will encounter in the ODI arena, it gives them all sorts of incentives to play very differently.

An ODI team typically has five top-class batsmen and two lower-order power hitters. Between them, they can play aggressively and usually last the fifty overs. A county team, on the other hand, has three pretty good batsmen and two average ones, a big hitter and someone who is really a big misser. If the good batsmen play the way they could if they were surrounded by other good players, it's very likely that their team will be all out in forty because the lesser lights can't keep up. 35 overs to go and only two decent batsmen left is a position that you rarely encounter in an ODI but is not uncommon in county 50-over cricket. So the good batsmen learn to play more conservatively, and we wonder why we can't find anyone who is convincing in ODI Powerplay overs when nobody plays that way domestically because it would be stupid cricket if they did.

Playing domestic games which are shorter than their international equivalents compensates for the lower standard of player. It is no coincidence that South Africa play 45-over games at home and are the most consistently successful 50-over ODI side year in year out – even if they choke in World Cups.

Though the counties made their decision on commercial grounds, they have inadvertently stumbled on the best thing they could do for the England ODI team.

	Johnathon Trott: Better value will be obtainable when market fever subsides © Getty Images

The Holmans Consulting Group (HCG) presents another market survey, this time covering leading English stocks. Investors are advised that this is a highly speculative market in which there is the potential for both substantial gain and considerable loss: market sentiment is extremely volatile, leading to regular outbreaks of panic buying and selling which distort the market considerably.

Strauss Hold. Has achieved outstanding results since adding a management services division, both in management itself but also in the batting, which is now one of the world's leading suppliers of opening products. Trading conditions in South Africa will be extremely challenging and dividends may well fall back in the short term, but the medium-term outlook is bright.

Cook Sell. Impressive when a newcomer, performance has declined significantly over the last twelve months as the competition have ruthlessly exploited technical defects which have not been fixed despite bullish reports from the research labs. Up-and-coming firms such as Denly of Kent or Carberry of Hampshire could well displace Cook in the short term, although the underlying strength of the company makes recovery probable.

Bopara Sell. Many observers were very surprised at the appalling performance in the most recent trading period after outstanding success in some Caribbean ventures. HCG believes that the stock will eventually have considerable value but it will take time for markets to regain confidence in it.

Bell Weak sell. While famed for its elegant products for the luxury market, consumers have long been demanding an extension into the steel grinder field. The product unveiled at Oval09 goes some way to allaying concerns but a more substantial version needs to be brought to market soon. HCG reiterates its belief that Joyce of Sussex would be a more appropriate vehicle but recognises that long-standing ties between Bell and central government are likely to see the relationship continue for some while.

Pietersen Hold. It is expected that once refurbishment has been completed this powerhouse company will resume high levels of production.

Collingwood Sell. By holding firm at the beginning of the reporting period, Collingwood averted a complete meltdown in the market, but subsequent performance was extremely disappointing. The emergence of strong competition makes its hold on market share very precarious.

Trott Await developments. Given that the markets were so febrile that many brokers fell for a PR offensive from the venerable firm of Ramprakash, it is not surprising that the IPO was received with suspicion. Those who took up the offer made huge immediate profits, but there is no guarantee that these will be maintained. HCG believes this stock now to be massively over-priced and that better value will be obtainable when market fever subsides.

Prior Buy. The perky batting division had some good returns, although doubts remain about its ability to cope with crisis conditions, but heavy investment in training for the wicketkeeping division has resulted in products of considerably higher quality, leading HCG to believe that its position is unchallengeable.

Flintoff has regrettably ceased trading.

Broad Take profits. Freddy's medical bankruptcy opens up a market gap for a multi-purpose agency which many analysts hope Broad will fill. While HCG predicts a profitable long-term future, Broad is currently trading at a price which will not be justified by asset values without another two years of steady growth and refinement of the product range.

Swann Hold. Like several other English bowling firms, Swann has some excellent specialist products but is not well-equipped to deal with unfavourable trading conditions, though it should be noted that considerable value is also derived from the dynamic batting subsidiary.

Anderson Weak buy. Now the world's leading producer of swing goods, but much more work is needed on the general-purpose bowling products, which have very basic functionality and contribute very little to sales revenue. The batting company is gaining respect despite the first complete failure of a project in the final trading week; HCG believes that the popular Nightwatchman range has an outside possibility of three-figure returns if market conditions are particularly favourable. Unusually for a fast bowling group, they also have a very high-quality fielding division.

Harmison Sell. Post-Freddy's, Harmy's is the only recognised supplier of Ultrabounce items left but quality control is poor and too many are defective. There are strong rumours that the company will withdraw from the market entirely unless government is prepared to offer contract guarantees but there seems to be little incentive for government to do so.

Onions Hold. This recent market entrant has so far performed satisfactorily. Unexpected celebrity endorsement from Lily Allen will assist the PR efforts.

Panesar Sell. The Cardiff Expo saw the unexpected introduction of an excellent batting product, but the main bowling line has fallen away badly. Even in the domestic market, returns have been far below expectations and the future looks bleak for this popular enterprise. HCG would instead draw investors' attention to Rashid of Bradford, which has been demonstrating three-figure batting returns concurrently with bowling that reaches the 5W standard.

For the moment, the general trends in this sector remain very unclear. Investors are urged to be cool in their judgements and not allow themselves to be swept away on one of the market's frequent bouts of insanity. HCG accepts no liability whatsoever for investment decisions taken by readers of this survey and strongly urges that investors take professional advice, preferably from a psychiatrist.

	Phillip Hughes: Short-term sell, long-term buy © Getty Images

Cricket markets are notoriously volatile and have become even more so in recent times, and investors may be unsure where to put their money. The Holmans Consulting Group (HCG) is therefore pleased to offer this analysis of the Australian market's leading stocks. [Potential investors are reminded that past performance is not necessarily a guide to future returns and should take professional advice before committing any funds.]

Ponting. Hold. The dominant company's batting division is and will remain a world-class performer for the foreseeable future. The management division has posted its third loss in five reporting periods, which clearly gives cause for concern, but there are signs that it will be concentrating more on improving its own performance rather than explaining disappointing results by referring to unfavourable conditions, competitors' business practices or perceived failures of regulation.

Hughes. Short-term sell, long-term buy. Technical defects in the product line have forced a retreat from international markets for retooling. Testing of an updated range in the domestic market should be carefully watched, however, as it is anticipated that this highly innovative entity will prove one of the leading performers over the long term.

Katich. Hold. Since repositioning in the openers sector, Katich has yielded solidly reliable if unspectacular returns which should continue to satisfy the conservative investor.

Watson. Weak hold. Government has long regarded Watto's as a preferred long-term partner, and early results from entry into the openers sector are reasonably promising, but the bowling division has declined from an already weak position to the extent that it should probably be shut down.

Hussey. Sell. There is considerable loyalty to the Mr Cricket brand, and many will be hoping that the strong performance in the last couple of trading sessions signals a return to previous dividend levels. HCG is less optimistic and regards Hussey as extremely vulnerable to takeover, especially if strong domestic competitors emerge.

M Clarke. Strong buy. Long-standing predictions that Clarke will become as important a force as Ponting seem on the verge of fulfilment, and bumper returns are to be expected from this quarter. Especially fine are the products for the spin-facing niche, which for flexibility and agility rival any of those offered by the traditionally-dominant Asian producers.

North. Buy. Well-engineered batting coupled with some very handy spin-bowling accessories should ensure a prosperous medium-term and make the long-term prospects very hopeful.

Haddin. Weak hold. Those with nostalgia for former giants of the keeping industry such as Gilchrist, Healy or Marsh will continue to regard Haddin as yielding very poor dividends. On the bright side, the batting performs somewhat above lowish expectations, but the keeping is of extremely variable quality. An absence of serious competition in the field means that the stock should be retained pending developments.

Johnson. Partial sell. Investors who piled into the Mitch on the back of exceptionally strong performances in the South African market should seek to reduce their exposure. The sling-based technology is inherently unstable and prone to malfunction while offering the potential for very high returns when it operates correctly. It is worth retaining a holding as part of a diverse portfolio, but not as the main focus of investment.

Siddle. Hold/weak buy. Only a recent market entrant, Siddle has already established a reputation for reliability and should provide very steady returns. Optimists may wish to increase their holdings, but HCG sees little potential for further growth and would advise against.

Hauritz. Buy. This stock was badly underrated and deserves more attention. While not offering the earnings potential of a Warne or a MacGill, failure to include this stock can in some circumstances result in catastrophic losses.

Hilfenhaus. Weak sell. This may seem an odd recommendation given that the Hilf was the leading performer in the last reporting period, but similarly swinging trading conditions may not be encountered often enough for him to continue to lead the market.

S Clark. Sell. A loss of oomph in the main power unit has rendered this product line largely ineffective unless the targets are already on the brink of failure. It will be of very limited usefulness going forward and there is little chance of an improvement in the stock price. A more likely option would be the Lee, but it has been absent from the market for some time and future performance is therefore uncertain.

To sum up, batting stocks remain relatively buoyant. Returns may be down compared with the historic market highs of the 1995-2006 boom years, but they remain in the market's upper quartile. However, bowling stocks have fallen significantly, particularly when compared with South African equities, and considerably improved performance will be needed from them if Australian industry is to resume its world-leading position.

Our next report, to be published shortly, will be a survey of the English market.

	Andrew Strauss got the bowling changes right when it mattered most © Getty Images

The biggest difference for me between the 2009 Ashes and most recent editions of this long-running soap was that the Australian bowlers were never alarming. During the 90s and most of this decade, I usually had a reaction to a change of bowling. Either dread at what Warne or McGrath or Alderman or McDermott or Gillespie might do in the next few (or, in Warne's case, many) overs or relief that they were taking a rest and England's batsmen - or, more to the point, their supporters - could breathe somewhat more easily.

It's not that Ben Hilfenhaus or Peter Siddle are bad bowlers. Hilfenhaus is the nearest approach Australia have made to an Alderman-a-like in ages and Siddle can bustle in like a truck for hours of lung-bursting effort, but one never felt that they put batsmen in imminent danger of dismissal. Nathan Hauritz, Marcus North and Stuart Clark are usually competent at what they do, but rarely rise to incisiveness. And the bowler who had ripped through South African batting orders like so much tissue paper, Mitchell Johnson, only managed to bowl well in one innings of the fourth Test – if anything, his introduction to the attack was the signal for the batsmen to get their shovels out and start filling their boots.

But apart from remembering to give Hilfenhaus the new cherry and not put a spinner on until the shine was off the ball, Ricky Ponting's bowling changes were basically an exercise in working out whose turn it was next. Wickets would fall because whoever was on bowled enough good balls for the inevitable lapse in a batsman's concentration to prove fatal, but there was rarely a sense that any of the bowlers had the force with them.

England's bowlers, on the other hand, were wildly inconsistent. Though quite capable of sending down hours of dross, they also turned on the magic for the odd spell and a clutch of wickets disappeared in puffs of smoke (or, at The Oval, dust). At Lord's, Jimmy Anderson and Fred Flintoff got five-fors, and at The Oval Stuart Broad got one for real and Graeme Swann had a moral one - though the scorebook says that Michael Clarke was run-out, an entry of st Strauss b Swann would give a slightly more accurate picture of what happened. Australian bowlers only managed two five-wicket hauls, both at Headingley. Graham Onions managed a couple of very destructive spells, and even Steve Harmison came to the party on the last afternoon, rattling Mike Hussey's cage enough to get him to run Ponting out and then wiping up the tail in no time flat - a task at which Australia failed repeatedly. England's tail usually wagged as if a lifetime supply of dog food had been plonked down in front of them.

Strauss had a wider range of bowling styles available to him, but every change was a bit of a gamble because until they started sending them down, he had to guess which of them was going to bowl accurately, at the right pace or on the right length. Fortunately for England, he got it right when it mattered most.

Much has been made of Australian players dominating the series aggregates and averages, but the statistical table which really tells the story of these Ashes is the one showing the best innings strike-rates, which has Siddle's and Johnson's performances from Headingley at or near the top, followed by a swathe of Englishmen scything Australians down in every match bar Cardiff.

A constant complaint about England's players is that they are too inconsistent. On this evidence, English inconsistency which has deep troughs and soaring highs is preferable to Australian consistent competence.

	Ed Joyce deserves serious reconsideration © Getty Images

A quiz question: who is the only player to have scored a one-day hundred for England against Australia who has not played a Test?

We'll come back to that in a moment, but first, some applause to the selectors for agreeing with my last post and sticking with their original judgement that Jonathan Trott is the batsman most deserving a chance. Presumably this was a decision based on rational assessment of his capabilities, such as averaging over 90 this season in Div 1 of the championship, although since two of the last three debutants were Swann and Onions, one cannot entirely avoid the suspicion that having a name which makes for good punning headlines is now the primary qualification for selection. (Actually, come to think of it, perhaps “Amjad Khan't” counts as well.)

Like Australia's casualty Phil Hughes, Ravi Bopara is to