I wonder if I am desperately out of sync with this but I am quite bemused by the colour Suraj Randiv’s century-denying no-ball to Virender Sehwag has acquired. Having been persuaded out for dinner with the family, I missed the last half hour of the match and caught Sehwag’s six on a shop window around which a crowd had gathered. The crowd rejoiced as Sehwag raised his bat and I walked on.

It was only after logging on at home that I realised Sehwag had been stranded on 99. When I watched the replay it felt schoolboyishly petty. The overstepping looked deliberate and, coming after the four byes conceded three balls previously, it seemed the Sri Lankans had a design to deny Sehwag a well-earned hundred. Overall, it felt mean-spirited. It was immediately apparent that there would be a few headlines about it next day.

But even making allowances for the media’s ability to exaggerate, there’s a touch of ridiculousness about the way the matter has played out. The forthright manner in which Sehwag expressed his disappointment was characteristic of him; you expected him to move on quickly. And when it turned out that Randiv had come over to say sorry, the matter should have ended there.

Instead, it took a turn for the ridiculous. Whispers emerged about the complicity of Kumar Sangakkara in the crime – after all, the four byes had slipped through his gloves – and the Sri Lanka captain was forced to protest his innocence. Some newspapers devoted a whole page to the incident, summoning the ICC and MCC for explanations. There was even a reference to Monkeygate somewhere in there.

The most bizarre play, though, came from the Sri Lankan cricket board. It apologised for the breach of spirit and, more, it announced an enquiry into the incident. Little fazes Sehwag but it’s not unreasonable to assume that even he might find this a bit embarrassing. Centuries matter, but cricketers move on swiftly after the missed ones.

By issuing a public apology, the Sri Lankan board merely belittled the concept. At worst, Randiv’s no-ball was petty; at best, it was naughty. But he broke no law; he didn’t even contravene the ICC code of conduct as it is laid out. He can be accused of breaching the spirit of the game, but the spirit of cricket is a fuzzy concept. Batsmen rarely walk when they know they are out, fielders do their worst to cheat a favorable decision out of the umpires; and wives and girlfriends are sometimes brought into the equation to rile an opponent. If Sehwag was owed an apology it was from the bowler.

The bowler apologised, the batsman accepted; where do the rest of us come in?

	Andrew Strauss played for Northern Districts on England's tour to New Zealand last year © Getty Images

On an idle Sunday, some stray thoughts.

I am staggered at the way large sections of the English cricket establishment and even the English media have managed to work themselves up over Kent signing Stuart Clark for the first part of the next summer.

Not only is it a needless distraction, but it also reeks of hypocrisy. Have they forgotten the generosity New Zealand extended to them by allowing Jimmy Anderson to play for Auckland to gain match practice during England’s last tour there?

And this quote from Andrew Strauss is a bit rich: "It's very easy for the counties to be short-sighted and worry about their next championship game and season … From an England team's point of view it's important we all need to buy into the fact that an England team performing well helps everyone, including the counties." He was the other beneficiary in New Zealand, playing five games for Northern Districts.

And last year, the BCCI hosted an England High Performance squad during the England-India Test series, and the squad included Sajid Mehmood and Amjad Khan, both of whom were drafted into the England one-day team. It’s another matter that the squad returned without playing a single match in the wake of the Mumbai attacks.

The New Zealand cricket board extended the same generosity to the touring Indians and Rahul Dravid made the most of it by scoring a hundred for Canterbury. It was pathetic that the Indian board chose to withdraw Sachin Tendulkar and Dinesh Karthik from a practice match contaminated by the presence of couple of ICL players. It made the world’s most powerful cricket body look mean and small.

I am waiting to see if Craig McMillan is part of the commentary team for the second Test. Sky TV are right to tell BCCI, which wants McMillan, another ICL player, withdrawn, to stuff it. I am hoping the New Zealand board stand by Sky. Someone has to tell the BCCI that it might make the most money, but it doesn’t own the world.

Coming back the England, I can’t help feeling the obsession with the Ashes borders on the unhealthy. It’s time to wake up to the reality that there is more to cricket than their traditional rivalry with Australia. The truth is the Ashes has only been in contest once in the last 20 years.

And obsessing with one contest and one opposition can be hugely distracting. It was ridiculous to hear the chatter about the Ashes even before England started their West Indies tour.

Despite all the hype about this being an Ashes year, the first task of the summer for England is to win back the Wisden Trophy.

I feel sorry for John Dyson, who will now become a reference point for gaffes after messing up the D/L calculations. He is not the first man on the earth to make a mistake, and pray, what was the captain doing?

And I felt sorrier for Bryce McGain. It was as if the South Africans were avenging themselves for a lifetime of torment against Shane Warne. McGain isn’t the first Australians legspinner to have been taken to cleaners on his debut. But he is 37 and might have played his last Test.

Like Daryll Cullinan said after the second day, you don't want to see any cricketer being humiliated and having to experience the day that McGain experienced.

And news has just come in that the IPL has been shifted out of India. To where it is not certain yet, but what’s certain is that Lalit Modi seems to have met his match in P Chidambaram, the Indian home minister. No one has made Modi sweat more in recent times.

It is not unusual for sport to adjust its timing to suit the structure and space of television but Test matches starting at noon will still feel strange.

For the moment, the New Zealand cricket board has managed to keep the start of the first Test against India to 11 am. But who knows what will happen before the second Test. Sony Television, which has the rights to broadcast the India-New Zealand series in India, want the Tests to be pushed back by an hour so that the start is at the slightly less unearthly time of 4.30 am.

At one level, it is a reasonable request because ultimately television runs – and pays for - sport. And non-cricket fans might wonder what the fuss is all about. After all, they will still play for six hours or more and 90 overs will still be bowled, and the light in New Zealand holds till 7 pm. And in most parts of the world, sport organises itself to the convenience of television.

The English Premier League long ago sandwiched the traditional 3 pm Saturday kick-off between matches starting at noon and at 5 pm to ensure a better spread on television. It means inconveniencing fans travelling to cities spread over a distance – they either have to start out too early or have to stay back overnight - but the truth is that television pays the salaries. The two football world cups in Mexico – in 1970 and, more famously, in 1986 – had matches starting at noon despite the heat just to suit television timings in Europe. And earlier this year Roger Federer complained about the late starts at the Australian Open that kept players on the court close to, and sometimes past, midnight. But he had to play on.

Perhaps Test cricket fans are nerdy and removed from reality in their devotion to Test cricket but a noon start just wouldn’t feel right. It is contrary to the rhythm of Test cricket, in which the morning session stands for something.

Maybe it is only notional, and mostly in our minds, but the mornings are supposed to belong to the bowlers. Not that they always do but conditions – moisture on the pitch, heaviness in the atmosphere – have the potential to make the ball wobble and seam a bit.

But of course, most traditions are now disappearing. When India toured Australia in 2007-08, the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne was the series opener and not, as customary, the second Test; the upcoming Ashes in England begins on a Wednesday instead of the traditional Thursday; and they may soon print names of player on whites. And as soon as they can find a light-coloured ball to last 90 overs, they will start playing Tests at night.

That might not such a bad thing after all. But those of us who love Test cricket just the way it is reserve the right to be horrified.