England were less than pleased to hear that Trott and Cook didn’t win the coveted Most Soporific Batting Performance by a Duo or Group © Getty Images

Saturday, 6th February
While the cricket world is engrossed by a fascinating Test series in Dubai and the Commonwealth Bank ménage-a-trois is just warming up, into our consciousness barges the IPL, like a messenger in a ten-foot-tall peacock outfit interrupting a village wedding to announce via a solid-gold loudhailer that the Maharajah will be holding a bacchanalian orgy and concubine market at the Palace and all are invited.

Or to put it another way, it’s IPL auction time. As usual, some of the world’s finest cricketers were on offer at completely random prices, which is what makes this game show so entertaining. The eager contestants queue for their chance to give the Wheel Of Crazy Money a spin and see what wacky prizes they end up with. Vinay Kumar $1 million! Sunil Narine $700k! Somebody bought Mitchell Johnson! Crazy!

In keeping with IPL tradition, there were a few English bridesmaids, and we now look forward to another post-auction ritual: guessing which of the unsold Englishmen will be the first to declare (whilst wiping away a tear) that they never wanted to play in the thing anyway and that their first priority has always been international cricket/turning out for Nowhereshire/spending April decorating the spare room.

Monday, 6th February
So, after a short but spectacular run, the England Test team’s touring show, Carry On Dubai is over. But if you’ve enjoyed their madcap mixture of clumsy footwork and hapless swiping, you’ll be pleased to know that the ECB has scheduled two more spin-themed farces later this year. Chaos In Colombo will open on March 26 and there are high hopes for the autumn production of Nonplussed In Nagpur.

Not all the reviews have been positive, but Andrew Strauss insists that England got better as the series went on and the stats back him up. They lost by a narrow 71 runs today, compared to a massive 72 last time and at this rate of improvement, they should finally be gaining the upper hand towards the end of the 2107-08 series.

Having already used up their stock of excuses, the English media have been a little short of plausible explanations for this unfortunate third outbreak of failure and so have fallen back on sniping about how slowly Azhar Ali bats, which is a little unfair. He may not be a dasher but the drowsiness induced by an Azhar innings is as nothing compared to the powerful sedative effect of a Cook-Trott partnership.

Anyway, enough of the losers, let’s talk about the winners, who are currently at the high point of the Pakistan Cricket Cycle, which is a bit like the economic cycle, or perhaps the life-cycle of the phoenix, and has four stages:

1. Chaos.
2. New captain harnesses the available abundance of talent to secure surprising triumph that promises much for the future of Pakistan cricket.
3. Someone does something silly.
4. Chaos.

At the moment it’s hard to see any of the players or coaching staff coming up with something silly, so I guess it’s over to you, PCB. There’s not a lot to work with, but maybe you could sack Misbah, appoint the Interior Minister’s nephew as opening batsman or even withdraw from the ICC? You’ll have your work cut out to turn this triumph into disaster, but I’m sure you can do it if you put your minds to it.

"It's that or the firing squad, Brad" © Getty Images

Wednesday, 1st February
How do you let someone know that you’re not interested any more? That they are the leftover bit of pastry dough or the spare screw in the flat pack furniture set?

You could tell them bluntly that the spark has gone, that you don’t find their sledging thrills like it used to, that they can’t catch and that your mother never liked them. This can be painful; there may be tears, perhaps the odd bruise. But it’s the kindest way.

Option two is to take the little kernel of truth and wrap it in an awful lot of stuff that could plausibly be true, but on this occasion isn’t. It’s not you, Brad, it’s me. I’ve changed. I used to think that looking like Ian Healy and occasionally blasting a quick 50 was all I wanted in a keeper, but now I realise I was wrong. That kind of thing.

But John Inverarity has gone for option three - the evil villain approach. In this scenario, you enact the dumping but dress it up in the sort of vaguely sinister euphemisms best delivered by an od- looking man in an overstuffed leather armchair, stroking a cat.

“You have disappointed us, Mr Haddin. Perhaps you need a rest. Perhaps the schedule is beyond you. I am sorry that you have to leave us now. Kindly stand on the spot marked with an X and wait while I press the red button. Is it safe? Oh yes, perfectly safe, Mr Haddin, you won’t feel a thing.”

But Brad’s not buying it. He can see through the talk of gruelling schedules to the harsh reality beneath. He knows he hasn’t been rested and after Matthew Wade’s knock today, he may be even more dropped than he was yesterday.

If he has pulled on the saggy green for the last time, it will be a shame and possibly a season or two earlier than he’d hoped. Having taken the precaution of not being very good at sport, I’ve never found myself dropped from an international team, but I imagine it must feel a bit like someone tapping you on the shoulder in the middle of the most amazing party and telling you that you have to leave. A bit like life, really.

Thursday, 2nd February
The Woolf Report is in today, continuing a family tradition of Woolfs taking the game’s governing body to task. It is well known that Virginia Woolf was a scathing critic of the Imperial Cricket Conference and regularly used to bore the rest of the Bloomsbury set with her long-winded diatribes about the state of the modern game, as this extract from Lytton Strachey’s diary attests:

“Afternoon tea with V.W. Banging on about the overcrowded fixture list and England having to play as many as eight Tests in a year. Made polite noises. Light-heartedly suggested she take interest in a more lady-like pastime. Did not go down well.”

Published in 1924, her first novel, The Woolf Report, was a tautly plotted administrative thriller based around the struggle of a minor MCC official called Victor Woolf as he sought to overhaul the antiquated filing system and reform the outdated Edwardian board meetings by instituting a revolutionary biscuit rota.

But the book did not go down well in literary circles. Her friend EM Forster told her that no one in their right mind would want to read administrative cricket fiction and that if that was the best she could come up with, she might as well go the whole hog and just write down any old thoughts that popped into her head. The following year she released Mrs Dalloway and her cricket writing career never recovered.

Sadly, this second Woolf Report is not a patch on the first. There is no plot to speak of, the dialogue is non-existent, there are very few sword fights and the characters, including a businessman who owns a cricket team, runs the national game and sits on the ICC board all at the same time, are frankly implausible. All in all, a bit of a disappointment. If you haven’t read it I’d wait for the movie.

Patient Pakistan is not as entertaining as out-patient Pakistan, but far more satisfying to watch © AFP

Sunday, 29th January
“And so the Andy who was called Strauss led his disciples into the desert. For three days and three nights they wandered but on the fourth day they rested on the back foot and were caught unawares. There was then much wailing and gnashing of teeth and they returned unto their hotel whereupon they did beat their X-Boxes mercilessly.”

The Greeks didn’t give us the whole picture. Nemesis comes after hubris all right, but they missed out stage three: recrimination, which is the worst bit. Sky’s usual suspects looked like appalled teachers confronted with the evidence that last term’s top student had just been caught smoking in the sixth form toilets. Bob was loftily contemptuous, Botham was steaming and Nasser was definitely not amused.

But are they being fair? England are a good team, they just aren’t as good as all that. There’s no disgrace in losing to Pakistan, who played very well. What’s the problem?

The problem is that England’s media cheerleaders have spent the last six months indulging their fevered patriotic imaginations and now that Strauss and chums have slipped up, the pundits are left feeling more than a little cheesy.

Things were already getting silly a year ago, after England beat one of the worst Australian teams ever to don saggy cloth caps. Then they beat India and silliness readings went off the scale. One writer even got away with listing England’s 2011 vintage as one of the best five Test sides of all time without being immediately arrested and detained in a suitable medical facility for his own safety.

We’ve seen it all before. In fact, this English habit of premature laurel-resting was first noted at the Battle of Hastings when five minutes after the start of play, King Harold, observing that the Normans were struggling to break the English shield wall, declared that the battle was over, his army was clearly the best since the Romans and sat down for an impromptu muffin and mead break.

So now that events have demonstrated that England are somewhat less than invincible, the wronged experts must have someone to blame. I’m no psychic, but I suspect attention will first turn to the least English of the Abu Dhabi failures. Mr Trott’s gastro-intestinal tribulations may earn him a sympathetic reprieve and so scapegoat duties will have to be assigned to either Mr Morgan or Mr Pietersen.

But the blame apportioners are missing the point. Test cricket is more interesting when there is an unresolved scrap for No. 1, and right now there are at least four teams involved in the squabble to be top Test dog. Pakistan are one of them and not just because they have a pair of proper spinners. Misbah’s Pakistan is Patient Pakistan and that is the most dangerous kind of Pakistan you can get.

It was Ajmal and Rehman who dismantled England’s house with their spinning wrecking ball, but the hard work was done on day three by Azhar and Asad, who batted like Geoff Boycott’s older, more circumspect cousins, blunted the tourist’s momentum as though their bats were saucepans and Broad and co were onrushing cartoon cats in pursuit of a runaway mouse, and so set up the final day’s spectacle.

Kevin Pietersen participates in bringing about the downfall of the game © PA Photos

Thursday, 26th January
Today Giles “Show me the money” Clarke issued a dire warning. Ever vigilant, like Batman in a pin-striped suit, he’s identified the biggest threat to cricket, the looming danger that could destroy our beautiful game and he wants to tell us all about it.

Is it match-fixing? Nope. Twenty20 overkill? No. What about the ongoing DRS controversy, with its corrosive effect on the authority of umpires? Not that either. The imbalance in wealth between rich and poor cricket boards? The plight of Test cricket? The threat of Premier League football? No, no and no.

It seems the biggest danger to cricket is… people watching cricket on the internet. Now I’ll be honest, until recently (this morning) I didn’t really know what pirate streaming was. It sounds like an extreme form of white-water rafting restricted to members of the piratical fraternity. In a better world, that’s what it would be.

But no. Pirate streaming is the broadcasting of cricket coverage over the internet by people who have no permission to do so. And, make no mistake, it is evil.

“They take money out of the game without commercial benefits to us.”

So says Giles. But is he right? He’s assuming that people who watch illegal footage would otherwise be forking out for a Sky subscription. But surely, if you could afford to buy a Sky subscription, you’d er… do that, rather than choose to watch jerky footage of a blurry Test match that looks like its being filmed through the balcony window of a nearby hotel?

Is it an irritation to the ECB? Yes. Ever so slightly illegal? Certainly. But the biggest danger that cricket faces? Come now, Mr Clarke, you’re being hysterical. It’s like me suggesting that the biggest threat to cricket is the impulse to make as much money as possible in the shortest possible time, regardless of the effect on the sport, its legacy or the wider cricket public (see Stanford, A).

Friday, 27th January
When I first saw the headline, I could feel the gas being turned up beneath the simmering broth of dissatisfaction that has been bubbling away on my mental stove throughout this one-sided Australian-based farce:

“Ashwin says players disappointed, not embarrassed”.

It immediately begged the question: if losing a second away series 4-0 does not embarrass them, what would? Pictures of MS Dhoni as a baby? A Justin Bieber tune discovered on Ishant’s ipod? The revelation that Zaheer used to run a lingerie boutique or that Sachin is an avid reader of the works of Mr J Archer?

But when I calmed down a little and gave it some thought, I realised that Ashwin’s statement is in the classical philosophical tradition of Stoicism. As Marcus Aurelius said at his press conference after the battle of Carnuntum in AD170, “No, I am not embarrassed that the Germans have sneaked across the Danube while I wasn’t looking. If the rational mind of a man refuses to accept embarrassment, then he is not embarrassed. And everyone knows we don’t fight as well away from home.”

In any case, it would hardly be fair to pick on Ashwin. Not only is he the team's deputy nightwatchman, he appears to be the regular press conference watchman, having been to more of these excruciating recrimination and cliché fests than any other member of the squad. How many more different ways can he find to explain why they lost in three days, why Sachin hasn’t scored his hundred yet and why his captain puts most of the fielders on the fence as soon as Australia hit fifty?

Still, I’ve a horrible feeling that his sterling work in front of the microphone won’t do him any good come scapegoat time. Virat looks to have scrambled to safety by scoring some runs and since eight-elevenths of the Indian team appears undroppable, Ashwin must already feel like the next sacrificial victim tied to the tree waiting nervously for The Srikkanth, the terrifying career-eating monster with his deadly axe.

The man to be consulted if it’s complete honesty about the County Championshop you want © Getty Images

Sunday, 22nd January
Like many cricket watchers, I have whined on incessantly about how boring modern Test pitches are. Who cares if the game lasts five days if we’re asleep for four of them? Well, like a bank that has been recently been bailed out by the government at a time of low economic growth, I should now start giving credit where it’s due. The groundsmen of the world deserve a prolonged hurrah.

They deserve all three cheers and more, for letting the grass grow, leaving the hose pipe on, inserting mattress springs below the top soil or whatever it is that they do to make things more interesting, whilst all the time under pressure to do precisely the opposite. In what other sport would the phrase “result pitch” cause widespread administrative frowning and monocles to pop from the eyes of officials?

So when Gautam Gambhir today said Indian pitches should be spin-friendly, I was almost entirely in agreement. Dry, dusty, cracked surfaces on which spinners can cause the ball to move sideways to a preposterous degree is precisely what you should expect when you go to India, just as you should look forward to soggy ankles in England and broken noses in the Caribbean. That’s how it should be.

There’s nothing wrong with what he said. The problem, sadly not for the first time this winter, is his timing. Talking boldly about what may happen in several months’ time on a different continent creates the unfortunate impression that he’s already thinking of going home. Rather than reassuring Indian fans that their team will be hard to beat in Kanpur, could he give them some reason to be optimistic about Adelaide?

Tuesday, 24th January
A few years ago it was conventional wisdom to regard the County Championship as a chuckleworthy remnant of bumbling amateurism, a repository of mediocrity, the nasty damp patch that was the source of English cricket’s rot. It belonged in the wheelie bin of history, like fox-hunting, the Conservative party, and putting offal in pies.

But now that England are No. 1, we realise that the Championship is in fact the attractive flowery tattoo on the bee’s knee, and civilisation’s greatest achievement since the invention of the sherry trifle. In just six seasons this fine nursery of talent has, in exchange for around £150 million, produced literally two new Test-match ready batsmen, only one of whom was born and raised in South Africa.

There are some dissenters, but they are mostly extremists; obscure bloggers, England internationals, you know the type. Take this comment from someone called “Alastair Cook”. Asked recently whether he felt the success of the England team was directly linked to the county system, he said, “I don’t think it is, to be totally honest.”

But what does he know?

Still, we shouldn’t be complacent, because the Championship is under serious threat. A sinister cabal of 18 troublemakers in boring ties, known simply as “The Chairmen” are plotting to replace it with three months of Twenty20 and three months of Forty40, whilst siphoning millions into unnecessary seating and hideous hospitality blocks in a grandiose scheme to make every county ground an international venue.

In this conspiracy, David Morgan is just a patsy. Behind the grassy knoll, you’ll find the chairmen of Bankruptshire, Kolpackchestershire and Subsidyshire waiting for the Championship to drive past in an open-top limo, passing the time by colouring in the dollars in their official 2012 Champions League colouring books.

Ian Bell practises the flummoxed batsman look for the next time he meets Ajmal © Getty Images

Thursday, 19th January
As a fan of the three-day game, it was great to see England doing their bit to promote one of cricket’s classic formats. There were no wacky declarations in their homage to 1980s county cricket, but they did bring on Jonathan Trott for some joke bowling and they managed to wrap the whole thing up by the third evening. Well done, chaps.

Saeed Ajmal was their nemesis, a smiling purveyor of psychological cricket warfare and cunningly fashioned straightish ones that kind of do a little bit. On the face of it, there doesn’t appear to be much devil in the Ajmal style. If he sold his deliveries in a high street shop, the customers would soon be complaining about the lack of choice.

“Saeed, where are the teesras you said you were getting in? And these doosras here look very similar to your offbreaks over there.”

“Ah,” he would reply, with a grin, “But if you look very closely, you can see that one bends slightly this way, and one bends slightly that way.”

And it’s true. Of course, Ian Bell’s visit to Saeed’s Supermarket of Spin would end after a couple of minutes of confused browsing, with the wee fella running out, screaming, “I don’t know which one to choose! I don’t know which one to choose!”

Bell is, remember, England’s officially nominated “best player of spin”, which admittedly isn’t a great claim to fame, a bit like being the tallest of the seven dwarves or the least unpleasant Republican presidential hopeful, but still, if anyone could handle Saeed, it was going to be Ian.

That didn’t work out too well and now England’s only hope of leaving the Middle East with any semblance of dignity lies in their batsmen finding a way to identify the doosra, preferably before it hits their pad. At the moment, I doubt they’d spot it even if the ICC were to introduce a new rule requiring the umpire to hold up a card stating “Warning: Doosra!” at the appropriate moment.

They will though have some behind-the-scenes help. I don’t mean Merlin the magical bowling machine. I’m talking about the Sky commentators. We should never forget one of the fundamental principles of modern cricket, known as Murali’s Law, which states that the extent to which a spin bowler’s action is a problem is directly related to the number of opponents he has dismissed in the current series.

We have already heard Bob Willis talking ominously about long sleeves and crooked elbows and ahead of the second Test, Sky are working on a giant rubber protractor which Nasser Hussain will hold up in front of the camera every time Saeed bowls in order to give us regular readouts on his angle of arm-bend. Expect more public tastings of vintage Chateau Sour as the series goes on.

Pakistan fans, meanwhile, were having a fantastic time, watching a match in which their team started off well, carried on doing well and utterly refused to throw it away in the most painful way possible right at the end. And in between watching the clatter of English wickets, there was the added entertainment of goading Ian Botham via Twitter, a pastime which obviously I could not possibly endorse.

This metamorphosis from embarrassing shambles to casual success would be remarkable for most teams, but for Pakistan, it’s just another 12 months. With their opponents in disarray, the series is theirs for the taking. Providing they don’t do anything silly…

MS Dhoni folds his ears back and stares into the middle distance to adopt a "I'm-waiting-for-you-to-make-the-first-move-and-then-I'll-bite-you" look © Getty Images

Sunday, 15th January
So 3-0 then. But the fallout from this little run of unfortunate results has been relatively mild. There’s been no talk of ditching Fletch, no declarations of discontent from the upper echelons of Indian cricket and, remaining true to their anti-review policy, the BCCI have not announced their equivalent of the Argus Report. Indeed, a suspicious onlooker might conclude that they don’t seem to care all that much.

Even the players seem to be remarkably sanguine about the way things are going down under. Responding to the merest hint of a suggestion that perhaps it might be time to consider removing one of the batsmen; VVS Laxman, for example, Gautam has hit back at the naysayers.

“There should not be anyone who should be deciding about his retirement. It should be him.”

This is admirable sentiment, but I fear that Gautam is missing the point. VVS is one of the most stylish batsmen ever to have played the game and for many years has been a joy to watch. But perhaps the key words in that sentence are "has" and "been". In Laxman’s case, "perhaps he should consider retiring" is a polite euphemism for "he’s batting like Chris Martin on a bad day".

Of course, it’s up to VVS to decide precisely when he retires from cricket and the same goes for Dravid and Sachin. But it’s up to the selectors to decide whether they deserve to remain in the team in the first place. It is an unfortunate reality of professional sport that sometimes, when you aren’t playing well, you get dropped. And, sadly, that applies whether you’re 17 or 37.

Monday, 16th January
Michael Vaughan thinks one of England’s strengths is aggression and he doesn’t want them to go all diplomatic, just because they are playing Pakistan. By aggression, he doesn’t mean sledging. And I don’t think he means throwing the ball at the batsman in a fit of adolescent pique. No, he’s talking about something altogether more spurious.

First of all, he likes the idea that England "hunt in packs". This sounds exciting and dangerous, but I’m not sure what it means. Do their off-field activities include prowling the streets wearing wolf masks? Do they sniff each other when they meet? And what are they hunting? The ball? The batsman? Rabbits?

He also likes their aggressive body language. But what does he mean? Cricket is a game that involves a lot of standing about. Have you tried standing still aggressively? I did and I nearly fell over. Maybe I wasn’t doing it right. But it must be jolly tricky to display aggressive body language when you’re at fine leg or deep backward point and all your stony glares and furrowed brows pass unnoticed by the distant batsman.

I suspect that by "aggressive body language", Mr Vaughan means the kind of niggling and posturing you get with squabbling schoolboys who know they aren’t allowed to fight in front of the teacher. It may seem like a good wheeze in the dressing room, but there is nothing duller than watching grown men going through the motions of pretending to be moody teenagers because that’s what they’re expected to do.

And, according to Mr Vaseline, there’s one more way in which England display their praise-worthy aggression. “They constantly throw the ball into the keeper which annoys the opposition.”

Yes, and it irritates the hell out of us spectators too. But there you are, India, if you want to reverse that decline in fortunes, Dr Vaughan’s prescription is clear. Look cross, pretend you’re a wolf and throw the ball to Dhoni for no apparent reason

Demons in the pitch? Freddie v Jason, no doubt © Getty Images

Wednesday, 11th January
How best to describe Sri Lanka’s batting today? Mere words can only begin to convey the wretchedness of their willow-wafting. It was more horrifying than Rick Santorum wearing a Newt Gingrich mask; messier than the state of Italy’s finances, and uglier to watch than the unveiling of the new pavilion at Headingley.

But not, I suspect, as ugly as the mood of the ordinary Sri Lankan spectator who has been asked to swallow an awful lot of ineptitude of late and who might be starting to suspect that the phrase “We’re in transition” is in fact top sports administrator code for “Help, we really don’t know what to do without Murali!”

And just what is it with the modern batsman? Accustomed to nice, well-behaved pitches, where the bounce is always ankle height and the runs flow easy, he turns into a dainty, timorous creature when faced with deliveries that deviate a millimetre from a straight line or which threaten to bounce up and tickle his tummy.

Sri Lanka’s ineptitude was summed up by Lasith Malinga. In Twenty20 World, a quick 30 from the Slinger can be the game. But faced with the need to hit a quick 270, his methods proved less effective. Going down on one knee, he swung mightily, as though trying to get them all in one shot. Naturally, he missed.

Thursday, 12th January
There is a lot of speculation ahead of India’s defeat in Perth about what kind of team they are going to pick. I have no inside knowledge, but experience leads me to suggest that the kind of team they will pick will be one that looks good on paper, sets off with purpose, gets within sniffing distance of the outskirts of victory, then wanders off to sit in a field making daisy chains before falling asleep under a bush.

You know, the usual.

But MS Dhoni, a man who can rival Chris Gayle in the unflappable/laidback/not-appearing-to-be-all-that-bothered-actually stakes, is in a philosophical mood.

“You lose a few series, you lose a few games. As long as you are competing, it is good.”

It rather depends. If by “competing” he means, “turning up and running about a bit like it says we have to do in our BCCI contracts” then yes, India have been competing. But it’s not the kind of competing that we might expect from a team that was No. 1 not so long ago. But hang on. Is there another reason for their poor efforts?

“In England, we weren’t really there, so we didn’t perform to our potential.”

What do you mean, you weren’t really there? Is this just sportsman’s speak, a derivation of the cliché about parties? You know the one: “We didn’t come to the party, so obviously we didn’t get a go on the karaoke machine or have a chance to sample the buffet or get to show off our dance moves and we don’t know who did what with whom at the party, which is disappointing, but hopefully we will be invited to the party next time.”

Or was Dhoni being literal. What if he has accidentally let the feline out of the holdall? What if they really weren’t there in England and they aren’t there in Australia either? Perhaps, worn out by the excessive demands of their fans/accountants/agents, they’ve taken these series off and sent in their place a plausible cast of doubles, impersonators and, in the case of VVS, a realistically dressed mannequin.

It would explain a lot.

"And they said my dives are more like Italian footballers' attempts to get penalties" © Getty Images

Saturday, 7th January
Although India’s rickety cart, minus wheels, driver and horses, did eventually come to a crashing halt, the prayers offered to the God of Revenue Maximisation by the SCG treasurer were answered and the mirage of the golden century was still flickering come the morning of the fourth day.

I reckon if you could calculate it, you’d find that Sachin’s failure to score a hundred is one of Test cricket’s most valuable assets. Cricket boards around the world will soon start factoring it into their budgets, wondering if they can get away with charging a “Sachin Century Possibility Premium” when India arrive.

I feel about the Sachin ton a little bit like I used to feel about Christmas as a child. It took so long to arrive that by the time it did, there was no possible way it could live up to the anticipation and you knew that it probably wouldn’t, but still that didn’t prevent you from giving your fevered imagination free rein.

Perhaps when it comes, the century will bring the cosmic cricket forces into balance and herald a new golden age. Jaded old cricketers will throw off their cynicism and come running onto the pitch to embrace. Ian Chappell and Ian Botham will sing “I Got You Babe,” in the centre of the WACA and doves will take off from all directions as petals fall on the outfield. In the days after the century, maybe Pakistan will be allowed to host Tests again, the World Test Championship will return, the DRS system will be made mandatory and Bob Willis will finally get his own chat show.

It is, of course, possible that none of these things will happen and that the event will pass with just a wave of the bat and an extra digit in the records. But you never know. And in the meanwhile, can I interest you in a commemorative signed photograph of Sachin almost scoring his hundredth hundred? Yours for only $99.99

Monday, 9th January
I have an apology to make. I have over the months made the occasional cheap jibe at the expense of a certain Sussex performer. I have called him Luke Wrong. I have averred that if he’s an international cricketer, then I’m a Dutchman. I have suggested that he patents the straight up in the air shot, an art in which he even surpasses the master, Shahid Afridi. Well I was wrong. Call me Ronald van Humble.

Today he heaved nine sixes and eight fours in a rampage of willow-wafting that had me so astonished that I fear I may need surgery to return my eyebrows to their correct position. The list of impressive blonds called Luke that I have seen in my lifetime now extends to two and given that Luke Skywalker was, I have to reluctantly accept, a fictional character, the Luke from Grantham is probably at the top of the list.

Tuesday, 10th January
Brad Haddin has copped some flak for suggesting that India are fragile and that they break quicker than anyone in the world, but I think a little understanding is called for. Having been a regular in the Australian team for the last three years, he’s seen a collapse or two so he knows what he’s talking about. Indeed, coming from an Australian cricketer of recent vintage, his comments could be taken as a kind of compliment; like one cowboy builder with a record of collapsing structures admiring an even bigger ruin brought about by another firm of dodgy constructors.

Then there is the psychological factor. We all remember from our school days that the loudest name-callers have often borne the brunt of such bullying themselves. People are saying nasty things about Brad; that he can’t catch, that he doesn’t know which end of the bat to hold, that Brad’s a silly name, that he wears his baggy green all wrong, that he can’t tie his shoelaces, that his mother cuts his hair; this kind of thing; so in time honoured schoolyard tradition, he goes and picks on someone else.

No, the Indian players shouldn’t worry too much about the fact that an Australian called Brad is saying these things; they should worry about the fact that he’s right.

It isn't widely known that the combination of alcohol, sun and cricket makes a person smarter than George Bush at a world environment forum © Getty Images

Wednesday, 4th January
Catching up with old news today, I came across something I’d missed just before the holidays. It was a piece of work by an Australian economist. Now, normally speaking I’d give no more credence to the analysis of an economist than I would to the man who predicted that the world would end last May or to the theory that all the major nations are secretly ruled by moustachioed reptiles from another planet.

This is because, as far as I can tell, economics is about as scientific as water divining, creationism or the sticking-a-pin-in-the-sports-pages method of betting on the horses (a method which, coincidentally, is very popular in Wall Street stock-trading circles).

But this economist wasn’t banging on about the usual mumbo jumbo; fiscal restraint, quantitative easing and suchlike. He was talking about something that really mattered: namely, whether or not Sachin Tendulkar or Don Bradman was the best.

Now I know this is a subject that can get some people lathered up and I have generally steered clear of it. As a neutral, it has often struck me that to wade into this particular squabble would be as foolish as intervening in a fight between two angry cats. Unless one of the cats happens to be yours, it’s sensible to leave them to it.

But economists are made of sterner stuff. The plucky chap had decided to settle things statistically by using mechanisms called “opportunity cost” and “supernormal profit”, which sound like horrendous torture devices designed to torment undergraduates, but which, when applied to the facts, told him definitively that Sachin is best.

And who knows, perhaps he is. But there is one statistic that refuses to go away, the enormous iceberg in the water that threatens to sink the pro-Sachin argument. 99.94. If you rate Sachin’s undoubtedly splendid average of 56.03 as the more impressive, then where does this leave Hammond, Headley, Sutcliffe, Hutton, Ponsford, McCabe and all the others who were utterly dwarfed statistically by the Don?

And if he benefited from fewer opponents, easier pitches or the absence of post-match interviews with Mark Nicholas, then how was it that not one of those other fine players of legend were able to benefit from the same conditions and all trailed in his wake statistically, like little boys trying to keep pace with a marathon runner.

But, perhaps, before we take these findings too seriously, we need to know more about the record of the man responsible. Specifically, we need to know whether this particular economist predicted the credit crunch and the global economic crisis. And if he didn’t, then perhaps we need not worry too much about his cricket analysis.

Thursday, 5th January
Whilst I don’t often feel sympathy for the lot of the professional cricketer, I feel compelled to defend Mr Kohli. I didn’t see the incident live but one Indian channel helpfully provided a photograph of his Sydney gesticulation, with the naughty digit deliberately blurred to spare our feelings. Or perhaps there’s something intrinsically offensive about Virat’s middle finger? At any rate, we got the picture.

Now, of course, in the normal run of events, a professional on duty should not be doing such things. And yes, we spectators are not mere cheerleaders; we pay our money and we are entitled to air our views, even if we slur some of the words.

But if you aim abuse at a fellow human being, then you should expect abuse in return. If you or I were to approach Virat in a shopping mall and, from a distance of a few yards away, shout that we thought his hair looked silly, that he can’t throw for toffee and that his mother’s tea was undrinkable, we should expect that he may want to come over and offer us the benefit of his opinion.

So why do some people think that the possession of a match ticket, a t-shirt with a witless slogan and a large foam finger exempts them from the normal rules of civilised society? If I had any money, I’d happily pay Virat’s fine.

Dravid, Tendulkar and Laxman contemplate saving the board money on farewell-party cake © Getty Images

Sunday, 1st January
Hobart’s purpley heroes continue to sweep all before them. Today they overcame the Sydney Gayle and they were steered home by Owais Shah, one of my favourite batsmen. I liked him when he was the future of English batting, and I still like him now that he’s a footnote to an earlier chapter in the history of English batting.

He is fascinating because he has two distinct batting personalities, between which he alternates in phases, as though his technique is affected by high tides or the position of the stars. Perhaps in a desperate attempt to relaunch his England career, he once purchased a magic potion from a mad scientist, an elixir guaranteed to render any man invincible at the crease, but only for three overs at a time.

One moment he’s a harmless nudger and pusher, always in peril of tripping over his bootlaces whilst going for an easy single, and then, kapow! He is transformed into a biffing machine, despatching the ball with an angry snarl and a Pietersen strut, before reverting without warning to mild-mannered Owais, unable to say boo to the proverbial goose or even to the goose’s timid little gosling, Gary.

The setting for Owais’ triumph is now called the Blundstone Arena, which is overselling it slightly; the Blundstone Enclosure or the Blundstone Grassy Area would have been more accurate. But it’s a pleasant setting for a game of cricket and it was fun watching Chris Gayle attempt to bounce sixes off the tractor parked near the boundary, for which presumably he’d win a BBL Big Tractor Bashing Bonus.

Monday, 2nd January
India’s batting order is like Stonehenge or Mount Rushmore. No matter how crumbly it gets, people still flock to see it in their thousands whilst these towering figures continue to weather poor form, creeping age and internet abuse, just as statues have to endure howling winds, lashing rain and the unwanted attentions of pigeons.

It can’t last for ever, but the question is, how to manage the decline? The Indian selectors need to bear in mind the Fire Drill Theory of Transition, which states that an orderly and controlled procession is better than a desperate rush for the exits.

For one thing, just think of the consequences for the Indian microphone-bothering industry if the famous four all head for the commentary booth at the same time. Talking loudly about nothing whilst watching a game of cricket is all that Ravi and Siva know these days. How will they earn a crust when they are made redundant?

No, each of these players deserves their full month’s worth of headlines, parliamentary tributes, pullout specials, and interviews with Harsha. And then there’s the other oldies. Ricky and Michael will also soon be entitled to their time in the setting sun. Maybe the ICC should set up a veterans decommissioning unit to prevent these all-time greats from stealing one another’s limelight.

Rahul, in particular, doesn’t deserve to have his retirement overshadowed. I can see the message board comments now: “Yes, he gave a lovely farewell speech, you can always rely on Rahul, but even though Sachin only said a few words (‘So long and thanks for all the runs’) he said it with such a mastery of tone and pitch that you’d have to say his goodbye press conference was the better of the two…”

The nightmare scenario for the selectors is if retirement becomes contagious. Let’s say Virender is woken at six one morning, turns over to look at the alarm clock and thinks, “Nah, I’ve had enough of this.” Later, he wanders into the dressing room in his jeans and t-shirt, and VVS sees how cool and relaxed he looks and calls it a day on the spot. Then Rahul, who was on his way out to try and save the follow-on, gets halfway to the wicket before retiring and returning to the pavilion, from where Sachin has already sent his farewell text, and the four of them drive off in a hors- drawn chariot.

And then what will Dunc do?

Rahul Dravid disapproves of the ball's persistent attempts to kiss the stumps as if it will turn into a prince © Getty Images

Thursday, 29th December
Last week, Sri Lanka looked like a contingent of nervous schoolboys who’d just discovered they’d been booked to fight the lions in the Coliseum. But as any Roman Coliseum-goer would tell you, lions are notoriously inconsistent performers; savage powerful beasts one day; harmless sleepy pussycats the next.

And today, the Sri Lankans had the home side lying on their backs with their legs in the air, having their tummies tickled. The defining moment came when Big Jacques, who never gets a double pair, got a double pair; diverting the ball onto his helmet from where it rebounded with the dismal clunk of failure into the palms of short leg.

As the probability of defeat became a certainty, I watched a succession of South Africans miss a succession of straightish ones in a parade of increasing ineptitude until Marchant de Lange’s bails exploded and the Sri Lankans began whooping and screaming like I would do if I’d won the lottery after having been widely ridiculed for my inability to pick a single correct number in the last six months.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the hemisphere, Australia and India were doing their bit to undermine confidence in the batting industry with some shots that were so ugly that if they’d occurred in Victorian times, they would have been featured in a Travelling Show of Hideous Freaks. Apparently responsible batsmen appeared incapable of coping with the hint of a rumour of a suggestion of lateral movement.

Why should this be? It is generally accepted that pitches don’t talk, but if they did, the strip at the MCG would probably say something like this: “Don’t blame me, mate, I didn’t do anything. I’m not even wearing any grass today. And stop spitting on me. You don’t see me expelling unpleasant fluids on Ricky Ponting’s boots, so why’s he got to dribble all over me? Bloody hooligans! Players of today got no respect.”

First, Australia, having pocketed a lead, attempted to commit cricket suicide by inside-edging themselves to death and at 27 for 4 were tottering like a tray of full champagne glasses being carried by a blindfolded waiter on rollerblades down a freshly polished marble staircase. Then Ponting and Hussey slapped the innings vigorously about the face, told it to pull itself together and batted properly for a bit.

They were helped by the fact that India continue to take the lazy angler approach to the business end of Test matches. They may have the opposition on the hook, but they really can’t be bothered to reel them in. Set just about enough to win, Dravid, who never gets bowled twice in a match, was bowled for the second time in the match and India collapsed softly like a sponge cake left out in the rain.

Still, I’m not complaining. This global batting crisis makes for thrilling cricket. Hopefully we’re in for a Great Batting Depression, in which centuries are rarer than cliché-free cricket commentary and wickets always fall at the rate of five a session.

Friday, 30th December
Without David Warner, the Thunderers of Sydney have only Gayle to bring the big hits at the top of the innings. But this is not a problem. Bangalore managed to almost win the Champions League with a team sheet consisting of Gayle and 10 somebody-or-others so there’s no reason to fear for the fate of the fluorescent green team.

And even though I’ve seen it several hundred times before, the Gayle repertoire still causes me to stop and stare. Today he hit a six off Shaun Tait, with no follow-on worth mentioning, that looked like a bored golfer hitting a nine iron onto the green or a retired colonel half-heartedly dead-heading his rose bush with a walking stick.

As is traditional on these occasions, the bowler was pictured trudging back from whence he came looking more rueful than a rue seller returning from a bad day at the market. Other bowlers tried different tactics. Shane Harwood tried swearing in the general direction of the ball, but that didn’t work either. This is the way with Twenty20 Gayle. Either he gets himself out, or you lose the game.

Moroccan gem dealer de Lange prepares to launch an extra-large ruby to test its quality © ESPNcricinfo Ltd

Monday, 26th December
The 21st century cricket watcher lives a blessed existence. If our forbears wanted to see that new South African with the daring haircut or India’s latest medium-paced fast bowler, they had to wait half a decade or so, until the tour schedule brought the team in question to home soil. A fresh-faced and sprightly protégé could become a gnarled and stooped veteran before half the cricket world had seen him in action.

But now, with simultaneous broadcasts, highlights, extended highlights, and the frankly unnatural capacity to record two things at the same time, the cricket fan can see every ball of a man’s career, from that first nervous push outside off to the tears he wipes away at his final press conference. In 3D.

So today, weighed down by too many helpings of fruit-based steamed puddings, it was my pleasure to be able to contemplate, from the depths of my sofa, two intriguing new characters in the international cricket soap opera: Ed Cowan and Marchant de Lange.

My first impression of Cowan is that he has more than a flavour of Simon Katich about him, although he doesn’t seem to shuffle about so much, and as far as I know, has yet to take his captain by the throat. de Lange should be a dealer in precious gems, with an office on a seedy side street in Marrakech, but he is in fact a strapping fast-bowler from the same Terminator-factory that brought us Morne Morkel.

But whether they go on to illustrious commentary careers or end up having to take demeaning jobs in sports administration, it is always a kind of privilege to see players take their first step onto the Test stage. Good luck to both of them.

Tuesday, 27th December
Today we heard from Mustafa Kamal, the Bangladesh Cricket Board chief, who has been mulling something over and clearly needed to get it off his chest.

“I was listening to the commentators during the recently concluded Pakistan series. Everyone mentioned there that we got bad decisions.”

I’m a lesser man than Mr Kemal, no doubt, but even a humble cricket fan can spot the problem here. Listening to commentators is not absolutely guaranteed to give you the full picture, reality-wise, and relying on commentators from your own country for the objective truth on these matters is rather like relying on a mother to give an unvarnished assessment of her son’s character.

“I cannot talk against umpires, being an ICC director… but I have seen that against weaker countries, there are more wrong decisions.”

Are there? Well, now I’m intrigued. Did he have any graphs, tables, or spreadsheets to seal the deal? After all, these days it ought to be perfectly possible to tot up the details of umpiring bloopers worldwide and thus demonstrate that x is greater than y. Sadly, Mr Kemal had not a single pie chart or indeed number to call upon, and his plucky attempt to scale Mount Conspiracy failed to reach base camp.

"Will Tendulkar get his 100th? That'll depend on whether he's willing to cut out his off-side shots again" © Getty Images

Wednesday, 21st December
Every year, at around this time, a respected figure addresses the faithful. As two Commonwealth nations prepare to do battle on the cricket field, what better time for a Christmas speech from fast-bowling royalty. It is time, ladies and gentlemen for HRH Glenn McGrath to give us his state of the cricket nation address.

What does Glenn think of it so far? Well, he’s quite upbeat. He thinks Ricky has got a big score not far away (I assume he means not far away in the future). He reckons the Aussie batting line-up will “do the business” (presumably a different kind of business to the business they did in Hobart, which was the sort of business that Lehman brothers were doing in 2008). And he thinks the Indian team will be surprised by Nathan Lyon (because nothing terrifies those veteran Indian batsmen like an inexperienced spinner).

But that is the beauty of the annual McGrath Oration. It doesn’t have to make sense, and unlike the mealy-mouthed bias that you get from a lot of ex-pros, it is unashamedly and gloriously partisan. And it always makes me smile. Sadly, the interviewer did not press Glenn for his series score prediction, but if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say there was a strong chance of it ending in nil.

Thursday, 22nd December
Congratulations to Shakib Al Hasan, who is now officially the world’s No. 1 Test allrounder. He always struck me as the responsible adult in the Bangladesh team, the supervising teacher on a school outing. Tamim goes racing ahead on his bicycle, then gets a flat tyre; Mushfiqur and Junaid wander off and get lost; Shahadat forgets his packed lunch and everyone picks on Ashraful.

Then, along comes uncle Shakib to sort it all out.

He was at it again in Mirpur, gathering 144 first-innings runs, the highlights of which were the late cuts he played off the bowling of Umar Gul, deft as a brushstroke, the kind of shots that produce a contented sigh from the neutral viewer. And then he whipped out six Pakistani batsmen with those deceptive left-arm deliveries that rear and spit out of the dust like angry cobras.

Well done, Shakib. But this isn’t over. And if you’re a Sri Lankan batsman, be afraid. For even as you read this, Jacques Kallis is standing somewhere in the South African veldt, bare-chested, roaring to the heavens, like the Incredible Hulk, swearing to the cricket gods that he will have vengeance and regain his rightful crown. Probably.

Friday, 23rd December
The cricket watcher often has to wrestle with ethical dilemmas. Should I disturb my family by getting up at 3am to creep downstairs and watch live Caribbean Twenty20? Should you risk being late for your wedding in order to catch the end of the morning session at Lord’s? When you’re watching cricket on TV and someone scores a century, should you stand and applaud? *

Well here’s another one. When you have no connection whatsoever with a tournament that is being played in a foreign country, how do you choose which team to support? This is particularly tricky in the case of franchise cricket, where there is no history to go on, just a logo, a mission statement and a theme tune.

You could choose the team with the best name. But this isn’t quite shallow enough. These days I find I tend to gravitate towards the team with the most purple in their shirts. Hence my love of all things Kochi, my flirtation with Kolkata (was that really purple or had their black shirts faded in the wash?) and my new-found loyalty to the Hobart Hurricanes, the purplest team in the world.

Due to an administrative error, I had been supporting the Scorchers, but then I remembered that they were wearing orange and so I lost interest. Naturally they won immediately, although I did notice that the boundaries for their game yesterday had been downscaled to the proportions of a medium-sized bowling green. Clearly the tournament needs more sixes. Every day is Christmas Day for batsmen in the BBL.

On that note, Merry Christmas to all Page 2 readers.

* Obviously, the answer to all of these questions is yes.

Shahid goes bananas. Again. How dreary © Getty Images

Saturday, 17th December
I enjoy a good batting collapse. It’s like the final act of a Jacobean play, when the bodies start piling up and the plot gallops on. But like the eye-gouging scene in King Lear, it can be brutal, and I bet there are a few Sri Lankan fans who watched the denouement in Centurion through the gaps between their fingers.

Paranavitana’s plight was particularly sad. Having witnessed the demise of his captain, he spent most of his 32 minutes at the crease attempting to play at an imaginary ball that was always two inches away from the real ball. In the end he was out to an edge that was almost impossible for human senses to detect.

This was a recurring theme in the second innings; some of the dismissals were the nickiest nicks I’ve ever seen. Only just making contact like that takes real skill. Perhaps now that the ICC is going to pay the Sri Lankan players 46% of their wages, they might manage to get 46% of the bat on the ball.

Sunday, 18th December
Although cricket coverage is pretty comprehensive these days, sometimes even the most dedicated fan is forced to rely on highlights. Better than nothing, of course, but they still leave you unsatisfied. It’s like being shown photographs of the best bits of a Rembrandt, or in the case of the BBL, half a Jackson Pollock.

This weekend I’ve seen seven minutes of Aussie action and I’m left with memories of fleeting and unconnected images of games I haven’t actually watched, some of them vaguely hallucinatory. Did I really see the ball for the Scorchers game being delivered by helicopter and carried out by a man in uniform? Has the credit crunch hit the Australian sports industry so hard that a ball needs an armed escort?

I’m sure I saw Afridi play one shot, but it was the one that goes straight up in the air, not the one that sails over long-on. And though Australian scientists have worked miracles to get Shaun Tait, or at least a cyborg constructed from parts of Shaun Tait, onto the field, his limb-flailing run-up is more ungainly than ever. If he were a racehorse, you’d say he definitely didn’t act on the going.

Naturally there were a lot of sixes, but frankly, after you’ve seen David Warner launch the ball over long-off once, you’ve seen it a thousand times. The Little Farmer brings the fireworks, for sure, but you can only crane your neck, peer into the sky and say, “Wow, look that!” so many times before you start looking at your watch.

And this is the sole drawback to Twenty20. A six should be as surprising as a slap in the face with a wet fish; it should be as shocking as a swear word in the middle of a church sermon. But now every player worth his salt is clearing his leg out of the way and sending everything aerial into that straight-of-midwicket corridor of predictability.

Watch too much Twenty20 and you begin to yearn for a half-timed cover drive or a carefully placed leg glance for a well-run two; anything but another full length ball launched back over the sight screen.

The penultimate delivery on the final highlights package I saw was Glenn Maxwell’s dismissal. After clubbing six boundaries, he had a half-hearted waft at Johan Botha and holed out lazily at mid-on. It was the weary swing of a man who had slogged and slogged but could slog no more.

"Yes, I have just been smashed on the nose by a leather ball. Yes, it hurts like hell. Yes, I do feel a bit light-headed, but really, it's just a scratch" © Getty Images

Thursday, 15th December
Ouch! I’ve never faced Steyn and Philander on a green wicket but I imagine it’s not the most congenial way to spend a Thursday afternoon. After an hour or two of watching hard leathery ball smack repeatedly into Sri Lankan rib cage I was starting to wince, and I’m 3000 miles away. I expect tomorrow I’ll wake up covered in sympathy bruises with an overactive duck reflex.

Still, I do think it’s time for Sri Lankan cricket to have a rethink. In this day and age, you simply can’t expect unpaid amateurs to hold their own against professionals.

Friday, 16th December
I haven’t yet been able to find a place to watch the Big Bash League so I don’t know what the opening ceremony was like. I’m guessing cheerleaders, fireworks, enormous papier mâché Richie Benaud heads parading around the outfield on stilts, a hologram of Donald Bradman giving the whole thing his blessing and James Sutherland wearing an Australian flag skydiving onto the pitch from a Martian spacecraft.

The usual kind of stuff.

I did manage to find highlights of the game on the tournament website, although I was a little disappointed to find that the entire three-hour experience had been boiled down to 2:58 minutes. And then my teeth began to itch as I was forced to watch two excessively hair-gelled presenters throwing away 25 seconds of valuable highlight time by giving us a précis of the already edited action.

And what did we see through this tiny window on BBL World?

Well, I saw Brett Lee looking mean, followed by Brendon McCullum bleeding casually in that manly way that men who can’t see themselves bleeding can pull off. Had the physio brought out a mirror along with his sponge, I reckon Brendon would have been swooning onto the turf faster than a Victorian lady who has just found out that her daughter is eloping with the chimney-sweep.

I saw grey-haired Stuart MacGill roaring like a whiskery old lion who has just outrun all the younger cubs in the pride to haul down a wildebeest (although to be honest, Matthew was straggling badly at the back of the herd and is a bit long in the hoof these days.) I saw some evil-looking slogs that were so scandalously wrong I had to pop into church for extra confession afterwards.

And I was pleased to note a raising of the quality bar from the men in the booth. One commentator specified that a particular six had gone straight into row 15. Not 14 or 16, you’ll note, but 15. That’s precision commentary and a challenge to Mr Shastri, who can’t be bothered to count the rows but instead tries to convince us of the existence of a mythical “Row Z”.

So to summarise: bleeding, slogging, sixes and oldies. Not a bad 2:35 minutes worth of entertainment. Keep it up, Mr Sutherland and I might even be persuaded to buy a Perth Scorchers tea cosy. (“Keeps your teapot Scorching hot!”)

Kochi's orange pads can be used to fence your garden to attract butterflies and other such winged creatures to pollinate your flowers © Getty Images

Saturday, 10th December
Today we had a poignant reminder of the franchise that touched all our hearts with their cheerful clothes, crazy boardroom antics and unlikely defeats. The Kochi Calamities are holding a fire sale. Shrewd bidders can grab themselves a bargain at the auction and here are just some of the items available at a knockdown price:

1. Thirty-seven polyester orange and purple shirts, with matching trousers, baseball caps and man-bag accessories. Some tear stains. Ideal for children’s entertainers, holiday camp attendants or circus performers.

2. Two thousand copies of the Kochi theme song, “If Any One Can, Kochi Can”, autographed by Ramesh Powar’s cousin.

3. Sreesanth, fast-medium, reasonable condition, slightly wonky. Headband included.

4. Flat-pack trophy cabinet. Some assembly required.

5. Giant inflatable elephant featuring Mahela Jayawardene on one side and Parthiv Patel on the other. One puncture, in need of some repair.

But not all the IPL news is bad. One of the tournament’s most hated features could be on the way out. No, don’t worry, Ravi’s safe. I’m talking about the strategy break.

Surveys have shown that viewers rate this the least popular 180 seconds in all of human experience. It came in ahead of the long uncomfortable pause after you ask someone to marry you; it was less well liked than those unpleasant moments between when the doctor asks you to roll up your sleeve and when he jabs you with the needle and it was considered more frustrating than the interminable time it takes your stupid computer to get going in the morning because you really need to check your emails.

So the news that the company who sponsors this interval of pointlessness is pulling out is splendid. Hopefully others will get the message that associating your brand with a period of time in which absolutely nothing happens other than a dangerous increase in viewers’ blood pressure is not great for business.

Monday, 12th December
The news of Shane Warne’s incapacitation is a blow to the Bacon Butty League as it struggles to persuade us to upgrade our passing interest to something more bankable. But this unfortunate frying-pan related injury is just part of an ignoble tradition of cookery disasters befalling the greats of the game.

WG Grace was a panther at the crease, but when it came to alfresco snacks, he was far less nimble and in 1902, suffered severe beard singeing when he set himself alight whilst trying to toast marshmallows during a camping holiday in the Forest of Dean.

Geoffrey Boycott infamously missed the 1975 Australian tour because of wrist strain brought on by the excessively vigorous whisking of a soufflé mixture. (Geoffrey claimed that he’d been stirring a manly Yorkshire pudding batter, but his dinner guests later confirmed that he had indeed served up a soufflé of delightful whimsy and ethereal delicacy and that furthermore his crème caramel was to die for.)

And then there was the significant dental trauma sustained by IT Botham in 1979 when the free-spirited allrounder refused to conform to the establishment line that you couldn’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.

But Shane’s unfortunate sarnie disaster also highlights a new social problem. In the era of central contracts, the modern player is insulated from the real world and grows up lacking even the most basic of life skills. When released into the community upon retirement, they are clearly a danger to themselves.

So this Christmas, we should all do our bit to support these bewildered ex-pros and help them adjust to a world without room service. Could you teach Matthew Hayden to butter his toast without blinding himself? Or spare 10 minutes to help Murali empty his Hoover? Maybe you could pop round to Darren Gough’s house to explain the dangers of eating peas with a knife?

Shane only wanted a tasty snack but now his BBL career is in tatters. It didn’t have to happen. Together, we can help keep Test cricketers safe in the kitchen.

Ian Botham: no place for this trundling slogger on the Hughes bedroom wall © Getty Images

Wednesday, 7th December
The modern cricketer may think he has it hard, but he only has to stay awake for one game at a time. The cricket watcher, on the other hand, lives in a state of paranoia; unable to fully appreciate the contest they are watching for fear that they may be missing Sehwag doing something marvellous on the other channel.

Though I hate to say it, I do sometimes wonder whether there isn’t a little bit too much cricket. At the moment, I feel like a diligent guard dog who has, by rapidly turning his head this way and that, managed to keep three cats under surveillance, only to see a fourth moggy emerging from the rhododendron bushes.

For it seems that Sri Lanka are about to tour South Africa, leaving just Zimbabwe and England as the only Test nations currently without a date. The only way for the hard-pressed cricket fan to keep up with all this is to hire a personal assistant. Alec Stewart would be ideal, I reckon.

“Morning, Stewart, what’s on the agenda today?”

“The Bangladeshi players have boarded a flight to Wellington, Australia’s seventh one-day international against Papua New Guinea starts in 37 minutes, and during the interval you’re scheduled to watch the ICC board meeting on Snooze TV. And I’ve recorded highlights of the England’s team bonding trip to the tattoo parlour, warmed your sofa and arranged your snacks in alphabetical order, just as you like it.”

“Excellent work, Stewart, now if you wouldn’t mind making a start on those dishes...”

“Already done, sir, and I also took the liberty of dusting your Wisdens and folding your socks.”

Anyway, though I haven’t had time to read up on all the pre-tour gossip, I did ask Kumar the Sledging Macaw what he thought of Sri Lanka’s chances, as I cleaned out his cage. He squawked derisively at me, pecked me on the arm and then did his Tony Greig impression. A fair assessment, I think.

Thursday, 8th December
I wonder if our affinity with certain cricketers depends on our age. When I was the silly side of 25, I was rooting for the Athertons, Lathwells and Ramprakashes: nervous youngsters thrust blinking into the fast lane. I had no time for doddery old Gatting or hairy Goochie or the trundling slogger masquerading as Ian Botham.

These days, as my fantasy Test career is drawing to a close (they say that one day you wake up and you just know that’s it time to fantasy retire) I identify with the old codgers, the grizzled veterans and the wily senior pros who stubbornly refuse to conform to the idea that a chap is washed up once he hits not-quite-40.

That’s why I was delighted to see Rahul Dravid get the gig as captain of Rajasthan. And there’s another reason too. Dravid hasn’t just been written off because of his age but because he doesn’t lose his wicket often. The two are usually combined: Dravid has a solid defensive technique and is nearly 39, ergo Dravid can’t play Twenty20.

But cricket is just bat versus ball. The batsman must find ways to manoeuvre the ball in scoring directions without being bowled, caught or poking himself in the eye. If you are good at the bat and ball thing (and I think we can agree that Rahul is pretty useful in that department) then the rest is just detail.

Adept sous chef Phillip Hughes shows off his skills © Getty Images

Monday, 5th December
Rotation is, on the whole, a good thing. Without it, merry-go-rounds would be a good deal less merry; our cities would be congested with commuters on horseback*, and we would probably never have heard of Shane Warne.

But for the professional sportsman, rotation has a sinister side. It’s okay when it’s happening to someone else. Michael Hussey, for example, is quite relaxed about the prospect of bowler rotation. Batsman rotation, on the other hand, is quite possibly the end of civilisation as we know it, and The Huss is having none of it.

"From a batting point of view, if you're playing well you want to keep batting, and if things aren't going right, you want to keep playing so you can get that big score.”

Well, quite. But if batsmen in form shouldn’t be rotated and batsmen out of form shouldn’t be dropped, then the only ways out of the team would appear to be retirement, insanity or imprisonment. The Australian batting order is like the mafia, only less efficient and with more silly green hats.

Huss also has the solution to Phil Hughes’ minor technical flaw (his compulsion to play the cut shot regardless of the state of the game, the position of the fielders, the length of the ball or the direction in which he’s facing): just keep swinging, Phil. And if that doesn’t work, it so happens that Mike knows of a veteran left-hander who could step into the rotation-proof opening position at short notice.

Tuesday, 6th December
Like rare flowers, the talents of most professional cricketers bloom for a season, and right now it’s Mohammad Hafeez’s time in the sun. Having earlier opened the batting, Super Prof once again opened the bowling and once again skittled Tamim before the poor chap had had the chance to fully digest his pre-game energy bar.

The tricky thing about facing a ball from Hafeez is that although you know it probably won’t turn, there is always the outside possibility that it will. Today the Bangladeshi batsmen were braced for the one that didn’t, only to be undone by the revs on the one that did. He is my new favourite mystery spinner. (Ajantha isn’t allowed out to play very often these days.)

And it wasn’t just the Professor who was enjoying himself. With 11 twirlers doing their thing, the match was a festival of spin, as one after another, batsmen were ensnared like desperately struggling flies in a spider web.

At 50 for 1, it was Bangladesh’s game; there were congas in the crowd and the home side had just taken the batting powerplay. And then the floodlights failed. Umpires Cloete and Haque took a light reading, though they had to employ the special backlit display setting on their meters in order to read the numbers confirming that it was dark.

Umpires are obsessed with their light meters. If Asad Rauf were to feature in an episode of Scooby Doo, he’d be the one left behind in the spooky corridor of the haunted house because he’d stopped to take another reading. Mrs Bowden frequently has her bedtime novel confiscated by Billy on the grounds that his light meter says conditions are unfit for reading and the bedside lamp is casting dangerous shadows.

Anyway, eventually the lights came back on, Bangladesh remembered that they were Bangladesh, and crumbled to 119 all out.

*Although a world without cars would also mean a world without the television programme Top Gear, so it wouldn’t be all bad.

The PCB's committee that decides the number of Akmals to appear in each game © PCB

Wednesday, 30th November
As Sri Lankan cricket’s temporary cash-flow crisis enters its 214th day, there’s good news for Tillakaratne, Kumar and friends, who have taken to living under the covers at the Premadasa Stadium, eating grass cuttings and burning Mahela’s spare bats to keep warm. The politicians are on the case.

“The sports ministry is making arrangements to resolve this issue,” said a man in a suit. “The players will be paid very soon. They need not worry.”

I suspect that if I hadn’t been paid since April, I would long ago have abandoned worry, worked my way steadily through perturbation, consternation, despair and hysteria and would by now be angrier than Jade Dernbach when he discovered that Craig Kieswetter had stolen the last wildebeest sausage at England’s annual braai.

It’s true that SLC doesn’t have a lot of spare cash at the moment, but that is not the players’ concern. Last spring I was a little short myself as I was waiting on an unpaid debt (I’d confessed to a friend that watching Sky’s cricket coverage often drove me to blasphemy and he’d wagered that he could endure a whole weekend of Gower and Botham without resorting to that kind of language. In the end, he did 20 minutes.)

Anyway, until he could stump up the money from his congregation, I was left in a bit of a hole, gas-bill wise. So I laid it all out to a cheerful sounding chap at the GasCorp call centre, assuring him that payment was most definitely imminent and that he was not to worry. At this news, he lost his call-handling joie de vivre, turned decidedly frosty and began to prophesise all manner of dire consequences of a legal nature.

And with hindsight, I can see his point. So it’s a minor miracle that Dilshan and chums have not yet downed bats, face guards and athletic supports and staged a sit-in, followed by a march around the outfield bearing placards. But then, perhaps I’m missing something. Perhaps their recent on-pitch debacles were a kind of protest and a pretty tasty threat too: pay up, SLC or the defeats keep on coming.

Thursday, 1st December
The first PCB get-together of the post-Butt era was a great success. Everyone who is anyone in Pakistan cricket was there, Ramiz had a new hairdo, and a splendid time was had by all. Many of those present had fallen out with old Ijaz for one reason or another and hadn’t visited PCB Towers for months, so there was much catching up to do, and I have it on good authority that the gossip was of the juiciest quality.

In fact the whole affair turned into something of an epic. It lasted nine hours and we know this because they were trying out the new Alastair Cook egg timer, designed to measure interminable intervals of time. The device was upturned when Mr Ashraf politely coughed to signal play and by the time a third administrator had passed out and the meeting was declared closed, only half of the sand had fallen from the top of Alastair’s glass leg glance into Alastair’s glass boots.

Sadly, there was no time to decide on a new coach but there was an agreement in principle to create a committee to look into streamlining the committee-creation process, and a meeting was pencilled in for next month to discuss the desirability of monthly meetings.

Friday, 2nd December
With a late entry for the 2011 Superfluous Sacrifice Award, Samit Patel has ruled himself out of next year’s IPL auction. He’s not the only one. I’ve also excused myself, as have the Dalai Lama, Newt Gingrich, the racehorse Kauto Star, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Mrs Ethel Makepeace of 17, Elder Grove, Nantwich, who has a lot of knitting to get on with ahead of next April’s trip to Eastbourne and so has had to reluctantly decline an imaginary offer of $2m dollars from Rajasthan.

Ricky Ponting was not exactly chuffed to hear he would be the team's designated Lhasa Apso © Getty Images

Saturday, 26th November
Graeme Swann would like to scrap 50-over cricket and keep the other two formats. I have every sympathy. It reminds me of my French GCSE. I was a natural when it came to listening to the stuff and could read the lingo as easily as if I’d been raised in a fishing trawler off the coast of Marseilles. But ask me to speak it and the Hughes brain clammed up. I got my accents horribly muddled and my uncooperative vocal chords did unforgivable things to entirely innocent French vowels.

But there it was. Despite my protests, the headmaster insisted that the French oral exam was an essential part of the course and that he wasn’t about to remove it from the syllabus just because I wasn’t very good at it. C’est la vie, I suppose.

Monday, 28th November
One of the many benefits of following this great game of ours is that you are always learning new things about cultures other than your own. For example, until today, had anyone pressed me on my knowledge of New Zealand slang, I would have had nothing to offer but an embarrassed cough and an apologetic shrug.

But now I’m happy to say I have broken my duck when it comes to the vernacular of Christchurch and Auckland, thanks to Doug of the Bracewells.

“We’ve spoken about being more ruthless and having more mongrel…we are the underdogs and so it gives us that mongrel to go out and show that we’re better than them.”

Animals, whether be they monkeys or donkeys, are often a source of perturbation and antagonism in the modern game, so you have to admire Doug’s pluck, or as I gather they say in Wellington, his dog of mixed parentage, in introducing a canine theme.

But with sprains, tweaks and aches afflicting their opponents, are the tourists really the underdogs? I suspect Australia’s arrival on the field of play will have spectators nudging their companions and enquiring which one is Starc and whether the blond one is Lyon or Cutting or indeed Pattinson minor. Thank goodness Ricky is still there: the recognisable pedigree in a kennel full of pups and strays.

Tuesday, 29th November
The sun never sets on Twenty20 cricket and today our chum Chris Gayle popped up in Zimbabwe, playing for a team called the Tuskers*. The Tuskers lost out to the Rhinos in what sounds like an epic clash of horned titans on the African savannah.

Chris’ choice of franchise is an appropriate one. The elephant is a big beast, which generally prefers to potter about peacefully, doing its elephant thing, but when provoked can behave recklessly and is absolutely not one to back down. If, for example, you were to ask an elephant to apologise for trampling on your new shoes or snorting loudly as you were about to play a tricky snooker shot, he’d give you short shrift.

While the elephant isn't close to extinction yet, there is a dearth of tall, laidback Caribbean left-handed biffers in world cricket at the moment. So perhaps we should be grateful for the Twenty20 circus that prolongs the careers of such endangered and often unselected cricketers and enables us to enjoy them in their natural habitat: under floodlights, wearing gaudy polyester shirts.

* The article was amended at 1314GMT on November 30 to note that Gayle played for the Tuskers and not the Rhinos in the Stanbic Bank 20 Series

"When I told the TV people about the Test championship, they said they'd rather show the lifecycle of earwigs" © Getty Images

Wednesday, 23rd November
As three-cap wonders go, Hugh Morris was one of the best. It wasn’t his fault that his parents had the lack of foresight to bring him into the world in 1963, thus ensuring that his peak years as a cricketer would coincide with a period in English cricket when a new Test batsman had a career expectancy of two and a half weeks.

Anyway, in his current role as Head of Miscellaneous Cricket-Related Stuff at the ECB, he’s been keeping his finger on the technological pulse and wrestling with the ethical dilemmas inherent in allowing contracted cricketers access to social media. So Hugh, what’s the official ECB position on Twitter?

“It’s like giving a machine gun to a monkey.”

Hmm. Well that’s one way of putting it, I suppose. But it does put me in mind of that famous mathematical theory about the hypothetical primates. Given an infinite amount of time and unrestricted access to the internet, would an infinite number of international cricketers eventually come up with an interesting tweet?

Friday, 25th November
It isn’t entirely true to say that nobody wants to watch Test cricket. On the other hand, it isn’t entirely false either. Everything is relative. For example, there are more people who like to watch Test cricket than there are squirrels on the branch of the sycamore tree outside my window*. There are more people who want to watch Test cricket than are running for the nomination of the Republican Party (though it’s a close-run thing).

But there are not enough of them to make it worthwhile for broadcasters to want to televise it, at least not in preference to the really popular stuff; which is why when the ICC tried to get boards to ditch the 2013 Champions Trophy in favour of a Test Championship playoff, it received the kind of response that batsmen used to get from Glenn McGrath if they nicked a mistimed cover drive to the fine-leg boundary.

And who can blame them? They aren’t historical societies; their job is not to preserve archaic and unpopular pastimes. Test venues are emptier than a Sri Lankan cricketer’s bank account and worse still, no one’s tuning in at home. It’s one thing when people wouldn’t cross the road to watch a Test match, but when they can’t even be bothered to cross their living room, then the writing is on the wall.

Purists like to say the five-day game will always survive and they’re probably right. Like re-enactments of the English civil war, chess boxing and the Conservative Party, there will always be enthusiasts who want to keep it going. It just won’t be on television. A hundred years from now, Test cricket will be played by dedicated amateurs in their spare time. Just like the good old days.

* There are two squirrels. I have named them Ivanhoe and Wally. Why? There is a reason and not just that I like giving unusual names to tree-dwelling rodents. The first reader to come up with the correct answer earns themselves a glow of satisfaction, the admiration of their friends and a state-of-the-art emergency DVD-disposal capsule to be used in the event that any of your friends are unkind enough to send you a copy of Swanny In A Spin as a Christmas present. The capsule is made of reinforced concrete and designed to withstand extreme underwater pressures so you can rest assured that, once thrown overboard, you will never have to see the thing again.

Martin Crowe accepts a cool oldster award on behalf of Ray Liotta © XXXX Gold

Saturday, 19th November
Do you believe in fairy stories? Me too, even though over the years I’ve been badly let down by the likes of Santa Claus, the Loch Ness Monster and those leprechauns that my friend said would definitely appear at the bottom of the garden if I sat under the magical oak tree for long enough. After three hours sitting in the wet grass, I learned an important childhood lesson: never put your trust in imaginary little people.

But there’s still one story I believe in, though like many, my faith is being tested. All summer I sat staring at the television, waiting in vain for it to happen. I’m referring of course to Sachin’s hundred. According to the man himself, it’s “just a number”. Well, yes it is, Sachin, but that’s like an astronaut saying Mars is just a planet. And as you know full well, cricket is a number freak’s paradise. In fact, numbers are cricket.

Consider the jellyfish: a beautiful, delicate, ethereal underwater presence. But take it out of the sea and all you’ve got is a pile of squelchy stuff. So it is with cricket. When it goes the way of the dinosaurs, what will be left of it? A few glorious paragraphs from Cardus, the odd faded photograph of Doug Bollinger, and great piles of fossilised numbers. Numbers are cricket’s skeleton, its structure, its substance.

And a hundredth hundred is such a beautiful thing numerically, it is the dot on the exclamation mark, that feeling of inner peace you attain when you’ve solved a sticky piece of algebra, dug the last weed from the vegetable patch or finished wrapping all the presents. So please don’t keep us waiting any longer Sachin, we really need this. I just hope this isn’t the tooth fairy episode all over again...

Monday, 21st November
For those of us who had wagered on an Australian win, the second Test was a rollercoaster, although not one of those tame theme-park affairs. No, this was a bowel-twisting, stomach-churning ride in a runaway mine cart with a wonky wheel, travelling at breakneck speed along a disused underground railway whilst being pursued by savage cutthroats waving sabres and unpaid utility bills.

Naturally, Patrick Cummins is my new hero. Not just wickets, but the endearing grin of a teenager who can’t quite believe he has been allowed to play with the grown-ups; and, gloriously, big, fat timely boundaries. As we know, teenage fast bowlers can let you down, but I’ve every confidence that he is the next Ray Lindwall, or possibly the next Craig McDermott or at the very least, the next Chris Matthews.

The only whiff of negativity about the thing was the realisation that this was all there was. It was like someone snatching a chocolate bar away from you just as you were getting to the crunchy bit in the middle, or the lights going up just as Hamlet says, “To be…” and the actors asking you to please remember to take your belongings with you on the way out and expressing their hope that you’d enjoyed the show.

Well, yes, it was a corker, I’d just like to see the rest of it to find out what happens.

Tuesday, 22nd November
It was with some sadness that I read that Martin Crowe had retired again. I didn’t see his final game. Despite my badgering the young lady at the call centre, she did not budge from her, in my opinion, rather inflexible stance that my subscription did not entitle me to live coverage of New Zealand club cricket. I wasn’t asking them to fly Gower, Botham and Hussain out there. I’d have settled for Bob Willis with a camcorder. Then I had to explain who Martin Crowe was. I despair of modern youth.

So as I say, I didn’t see the game, but I imagine that even at the age of nearly over the hill, there was more style, panache and gold-plated star-quality in his three-ball retired-hurt duck than all of the rest of us combined managed in the entirety of our willow-swishing careers. Enjoy your second retirement, Martin.

Graeme Swann will feature next in Britain's Top Model © Getty Images

Tuesday, 15th November
I came across Paul Collingwood in the supermarket today. He was in the tinned comestibles aisle, struggling to reach the baked beans, so I picked up a can from my basket, shouted his name and flung it in his direction, expecting him to execute one of his trademark salmon-like leaps. Instead, it caught him flush on the crest of his Sunderland baseball cap and sent him flying backwards, demolishing a display of cut-price DVDs and a cardboard cut-out of Graeme Swann.

“Bad luck, you almost had it,” I lied, as I helped the dazed allrounder to his feet.

“Can you believe this rubbish?” he asked, brandishing one of the much discounted DVDs (was £9.99, now available at £2.50, three for £5.00).

“Swanny in a Spin?” I read the title, none the wiser.

“It doesn’t even make sense,” continued the ginger one, “Why is he in a spin? Is he surprised? Is he drunk? It’s gibberish. If I was still captain I’d sort this out…”

I left him to it. As I queued at the till, absent-mindedly casting my eye over a selection of Graeme Swann Advent Calendars (25 Days of Swanny), I mused on how sad it was that a player like Collingwood could have developed such animosity for the harmless commercial activities of everyone’s favourite offspinner.

By the exits, I paused at the magazine display. Graeme Swann was on the cover of Vogue, The Radio Times, Angling Weekly and the Catholic Herald. And on the front of Time magazine was a photo of Graeme Swann holding a photo of Graeme Swann holding a photo of Swanny. As I left, I could have sworn I saw his eyes follow me.

Wednesday, 16th November
I’ve got the decorators in. Caddick and Russell Ltd. are cheap but progress has been slow. After half an hour I found Caddick reclining on my sofa, dipping digestives into his tea, claiming a bruised toe; whilst Russell spent all morning on the door frame, although I have to say it’s the finest two square inches of paintwork I’ve ever seen.

I suppose I should have known better than to employ 90s rejects. I’m still waiting for Alan Mullally to finish that chicken coop and Dean Headley’s work on the rockery left so much loose dirt, I had to get Mike Atherton in to dispose of it and it’s taking for ever because his pockets are so damn small. I’d let him go, but when he looks at me with that weary, downtrodden, press-conference face, I haven’t the heart.

When I returned from taking Dale Steyn’s pet crocodile for a walk, I found Jack balancing on Andy’s shoulders, painting Trevor Chappell’s moustache onto the dining room ceiling.

“It’s a re-interpretation of Michelangelo,” Russell explained, “I’m calling it the Sistine Chappell ceiling.”

Caddick didn’t get it. I pointed out that it was wrong on so many levels, not least because I didn’t want to look up in the middle of my carrot and coriander soup to find Trevor and Ian leering down at me, nor did I particularly want to behold a naked Greg reclining on a cloud about to touch fingers with a bearded Richie Benaud.

At this point, Caddick bent down to pick up a jelly bean, causing Russell to loose his footing and tumble to the carpet, spilling burnt umber and yellow ochre in all directions. How these people ever represented their country is beyond me.

Thursday, 17th November
Last night I had a terrible nightmare.

I’m lying on a table, looking up at a bright light, when Graeme Swann leers over me, teeth glinting. He’s trying to sell me his DVD and I’m trying to tell him I don’t want it, even at the reasonable price of 99 pence, then he pulls on a surgical mask and I can hear someone strumming an electric guitar. And that’s when I scream.

I thought it might be effect of lingering paint fumes, or possibly that ill-advised second helping of gorgonzola I’d eaten whilst watching my old video of the 1990 Benson&Hedges Cup Final (I blame you, Hick, for that result). But no, I think the dream was brought on by anxiety over today’s events in Johannesburg.

You see, instead of betting on a whim as per usual, I had dabbled with Statsguru, in an attempt to bring science to bear on the art of the gambler. After much clicking, my screen was full of statistics of all shapes and sizes, but after a while, the numbers started to blur together and I became so confused that I forgot where I was or what I was doing. It was like my maths GCSE all over again. And that is the only defence I can offer for betting on Australia to win the second Test.

“And I’ll also be driving the team bus. Coach... bus, get it?” © Getty Images

Friday, 11th November
Andy Flower says that cricket boards are piling up fixtures with the same alacrity with which Samit Patel used to fill his plate at Nottinghamshire’s end of season charity buffet (“All you can eat for a fiver, bring your own plate and indigestion pills”) and that this global scheduling gluttony is all about the money.

So why this fixture frenzy? Where does all that money go? Well, some of it is invested in vital tools for hard-pressed cricket administrators: velvet sleeping masks, embroidered executive aromatherapy hand towels, and posterior-pressure-relieving cushions for those long afternoons in the boardroom.

But to take just one cricket board at random, an awful lot of the ECB’s money is shovelled in the direction of Team England: to keep Kevin Pietersen stocked up with silly sunglasses, to fund James Anderson’s twice-yearly cosmetic frown surgery and, without wishing to be indelicate, to retain the services of a certain Mr Andrew Flower.

So perhaps, in order to help the ECB kick their one-day cricket habit, Andrew and Andy could cut down on the expenses. How about asking the players to hand-wash their own whites? Replace the team of nutritionists with a weekly text message reminding their chaps to finish all their vegetables and lay off the chocolate éclairs?

And next year, rather than lounging around in business class, issue them with a map of Asia, a stout pair of walking boots and a tent and let them make their own way to Sri Lanka. As an incentive, the first 11 to arrive in Colombo will be guaranteed a spot in the first Test (unless one of them is Ravi).

Saturday, 12th November
Kamran Akmal likes the idea of cricket boards nosing around in players’ bank accounts, presumably on the look out for suspicious deposits under the name “A Bookie”. It’s an excellent idea, though I think the investigations should also extend to mattresses, recently dug herbaceous borders, and the inside pockets of new leather jackets.

Of course, some boards will find it easier than others. Sri Lanka Cricket, for instance, would smell a rat if they found that their chaps had any money at all, as they haven’t been paid since April. By definition, therefore, any income must have been obtained nefariously (although allowances would have to be made for Kumar Sangakkara’s earnings from his new part-time dog-grooming job – “Call Kumar for Kool Kanine Kuts!’ - and Angelo Mathews’ paper round.)

Monday, 14th November
According to assistant coach Justin Langer, Ricky Ponting is still a vital wingnut in the rickety suspension system of the rattly old banger that is Australian cricket.

“Ricky is great for morale; he makes Huss feel young, he keeps us entertained with stories of the old days when we used to win sometimes, and he knows how to read the racing form. Plus, he’s our regular poker dealer, ‘cause some of the other blokes aren’t great with the hand-eye co-ordination. I mean, you should see Mitch spray the cards all over the shop. And he’s the only one who can say, “Ah look…” with conviction, because between you and me, when Pup tries to do it, he sounds like Dame Edna Everage’s younger sister.”

When pressed on how long he thought the former Australian captain could continue in international cricket, Langer was supportive: “Ah look, Ricky will be around for a while yet. Monday I reckon. Possibly Tuesday. Depends if we make it to day five.”

And here Ricky Ponting shows us why the creased look is coming back into fashion © Getty Images

Wednesday, 9th November
We all tend to put off household repairs, and cricket boards are no different. In the 1990s, the TCCB had long chats about what needed to be done around the place, but invariably concluded that rising damp, woodworm and peeling wallpaper were probably cyclical and wasn’t it time for another cup of tea? In India, the BCCI have dealt with the nasty stain on their reputation that appeared last summer by covering it with that portrait of MS Dhoni lifting the World Cup that was hanging in the foyer.

But Australia have set about their renovation with gusto. Having thrown out much of the old furniture, including a rickety old Nielsen that was starting to look a little last decade, they are just waiting on delivery of a new coach. Steve Rixon is the favourite, mainly it seems because he has a strong relationship with Michael Clarke and bonding with the captain is now an essential skill for aspiring national coaches, right up there with looking good in a baseball cap and glaring menacingly at press conferences.

It seems Michael likes Steve’s sense of humour and Steve loves the way Michael says “Obviously, I’m disappointed…” and no doubt they’ll make a fine couple. But I’d give it to Justin Langer. I think he’d bring a wild unblinking, “Are you looking at me?” intensity to the role, as well as extreme martial arts (I’m picturing Mitchell Johnson head-butting planks of wood painted with Andrew Strauss’s likeness) and rose cultivation. Tending to these delicate blooms will help players to develop patience and attention to detail, whilst the thorns will fine-tune their swear reflexes.

Thursday, November 10th
Now that’s proper cricket. Twenty-three dismissals, two umpires with strained forefingers and a blown fuse in the electronic scoreboard. All kinds of records were broken, or at the very least, made to wobble precariously on their stands above a marble floor as these old rivals went all 18th century on us. It was a throwback to the days when a chap with a curved bat drank an ale or two, then went out to have a swipe and was lucky if he managed double-figure nicks.

For the connoisseur of the extravagant collapse, it was a treasure trove of witless batting. South Africa’s innings was more cavalier and reckless than the pink silk hat with ermine trim and peacock feathers that Prince Rupert wore on the morning of the Battle of Naseby, whilst Australia seemed to be trying to re-enact England’s 1994 amnesia-induced Trinidad collapse in which one player after another completely forgot what it was they had gone out to the wicket for or why they were holding a bit of wood in their hands.

There was so much traipsing to the wicket and back that it began to resemble a fashion show, showcasing this summer’s must-have combination of white shirts, extensive tattoos and grumpy expressions (“Ricky is modelling the latest in thigh enhancing body wear with 9lb willow accessory and a scowl”). But it was all jolly entertaining and somehow highly appropriate. What better way to start a frivolously short two-Test series than with an extremely silly two-and-a-half day Test match.

Mike Brearley: a mastermind in cricketing strategy and making razors redundant © Getty Images

Monday, 7th November
Like dragging a piano up the north face of the Eiger or trying to remove a recalcitrant hippo from a swimming pool full of blancmange, building a successful Test team depends on everyone pulling together. Take Sri Lanka. They’ve lost another Test series but chairman of selectors, Duleep Mendis, sees the bigger picture:

"It is not easy replacing players of the calibre of Murali, Sanath, Vaas and Marvan. It will take some time and we will hit some rough patches while in the process.”

Quite so. You’re rebuilding so the last thing you want is for people to start laying into the team just because they lose the odd series along the way. Am I right, Mr M?

“The performance of our cricketers is way below what we expected of them… See the number of players who are injured. I don’t know what our physios and masseurs are doing with the players for them to get constantly injured…”

It seems that Duleep has a Big List of Blame which includes batsmen, bowlers, coaches, backroom staff, cleaners and even the team cook whose biriyani too often lacked bite and whose rice was insufficiently fluffy on the big occasion. Calm down, Mr Mendis! If the chief architect is going to keep panicking like this, that rebuild project could take a while. Oh and it might help if you paid the builders occasionally.

Tuesday, 8th November
With just 39 days left until the Sydney Sausages take on the Brisbane Ribs, the marketing people are working overtime to persuade us that the Big Barbeque League is the most exciting thing in cricket since Mike Brearley started to grow a beard.

We’ve seen these Twenty20 launches before and we know the drill by now: Power Rangers style logos, randomly alliterative team names and some really, really awful shirts. But how can the organisers establish identities for eight teams that don’t yet exist? Simple. With a healthy dose of IPL-style gibberish.

For example, the website of the Perth Scorchers tells us that they are “proudly, defiantly Perth”. I don’t know what this means. I was happy to accept that they were from Perth when I read that they were called the Perth Scorchers, and I didn’t really require any further clarification. Or are they saying that Perth is a state of being, not a city. Are you Perth? Are you feeling Perthy today? Or is that just wind?

Elsewhere, we learn that Melbourne Renegades are vibrant, diverse and progressive, that the Hobart Hurricanes have a passion that is both rugged and yet at the same time purple, whilst The Heat, who rather oddly will be wearing icy blue, are loyal, forward thinking and energetic. By contrast, poor old Sydney Sixers are letting the side down with just the one adjective, a rather paltry “vibrant”.

And is it just me or do the Melbourne Stars seem rather light on stars (with due apologies to Luke Wright)? I suppose they have signed up Liz Hurley’s fiancé and he is most definitely box office, although I am a bit worried about the old boy. It’s not his age, it’s his weight. In my experience people who shed that many pounds are never quite the same. I fear that a lean and slender Warne will be a man much reduced in his powers; like Samson after Delilah had been at him with the scissors.

Lasith Malinga helps out at the macaroni and fusili pasta section of Colombo's gourmet stores © Getty Images

Wednesday, 2nd November
Something strange is afoot. Back at the soggy end of September, Graeme Swann suggested that West Indies hadn’t bowled well enough to dismiss England for 88. And yet the scoreboard read, “England 88 all out”. Mysterious. And now history has repeated itself. “They hardly got us out,” said Bangladeshi captain Mushfiqur Rahim, after some bowlers or other had dismissed the Tigers for 278.

Every time West Indies roll into town, the home team suddenly and mysteriously begin losing wickets. What is going on? Is it a conspiracy? Have the men from the Caribbean finally managed to incorporate Klingon cloaking technology, making Marlon Samuels invisible to the naked eye? Or could it be that they’ve found a decent bowling attack and the rest of the world is being a little ungracious?

Thursday, 3rd November
Give praise to the god of satire, for Afridi is back! His unconditional unretirement (slight return) means that the cricket world is approximately 10% more interesting in real terms. So how have you been keeping, Shahid?

"I am strong, fit and in good shape to cover the wild period I had lost during the time of retirement.”

Wild period? Sounds intriguing. Tell us more about this wild period. Did you grow dreads and journey across Outer Mongolia in a beat-up multicoloured camper van? Did you have a tattoo of a man eating a cricket ball with the legend “Lala likes leather for lunch” across your upper back? Did you spend some time in the jungles of Borneo, learning how the orangutan deals with the outswinger?

Oh, you played for Hampshire. Well, that’s pretty wild, I guess. But his return to the one-day squad was not a formality and as always, the Pakistan selection committee carefully weighed up the pros and cons in an objective and dispassionate manner.

“He is like a son to me,” said interim selector Mohammad Ilyas, “And his selection is not unfair.”

Friday, 4th November
Colossal fiscal incompetence is everywhere it seems, so we shouldn’t be surprised to see cricket boards following the fashion for financial stupidity. Our old friends, SLC built a lot of grounds that they couldn’t afford to run and so, naturally enough, have handed them over to the military. I’m not entirely sure what the military would want with cricket stadiums, though if the SLPL ever happens, I guess Ravi could have fun spotting sponsored Abrams tanks and F16s rather than the accursed blimp.

But it isn’t just the stadiums that SLC are offloading. Many of the players are being handed over local businesses as the board can no longer afford to run them either. Kumar Sangakkara will be working for a Mrs De Silva of Market Street, Colombo, shouting out the prices at her fruit and vegetable stall; Mahela Jayawardene will be employed as a street sweeper by Galle District Council, tidying up the mess that others have left (similar to his current role) and Ajantha Mendis will be placed in storage at the Kandy Museum of Mystery, though may not be picked for every exhibition.

"... and Jessica, where did you go for voice-training? The local Bingo hall? © Getty Images

Friday, 28th October
His Buttiness has gone, but the effects of Buttism linger. Pakistan’s cricketers are currently playing a home series 1200 miles away from home and cricket fans in Pakistan haven’t been able to watch their team play live for two and half years. Thanks to Ijaz’s patented formula for administration (Crisis x Incompetence = Disaster²) who knows how many have given up on the sport altogether?

And since the globalised sports marketplace deplores a vacuum, it appears that the imaginations of Pakistani youth are being seduced by, of all things, Premier League football. Quite why anyone in Pakistan would want to watch a bunch of overrated, overpaid, whining hooligans play-acting, spitting and kicking at each other is beyond me, particularly when they can already get that on the Parliament Channel.

But it seems that the doings of Terry, Torres and Suarez are of increasing interest to the citizens of Pakistan and so now Manchester United are supplying “exclusive” content to their mobile phones. Just imagine that. As well as being able to see Wayne Rooney swearing in slow-mo on your television, you can now take the foul-mouthed moron with you on the train, to the dentist or visiting your grandmother.

Never mind inviting Imran round for tea and gossip, Mr Ashraf, your No. 1 priority should be bringing back international cricket. Do you want the next generation to grow up wearing Chelsea shirts, throwing themselves to the ground Drogba style every time the wind blows or celebrating their exam results by lifting their shirts over their heads and running around like loonies?

No, neither do I. So pull your finger out.

Sunday, 30th October
What is it with the modern cricketer? They get piles of cash, a tempting selection of essential oils in the massage room and all the official tracksuits they can stuff into their suitcase. And then when they’re too old to bend down at first slip, they can retire to the commentary booth, where they will be handsomely remunerated without having to voice an original opinion for the next 30 years.

So why are they so angry all the time?

England’s mini-break to India has been the last word in grouch; a touring exhibition of grumpiness that featured more hissy fits than the opening night at the Paris Fashion Show and finally ended yesterday, with KP performing the now traditional spitting out of the dummy. And it’s not just the English. Today, Tamim Iqbal was in trouble for sledging Marlon Samuels; not a sentence I ever thought I’d have to write.

Now we all like the odd bit of misbehaviour, providing it’s good enough to one day feature in a book of cricket anecdotes. But not all the time. These days sledging and acting out isn’t the result of an entertaining and spontaneous psychotic episode, it’s a tactic, a routine part of the game. I imagine Jonathan Trott randomly swears at elderly ladies in the street, just to keep his verbal abuse reflexes honed.

And the result is so boring. Bowler follows through and glares at batsman. Batsman reminds him he hasn’t taken a wicket yet. Bowler swears at non-striker. Non-striker sticks his tongue out at bowler. Mid-off criticises non-striker’s girlfriend’s choice of curtain-fabric. Non-striker demands mid-off takes that back or he’ll be forced to tell him what he really thinks of his hairstyle. Umpire sighs. Repeat ad nauseam.

Coaches clearly believe it works. Maybe it does. Perhaps the sheer mind-numbing banality of it all eventually causes batsmen to flip and do anything to get out of there. (I find the same thing happens if I’m forced to watch two consecutive episodes of iCarly.) But is that really what we want our game to look like? Are we expecting kids to see these tantrum-throwing sledgers as heroes? Is that what cricket is about?

So I have a suggestion. Since fining the players doesn’t seem work, let’s fine the coaches. A day’s salary for every swear word, a week for every sledge that doesn’t make us laugh and 100 lines every time Craig Kieswetter opens his mouth.

That ought to do the trick.