Not, repeat, not Satan © Getty Images

Good evening. My name is Sir Charles Parasite of legal firm Parasite and Leach (London branch). I am writing on behalf of my client, a Mr Hughes, who wishes me to make the following statement:

In an article published on Page 2 of the world famous (note: check this) Cricinfo site, my client made reference to a Mr Brendon McCullum (henceforth known as “Baz”). During the course of what my client assures me was a hilarious piece of writing (note: check this), he may have unwittingly and entirely without malice insinuated that Baz was an unsavoury character, a troublemaker and a danger to society.

My client had been acting on information received from what he believed was a reliable source, suggesting that Baz had been attempting to exploit a loophole by not signing his Cricket New Zealand contract. It would not be fair to reveal the identity of that source, although we can confirm that the individual concerned is believed to be prominent in the tournament-organising industry and that his surname starts with Modi. Mr Hughes would like it to be known that he now believes that Baz did not delay the signing of his contract and that even if he had done (which he didn’t) it would have been for the good of the game.

Mr Hughes would also like to place on record that the Black Caps are always his favourite losing semi-finalists, would remind the public of his tireless work on behalf of temporarily incapacitated New Zealand cricketers in the wake of the Grant Elliot affair, and above all would like it to be known that he is second to none in his admiration for Baz’s ability to hit a little ball in various directions.

On a legal note, I would like to add at this point that here at Parasite and Leach, we are firm believers in the principle of freedom of speech. Nevertheless, any further comments suggesting that my client is a) incompetent, b) illiterate or c) Australian, will be referred to our Wellington branch and the originators of said comments detained under the Prevention of Irritation to Cricket Writers Act 2009.

	Shahid Afridi does his best Saturday Night Fever impression © Getty Images

Some images from Saturday’s game linger in the mind. There were the ghostly faces of players shrouded in sunscreen. There was Mohammad Yousuf’s grim, expressionless concentration - a man of fortitude and endurance at work. There was the close-up of Harbhajan’s gleaming kara, his hand cradling the green-stained ball that looked like a moss-covered relic from a bone yard. There was 17-year-old Mohammad Aamer blowing Gautam Gambhir a kiss, Sachin Tendulkar’s exquisite square drive, the whirl of Simon Taufel’s finger to signal yet another free hit.

The surroundings played their part. As the stadium resounded with shouts, whistles, drums and music, the fierce light of a Highveldt mid-day seemed to belong to another continent entirely. Then slowly the Indian players’ uniforms began to turn darker shades of blue, night crept up unannounced and the broiling arena was transformed into a clammy, floodlit film-set.

It was compulsive television. And even though by the standards of one-day cricket it was not a nail-biter, you didn’t want to leave your sofa. We owed the players that much at least. They seemed to be walking on eggshells. Every movement, every gesture, every run, no-ball, misfield and stumble brought instant feedback from the crowd. The audience were part of this drama, not mere onlookers. The pressure was evident in the muted behaviour of the players, unleashed in moments of celebration and sometimes in wild, pleading appeals. India were the more inhibited team, made more bad decisions under pressure, and so they lost.

And in the midst of all this sweaty tension, there were some bizarre musical interludes. A failed Harbhajan sprawl and claw at third man was greeted with the chorus to “Come On Eileen”. A short while later, RP Singh had only just begun to wipe the grass stains from his trouser knees after an inelegant fumble when Abba’s “Dancing Queen” blasted out across Supersport Park. Either the DJ was a Pakistan supporter or he had a dangerously mischievous sense of humour.

	Jesse does the seventies © Getty Images

Let there be no doubt, cricket is men’s work. Women may be able to bat, bowl and field as well as the lesser sex, but there is one cricket skill in which, by and large, men remain pre-eminent: the rapid production of facial hair. And one man in particular, one selfless hero, has just raised cricket’s masculinity bar a notch higher. That’s right. Jesse Ryder has grown a moustache.

At the moment, it is hard to tell which way Jesse’s ‘tache will go. It’s something of a mini-Boon, but by the time the Champions Trophy comes to an end, he may be walking around with a full Zapata under his nose. Or perhaps he might go in for the waxed Hercule Poirot, or possibly even a Salvador Dali. I’ll keep you posted.

Of course, as we all know, the moustache is the nuclear option when it comes to demonstrating one’s masculinity and it brings its own particular dangers. Admirable though it is, this extra infusion of hairy-lipped testosterone into the New Zealand squad could have repercussions. Indeed, I’ve suspected for a long time that we may be approaching a fashion black hole. Consider, if you will, Jacob Oram’s hair. At what point does deliberately messy become just plain scruffy? Before you know it, people will be sprouting sideburns, shirts will remain unfastened and we will be back in the dark, hairy, and above all ugly, seventies; a decade when even attractive cricketers looked like they’d spent their close season living in a ditch.

It was precisely in order to uphold the aesthetic purity of the modern game that I recently launched my latest campaign. I am proposing that tattoos are made illegal under Level 4 of the ICC Code of Conduct. We all know that there are only three kinds of people on whom tattoos look good: Maoris, Bronze Age tribesmen and 19th century sailors. On everyone else they look like the scribblings of someone who tried to cheat in their maths exam, failed and then forgot to wash off the evidence. It can surely be no coincidence that the two biggest troublemakers in international cricket - Andrew Flintoff and Brendon McCullum - are covered in inky dribble

If we don’t make a stand then commentators will be next, and before we know where we are, Nasser Hussain’s pitch report will end with him rolling up his trouser leg to show us something deeply personal. Someone needed to draw an imaginary line in the metaphorical sand. That person was me.

The ICC tend not to answer my emails these days, so I decided to go to the top. The modern globetrotting cricketer is a surly sort of cove and not easy to bring to heel. I needed the help of the only man they would listen to. I needed Lalit Modi.

As you might imagine, His Modiness is a tricky man to get hold of, but I find that if you grab him firmly by the BlackBerry, he eventually stops struggling. He was sympathetic to my request, but replied that he was in no position to take a firm stance on body art. To my mounting horror, he then began to slowly remove his shirt to reveal an enormous, slightly hairy, chest-size Lalit Modi portrait in ink and flesh.

I haven’t been able to sleep ever since.

	Full disclosure: your correspondent’s cellphone-alert tone is a song by this man © Getty Images

Burnout. It is the scourge of our times. And it can devastate lives. In fact, it struck this very morning. I had just sat down to my usual orderly breakfast, my eggs perfectly boiled, my toast symmetrically aligned and my butler standing ready with the Lady Grey. All that was missing was a crisp pile of fan mail. The clock ticked on inexorably. Eight thirty-one. Eight thirty-two. The toast cooled. Outside on the lawn, a cricket chirped. Silence reigned.

Then, instead of the comforting rattle of a brass letterbox, I was shaken by the shrieking of a polyphonic Freddie Mercury. I had received a text message from my local sorting office, informing me that my postman was unable to fulfill his contractual duties today. He had, it emerged, been delivering letters and parcels for 15 of the last 21 days and the Post Office management had decided to give him a rest, lest his letterbox-stuffing career be cut short.

My breakfast was ruined. The eggs were two degrees below their optimum edible temperature and my butler had sustained third-degree teapot burns. But I was not angry. You see, dear reader, I felt that poor mailman’s pain. I too have fallen victim to the curse of burnout.

Yes, I am ashamed to say that midway through the recent Natwest series between England and Australia, I experienced what can only be described as a spasm of ennui. I simply couldn’t watch another nudged single or another clumsy fielding pratfall. I was running on empty. I knew that if I didn’t take a break, I would be placing my sanity in jeopardy.

So I took off to the races and asked a chum to help out. He dutifully stood in for me during the fifth and sixth (or it may have been the ninth and 10th) matches, allowing me to return fresh and invigorated to catch the 17th game of the series and England’s statistically inevitable victory.

And it was whilst standing on the heath at Newmarket, watching those beautiful, athletic thoroughbreds galloping up the Rowley Mile, that a solution to the problem of player burnout occurred to me. Racehorses are sensitive, intelligent creatures. They are only in it for the hay, and yet in order to entertain us they are forced to run and run and run and occasionally thwacked with a leather whip, through no particular fault of their own.

So I have contacted the ICC’s disciplinary department to suggest a similar motivational tool for recalcitrant freelancers and lazy-arsed franchise employees. Take that, Mr Anderson, and get moving! Your job is to play cricket. We pay money. You play. That’s the deal. No, Mr Collingwood, I’m not interested in your bruised thumb, your dicky knee or your general feeling of world-weariness. Just shut up and play. And while you’re at it, do it better, too!

	“Hello, I’ll be your Ronnie for the day” © Getty Images

In less than three weeks time, the inaugural Champions League Twenty20 tournament will begin. Naturally, I assume you will all be watching. In these parts, the whole shebang is to be broadcast by British Eurosport, something of a coup for a channel more accustomed to bringing us the Baltic Wood-Chopping Grand Prix and Snail Endurance Racing from Calais.

None of this is a problem. I’m a broadminded kind of guy; I can live with getting my fix of the pyjama game via a rickety studio in Luxembourg. Anyway, thanks to the marvels of modern-day capitalism, I have no choice.

No, what is troubling me is the news that England’s very own Freddie Flintoff is to be part of the commentary team. Now Fred is a nice bloke, he does a good line in post-match self-deprecation, and I understand he has some interesting things to say on the subject of post-millennial immigration and its impact on standards of service in the hospitality industry.

Nevertheless, for all of his merits, he has one fault that renders him a commentary liability. He sounds exactly like Ronnie Irani. This is no trivial objection. For the last six months, I have been running a support group for traumatised IPL viewers suffering the effects of Post-Irani Syndrome. The symptoms they describe are invariably the same. Victims report seeing a yellow haze that they slowly recognise as the Setanta studio. They hear a man talking. The voice gets louder. They can make out the words, “I tell you what…” Then they wake up screaming.

The thought of this much-anticipated tournament being played out to a sound track of Lancastrian platitudes is enough to keep me up in the early hours, gnawing my pillow with anxiety. We can only hope that Freelance Fred is not being paid by the word.

I don’t know about you, but for a while now I have felt that there is something missing on Cricinfo. Sure, there’s plenty of informed opinion and pages of piercing analysis. Statistical weightiness? Check. Erudite journalism? Yep. Comprehensive information? You betcha.

That’s all very lovely. But what if you’re in the mood for some uninformed opinion? What if you have a liking for flawed arguments? And, while we’re at it, where are the wildly inaccurate recollections? Where are the vivid hallucinations, the ill-considered rants and the dangerously over-inflated metaphors? Look for these things on Cricinfo for as long as you want; you will not find them. In the march to the sunlit uplands of excellence, vast swathes of unexplored amateurishness have been overlooked.

Well, no more. I have been asked to venture forth into these territories, to pioneer on behalf of the dilettantes, the idlers, the malconents and the misguided; to speak for the silent minority, for those of us who like a little grit in our oysters.

My quest begins with a name: The Long Handle. What do we mean by The Long Handle? What is all about? Why is it here? Where has it come from? When will it stop? All of these questions will be answered over the coming weeks.

For those who can’t wait, all I can do is offer a little taste, a hint of what The Long Handle stands for. It is the look in Harbhajan’s eye just before he swings his handbag. It is the roar of an angry Sidebottom as Monty drops another sitter. It is the moment in a Shane Warne hair advert when you realise they aren’t joking. It is all these things and more. And sometimes less.