Thommo: If you ask him nicely, he'll rip your tongue out for you © Getty Images

I was resting in the tea room yesterday afternoon, savouring a slow-sipping amontillado and watching the November rain lash down onto the herbaceous borders when I was surprised to hear a heavy rapping on my front door; surprised because my pack of Japanese fighting dogs usually intercept any visitor long before they attain the sanctuary of the portico.

I was even more surprised to see Jeff Thomson standing on my doorstep, holding a World Series Umbrella and a bulging plastic carrier bag.

“G’day, yer Pommie bastard,” he greeted me, “Can I use yer fax machine?”

Since I had only last week allowed Rodney Hogg to avail himself of my hedge trimmer, I felt obliged to extend the Hughes hospitality to his hairy compatriot. Before long, I heard the soothing whirr and beep of the facsimile device, punctuated by a choice selection of ripe Australian expletives.

“Sherry?” I asked, when he was done. Propriety forbids me from repeating his reply here, but you can be assured that he left me in no doubt as to his opinion on the merits of fortified wine and its implications for the sexual preferences of the imbiber. As he left, I tried to warn him about the pack of slavering beasts that was sure to descend upon him, but in the event, I need not have worried for his safety. Later that evening I found them cowering and whimpering behind the livery stables.

But to the gist. As he left, a solitary sheet of paper became dislodged from his carrier bag and drifted onto the marble floor. When I picked it up, I found that I held in my hand a single page from the minutes of the latest meeting of the FBU, the Fast Bowlers Union. In the interests of freedom of information, I feel duty bound to publish the entire contents of page two for your perusal:

“…tore his arm off and had a good laugh about it in the dressing room afterwards.

Apologies
Mr Edwards is unable to be with us as his bruised fingernail is a lot more serious than first thought. I understand that he also sustained a nasty paper cut when trying to open his Deccan Chargers pay packet. I’m sure we all wish him a speedy recovery.

Appointments
We are delighted to announce the re-election of Mr Sreesanth to the top table (applause). Previously a strike bowler only in the sense that we all wanted to strike him (thanks to Mr Kirsten for that joke), he has recently managed to take some wickets without doing anything silly. Thanks go to Mr Dravid for the hypnosis sessions, to Mr H Singh for the slaps and to Mr Patel and Mr Nehra for stepping aside so graciously.

Injuries
Mr Lee wished me to pass on my thanks for the flowers and chocolates. He has undergone emergency teeth-whitening treatment and his dentist believes that his smile should soon be back to normal. So a reminder to everyone to remember their shades next time, and I will also be writing to Mr Lee, reiterating our rule on bringing guitars to committee meetings.

Awards
It’s that time of the year again when we reveal our ‘Snarler of the Year’. It has been a good year for snarling, although several entrants had to be disqualified for excessive smiling on the field of play. And a reminder to you all for next year that a grimace because you’ve put your back out again does NOT count as a snarl.

I’m pleased to announce that this year’s award goes to Mr Siddle for his sterling work in Cardiff. The judges were impressed not just with the extent of his snarl and growl work, but also the high volume of spittle deposited onto the pitch, the umpire and Simon Katich at short leg. Well done, Sid; a worthy winner, I think you’ll agree.

Charitable Causes
Mr Akhtar has once again been leading by example. His concern for the plight of penniless cosmetic surgeons has led him to voluntarily undergo the knife-and-vacuum-cleaner procedure, rather than just going for a bit of a jog of a morning. I think we can all applaud such selfless dedication.

Unfortunately, our ‘Radar’ appeal has stalled a little of late. I know there’s a recession on but can I ask all of you to dig deep and redouble your fund-raising efforts so that sufferers like little Mitch can get the treatment they need for their unfortunate problem. Thanks in this regard to Mr Steyn for his ‘sponsored choke’. It didn’t raise any money, but it did give us all a good chuckle and helped to raise morale…”

	Insert “balls” joke here © Clare Skinner

Sunday morning is a tricky test for the cricket watcher and I’m afraid that, confronted with the glaring South African sun this Sabbath past, I flunked it. You see, I’d had rather a heavy week, cricket-wise, and was suffering from a bout of post-Ahmedabad fatigue. So with due apologies to the Right Hon Strauss, I excused myself from the televisual revels in Centurion and sloped off for an hour or two’s recuperation at my club. All I required was a plump leather armchair and the sports section of the Times and all would soon be right with the world. Alas, it was not to be.

“It’s a damned disgrace!” spluttered a voice from the armchair opposite. Stirred from my meditative state, I fetched Atherton’s latest piece from atop my weary visage to see Colonel Thrashem-Harde, his cheeks the hue of the West Indies one-day jersey, jabbing a stubby finger at his copy of the Telegraph.

“That’s a little harsh, Colonel,” I suggested, “Yer man Pringle’s doing his best.”

The Colonel regarded me with narrow-eyed suspicion, the same expression, I imagine, that greeted many an unwary tiger emerging from the undergrowth in the jungles of Borneo.

“Ah, there you are, Pugh, thought you’d sneaked off to watch that travesty in South Africa.”

“Certainly not, Colonel, wouldn’t dream of it. Dreadful stuff.”

“Glad to hear it,” he spluttered, “Pyjama cricket, that’s all it is. Disgraceful! Almost as bad as this fellow here,” he growled, stabbing at the paper once more.

“Christopher Martin-Jenkins?” I guessed.

“No, no, no! It’s that blighter Modi at it again,” said the Colonel.

I sighed inwardly. The vice-president of the BCCI was a regular source of torment for some of the older members of the club. I’m sure that since the advent of the IPL, the incidence of apoplexy amongst elderly retired gentlemen in London clubs has increased drastically.

“What has he done now, Colonel?” I asked, fearing the worst.

“I’ll tell you. He’s snatched our pink balls, that’s what he’s done. Damned if we weren’t going to use them at HQ next May.”

“I’m sure there’ll be plenty to go round,” I added, in a spirit of conciliation.

“Don’t be facetious, Pugh! It’s our blessed idea, the first idea we’ve come up with since 1787 and this bounder has stolen it!”

“Oh, I see what you mean,” I replied, scratching my head for a moment. “Well, perhaps you could try a different colour. Sunflower yellow perhaps? Or cerise?”

“Don’t be absurd! I’ve had my staff knocking these things up for weeks. The billiards room is full of the blighters. And of course, if we use them now, it’ll look like we’re copying the Tanzanian Premier League, or whatever they call it. We’ll look second-rate, Pugh, like a bunch of slow-witted amateurs, incapable of an original thought!”

“Indeed, Colonel.”

“That Modi has a lot to answer for. If you ask me, it’s Packer all over again! If I were a hundred years younger, Pugh, I’d….”

At that point, unable to hold back the swelling tides of indignance, the Colonel’s habitual splutter bloomed into a phlegmy coughing fit that required the assistance of two of the club stewards and an emergency dose of Chateau Haut-Brion. Fortunately, the ensuing melee enabled me to make a rapid exit, leaving the Colonel blowing angry bubbles into his wine glass and muttering ominously about Rhodesia.

On my way home, I reflected on the Colonel’s predicament. It is hard not to feel sorry for the MCC. They are doing their best. They only dreamed up this pink ball wheeze a couple of years back, and in MCC time, two years is a mere blink of an eye, a flutter of a butterfly’s wings. After all, this club took 212 years to agree to permit women to enter its pavilion during play.

Then, as I drove through the gates of Hughes Hall, a solution presented itself. Why not invite Lord Modi to become an honorary member of the MCC? Once he had a strip of the old egg and bacon around his neck and a drop or two of decent brandy inside him, I’m sure he’d slow down a bit and then the cricket world could return to a more sedate, manageable, MCC kind of pace. And perhaps then a chap might be able to get a bit of shut-eye of a Sunday without being perturbed by belligerent ex-Army officers.

On the way to my study, I did briefly check on the state of play in Centurion, but for some reason the scorecard was showing a thumping England win. Naturally, I assumed that there was some kind of technical fault, paid it no further thought and settled down with a glass of malt and a sheet of my best writing paper.

“Dear Mr Modi…”

	Bob Willis (right): a thrilling prospect in store for those who eat all their vegetables during the South Africa-England series © Cricinfo Ltd

In a world of fast-food cricket, there is something just so about the menu for England’s tour of South Africa. First up was a serving of Twenty20 bites, a frivolous snack to pick at while everyone settled into the affair; then comes a modest portion or two of the 50-over stuff, followed by the main course: a big, fat, filling Test series with lashings of hot controversy and helpings of steamy tension, and the extended postprandials, including victory cigars, a selection of hard cheeses and bitter grapes and, if we are particularly blessed, a pungent slice or two of Bob Willis. Gosh, I am hungry! Excuse me while I pay a visit to the pantry.

Ah, that’s better. Sadly, I missed one of the Twenty20 appetizers as I was making my biannual pilgrimage to the WG Grace Memorial Rest Home in order to pay obeisance to my great aunt. She isn’t as up to date in matters cricket as she should be, a state of ignorance that can be partly ascribed to the fact that she is currently the only person on the planet legally constrained from taking out a satellite subscription, following a particularly belligerent letter to the Sky Studio. In her defence, I must say that David Lloyd’s slacks were distressingly beige and that a man who treads such a fine line sartorially must expect to receive a death threat or two during the course of his working day.

As ever, she was anxious to hear the latest news. I explained to her that the great Sachin Tendulkar was approaching 30,000 international runs. She absorbed this information with great solemnity, nodding several times.

“He reminds me of your grandfather,” she opined, definitively, taking a healthy gulp of her gin.

“Are you sure about that?” I asked, concerned that the oldest surviving member of the Hughes dynasty might be a legspinner short of a balanced attack.

“Oh yes. They could have been twins. Apart from the eye patch and the false leg, Sebastian was the spitting image of your Mr Tentacles.”

“Tendulkar,” I corrected her.

“Yes, that’s what I said. In any case, 30,000 isn’t all that many.”

“Well it sounds like an awful lot to me.”

“Nonsense. Your grandfather could have done that, if it weren’t for the Great War.”

“Grandfather was born in 1936.”

“Yes, but it upset him terribly when he read about it.”

The visit continued in a similar vein, though, as ever, I had to be careful not to mention anything relating to Twenty20, lest she suffered another of her turns. Unfortunately, against medical advice, she had been reading the Times, and inspired by an article by that nice young man, Michael Apathy, who had once been something or other with England, she had taken matters into her own hands. Her contention was that modern cricketers are lily-livered, weak-kneed invertebrates, and that any run scored before the invention of the athletic support was worth two of our modern runs. She had therefore taken her fountain pen to every one of her Wisdens, all of which now show one DG Bradman topping the Test averages with an impressive 199.89, a figure that I have to say is unlikely to be surpassed, even by the prolific Mr Tentacles.

I returned home in time to catch some of the first Test from Ahmedabad. The game had not yet died at that point and there were some memorable passages of play. I was particularly impressed by Ishant’s slower ball to Jayawardene a little while before tea on the third day. Time seemed to stand still as the ball followed its lazy, mesmeric trajectory, as though the laws of the universe had conspired to bring about a slow-motion effect. We caught our breath momentarily. Would Mahela spot it? Naturally he did, for at his best he is the kind of delicate, precise batsman who could probably carry out open-heart surgery with his blade.

These moments may occur in other forms of the game, of course, but they flit away from you. Test cricket invites reflection; it is the ultimate luxury sporting spectacle, displaying all the haphazard rhythms of real life. Unfortunately, as we all know, whilst real life can indeed have its heart-stopping seconds of passion, it also includes a certain amount of grocery shopping, toenail clipping and snoring. Lets hope that Kanpur next week offers us a few more thrills and a little less somnolence.

	Giles Clarke, inventor of many valuable cricket laws © Getty Images

Life, friends, is a complicated, unsettling, sometimes dangerous business. We have to cling to what we know, to look to those truths that we can depend upon, which may not be for ever but which serve as useful beacons on the misty seas of 21st-century life. Fortunately there is one human foghorn in particular whose utterances always steer me in the right direction, away from the jagged rocks and into calmer waters. I am talking, of course, about Giles Clarke.

In the decades that have passed since he became ECB Chunterer-in-Chief, I have benefited enormously from his wisdom and even formulated some simple maxims to sum up his teaching. For example, Clarke’s First Law Of Cricket is a cornerstone of the English game. It states that if Giles Clarke declares his admiration for something or someone, then you can be sure that person or object is bad for cricket and entirely worth avoiding.

The elegance of Clarke’s First Law is that the converse also applies. Anything that gets old chubby cheeks blowing out hot air like a dirigible with a puncture is highly desirable and unquestionably good for the game. Only last week we witnessed a splendid pageant of colourful and spurious arguments as Clarke launched himself onto the airwaves to explain why the recommendation that the Ashes be on free-to-air television after 2013 was A Very Bad Thing. A Very Bad Thing Indeed.

Of course, under Clarke’s Law this means that it is A Very Good Thing. It has been easy to lose sight of this simple philosophical truth amid the barrage of disinformation and spin booming forth from the ECB’s media howitzers over the last five days. But like Luke Wright on his Test match debut, or a tabloid photographer trying to get a picture of Cinderella, we must keep our eyes on the ball. Though sultry Sky sirens such as Michael Atherton attempt to beguile us with their plaintive wailing, we must close our ears to it all and seek steadfastly for the truth by remembering Clarke’s Second Law of Cricket: Counties Come First.

This particular Law was born of a terrible truth. Deep down in the foul-smelling bowels of the ECB headquarters, just along the corridor from the Kolpak-cloning booth and past the boiler room where they store remaindered copies of Alastair Cook’s autobiography, is a yawning chasm of oblivion, the bottom of which is impossible to perceive. And a little way down into that unfathomed pit, clinging on precariously, is a hideous, slavering, 18-headed monster; deadlier than the Hydra and grumpier than Scylla with a migraine.

Each morning a Sky van delivers fresh sacks of currency notes, which humble ECB employees haul down to the basement and empty into 18 gaping maws, thus temporarily satisfying the beast’s appetite. But in 2013 there might be no more money trucks from Sky. After they have fed the young, the disabled and the women cricketers to the monster, what will the ECB do? Let the hideous beast starve, you might say. But Giles cannot. For long ago, he became King of English Cricket by making a pact with the creature. If he fails to keep it nourished, the magic will unravel and in a puff of hot air, he will turn back into a large, plump and slightly indignant rat.

	Dhoni, in an extraordinary display of impudence, shares a laugh with Ponting at the last presentation ceremony of the series © AFP

Hold the front page! Saddle up your high horses and head for the moral uplands. Our old friend the cricket scandal is back in town, barging into forums and message boards across the cyber world, banging a metaphorical fist on a virtual table and demanding our attention. Yes, to the sound of several hundred million people tut-tutting in unison, it was revealed earlier this week that MS Dhoni and associates had been “partying” just hours after a cricket match that they’d had the appalling bad manners to lose.

When I first heard the news, naturally I was horrified. How dare they, I thought. What kind of heartless, selfish, irresponsible reprobates go out “partying” whilst a nation is still weeping over a defeat at the hands of Australia, a catastrophic event almost unheard of in the history of Indian cricket, certainly since the last one.

At first I resisted the temptation to click on the link inviting me to goggle at the sordid pictures of these debauched playboys getting up to all manner of disgraceful things. To click or not to click, that is so often the question. But after a millisecond or two spent weighing up the ethical issues involved, I decided to click. Invariably, I find it is better to have clicked and regretted it than never to have clicked at all.

However, for the benefit of those who did not click, I will tell you what you missed. Almost immediately, the scandal-seeking viewer was presented with a photograph of Dhoni, resplendent in a Michael Jackson t-shirt and beaming a well-scrubbed smile. Other photos followed, all of them featuring the Indian captain, the aforementioned t-shirt and an ever-present smile. Sometimes there were other people standing next to him. They were also smiling, though they were not wearing Michael Jackson t-shirts. I do not know their names. So far, so dull.

Then things started to get interesting. Just who was that mysterious man in the background? Could it be Praveen Kumar? Possibly. Well, guess what he was doing, this man-who-could-be-Praveen? Brace yourselves. You may want to make sure your children are not reading at this point. He was…(whisper it)…smoking! Yes, I know, I could scarcely believe it. But that wasn’t all.

Still reeling from the shock of Smoking-gate, I was confronted with a photo of Ashish Nehra. And what was that in his hand? It was a glass containing what appeared to be some kind of carbonated fruit-themed soft drink! Who knows how many he’d already had! Should he really have been drinking himself into a caffeine-frenzy in the middle of such an important series? Did his mother know he was out? What would Sachin say? What a scandal, what a disgrace… what a… what a… complete waste of our time.

Whatever Dhoni and chums were doing, it was certainly not “partying”, at least not in any meaningful sense of the word. They looked like a bunch of computer technicians relaxing in a provincial hotel between seminars on open source software and embedded systems programming. In other words, it looked like exactly the kind of tedious affair that you or I might have found ourselves at, not the carnival of celebrity bacchanalian excess I had been led to expect by the lurid headlines.

So just as Gary Kirsten will be analysing his team’s efforts against Australia, perhaps it is time that the Indian media held a performance review of their own. To help them out, I have compiled my own handy reference guide to help struggling journalists to tell the difference between a big fat juicy scandal and something that, er, isn’t. Here is just a brief extract:

Drugs test, failing of: Scandal

Coca Cola, drinking of (with or without ice): Not Scandal

Lap dancing club, visiting whilst on tour: Scandal

Michael Jackson t-shirt, wearing of: Not Scandal

Pedalo, falling from whilst drunk: Scandal

Pool, playing with friends: Not Scandal

Team-mate, hitting with cricket bat: Scandal

Grinning in company of consenting adults: Not Scandal

See how it works? We all love a scandal, but this, I’m afraid, was not it. Now raise your game, chaps, get off your comfortable office chairs, go out there and get us some real dirt. What’s that? Exclusive photographs of Graeme Smith looking at wallpaper samples just days before the coin toss for the crucial first Test? Ooh, that has to be worth a click…

	Ireland practise sarcastically celebrating a no-ball © ICC/Donal MacLeod

As a mere humourist, an amateur dabbler in the mysteries of cricket writing, I make it my business to study the greats. I have, for instance, catalogued every one of Gideon Haigh’s shopping lists from the autumn of 2005 onwards, and when I am particularly in need of inspiration I fetch them down from their place on my shelf next to Mike Atherton’s Notes to My Milkman 2002–2008 and pore over them for hours.

Of course, the conventional method of finding out what the best cricket minds are thinking is to read their Cricinfo columns. Last week, for instance, Peter Roebuck penned a piece that swiftly became essential reading at Hughes Towers. I printed off copies for all of the household staff and withheld their monthly remuneration until I was happy they had mastered the finer points of Mr Roebuck’s thesis.

I even had my butler recite it whilst I enjoyed my afternoon tea on the terrace. Hearing those words of reason pour forth once again, I felt all was right with the world. “Quite so!” I exclaimed as he extolled the virtues of opening up Test cricket’s borders. “Hear hear!” I declared as he railed against the ill-treatment of the “hard-pressed and often insulted spectators”. Indeed, at this point I was nodding so hard in agreement that my monocle popped out of my eye and into my Earl Grey.

Tea-splashingly good though his piece was, I couldn’t let this opportunity pass without correcting him on an important point. Specifically, in paragraph two he stated, “Test cricketers cannot be microwaved.” This is unduly defeatist. Granted, you might have to chop them up a bit first, but I'm certain that it could be done, given a sufficiently large plate and a dash of good old-fashioned determination.

But aside from this unwarranted pessimism regarding the efficacy of modern radiation-based cooking facilities, his article was bang on. Let’s jolly well get on with it and give our Irish friends their place at the (slightly rickety) top table. There are of course, one or two issues to be thrashed out beforehand, but Mr Roebuck naturally has his mind on higher things and so it is down to lesser scribblers such as me to deal with the practicalities.

Firstly, there is the problem of hue. Who? No, hue. The fact is that South Africa, Pakistan and Bangladesh have pretty much got all the greens covered. So if we are to see more of the Irish on the international stage, they need to bring a new colour to the cricket spectrum. I’m thinking of fuchsia pink with violet trim. Or failing that, I’m sure Boyd Rankin would look lovely in lavender.

Secondly, what’s their shtick? Everyone else has a thing, a cliché. Pakistan are mercurial. Sri Lanka are unorthodox. England are useless. But what about Ireland? The lucky Irish? Well, Ravi Shastri needs more to work with than that. Plucky underdogs? Not a good idea because when it comes to Test cricket, everyone hates the plucky underdog (see Bangladesh). For a long time, I pondered this problem and then, whilst I was gazing at a portrait of a smugly smiling Stuart Clark, I had a eureka moment.

Sarcasm! We have nasty teams, incompetent teams, teams with immaculate haircuts, teams who choke, teams who sulk and teams who sometimes don’t turn up. But what the modern game lacks is a truly sarcastic international outfit.

So, I want to see Niall O’Brien play a forward defensive to a Jimmy Anderson half-volley and hold the position for fully 10 seconds. I want to see the Irish fielders applauding when Ricky Ponting reaches his fifty and then continuing to applaud and perhaps even throwing in a whoop or two, long after the crowd have stopped clapping and the ground has fallen silent.

Imagine Nasser Hussain holding a microphone under William Porterfield’s nose on a Thursday morning in June:

“So, William, you must be delighted to finally be playing a Test match at Lord’s.”

“Oh yeah, sure, we’re REALLY delighted. I mean it is SUCH an honour, you’ve no idea. I am, like, literally wetting myself with excitement.”

Email the ICC. Write to the United Nations. Pray to Uncle Lalit. Do what you have to do, chums, but let’s make it happen.

	Siddle: refreshingly toxic © Getty Images

Cricket is like a soap opera and if you don’t watch every episode, you’ll find yourself failing to recognise some of the characters. For instance if you were one of those heathens who put your hands over your ears, closed your eyes and made “La la la la!” noises during the Champions League, you will find yourself at something of a disadvantage during the current 50-over bash in India.

Of course, some of the old characters that you know and love are still around. There’s grizzled old Punter, who is always grumbling but secretly has a heart of gold; saintly Uncle Sachin, who listens to everyone’s problems without ever complaining; and the villainous Bhaji, who is pretending to have turned over a new leaf, but who everyone knows is bound to do something despicable any day now.

But now that our Australian chums are starting to come apart like badly assembled action figures (these plastic Paines, Clarkes and Lees might look sexy but they just don’t have the staying power of those clunky old Aussies you got in the seventies), the selectors are being forced to reach deeper into the back of the domestic-cricket fridge, past the leftovers and those on the turn, to see if there’s anything they can use. As a result, for the casual non-Australian cricket watcher, parts of the scorecard might as well be written in Klingon. Henriques? Bollinger? McKay?

But here’s where the Champions League comes in. Those of us who watched (nearly) every twist and turn of that pilot show are fully up to speed on these new characters and are able to avoid some embarrassing faux pas when discussing the current series with taxi drivers, undercover vice-squad officers or members of Parliament.

We know, for example, that Clint McKay is not the cheroot-chomping, Stetson-wearing sidekick of cowboy Jesse Ryder. Moises Henriques is not the dictator of a small island off the Mozambique coast with a solid gold throne and a personal bodyguard of Amazonian mercenaries. And Doug Bollinger is not a cartoon character devised to help sell champagne to the Australian market.

In fact, these three have something else in common. They all come from the shelf marked, “medium”. We can quibble about which is medium-fast or which is fast-medium, but essentially, they all fall into that large grey area on the bowling speed dial between “Collingwood” and “Steyn”.

Now I have to say that this is one plot development that I have my doubts about. There is always room for one trundler in an Australian side. But it goes somewhat against the laws of cricket nature to see so many yellow-shirted warriors whose game plan is not the reassuringly savage “hit ‘em in the face and make ‘em bleed” but the rather English “kind of put it on a length and wobble it about a bit”.

Thank goodness, then, for Peter Siddle. If he'd been born in Todmorden rather than Traralgon, he'd probably be saddled with some nursery-rhyme nickname like Siddley or Siddles. Instead, he goes by the name of Vicious. He used to tear down trees with his bare hands (probably) and now he hurts batsmen for a living. He is Merv Hughes with a razor and access to a treadmill. Good on yer, Siddley.