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.