In his over-eagerness, Flintoff sizes up the next generation of Indian Test cricketers who he expects will challenge England's No. 1 ranking in 15 years from now © AFP

Wednesday, 3rd August
Last night I was visited by the Spirit of Cricket. He wasn’t in a very good mood. He complained vigorously that the Ian Bell thing had nothing to do with him, that as far as he was concerned, the fellow was dozier than a sloth on sleeping tablets and that if he’d been Dhoni, he’d have waited till Bell got back to the wicket and then rescinded his rescinded appeal, just to teach the blighter a lesson.

After he had calmed down, I told him I was about to post my 200th Long Handle entry and asked what he thought I should write. He thought for a moment, then he said, “Write what you like, it’s only Page 2. But whatever you do, don’t insult Ganguly.”

Thursday, 4th August
A realistic view of our place in the great scheme of things is a hallmark of the English nation from Alfred the Great, a failed baker, to David Cameron, who has spent much of his first year as prime minister apologising and publicly changing his mind. We are a moderately sized, oddly shaped, frequently damp island nation whose primary role these days is to bear the brunt of the Atlantic weather for the sake of mainland Europe. We’ve lost an empire but we can still serve as an umbrella.

So just because we happen to find ourselves beating India 2-0, there is zero danger of any flabby complacency or premature triumphalism creeping in. No one would be foolish enough to start loosening champagne corks just because they were leading a big final at half-time. Isn’t that right, Freddie?

“England are the best team in the world already, not just in ranking.”

Actually, not even in ranking, Freddie. Let’s be clear. The ICC rankings table is not drawn up by tabloid editors. As of tea-time today, I regret to inform you that we are not No. 1. To start calling ourselves No. 1 before we are in fact No. 1 would be the highest-profile English case of premature fowl-tallying since King Harold turned to his men on Senlac Hill and said, “Look, I told you, we’ve got real strength in depth behind this shield wall and the Normans were badly underprepared. I’d be astonished if we didn’t win from this position.”

Friday, 5th August
Two-nil down and the Indians are fighting back. Not on the pitch, but where it really matters: in the media. Today it was Paddy Upton’s turn to come to the PR party, spinning far more effectively than anything Harbhajan has managed in 70 overs. He isn’t saying that playing an awful lot of cricket is the reason why India are losing the series, but they are losing the series and they have played an awful lot of cricket.

“By giving the players so much cricket there is a potential of diluting the quality of the product. We are possibly seeing the evidence of it now.”

Possibly. But then cricket to the modern international bat-wielding superstar is a bit like dessert. Just because someone keeps putting it in front of you, doesn’t mean you can’t push it away now and again. For example, any of the World Cup heroes could have chosen seven weeks of comfy chairs and light promotional duties after their triumph, but instead they chose to muck about in the IPL. Jolly entertaining for the rest of us, but not the ideal, burnout wise. No, mental fatigue is not quite going to cut it as an explanation; we’ll need something more convincing. Ganguly thinks its lack of preparation. But then what does he know?

Two legends star in a “name that fruit” line-up © AP

Saturday, 23rd April
So what is burnout, exactly? Is it that feeling you get some mornings, you know, when you’re dog tired, you lack any motivation, you can’t face another day working with the same old people and you wonder if you’ll ever get a break.? Is that burnout? No, of course it isn’t silly. And why? Because you aren’t a professional cricketer, that’s why, so get out of bed and get to work, you idle layabout!

Proper burnout is what happens to the top sportsman when he decides he wants some time off, perhaps because his golf handicap is slipping or he really wants to get started on that house extension. Or sometimes because his contract is up. And burnout is such a powerful phenomenon that it can even be cited before it’s happened. For example, we read today that Andy Flower might be at risk of burnout in the future and so will need a really good deal from the ECB. Unless, of course, he gets the India job.

I suppose fast bowlers like Lasith Malinga might be entitled to complain about burnout, or more accurately, the gradual disintegration of their more important limbs. If Larwood, Hall, Lillee or Lindwall had been forced to tear in, jam their foot into the dirt and twist sideways at speed in three different formats all year round, they’d be retiring from Test cricket in no time. But how exactly do coaches burn out? Laptop strain? Press conference fatigue? Selection anxiety?

Sunday, 24th April
What’s the big talking point in cricket at the moment? Chris Gayle versus the WICB? The make-up of the 2015 World Cup? The identity of India’s next coach? All of that is very interesting, I’m sure, but the Long Handle is more interested in the human angle. We want to know about the people behind the news. Specifically, we are fascinated by the incredible smoothness of Shane Warne’s orange face.

The story of his complexion is a modern version of an Oscar Wilde classic. The Moisturiser of Shane Warne stars an ageing but virile spin bowler who is offered the chance to stay young forever, and even to look a little bit younger, if he will sell his soul to a cosmetics company. No worries, says Shane. He agrees to promote a tub of cold cream and uses the money he gets to pay for a bit of facial renovation.

Of course that’s just a fairy story. It couldn’t actually happen. Still, the fact remains that he is becoming spectacularly multi-coloured. The white teeth, the tangerine face, the electric blue shirt; it’s quite a sight. And he can still bowl a bit. On a dusty day in Ahmedabad, he took Kochi apart. They were like unwary purple and orange sheep who had wandered into a tiger enclosure. And, provided you didn’t sit too close to the television and wore protective sunglasses, it was lovely to watch the old boy in action.

Monday, 25th April
Kamran wants to play for his country again. Referring to his less than splendid performance against New Zealand in the World Cup, he complained:

“I have one of the highest dismissal rates among all the wicketkeepers who have played for Pakistan.”

That may be, but he benefits from the fact that the stats do not include columns for “Oopsie daisies”, “Sorry, skipper she just didn’t stick” and “I was sure I had that one”.

But then, it isn’t Kamran’s fault that he kept being picked despite the mounting evidence that entrusting him with the gloves was a little like asking your rollerblading-addicted seven-year-old nephew and his pet macaw to mind your porcelain shop for the afternoon.

And having finally de-gloved him it would be a shame if Pakistan decided to dispense with his batting. The Kamran cover drive is something spectacular; it hits you like a slap in the face from a good friend. It is a stunning piece of batsmanship. It would be a shame if that shot were not to be seen again in international cricket.

	Hauritz: when a man’s gotta celebrate, a man’s gotta celebrate © Getty Images

Punter probably gets a bad press, but sometimes it seems that journalists only need to poke him with a stick and then press “Record”. This week the grumbler’s grumbler has been disgruntled over the late arrival in Vadodara of the Champions League Three: Brett Lee, Doug Bollinger and Nathan Hauritz. The trio were unable to prepare for Sunday’s game of cricket because they had been playing cricket, and apparently there is no worse preparation for a professional cricketer than to be playing cricket.

The Aussie captain was particularly annoyed because whilst they were away playing cricket, they were altogether unavailable for the tactical seminars conducted by Team Australia ahead of the first one-day international. Talk of these tactics intrigued me. Were they so complicated that they couldn’t be explained in an hour or two on the morning of the match? Does Brett Lee really need to attend a workshop on how to bowl at Sachin Tendulkar?

Probably not, I thought. But then I am not an initiate in the Byzantine complexities of the great game. All us plebs need to know is that these “tactics” exist and that they are so fiendishly difficult that they need several days to fully explain. Or perhaps the tactics are fairly simple but the cricketers are relatively dim. Maybe the days leading up to an international are spent in a classroom with a slack-jawed Lee staring uncomprehendingly at a whiteboard upon which General Ponting has drawn a picture of some stumps with the word “stumps” written underneath in large capital letters.

Then there was the stirring tale of Nathan Hauritz and his dash across India to answer his nation’s call. The headlines told it all. Words like, “weary”, “sleep-deprived” and “frenetic schedule” all featured prominently. A little further reading uncovered the details of Hauritz’s horror timetable, beginning after Friday night’s Champions League Final. Left dressing room at 1am. Caught flight at mid-day. Arrived 8:30pm on Saturday night, a mere 12 hours before the toss. Wait a minute, what was that first item again? Left dressing room at 1am?

“Becoming the inaugural champions, you still have to celebrate with your team-mates,” said Hauritz. Do you? When you have an important flight to catch the next day?

“It was tough”, he elaborated. Wouldn’t it have been a little less tough if he hadn’t stayed up till 1am celebrating? And is one-and-a-half games of cricket in 48 hours really such a problem? Does trundling in to send down a few offbreaks, then doing the same thing two days later really warrant such dramatic headlines?

Now I like Hauritz. I enjoyed watching him confound his critics during the Ashes. And he is not entirely to blame for how this “story” was written. Cricket has become a kind of celebrity circus, with its performers surrounded by agents busily spinning and journalists anxious for access, all of them peddling narcissistic claptrap about burnout, fatigue and the weariness of the long-distance spinner.

So in a spirit of philanthropy, I have decided to help out. I am setting up franchises of Hughes’ House of Snacks at airports around the world. Staffed by employees working 12-hour shifts on minimum wages, these outlets of enlightenment will specialise in early-morning coffee and delicious reality sandwiches for those who have recently spent a lot of time with their head in the clouds.

	'Fred?' 'Yes Harmy.' 'I feel a whinge about too much cricket coming on' © Cricinfo Ltd

Regular readers of this blog will find that from time to time I put forward proposals to benefit the game as a whole. Already this week I have launched a petition to persuade Mr T to join the elite panel of umpires (“Don’t give me no howzat, sucker, that was going down leg-side, fool!”) and emailed the BBC to suggest that Test Match Special replace their current theme tune with the one from MASH. So while the relevant bodies mull over those beauties, here’s another corker from the Hughes think tank.

It is high time that we brought back the good old-fashioned gagging order. Under this system, no player will be allowed to talk to anyone, not even their partners, until the end of their playing career. Now I realise that this means fewer interviews, fewer autobiographies and fewer celebrity ghost-written tabloid columns. But these aren’t the only benefits.

We might also get to hear less about "burnout". Burnout is such a dramatic word. It conjures up the image of a spent firework lying smouldering on the grass or a high-performance racing car pulled over to the side of the road with smoke pouring from its engine. Upon investigation, I discovered that my dictionary defines burnout as "to become ineffective through overwork".

Still, it is hard to see how this word could be employed when talking about cricketers. For a start, you would need to define "ineffective". In many cases, it would be fiendishly difficult to tell the difference between a cricketer who was naturally ineffective and one who had ineffectiveness thrust upon him due to the demands of the Future Tours Programme.

Of course, "burnout" is really cricket jargon. It is trade speak, just as much as "arm-ball" or "googly" or "What the f*** was that, Harmison?" As such, cricket being such a high-tech pursuit, far beyond the grasp of the non-cricket-playing mortal, it is difficult to translate "burnout" directly into standard English. I suppose the nearest equivalent would be, "a little bit tired".

Now for most people, being "a little bit tired" is an indication of having completed a reasonably hard day’s work. For the modern cricketer, though, it is a kind of torture to rank alongside having one’s champagne delivered without an ice bucket and finding that the hotel bed sheets are not made from Egyptian cotton. By the sound of it, the most important piece of equipment in the English dressing room at the moment is the team fainting couch onto which incoming players are forever swooning before being revive with a sniff of Dr Strauss’s Patented Smelling Salts for Distressed Ladies.

In times past, such behaviour would have resulted in a severe dressing down from a boardroom full of snugly suited bewhiskered pipe-smokers, a beating from the senior pros and an extra shift or two down the coalmine before breakfast. We can’t bring back the good old days but we can adhere to an important Victorian motto, sadly neglected of late: professional cricketers should be seen and not heard.