Saturday, 3rd September
You’ve got to feel for MS Dhoni. We’ve all had holidays like this. Trapped in a caravan, a tent or a four-star hotel, surrounded by the same old faces, going slowly insane with nothing to do but watch Alastair Cook bat for weeks at a time, listening to everyone complaining about their aches and pains, and counting the days till it’s time to go home. And then, just when it seems things might be looking up, it starts to rain.

I can remember following England tours that scored just as high on the angstometer, in which the only sounds you heard were the clatter of wickets, the roar of the home crowd, and the stamping of passports as another batch of trembling replacements arrived at immigration control. As it happens, Nasser Hussain and his fragile fingers featured in many of those tours, so you’d think he would understand the tourists’ pain. Instead, his loose talk of donkeys has caused the summer’s third “Gate”.

But it isn’t always a good idea to take cricket folk literally. When KP called Graeme Smith a muppet, he didn’t mean that he believed the South African captain was made of cloth and operated by strings. When a commentator tells us that Sehwag has launched himself at a short one, he is not implying that rocket fuel was involved. Then there are the phrases like “impetuous hooker” and “flashing outside off stump” that could lead to all kinds of litigious misunderstanding if they were taken literally.

So in the interests of international harmony, here’s another, more positive interpretation of Nasser’s agricultural metaphor. A field is, after all, where a donkey belongs. Therefore the phrase, “he’s a donkey in the field” simply means “to be in his element” or “to feel at home” and is an adaptation of the well-known saying, often heard in the villages of rural Essex: “He’s as happy as a donkey in a field.”

Monday, 5th September
The pitch at Galle was dryer than a dry gin in the Gobi desert and dustier than the trophy cabinet at Sahara Smiles, the world’s least successful synchronised swimming team. The ball was doing sneaky things from day one and batting was as tricky as trying to tiptoe through a snake pit in the dark. Which is precisely how it should be.

A Test run should be a hard-won thing, a precious jewel wrestled from the teeth of an angry clam at the bottom of a piranha infested lagoon*. Instead, we are currently in a period of rampant inflation, in which the value of the Test run has plummeted. A double-century in 2011 would be worth 150 back in 2001, whilst an Alastair Cook accumulatorathon translates as a pretty little thirty-something cameo at 1930 prices.

So do we celebrate this triumph? Do the powers that be initiate The Most Noble Order of the Gracious Groundsmen and give the Galle curator a yacht, a lifetime’s supply of broom handles and a complimentary Test century? Nope.

Chris Broad (a batsman, let it be noted) refers the venue to the ICC’s Department Of No Fun. Next spring, the Galle pitch will be flatter than the M25, England will declare on 750, Jayawardene will score a triple-century, and the crowd will need to be woken up at the end of the fifth day to remind him to go home. Sometimes I think the ICC don’t really want people to watch Test cricket.

*Marine biologists may query one or two of the details in this metaphor. However, I would refer them to the renowned documentary series, Spongebob Squarepants which is, as we are all aware, the authority on matters aquatic.

Saturday, 30th July
Michael Vaughan found himself in a sticky situation today, thanks to a popular ointment, Britpop, and the perils of Twitter. An entire sewage farm of e-effluence was poured onto his virtual head when the world mistakenly assumed that he had accused VVS Laxman of applying slippery foreign substances to his bat. In fact, MPV was a hapless victim of circumstance. Earlier in the day he had received this tweet:

“@MPVaughan what’s your favourite petroleum jelly-themed chorus by an English indie band?”

To which he had little choice but to reply:

“Vaseline! La la la-la la la la la-la-la la! #Elastica”

Unfortunately this tweet was tweeted at precisely the same moment that television replays were showing no hint of hot whiteness on VVS’s ghostly grey bat.

I hope this clears up any misunderstanding and also defuses any hostility that might have been provoked by his later tweeting of “Cigarettes and Alcohol” just as Nasser Hussain was asking why Sachin is out of form, and his unfortunately timed reference to “Big Mouth Strikes Again” as Geoffrey Boycott began his commentary stint.

Sunday, 31st July
Poor Ian Bell. He was going along swimmingly, having scored 137 of the politest, most well-behaved runs in Test match history. The world was a lovely, happy place. Already his thoughts were turning to his tea-time glass of strawberry-flavoured milk and his post-game episode of Peppa Pig. He watched Eoin Morgan hit the ball towards the boundary, the little umpire in his head called over and he was off.

And well done to MS Dhoni for saving the day. His noblesse oblige belongs to a parallel universe in which Geoff Hurst went to check with the Azerbaijani linesman, because from where he was standing, he didn’t think the ball had crossed the line; the Greeks got back into their wooden horse and asked to be wheeled out of Troy because it just didn’t feel right; and George W Bush asked for a state-wide recount in Florida on the grounds that he wanted to win but he didn’t want to win like that.

There was more to it than that. Dhoni, in addition to being one of India’s foremost commercial endorsers, a jetsetting magazine interviewee, a national hero and an occasional cricketer, also holds down a part-time job in the Indian Foreign Office. Yes, Ian Bell scored another 22 runs, but those runs didn’t come cheap. This evening there’s a new Anglo-Indian trade agreement on the regulation of prices in the paper clip industry that wasn’t there yesterday. Nice diplomacy, MS.

Monday, 1st August
Zimbabwe’s new captain, Brendan Taylor, has declared that his team may have a few surprises for Bangladesh in their forthcoming Test clash, which is already being billed in some quarters as Bangladesh’s fourth Test win. But what, we wonder, could Zimbabwe have up their sleeves to surprise an opponent they have met 18 times in the last two years? Here are three possible surprise scenarios.

1. Zimbabwe don’t turn up at all, later claiming that the entire team developed Bell’s Syndrome, a rare and only recently discovered form of temporary cricket-related amnesia. The match is abandoned, which is officially not the same as losing.

2. Soon after arriving at the ground, they express indignation at the lack of a gluten-free vegetarian option on the lunch menu and remain in their dressing room for five days, hoping the ICC will declare the game a draw.

3. Just before the toss, Taylor goes into the Bangladeshi dressing room and asks Shakib Al Hasan if, in the Spirit of Cricket, he wouldn’t mind conceding the match. It’s worth a try.

Saturday, 23rd July
Steve Waugh says that 56 players have come forward to report approaches by bookmakers in the last year, compared with five for the previous year.

“That suggest the players have confidence in the system and confidence it will work.”

Absolutely. Or it might suggest that what happened to Salman Butt and chums has put the wind up every player in the game and they’re not leaving anything to chance. But let’s not be uncharitable. The important thing is that they are coming forward.

Haroon Lorgat agrees. But he didn’t get to be where he is today without finding something trivial to disagree about. He doesn’t know where Steve has got the figure of 56 players from. So what’s the real figure, Haroon?

"There's one individual in the Anti-Corruption and Security Unit that maintains such records and he does not even know the figure himself, simply because he had not compiled it.”

Hang on. If you don’t know what the figure is, how do you know it isn’t 56? And more to the point, why don’t you know the figure? What kind of spreadsheets are you using at ICC Towers? Is your chap in the Anti-Corruption and Security Unit not trained to use a calculator?

So until Haroon sorts it out, let’s all join in and play ICC Corruption Bingo. Steve’s already bagged 56, so I’m going to go for 42. Pick a number, and if you guess right, you’ll win a leather jacket, a brown envelope and the phone number of a good lawyer.

Monday, 25th July
Something terrible has happened to Test Match Special. I’d heard it was poorly, but dear me, I wasn’t quite expecting this. Jonathan Agnew has gone all grumpy; Geoffrey Boycott’s monologues sound like a recording of Churchill’s speeches played too slowly through a dodgy speaker: you know that what he’s saying is quite important but it still makes you want to chew your own ears off; and Phil Tufnell appears to have only the vaguest idea what is going on at any given moment.

And then there’s Michael Vaughan. Listening to him is like having an audio feed from the England dressing room. He has two modes of broadcasting. He’s either telling you what he did at the weekend or he’s giving you his England team talk, in which the phrase “the boys” appears distressingly often. The nadir of his contribution was when Tendulkar was dismissed and he screamed “Yeeeessssss!” into the microphone so loud I could swear I felt his spittle in my ear.

Tuesday, 26th July
There are many approaches to picking a cricket team. Here in Blighty, due to European Union Human Rights Regulations, the paperwork involved in dropping anyone from the England team is so onerous*, it is easier to just cut and paste the same XI from the game before. Indeed, the only chance a player has of breaking into the team is if one of the incumbents retires, resigns or has an affair with the prime minister.

But they do things differently in Australia, where Andrew Hilditch is known to favour the Lucky Dip approach. Before each series, he reaches into his Bag Of Unlikely Candidates and pulls out something unexpected. This time it’s another new spinner, Nathan Lyon. I’ve never heard of him, and to be honest, there’s probably only a 50-50 chance that Digger has heard of him either, but then that’s the thrill of the Lucky Dip!

* For example, I believe the Deselection Trauma Counselling Referral form (known as the “Hick 1A”) runs to 17 pages and has to be countersigned by the chairman of selectors, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the player’s mother.

One of the pleasures of the enthralling first Test at Lord’s was listening to Shane Warne. I emphasise the word "listening". On camera, Warnie is a slightly alarming presence, sporting a tan suggestive of a fortnight at one of Mercury’s more exclusive resorts and teeth that could guide trawlers to port on moonless nights. But safely ensconced in the commentators’ booth, he is an uplifting contributor who rivals Harsha Bhogle in the congeniality stakes.

For instance, I have yet to hear the game’s greatest legspinner utter a negative syllable about anyone or anything. All of life’s unpleasantness is encapsulated by the word, "rubbish", a word he occasionally uses to describe such diverse phenomena as inaccurate bowling and negative personality traits, but only to confirm that such things are entirely absent from the make-up of the player under discussion.

Optimism and generosity of spirit isn’t for everyone though, so viewers in need of an alternative had the option of tuning in to Test Match Special, where Ian Chappell was holding court. Gruffer than a billy goat recovering from laryngitis, he seems to have discovered new frontiers of grumpiness since I last heard him; at one point managing to inject bile, belligerence and bad temper into an anecdote about learning to ski.

Still, sometimes only plain speaking will suffice. Invited to assess the performance of Pakistan’s Test captain, Chappell remarked bluntly that he seemed to have gone backwards. Those of us willing the luxuriant-haired one to succeed could only concur as we watched him embark on a cricket-themed suicide ballet. Nineteen balls, 33 runs and then, the crazy icing on the failure cake, a spur of the moment resignation. Top that, Salman.

Still it’s not too late for showman Afridi to sign up for one of the many amusingly-named domestic Twenty20 teams. Yes, like an epidemic that was once briefly in the news, turned out to be duller than expected, but hasn’t yet gone away, the Friends Provident Twenty20 persists. A flurry of fixtures signifies that we are approaching the outskirts of the quarter-finals as those teams who have qualified for the next bit attempt to secure home advantage and those teams who can’t possibly qualify attempt to avoid injury while fulfilling their contractual obligations.

After witnessing all of Thursday’s play at Lord’s, I fought the impulse to switch off the county action and found myself watching a collective, calling themselves The Steelbacks, playing against Lancashire on a pitch that had been laid out by a groundsman with a keen sense of the comic potential of the absurd.

“That’s out of here!” roared the man with the microphone as one batsman lobbed a gentle slog sweep forty yards. In a Test match, such a shot would have resulted in a comfortable catch at shortish midwicket, but on a pitch reduced to back garden dimensions, it sailed over the rope and landed in the acres of space between where the boundary ought to have been and where it actually was.

My daughter is only six and I’m fairly sure that, granted a stiffish following breeze, she could reach that boundary with her size one plastic bat. Earlier during the day, a pre-recorded Clive Lloyd had suggested that Twenty20 is an exhibition. This was more like a family fun day. All that was missing was a coconut shy at square leg and Pakistan’s newest former captain running the tombola.

Have you seen the cricket in 3D? Oh, you must try it. 3D is marvellous, it is the future, you get, like, these dark glasses and when you put them on you can watch in 3D. Yes, I know, three dimensions! It’s the way of the future, 3D. Did you know that Sky are pioneering 3D? Didn’t I tell you? Yes, 3D. Cricket matches in 3D. Incredible, isn’t it. Sky are doing it. Yes, that’s right, 3D coverage of cricket. Only on Sky. It’s really wonderful, this 3D. 3D, 3D, 3D, 3D, 3D.

I apologise if my opening paragraph was a tad annoying. I hope, though, that it has conveyed to you something of the experience of watching Thursday’s one day international. Like particularly obtuse opponents in a rather frustrating game of Battleships, there was only one number-and-letter combination that the Sky employees were interested in. Again and again they rammed home the news of broadcastingkind’s latest technological advance until it displaced almost every other thought in the viewer’s head.

Ian Botham described it as though the players were miniature cricketers in a goldfish bowl and you were in there with them. That to me sounds like the disturbed nightmare of a feverish patient, not an arrangement that I might care to pay £36 per month for. It may well put the players in your living room, but frankly I do not particularly want James Anderson scowling at me from the chaise longue or Paul Collingwood walking across my carpet in his muddy boots.

And the key thing to note here is that we mere subscribers were not granted this peek into the world of tomorrow today. The 3D revolution was confined entirely to selected public houses, to which the Sky massive were directed. Thus, many years after the banning of alcohol advertising in sport, the nation’s main cricket broadcaster was directing its viewers to the nearest watering hole. For all I know, Nick Knight and Nasser Hussain were standing outside Trent Bridge, encouraging would-be spectators to try the Red Lion instead.

Of course, Bangladesh were playing and so this meant that, when they were not entreating us to enter the extra dimension, the commentators were delicately pacing that perilous border between insulting and patronising. They managed to restrain themselves fairly well until after darkness had fallen, but by then it was too much for David Lloyd to bear and the outlawed phrase that had no doubt been the subject of many an internal email, finally limped apologetically out into the open, dressed up in those distinctive Lancashire tones:

“It’s only Bangladesh,” said Accrington’s favourite son.

It’s. Only. Bangladesh.

Sometimes I wonder whether the words “it’s” and “only” should become permanent prefixes or somehow incorporated onto the badge of the Bangladesh Cricket Board. But though they got another thumping at Trent Bridge, to go with the 23 previous such outcomes this year, they have the batsmen; they have the fourth and fifth seamers and the back-up spinners. They are just one world-class bowler away from being contenders. We need a new Murali, so God, if you are listening, if there’s any justice, let him be a Bangladeshi.

I’m Andrew Hughes. My pen weighs 40 grams, my favourite aural experience is the sound of a cork popping from the neck of a bottle, and my toughest opponent is the stray cat who keeps digging up my azaleas. Next week I’m hoping to be miked up as I sit at my desk so the editor of Cricinfo can fire interesting questions at me for the benefit of readers. (“The opening paragraph went well, but there’s a long way to go and I need to keep hitting my grammatical straps” etc. etc.)

Yes, yes, yes, you’re probably thinking, that’s all very well, but what do I care? Quite so. A pot pourri of personal trivia does not add greatly to the reading experience. But for reasons that are not immediately apparent, someone in an editorial position of a certain satellite-television company feels that it is paramount that those viewers following the Friends Provident T20 are kept up to date in the crucial matters of willow poundage and the musical inclinations of county cricketers.

Like cheerleaders, blimps and the employment of Danny Morrison, it is not immediately clear what all of this adds to the cricket watcher’s experience. The dutiful reporting in pounds and ounces of the size of every batsman’s weapon merely reminds us that these things are indeed heavy - not as heavy as a small dog, perhaps, but weightier than a bag of sugar. As everyone knows, it’s not the size of your bat that matters, it’s what you do with it.

And I’m not entirely sure why we need to know that Jamie Dalrymple’s favourite band is Oasis or that Tom Maynard thinks England will win the Ashes series 3-2; any more than we might wish to learn that Marcus Trescothick thinks it could rain tomorrow or that Keiron Pollard isn’t sure whether he left the iron on. If the intention is to remind us that sportsmen lead rather mundane lives and have very little of interest to communicate, then mission accomplished, but surely anyone who has ever read a cricketer’s autobiography knew that already.

It isn’t just the on-screen gimmicks that are looking a little tired these days. Sky pack their booth with ex-professionals, but the absence of a proper broadcaster, a Harsha Bhogle or a Henry Blofeld, means that complacency, clichés and dressing-room in-jokes abound.

Commentary comes in two equally unappealing flavours. The first is a kind of anti-Arlott mode, in which the action is described with all the joie de vivre of two retired plumbers discussing copper piping. The alternative is a brand of humour that manages to evoke the singular atmosphere of a bunch of schoolboys sniggering at the back of a science class.

Monday’s culprits were Lancashire old boys Allott and Atherton. Their target was Glamorgan’s Mark Cosgrove. As we all know, Cosgrove is larger than most cricketers. You and I might have felt that this is not really worth remarking upon. But then you and I are not paid commentators. Cosgrove’s size was apparently comedy gold to the woeful duo, who had a splendid time chortling about it for several overs. Indeed, the fat jokes continued well beyond the Powerplay, until, like the archetypal school bullies, they grew bored; a state of mind with which the regular Sky viewer is becoming all too familiar.

	If Warner had cleared the G's gargantuan stands, he would have missed the fielder © Getty Images

Gosh that was a good game, as Mark Nicholas would say. Perhaps I’m getting older, but Twenty20 seems to be a lot faster than it used to be. On Friday, fielders swooped, bowlers marched back to their run-ups and new batsmen fairly leapt up out of their white plastic chairs. The game whizzed by so quickly that I almost longed for a strategy break, just so I could gather my thoughts. Almost.

The G (I understand there are other Gs, but this apparently is The G) remains utterly enormous. When the camera drew back to capture the stadium’s full height, I felt my vertigo coming on. There are other gargantuan grounds in the world, of course, but I have not seen a better Twenty20 venue. It’s a spaceship, a cavernous superstructure designed to concentrate sound, colour and light.

It also includes a small room fitted with microphones, via which several men take it in turns to tell us what we are looking at and what we have just seen. On Friday, I was introduced to a man by the name of James Brayshaw. Besides being a cricket expert, it turns out that he is fully up to speed on recent breakthroughs in the field of neuroscience. Earlier this week, scientists communicated with a man by monitoring his brainwaves. Brayshaw was keen to apply this new knowledge.

“David Warner, let’s have a look at his mindset.”

That got my attention. This should be good, I thought. Never mind Snicko, Hawkeye and Hotspot, those clever chaps in the Channel Nine laboratory have come up with a device to enable us to see the inner workings of a batsman’s brain. Unfortunately, Professor Brayshaw didn’t elaborate and so I can only assume that the mindset monitor is at an early stage of development, like the UDRS system.

Anyway, the neuroscience was just a bonus. These custodians of the commentary booth have a noble calling. They have played the game at the highest level and are duty bound to share with us their analysis, to enrich our cricket experience with their insight. Take this piece of wisdom from the man known as Slats, summing up Warner’s dismissal, caught, as is his wont, whilst trying to land the ball on the moon: “If it was higher, it would have gone over the fielder’s head,” our man revealed.

You can’t argue with that. Let’s hope Slats manages to pass his advice onto the tiny opener. Remember, David, if you’re reading this, next time don’t hit it straight to the guy, hit it over his head. Then he can’t catch it, see.

Of course, you don’t need me to tell you that Pakistan could have won. Again. They are like an experimental theatre group, re-enacting all of Shakespeare’s tragedies through the medium of bat and ball. You know it is going to end horribly, particularly if things appear to be going well. You know too, that, like the best tragedies, the outcome is an inevitable result of the flaws of the protagonists. 28 to win off 30 balls. Surely they can’t lose it from here? Oh, they can. Wow, as Mark Nicholas might say.

	Richie Benaud: “… and if there are no infractions for three years, you get to wear a cream suit, just like mine” © Getty Images

I love the ICC Code of Conduct. I read it all the time. There’s a lot of good stuff in there. Drama, pathos, tragedy, even a little romance. Oh and an awful lot of “Thou Shalt Nots”. Really, if Moses had had to bring this little lot down from the mountain, it would have taken a fortnight. I particularly like the rules on showing dissent at an umpire’s decision, which, as far as I remember, forbid a batsman from lingering overlong at the crease, raising either eyebrow quizzically (both eyebrows is a Level 2 Breach) or making sarcastic quips over the salad bowl at the post-match buffet.

Now, to be honest, I do enjoy watching the occasional dust-up on a cricket field. It brings out the Roman emperor in me, watching these gladiators tear into one another. Admittedly, I’m not sure that Nero would have been satisfied with a little bat-waving or the kind of handbag scuffles that we witnessed in Perth, but as Harbhajan is behaving himself these days, it’s the best we can do. But after a bit of an on-field set-to, there is nothing I like more than the serving up of a big steaming plate full of justice. And thanks to the ICC, there is a punishment to fit every crime.

Yes, when it comes to codes, I’ll pick the ICC version over Dan Brown’s any day. But, Haroon, I feel you can do more, much more. Television viewers may be considered the lowest of the low, even more unworthy than the plebs who pay good money to sit on uncomfortable seats amongst the drunks, but we pay our satellite subscriptions and we are entitled to at least a modicum of consideration. Hearing Shane Watson scream like a four-year-old who’s just beaten his older brother at Buckaroo is mildly troubling, but it pales into insignificance when set against the aural torture that the sofa-dweller must endure from the commentary booth.

Following recent events in Australia, impressionable youngsters may start waving their bats, scuffing the floor with their boots or pretending to hurl cricket balls at elderly ladies waiting at bus stops. I don’t have a problem with that. But what if they start to imitate their idols with microphones?

At the breakfast table yesterday, I had just delivered a smart blow to the shell of my boiled egg, whereupon my daughter declared, “When he hits them, they stay hit.” I demanded to know where she had heard that and she confessed to having stayed up late one night listening to some IPL commentary. I have informed her teachers that any other such lapses should be dealt with harshly.

So, if not for our sake, for that of our children, let’s bring in a Code of Conduct for Commentators. I’ve already made a start. Here is just a brief extract:

“Article 2.1: In describing the progress of a cricket ball from the moment it leaves the bat, no commentator shall be permitted to refer to a) tracer bullets, rockets or munitions of any description; b) imperial measurements such as a mile, a country mile or non-specific distances such as a long way, a very long way or over the hills and far away; c) specific seating areas of the stadium, particularly Rows X, Y & Z; d) interjections such as “wow”, “shot”, “gone”, “out of here” etc.

Article 2.2: In attempting to communicate technical information to the viewer, no commentator shall be allowed to employ complicated jargon likely to be difficult for the non-cricketer to grasp. Specific examples are given below:

2.2.i If you’re going to flash, flash hard. In addition to introducing an unwanted element of innuendo to a family sport, this phrase is likely to leave the viewer confused, since this use of the verb “to flash” does not appear in any dictionary.

2.2.ii Tickled that one down to fine leg. Coaching manuals are silent on the question of the tickle, and as it is not an officially sanctioned shot, it could lead to confusion, since little actual tickling is involved.

2.2.iii Got im! Used to indicate that the bowler has successfully dismissed the batsman: silence at this point is usually to be preferred, since, barring a power cut, the viewer will be fully abreast of the situation.

2.2.iv This pitch isn’t doing much. Avoid, except at those venues situated within an earthquake zone, since in the ordinary course of events, viewers will not be expecting the pitch to do anything.

I haven’t worked out all the details yet, but there will be heavy fines for transgressors, including reduced dry-cleaning allowances, withdrawal of comfy chair privileges and community service spent covering Division Two of the County Championship. Harsh, but fair, I’m sure you’ll agree.