Subtle visual comparison, for your benefit

Tuesday, 13th March
I’m worried about Gautam. His century was very nice, but it’s not as though he hasn’t done it before or was poised on 99 hundreds or had his mortgage on it at 25-1 or anything. His reaction upon securing three figures was a bit of a jolt. I haven’t seen that much unexpected fist-pumping since the Pope received the news that Germany had knocked England out of the World Cup.

And then there were the verbal ejaculations. Traditionally, this kind of thing is left to the chap with the ball. Ryan Sidebottom is a master of the fist-clenched primal roar and Dale Steyn does that thing where all his upper body muscles go taut and he looks like he’s about to turn into some kind of mutant super hero. Or dislocate his jaw.

So what could have provoked mild-mannered Gautam to join the ranks of the screamers and ravers? His frenzied finger-jabbing in the direction of the dressing room suggested that he’d proved a point to someone. “There you go,” he seemed to be saying, “I told you I could score a century on a flat pitch against a toothless bowling attack in a minor tournament. Take that!”

Frankly, if high scores have this kind of effect on him, perhaps it’s just as well he hasn’t had too many of late.

Wednesday, 14th March
A Delhi bookmaker has claimed that English county cricket is a good market for match-fixing because the quaint rural pastime is so low-profile that nobody monitors it. This is a little unfair on the ECB. They have tried to keep tabs on what is going on in the shires but their undercover naughtiness monitors invariably nodded off on the first morning, and when debriefed at ECB HQ, were unable to recall a thing.

Can bookmakers really fix these games? Perhaps. But surely the more important question is what kind of dangerous lunatic would want to bet on county cricket?

A bet should be something to make the pulse quicken, the eyes widen and the wallet twitch. A helter-skelter two-mile steeplechase or a blood-and-thunder game of rugby is worth a wager. But the spectacle of a bunch of has-beens, might-bes and expat South Africans pottering around a field in front of a gaggle of sandwich-munching retired civil servants does not cause the Hughes betting neurons to fire.

Frankly, I fear for the future of illegal bookmaking if their business model depends on encouraging customers to speculate on Slumbershire versus Yawnchester. Give me two cockroaches racing up a wall anytime.

Thursday, 15th March
Traditionally, first-wicket down is usually where you put the star of the show, although there are a couple of accepted variations:

1. If your show doesn’t have a star, you might hand the position to a reserve blocker. Selectors enjoy pulling this trick. Remove one of our dogged openers, they chortle and aha, here comes another dogged opener! England tried this sometimes in the 1990s, although it doesn’t work if none of the batsmen concerned are any good.

2. Occasionally, No. 3 is the place you might choose to blood a talented but fragile young strokemaker, particularly if you don’t like him very much.

But if, as seems likely, Shane Watson is to take the third position in the Australian batting order, then we need to rewrite the rules. From now on, three is also the place where former big hitting allrounders go when their work experience at the top of the order is over and they find themselves captaining the team.

For many of us, this is bewildering. Once upon a time, the architecture of the Australian batting order was as solid and enduring as an old market town and when changes had to be made, they were subtle, in keeping with the character of the place. But now it seems the developers have been let loose and anything can go anywhere.

Or perhaps this is the equivalent of the Ajax football team’s tactical innovations of the early 1970s. In Australia’s “Total Cricket” philosophy, any player can play anywhere. Personally I’d like to see Xavier Doherty express himself at No. 4, and I reckon that young Ricky Ponting could do a job in the lower middle order.

David Hussey: not particularly fond of beer and barbies either © Getty Images

Sunday, 26th February
One of the joys of cricket is the opportunity it gives us for vigorous debate whenever another little hole is found in the tattered fabric of the blessed Laws. Is the ball dead, or is it merely resting? Is it six if a stray platypus catches the ball and carries it over the boundary rope whilst keeping one webbed foot on the field of play?

This kind of stuff also lets us bask in the illusion that, through the scrutiny of a few densely written paragraphs of cricket scripture, ideally read aloud from a tatty old Wisden, we can pin down the whole messy business of reality, dig out the pure truth and then batter everyone about the head with it until they agree with us.

India’s captain knows all about this kind of thing, and having been overly generous at Trent Bridge last year, he wasn’t letting Hussey minor get away with anything today. But after an awful lot of chin-scratching, Hussey II did wriggle free of the clutches of Law 33, on the grounds that he had handled the ball to avoid injury.

So perhaps Law 33 needs a new paragraph, defining the difference between “injury” and “Mummy, I got an owie!” Besides, I thought Antipodean cricketers were tough. If Little Huss is claiming that he was scared of a tiny bruise on his tummy, then it’s time he thought seriously about whether he’s entitled to that Australian passport.

Monday, 27th February
Once upon a time, television viewers were enthralled by shows like Dallas, Dynasty and, if their evenings were particularly empty, The Colbys; glamorous melodramas featuring ludicrous characters and preposterous financial goings-on that almost always ended in tears, recriminations and implausible, series-ending cliff-hangers.

But in recent years, cricket lovers have been able to follow their own high-finance and skulduggery-themed soap opera. The Shires is a tale of colossal egos and massive financial incontinence amongst the deceptively comatose world of county cricket. It’s a tale of dodgy architects, high-maintenance South Africans and crazy fixture lists.

Above all, it’s the story of 18 desperate men, men who know there’s only so much subsidy money to go round. In an earlier episode, the chairman of Hampshire had sold his ground to the council. Today he sold the name of the ground that he’d sold to the council to a company named after a random selection of Scrabble tiles.

From now on, Hampshire cricket lovers, proud heirs to the legacy of Hambledon, will be privileged to call the place where they watch their cricket the Ageas Bowl. “Ageas” is from the Latin “agere” meaning “unpronounceable drivel” but was also the name of the Greek God of Financial Disaster. I can’t wait to see what Hampshire do next.

Some troublemakers might ask what all the hospitality gazebos, satin-furnished conference suites, innovative financial arrangements and Surrealist pavilions have got to do with identifying and developing talented England cricketers? This is, after all, the thing for which counties receive the annual subsidies that keep them afloat.

But, like Dallas, The Shires shouldn’t be taken seriously. It is a fantasy world populated with implausible men in suits pretending that their heavily subsidised debt-ridden sports clubs are proper businesses. And, like the best soaps, it will end with a bang as several counties commit financial suicide in the final episode.

Gayle had to retire hurt after fluctuations in the international currency exchange upset his stomach © BPL T20

Wednesday, 15th February
Derbyshire today revealed that they had turned an enormous loss into a marginally smaller loss by offering their ground as a wedding venue. This excellent idea should encourage other counties to find ways to generate a little extra money and to help them along, we’re launching a new feature called “101 Uses For A County Cricket Ground”. Here are three from the top drawer:

1. With their prime locations, Lord’s and The Oval could be turned into exclusive business heliports, enabling millionaires/billionaires/international fraudsters to get easy access to London’s financial district or alternatively, to make a quick getaway.

2. By turning their outfields into arable farmland, counties could swap their piffling ECB handouts for massive EU agricultural subsidies. Each county could specialise in a particular vegetable and the County Championship would be replaced by the Friends Provident Harvest Festival, judged by Geoffrey Boycott and Alan Titchmarsh.

3. With England running short of landfill sites, what better way to celebrate the summer game than to create 18 heritage waste dumps where unwanted copies of Alastair Cook’s third volume of autobiography (How I Scored Some Runs In Different Countries) and Graeme Swann’s Swanny In A Spin DVD (now three-for-the-price-of-one at “World Of Tat”) can be safely disposed of.

Thursday, 16th February
Chris Gayle’s spell as top earner for the Rand Rhinos in South Africa’s Money Money Money Trophy maybe in doubt after the ubiquitous leather abuser suffered another injury. Gayle, who was already struggling with a swollen bank account and had been managing his condition with regular cash injections, has now been diagnosed with diary strain and could be out for up to six weeks.

It was revealed that Gayle had been carrying the injury throughout January but had managed to turn out for Sydney Sausages in the BBL, Barisal Boredom in the BPL and as Widow Twankey in the Southend Repertory Company’s production of Aladdin and the Golden Handshake.

His engagements in the Tahitian, Iranian and Uzbekistan Premier Leagues are now in doubt, but doctors are hopeful that a course of remunerative treatment in Bangalore later this spring may enable his wallet to make a full recovery.

Friday, 17th February
Good news, franchise fans. The Sahara Pune Warriors will be taking part in this year’s IPL (“IPL 5: The Shrinking”). Kochi have already gone and, as Lady Bracknell would almost certainly have put it, to lose two franchises due to opaque contractual, administrative or financial disagreements looks like carelessness.

Sahara’s epic sulk, which included the termination of their sponsorship of the Indian team, the withdrawing of the Pune Warriors from the IPL to take part in the Pune Warriors Premier League (against Pune Warriors B, Pune Warriors Under-15s and the Harlem Globetrotters) and a parliamentary motion to have the words “Indian, premier, league and cricket” removed from the dictionary, is finally over.

A deal was done earlier today and, whilst BCCI officials were adamant that they had not bowed to Sahara’s demands in any way, they did reveal that they had made the following concessions in the interests of themselves:

1. Pune Warriors to be allowed to field 14 players during home games

2. A fresh box of a dozen jelly doughnuts (no sprinkles) to be at Mr Roy’s door by eight o’clock every morning for the duration of the IPL

3. A reform of the discriminatory and outdated rules on bat size, allowing Pune Warriors batsmen to employ three-foot wide blades

4.The words “Champions 2012: Pune Warriors” to be engraved on the IPL trophy before the tournament begins, “just in case”.

5. Ravi Shastri to insert four agreed phrases into the finely woven oral thread of his commentary narratives, specifically:

a) ‘This Pune team are unstoppable!’
b) ‘You’d have to fancy Pune for this one!’
c) ‘If you ask me Pune can go all the way!’
d) ‘There’s Subrata Roy, what a handsome man he is!’

The man to be consulted if it’s complete honesty about the County Championshop you want © Getty Images

Sunday, 22nd January
Like many cricket watchers, I have whined on incessantly about how boring modern Test pitches are. Who cares if the game lasts five days if we’re asleep for four of them? Well, like a bank that has been recently been bailed out by the government at a time of low economic growth, I should now start giving credit where it’s due. The groundsmen of the world deserve a prolonged hurrah.

They deserve all three cheers and more, for letting the grass grow, leaving the hose pipe on, inserting mattress springs below the top soil or whatever it is that they do to make things more interesting, whilst all the time under pressure to do precisely the opposite. In what other sport would the phrase “result pitch” cause widespread administrative frowning and monocles to pop from the eyes of officials?

So when Gautam Gambhir today said Indian pitches should be spin-friendly, I was almost entirely in agreement. Dry, dusty, cracked surfaces on which spinners can cause the ball to move sideways to a preposterous degree is precisely what you should expect when you go to India, just as you should look forward to soggy ankles in England and broken noses in the Caribbean. That’s how it should be.

There’s nothing wrong with what he said. The problem, sadly not for the first time this winter, is his timing. Talking boldly about what may happen in several months’ time on a different continent creates the unfortunate impression that he’s already thinking of going home. Rather than reassuring Indian fans that their team will be hard to beat in Kanpur, could he give them some reason to be optimistic about Adelaide?

Tuesday, 24th January
A few years ago it was conventional wisdom to regard the County Championship as a chuckleworthy remnant of bumbling amateurism, a repository of mediocrity, the nasty damp patch that was the source of English cricket’s rot. It belonged in the wheelie bin of history, like fox-hunting, the Conservative party, and putting offal in pies.

But now that England are No. 1, we realise that the Championship is in fact the attractive flowery tattoo on the bee’s knee, and civilisation’s greatest achievement since the invention of the sherry trifle. In just six seasons this fine nursery of talent has, in exchange for around £150 million, produced literally two new Test-match ready batsmen, only one of whom was born and raised in South Africa.

There are some dissenters, but they are mostly extremists; obscure bloggers, England internationals, you know the type. Take this comment from someone called “Alastair Cook”. Asked recently whether he felt the success of the England team was directly linked to the county system, he said, “I don’t think it is, to be totally honest.”

But what does he know?

Still, we shouldn’t be complacent, because the Championship is under serious threat. A sinister cabal of 18 troublemakers in boring ties, known simply as “The Chairmen” are plotting to replace it with three months of Twenty20 and three months of Forty40, whilst siphoning millions into unnecessary seating and hideous hospitality blocks in a grandiose scheme to make every county ground an international venue.

In this conspiracy, David Morgan is just a patsy. Behind the grassy knoll, you’ll find the chairmen of Bankruptshire, Kolpackchestershire and Subsidyshire waiting for the Championship to drive past in an open-top limo, passing the time by colouring in the dollars in their official 2012 Champions League colouring books.

RP Singh is ecstatic when he finds out the new Kochi owners are looking at Ronald McDonald as the inspiration for the uniforms © AFP

Tuesday, 5th July
Chris Gayle and Kumar Sangakkara have a lot in common. They are supremely talented players whose careers have been interrupted by lesser men. But they are dealing with it in different ways. Chris composed a moving piece in 33 paragraphs based around variations on a theme (the theme being “It’s Not Fair”). Kumar looked further than his own future and made an eloquent and impassioned plea for the reform of Sri Lanka’s cricket establishment.

And the response of Sri Lanka’s sports minister to these thoughtful, reasoned and articulate remarks? He stuck to the code of administrators worldwide, cranked up the pomposity dial to maximum and let off some self-righteous steam. The most significant thing he noted about the speech? That Kumar should have sought permission from the board in order to criticise the board.

But this is worse than just a few more puffed-up men in suits and fancy moustaches, stroking their egos. This is corruption we’re talking about, you know, that “very bad thing” that we were all so determined to root out a few months ago. Have we forgotten about that? Or is corruption only a problem when it involves players?

Wednesday, 6th July
Exciting developments, franchise watchers: the Kochi Katastrophes might be for sale! This news had me rooting down the back of my sofa for small change and ringing my elderly relatives to persuade them to invest their life savings. Having supported the purpley-tangerines in their debut season, only to see them blow it in a series of let-downs, flops and disasters, I thought I might as well buy the thing and sort them out.

And they can’t be that expensive. They finished eighth. They barely have any sponsors. Their gate revenue was puny, they couldn’t get a new stadium built and their shirts are revolting. Surely they’ll be going for a knock-down price? What’s that? US$ 333.33 million? Hmm. Well how much for Sreesanth’s head band?

Friday, 8th July
Things are getting out of hand in the shires. The wickets are littered with dummies and the county championship’s traditional soundtrack of four hands clapping is being drowned out by John McEnroe-style protests and language that would make a Premier League footballer’s mistress blush.

So what is going on in snoozy-time land? Are they putting something in the tea? Are there bonus points available in the championship this year for petulance, swearing and generally carrying on like a three-year-old on a long car journey? No. The Professional Cricketers Association believes the problem is twofold. First, the DRS is to blame. The players, having watched cricket on telly, want to emulate their heroes, but when they make those cool T-shapes in a county game, nothing happens. Naturally, they become disillusioned.

The second problem is slightly duller and has to do with some kind of umpiring feedback thingy. The PCA’s head Nursery School Supervisor explained:

“I think it's important that the players have a mechanism for giving feedback and that they have the confidence in it so that they don't get frustrated.”

The poor dears.

But why exactly are players commenting on umpires? Do schoolchildren fill in questionnaires rating the performance of their headmaster? Umpires are not in the service industry; they don’t need to be sensitive to the needs of their clients. They are enforcers. They are there because: a) the players can’t be trusted to play nicely and b) the players don’t know the rules.

I suggest that, in addition to fines, bans and stiff talkings-to, errant pros should be forced to write, “I must not undermine the umpire’s authority,” a hundred times on the pavilion blackboard. And an hour or two on the naughty step wouldn’t hurt either.

Brett Lee: the world's blondest man and pop sensation most likely not to win a Grammy © Getty Images

Wednesday, 25th May
Andrew Strauss answering a question reminds me of a cow processing grass. He sits there gazing listlessly into the middle distance, the words go round and round in his mouth and the end result appears to be at least partly methane-based. He has mastered the politician’s art of talking purposefully without saying anything at all. Here he is on corruption:

“My gut feeling is there is more to it than we know about.”

Immediately the listener is concerned. This feeling in your bowels, Andrew, is it a tingly kind of feeling or something more urgent? Should the ICC anti-corruption unit be hooked up to your intestinal early warning system? Could more roughage in your diet be the answer?

“It is hard for me to comment because I don’t know what’s going on behind closed doors.”

Ah, I see. He believes that some of his fellow professionals are corrupt, but he hasn’t got any evidence, beyond an enigmatic rumbling deep in the Strauss innards. It’s hard to know what to suggest: greater resources for the ACU or a couple of indigestion pills at bedtime.

Thursday, 26th May
Over at Big Bash HQ, the big crazy ideas machine is operating around the clock and those edgy zeitgeisty concepts continue to pour forth. One fielder outside the circle! Super overs! Pinch-hitting 12th men! Spectators keeping any balls they catch! Yes this is exactly what the game needs; time to shake up a sport that has remained stuck in the past (2007) for far too long.

But I still think we can do better. Let’s really blue-sky the thing, push the envelope and shift that paradigm. Instead of one fielder outside the circle, how about no fielders on the field at all? Instead of a super over, why not make every over a treble super deluxe dance Powerplay! Let’s have continually rotating teams of 37 a side! Let’s auction the Man of the Match’s house to the highest bidder!

In fact let’s hire a big tent, get Mark Nicholas to compere it and import a couple of elephants. We could call it the Big Bash Big Fun Big Family Cricket Themed Circus. Roll up, roll up everyone! See Brett Lee, the World’s Blondest Man! Gasp at Keiron Pollard and his One Big Shot! Thrill at the spectacle of David Warner the Mighty Midget being fired through the air from a cannon to land safely on a pile of dollars!

Friday, 27th May
The ECB are going to review county cricket’s business plan. This came as something of a surprise because I didn’t realise county cricket had a business plan. It does rather seem a generous way of describing what goes on in the shires. As I understand it, county cricket’s business plan goes like this:

1. Receive large amount of money from ECB
2. Spend said money on washed-up South Africans, hideous pavilions and top-of- the-range soap dispensers for the executive washroom.
3. Wait for more money from the ECB

Of course the ECB have some experience in this area. It wasn’t so long ago that they developed their own innovative business plan:

1. Obtain large amounts of money from reputable Texan banker
2. Spend said money on a 20-foot bronze likeness of Giles Clarke and twice-monthly goodwill visits in support of the Tahitian Cricket Association.
3. Refuse to give the money back when it turns out that it didn’t really belong to the Texan banker on the grounds that you’ve already spent it and anyway, finders keepers.

With that kind of financial foresight behind them, county cricket will soon be back on its feet. Or bankrupt.

A Kenyan exponent produces a decent rendition of cricket's most fashionable dance step © Getty Images

Saturday, 9th April
This year the IPL and the County Championship began on the same day. It makes for a startling contrast. Flicking between the two is like travelling in time: from cricket 21st-century style to the late Victorian era and back again. In entertainment terms it’s like choosing between a frenetic weekend trip to a packed out theme park and a wander around your local door-handle museum on a wet Tuesday afternoon.

And internet forums are full of people prepared to argue to a standstill to prove one or the other is best. These days you can’t be a cricket pluralist; you’re either an empty-headed, face-painted Twenty20 fan with the attention span of a goldfish, or you’re a sad old fuddy duddy at war with the modern world, hankering after a colonial past in which the sun never set on the dullest way of playing mankind’s greatest sport.

But why must we choose? Why deny ourselves one or the other? Let’s cherish cricket in all its forms. Personally, at the moment the county version doesn’t really float my boat. But if fate allows, post-retirement I intend to spend many long afternoons quietly snoozing in the shires. The County Championship is like Parliament, the Law Courts and open-heart surgery. I don’t really want to watch it, but I’m glad it’s there.

Sunday, 10th April
Pune have more players than anyone else. This is clearly unfair, but it does bring with it a particular problem. When Yuvraj sits down to pick his XI, he must feel like a schoolboy given the keys to a sweet shop. The temptation to try everything must be overwhelming. Where do you start? Picking an IPL team must be like trying to complete a crossword puzzle in which there are 27 answers to each clue.

Pune won today and so did Malinga. He caused more bruised toes than a short-sighted hippopotamus learning to tango. There’s even a dance named after him. It’s called the Malinga Shuffle and it’s easy to learn. Shift your weight to your right. Crouch in anticipation. Stare helplessly into the middle distance as though trying to spot a pouncing snow leopard in a blizzard. Then double up, hop backwards and try to hit yourself on the foot with your own bat. Falling over is optional.

Monday, 11th April
Today something interesting happened at New Road. No, not the fact that Worcestershire’s latest brief visit to the First Division began with a nine-wicket loss in three days. It was the fact that Adil Rashid took an awful lot of wickets. This is rather inconvenient. If he carries on like this, things might get rather uncomfortable for those on the England selection committee currently suffering from Rashidophobia. When we need a second spinner against Sri Lanka, could it be that they will be left with no choice but to pick the talented youngster? Or will they give John Emburey a call?

In his inimitable fashion Malinga asks for permission to be excused go to the bathroom © AFP

Friday, 1st April
April is here and it won’t be too long before we hear those familiar, gentle sounds of sploshing tea, sporadic clapping and elderly men snoring under the business supplement of the Daily Telegraph. Yes, it’s nearly county cricket time and to get us in the mood, here is a selection of today’s county news, only parts of which are true:

In order to give members a chance of seeing their latest signing, Surrey have announced that during the lunch intervals of Championship matches they will be using the Oval’s big screen to show highlights of KP’s recent hernia operation.

Leicestershire and Lancashire will be making history this season as they become the first county teams to merge. The new Super-County will be called Bankruptshire and they hope to play their home games on a patch of waste ground near Accrington.

The MCC have revealed that one of the reasons their pink balls have gone down so well with players is that the lacquer used on the balls is strawberry flavoured.

Derbyshire have landed something of a coup and, despite a somewhat limited budget, have managed to sign Sachin Tendulkar for the Friends Provident T20. Sachin will be available for up to 15 minutes during the opening group game.

Saturday, 2nd April
In a surprising twist, the least tedious World Cup banquet since 1992 has ended with a final soufflé that didn’t collapse into a soggy, chaotic mess, and victory champagne that wasn’t flat. But the after party wasn’t all fireworks and flowery garlands. It emerged that India had been fined for their slow over rate, a piece of disciplinary nit-picking that has already earned the ICC a place in the Guinness Book of Records for “Most Superfluous Rule Enforcement at a Sporting Event”.*

Sunday, 3rd April
At a packed press conference, Lasith Malinga today announced his intention to retire before the next World Cup, probably. Mopping himself with a towel after attempting to drink from a glass of water that he had been holding at arm’s length, Malinga denied that his unconventional approach to apparently straightforward physical tasks was putting an unnecessary strain on his body.

He also claimed there was a media vendetta against slingers that was putting them under extra stress. He cited the example of Shaun Tait. In a moving story, Malinga explained how one publication had suggested the South Australian was a little bit injury prone and related the sad tale of how Tait had attempted to text the paper to deny the claim, sprained his thumb, and could now be out for six weeks.

Monday, 4th April
The ICC have acted quickly to prevent any reoccurrence of Saturday’s toss confusion, caused by Kumar Sangakkara’s ambiguous coin call. From now on, mime is the only officially permissible method. Should a captain wish to indicate “heads”, he will simply point his index finger at his own face (taking care not to poke himself in the eye); whilst a call of “tails” will require him to turn around and wave one hand behind his buttocks in a sort of swishy motion, as though attempting a donkey impersonation.

Tuesday, 5th April
Concerned at the extent of bad sportsmanship amongst English schoolchildren, the government has drafted in the MCC to help teach the art of losing politely. Youngsters will be taught how a modern English cricket team deals with defeat: by pretending that you never really wanted to win anyway and that in any case, considering how tired you were, it was a miracle you’d turned up at all.

*Previous holders of this title were FIFA, for the fine they imposed on Pele after he allowed his shirt to become untucked whilst celebrating a goal against Italy at the World Cup in 1970, and special constable Maurice Deladier of the Magny Cours traffic police, who issued Michael Schumacher with a reckless driving citation for waving as he crossed the finishing line in the 1996 French Grand Prix.

David Warner congratulates Dirk Nannes on having snagged a rare edition of Plato’s Dialogues © Getty Images

Wednesday, 2nd February
Thanks to the miracle of Twitter, we have learned more about cricketers than we ever could have from the mountains of unreadable biographies and hours of televised cliché-swapping that were once our only window on their world. For example, pre-Twitter we might have suspected that the average cricketer had the mentality of a 12-year-old schoolboy. Now we know it for sure.

Or do we? There has been a flap about the recent Twittertiff between a man named Warner and a man named Geeves, but the media have only given us half the story. I have obtained the as-yet unreported tweets that cast these two distinguished gentlemen in a rather different light. It all started when a post-match dressing room discussion spilled over into cyberspace:

@geevesyb: It is my contention that of all the ancient schools of philosophy, it is the Stoics who offer mankind the greatest consolation

@lil’dave: I respect your views, sir, but have myself always preferred the Epicureanism of Lucretius

@geevesyb: You are a learned chap, but if I may be so bold, would you not agree that Lucretius was rather a depressing reductionist?

@lil’dave: No, I would not. indeed, I would contend that it is your Marcus Aurelius who brought everyone down with his tedious Meditations

@geevesyb: You may well contend it but that is because you is an ignorant

@lil’dave: Who u callin ignorent. U carnt even spell it u muppet

@geevesyb: U want me to come down and break your f&*^* bat!!!!!

@lil’dave: Ooooh I’m scared! An ur name sounds like pee

@geevesyb: Yeah well no-one likes u ne way, davey no friends

@lil’dave: I have too got friends, you is just jealous

@geevesyb: Talk to the hand cos I aint listenin…

Sadly we have been unable to obtain the rest of the Twitter debate, which is a shame, because I understand that they went on to engage in a most stimulating dialogue that touched on subjects as diverse as the modern-day relevance of Aristotle’s Poetics, the nature of art and the perennial question of whose mother was the ugliest.

Thursday, 3rd February
Apparently there is a possibility that the ECB will be asked to pay back the £2 million they were given as part of the Stanford fiasco. But don’t worry. I understand that the ECB have already sought legal advice and they have a watertight case for keeping the money allegedly embezzled from innocent creditors by a man currently awaiting trial for major fraud. And who can blame them? If a mugger snatches an old lady’s purse and, in his hurry to get away, gives it to you for safe keeping, then why should you give it back to her? Finders keepers, after all.

However, I do happen to know that there is another legal action pending against the ECB that they may find harder to sidestep. It is alleged that for many years they have been running a variant of a Ponzi scheme known only as “county cricket”. Unwitting England cricket supporters hand over money that is ploughed into apparently legitimate businesses or “counties”, which turn out not to be businesses at all but front companies. As the counties make no money, the system requires larger and larger investments to maintain before it eventually collapses in a mess of overgrown pitches, unemployed South Africans and huge unsightly red hospitality oblongs.

Samit Patel: at large in more ways than one now © Getty Images

Monday, 17th January
An abundance of felicitations to Leicestershire County Cricket Club! For those of you who don’t give a flying Irani about Leicestershire County Cricket Club (and I fear there may be several) you should be aware that this particular sporting collective has, at a time of global financial perturbation, achieved the eyebrow-raisingly impressive feat of hauling themselves up the mouldering heap of fiscal ineptitude and planting their flag at the very summit.

Last year, in return for continuing to be Leicestershire, the ECB shovelled in their direction £1.7m with which to play at being businessmen. In homage to the classic Richard Pryor film Brewster’s Millions, the besuited denizens of the Leicestershire boardroom set about disposing of this embarrassingly enormous sum in the shortest possible time. This week they were able to announce that, against all the odds, they had attained a loss of £400,000. Quite an achievement, I think you’ll agree.

But in county cricket there can be no question of laurel-resting or of slack-bottomed complacency. How can Leicestershire exceed the raised expectations of ineptitude that will inevitably follow? It is an order of Morkelesque proportions, a Jesse Ryder of an ask. In the next few weeks, the ECB money truck will pull up outside the gates of Grace Road and deposit another, even larger mountain. But if I know these guys, squandering free money will not be enough. They will also be going for the record of failing to produce a single international cricketer for five full seasons in a row!

Good luck, chaps!

Wednesday, 19th January
Matthew Prior has returned to the warm embrace of Team England, his utterly splendid average of 17.55 on Indian soil taking him straight to the top of the list of bald wicketkeepers who are available for the World Cup. But this is not the only reason why everyone’s favourite ear-drum irritator and connoisseur of the chirp has been given back his energy-drink privileges at the Club England bar.

“He’s a combative, aggressive cricketer,” says Andy Flower, “and he suits our aggressive fielding unit.”

At first and indeed upon subsequent glances, the art of interrupting a leather ball’s progress and returning it in the approximate direction of a work colleague does not appear to offer much scope for aggression. An angry snarl, for example, is often wasted in such circumstances, particularly when the snarlee is sliding across the boundary on his left buttock and is about to collide with an advertising hoarding.

But “aggressive fielding unit” is cricketese. Roughly translated, it means “bunch of loudmouths”. It makes sense, therefore, that the owner of Britain’s flappiest gums outside of the Houses of Parliament should be invited back to lead the chorus of on-field inanity that will be vital to England’s prospects of going out in the semi-finals.

Yet whilst it’s high fives and manly bottom pats all round for Matthew, for Samit Patel sadly there can be only stern looks of disapprobation and tuts of moral disapproval. You see, Mr Patel is an infidel, an unrepentant heretic in the Church of the Sanctimonious Fitness Freak and so has been cast into the bleak outer darkness, or Nottingham as it is sometimes known.

Mick Newell has suggested that Patel’s wedding in the autumn had led to a “slipping of standards”. Android Flower was even more joyless:

“It would be sad if he looked back on his career and he hasn’t done something that everyone is capable of. Everyone is capable of hard work.”

Or perhaps, just maybe he will look back on his career and say that he has thoroughly enjoyed the chance to play an utterly frivolous game in return for an ample amount of money, all the more so for having remained a balanced and happy human being with a healthy arrangement of priorities, rather than buckling under to a demand to fulfil an arbitrary standard of physical shape for the chance to serve in commandant Flower’s grim-faced boot camp for gym botherers.

Possibly.

Aggressive, with a dash of flair. Will rip Englishmen to shreds for fun © Getty Images

Wednesday, 20th October
Shane Warne, in his attempt to break the world record for pre-Ashes sound bites, has today found a new angle by offering us a zoological perspective on the merits of the current Australian captain:

“I think Ricky is at his best when he shows his Tassie devil side, which is aggressive, with a dash of flair.”

It transpires that Warne was referring to the Tasmanian Devil or Sarcophilus harrisii, a carnivore of the family Dasyuridae. Wikipedia has this to say about the apparently Ponting-like marsupial:

“It is characterised by its stocky and muscular build, black fur, extremely loud and disturbing screech, pungent odour and ferocity when feeding.”

It seems a bit harsh at first glance, but then again I’ve never seen Ricky eat a meat pie, or indeed stood close enough to him to offer an informed opinion on the pungency of his odour. Still, he might be forgiven for thinking that this is not perhaps the most felicitous of supportive pre-Ashes mammalian comparisons, particularly given that the Tasmanian Devil was declared an endangered species in 2009.

Thursday, 21st October
Under intense pressure to do something about the bloated county fixture list, the ECB structure group have made their long-awaited recommendations. In a bold move, they have proposed an initial period of inaction, followed by inactivity in the medium term, leading to further inertia going forwards. They have tentatively suggested the possibility that something might be done in 2012, but have sensibly not committed themselves as to what that something might be.

As they explained, change cannot be rushed into without a proper review, and given that county cricket has only been running for 150 years, it would be far too risky to draw precipitate conclusions. They were able to report, however, that they have taken action in one crucial area. It was proposed that the tea served at future committee meetings should be Darjeeling rather than Earl Grey. A working party was appointed and is expected to report on the matter by 2015 or possibly later.

Friday, 22nd October
In another triumph for the “names in a hat” method of captaincy selection, the WICB has chosen Darren Sammy to be the team’s next skipper, on the grounds that a) he wants to do the job, and b) he isn’t as good as the last chap so they won’t have to pay him so much. He is taking on the task with the touching naivete of over-promoted captains of dysfunctional teams everywhere, promising that he will be both bold and frank and referring to himself in the third person:

“That’s what Darren Sammy wants to do. Bring back the joy.”

However, the WICB were quick to issue a statement today reprimanding the new boy for his unguarded comments:

“We wish to make it clear that, as stipulated in his captaincy contract at Paragraph 127, subsection 17a, boldness and frankness are prohibited behaviours. We will also be monitoring levels of joy in Caribbean cricket, to ensure that they remain within acceptable levels, and would remind Mr Sammy that his remit does not extend beyond his core responsibilities, namely: taking the blame, doing what he is told and standing at second slip with his arms folded.’

Afridi rues not having resorted to a childish attention-grabbing stunt in his last Test match © AFP

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.

Note lack of cheering villagers in background © Getty Images

Once upon a time there was a poor king called Giles, whose kingdom was terrorised by 18 squabbling barons. The barons could never agree on anything, except that they should all have lots of money, which they spent on hiring African mercenaries and building enormous brightly coloured palaces that everybody hated. But King Giles could not get rid of the barons because they were so powerful.

And no matter what King Giles did, his people were never happy. He made money fall from the Sky but people complained that the barons grabbed it all and there was none left for them. For the prestige of his kingdom, he bought himself a splendid new suit made from invisible Texan cloth, but when he paraded it on television, everyone laughed at how naked he appeared.

One night, as he was just about to fall asleep under his Stanford Super Series Commemorative duvet, his fairy godmother appeared. She told him not to be alarmed and to look out of the window. With a wave of her magic wand, a quiet little shire hen that had been pecking away in the castle courtyard was instantly transformed into a plump goose wearing a Kolkata Knight Riders baseball cap.

“Is that all?” said King Giles, “What do I want with a goose? Haven’t you got any cake?”

“It’s a magical goose,” replied the fairy, “Say the magic words, ‘synergistic revenue maximisation’ and it will lay a golden egg. But if you ask it too many times, it will stop laying altogether and disappear in a puff of apathy.”

King Giles thought for a minute.

“Could I have another one?”

“No. It’s a metaphor. It doesn’t work if you have two,” replied the fairy.

King Giles was happy with his marvellous goose. But soon the barons heard of this miraculous creature and they crept into the castle and stole it. They took it around the country, saying the magic words and scattering golden eggs wherever they went. At first lots of villagers wanted to come and see the goose. So many people came, in fact, that the barons started to charge £20 a time plus extra for ale and pies.

But after a while, people grew bored of watching the goose and had no pennies left, so instead spent their spare time darning their socks or renovating their cottages. One July day when the poor exhausted goose had laid her 158th golden egg of the summer, the magic stopped working and in a trice she turned back into a plain old shire hen, whose eggs were small, uninteresting and not at all golden.

The barons were most displeased and so they had a meeting at which they decided that King Giles was to blame. And to teach him a lesson, they told all of the newspapers in the kingdom that it was his fault that the goose no longer generated sufficient revenue streams. Word spread throughout the land and children began to taunt poor King Giles whenever he passed by in his ECB coach.

“There goes silly King Giles,” they said, “the man who lost the goose that laid the golden eggs.”

And the eighteen heavily-subsidised barons lived happily ever after.

Mark Cosgrove: his weight is still funny, apparently © Getty Images

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.

Worcestershire’s Alan Richardson groans at having given caption writers another chance to pun on “Loots” © PA Photos

The Friends Provident Trophy is an enormous competition. It looks sizeable on paper, but like a gigantic beached whale, it’s only when you get up close to it that you can appreciate the scale of the monster. Eighteen teams play approximately 57 times each before the exhausted viewer is granted the reprieve of a knock-out stage and the whole thing reaches a merciful conclusion.

Still, there is no competition so large that Worcestershire can’t find the quickest way out of it. An impressive haul of defeats, surrenders and capitulations means that the men in dark green and camouflage are already going through the motions with the group stages barely halfway through, and whilst this is an impressive feat that ought to earn them a place in the lists of cricket failure (just above the Kings XI Punjab and below Brett Lee’s singing), it does not make them box office.

Falling asleep whilst watching cricket is something that I had pencilled in for my twilight years, but Monday evening’s clash between the aforementioned losers and Derbyshire Falcons had me teetering on the brink of unconscious more than once over the course of three painful hours. On the longest day of the year, this was the longest Twenty20 game I have ever witnessed that didn’t involve Mr Duckworth and his colleague.

Worcestershire set a small target slowly. Derbyshire pursued it steadily. A nation yawned. When Loots Bosman fell, the non appearance of Chesney Hughes meant that Derbyshire tap-tapped their way to an easy target with all the dash and élan of Geoffrey Boycott alphabetising his CD collection. It isn’t easy for a man in a seven-foot falcon costume to look bored, but Derbyshire’s mascot managed it, standing arms folded as the men in powder-blue shirts made a seven-course banquet of the situation.

If you are beginning to spot the slightest whiff of bitterness about my indifference to this particular fixture, then you may have a case. I’m afraid I haven’t been entirely straight with you, readers and must declare an interest. I am a Worcestershire supporter. This isn’t something I talk about too often, but my therapist thinks it might help to get things out of the open, to come out of the green closet as it were.

It started back in 1988. The world was younger; I was thin; anything seemed possible. Back then, Worcestershire were the thing. They had Graeme Hick, in the days before we found out that he wasn’t as good as we had fantasised that he might be. They had Ian Botham, or at least a tubby man who looked rather like him. They had Graham Dilley, Neal Radford, Richard Illingworth. They had Steve O’Shaughnessy.

But this current lot are a sorry sight. It doesn’t help that they are wearing a ridiculous uniform. Yes, I know it’s for charity and all that but they look like one of those nutty backwoods American militias or extras from an episode of The A-Team. If it wasn’t for Moeen Ali, they’d barely be functioning, and the addition of the MP for Matara District, one Jayasuriya, S, is a signing as symbolic as it is desperate. “They’re just not going anywhere, Worcestershire,” sighed Ian Ward. Quite so, Mr Ward.

	'Right lads, winter's over in Narnia. I'm needed there for a spot of cricket' © Getty Images

If I were paid by the word I would write Ryan ten Doeschate as often as possible. Sadly, I am not and so I will refer to him as RTD. Before Wednesday’s televised Twenty20 game, RTD said that whilst he was flattered that some were talking up his chances of playing for England, he felt he was South African. There then ensued a debate between Charles Colville and Robert Croft that was a pleasant conversational excursion through the thorny maze of cricket nationality. It went a little like this.

Croft: I find it refreshing that he’s said he doesn’t want to play for England, that he feels South African and only wants to play for South Africa.

Colville: But he’s been playing for Holland

Croft: Well, you can’t blame him for taking the opportunity.

Indeed not. It appears that you can have your biltong and Edam soup and eat it too. Croft of course, is a Welshman who played for England and who bristles at any suggestion that he might be described as an Englishman. It is all rather confusing. Perhaps, since England is a country that in many ways does not exist, we should go further and have it registered alongside Narnia as an entirely mythical realm, thus allowing anyone with access to a wardrobe to be considered for selection.

But whoever he happens to be playing for, RTD is an entertainer, his nimble-footed assays down the pitch and his whirring arms making him Twenty20 box office. In recent times though, the rest of the Essex chorus line have not been pulling their weight. After a thrilling performance was cut short by a calf injury that will stop him turning out for Essex, Holland, South Africa or Narnia for several weeks, Eagles fans, if such people exist, might have expected another disappointing show.

But they were wrong. Essex were "pumped up" as the experts put it, which I understand is a euphemism for "trying really hard" rather than an aspersion that they might be on steroids or wearing inflatable shoes. Kaneria sent Pollard off with some un-Parliamentary language and after taking a catch in the shade of the pavilion, Grant Flower showed off his right bicep in a threatening fashion to a section of the Somerset crowd. At least, I think he was showing off his bicep.

Throughout the debacle, Poor Marcus Trescothick sat helpless in the Somerset dug out. He’d done his bit. Although no longer cutting a dash in the field (his pursuit of one leg glance looked like a middle-aged man trying to catch a runaway puppy) he had helped to lay what is known in the game as a "platform"; a platform from which his chaps proceeded to launch themselves like black-clad lemmings. As the wickets fell, there was even time for a touch of comedy, courtesy of Nick Compton who added to the game’s repertoire of Twenty20 innovations by reverse-sweeping his own bails off.

Still, at the post match sit-down with microphones, even Trescothick was smiling. And why not. Taunton looks a thoroughly lovely place to witness cricket. The game had begun in bright sunlight and every time the ball soared into the sky, we were afforded a glimpse of the sandstone tower of St James Church against various shades of blue. As spectators sizzled, the sun sank and the evening came on by discreet shades so that by the end, the midsummer light had softened to a mellow amber; the colour in fact, of a decent glass of cider.

	A Durham Demon determinedly drives in to bowl © PA Photos

My dictionary defines a dynamo as “a machine for generating electric currents by means of the relative movement of conductors and magnets”. Extremely useful, I’m sure, but at first glance, such a device would appear to have little to do with the game of cricket. Nevertheless, I have no truck with those who suggest that the cricketers of Durham are saddled with this moniker as the consequence of a random alliterative brainstorming session in a conference room somewhere in Chester-le-Street.

Anyway, on Monday the Dingos were up against the Leicestershire Foxes, so named not because they employ only the most attractive cricketers (consider if you will, Mr Hoggard, Mr Nixon and Mr Henderson) nor because they display a particularly vulpine craftiness (they don’t) but because that particular mammal was at one time more persecuted by men on horses in the fair county of Leicestershire than in any other part of this green and pleasant land. Probably.

For this game the Dodgems were able to call upon one Paul Collingwood, back from his burnout sabbatical, having given his mind the month off. Another ideal location for mental rehabilitation is of course the Sky commentary box, and there another of the Dodos, Graham Onions, was also giving his cranial machine a well-earned break.

At one point the vagaries of battle had brought Claude Henderson and Dale Benkenstein face to face across twenty-two yards of turf.
“Claude’s South African,” began Graham, taking seriously the commentator’s duty to inform, “and so’s Dale, so obviously they’ll know each other well.”

Obviously. Still, I’m not entirely sure whether we can assume that those who share similarly designed passports will inevitably be buddies, as though the Republic of South Africa were a small mining village in Northumbria, where everybody knows your name, or indeed, a fictional Boston bar in the mid-to-late 1980s. On the other hand, if all South Africans do have a symbiotic relationship with one another, it could explain why the England dressing room is a more contented place these days.*

Immigrants from the Cape, be they Kolpak or just visiting for the summer, must of course adjust to the meteorological realities. No doubt when Albie Morkel signed up for the Didgeridoos he took a quick look at the calendar, thought June and July would surely be okay temperature-wise and only packed the one sweater. How wrong can you be? At the Emirates International Cricket Ground there are only two weather options: cold and colder. Poor Albie spent half the game shivering in the dugout under an emergency hoodie with not even a strip of biltong to warm his palate.

But in the end the Dentists won the game and this was largely due to Ross Taylor, who brought his enormous willow to bear heavily on the assorted fast-medium and medium-fast Foxes. David Lloyd et al were in raptures at his timing, the strength of his wrists, and above all, the proportions of his bat. The size of a chap’s blade is, it seems, a continual source of fascination to the microphone botherers and I’m starting to become concerned about the enthusiasm with which cricketers of a certain vintage bang on in such excited tones about poundage and girth and heft. Sigmund Freud might have called it bat envy.

* For those who like to keep a note of these things, this is Joke 1678 (b) from Cricket Immigrants Satirical Remarks Volume Two (also available in Afrikaans)

	Readers will be pleased to know that both players involved in this unseemly animated display have been fined for unnecessarily exciting spectators © Getty Images

I’d like to start today’s blog with an apology. I understand that the non-appearance of Tuesday’s Long Handle piece caused a great deal of distress, indeed panic, on the streets of London, Mumbai and Melbourne. To those of you who staged a massed protest outside the offices of Cricinfo and had to be dispersed by riot police threatening to broadcast Danny Morrison’s audio recording of Shakespeare’s love sonnets, I offer my sincere apologies.

Rest assured that almost nothing can keep me from my keyboard. A court injunction might, but so far this month I have managed not to invoke the wrath of the law (though I did have to make some last-minute changes to last week’s piece entitled “Giles Clarke and the Kennedy Assassination”.) No, it was something far more serious that prevented me from fulfilling my Cricinfo duty. I have been, friends, to the very gates of sanity and gazed beyond at a world that makes no sense.

It began on Monday morning. I woke with a piercing headache and an ominous sense of foreboding. Nothing unusual in that, except that this time I was also experiencing the most bizarre hallucinations, visions of such absurdity that they could only have been the product of a fevered and diseased mind. I could see before me, as clear as if it had actually happened, irregularly shaven men in dark blue uniforms celebrating on a cricket pitch, and an Englishman lifting a trophy. Yes, a trophy. I know.

My doctor has assured me that the hallucinations will pass, but as part of my treatment I have been ordered to stay away from overly stimulating cricket and have been prescribed a week-long course of something called, “County Championship”. So on Wednesday morning I handed in my prescription at the pharmacy, collected my deck chair, straw boater, bottle of Pimms and king-sized pillow and began my treatment.

The first side effect they warn you about is the sensation of hearing loss. After seven weeks of IPL and two more from the Caribbean, I am used to a wider range of frequencies and I spent much of the first hour of Wednesday’s play fiddling with the television until I realised that this was no technical fault: the ground really was that quiet. It was the deathliest of hushes, the kind of silence librarians dream about. Even the birds were whispering. Only if they’d marked out a pitch in the Sea of Tranquillity could a more profound silence have been obtained.

And it proved to be a strange sort of morning in the world of subsidised cricket. One of the teams (let’s call them Northchestershire) were a certain number of runs behind and needed 50 more to get a bonus point. But it seemed that the allure of a glittering point couldn’t rouse them to urgency. Twenty-seven runs accumulated in the first hour. I hadn’t been that bored since the week I spent glacier-watching in Interlaken.

The bowlers bowled, the batsmen blocked, the fielders fiddled with their facial hair and the grass continued to grow. The highlight of the morning was probably the extended footage given to the manoeuvres of a fire engine. The commentators eagerly speculated on what the vehicle might have been doing, although “transporting firemen” did not feature in their conclusions, thus raising some doubts about their judgement on other matters.

But there is no doubting the efficacy of this county stuff. As the butterflies fluttered amongst the horse chestnut flowers and Bob Willis started to complain again, I felt my eyelids droop, and long before the lunch interval I had been lulled into a deep, deep slumber, disturbed only fitfully by a recurring dream in which Nick Knight was rocking Eoin Morgan to sleep, singing a lullaby about heavy rollers. Another week of this and those Caribbean nightmares will be but a distant memory.