Ajantha Mendis: Kept safely out of the opposition's way so no one can work him out © Getty Images

Wednesday, 31st August
Don’t ever gamble, readers, it is a perilous and painful business, as risky and as futile a pastime as setting fire to your hair and standing in the garden waiting for it to rain. It is like putting a five-pound note into a post box in the hope that it will somehow be delivered back to you and that in the meantime it will have turned into a ten-pound note. At least it is the way I do it.

The failed gambler always has an accomplice, a stooge who can take all the blame. Today his name was Virat. It is a shame when a career that promised so much takes such a disappointing turn. I feel a lump in my throat when I remember watching the wee fella scoring all those runs for the Royal Challengers Bangalore. One day, I thought, one day, I’ll bet on you to top score for India in a meaningless Twenty20 game in the north west of England.

And today his moment had come. What better opportunity for him to emblazon his name across Duncan Fletcher’s frontal lobes than to top-score for India (at 5-1.) So what happened? Nudge, nudge, nudge, swipe, oh dear. There are some things in life you should never try to pull: Steven Seagal’s ponytail; a hippopotamus through a revolving door and a ball short and wide outside the off stump unless you are Viv Richards. Are you Viv Richards, Virat? No, you are not. Don’t do it again.

Thursday, 1st September
The mystery of Sri Lanka’s Mendis-phobia is frankly mystifying. The man formerly known as the most exciting spin bowler in the world is now more or less permanently languishing in the Johnny Gleeson Wing of the One-Trick Pony Retirement Home.

He was to be the skittler-in-chief in Sri Lanka’s demolishing of Australia. Instead, his record of squad superfluousness means he is in danger of becoming the new Adil Rashid.

The Sri Lankan selectors seem worried that batsmen will work him out. Well yes, they might. Some of them already have. But in the meantime he might pick up a wicket or two. He might even get better with experience. He averages 32.48 which is only 0.48 worse than Stuart Broad and 1.91 worse than James Anderson, who is, as we all know the new Dennis Lillee.

Instead, in order to ensure their impact spinner doesn’t lose his impact, they are going to keep him in his packaging like an unwanted birthday present. So today we had the spectacle of Sri Lanka, with a mystery spinner up their sleeve, being skittled out by the other team’s mystery spinner, who isn’t really a mystery spinner, but is a spinner who proved something of a mystery to the home side. It’s all very confusing.

Friday, 2nd September
Earlier this summer we learned that Hotspot was rubbish. Now Simon Taufel, umpiring superhero, is to refer Phil Hughes’ Hawk-Eye-aided dismissal to the ICC’s Hindsight Committee on the grounds that it looks a bit dodgy to the naked eye and can we really trust this gizmo anyway. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Technology was going to sort everything out. Instead, it is getting horrendously complicated.

We have applied the tin opener of accuracy to the can of decision-making, and now our cricket kitchen is full of worms. Accuracy is like a drug - 96% was okay last year, but the accuracy addict always wants more. Hawk-Eye was fine, we thought we could handle it, but now it doesn’t give us enough of a buzz, we want more, shinier, faster technology, which not everyone will want to use straightaway and which will anyway turn out to be less than 100% accurate and will in turn need to be replaced and so on.

So I have an alternative. We simply need to clone Taufel, who is as accurate as Hawk-Eye and doesn’t even need to be plugged in. An elite panel of Taufels will then be able to umpire the whole international calendar to a high standard. And we could have a wardrobe full of Aleem Dars standing by, just in case.

”If we give them this, what next – inspectors in the dressing-room showers to monitor our soap use? Rules about how many M&Ms we can eat per hour? It’s the end of civilisation” © AP

Saturday, 11th June
This summer there will be no T-shaped gesturing, no slow handclapping from the crowd and no sheepish-looking umpires changing their minds. Though the rest of the cricket world has gone DRS crazy, India continue to oppose it with Trott-like stubbornness, for reasons that are not entirely clear. It remains one of the sport’s enduring mysteries, like why professional sportsmen can’t play on wet grass, and how exactly a game of cricket is enhanced by having young women dancing near to it.

We know that Dhoni and Tendulkar regard the DRS with the same suspicion with which a family cat might greet the introduction of an automatic cat-food dispenser. Personally, I agree with them. I like the old-school thrill of middle-aged men in silly hats making snap decisions. Since in any given match, I don’t much mind who wins, to me, umpiring booboos are just a wobbly thread in cricket’s tapestry.

But if accuracy is your thing, then DRS works. And this summer we need it more than ever. Last time India toured these shores, there was plenty of tasty cricket, but we were also served several helpings of silliness, a side order of stupidity, and a light sprinkling of jelly beans. Any series featuring Sreesanth, Harbhajan, Prior and Broad is likely to have a touch of the school playground about it, and without DRS, we can expect toys to be ejected from prams with monotonous regularity.

Monday 13th June
At a time when Asian cricket boards are being encouraged to extricate themselves from the clammy embrace of the political class, the Australian defence minister has struck a blow for his kind. He has condemned the decision to deprive Simon Katich of his central contract as an atrocity. And he’s right. Chalk one up to the politicians.

“Simon has been a fantastic player, but we felt it was right to start blooding our next opening partnership in preparation for the Ashes.”

So says Andrew Hilditch. “Next opening partnership” is an impressive phase, implying that the Aussie talent factory has turned out yet another batch of world-class top-order batsmen, and that crusty old Kat has been swept aside by progress. It is slightly less impressive when you discover that what it means in practice is a recall for Phil “Step Back And Swipe” Hughes, the world’s leading bouncer magnet.

But the problem goes beyond Hilditch and Co. Cricket Australia is clearly suffering from Sick Organisation Syndrome, the symptoms of which are an outbreak of verbal diarrhoea and a rash of fake business-style job titles. Titles such as “Head of Cricket Operations”. Surely this should be Michael Clarke? Apparently not. Presumably he is only “Head of (Onfield) Cricket Operations”.

Anyway, this is how the Head of Cricket Operations described their selection set-up.

“You’ve got to have the best people, the best structures, the best position description for them…”

Well, if you like. Or you could just get a bunch of former pros together every so often and ask them to write down a list of the best dozen Test players in the country. A list that includes Simon Katich.

England’s hardy warriors return after having beaten every trace of moisture out of the ground with their bats © Getty Images

Saturday, 12th March
On Friday in Chittagong, we witnessed two well-documented natural phenomena: the early-evening accumulation of condensed water droplets, and Englishmen complaining about the weather. At the post-defeat debrief, Mr Strauss and Mr Swann sounded like marine commandos returning from some dangerous amphibious operation, rather than sportsmen who’d had to play cricket on a bit of damp grass.

Their repeated use of the word “dew” in close proximity to the word “defeat” was, by the way, entirely coincidental. Let’s be clear: in no way were they blaming this dew-soaked defeat on the prevailing dampness that made it impossible to grip the ball or bowl straight. They were not suggesting, as some might, that this was a debacle borne of dew, a dew-induced lottery or a dewy farce; a dew-feat, if you will.

But it was karma. Mr Swann has spent the winter choreographing a surprisingly irritating dance modelled on a device employed for the purpose of distributing water onto grass. So the cricket gods have devised for him a fitting torment: to spend eternity bowling at tailenders with a ball that is never quite dry, no matter how many times he swears at it or wipes it with his special handkerchief.

Sunday, 13th March
The Kochi Tuskers Kerala is not just the first half of a high-quality tongue-twister, it is the newest name in the Twenty20 menagerie; an exciting new attraction occupying an enclosure next to the Matabeleland Tuskers and just around the corner from the Faisalabad Ferrets and the Adelaide Anteaters. If domestic leagues continue to expand at the current rate, scientists estimate that within a decade every animal species on the planet will have a Twenty20 team named after it.

Monday, 14th March
For many years the test of a true cricket lover was the ability to explain to an outsider the rules concerning leg before wicket. And if you could get to the end before the person you were talking to passed out, you could feel justifiably pleased with yourself. Mastering the intricacies of this particular corner of cricket’s rule book was tricky, but achievable, with a little dedication and the occasional diagram.

But how would you fare if, in the course of your attempt to convert the non-cricket lover, you were asked to explain the DRS system? Even if you felt confident in your grasp of all the intricacies (and as far as I can tell, Simon Taufel is the only human being who can say that) I fear your conversational partner would expire through old age long before you even got onto the thorny subject of the 2.5 metre rule.

And DRS is having some unpleasant side effects. Players used to put up with the occasional howler out of respect for the doctrine of Umpiring Infallibility. But not any more. Thanks to DRS, the on-field umpire’s decision is no longer final. Last week, MS Dhoni was having a grumble; today the Irish captain has been fined. They may be right, they may be wrong. Who cares? Once players think they can get away with whingeing about decisions, they’ll never stop. Our game will descend into chaos. Or worse, it’ll be like Premier League football.