"Everyone's always saying we don't play enough practice matches. So we did, for the IPL" © AFP

Thursday, 29th March
Every cricket watcher knows that the post-mortem after a Test defeat is far more entertaining than a victory celebration. Who wants to listen to sweaty sportsmen being tediously self-effacing about their success when you can wallow in the angry recrimination and existential despair of the unhappy professional pundit?

These decommissioned pros may spend most of their time on air reminiscing, snoring or talking about their lunch, but at times of national despondency, they really come into their own. When England lose, we connoisseurs of cricket misery have a range of choices from Bob Willis, the high priest of woe, through Nasser Hussain’s disapproving parent to Ian Botham, the angry man’s angry man.

But after this latest defeat, I thought I’d give Geoffrey Boycott a try. His style is straightforward, yet strangely compelling. To begin with, he tries a variety of grumbles on for size: Ian Bell’s sweep shot; the theory that the England players “have got nowt between the ears”; the state of the Greek economy. Soon, however, he settles on the grumble de jour and his oratory really takes flight.

At first, the significance of Ian Bell’s sweep shot is not fully appreciated by the listener. But as Fiery amplifies, repeats and reiterates, Ian Bell’s sweep shot takes on a more sinister meaning. From minor technical quibble to serious character flaw to national disgrace, we begin to see the enormity of Ian Bell’s sweep shot, until, after hammering away at his theme for several minutes, we finally come to understand that Ian Bell’s sweep shot represents everything that is wrong with western civilisation.

It was marvellous stuff. I look forward to his stirring explanation of why Andrew Strauss’ forward defensive is symbolic of the decline in British educational standards and the main reason for England’s seven-wicket defeat in Colombo.

Friday, 30th March
Every journalist has a “too much cricket these days” piece up their sleeve. If a deadline approaches and they find themselves staring helplessly at a blank page, they know that they can always dig out a few paragraphs about stuffed fixture lists and burned out batsmen because they think that everyone agrees with them.

Normally I don’t. How can there be such a thing as “too much cricket?” Burnout can be a problem for the cricket watcher, as can bruising your knee on the coffee table or picking up a nasty paper cut from the TV guide, but we’re a hardy lot and we tend to shrug these things off as the inevitable downside of a demanding, sofa-bound career.

And yet today I find myself contemplating the unthinkable. I may be on the verge of complaining about the amount of cricket. And the reason? Today’s one-off Twenty20 in Johannesburg. It had crept into my consciousness earlier in the week but I shrugged it off as the product of a fevered imagination. Surely such a thing couldn’t happen.

But there it is. As superfluous as a hot chocolate machine in the Sahara; as out of context as two clowns bursting into the reference section at the British Library and enacting the penultimate scene from the Empire Strikes Back. Aside from pumping a few more litres of carbon into the atmosphere, what will it achieve?

There is a charity involved, but the assorted millionaires of India and South Africa could easily dip into their pockets to support that. Alternatively, a successful charity appeal could surely be run on the promise that if sufficient sums are raised, there would not be an entirely pointless Twenty20 game a few days before the start of the IPL.

But since it seems that we can’t stop the thing from going ahead, those of us who have had a bet on Kolkata to win the IPL would appreciate it, Gautam, if you could refrain from diving, jumping, stretching, lunging or in any way risking your more easily ruptured tendons. And the same goes for you, Jacques.

Spin? Quelle horreur. Jonathan Trott reels at the prospect © Getty Images

Tuesday, 27th March
The England batting order is starting to resemble one of those sets of building bricks that toddlers like to play with. You can stack them in any order, perhaps moving Bell here, maybe taking out a Morgan and putting in a Patel, but whatever you do, the whole wobbly construction ends up in a heap on the floor, with a delighted spin bowler clapping his hands gleefully and shouting “Again, again!”

This time it was Rangana Herath carrying out the demolition but it could just as easily have been Herath’s great aunt, his ten-year-old niece or a suitably motivated orangutan. It seems that any sentient being capable of propelling the ball towards the English batsmen at under 50mph is on to a winner.

Is it genetic? Is the doosra-picking gene missing from the English DNA? Or is it biological? Just as dogs can’t see certain colours, perhaps English people can’t work out whether a spherical object is spinning clockwise or anti-clockwise. Or could it be educational? Does the chapter on spin bowling in the England coaching manual read, “Take a big stride forward, don’t look at the umpire and hope for the best”?

Whatever the cause, some of the Sri Lankans had clearly been standing too close to their English counterparts and had caught a nasty dose of Spin Fever themselves. On a pitch that had all the menace of a warm sponge cake, Monty Panesar’s understudy persuaded Sri Lanka’s finest to add their wickets to the bonfire of batsmanship and so end another madcap episode of Test cricket 2012 style.

And how exactly did the five-day game become so exciting? It doesn’t seem so long ago that Sri Lanka and India (or it may have been India and Sri Lanka) were competing to see who could produce the dullest Test innings ever (with India’s 707 in 1352 balls in Colombo the clear winner) on pitches that would have caused Fred Spofforth to weep and Jeff Thomson to pack it in and take up ballet.

But now it’s five wickets a session and all done on the third day. I’m beginning to suspect that at some point last year, a deal was reached between the Bowlers Union and the Society of Batsmen, whereby, in return for the thousands of cheap runs they had accumulated in recent months, the willow wielders of the world agreed to bat with their eyes closed for the first half of 2012, just to even things up.

"No, you philistines, this is not an ice-pack. It's my tribute to the 1958 classic The Blob © Getty Images

Tuesday, 20th March
As the Gayle v Hunte row enters its 723rd week, a high-level meeting was held today to break the deadlock. In attendance were the prime ministers of St Vincent and Antigua, officials from CARICOM, WIPA, WICB and Interpol; Kofi Annan, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Rolf Harris, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men and the universe’s most diplomatic robot, C-3PO, who, as we know, is fluent in over six million dialects including “Sulking Sportsman” and “Pompous Administrator”.

Sadly their combined efforts to put West Indian cricket back together again came to naught because no one could remember what it was that Gayle had said in the first place. This is hardly surprising. It seems so long ago now that the truth is obscured by myth and legend. For example, there are people in downtown Kingston who will tell you that it all started because Gayle accused Ottis Gibson of trying to undermine Ramnaresh Sarwan by saying rude things about his shoes.

Still, it’s not all bad news. Things must be going swimmingly in the Caribbean if two of the region’s prime ministers have the time to play agony aunts to Chris and Julian. By way of a contrast, David Cameron has completely failed to get to grips with the Carlos Tevez situation at Manchester City whilst Barack Obama clearly can’t be bothered to bring his influence to bear on the long-running feud that is threatening to tear apart the Chicago and District Pekinese Breeders Association.

But when you strip away the silliness, the Gayle situation is really about player power. The days when the men in the blazers ran the show is over and now the players are in charge. That isn’t much of an improvement, although I suppose they do tend to wear more fashionable sunglasses. For administrators, it’s a lose-lose situation. You can’t really stop your best players from playing wherever they want and you can’t exile them all because no one will pay to watch a second XI Test match.

For now though, saving face is the order of the day. At some point Chris will agree to pretend to apologise for like, whatever, and Julian will put on a reasonably convincing impression of considering the matter closed. Chris will then reaffirm his commitment to play for the West Indies (whenever there’s no franchise action to be had) whilst the WICB will cordially invite Chris to rejoin the West Indian squad (until such time as they can find a plausible pretext to drop him again).

Friday, 23rd March
Complaining about the weather on holiday is about as British as you can get and today Kevin Pietersen showed that those “How To Be British” evening classes are really paying off with a masterly piece of temperature-related grumbling. In fact, according to KP, so hot is the Sri Lankan heat that it is even more of a threat to his team’s chances than spin bowling; an eye-opening claim given that these days even the sight of a spinner warming up can induce an England collapse.

But this was also a masterpiece of pre-emptive excuse-making. No wonder they’re going to lose in that heat. Have you ever tried batting whilst holding a parasol?

"Don't forget to get cheese for our whines in the Tests" © Getty Images

Saturday, 17th March

Well done to Sachin, but commiserations to ESPNcricinfo. Harsha Bhogle’s piece yesterday asking us to stop going on about Sachin being stuck on 99 centuries was the 99th item about Sachin’s 99 centuries to appear on ESPNcricinfo. On the verge of bringing up a century of century-articles, we’ve been left stranded.

There is the possibility of a century of century-celebratory features, towards which these paragraphs might count as a scrambled single. But it’s a tough ask and I think the gathering bad light of reader intolerance might call time on our word chase.

Over the long months of our vigil, the ranks of the Sachin-century spotters had dwindled somewhat. The eager crowds who had at first gathered to see the lesser spotted century bird make its appearance grew bored of staring at a scoreboard waiting for something to happen, and one by one wandered off to find ice creams, jobs, dye their hair, marry, divorce, emigrate, spend some time finding themselves in a Thai monastery, and generally get on with their lives.

So when those three cheeky little digits popped on the scoreboard at the Shere Bangla Stadium, it crept up on us, it was a pleasant surprise, although it wasn’t that pleasant for the Bangladeshi players nor was it much of a surprise, as he’d done it to them five times before. We suspect that they didn’t really mind, though, because they won the game anyway. It was a win-win kind of a win.

But that really has to be the end of it. By now many cricket lovers have developed an angry Pavlovian response to sentences built around the words “Tendulkar” and “century”. So I won’t mention it again. Though I should just let you know, purely for your personal reference, that Sachin is currently poised on 195 one-day international sixes and only needs another five Test wickets to bring up his 50…

Monday, 19th March
For a lot of teams, a warm-up game is a relaxing potter around some picturesque provincial field/godforsaken suburban dump; a break from being photographed standing next to architecture, complaining about room service, and trying to identify your socks amongst the hotel laundry. But Team England tend to take everything too seriously and now it seems they’re trying to put the war into warm-up.

As we know, being generally unpleasant and obnoxious on the field of play is a vital part of the modern game. At the moment, Andy Flower’s Angry Boys lead the way in the shouty arts, and so a fixture against a Sri Lanka Board XI was the perfect chance for them to hit their moaning straps. After all, nothing prepares you for Test cricket quite like standing around swearing at someone.

When Dilruwan Perera refused to accept a fielder’s word about a catch and didn’t walk, the England players converged on the offending batsmen in a scrum of arm-waving, pouty indignation. You might think this was just a silly overreaction but I have a weary feeling that Team England will see it as the choicest drop of cream at the very tip of the pedigree cat’s whiskers, and that we are only at the start of several very trying weeks of whingeing, tantrums, foot-stamping and Stuart Broad’s lower lip going all quivery when yet another DRS review request is turned down.

Ryan Harris: learned how to curb his enthusiasm © Getty Images

Saturday, 10th March
Vacancies in the Indian batting line-up do not occur that often, and now that Rahul has gone, the hopefuls are queuing round the block. Like casting directors for a Bollywood blockbuster, BCCI selectors have been leafing through headshots and resumes for several days, but nothing has yet caught their eye. So today this advert appeared in the Indian batting industry’s trade newspaper, The Bling and Nurdle:

A position has recently become available in our top order. The successful candidate must be good in a crisis, with strong damage limitation skills and considerable firefighting expertise. Experience of working with the elderly an advantage. Some foreign travel necessary but this will be kept to a minimum. Ability to duck essential. Apply to Mr Srinivasan, Super Kings Mansions, Cement Street, Mumbai.

Sunday, 11th March
If you thought that the diabolical debacle in Dubai surely meant the end of England’s spell as head prefects at the Test Cricket Academy, you were wrong. It looks like Strauss and chums will still be hanging on to the shiny mace of supremacy come April Fools Day, thanks to an old ally.

Dampness has long been the English cricketer’s friend, and scientists at the Met Office have now found a way to harness the natural sogginess of the British Isles. With South Africa poised to beat New Zealand last week, a special cumulonimbus task force was despatched to the southern hemisphere and today it drizzled on their parade.

It will only get harder for the challengers. They think they’re coming for a pleasant stroll around the shires this summer, but they’re in for a world of rain. Millions of gallons of water have been stored in the ECB’s underground reservoir, ready to be dumped on Graeme Smith’s head if it looks like his team might be winning.

As Churchill would have put it, we shall fight them in the drizzle, we shall fight them in the showers, we shall fight them in the downpours and in the puddles; we shall never surrender, because we’ll be wearing waterproof trousers.

Tuesday, 13th March
Ryan Harris has put his absence from Australia’s Caribbean holiday down to the fact that he was trying too hard in recent games. This is a timely reminder for all of us. Dabble, dip your toe in the water or languidly go through the motions, but there really is no point in trying hard. It simply isn’t worth it.

Life teaches us this lesson time and again. You try too hard to impress a certain girl but somehow end up falling head first into a duck pond or crashing your penny farthing into a fruit stall. You develop a hunched back and a squint from too much revision, yet the chap who spent his term playing gin rummy strolls to an A.

Not really trying is the way to go. The great thinkers of human civilisation, from Oscar Wilde to Baloo, are all in agreement. That’s why David Gower is one of my favourite players. It’s not that he didn’t try, I’m sure he did. But he didn’t look as though he was trying, and that is immensely encouraging to the rest of us.

So now you know what to do, Ryan. Curb your natural Australian tendency to work hard and ease back a little. Cultivate a bored expression. Saunter to deep fine leg with an air of ennui. Perhaps sip a cup of tea or have a flick through the racing pages whilst leaning on the advertising hoardings. You’ll be back in no time.

"Just rip it off like a bandage" © AFP

Wednesday, 7th March
Once upon a time there lived a poor princess. Her land was so poverty-stricken that she was forced to sell it to television for a paltry £300 million.

“Oh woe is me,” cried the princess, “How am I to compete financially with my peers? Oh how I envy Countess Lalit, who travels everywhere in a diamond-studded carriage pulled by flying unicorns!”

But one day, as she sat in the Lord’s pavilion, weeping over her spreadsheets, a heavily-tanned knight landed his helicopter on her lawn.

“I’ve got a yacht and I live in a make-believe kingdom. Will you marry me?”

“Oh yes!” said the princess, adding, “Show me the money!”

And Prince Charmless carried her off in the Ponzicopter to the magical land of Stanfordia where they lived in his giant sandcastle, entertaining themselves by throwing custard pies at people who weren’t billionaires.

But it couldn’t last for ever. One day a wicked federal agent knocked on their door and cast a magic arrest warrant. Prince Pyramid was transformed into a giant rat and ran away. His castle became a pumpkin once more and all his servants turned back into former international cricketers who swore they couldn’t remember a thing.

Yet the princess was unabashed and behaved as though nothing had happened, saying:

“I’m keeping the engagement ring and this £2.2 million and there’s nothing that anyone can do about it so there.”

And they all lived happily ever after apart from a few thousand investors and the citizens of Antigua, but let’s face it, they don’t really count.

Thursday, 8th March
And just like that, Dravid has gone. He could have carried on, seeing off Sharma and Raina and Sharma and Raina’s nephews and Sharma and Raina’s nephew’s sons, batting on with indefatigable rectitude, stiffening the Indian spine long into his senior years.

Let’s face it, the timorous lumberjacks of the BCCI would never have dared to wield their axes against this mighty oak. But now that he has toppled over, he leaves a gaping hole. Which puny sapling can possibly fill it? They still haven’t found anything to put in the space where Ganguly used to stand.

It was the same when Poseidon announced his retirement. Who will regulate the tides now? Who’s going to stop the sharks from eating the mermaids? How will we get the smell of fish out of the carpet? And who’s going to tell Zeus that it might be time for him to hang up his thunderbolt?

Sachin and VVS should contemplate the experience of Mr Gatting and Mr Gooch. A pair of the finest willow-wavers England ever produced, but throughout their 1994 farewell tour they lumbered around Australia like bewildered brontosauruses who had somehow survived the Ice Age.

And 99 centuries isn’t a bad finish. Like 99.94, it has a certain numerical poignancy.

Also available in a Bob Willis stylee © Getty Images

Wednesday, 22nd February
Stung by accusations that they have been a tad complacent in light of their team’s somewhat less than triumphant excursion to the Antipodes, the BCCI has today announced a wide-ranging review. Entitled “What We Did on Our Holidays”, it will be headed by an experienced playground supervisor and will aim to get to the bottom of a number of key concerns raised by players, specifically:

1. The X-Box rotation policy limiting senior players to half an hour each
2. The way Ishant always has the volume of his iPod too high on the bus
3. Gautam’s reluctance to change his socks
4. Praveen’s annoying habit of slurping his tea
5. Viru’s refusal to sit in the front row at team meetings if Mahi is there
6. The amount of time Virat spends in the bathroom

The review will be complete by the time the players land in Delhi and is expected to conclude that after ten weeks of being cooped up in the same coaches, dressing rooms and hotel lifts it would be in the best interests of Indian cricket and the sanity of all concerned if they spent some quality time as far away from each other as possible.

Thursday, 23rd February
England’s fast bowlers may look like nice young men who spend their spare time helping elderly ladies across busy roads and retrieving kittens from high branches, but sometimes they can be grumpier than Bob Willis at a Justin Bieber concert. Today it was Steven Finn who was wearing the angry trousers, heaping abuse on a slightly nonplussed Awais Zia, both before and after he took Zia’s wicket.

To the untrained eye, this carry-on might appear to be the petulance of a schoolboy who can’t cope when things don’t go his way. But Steven is 22, so that couldn’t be it. So what was his problem? Had his ECB underpants shrunk in the wash? Were his bunions playing up? Had he overdosed on the Daily Mail? And then I worked it out. Like me, he must have sat through Sky’s pre-match unpleasantries.

We all know the drill. Every viewer must pass through an initiation ceremony, an ordeal of inanity, in order to get to the thing for which they’ve paid. Today’s theme was KP’s confidence. First the chaps in Dubai informed us that he’d be full of it. They handed back to the studio, whereupon Ian Ward asked his first guest if KP would really be full of confidence. Yes, said Rob Key, Kevin would be full of confidence.

But Ward was leaving nothing to chance and brought in Robert Croft for the Celtic angle on Pietersen’s confidence. He concluded that KP would be full of confidence. At least I think he did. Croftie has a troubled relationship with vowels and his strenuous attempts to elucidate his opinions produced the kind of jaw arrangements you might associate with a snake trying unsuccessfully to regurgitate a mouse.

It went on. A quantam of waffle from Nasser Hussain; a light shower of drivel from David Lloyd and Aamer Sohail, including an anecdote about Lloyd having to borrow a tie*; adverts for deodorant, banks and cars; and an exchange of platitudes with a bored-looking Craig Kieswetter wearing a bored-looking baseball cap. After several minutes of this, my nerves were frayed, my mute button broken and my porcelain tea service in peril. No wonder Steven was so cross. Had I been expected to go out and play cricket after that, I might not have been able to restrain myself either.

*Turns out he didn’t have a tie so he had to borrow one

Masterful overlords of one-day cricket. For the next seven minutes or so. © Getty Images

Saturday, 18th February
Opinions, like socks, are commonplace and most people have several, though they can’t always remember where they got them from. It is also the mark of the civilised individual that they change them regularly, and so this weekend, English cricket journalists have been proudly displaying some freshly laundered ones.

Throughout 2011 they were agreed that England had not the faintest notion of an inkling of a clue as to how to tackle the 50-over stuff but that their ineptitude was not really a big deal because Test cricket is where it’s at, the World Cup is just a big yawn, and no one cares about a format that is all a little bit 1980s.

However, in the light of England’s recent series victory and dramatic rise up the rankings from mid-table to upper mid-table, the desert-bound hacks, suffering perhaps from a cocktail of sand exhaustion and golf fatigue, are spinning us a line about the importance of the 50-over game and England’s building for 2015.

It seems to have slipped their memory that the chaps from Blighty have rather cornered the market in false dawns over the years. It might be wise for journalists not to rush to the window claiming that they can see the sun rising on England’s new 50-over empire simply because Cook and chums have won three games in a row.

For instance, the last time England stood poised on the brink of a one-day series whitewash was in 2008, against South Africa. Did this herald:

a) the inexorable rise of England’s 50-over fortunes, culminating in top spot in the one-day rankings and a World Cup final appearance?

b) absolutely nothing?

You may already know the answer, but if you need a clue, it wasn’t a). It never is.

I have an alternative theory, which I’ve named the Quantity Theory Of Victory. The theory states that there is only so much victory that a normal team can absorb before they experience what is known as Victory Fatigue and reach a state of Can’t Be Botheredness. Pakistan, having reached their maximum level of victory in the Test series, were scientifically incapable of winning the succeeding tournament.

We’ve seen this before. How often does one team win the Test series only to see their flattened opponents struggle to their feet and triumph in the one-day arena? If I were a diligent writer, I would investigate how often. Since, however, I am lazier than an elderly cat after a heavy meal on a sunny afternoon, I have not done this. But having thought about it for a bit, I believe the answer to be “quite often”.

Tuesday, 21st February
A few days back, Giles Clarke, ever watchful guardian of all that is sacred and profitable in our great game, announced that the ECB’s crack team of cyber police (David Collier’s nephew and his friends from the IT club) would be scouring the virtual seas of the interweb in search of naughty pirates with their illegal feeds and dangerously unregulated streams. At least I think that’s what he said.

Well, it seems that the ECB are now opening up a new front in their ongoing struggle to prevent cricket fans from getting access to cricket. Their top-secret listening station in St John’s Wood will be “monitoring” Test Match Sofa, and no doubt the people involved will find suspicious-looking ECB operatives in leather overcoats following them when they pop out to the newsagent for cigarettes and moisturising wipes.

I’ve listened to Test Match Sofa and whilst it isn’t really my cup of Earl Grey, it does have at least two things going for it. Firstly, it annoys the ECB. Secondly, it does not, at least as far as I can tell, feature Michael Vaughan, his accent or any of his golf anecdotes. These are good things and give it a big advantage over the other TMS. Besides, Giles, I’m no businessman, but I thought competition was a good thing?

The rumour that Ajmal subs for Rudolph every leap year is completely false. He only does it when Rudolph is picked in the Lapland Premier League © AFP

Thursday, 9th February
What’s the difference between a nuclear fallout and a media fallout*? Well, a nuclear fallout is a deeply unpleasant side effect that lingers interminably, whereas a media fallout is a deeply unpleasant side effect that lingers interminably for which journalists get paid.

Early in the recent series, a few English types tried to launch the Saeed Ajmal crooked arm thing, but like a poorly constructed kite on a windless afternoon, it didn’t really take off, no matter how much they ran with it. In the end it was left to Saeed himself to take pity on the struggling hacks by talking about his special dispensation from the ICC to have a bent arm or something. I forget the details.

And as sure as the doosra follows Ian Bell’s front pad, a little typhoon of tediousness blew up in the desert as journalists and message board trolls desperately tried to fan the infant spark of baby controversy into a toddler-sized blaze. Yesterday, ESPNcricinfo’s own King Cnut, George Dobell, tried valiantly to stand against the waves of silliness by laying out the facts about Saeed’s perfectly legal action.

But no one with newspapers to sell or fellow cricket lovers to annoy is interested in anything as dreary as facts and George’s efforts have not stemmed the tide of preposterous speculation and libellous insanity. So it falls to the Long Handle to sort things out. In no particular order, here are the answers to the questions you wanted to ask, didn’t ask because you were afraid you’d look stupid but then thought, “Ah well, it’s the internet, no one’s looking,” and posted them up anyway.

I heard from the wife of the man who grooms Shoaib Akhtar’s poodle that Saeed Ajmal cannot straighten his right arm as he is half-velociraptor. Is this true?

No. Saeed only spent his summer holidays with the velociraptors who were friends of the family. In fact, he grew up on a ranch in Oklahoma where he developed the kink in his arm from too much vigorous lassoing of cattle as a child.

Ten years ago, in a secret deal with the PCB, the ICC cleared the use of artificial arms with food blender attachments that can impart illegal levels of spin and pace on the ball and, being made of aluminium, never get tired. Is this true?

This is perfectly true, but to date, Mitchell Johnson is the only international cricketer to have incorporated cyborg technology, with mixed results. Engineers are now working on the Midge 2.01, a mechanical arm featuring a safety valve that prevents the bowler from releasing the ball if he’s facing in the wrong direction.

Last August, whilst browsing in the Redditch branch of Sainsbury’s I saw Saeed Ajmal reaching for a tin of pilchards from the top shelf of the tinned produce aisle and I noticed that he completely straightened his arm. Doesn’t this prove beyond reasonable doubt that he is a cheat, albeit a cheat with a high Omega 3 intake?

No. In fact, it is well know that Saeed is allergic to fish, which is why when he was shipwrecked in the Bermuda Triangle with Lady Gaga and the UN Secretary General they were able to sustain themselves by catching sea creatures, whilst our hero lost two kilograms in weight and had to survive by eating pages of Ian Bell’s autobiography. The man you mistook for Saeed was almost certainly Ramiz Raja without the Austin Powers wig that he dons for his celebrity appearances on Sky.

My friend and I were having a disagreement. She thinks the argument about DRS is the most tedious topic of cricket conversation known to humanity, but I’m convinced that the degrees of tolerance debate is so boring it can cause birds to fall out of the sky and fish to commit suicide by banging their heads against the side of their tank just to make it stop. Which of us is right?

You both are.

* Not to be confused with a media falling out, which is what happens when David Gower accidentally treads on Jonathan Agnew’s foot and causes him to tip coffee all over Geoffrey Boycott’s laptop as he’s writing his column for the Whine on Sunday.

"It's that or the firing squad, Brad" © Getty Images

Wednesday, 1st February
How do you let someone know that you’re not interested any more? That they are the leftover bit of pastry dough or the spare screw in the flat pack furniture set?

You could tell them bluntly that the spark has gone, that you don’t find their sledging thrills like it used to, that they can’t catch and that your mother never liked them. This can be painful; there may be tears, perhaps the odd bruise. But it’s the kindest way.

Option two is to take the little kernel of truth and wrap it in an awful lot of stuff that could plausibly be true, but on this occasion isn’t. It’s not you, Brad, it’s me. I’ve changed. I used to think that looking like Ian Healy and occasionally blasting a quick 50 was all I wanted in a keeper, but now I realise I was wrong. That kind of thing.

But John Inverarity has gone for option three - the evil villain approach. In this scenario, you enact the dumping but dress it up in the sort of vaguely sinister euphemisms best delivered by an od- looking man in an overstuffed leather armchair, stroking a cat.

“You have disappointed us, Mr Haddin. Perhaps you need a rest. Perhaps the schedule is beyond you. I am sorry that you have to leave us now. Kindly stand on the spot marked with an X and wait while I press the red button. Is it safe? Oh yes, perfectly safe, Mr Haddin, you won’t feel a thing.”

But Brad’s not buying it. He can see through the talk of gruelling schedules to the harsh reality beneath. He knows he hasn’t been rested and after Matthew Wade’s knock today, he may be even more dropped than he was yesterday.

If he has pulled on the saggy green for the last time, it will be a shame and possibly a season or two earlier than he’d hoped. Having taken the precaution of not being very good at sport, I’ve never found myself dropped from an international team, but I imagine it must feel a bit like someone tapping you on the shoulder in the middle of the most amazing party and telling you that you have to leave. A bit like life, really.

Thursday, 2nd February
The Woolf Report is in today, continuing a family tradition of Woolfs taking the game’s governing body to task. It is well known that Virginia Woolf was a scathing critic of the Imperial Cricket Conference and regularly used to bore the rest of the Bloomsbury set with her long-winded diatribes about the state of the modern game, as this extract from Lytton Strachey’s diary attests:

“Afternoon tea with V.W. Banging on about the overcrowded fixture list and England having to play as many as eight Tests in a year. Made polite noises. Light-heartedly suggested she take interest in a more lady-like pastime. Did not go down well.”

Published in 1924, her first novel, The Woolf Report, was a tautly plotted administrative thriller based around the struggle of a minor MCC official called Victor Woolf as he sought to overhaul the antiquated filing system and reform the outdated Edwardian board meetings by instituting a revolutionary biscuit rota.

But the book did not go down well in literary circles. Her friend EM Forster told her that no one in their right mind would want to read administrative cricket fiction and that if that was the best she could come up with, she might as well go the whole hog and just write down any old thoughts that popped into her head. The following year she released Mrs Dalloway and her cricket writing career never recovered.

Sadly, this second Woolf Report is not a patch on the first. There is no plot to speak of, the dialogue is non-existent, there are very few sword fights and the characters, including a businessman who owns a cricket team, runs the national game and sits on the ICC board all at the same time, are frankly implausible. All in all, a bit of a disappointment. If you haven’t read it I’d wait for the movie.

Patient Pakistan is not as entertaining as out-patient Pakistan, but far more satisfying to watch © AFP

Sunday, 29th January
“And so the Andy who was called Strauss led his disciples into the desert. For three days and three nights they wandered but on the fourth day they rested on the back foot and were caught unawares. There was then much wailing and gnashing of teeth and they returned unto their hotel whereupon they did beat their X-Boxes mercilessly.”

The Greeks didn’t give us the whole picture. Nemesis comes after hubris all right, but they missed out stage three: recrimination, which is the worst bit. Sky’s usual suspects looked like appalled teachers confronted with the evidence that last term’s top student had just been caught smoking in the sixth form toilets. Bob was loftily contemptuous, Botham was steaming and Nasser was definitely not amused.

But are they being fair? England are a good team, they just aren’t as good as all that. There’s no disgrace in losing to Pakistan, who played very well. What’s the problem?

The problem is that England’s media cheerleaders have spent the last six months indulging their fevered patriotic imaginations and now that Strauss and chums have slipped up, the pundits are left feeling more than a little cheesy.

Things were already getting silly a year ago, after England beat one of the worst Australian teams ever to don saggy cloth caps. Then they beat India and silliness readings went off the scale. One writer even got away with listing England’s 2011 vintage as one of the best five Test sides of all time without being immediately arrested and detained in a suitable medical facility for his own safety.

We’ve seen it all before. In fact, this English habit of premature laurel-resting was first noted at the Battle of Hastings when five minutes after the start of play, King Harold, observing that the Normans were struggling to break the English shield wall, declared that the battle was over, his army was clearly the best since the Romans and sat down for an impromptu muffin and mead break.

So now that events have demonstrated that England are somewhat less than invincible, the wronged experts must have someone to blame. I’m no psychic, but I suspect attention will first turn to the least English of the Abu Dhabi failures. Mr Trott’s gastro-intestinal tribulations may earn him a sympathetic reprieve and so scapegoat duties will have to be assigned to either Mr Morgan or Mr Pietersen.

But the blame apportioners are missing the point. Test cricket is more interesting when there is an unresolved scrap for No. 1, and right now there are at least four teams involved in the squabble to be top Test dog. Pakistan are one of them and not just because they have a pair of proper spinners. Misbah’s Pakistan is Patient Pakistan and that is the most dangerous kind of Pakistan you can get.

It was Ajmal and Rehman who dismantled England’s house with their spinning wrecking ball, but the hard work was done on day three by Azhar and Asad, who batted like Geoff Boycott’s older, more circumspect cousins, blunted the tourist’s momentum as though their bats were saucepans and Broad and co were onrushing cartoon cats in pursuit of a runaway mouse, and so set up the final day’s spectacle.

MS Dhoni folds his ears back and stares into the middle distance to adopt a "I'm-waiting-for-you-to-make-the-first-move-and-then-I'll-bite-you" look © Getty Images

Sunday, 15th January
So 3-0 then. But the fallout from this little run of unfortunate results has been relatively mild. There’s been no talk of ditching Fletch, no declarations of discontent from the upper echelons of Indian cricket and, remaining true to their anti-review policy, the BCCI have not announced their equivalent of the Argus Report. Indeed, a suspicious onlooker might conclude that they don’t seem to care all that much.

Even the players seem to be remarkably sanguine about the way things are going down under. Responding to the merest hint of a suggestion that perhaps it might be time to consider removing one of the batsmen; VVS Laxman, for example, Gautam has hit back at the naysayers.

“There should not be anyone who should be deciding about his retirement. It should be him.”

This is admirable sentiment, but I fear that Gautam is missing the point. VVS is one of the most stylish batsmen ever to have played the game and for many years has been a joy to watch. But perhaps the key words in that sentence are "has" and "been". In Laxman’s case, "perhaps he should consider retiring" is a polite euphemism for "he’s batting like Chris Martin on a bad day".

Of course, it’s up to VVS to decide precisely when he retires from cricket and the same goes for Dravid and Sachin. But it’s up to the selectors to decide whether they deserve to remain in the team in the first place. It is an unfortunate reality of professional sport that sometimes, when you aren’t playing well, you get dropped. And, sadly, that applies whether you’re 17 or 37.

Monday, 16th January
Michael Vaughan thinks one of England’s strengths is aggression and he doesn’t want them to go all diplomatic, just because they are playing Pakistan. By aggression, he doesn’t mean sledging. And I don’t think he means throwing the ball at the batsman in a fit of adolescent pique. No, he’s talking about something altogether more spurious.

First of all, he likes the idea that England "hunt in packs". This sounds exciting and dangerous, but I’m not sure what it means. Do their off-field activities include prowling the streets wearing wolf masks? Do they sniff each other when they meet? And what are they hunting? The ball? The batsman? Rabbits?

He also likes their aggressive body language. But what does he mean? Cricket is a game that involves a lot of standing about. Have you tried standing still aggressively? I did and I nearly fell over. Maybe I wasn’t doing it right. But it must be jolly tricky to display aggressive body language when you’re at fine leg or deep backward point and all your stony glares and furrowed brows pass unnoticed by the distant batsman.

I suspect that by "aggressive body language", Mr Vaughan means the kind of niggling and posturing you get with squabbling schoolboys who know they aren’t allowed to fight in front of the teacher. It may seem like a good wheeze in the dressing room, but there is nothing duller than watching grown men going through the motions of pretending to be moody teenagers because that’s what they’re expected to do.

And, according to Mr Vaseline, there’s one more way in which England display their praise-worthy aggression. “They constantly throw the ball into the keeper which annoys the opposition.”

Yes, and it irritates the hell out of us spectators too. But there you are, India, if you want to reverse that decline in fortunes, Dr Vaughan’s prescription is clear. Look cross, pretend you’re a wolf and throw the ball to Dhoni for no apparent reason

Ricky Ponting was not exactly chuffed to hear he would be the team's designated Lhasa Apso © Getty Images

Saturday, 26th November
Graeme Swann would like to scrap 50-over cricket and keep the other two formats. I have every sympathy. It reminds me of my French GCSE. I was a natural when it came to listening to the stuff and could read the lingo as easily as if I’d been raised in a fishing trawler off the coast of Marseilles. But ask me to speak it and the Hughes brain clammed up. I got my accents horribly muddled and my uncooperative vocal chords did unforgivable things to entirely innocent French vowels.

But there it was. Despite my protests, the headmaster insisted that the French oral exam was an essential part of the course and that he wasn’t about to remove it from the syllabus just because I wasn’t very good at it. C’est la vie, I suppose.

Monday, 28th November
One of the many benefits of following this great game of ours is that you are always learning new things about cultures other than your own. For example, until today, had anyone pressed me on my knowledge of New Zealand slang, I would have had nothing to offer but an embarrassed cough and an apologetic shrug.

But now I’m happy to say I have broken my duck when it comes to the vernacular of Christchurch and Auckland, thanks to Doug of the Bracewells.

“We’ve spoken about being more ruthless and having more mongrel…we are the underdogs and so it gives us that mongrel to go out and show that we’re better than them.”

Animals, whether be they monkeys or donkeys, are often a source of perturbation and antagonism in the modern game, so you have to admire Doug’s pluck, or as I gather they say in Wellington, his dog of mixed parentage, in introducing a canine theme.

But with sprains, tweaks and aches afflicting their opponents, are the tourists really the underdogs? I suspect Australia’s arrival on the field of play will have spectators nudging their companions and enquiring which one is Starc and whether the blond one is Lyon or Cutting or indeed Pattinson minor. Thank goodness Ricky is still there: the recognisable pedigree in a kennel full of pups and strays.

Tuesday, 29th November
The sun never sets on Twenty20 cricket and today our chum Chris Gayle popped up in Zimbabwe, playing for a team called the Tuskers*. The Tuskers lost out to the Rhinos in what sounds like an epic clash of horned titans on the African savannah.

Chris’ choice of franchise is an appropriate one. The elephant is a big beast, which generally prefers to potter about peacefully, doing its elephant thing, but when provoked can behave recklessly and is absolutely not one to back down. If, for example, you were to ask an elephant to apologise for trampling on your new shoes or snorting loudly as you were about to play a tricky snooker shot, he’d give you short shrift.

While the elephant isn't close to extinction yet, there is a dearth of tall, laidback Caribbean left-handed biffers in world cricket at the moment. So perhaps we should be grateful for the Twenty20 circus that prolongs the careers of such endangered and often unselected cricketers and enables us to enjoy them in their natural habitat: under floodlights, wearing gaudy polyester shirts.

* The article was amended at 1314GMT on November 30 to note that Gayle played for the Tuskers and not the Rhinos in the Stanbic Bank 20 Series

"When I told the TV people about the Test championship, they said they'd rather show the lifecycle of earwigs" © Getty Images

Wednesday, 23rd November
As three-cap wonders go, Hugh Morris was one of the best. It wasn’t his fault that his parents had the lack of foresight to bring him into the world in 1963, thus ensuring that his peak years as a cricketer would coincide with a period in English cricket when a new Test batsman had a career expectancy of two and a half weeks.

Anyway, in his current role as Head of Miscellaneous Cricket-Related Stuff at the ECB, he’s been keeping his finger on the technological pulse and wrestling with the ethical dilemmas inherent in allowing contracted cricketers access to social media. So Hugh, what’s the official ECB position on Twitter?

“It’s like giving a machine gun to a monkey.”

Hmm. Well that’s one way of putting it, I suppose. But it does put me in mind of that famous mathematical theory about the hypothetical primates. Given an infinite amount of time and unrestricted access to the internet, would an infinite number of international cricketers eventually come up with an interesting tweet?

Friday, 25th November
It isn’t entirely true to say that nobody wants to watch Test cricket. On the other hand, it isn’t entirely false either. Everything is relative. For example, there are more people who like to watch Test cricket than there are squirrels on the branch of the sycamore tree outside my window*. There are more people who want to watch Test cricket than are running for the nomination of the Republican Party (though it’s a close-run thing).

But there are not enough of them to make it worthwhile for broadcasters to want to televise it, at least not in preference to the really popular stuff; which is why when the ICC tried to get boards to ditch the 2013 Champions Trophy in favour of a Test Championship playoff, it received the kind of response that batsmen used to get from Glenn McGrath if they nicked a mistimed cover drive to the fine-leg boundary.

And who can blame them? They aren’t historical societies; their job is not to preserve archaic and unpopular pastimes. Test venues are emptier than a Sri Lankan cricketer’s bank account and worse still, no one’s tuning in at home. It’s one thing when people wouldn’t cross the road to watch a Test match, but when they can’t even be bothered to cross their living room, then the writing is on the wall.

Purists like to say the five-day game will always survive and they’re probably right. Like re-enactments of the English civil war, chess boxing and the Conservative Party, there will always be enthusiasts who want to keep it going. It just won’t be on television. A hundred years from now, Test cricket will be played by dedicated amateurs in their spare time. Just like the good old days.

* There are two squirrels. I have named them Ivanhoe and Wally. Why? There is a reason and not just that I like giving unusual names to tree-dwelling rodents. The first reader to come up with the correct answer earns themselves a glow of satisfaction, the admiration of their friends and a state-of-the-art emergency DVD-disposal capsule to be used in the event that any of your friends are unkind enough to send you a copy of Swanny In A Spin as a Christmas present. The capsule is made of reinforced concrete and designed to withstand extreme underwater pressures so you can rest assured that, once thrown overboard, you will never have to see the thing again.

Graeme Swann will feature next in Britain's Top Model © Getty Images

Tuesday, 15th November
I came across Paul Collingwood in the supermarket today. He was in the tinned comestibles aisle, struggling to reach the baked beans, so I picked up a can from my basket, shouted his name and flung it in his direction, expecting him to execute one of his trademark salmon-like leaps. Instead, it caught him flush on the crest of his Sunderland baseball cap and sent him flying backwards, demolishing a display of cut-price DVDs and a cardboard cut-out of Graeme Swann.

“Bad luck, you almost had it,” I lied, as I helped the dazed allrounder to his feet.

“Can you believe this rubbish?” he asked, brandishing one of the much discounted DVDs (was £9.99, now available at £2.50, three for £5.00).

“Swanny in a Spin?” I read the title, none the wiser.

“It doesn’t even make sense,” continued the ginger one, “Why is he in a spin? Is he surprised? Is he drunk? It’s gibberish. If I was still captain I’d sort this out…”

I left him to it. As I queued at the till, absent-mindedly casting my eye over a selection of Graeme Swann Advent Calendars (25 Days of Swanny), I mused on how sad it was that a player like Collingwood could have developed such animosity for the harmless commercial activities of everyone’s favourite offspinner.

By the exits, I paused at the magazine display. Graeme Swann was on the cover of Vogue, The Radio Times, Angling Weekly and the Catholic Herald. And on the front of Time magazine was a photo of Graeme Swann holding a photo of Graeme Swann holding a photo of Swanny. As I left, I could have sworn I saw his eyes follow me.

Wednesday, 16th November
I’ve got the decorators in. Caddick and Russell Ltd. are cheap but progress has been slow. After half an hour I found Caddick reclining on my sofa, dipping digestives into his tea, claiming a bruised toe; whilst Russell spent all morning on the door frame, although I have to say it’s the finest two square inches of paintwork I’ve ever seen.

I suppose I should have known better than to employ 90s rejects. I’m still waiting for Alan Mullally to finish that chicken coop and Dean Headley’s work on the rockery left so much loose dirt, I had to get Mike Atherton in to dispose of it and it’s taking for ever because his pockets are so damn small. I’d let him go, but when he looks at me with that weary, downtrodden, press-conference face, I haven’t the heart.

When I returned from taking Dale Steyn’s pet crocodile for a walk, I found Jack balancing on Andy’s shoulders, painting Trevor Chappell’s moustache onto the dining room ceiling.

“It’s a re-interpretation of Michelangelo,” Russell explained, “I’m calling it the Sistine Chappell ceiling.”

Caddick didn’t get it. I pointed out that it was wrong on so many levels, not least because I didn’t want to look up in the middle of my carrot and coriander soup to find Trevor and Ian leering down at me, nor did I particularly want to behold a naked Greg reclining on a cloud about to touch fingers with a bearded Richie Benaud.

At this point, Caddick bent down to pick up a jelly bean, causing Russell to loose his footing and tumble to the carpet, spilling burnt umber and yellow ochre in all directions. How these people ever represented their country is beyond me.

Thursday, 17th November
Last night I had a terrible nightmare.

I’m lying on a table, looking up at a bright light, when Graeme Swann leers over me, teeth glinting. He’s trying to sell me his DVD and I’m trying to tell him I don’t want it, even at the reasonable price of 99 pence, then he pulls on a surgical mask and I can hear someone strumming an electric guitar. And that’s when I scream.

I thought it might be effect of lingering paint fumes, or possibly that ill-advised second helping of gorgonzola I’d eaten whilst watching my old video of the 1990 Benson&Hedges Cup Final (I blame you, Hick, for that result). But no, I think the dream was brought on by anxiety over today’s events in Johannesburg.

You see, instead of betting on a whim as per usual, I had dabbled with Statsguru, in an attempt to bring science to bear on the art of the gambler. After much clicking, my screen was full of statistics of all shapes and sizes, but after a while, the numbers started to blur together and I became so confused that I forgot where I was or what I was doing. It was like my maths GCSE all over again. And that is the only defence I can offer for betting on Australia to win the second Test.

“And I’ll also be driving the team bus. Coach... bus, get it?” © Getty Images

Friday, 11th November
Andy Flower says that cricket boards are piling up fixtures with the same alacrity with which Samit Patel used to fill his plate at Nottinghamshire’s end of season charity buffet (“All you can eat for a fiver, bring your own plate and indigestion pills”) and that this global scheduling gluttony is all about the money.

So why this fixture frenzy? Where does all that money go? Well, some of it is invested in vital tools for hard-pressed cricket administrators: velvet sleeping masks, embroidered executive aromatherapy hand towels, and posterior-pressure-relieving cushions for those long afternoons in the boardroom.

But to take just one cricket board at random, an awful lot of the ECB’s money is shovelled in the direction of Team England: to keep Kevin Pietersen stocked up with silly sunglasses, to fund James Anderson’s twice-yearly cosmetic frown surgery and, without wishing to be indelicate, to retain the services of a certain Mr Andrew Flower.

So perhaps, in order to help the ECB kick their one-day cricket habit, Andrew and Andy could cut down on the expenses. How about asking the players to hand-wash their own whites? Replace the team of nutritionists with a weekly text message reminding their chaps to finish all their vegetables and lay off the chocolate éclairs?

And next year, rather than lounging around in business class, issue them with a map of Asia, a stout pair of walking boots and a tent and let them make their own way to Sri Lanka. As an incentive, the first 11 to arrive in Colombo will be guaranteed a spot in the first Test (unless one of them is Ravi).

Saturday, 12th November
Kamran Akmal likes the idea of cricket boards nosing around in players’ bank accounts, presumably on the look out for suspicious deposits under the name “A Bookie”. It’s an excellent idea, though I think the investigations should also extend to mattresses, recently dug herbaceous borders, and the inside pockets of new leather jackets.

Of course, some boards will find it easier than others. Sri Lanka Cricket, for instance, would smell a rat if they found that their chaps had any money at all, as they haven’t been paid since April. By definition, therefore, any income must have been obtained nefariously (although allowances would have to be made for Kumar Sangakkara’s earnings from his new part-time dog-grooming job – “Call Kumar for Kool Kanine Kuts!’ - and Angelo Mathews’ paper round.)

Monday, 14th November
According to assistant coach Justin Langer, Ricky Ponting is still a vital wingnut in the rickety suspension system of the rattly old banger that is Australian cricket.

“Ricky is great for morale; he makes Huss feel young, he keeps us entertained with stories of the old days when we used to win sometimes, and he knows how to read the racing form. Plus, he’s our regular poker dealer, ‘cause some of the other blokes aren’t great with the hand-eye co-ordination. I mean, you should see Mitch spray the cards all over the shop. And he’s the only one who can say, “Ah look…” with conviction, because between you and me, when Pup tries to do it, he sounds like Dame Edna Everage’s younger sister.”

When pressed on how long he thought the former Australian captain could continue in international cricket, Langer was supportive: “Ah look, Ricky will be around for a while yet. Monday I reckon. Possibly Tuesday. Depends if we make it to day five.”

"... and Jessica, where did you go for voice-training? The local Bingo hall? © Getty Images

Friday, 28th October
His Buttiness has gone, but the effects of Buttism linger. Pakistan’s cricketers are currently playing a home series 1200 miles away from home and cricket fans in Pakistan haven’t been able to watch their team play live for two and half years. Thanks to Ijaz’s patented formula for administration (Crisis x Incompetence = Disaster²) who knows how many have given up on the sport altogether?

And since the globalised sports marketplace deplores a vacuum, it appears that the imaginations of Pakistani youth are being seduced by, of all things, Premier League football. Quite why anyone in Pakistan would want to watch a bunch of overrated, overpaid, whining hooligans play-acting, spitting and kicking at each other is beyond me, particularly when they can already get that on the Parliament Channel.

But it seems that the doings of Terry, Torres and Suarez are of increasing interest to the citizens of Pakistan and so now Manchester United are supplying “exclusive” content to their mobile phones. Just imagine that. As well as being able to see Wayne Rooney swearing in slow-mo on your television, you can now take the foul-mouthed moron with you on the train, to the dentist or visiting your grandmother.

Never mind inviting Imran round for tea and gossip, Mr Ashraf, your No. 1 priority should be bringing back international cricket. Do you want the next generation to grow up wearing Chelsea shirts, throwing themselves to the ground Drogba style every time the wind blows or celebrating their exam results by lifting their shirts over their heads and running around like loonies?

No, neither do I. So pull your finger out.

Sunday, 30th October
What is it with the modern cricketer? They get piles of cash, a tempting selection of essential oils in the massage room and all the official tracksuits they can stuff into their suitcase. And then when they’re too old to bend down at first slip, they can retire to the commentary booth, where they will be handsomely remunerated without having to voice an original opinion for the next 30 years.

So why are they so angry all the time?

England’s mini-break to India has been the last word in grouch; a touring exhibition of grumpiness that featured more hissy fits than the opening night at the Paris Fashion Show and finally ended yesterday, with KP performing the now traditional spitting out of the dummy. And it’s not just the English. Today, Tamim Iqbal was in trouble for sledging Marlon Samuels; not a sentence I ever thought I’d have to write.

Now we all like the odd bit of misbehaviour, providing it’s good enough to one day feature in a book of cricket anecdotes. But not all the time. These days sledging and acting out isn’t the result of an entertaining and spontaneous psychotic episode, it’s a tactic, a routine part of the game. I imagine Jonathan Trott randomly swears at elderly ladies in the street, just to keep his verbal abuse reflexes honed.

And the result is so boring. Bowler follows through and glares at batsman. Batsman reminds him he hasn’t taken a wicket yet. Bowler swears at non-striker. Non-striker sticks his tongue out at bowler. Mid-off criticises non-striker’s girlfriend’s choice of curtain-fabric. Non-striker demands mid-off takes that back or he’ll be forced to tell him what he really thinks of his hairstyle. Umpire sighs. Repeat ad nauseam.

Coaches clearly believe it works. Maybe it does. Perhaps the sheer mind-numbing banality of it all eventually causes batsmen to flip and do anything to get out of there. (I find the same thing happens if I’m forced to watch two consecutive episodes of iCarly.) But is that really what we want our game to look like? Are we expecting kids to see these tantrum-throwing sledgers as heroes? Is that what cricket is about?

So I have a suggestion. Since fining the players doesn’t seem work, let’s fine the coaches. A day’s salary for every swear word, a week for every sledge that doesn’t make us laugh and 100 lines every time Craig Kieswetter opens his mouth.

That ought to do the trick.

The former captains of England and India were invited to Lord's to commemorate the third straight day without rain © Getty Images

Friday, 21st October
The Test Championship has been delayed until 2017, or to put it another way, the Test Championship has been indefinitely postponed. The ICC loves a gimmick and they toyed with the concept for a while, but inevitably they grew bored. Perhaps now people will understand: the ICC is not interested in preserving Test cricket. The BCCI don’t care either, nor do the PCB, Cricket South Africa, Sri Lanka Cricket or the West Indies Cricket Board.

We can’t really blame them. They already have two profitable international formats, which is one more than FIFA. Why would they care about a third that doesn’t make any money and which no one bothers to turn up to watch? And what about the English? Tests still turn a profit here, so surely we should be leading the fight to save them? Nope. As long as the sun shines on a packed Lord’s every June, we don’t care.

I don’t expect we’ll bother doing anything about it until it’s too late, when there’s only us and our favourite cousins left playing the five-day game and the Future Tours Programme consists of nothing but the Ashes. Those who claim to love Test cricket need to get moving because at this rate, it’s going the same way as top hats, penny farthings, the curly perm and responsible investment banking.

Sunday, 23rd October
News that scientists have made a neutrino travel faster than light is exciting, but somewhat overdue. I’ve seen Doctor Who and I’ve read the blurb on the back of Stephen Hawking’s book, and frankly I don’t know what took them so long. Still, they got there in the end. I’m expecting a time machine to be in the shops next Christmas and I’ll be using mine immediately. What will I use it for?

Well, for starters, I’ll be paying Adolf Hitler a visit; explaining to Christopher Columbus that I’ve just come back from the Americas and that there really is nothing to see; and then whizzing back to 1980 to confiscate and burn that brown corduroy shirt that should never have come near my wardrobe. And then I’d get down to the important business.

I’d start by taking 11 helmets, chest pads and thigh protectors and leaving them in the Australian dressing room at the SCG on the morning of December 2nd 1932. Then a quick trip to Brisbane in 1960 to watch the last day of the tied Test, before selling my house, transporting the proceeds to Leeds in July 1981 and joining Dennis Lillee and Rod Marsh in the queue at the bookies.

What would you use a cricket time machine for?

Monday, 24th October
So England’s series ends with a heavy defeat, a nice bookend to the tour to go with the heavy defeat with which they began and the three heavy defeats they suffered in between. Cook’s Losing Symphony has not been easy on the ear and the fifth movement followed the established theme: a harmonious opening followed by a swift and alarming descent into cacophony and discord. With a four-letter motif.

But before they leave the subcontinent (and they may have difficulty getting that bulging swear box through customs) they have one more show to put on. They are now officially the world’s best hit-and-giggle team and so Thursday’s game is a chance to restore some pride. Or perhaps, given their performance against the West Indies 3rd XI last month, a chance to lose in three hours rather than six.

"If looks could kill, yours would tickle me like a feather" © Getty Images

Tuesday, 18th October
The War On One-Day Internationals may not involve tanks, camouflaged trousers or iffy occupations, but that doesn’t mean it’s not real. There are people out there who want to destroy our way of life or, at the very least, to significantly reduce the amount of 50-over cricket we are able to watch, which is almost as bad. And these people are not shifty subversives skulking in dingy alleyways. They operate in broad daylight, on our most popular websites (and thecricketer.com).

“It now seems pointless warning the administrators about the proliferation of one-day cricket. They simply are not listening and will only learn when the paying public start voting with their feet.”

Quite so, Mr Agnew. Any idea when this voting-with-feet thing is likely to happen? I only ask, because one-day internationals have been going since 1971 and y’know, they’re kind of still popular and that. At least, they are with the people who matter, which is us, the spectators. We know commentators and journalists don’t like them, but since you don’t even pay to go to them, this is a bit rich. What’s that, Mr Roebuck?

“It is widely believed that the 50-over version of the game has become tired.”

Widely believed? You mean you asked a couple of fellows in the press box and they agreed with you? Come off it, chaps. We like the 50-over stuff. That’s why there’s so much of it. You won’t save Test cricket by attacking the formats that pay for it.

Wednesday, 19th October
Time for a brief word from our sporting ethics correspondent, Mr Tim Bresnan, with his take on England’s rather aggressive approach to their Indian tour.

“As a fast-bowling unit, we can't really use the ball to intimidate as much as we'd like in India, with it not bouncing so high, so we have to do other things to get into the batsman's bubble, whether it's a little bit of a word or a look or a stare. It's all handbags, to be honest. No one really pays much attention.”

So if it’s all handbags and no one pays much attention, why not save your breath, rest your frowning muscles and concentrate on trying to bowl straight?

Thursday, 20th October
Those sensitive dears at the WICB are still refusing to pick Chris Gayle because he said nasty things about them which were only mostly true (you can be sure that if he’d libelled them, they’d be all lawyered-up and dragging him through the courts as we speak.) Clive Lloyd says they are entitled to take umbrage, well yes, but on the other hand, they could just suck it up and do the right thing for West Indian cricket.

Criticising the coach is one thing, and if he hasn’t already, then Big Chris should probably throw a little sorry Otis’ way. But isn’t taking flak part of the WICB’s job description? Has Julian Hunte never been criticised? Does he burst into tears and run out of the room every time a journalist accuses him of something? Does Mrs Julian Hunte have to tread on eggshells every time she raises the thorny issue of the toothpaste tube being squeezed from the wrong end? Get a grip, Dr Hunte, give your ego the day off and pick up the phone.

Matthew Hoggard's autobiography contains a "paw-word" from his dogs. Would you read it? © ESPNcricinfo Ltd

Sunday, 16th October
Andy Flower is wrong. He thinks autobiographies from current players are a bad idea because they might reveal dressing-room secrets. Au contraire, Mr F, that is precisely why they are a good idea. The only autobiographies worth reading are the ones that are packed with gossip, and gossip, like fertiliser, should be spread while it’s still fresh. Nobody wants the inside scoop on the 1978 series between New Zealand and Pakistan, we want to know what is going on behind closed doors right now.

No, the real problem with these books is not an excess but a lack of muck-raking. I can understand why a player wouldn’t want to offend his comrades, ex-comrades and soon to be ex-comrades, but without the gossip what are you left with? A loose collection of reheated golf stories, nickname anecdotes and a lot of whingeing about hotels. This is why most autobiographies are duller than a Wednesday afternoon session of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Paper Clip Standardisation.

Steve Harmison once claimed not to have read his book about the 2006 Ashes. I don’t blame you Steve, I didn’t read it either. Indeed these books are not designed to be read, only to be bought. They are part of the cricketer’s brand, a commercial PR exercise, like being seen in public supping from cans of barely digestible caffeine-themed liquid or tweeting about how this new washing powder you’ve tried really does get your cricket whites whiter than white at a price that won’t hurt your wallet.

And, by the way, if a journalist listens to you talking about your life, then goes away and writes it all down, that’s not an autobiography, it’s an interview.

Monday, 17th October
England’s last two visits to India produced an average of 0.5 wins per series but they are doing their best to limbo underneath this eye-wateringly low standard and have already acquired a couple of big fat losses. Can they keep it up? Almost certainly. We don’t play this kind of cricket domestically and we haven’t been any good at it since 1992; a time when men were still men, upper lips were still hairy and no one worried about the state of their abs.

Unfortunately not only are they failing to win at the moment, they are also struggling somewhat in the losing-with-dignity department. You might think the whining and general acting out in Delhi looked like the kind of tantrums you’d expect to see after a particularly controversial pass-the-parcel ruling at a 10-year-old’s birthday party. But you’d be wrong. According to Team England, Trott et al were just “being aggressive in their body language” and “not taking a backward step”.

And they haven’t ruled out taking their aggressive body language to the next level when they find themselves losing on Thursday, with a range of options available to the England captain including mass pouting, synchronised foot-stamping and, should defeat be particularly imminent, taking their bats home with them.

Andy Flower makes Samit Patel skip rope for a rhino to make him understand the importance of fitness © Getty Images

Thursday, 6th October
England’s official Liposuction Coordinator has had his leave cancelled and crates of reduced-flavour celery drink have been delivered to a certain Nottingham residence. Yes, the game is up for county cricket’s favourite fugitive from fitness and he is at last in compliance with Flower Directive 1.01: You Must Be Able To See Your Toes At All Times (Now Give Me One Hundred Press-Ups, Fatty).

Quite right, Samit, I said to myself, whilst munching on an éclair, about time you put the effort in. And it was, of course, inevitable. You don’t mess with Team England. They’re a cross between a Neapolitan crime family and a Royal Marines boot camp; The Godfather with energy drinks. Paul Collingwood once thought he could retire a little bit. Now his career is wearing a concrete overcoat and has sunk without trace.

Still it is a little sad to hear Samit spouting Flowerspeak. Train harder. Do the work. Put the hours in. Put the work in. It sounds exhausting yet at the same time monotonous, a little too much like working for a living. Some of us cling fondly to the idea that cricket should be played by people for whom a bit of a thrash with the bat is just a pleasant diversion from an afternoon of sipping cocktails, playing canasta with the French ambassador and swimming the Hellespont.

And perhaps in years to come, we will tell our children the story of Samit the Outlaw, the rebel with a paunch who stood up for a man’s right to eat three samosas before breakfast and still call himself a professional sportsman.

Friday, 7th October
There are some aspects of human civilisation I will never understand: television talent contests, line dancing, coats for dogs, the popularity of Sarah Palin. And our peculiar sport has a few unfathomable oddities of its own. Take, for example, the idea that our cricket pitches must be standardised. Has anyone ever asked the ICC why?

I’m not suggesting horticultural anarchy. On the whole it would be preferable if pitches were to continue to be based around the popular soil and grass theme, roughly level from one end to the other and devoid of craters, molehills, water features and sandpits. I accept too, that the grass must be cut from time to time and that herbaceous borders probably add little to the cricket watcher’s experience.

But beyond that, surely we must let the curators have their fun. And if they occasionally come up with a pitch that is dryer than the surface of the moon, then so be it. We don’t ask that our batsmen be of a standard height, or that spinners only bowl googlies on day five. Give the men with the mowers free rein and see how much more interesting these matches could be.

Instead, Sri Lanka Cricket has been reprimanded because the Galle surface helped to create dangerously high levels of entertainment and batsmen were required to look for their runs rather than have them brought out on a silver platter.

"Our next coach should be a person who cannot guess Shahid's real age but can anticipate when he's going to retire next" © Associated Press

Wednesday, 28th September
Next summer there are to be 13 one-day internationals in Britain, which is obviously a good thing. Fifty-over cricket is splendid. You get a proper day out, coloured shirts, an eclectic mix of bad ‘90s dance music on the PA system, no fussing about with floodlights and a guaranteed result. If it were up to me, I’d scatter them across the fixture list like sparkly confetti. Players don’t like them, but what else would they be doing? Shopping for sunglasses? Arranging barbeques.

Journalists say that scheduling so many one-day internationals is like flogging a dead horse. I disagree. The horse is full of beans and the occasional thwack across its hind quarters merely encourages more mileage from the beast. It is Test cricket that has been lying in the straw, not touching its hay and refusing to get up. And rather than calling in the vet, the various cricket boards are standing around, shuffling their feet, looking awkwardly at the ground and waiting for it to expire.

Because here’s the real scandal about next summer’s calendar: there will be three Tests against South Africa. That’s right. Three. De La Soul were wrong. Three is most definitely not the magic number. It is an entirely inadequate number, a number that we should look down upon and make those dismissive sniffing noises that the French are so good at. Three? Ha, I cannot even bring myself to look at you, you paltry and pathetic series of puny proportions.

Anywhere else on Planet Cricket, where Tests are played out to the accompaniment of empty seats and mass yawning, this kind of scheduling would make sense. But in England people still turn up for the five-day stuff. They actually like it. What’s more, it’s the only format we’re any good at these days. If we can’t even muster up a five-match series to decide the No. 1 Test ranking, then what hope is there?

Thursday, 29th September
Put your pens down, stop licking that Lahore-addressed envelope and don’t bother sending that text to Ijaz Butt complimenting him on how distinguished his grey hair makes him look, because entries are now closed in the international competition to become Pakistan’s next coach. In fact the PCB’s whittling committee have already whittled down a list of 37 to just five, which is the most impressive and speedy piece of whittling you are likely to see outside of the World Whittling Championships.

I knew there would be a lot of interest, so I got my application in early. My credentials are impeccable. I have a great deal of experience in the field of virtual coaching (shouting advice at the television during Kochi’s IPL matches), I am prepared to do whatever Mr Butt tells me and I’ve never fallen out with Shahid Afridi. I haven’t heard back yet, which I think is a good sign. I’ll let you know how I get on.

Mike Hussey accepts the Jane Fonda Man of the Series award © AFP

Saturday, 24th September

Those of us who are hauling around a little more personal freight than we’d like are always on the lookout for inventive ways to lessen the burden on our belt buckles, so the news that a man called Mike had recently lost four kilos in two days was very exciting. But having looked into the Hussey Diet, I should warn unwary fatties, his new plan, Lose Weight And Play Till You’re Forty-Eight, is a tough one to follow.

For a start, there’s a lot of preparation involved. You’ll need to take up professional cricket in order to get selected for the Australian Test team. And then it gets a lot tougher. Stage two involves flying out to Sri Lanka and batting for several hours in extreme humidity whilst wearing a heavy hat and an unnecessary amount of padding as other people take it in turns to throw leather balls at you.

On reflection, I think I’ll just reduce my daily doughnut ration and see how it goes.

The man himself, though, is a superb advertisement for the benefits of dehydration. He was back in the Champions League today, putting together a handy little eightysomething against Mumbai; a carefully assembled piece of craftsmanship, like a lovingly carved dresser or a pretty mahogany desk; only to see his handiwork smashed to pieces by Mad Malinga and his flailing axe of surrealism.

When Lasith arrived, Mumbai needed 54 runs in 4.4 overs, an Everest of a target. 4.3 overs later, the Chennai fielders were scattered like pigeons at a cat show and Malinga was leaning on his axe, a lumberjack surveying the stumpy remains of a once heavily wooded locale, having reached the summit a ball early. It was a cameo of chaos and it was all very silly indeed, which is why Twenty20 is so much fun.

Sunday, 25th September

After Friday’s South London show, it became apparent that spin was absolutely the thing and that pace bowling was so mid-September. So inevitably today’s get-together featured every known variety of the species. I had my Eye Spy Book Of Spinners out and was able to tick off a few lesser spotted dobblers, a long-legged googly and the extremely rare St Lucian Twirler, which earned me extra points.

Lots of spin means that red-blooded batsmen go big-hitting crazy, and so it proved. Swiping and lunging were very much in fashion in SE11, but the entertainment also included some slapstick goings-on mid-pitch as, in pursuit of a tiny total, England suffered a collective anxiety attack, running between the wickets with all the co-ordination and control of a bunch of squirrels let loose on the M25.

And on Spin Sunday, the big revs continued after the game, with England’s newest temporary captain showing a knack for truth massaging and reality bending that could easily land him a job with one of the major political parties.

“West Indies bowled and fielded well, but not well enough to bowl a team out for 88.”

So, Graeme, if it wasn’t West Indies who bowled you out for 88, whodunit? Aliens? The ghost of Jack Hobbs? Pigeons? Alas, he didn’t elaborate.

Tuesday, 27th September

I’m not an expert on bowling technique but according to Troy Cooley, Mitchell Johnson’s wrist is once again in the wrong position. It can’t be easy to have a wrist that keeps slipping into the wrong position. For instance, it must be particularly distracting when you’re trying to put your watch on. That he manages to hold down a place in the Australian side at all with such a disability is remarkable.

But Troy reckons he’ll be fine in South Africa. And why? Because there are approximately 33% fewer Test matches than there should be, and so 33% fewer “bad radar” days for Mitch. And why are there only two Tests? Because Test cricket is so popular that CSA are worried it is overshadowing the limited-overs version, and so they have shrunk the Test series for the good of the game. Probably.

Participants in New Zealand's youth programme for spinners © Getty Images

Wednesday, 21st September
One day, perhaps one day soon, my daughter may come up to me and ask, with the innocent curiosity of the seven-year-old:

“Daddy, why are England playing the West Indies at the wrong end of September in a couple of Twenty20 matches that are entirely without context?”

To which I will obviously reply that it is because of a man called Allen Stanford.

“Daddy, who is Allen Stanford?”

How should I explain? I could say that he was a generous benefactor of undeniably Texan persuasion with a vibrant tan, a manly moustache and a healthy touch of megalomania. I could say that he was a great friend of English cricket who helped us defy the might of the BCCI. Or I could swear blind I’d never heard of the chap.

But I’m not Giles Clarke, so those options are out. I could refer her to the comments of the US regulators who stated that Stanford perpetrated “a fraud of shocking magnitude” (and they know a thing or two about frauds of shocking magnitude, those US regulators.) Or maybe I could tell her what Andy Roberts, all-time great fast bowler, today said of the egregious founder of the Magic Bank of Stanford:

“He had the money, he had a plan and it was working.”

Which is true to an extent. But the money was other people’s and his plan was not to get caught. It was indeed working for quite some time. And then he got caught. England’s legacy is a couple of extra games a year. In the West Indies they are already talking nostalgically about a man who perpetrated a fraud of shocking magnitude. Which is perhaps the saddest part of the whole sorry episode.

Wednesday, 22nd September
A few days into the job and Kim Littlejohn’s research is going well. He picked up the 2011-12 Black Cap Sticker Album at Auckland Airport and has been seen regularly popping into John Buchanan’s Newsagent and Philosophical Grocery Store to bulk purchase packets of stickers. So far he has 17 Brendon McCullums and half a dozen Ross Taylors, but he’s missing a Tim Southee and he doesn’t know what Daniel Vettori looks like because his pet hamster chewed that one.

But I wish him well and I wonder whether the experiment could be extended. If the national selection manager doesn’t need to know anything about cricket, is it absolutely necessary that the players do? Have New Zealand been missing a trick by restricting places in their national cricket team to professional cricketers? Surely it’s just a matter of identifying transferable skills. Jugglers in the slips, gymnasts in the covers, javelin throwers for fast bowlers, and golfers for batsmen.

Thursday, 23rd September
Well, that was jolly entertaining. The West Indies, in the absence of half a team had sent over some of the members of their inter-island Agricultural XI. Johnson Charles (an excellent take on a rather dull name, like wearing a trilby back to front) had brought his scything blade of thunder and Dwayne Smith his shovel of iron destiny and both swung merrily like drunken farmers at harvest time. Poor Tim Bresnan looked like a volunteer from the audience who’d been invited on stage only to be hit repeatedly over the head with a frying pan.

Bang! Swipe! Crash! Pow! It was like one of those 1960s episodes of Batman, but without the tights. And for the first time ever, I began to wonder whether Australia’s decision to call their own Twenty20 thingy the Big Bash wasn’t just alliterative PR stupidity, but a profound insight. Big. Bash. Doesn’t that say it all? Or have I had one glass too many? But let no one say that Twenty20 is not authentic. Three hundred years ago, long before the Victorians got their hands on our game, this is the cricket Londoners were watching: raw, raucous, chaotic and as subtle as a Dwayne Smith leg-clearing bottom-handed shellacking over midwicket.

First came Jason, then Freddie, then Phil © Getty Images

Wednesday, 24th August
We all like to see the cut shot. It’s a fine shot. However, the traditional view is that it is seen to best effect when played at a ball short and wide of the off stump. Well Phil Hughes isn’t having that. He believes the cut shot is the only shot a girl could ever need. He plays it to short balls, straight balls, bouncers, beamers and yorkers. He uses the cut shot to open cans of beer, mix pancakes and dry the dishes, which perhaps explains why his appearance on Masterchef Australia ended so messily.

He plays the cello with the cut shot, flips burgers with it and when he proposes he will go down on one knee in a fancy restaurant, have a waiter toss him the ring and smack it into the dessert trolley with a flashing blade. And now he’s back, to cut the Sri Lankans into ribbons, at least, until they work him out. It’s just a pity that Lasith Malinga has retired from Test cricket and we have been denied the sight of wee Hughesie attempting to cut one of the Slinger’s slow bouncers from a seated position

Thursday, 25th August
Saeed Ajmal has a secret weapon, a new delivery that he is not telling anyone about. These little escalations of the spin-bowling arms race are always fun. It reminds me of the Soviets and Americans trying to outdo one another with ludicrous secret weapons boasts, such as Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars toy or Kruschev’s claim that he had replaced the island of Cuba with a Cuba-shaped cheese that come the hurricane season would blow up to Florida and turn the Sunshine State into the Fondue State.

Anyone remember Shane Warne’s Zooter? It was the Loch Ness Monster of variations; we all wanted to believe it was real, but no one had ever seen it. So what does Ajmal have up his sleeve? I have no idea, but here some possibilities:

The One That Might Do
Looks like it might, but in the end it doesn’t.

The One That Doesn’t
Exactly like the one that might, except that this one definitely won’t

The KP Puzzler
Delivered with a left-armer’s action whilst wearing a Yuvraj rubber mask, this leaves KP looking as confused as a poodle in a hall of mirrors.

The 3D One
A recording of Ajmal bowling a long hop is projected onto a screen in front of the batsman who charges out of the ground only to be stumped by the real delivery. This is tricky to arrange as the batsman needs to be persuaded to wear 3D glasses.

The One That Worked Last Time
(See The Oval 2010)

Friday, 26th August
Ex-pros in the commentary booth are like wine; they mature slowly and may not be palatable for a decade or two. Well I think Nick Knight may need to keep the cork in for a while longer. Last time I saw him, he was reading a sonnet he’d written about Eoin Morgan. On Thursday I found him on my television screen again and he was still talking about Morgan, but now the sonnet had turned into a full blown aria from an opera he’d composed called La Eoin (“Eoin, your tiny Irish hand is frozen”.)

Even footage of Morgan’s extraordinary stance could not dissuade him from his adoration. And when you first see “Crouching Morgan Useful Cameo” in full slow-motion, it is an astonishing thing. He bends, then he bends some more, shakes his back leg like a man doing the Hokey Cokey with a jittery ferret in his trouser pocket, works the ball away for a quick single and repeats till the 50th over.

But Mr Hyperbole is in town at the moment and Nick’s not the only one getting carried away. I caught Simon Hughes in this month’s Cricketer comparing James Anderson to Dennis Lillee. Really? How so, Simon? Because, just like Dennis, he can swing and cut it both ways. That sounds like fun, can I play? I reckon Paul Collingwood is pretty much the new Curtly Ambrose, let me see, yes, Luke Wright is Jeff Thomson and Ravi Bopara is Michael Holding. Hooray! I win!

Someone wake me up when England are rubbish again.

"... uh nothing, it's just that I have two tickets to Avril Lavigne, and I was wondering..." © Getty Images

Wednesday, 17th August
The Champions League will soon be with us. But this year the ECB (motto: “Show Me The Money”) are not going to let any counties play in it unless they are paid before the tournament. Quite right. You should always get the money upfront, then if something goes wrong, and you don’t actually turn up or, to take a hypothetical example, the person paying you turns out to be an international fraudster, you can always hide it under your mattress and deny everything.

Thursday, 18th August
While watching Sreesanth pretend that he wanted to throw the ball at KP today, it occurred to me that this is one of modern cricket’s odder rituals. Why would you pretend to do something that you almost certainly aren’t going to do, that even if you did wouldn’t achieve any purpose, and for which you’d have to apologise immediately?

If the intention is to frighten the batsmen, there are surely better ways. You could for instance, tell him that you’re in love with him and that you want to stop the madness for a moment so you can share a hug. You could bring out a microphone and invite him to say a few words. You could warn him about the tarantula on his shoulder.

But threatening to throw a ball at a man kitted out like a particularly safety-conscious samurai warrior seems a rather futile pursuit. You know you probably won’t, and he knows you know you probably won’t, and we all know that he knows that you know that you probably won’t, so knock it off, get back to your mark and bowl.

Friday, 19th August
Introspection is the fashion in Antipodean circles right now. Since the last Ashes, Australian cricket has locked itself in the bedroom with the curtains closed listening to the Smiths and now the Big Australian Review of Everything (subtitled “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now”) has finally been published. It’s a masterpiece of self-flagellation, as brutal an exercise in cricket masochism as RP Singh agreeing to cut short his holiday in Miami to chase a ball around south London for two days.

The Review is a 40-page cry for help, a long list of all the things that Australians think they aren’t very good at. Here’s a brief extract:

“…batting for long periods, batting against the moving ball, batting against spin, batting technique, overall fielding, catching, fitness, bowling to a plan, building pressure, spin bowling, swing bowling, reverse-swing bowling, gum-chewing, palm-spitting, we’ve got really stupid hair, no one loves us and frankly we don’t deserve to be happy anyway...”

The solution to all this angst? “Adult conversations” and “360 degree feedback”. Captain Clarke will be expected to go around the dressing room asking his blokes to pull their f*****g socks up, and they in turn will be encouraged to respond in forthright fashion, along the lines of telling him to stuff his f*****g feedback where the f*****g sun don’t shine. And then everything will be all right again.

Team-mates restrain PK from unleashing his best “You talkin’ to me?” impression on a departing batsman © AFP

Saturday, 13th August
I was wrong about Praveen Kumar. I thought he would be squad-filler, a scorecard padder-out, the man who dries the handkerchief with which Zaheer wipes his brow. I knew him as a growly plodder, a dibbly dobbler, a bit of a tail-end thrasher. Typical Twenty20 star, you know the type: all goatee and no chest hair.

I was wrong. After three successive Waterloos (or if you like, a Waterloo, a Trafalgar and a retreat from Moscow) he is the only one still standing, albeit with a wonky ankle. That injury is not surprising, considering he has hit the bowling crease 951 times already this summer in exchange for 15 of the toughest wickets runs can buy.

He’s like Fred Trueman in Mark Ealham’s body. He trots in off a few gentle steps, offers a Pringle-esque unfurling of the right wrist, followed by a Ray Lindwall follow-through and the stare of an angry father who knows you’ve been hanging round his daughter. He’s the Robert de Niro of Indian cricket. He’s tougher than Ganguly and cooler than Dhoni. Praveen for captain, I say.

Sunday, 14th August
England are top. But people will soon be trying to knock them off their perch, as if they were a row of jelly bean-filled parrot-shaped pinatas. So how to keep it real? Or for those of us used to years of disappointment, who find this outbreak of unmitigated English success makes us dizzy, how to keep it unreal?

Andy and Andrew have already set some new targets. Win in Pakistan. Win in Sri Lanka. The Test Championship. The 2012 Balti Pie-Eating Trophy. KP has a new book of word searches, and Alastair Cook has been challenged to reach Level 3 of the hit console game, Super Mario Takes No Risks In Attaining His Goal.

But there is a nagging feeling that we have forgotten something. It is there in Michael Vaughan’s patriotic ramblings, as he pauses momentarily in the middle of explaining how England are the greatest team ever. What is it? Did we leave the gas on? Did we forget to feed the fish? Oh no, now I remember. We haven’t beaten South Africa.

They are the forgotten contender. The other Klitschko. And I imagine that somewhere near the tip of the world’s warmest continent a collection of burly men are probably getting quite annoyed about it. I imagine Mr Steyn and Mr Morkel sitting by their pool, pet crocodile splashing happily at their feet, a couple of antelope on the braai.

“D’ya see that Morne?”
“Ja Dale.”
“Think they’re No. 1, eh, Morne.”
“Ja Dale.”
“Well we’ll show them next summer, won’t we.”
“Ja Dale.”
“The only recall Bell will be getting is the ambulance to take him home from hospital.”
“Ha Ha Ha, good one Dale.”
“Shut up now Morne.”
“Ja Dale.”

Monday, 15th August
After the epic defeat comes the post mortem. As an Englishman I’ve been through this sort of thing before, so I can offer some advice to the BCCI. Trust me, you can get through this. There is, however, a shopping list of psychological props that you’ll need to tick off before you can get closure.

1. Someone to blame. This is the easiest part and much preferable to blaming, say, a system, a culture or a lack of planning. Prime candidates are usually unpopular fringe players or, if you have one, a foreign coach, who almost certainly doesn’t understand how things are done round here, because he is foreign.

2. A minor administrative shuffle disguised as a bold fresh statement of intent for the nation’s cricket. I suggest changing your stationery contract and firing the guy who repairs the photocopier in the chairman of selectors’ office.

3. A country to model yourself on. Australia’s currency in this market is devalued these days. But Sri Lanka managed to put up a decent fight this summer and they seem like fun. So practise saying after me: “I wish we were more like Sri Lanka.”

4. Diversion. Like toddlers, the press are easily distracted. They’ll soon stop complaining if you show them a shiny new toy. What’s that, Mr Manohar? It’s Champions League time again! Hooray! Test cricket? Never heard of it!

“If you don’t get five they’ll take you out back and shoot you, you know” © Getty Images

Sunday, 7th August
That Zaheer Khan won’t be playing again this series is the least surprising injury update since the Philistine physio confirmed that Goliath wouldn’t be available for the rematch against the Israelites.

Zaheer’s body is clearly sabotaging itself. The fibres in his hamstring have made the ultimate sacrifice and spontaneously torn themselves in half so that his creaky ankles and burned out swing neurons can get some R and R.

This is nothing new, of course. Fast bowlers have been breaking down since Lumpy Stevens of Hambledon first dislocated his left pinky attempting a fast-medium underarm topspinning doosra against Old Peculiars in 1751. For most of the 1990s, I watched an attack that was cobbled together from the parts of English bowlers that still functioned: Cork’s larynx, Caddick’s ears, Gough’s buttocks.

That is why these days England have a stable of fast bowlers. That is not just an expression. Somewhere near Newmarket is an ECB facility where Onions, Bresnan and Finn are safely installed. Every morning, they are allowed to trot around the paddock, fed sugar lumps, given a pat on the nose, then put back safely into their stall with a blanket, a pile of straw and access to a Twitter account.

But even with 24-hour mollycoddling and regular veterinary inspections, the thoroughbred fast bowler can still succumb to a staggering range of ailments, from Anderson Syndrome (characterised by an inability to swear with conviction) to Zaheeritis (a severe allergic reaction to sweets). The lesson is that if you want a tasty Test omlette, you shouldn’t put all your victory eggs in a Zaheer-shaped basket.

Monday, 8th August
“If we don’t make mistakes or do anything silly, we should win.”

So says Tamim Iqbal and it’s hard to disagree. In fact, therein is the whole story of our sport. Every bad cricket thing that has ever happened since the first neanderthal threw the first rock at his brother, who happened to be standing in front of a tree stump holding a mammoth tusk, and was hit for six (boundaries in the Pleistocene period being notoriously short) can be categorised either as “Mistake” or “Silly”.

Into the “Mistake” box go all those wafts outside the off stump resulting in a nick so faint that only dogs and wicketkeepers can hear them; the times when the ball went through your legs because you couldn’t bend down far enough; and pretty much everything that Kamran Akmal did after he cleared customs at Perth International Airport in December 2009. And under “Silly” we can file Ian Bell’s amnesia, Dennis Lillee’s metal bat and Sreesanth’s interpretation of a man with fire ants in his trousers.

If you can manage to keep these two columns empty then you will probably win every Test match by an innings and lots of runs. History tells us that this hardly ever happens, particularly not to Bangladesh. They’ve spent the six years since the old Zimbabwe were expelled from Test Match High School being picked on by everyone else, and it will be particularly depressing if the new Zimbabwe starts bullying them too. Seem like they’ll have to wait a while to get their own whipping boys, at least until the ICC grant Papua New Guinea, Alaska or Narnia their long overdue Test status.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It's not illegal in any nation to check heart-rate, blood pressure, blood volume and rate of perspiration. So it cannot be illegal to take polygraph tests. Hence proved" © AFP

Wednesday, 20th July
On the eve of the 1999th/2000th Test match*, MS Dhoni believes that the five-day flavour of cricket is still appetising. And why? Because, despite the worldwide epidemic of empty stadia, lots of people are still “following” Test cricket.

I don’t blame MS. He’s not going to run down Test cricket just before playing Test cricket. He’s not Chris Gayle, after all. But this word “following” is an odd one. Some English hacks brandish it like a shield when people point out that virtually no one watches the County Championship. “Aha!” they say, “Maybe no one watches it but lots of people follow it and that’s more or less the same thing.”

But is it? Does it really count as support if your only commitment is to occasionally check the score whilst idly surfing the web? If Test cricket is relying on thousands of invisible supporters to demonstrate its popularity, then it really is in trouble.

And if a Test match happens but no one’s there to see it, does it really exist?

Thursday, 21st July
Lie-detectors are quite the thing at the moment. For some reason certain sections of cricketdom believe that wiring players up and asking them questions is the best way to root out corruption. This is despite the fact that in the legal systems of most of the world’s cricket nations, lie-detector test results are no more admissible than coin-tossing or entrail-reading.

The polygraph pushers appear to have stumbled into a logical fallacy:

1. We need to do something about corruption
2. This is something
3. Therefore we need to do this

But am I being unfair? After all Andrew Strauss is an intelligent man and he’s all in favour of it. Here’s his endorsement:

“I don’t know exactly how lie-detectors work and how accurate they are, but I like the idea of it.”

Hmm.

Strauss also said that if a player had nothing to hide, why wouldn’t he submit to a polygraph test? Why indeed. They probably used to say the same thing in medieval Europe to defend the practice of dunking suspected witches in the nearest river.

And maybe that’s the way we should go. A corrupt cricketer is almost certainly lighter than a normal cricketer because he is missing his conscience. So if you throw a player into the Thames and he floats, he’s clearly guilty. If he drowns, he was probably innocent. And there are additional benefits to the ICC because whereas polygraphs can be expensive, pushing a cricketer into a river costs very little.

Friday, 22nd July
Fear not, Australia, Mr Argus’s Big Review Of Everything is due soon. Messrs Taylor, Border and Waugh have been travelling the country asking questions. They’ve talked to players, coaches, chairmen, shoppers, tramps in doorways, a representative cross section of the koala community and the occasional dingo. The questions were wide-ranging but profound. Why did we lose to England? Why aren’t our players better? What’s the point of it all? Where are we going for lunch?

Whatever the findings, you can be sure that Cricket Australia will act upon them without delay (unless of course, the review were to make totally irresponsible recommendations such as, for example, prioritising Test cricket over Twenty20, changing the coaching set-up or getting rid of any of the selectors).

* Depending on whether the Australia v ICC All-Star Charity Six-Day Testimonial in 2005 counts as a Test. Or more pertinently, whether you care.

”Yay, there’s two of us in this photograph and I’m the only one who’s long and lissome and clenching his fists in this toffee-nosed Enid Blyton way. Yay!” © Getty Images

Saturday, 16th July
Sri Lanka’s new interim coach has warned his players to be wary of Australia.

“They will be like a wounded tiger after losing the Ashes and the World Cup and they will be hungry.”

A wounded tiger? Really? I don’t blame Rumesh for trying to whip up a bit of pre-series hype, but I fear those Sri Lankans who do turn up expecting a wounded tiger are going to be a bit disappointed when they find themselves watching an asthmatic possum with a dodgy hip.

Sunday, 17th July
The ICC is toying with the idea of a timeless Test to settle the Test Championship in 2013. I’m all for taking Test cricket back to its roots, but I’m not sure they’ve really thought this one through. Let me spell out for you the potential horror of the situation.

This Championship-deciding Test match could conceivably involve England. England means Cook and Trott. On a Lord’s featherbed. For days on end. And that, my friends, is clearly a violation of the UN Convention on Human Rights.

Monday, 18th July
There’s a spot of bother at Team England HQ and it’s all to do with English cricket’s favourite blond. Apart from holding the world record for teapotting and being handy with a scowl, just what exactly is Stuart’s role?

“We want him to be the enforcer in our team. There is no better bowler in the world than Stuart at bowling bouncers.”

David Saker, England’s bowling facilitator, spells it out for us. Apart from the fact that the baby-faced Broad is only slightly more intimidating than James Anderson, which is to say, not very intimidating at all, that does at least make it clear why the lanky tantrum-thrower is in the team. But hang on a minute.

“I’ve heard some crazy stuff about him being an enforcer. His job is not to rough up the opposition. It is not to be this ridiculous enforcer.”

So says Andy Flower. Now I don’t know what to think. Next time Stuart fires it ineffectively down the leg side, do we assume it’s an enforcement wide to rough up the fine-leg fielder, or a putting-it-on-a-nagging-length kind of wide?

And when you add his neither-one-thing-nor-the-other-bowling to his occasionally effective but often disappointing batting, it seems that Broad is in danger of becoming the classiest bits-and-pieces player in English cricket. Never mind the new Ian Botham, at the moment he’s the new Mark Ealham.

Tuesday, 19th July
What is it with Steve Waugh and lie detectors? He’s been banging on about them again today. Was he a big Jerry Springer fan? Or is he just taking his theory of mental disintegration to the next level? This time he went to the trouble of getting himself all wired up. He knows he isn’t corrupt, you see, so just by passing the test he proved that it works. Unless he was lying, of course.

Anyway, polygraphs are so dull. There must be other unscientific methods of rooting out corruption that are a bit edgier. How about graphology? I bet dodgy cricketers have really shifty-looking vowels. Maybe we could scrutinise tea leaves. I happen to know, for example, that after questioning by police, the dregs in Salman Butt’s mug apparently formed themselves into a perfect $ sign. And of course, there’s always astrology: “With the moon in Venus at the moment, Pisceans will be particularly susceptible to accepting brown envelopes from strangers in hotel bars.”

Ijaz Butt calls up the ICC in a rage to find out if their task team report was a conspiracy to evoke sympathy towards Pakistan cricket © AFP

Tuesday, 12th July
“The best man who walked the face of the earth never did anything wrong, but he was still crucified. And I am nowhere close to that.”

So now we know. Darren Sammy is not the Messiah. He can’t walk on water, but he does at least know how to get to the water and if you asked him, I’m sure he’d borrow a dinghy and row you across. He’s one of life’s triers. He doesn’t boast. He doesn’t score any runs. But he does at least give the impression that he quite likes being West Indies captain, which is always nice for Caribbean fans to hear.

And I know he isn’t quite good enough to be in the team, but there have been some very successful captains who weren’t quite good enough to be in the team. There was Mike Brearley, for example, and, well, the other ones, whose names escape me at the moment. Anyway, good luck Darren, I hope you succeed in your aim of getting West Indies into the top five by 2015, although it might depend on at least four of the other Test nations withdrawing from the ICC.

Wednesday, 13th July
We live in strange times, friends, and on days like these I feel particularly uneasy. But there’s no point shying away from it. Al Gore didn’t want to deal with the inconvenient truth, but he did it anyway. And if Al can do it, so can I. Here goes.

Today I read a story involving the PCB and found myself agreeing with them.

Yes, really. I know, but there it is. I think the PCB are correct. I’m right behind you Ijaz. Excuse me while I go for a quick lie-down.

What could possibly have led me to such a conclusion? Well, the Pakistan Task Team have produced recommendations for reform of the Pakistan cricket system. Jolly good thing, too, you might say. But then you read on. Apparently, only one member of the PTT had visited Pakistan, and that was because he caught the wrong plane. And neither of the two ambassadors for Pakistan have visited the place either.

Pakistan cricket may be poorly. But if you’re going to offer a cure, you should at least go and visit the patient. I’m a big fan of House, but I’m not sure the programme would have caught on if Hugh Laurie had done his diagnosing via email.

Thursday, 14th July
The News Of The World may be no more, but here at the Long Handle, we are keeping up the fine English tradition of sneaking about and getting our grubby hands on information we have no right to possess. Posing as an airline stewardess, I recently infiltrated an AirIndia flight to Heathrow and managed to swipe Duncan Fletcher’s SpongeBob SquarePants carry case.

Inside, I found a copy of Alan Border’s Fitness Programme, “Shed Pounds The Grumpy Way”; a good-luck card from Greg Chappell, 17 pairs of identical sunglasses and a highly confidential dossier, revealing the secrets of England’s top players. With this deadly dossier in their hands, the Indian team are certain to triumph this summer (even though they probably would have anyway). Here is just a selection of big Dunc’s inside info:

Kevin Pietersen: In my opinion, he could struggle against left-arm spin.
Stuart Broad: The lad has a bit of a temper.
Andrew Strauss: Posh. I believe he could be captain these days.
Alastair Cook: Can score a lot of runs if you don’t get him out.
Ian Bell: Short.
Matt Prior: He’s no Geraint Jones.
Ashley Giles:Retired.

"Look Stu, you can't complain to the umpire about the ugliness of Dilshan's facial hair " © PA Photos

Sunday, 3rd July
Tillakaratne says he’s disappointed at how his chaps went about pulverising England at Lord’s. Absolutely right. Poor show Mr Mathews, you made Cook and chums look awfully silly.

On the other hand, it was quite funny. And it did bring a little pulse quickening to the closing overs of a one-sided encounter. You could hardly blame Chandimal and Mathews. They are entertainers. If England weren’t going to put a fight, they had to do something to give the spectators their money’s worth.

And I don’t know what England’s problem was. That Sri Lanka could have won in 44 overs but instead they won in 49? Really, they had nothing to complain about, but that didn’t stop them. Led by Peter Pietersen the Petulant Pouter, they managed to extract maximum sulkage from the situation. Their expressions at the end of the game were so sour they could have curdled milk.

How has this happened? Losing with dignity used to be the only thing England were any good at. Now they’re rapidly climbing the ICC Whining Rankings. And their most exciting young complainer is Stuart “It’s Not Fair” Broad, the man with the fastest whinge reflex in the modern game. Has losing half of his match fee at Headingley caused him to reflect? Nope.

“I’m certainly not going to lose my passion for the game…”

No one is asking you to lose your passion for the game, Stuart. Just stop swearing at umpires. And fielders. And pigeons.

Monday, 4th July
Like an empty stomach the Katich Controversy rumbles on, but not everyone thinks that the decision to axe Australia’s most reliable batsman was a catastrophically short-sighted one. Coach Tim Neilsen isn’t party to the mystical goings on in selection land, but he fronted up today and said that he thinks the Katichlessness of the list of contracted players is probably a sign that the team is being regenerated.

Probably.

Of course, there are alternative explanations for his absence, all of them, in my opinion, just as plausible as the regeneration hypothesis:

1. The 17-year-old intern charged with filling in the Central Contract Software Wizard sneezed and accidentally deleted Katich’s name. He couldn’t get hold of anyone in IT so he just went with it.

2. Hilditch and Chappell have never really been happy with their spelling of “Katich” and so avoided the whole tricky business by going for Fil Huges instead.

3. The selectors wrote down the names of every vaguely talented Australian player they could think of on scraps of paper torn from a copy of Steve Waugh’s autobiography, put them all into Skippy the Magic Bush Hat, gave it a shake, chanted the magic words, (“Bowling Shane”) and awarded contracts to the first 25 names out of the hat.

4. They don’t like his crispy salmon. Who the hell wants their salmon crispy anyway? And his salads are just well, a little bit too tomatoey, you know?

Tuesday, 5th July
Good news for those of you living in the Caribbean. Things must be going pretty well domestically, because apparently your prime ministers are able to take time away from managing the economy, public services, transport and crime in order to tackle some of the region’s more trivial problems. And top of the agenda is the row between some incompetent suit wearers and Jamaica’s millionaire sulking champion.

After sorting out the Gayle squabble, I believe they will be tackling other important issues such as why do dogs eat grass, why can we never find our car keys and why are chocolate bars are a lot smaller than they used to be.

KP rehearses his "I've-never-seen-so-much-money-but-that-doesn't-mean-I'm greedy" look for the musical © Getting

Saturday, 18th June
The ECB today confirmed that the recent unseasonal downpours have revealed a significant leakage issue associated with the roof of their head office, with the potential for unsightly stains and long-term damage to structural integrity. In order to address this problem, they have arranged a friendly game between the England cricket team and the Easy-Fit Roofing Company XI, for which tickets will soon go on sale to the public (£75 for adults or £74.50 for under-16s).

They have also let it be known that the England team is available at a reasonable rate for weddings, bar mitzvahs and impromptu barbeques; Jonathan Trott will spend the autumn on loan to the British Archaelogical Society, helping with their excavations at Stonehenge; Chris Tremlett is to assist the Hampshire Fire Service with their tree-focused kitten retrieval programme, and Kevin Pietersen will be treading the boards this winter in the touring production of 2008’s popular farce, Oops, Mr Stanford!

Monday, 20th June
Out in the Caribbean, the war of the abbreviations is turning ugly. The WICB have alleged that at their latest meeting with the WIPA, President Ramnarine lost his temper, turned into a green-skinned tower of muscular rage, splitting his shirt in the process and threatened senior WICB executives with an easy chair. The WIPA dispute this version of events, claiming that Mr Ramnarine merely got out of his seat prematurely during a game of musical chairs.

We can’t be sure which version is correct and to be honest, we don’t really care. I’d like to imagine that the chair in question was one of those little red plastic ones you find in kindergartens. And, since the chair is the only participant at that meeting to have emerged from it with any dignity, perhaps it could take over at the WICB, with the table being voted in as WIPA leader. Their press conferences might not be very entertaining but they might bring some stability to West Indies cricket.

Tuesday, 21st June
Like a low-fat, sugar-free dessert, this soggy Sri Lankan series has been unfulfilling and rather bland. The tourists were mostly ordinary without being completely awful, and England continued to do a reasonable impression of a very impressive team without actually achieving an awful lot. Indeed, had Dilshan and chums not developed an unfortunate case of collective agoraphobia on the last day in Cardiff we’d have been left with a stalemate staler than an ex-cricketer's after-dinner anecdotes.

Perhaps I’m just sulking because I’d been looking forward to watching Mendis and Randiv and instead I got Lakmal and Perera (and a limping Fernando). But really, why bring three spinners if you’re only going to use one? It’s like taking three hairdryers on holiday. And somehow at the end of all that rain and tedium, England have ended up as the second best Test team in the world. The ICC’s ranking system doesn’t lie, but it is perhaps a little economical with the truth.

Jonathan Trott puts both his hands up when Andrew Strauss asks for volunteers to participate the Guinness World Records' longest "left alone" contest © Getty Images

Tuesday, June 14th
I’m not sure that cricketers should be allowed to talk too much in public, but I’d make an exception in the case of Graeme Swann because every now and then he comes out with something that causes me to stop chewing my cereal in surprise. Like this statement, for instance:

“If there’s an uglier top three in the world than Strauss, Cook and Trott, I don’t know of it.”

This is the kind of thing we want to read. Signs of cracks in the depressingly immaculate team spirit of Team England. They may be all huddles and embarrassing dances on the field, but secretly, they loathe each other. Still, I did think he was being a bit harsh. After all, Strauss has a certain square-jawed charm and his deputy possesses the most immaculate set of eyebrows in the county of Essex.

But it seems I got the wrong end of the stick. He wasn’t assessing their physical attributes. He was admitting that he finds watching England’s top-order trio doing their thing to be a less than stimulating experience. He did go on to explain that the sedative effect of their batting, with the attendant risk of nodding off and falling from your chair on the team balcony, is a price worth paying because it helps keep the show on the road and the win bonuses flowing.

Sadly, the rest of us don’t have that consolation. It isn’t their fault of course. They do what they do and they do it very well. But here’s the unspoken truth of Test cricket. When it is played very well, it can sometimes be, well, quite dull. We all enjoy watching KP thrash the ball around, or Sachin battling against the odds on a dodgy track. But well-drilled, efficient grinders accumulating steadily on flat pitches? That’s ugly.

Thursday, June 16th
There was much talk about the poor crowds in Cardiff and we can expect more as the five-day rain festival at the Rose Bowl gets underway. The reasons for the empty seats are not clear, but hacks and pundits appear to be in agreement that it’s a jolly poor show and reflects badly on the part of the British public that they are not flocking in their droves to these poky little venues at the extremities of the island in order to pay £70 for the privilege of sitting in the rain all day. Shame on you, Britain!

Friday, June 17th

The legends of Caribbean cricket must grow weary of being asked to explain the inexplicable. In an interview in the Guardian today, Viv Richards had another stab at it, pointing out that the talent is there but that the players, selectors and management are all pulling in different directions. He’s right, of course, but will anyone listen?

Take the Chris Gayle stand-off. We know he’ll be back. The WICB know he’ll be back. Otis Gibson knows he needs him back. But it isn’t going to happen just yet because all parties need time to extricate themselves from the situation with dignity, like contestants at the end of a game of naked Twister. Then next month, they’ll do it all again. Players sulk, administrators posture and nothing changes.

Another device to aid KP: a pendant that beeps every time his bat is not in line with the ball © PA Photos

Wednesday, 1st June
Andy Flower today revealed that he is “very excited” about what he is seeing from KP in the nets at the moment, leading to much speculation about just what the big man has in store for us at Lord’s on Friday. A medley of Abba songs? A ventriloquism act with Ian Bell? Or perhaps that reliable old standby: attempting a few big shots before getting out in a disappointing fashion for a batsman of his talent.

In an effort to overcome his weakness against left-armers, he’s also been working with a new device called “The Trundlermatic”, a bowling machine that lobs balls very gently towards the stumps from a slightly wider angle than normal. KP is doing well, having only been dismissed 174 times so far, though the machine’s impressive bowling average means it is on the verge of being selected for England*.

Thursday, 2nd June
For reasons that are not immediately clear, a survey has been made of the opinions of the modern international cricketer. I’m all for a touch of democratic participation, but what with biographies, tweets, pre-match interviews, post-match interviews, promotional interviews, newspaper columns and sundry television appearances, I’m not sure we’ve anything left to learn about this particular section of humanity.

Still, there were some interesting results. For instance, 6% of those surveyed thought the ICC were governing in the best interests of the game, which represents a bit of a result for Mr Lorgat and chums. Two-thirds said that they thought the BCCI had too much power, although this clear statement was slightly undermined by the 31% who couldn’t be bothered to think about it and went with "I don’t know".

More bafflingly, 39% of the cricketers surveyed said that there was too much one-day international cricket leading to reduced interest on the part of the public. Surely if you want to know whether there is reduced public interest in one-day international cricket, you should er, ask the public? Or you could just check the attendance figures, which would show that there isn’t any reduction of interest at all.

And among the questions not included in the survey were the following:

1. Did you write your autobiography?
2. Are you happy with the quality of the fairways on Bangladeshi golf courses?
3. Is there too much complaining about there being too much cricket these days?
4. Have you ever fallen asleep watching Jonathan Trott bat?
5. Should there be a hyphen in burnout?
6. Is that your own hair?

Friday, 3rd June
Dizzy is back and not before time. It is a disgrace that so many cricket boards were willing to be complicit in ostracising ex-ICL players for playing cricket; in marked contrast to the way that drug cheats, information peddlers and match-fixers have been treated in the past. And I’ll be honest, I miss the ICL. It beat the IPL to the concept, if not to the cash. It had a delightful, amateurish freewheeling approach to Twenty20, which unfortunately included a not-quite-so-delightful amateurish freewheeling approach to paying people.

* Although technically built in Hong Kong, the Trundlermatic qualifies for England as one of the screws for the battery compartment was made in Redditch.

Afridi: you can call him Mr Muesli © AFP

Saturday, 28th May
Watching Cook and Trott bat today it occurred to me, in those brief moments between naps, that the medical profession is missing a trick. Such is the anaesthetic potential of England’s most prolific run-gatherers that it can’t be long before doctors are prescribing a dose of Trott and Cook for insomniacs, and anaesthetists are playing unedited highlights of their exploits to patients about to undergo minor surgery.

How to describe them doing their thing today? It was like watching two brick walls, each recently painted a different shade of grey, in order to find out which would dry first. And when they weren’t dull, they were annoying, particularly Trott, whose excavatory habit has reached the outer limits of screamingly irritating. Watching him is like sitting on a train next to someone who continually drums their fingers. Or listening to Danny Morrison commentate for more than 45 seconds.

Sunday, 29th May
IPL viewing figures are down. This is not surprising. There has been much talk of a tipping point in audience interest, but I think it’s not so much a tipping point as a choking point. For example, I think I’d enjoy being hand-fed from a bowl of peeled grapes but not if 74 grapes were shoved into my gullet in rapid succession whilst someone was pinching my nose and holding my jaws open. It would be even less pleasant if the forced grape-gorging were to be accompanied by Siva shouting in my ear that I was experiencing a Citi Moment of Indigestion.

Monday, 30th May
What a silly match. Some argue that this is the beauty of Test cricket, that for four days nothing occurs, then, long after everyone has gone home, something happens. This isn’t much of an argument or a selling point. It’s like promoting a package holiday tour and promising that 80% of the time you’ll be bored out of your skull, but things will really pick up just before you catch your flight home. Fine, well, in that case, let’s just cut to the chase. One afternoon, 20 overs a side. We could even give it a catchy name, like “Twenty20” or some such.

The final day’s high jinks were not the only silly thing about this Test. A year ago KP was undone hilariously by Shakib Al Hasan, and in Cardiff his contortions against Herath were similarly comic, his limbs flailing in all directions, like a giraffe learning to ice skate, as he contrived to discover hitherto unseen menace in one of Rangana‘s slow straightish ones. But like the punchline to your favourite comedy sketch, the fact that you know it’s coming doesn’t make it any less amusing.

Tuesday, 31st May
I’m not sure how many times Shahid Afridi has retired. Statsguru is no help on the matter, since it fails to list this or many other statistical player essentials, such as number of breaches of the ICC Code of Conduct, pages in autobiography, tweets per day and so on. This latest Afridi sabbatical would require a new column in the records as it is a “conditional” retirement – conditional, that is, upon the entire PCB being replaced. I love Shahid, but he is flakier than a crate of breakfast cereal, and he has now achieved the remarkable feat of making Ijaz Butt look like a reasonable man for five minutes.

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.

Misbah-ul-Haq uses a hand-sign to illustrate his point about the cyclical nature of fashion © AFP

Saturday, 21st May
Though the market for Ashes literature may be more crowded than an elevator at an obesity convention, it seems there’s always room for one more, hence the existence of Andrew Strauss’s new effort, Winning the Ashes Down Under: The Captain’s Story. Described by one reviewer as “another bloody Ashes book”, it is a stirring tale of how a team of professional sportsmen battled against the odds to beat another team who weren’t quite as good. This epic rollercoaster story is told in three parts:

Part One: Arrive in Australia
Part Two: Beat lower-ranked Test opponents
Part Three: Return home

Sunday, 22nd May
It is a peculiar thing, this Morgan situation. A man makes himself available to play Tests for England, flies all the way back from India to take part in a trial game to demonstrate his readiness to play Test cricket, and then has to answer questions about his priorities. It seems quite straightforward. He wants to test himself against the best players on the biggest stages, so he spends his early season time playing high-pressure cricket in the IPL rather than pottering around in the shires accumulating easy runs. What’s the problem?

Tuesday, 24th May
Pakistan’s visit to the Caribbean has come to an end with a 1-1 Test scoreline that left the viewer wondering whether these teams were equally good or just as bad as each other. An intriguing if peculiar little tour also threw up the following thoughts:

1. That the captaincy of the Pakistan cricket team is as inconstant and unpredictable as the world of haute couture. Right now, it seems that thirtysomething veterans are back in, Misbah is quite the thing and suddenly that hand-clapping, floppy-fringed look that everyone was raving about a few months ago seems to belong to a quainter time, like bell-bottomed trousers and responsible investment banking.

2. That West Indies is the new south Asia. As it happens, I like low, slow, crumbly result pitches that take prodigious spin. I just don’t like them in the Caribbean. That’s the wrong place for them. What chance have the next generation of Ambroses, Walshes and Marshalls got when they charge to the crease, let fly and watch the ball splat into the earth with a sigh and trundle towards the batsman at knee height?

3. That two Test matches is not a series, it is a pair of isolated incidents.

Craig Kieswetter, distracted by the crease on his trousers, is yet to realise he has been bowled © Getty Images

Wednesday, 18th May
Australia are expanding their Twenty20 tournament. They have ticked all the right boxes. No evidence that Australians want more Twenty20. Check. Watered down imitation of the IPL. Check. Silly team names. Check. But wait, isn’t there a danger that they have missed the boat on all this? Aren’t new Twenty20 leagues so 2008? Head zombie Mike McKenna doesn’t think so.

“There are a lot of people still feeling the game out, what’s the right way to play it, where to play games, what’s the right number of teams.”

A sentence like that really deserves a closer reading.

“There are a lot of people still feeling the game out.”

Are there? There may be a couple of yak herders in Mongolia who have never heard of the Dilscoop, but that’s probably about it.

“What’s the right way to play it?”

Score as many runs as you can as quickly as possible?

“Where to play the games?”

On cricket pitches, preferably near where lots of people live.

“What’s the right number of teams?”

In my experience, a useful rule of thumb is that the right number of teams is about 25% less than the number of teams who actually take part.

But I’m being unfair. This stuff isn’t for you or me. It’s comfort talk, soothing words for the benefit of the speaker; the PR equivalent of sitting on your sofa eating from a tub of ice cream because you think your boyfriend is about to leave you. He might just as well have said this:

“Oh my god! We’re really really worried that the Big Silly Bash is going to be a big fat flop but if we keep talking, maybe it’ll be okay, yes, I’m sure it’s going to be fine. Look, the sun’s coming out over there. Everything’s going to be all right. It really is.”

Thursday, 19th May
The great thing about Twitter is that there really is no limit to the ways in which professional sportsmen can use it to get themselves into trouble. Today it was Craig Kieswetter’s turn to invite Mr Stupidity round for tea and biscuits. He posted a photograph taken through the windscreen of his moving car. Oh dear. Fortunately, it was a false alarm, the photo was taken by a passenger and not by our hero.

But the key question is not who took the photo, but what was on the motorway that was so fascinating Craig felt the need to share it with the world? An elephant on a skateboard? A life-size version of the Eiffel Tower made entirely from marzipan? Elvis overtaking in the outside lane? And it raises serious doubts about his Test credentials. If he is so easily distracted that he finds motorways diverting, can he really be trusted to stand still for a day and a half?

Friday, 20th May
The debate has raged all week and now a nation holds its breath as the panel of judges prepare to give their verdicts. Who will be the winner in the talent contest to end them all? Who will earn themselves the coveted title of England’s sixth best batsman? Will it be Cheeky Anglo-Irishman Eoin “Reverse-Sweep” Morgan or Swaggering Essex Boy Ravi “Not Really A No. 3” Bopara? Vote now!

Having grown bored of churning out those traditional early season articles about how the County Championship is really a vibrant and popular competition and then having understandably grown bored of writing about the County Championship, English cricket hacks have moved on to the familiar third item on the summer’s agenda: the desperate hyping of a minor national selection issue into a major event.

And we all know it’s going to be Ravi anyway. The argument goes like this: Eoin has been in India, so is totally unprepared for Test cricket, as demonstrated by the 156 he scored against Sri Lanka this week. Ravi, on the other hand, put country first by choosing not to play in the IPL after none of the franchises bid for him. So Ravi will be going to Cardiff and Eoin will be flying back to Kolkata in the emergency vehicle known as the Keiron Kopter, originally built to carry Trinidad’s second-best allrounder to any Twenty20 league in the world at a moment’s notice.

Stuart Broad uses a pair of sunglasses craftily to protect his valuable brain © Getty Images

Saturday, 7th May
Shahid Afridi is a little boy, albeit a boy with a handsome beard and a mild case of media Tourette’s, but a boy nonetheless. He fidgets, he shouts, he claps, he swings wildly, he poses, he gabbles incessantly to his bowlers whether they like it or not. Life is a birthday party and he wants to open all his presents at once. Sometimes he gets a little over-tired, turns into Shahid Huffridi and stomps off in a sulk.

Naturally he wants to be in charge of picking the team. I’m sure he’d quite like to drive the bus too, and given half a chance, he’d take the kit home to wash, although he’d probably overdo the detergent, flood the kitchen, dismantle the washing machine, storm out of the house, come back half an hour later and try to eat one of the pipes before fixing everything with one hand whilst trying to break the world yo-yo record with the other.

Sadly it seems that Shahid is outliving his welcome in some quarters, which is a shame, so perhaps he should do the sensible thing and let Waqar have his say selection-wise. Besides, given some of the peculiar selections that Pakistan have come up with in recent months, you’d have thought a degree of plausible deniability would be useful to a captain. Don’t blame me, it was Waqar who picked the team…

Sunday, 8th May
It did not occur to me last week, when the elevation of Broad jnr was announced, that there wasn’t in fact a vacancy for him to be promoted to. It had completely slipped my mind that England already had a Twenty20 captain, which is unforgivable, because he was rather a good one too. Wee Colly may not be pretty, but then in the credit column, he rarely pouts on the field of play, and he did bring home a trophy.

The old ginger stonewaller talked about his successor’s “fast-thinking brain”, which was decent of him, but it doesn’t really tell the whole story. The newest England captain does have a brain, we can be sure of that, but it’s a brain that throws up a range of thoughts, not all of which are absolutely top drawer, and some of which, if acted upon, can lead to a string of detentions and a severely reduced pocket money allowance.

Monday, 9th May
Peter Roebuck has written an article in the Hindu criticising the scheduling of only two Tests between South Africa and Australia. It is a shame that these great cricket nations will not be playing more Tests, although the layman might humbly suggest that if people were interested in turning up to watch these matches, Cricket South Africa would be staging them. But then his article took an odd turn, thus:

“Cricket is not in its right mind. Instead it has been taken over by apologists whose thoughts turn to the frenzied mob and the bottom line.”

Hmm. Frenzied mob? Well no one likes a mob, and frenzied mobs are just about the worst kind of mob you can get. Shame on them, I thought. And then I started to think. How can we spot these mobs, so we can avoid them? Who are they? Where do they come from? And then it struck me. He means us. You and me.

But not all the time. Let me explain. If you troll along to a Test match in your best slacks, spiffing tie and panama, you’re a connoisseur of all that is noble and fine in the game and good luck to you. Well done. However, if the following month you take your seats in Bangalore to watch a Twenty20 game then you (yes you!) are a frenzied mob in the making. Frankly, you should be ashamed of yourselves.

"So Andrew, you mean to say as captain I can't ask my players to shine my shoes and do my homework? Where's the fun then?" © Getty Images

Tuesday, May 3rd
The word ashes has many meanings. It’s the plural of a well-known species of tree belonging to the genus Fraxinus. It’s the correct phonetical transcription of the sound the Queen makes when she sneezes. But to Graeme Swann, it’s the name of the greatest sporting event on the planet. Don’t believe me? Here’s what he said in today’s Independent:

“The Ashes is the greatest sporting event on the planet.”

Told you. Graeme’s a likeable chap so let’s give him a chance. Is there any way in which this statement could be correct? Is there another dimension in which this might be true? Can it really be the case that an event watched by a small minority of people in two of the world’s 193 sovereign countries is the greatest on the planet? No, almost certainly not, and no.

It isn’t really his fault. Cricket hereabouts runs on Ashes time (for instance, it’s currently quarter past Ashes) and everything that is not Ashes exists in a haze of dreamy indifference, which might perhaps explain the continued existence of the County Championship, the world’s oldest living museum. He is a product of his cricket culture and his obsession with a little brown pot is, I suppose harmless.

And he does a nice line in old fashioned English understatement:

“We want to be No. 1 in both Test and one dayers. We’ve got a better chance of doing it in Test cricket, whereas the one-dayers might take a bit longer.”

Just a bit, Graeme…

Wednesday, May 4th
As he gleamed under the floodlights, his burnished skin the colour of a nicely done barbecued sausage, Captain Shane knew the game was up. There was nothing left but to resort to that thing he does involving his nose, his forefinger and his thumb that looks as though he is trying to prevent a nosebleed but is actually his way of saying that he’d like to use the thick end of a cricket bat to bludgeon his colleagues to death one at a time, if cricket etiquette didn’t frown upon that sort of thing.

Stuart Binny was the main culprit. But as a fielding duffer myself, I enjoyed his performance, particularly his first error, in which the ball appeared to pass straight through his navel en route to the boundary. It is always reassuring to get a reminder that most professionals hate fielding just like the rest of us do. Let’s be honest, its an unpleasant, time-consuming and tedious activity, only enjoyed by a few South Africans and the odd Australian who has spent too long in the sun.

Thursday, May 5th
What a splendid idea! Three captains! Everyone agrees that having a captain is a good thing. Far better, for example, than not having a captain. So three captains must be three times as good! And England have added a nice touch, ranking their captains based on the calibre of their private school. Extensive analysis reveals that their innovative three-headed skipper strategy will have the following outcome:

1. After a poor series against India and having relinquished two-thirds of his power, Andrew Strauss will be under intense pressure to step down.
2. Deputy Alastair Cook will be unavailable, a broken man, having dropped himself from the one-day team due to a strike rate of 7.00.
3. Deputy deputy, Stuart Broad, will be serving his third ban of the summer, this time for setting fire to the umpire’s shoes after a marginal wide call.
4. In the absence of anyone else, a fourth candidate will emerge, unite the three formats and lead England into a glorious new age of arm-waving, top-of-the-range sunglasses and flashy defeats. All hail the second coming of KP!

Kapil's perfect logic: Just by walking the ramp you don't become a model so just because Fletcher coached England doesn't mean he's er a coach © AFP

Tuesday, 26th April
Today Alastair Cook called our attention to the plight of dozens of downtrodden cricket professionals, some of them earning as little as £100,000 per annum, who are forced to fly first-class, to train to a peak of fitness at someone else’s expense and to spend days at a time in five-star hotels. Comrade Cook complained that the modern cricketer doesn’t have enough say and implied that something ought to be done about it, whilst playing John Lennon’s “Power To The People” through his iPod speakers.

As a mood of militancy swept the golf courses, top-quality gymnasia and exclusive nightclubs of the nation, there were rumours that the England team might be about to go on strike. But after urgent talks, the Association of Stodgy Top-Order Grinders, the Federation of Flashy Cameo-Makers and the Union of Bowlers and Twitterers all agreed to cancel the planned industrial action on the grounds that actually they were rather well-paid, had lots of time off and really had very little to complain about.

Thursday 28th April
The news that bookmakers have been arrested and some may have confessed to making death threats against Zulqarnain Haider has not gone down well at the PCB. Officials are being instructed to exercise extreme caution in opening newspapers, and in the event of being exposed to suggestions that the match-fixing problem is widespread, have been taught advanced emergency techniques, such as carefully inserting one finger into each ear and making, “la la la la la” noises.

I have had some personal experience in dealing with bookies. Not the kind you might find hanging around a hotel bar, offering leather jackets and well-stuffed envelopes to gullible young sportsmen. No, I’m talking about a different breed. In Pakistan, the bookies may be illegal, but they will at least take a bet. Here in Britain we have the opposite problem. Perfectly legal bookies who are reluctant to entertain the idea of taking your money if they think you might win. Prison’s too good for ‘em.

Friday, 29th April
Kapil Dev doesn’t think Duncan Fletcher should be Indian coach on the grounds that he doesn’t really know who the man is and doesn’t remember him doing much as a player. Fortunately, India don’t select their coaches on the basis of whether Kapil has ever bumped into him at a social event or what kind of batting average he ended up with. Greg Chappell was one of the greatest batsmen of all time and Gary Kirsten wasn’t. But which of them is the better coach?

If there is a policy of deliberately not picking an Indian coach, then that of course would be absurd. But since we have no evidence that is the case, we have to assume that the BCCI has fallen back on the old-fashioned method of picking the best candidate from among the applicants. What counts against Fletcher most of all is not his sometimes gruff demeanour, his playing career or the fact that he doesn’t speak Hindi. It’s the fact that John Buchanan thinks he’s the right man for the job.

Be afraid India. Be very afraid.

A Shakespearean costume that KP has his eye on should he become captain again © Getty Images

Tuesday, April 19th
With the imminent abdication of Andrew Strauss from the one-day international throne, we are entering King Lear territory. Strauss is the ageing monarch. Alastair Cook is Cordelia. And Stuart Broad and KP are the ugly sisters, entirely unsuited to the position, but nevertheless jostling their way to the front of the media’s attention. Perhaps Strauss might stick to the script and divide the captaincy between them?

Last week, Bambi let it be known that yes, he’d quite like to do the job some day, but personally, he thought Straussy should go on for ever and ever. KP wasn’t quite so subtle today and inevitably found time to mention what happened the last time he was in charge. He said that it was water under the bridge, though this particular stretch of water has been recycled a number of times and is starting to look a bit murky.

But though the entertainment value of another KP captaincy stint should not be underestimated, I’m not sure that what England need to lead their rebuilding is a man who looks good in sunglasses. He should probably stick to what he’s best at: hitting huge sixes, communicating complicated emotional states in 140 characters or less and finding imaginative ways to lose his wicket to part-time left-arm spinners.

Wednesday, April 20th
Chris Gayle today demonstrated the efficacy of a new sportsman rehabilitation programme. Based around the recuperative power of the dollar, the new approach is believed to work directly on an individual’s bank account and involves significant transfusions of money. The effects are remarkable. Yesterday, Chris was injured. Today he is fit again and on Friday he will be able to play for Bangalore.

Cynicism aside, I have every sympathy with Gayle. The only thing that I don’t like is that these players are so coy about the choices they make. Why would you put your body through the strain of a five-day match, watched by nobody, for a modest wage, when you can play a more exciting brand of cricket in front of an audience of millions for a fortune? Country versus franchise? No contest.

Thursday, April 21st
At long last, the crisis that threatened to slightly disrupt Sri Lanka’s preparations for a not-very-important Test series is over. At a press conference today, a spokesman for Sri Lanka Cricket read out the following statement.

“First of all, let me say that in no way would we give in to pressure. The BCCI may be a large, powerful, and if I may say so, a deeply attractive, charismatic and fragrant organisation, but we make our own decisions. I can reveal that we did have a fruitful and productive meeting with Indian officials and we were persuaded by their arguments, particularly the points made by their associates with the baseball bats.

As you are aware, earlier this week we demanded that, if they could be bothered, our better players might like to consider turning up in England on May 5. We believed that two weeks was necessary to adjust to English conditions. We now realise that this was complete nonsense and that 24 hours and a jolly good nap on the plane is sufficient acclimatisation. We apologise for any inconvenience caused. Go Kochi!”

Friday, April 22nd
A Chris Gayle century is never dull and his debut for the Royal Challengers was typical in its spectacular brutality. Perhaps the best part though was when Virat Kohli realised he was in danger of pooping the party and denying Gayle his ton. Two runs to win, three balls to go in the over and the professional thing would have been to plunder the runs. But the watching millions did not tune in for a display of hard-nosed professionalism. We want drama, excitement, entertainment and, occasionally, a little human interest. Well done, Virat, for seeing the bigger picture.

"I welcome Zulqy's return to Pakistan. And if I am really, really, really out of form, I'm sure he'll stand a chance to keep for the team" © AFP

Saturday, 16th April
The WIPA are not happy and have filed a notice of dispute against the WICB, only the third since breakfast. This time they are properly riled up. They think the selection of the West Indies team was influenced by issues other than “performance, potential, playing conditions and preparedness” though they don’t elaborate. Perhaps they had run out of p words. Not that it matters: for all the difference it will make, they might just as well have cited pumpkins, pineapples, prestidigitation and parachutes.

The decision to ditch our old friends, Cool Chris, Shiv the Crab, and Hamstring Ramnaresh was many things. It was baffling, bizarre, and more than a little bonkers. But that’s how they roll at the WICB. They get to pick the team and that’s that. The WIPA say the selection process was not fair or transparent. In the long history of our game, has there ever been a fair and transparent selection process? It’s always smoky rooms, old men in suits, names in a hat and “My nephew is quite a player you know.” Fair and transparent selection policies? Whatever next? Accountability? Integrity?

Sunday, 17th April
Zulquarnain Haider is to return to Pakistan, having grown bored of waiting for his asylum application to be processed. Chalk another one up to the Home Office. Their next step would have been to claim that they had never received it in the first place, find it, lose it, find it then lose it again and it would eventually turn up next August in a small filing cabinet somewhere in the Outer Hebrides.

Now obviously, a talented young cricketer fleeing abroad in fear for his life can count upon the full support of his country’s cricket board. Unless, of course, that board is the PCB. As you remember, they conducted a fact-phobic fact-finding investigation into the affair and concluded that, besides the death threats, they couldn’t find any reason for his giving up cricket and flying to the UK. No doubt they will be doing everything to help him rebuild his career upon his return.

But he will face some stiff competition. They aren’t short of wicketkeepers at the PCB, thanks to their ongoing contract with Akmal Glove Logistics, the family firm that promises never to take their eye off the ball, even when it’s lying on the turf by their feet.

Monday, 18th April
Graeme Swann has today criticised “rollers”. For a moment I thought he was having a pop at those large iron wheels with the big handles. But it turns out he’s taking a swipe at our proud English tradition of spinners who don’t turn the ball. For a time in the 1990s, “rollers” were the fashion. Every county had four and most of them had England caps. Unsurprisingly, the General Secretary of the Amalgamated Union of Rollers and Trundlers has already bashed out a stiff email rebuttal to Mr Swann.

And as a roller myself I can tell Graeme that there is more to it than waddling up and putting it there or thereabouts, although admittedly, not much more. For example, you might be a “spear-it-in” kind of roller. Or you might be a “shuffle-up-and-turn-your arm-over-with-minimal-effort” kind of cove. Perhaps you might wear a flashy wrist band or cultivate a distracting hairstyle. But whatever the method, the philosophy of the roller is a simple and a dignified one. A cricket ball can be floated up, fired in or flung down, but it must never be spun. For spinning a leather sphere would be an unnatural use of finger and opposable thumb, a gift of evolution that was designed for manipulating small pieces of sharpened flint, rolling cigars and picking your nose.

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.

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.

Kevin Pietersen's ego: never too far from his team-mates © AFP

Tuesday, March 8
It’s been a hell of a summer in Australian cricket. But after a dignified pause for sombre reflection and careful consideration, Cricket Australia have chosen to pretend that Andrew Hilditch is definitely the man for the job and he will remain as ringmaster of the Circus of Selection Horrors until August or possibly later.

Explaining their decisive non-decision, chairman Jack Clarke explained that they were all waiting for the result of the Big Review of Everything which is expected in August or maybe November, depending how long it takes AB to type it up and Tubby Taylor to colour in the pictures. But he had this reassuring message:

“We’re looking forward for sustained future success, we’re not looking with rearview mirrors.”

He means metaphorical rearview mirrors, of course. But as any metaphorical driving instructor will tell you, it is important to check your metaphorical mirrors before you change direction, lest the articulated lorry of the past catch up to you again and run your rusty old vehicle of administration off the motorway of sustained future success.

Wednesday, March 9
So Kevin Pietersen is going home and England must find a new temporary replacement opener. But Andrew Strauss confirmed that whilst the big man will be flying back to Blighty, KP’s ego will be staying on in India.

“KP will be a big loss, no question, but it will still be good to have his ego around the dressing room, looking at itself in the mirror, Tweeting rubbish and encouraging the other lads by reminding them how much poorer they are as cricketers.”

Thursday, March 10
Imagine a man who wakes up one day and wonders what would happen if he hit himself on the head with a frying pan. He tries it; it hurts. Fair enough, you live and learn. But then a little while later, he wonders if he made too hasty a judgement. So he does it again. It hurts again. Hmm. Its looking pretty conclusive, he thinks. One more try? Now his head hurts, his dinner is ruined and he is able to deduce from all this that hitting yourself on the head with a frying pan is both painful and pointless. Yet, for reasons impossible to fathom, the Pakistan cricket team continues to beat itself about the cranium with a pan called Kamran.

Friday, March 11
England’s entertaining defeat today appears to have been the final straw for the ICC who have announced that their Implausibility Department will be investigating the string of unusually nail-biting victories and suspiciously thrilling losses that England have produced since they arrived in India. An ICC spokesperson stressed that they did not believe the men in dingy blue had been doing deals with bookmakers.

“It’s much more sinister than that. We suspect that certain England players have been engineering close finishes in order to produce a more entertaining post-tournament review DVD. Perhaps they are hoping for an Oscar nomination.”

Speculation intensified when it was rumoured that Quentin Tarantino was spotted on the England’s team balcony during the brutal post-modernist defeat to Ireland and that Bruce Willis had been seen practising in Matt Prior’s place ahead of the Bangladesh game. But Bob Willis, a leading film critic, was unimpressed.

“The plots are totally unrealistic, the dialogue from behind the stumps is wooden and unconvincing and quite frankly, James Anderson is just not believable in the role of an international fast bowler.”

A beating with a stick? Comes free with the privilege of being able to scrap for tickets to cricket’s biggest event © AFP

Saturday, 26th February
Today the ICC’s Director of Understatement, Mr Lorgat, described what happened in Bangalore as “unfortunate”. Unfortunate for whom, though? For the people who were beaten with bamboo sticks and left bleeding on the pavement simply because they had wanted to go to a cricket match? Possibly. Or was he, I wonder, employing the word in the way that evil villains tend to use it, in the sense of a temporary setback but with no lasting consequences for his long-term plans:

“Mr Bond is still alive? That is unfortunate. It will complicate matters.”

More likely, since Haroon is not, as far as I know, an evil villain, he just meant that it was very bad PR. Still, bad PR is pretty serious. It’s far worse than bad karma, for instance. Karma can take a lifetime to catch up with you. Bad PR can bite you on the backside before you’ve finished your breakfast. Only a swift dose of spin can cure an outbreak of bad PR. Mr Lorgat promised that “a centralised ticket system would be something they would look at next time”. So that’s that sorted then.

But this is just standard procedure for the likes of the ICC. The golden rules if you’re organising a major sporting event are:

1. Whatever happens was unforeseeable.
2. Whoever’s to blame, it isn’t us.

Pre-tournament it’s all slick presentations, confident smiles and photo ops. But when it’s underway and entirely foreseeable problems crop up, the men in suits rely on our human understanding. We’ve all organised picnics and forgotten the plates or sent out wedding invitations with the wrong date on, haven’t we? Relax. Take a chill pill. Easy to be wise after the event, they will tell us. Yes indeed. But the job of the ICC in this instance was to be wise before the event. That’s why they fly first class.

Sunday, 27th February
Aren’t ties marvellous? No, I’m not referring to those tatty bits of silk that sections of the world’s population are forced to wrap tightly around their necks on a daily basis. I don’t like those ties at all. I mean the good kind of tie, the kind that is a bit like a draw but better, providing of course, it is not tainted by some demeaning contrivance like a Super Over or a Bowl Off or a Groin Protector-Flinging Contest.

Ties put smiles on everyone’s faces. Had England sneaked one more or one fewer run today, there would have been a winner and a loser and the world’s cricket message boards would once again be clogged with post-match one-upmanship, abuse-laden recrimination and every flavour of witless jingoism. Instead, the butterfly of victory flitted this way and that but stayed always just out of reach and for once, we could bask in the pleasure of having enjoyed a game for its own sake.

The only bum notes in this uplifting session of free-form cricket were hit by former England captains. From the Sky studio, Mr Michael Vaughan offered up a noxious concoction, blended from the three worst ingredients in the punditry kitchen: sour bias, bland cliché and a vowel-mangling accent, whilst at the ground, Sir Beefy of Beefhampton could barely suppress his chortling as England began their chase well. The sound of a gloating Botham is not pleasing to a neutral ear, but mercifully England began to throw away wickets just as he was becoming unbearable and he was forced to go back to commentating on the cricket.

He was right about one thing, though. Who says that 50-over cricket is finished?

Afridi and Waqar contemplate with distaste the unprecedented outbreak of sobriety in the Pakistan ranks © AFP

Saturday, 19th February
Shahid Afridi thinks that Pakistan are dangerous. I disagree. A tamer set of green-clad cricketers you will rarely see. Shoaib Akhtar is an ageing rockstar, Younis Khan and Misbah ul-Haq are as sensible as a stout pair of brogues and even the captain is on his best behaviour. They’re about as dangerous as a Sunday afternoon in Bournemouth. And frankly, all this harmony, discipline and focus is dull, dull, dull; we get more than enough of that from the other teams. Loosen up, Shahid, and do something silly!

Monday, 21st February
As a species we have achieved much. We have travelled to the moon, carved railways through the sides of mountains, discovered supersonic travel, and eliminated the need to take two bottles into the shower. And yet it appears that, given 2000 years’ practice, four years’ notice, a potential audience of a billion and pots of money, we are still unable to satisfactorily arrange an efficient method of ensuring sufficient people gain entrance to a sporting event in exchange for a small fee.

The range of ways the authorities have found to deter people from attending World Cup games is impressive. Set up websites to handle public demand that then crash due to public demand. Refuse to tell anyone where they can buy a ticket. Don’t advertise where the games are happening until the last minute, like illegal parties. And, thanks to a suggestion from the Mumbai CA’s marketing consultant, a Mr Wonka, the public allocation of 10 golden tickets for the final have been hidden in bars of chocolate to be sold in sweet shops throughout India.

Tuesday, 22nd February
I don’t agree with this idea that Associate Members are cluttering up the World Cup. For one thing, it is a dangerous precedent to start excluding teams from competitions on the grounds that they haven’t got a hope in hell of winning them. Where do you draw the line? If such a rule was in place, England might never play in a World Cup again. Ditto New Zealand and West Indies. A few years from now, we could be looking at a tournament featuring just India, Sri Lanka and South Africa. Which might be better, but rather misses the point.

Anyway, you don’t always need a close game to be entertained. Today’s match, for example, had everything. There was an impressive display of formation politeness (“Would you like to catch the ball?” “No sir, I couldn’t, possibly. After you.” “No, you go, I insist”) a coconut shy in the covers, some hilarious clowning around on the boundary, and a lovely rendition of the traditional “Four Men in the Circle” dance. All that was missing were the silly hats, tinkly ankle bells and waving handkerchiefs. This troupe of English folk dancers are sure to be a hit on their six-date Indian tour.

And there was KP, continuing with his tradition of celebrating left-arm spinners. As heroic flaws go, this helplessness in the face of a ball heading towards him from a slightly wider angle is baffling. After all, it took a rare glowing green rock from outer space to bring Superman down. Though, to be fair, Clark Kent’s mission was easier: save the world whilst maintaining anonymity. KP has a lot more on his plate. He has to open the innings in the World Cup but doesn’t quite know how. Do they want him to be Kevin Boycott or Kevin Botham? As sportsmen would say, it’s very much swings and roundabouts being a superhero.

"Er no, Kevin, she's not the lady who wrote about the witches and goblins" © Getty Images

Tuesday, 8th February
Today we learned of another well-meaning, if misguided, attempt to employ cricketers as a force for good, this time to persuade people to read more. I’m not sure this is going to work. Frankly the news that Tamim Iqbal wants to be Harry Potter is unlikely to get me popping into my local branch of Books, Books, Books to contribute to JK Rowling’s yacht fund, though it might cause me to give the chap a wide berth if I met him at a party.

Perhaps the biggest mistake of all was inviting a Mr Pietersen to get involved. As he reviewed some of the classics of the English language, he kept us up to date via Twitter. This, for example, is what he had to say about Pride and Prejudice:

“Sum woman from the old days talking s*&t about bonnets and stuff!!!!”

This was his verdict on Martin Amis’s seminal 1980s work Money:

“Blokes a muppet!!! Noes nothing about money!!! He’s not even a millionair!!!”

and this on 1984 by George Orwell:

“B*())(ks!!!! It wasn’t like that in ’84, cos I was there!!!!”

He did, though, find one classic worth recommending:

“Just finished Spot the Dog Goes to the Dentist, Brilliant! Red it in one go!!! Deff takin it to India to read on plane!!!”

Other cricket figures to have boarded the literary train were Lalit Modi, who for some reason was drawn to The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde; Ijaz Butt, who recommended The Da Vinci Code as a must for fans of conspiracies; and one Bob Willis. Mr Willis was not impressed with Bob Willis’ autobiography, complaining that he found it entirely predictable, trite, riddled with cliché and that the author simply wasn’t up to international standard.

Wednesday, 9th February
Jaded and exhausted, the only team ever to play a one-day series before a World Cup staggered off business class at Heathrow earlier today. It’s been a long old tour. Frankly I am jaded and exhausted from reading about how the England team are jaded and exhausted. The sheer number of self-pitying tweets, whining comments and sympathetic articles from sycophantic journalists has taken its toll. There is no other word for it. I’m jaded. And exhausted.

But I did find time to do a little post-tour research. I counted the number of articles about exhaustion and plotted them on a graph, and in the process made a remarkable discovery. There was a direct correlation between the number of one-day defeats England suffered on the one hand and the volume of material declaring that they were exhausted on the other. Interestingly the graph shows exactly the opposite slope to the one from four years ago, when articles outlining the importance of one-day cricket increased exponentially as England neared the final. And no one mentioned burnout.

Friday, 11th February
As Donald Rumsfeld might put it, there are things we know we know and there are things we know we don’t know. We know, for example, that South Africa will depart the World Cup at a stage just prior to the final and that they will do so in a manner that is either inexplicable, hilarious or both. We just don’t know exactly how yet.

AB de Villiers doesn’t agree. He thinks that he and his chums are “the opposite of chokers”. The Opposite of Chokers is an excellent title for the book that will have to be written if South Africa do win. Which they won’t. My money is on a runaway elephant demolishing Billy Bowden in the semi-final and the men in sweaty green being eliminated under the new Pachyderm Intrusion Regulations.

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.

KP finds a better way for preparing for the World Cup is to watch a ball being slammed across a court countless times © Getty Images

Saturday, 29th January
What could be more teeth-grindingly depressing than the appalling news that the years 2013 to 2015 will contain no less than THREE Ashes series? Well one or two things, I suppose. Wolverhampton in the rain. Discovering that Osama Bin Laden has moved in next door. Being trapped overnight in a lift with Brett Lee. Discovering that Brett has brought his guitar with him. But that’s about all.

The only consolation is that by the autumn of 2015, all those people for whom the Ashes is more important than cricket will have come to understand. They too will be sick of the brain-numbing hype-mongery, the plague of pifflesome previews and the Graeme Swann video diaries. Personally, I will be retiring to a salt hotel on the edge of the Atacama Desert in May 2013 where I will remain until it is all over. You are welcome to join me. Just as long as you don’t mention the A-word.

Sunday, 30th January
So now we’re booing Michael Clarke? Really? Does the egregious Mr Pietersen get such treatment even though every time he opens his mouth he sounds like a particularly tactless Terminator trying to blend into human society? Did Paul Collingwood feel his lugs humming with boos for those long periods in his Test career when he appeared not to know which way up to hold the bat? Did grumpy old Ricky Ponting get booed? Well, you get the idea, anyway.

Michael Clarke is a good cricketer out of form, which it seems is a lot worse than being a bad cricketer out of form. Worse still, he has committed the heinous crime of being a celebrity. But why is he a celebrity? Did he once eat a plate of cockroaches on a jungle reality show? Was he involved in a love triangle with a waitress and the Foreign Minister? Did he come third in a televised Latin dance competition? No, he’s a celebrity because he’s very good at cricket. He’s a fair dinkum celebrity, you might say, if “fair dinkum” is the kind of phrase you like to use.

Monday, 31st January
One of the oddities of modern cricket is how little its practitioners seem to enjoy playing it; indeed their enjoyment of said pastime seems to decline at the same rate with which their salaries increase. The more money you throw at a cricketer, it seems, the more likely he is to complain about having to play cricket. Take Jesse Ryder. He has informed us, via that open drainage pipe to the ego, Twitter, that having to play for Wellington the other day was, “a waste of time”.

Now, if he was suggesting that, set against the vastness of the universe, our little sport is an insignificant speck in the vacuum cleaner of time or if he was attempting to communicate some of the existential pointlessness of all human endeavour, then fair enough. But I have a feeling that “waste of time” is just code for “I’m too important”. You would have thought he’d be happy just be fit, healthy and playing the game he is so talented at. But no. It seems that Hollywood Jesse picks his movies these days.

And then there’s KP. The man is a PR volcano, a brooding, rumbling presence who every so often erupts in an explosion of hot, gassy nonsense, spewing dusty clichés and molten inanities in all directions.

“Our schedule is ridiculous going into this World Cup. It has been for England teams for a long time and that’s probably why England have not done well in World Cups.”

Yes Kevin. That’s probably why England have never won the World Cup. Because they’ve wasted their time playing 50-over cricket in preparation for a 50-over cricket tournament, when they could have been busy playing golf, opening supermarkets or spending quality time on Twitter.

Bob Willis was not best pleased about the notice from the SPCA giving him two days to get rid of the small dog he had grown used to carrying about on his head © Getty Images

Friday, 21st January
Yet more avant-garde administration from the wacky pranksters who gave us the self-rescinding lifetime ban and the incredible vanishing allegations. The PCB have gingered up the yawnsome selection ritual by flinging down a conceptual doosra.

Yes, we have bowlers. Batsmen we’ve also got. Wicketkeepers too (ish). But check this out: there’s no captain! That’s right. We’re sending a World Cup squad to India and we’re so crazy we don’t even know who’s going to lead them!

Reactionary old Waqar doesn’t get it. He thinks it’s preferable to have a captain than not to have a captain. He used to play a bit and he still wears a tracksuit from time to time, so he’s probably entitled to his opinion. What he’s not entitled to do is express it. You concentrate on lining up the post-nets energy drinks, W, and leave the rest to the experts. Or they might just decide to send the team to India without a coach either. Maybe Chairman Butt will do the coaching. Who’ll be laughing then, eh?

Sunday, 23rd January
Only extensive hypnotherapy, blind fear or a cocktail of powerful hallucinogenic drugs can induce the English batsman to play in an attacking vein for any length of time. Andy Flower achieved the apparently impossible in the Caribbean last year, by artificially stimulating their slog glands. But since that EU ruling outlawing the use of sub-cranial electrodes, it’s back to normal for the men in shady blue. And normal means stodgy with occasional showers of recklessness.

Let me explain. In different, distinctly un-English climes, where the bounce is true and the sun shines, fledgling willow wafters grow up trusting their swing. But hereabouts, where everything is the colour of damp, grass and soil are the batsman’s natural enemies. This is the home of the wary nudge, the stifled clip, the sneaky glance and the dead bat. A classically correct drive to the cover boundary may be possible on a sunny day at Lord’s in early June. But that’s about it.

So when the England captain pledges that our chaps will continue to attack, I fear the worst. Attacking, like drinking in moderation, doesn’t come naturally to us and we tend to overdo it. Whereas our most famous military victories, like Waterloo and Agincourt, were based on the forward-defensive, when required to take the initiative we end up with the Charge of the Light Brigade: a reckless headlong attack that had very little prospect of success. Which could well be England’s World Cup motto.

Tuesday, 25th January
People have some funny ideas about what a cricketer should look like. Andy Flower thinks a proper cricketer should be able to look down and see his toes. Australians seem not so bothered by the dimensions of a man’s paunch and even have no problem if he’s blond. But blond, pretty and a celebrity? That’s too much. Hence the opprobrium heaped on Michael Clarke for using Twitter when he should have been beating himself about the shoulders with birch twigs in penitence for his lack of runs.

And then there’s wannabe Indian bowling coach Fanie de Villiers, who has taken against Ishant Sharma.

“First thing I would ask him is to cut his hair short. He does not look like a cricketer to me. You need to look like a cricketer first. Batting or bowling comes after that.”

Piffle times codswallop squared. Dennis Lillee looked like an angry scarecrow with a stick-on-moustache and averaged two buttons per shirt from 1975 till 1979, whilst Bob Willis appeared to be balancing a miniature poodle on his head for most of his career. I seem to remember they did okay. Out of solidarity, every single member of the Indian bowling attack should grow their locks until they could pass for a heavy metal band. Apart from Sreesanth, obviously. That dude really needs a hair cut.

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.

Not content with their morning debauchery, the criminals then went on a wanton spree of reckless autograph-signing © Getty Images

Saturday, 15th January
So why didn’t Australia win the Ashes? A batting line-up crumblier than a 500-year-old fruit cake? Bowlers who flung down more pies than a malfunctioning high-velocity pie-making machine? A selection policy based around the roulette wheel? No, the truth is much simpler. On the first morning of the Boxing Day Test, captain Clarke and first mate Hughes attended a breakfast function. Hughes had a croissant, Clarke ordered a low-fat frappaccino with cinnamon sprinkles. The rest is history.

Most of us in the cricket-playing world have come to an understanding with Defeat. We accept him as an old acquaintance, like one of those people you kind of know, whose company you don’t particularly like but who you can never quite seem to get rid of. And he’s not so bad really. When he does pop round he just sits quietly in the corner, looking fed up. Providing he remembers to wipe his feet and doesn’t drop digestive crumbs on the carpet, it isn’t too much of an ordeal to accommodate him.

But Australia and Defeat do not get on well at all. Down under, they see this latest Ashes setback as a sign that the cricket gods are angry. And when gods are angry they must be appeased. So the elders of Australian cricket are casting about for a sacrificial victim to help them relaunch their currently beached national sport. And in the absence of dumb animals it is generally accepted that the youngest and the prettiest members of the crew feel the knife for the greater good.

“They were interviewed at 7.30am,” revealed a shocked Scapegoat Finder General, James Sutherland. “Some of us are still in our Lalit Modi pyjamas at that hour!”

During previous, more successful eras, Clarke and Hughes would be copping it, not because they had breakfast in public on the morning of a Test, but because they were capable of walking in a straight line at that time of day. Ingeniously, Sutherland manages to insinuate this too. See how metrosexual Clarke is? He can’t even be unprofessional in a manly way. Breakfast functions? What would David Boon say?

Sunday, 16th January
Andrew Strauss has been explaining why Paul Collingwood is only a little bit dropped. He needs to “clear his mind” apparently. In fact, Strauss repeated this phrase no less than four times, until it became a little unnerving. It makes you wonder what exactly is on Collingwood’s mind. Has he dared to voice dissent about the regime? Has he not been taking his Team England medication? Does he need re-education?

This England team puts me in mind of a self-help group that has been together just a bit too long, or possibly even the early stages of a cult. There are the vulnerable misfits (one-time failures, young fast bowlers with anger-management issues, immigrants confused about their identity). There is the sinister figurehead, with the misleadingly pleasant surname and the grating accent. And there is the scary right-hand man with the terrifying smile and the menacing platitudes.

The smug videos, the funny little ritual dances, the unnaturally cheerful demeanour, the converging hairstyles; these are the tell-tale signs of group mind-control and a dysfunctional family dynamic. We all know where this is going. One minute they’re an impressively well-drilled and close-knit unit of personable sportsmen, the next they’re barricading themselves into the Lord’s Long Room as police marksmen take up position and Henry Blofeld tries to talk them out via a loud hailer. Take your chance, Paul, get out now while you still can!

Shilpa Shetty can’t contain her excitement at the launch of her new venture: Big Brother: Airborne, in partnership with Kingfisher © AFP

Saturday, 8th January
I’m not sure the PCB have quite got the hang of this anti-corruption thing. The dial on their administrative machinery appears to have two settings: “suspect no one” and “suspect everyone”, and at the moment it is stuck firmly on the latter.

Danish Kaneria has not been charged with any crime and is not under investigation by the ICC. And yet he is persona non grata in Pakistan selection circles, as likely to get a game as Barack Obama, Rolf Harris or “President” Asif Ali Zardari, veteran spinner and connoisseur of the cut.

Why is this so? I have a theory. The PCB, having been late converts to the benefits of fighting corruption, are now zealots in the cause and, like all zealots, have to take things that little bit too far. And what’s the only surefire way to prevent players from fixing cricket matches? Simple. Don’t ever let them play in any matches!

Sunday, 9th January
The work of conceptual artist Lalit Modi continues to make waves. This weekend, the Situationist collective known as “The IPL” staged a live “auction” at which cricketers were led onto a stage one at a time and “sold” to “franchise owners”, who threw sacks of gold coins at the mediocre players but completely ignored the good ones.

Said one leading art critic:

“The way they subverted cricket’s outmoded patterns of talent hierarchy was breathtaking in its artistic vision. I particularly liked the bit where they put $400,000 next to Michael Yardy’s name. That was hilarious.”

Sourav Ganguly was unavailable to comment (although he is now available for after-dinner engagements and pantomime at very reasonable rates.)

Monday, 10th January
This winter’s disagreeable turn of events for Ricky P has caused a certain amount of introspection in the little fella. He wants nothing less than a review of the whole structure of Australian cricket. Next month Merv Hughes and Jeff Thomson are to lead a fact-finding mission to ECB headquarters to find out just what kind of futuristic, state of the art, next-generation set-up we’ve got in England that has enabled us to produce players of the calibre of Kevin Pietersen and Jonathan Trott.

To help speed the process along, I’ve summarised the key changes that the Aussies will need to make if they want to be more like us.

Break up those large, uncompetitive states with their concentration of resources and streamlined scouting and coaching networks and replace them with 18 or so smaller teams who will not be accountable to anyone.

Ideally, incorporate the word “shire” or “sex” into the titles of Australian teams. For example: Victoriashire, Queenslandsex, South Australiashire etc.

Quadruple the amount of cricket played domestically and introduce two new tournaments, at least one of which should be in an irrelevant format, such as, say, 35 or 43 overs.

Ensure that most of the money generated by Cricket Australia is shared amongst the chairpersons of the 18 teams, who in turn are advised to spend it on foreign cricketers, ugly new pavilions and luxury trouser presses.

Identify the 10 most promising players in South Africa and send them complimentary Australian passports.

Obviously there is a little more to it than that. Cricket Australia might also find it useful to try doing absolutely nothing for 20 years, and if questioned, explain that these things have a habit of working themselves out and that it’s all cyclical anyway.

So don’t worry Ricky. Just follow our example and before you can say “Allen Stanford!” the plastic replica of the Ashes urn will be back in Australian hands.

Baz and Jesse are impressed when Coney correctly guesses that their faces look red not because of the Indian heat but because of an accident with Dan's DIY make-up kit © AFP

Saturday, 6th November
Twenty-four hours have passed since we last heard from the lad from Pietermaritzburg, so to put that right, here’s KP. What’s happening Kevin?

“I’m on fire right now.”

Don’t panic. He isn’t really smouldering at the edges. He means, “I’m playing really well.” He’s talking in the dialect known as “sportsman”, you see. Still perhaps he’s missing an endorsement opportunity: KP’s Asbestos Trousers. “They keep me safe even when I’m on fire.” Or maybe not.

But even if you’re not married to him, you’ve got to love KP. Firstly, he offers us quotes like this:

“I play like a clown.”

To English ears, that kind of soothing self-deprecation is like a hot mug of cocoa in front of a roaring fire. It makes us feel warm and cosy. Because I too play like a clown and so do all the people I have ever taken to a cricket field with. A proper South African could never say something like that, at least not in public.

And, secondly, he can conjure up profound statements like this:

“I have been working really hard over the last six weeks to get to a place where I am at the moment.”

By which he means Perth, presumably.

Sunday, 7th November
If the PCB were an animal, it would be a lion. It spends most of its time asleep, then wakes to indulge itself in an afternoon of over-the-top savagery before sinking back into a contented slumber. Having done next to nothing for months, this most bi-polar of cricket boards has now begun to lash out in a familiar flurry of edicts, bans, punishments and extra-large stationery requests.

As we all know, the path to a corruption-free sport is paved with good regulations. So, taking his inspiration from the Code of Hammurabi, Mr Butt has listed 271 rules to which the Pakistan touring squad must adhere, on pain of an immediate double-life ban (a new level of punishment introduced just in case one of the life bans is overturned). Here is a taster of the new regime for the men in green:

“…Rule 17: And no player shall permit even a single hair on his head to exceed the length stipulated in the anti-corruption regulations, since it is a well known fact that the longer your hair, the naughtier you are likely to be. The team barber (Mr Afzal of Krazy Kuts, Lahore) will be on hand throughout the tour with his scissors and his PCB comb and has been given licence to snip at will.

Rule 18: We do not want to stop players having fun or talking to people. But unfortunately, we have no choice. You have all shown yourselves to be hopeless judges of character so from now on, all potential friends, hangers-on, casual acquaintances, girlfriends and squash partners must obtain an Informal Relationship Clearance Certificate from the Ministry of Elderly Aunts.

Rule 19: Never forget, my players, that when you pull on those dark green blazers, you are representing something bigger than yourselves. You are representing me. I am your master, that is why my portrait has been embroidered onto the breast pocket of your blazers and that is why you will wear them at all times, even in the shower…”

Monday, 8th November
Few teams have you flicking through the cricketers’ Who’s Who more often than New Zealand, but after five days of intensive study, I am now fully up to date in the matter of Watling, Williamson and Bennett. Of course, the real New Zealand stars are beyond the boundary. Whereas Twenty20 Danny Morrison is an egregious squawking parrot, Test match Morrison is a wise bird who makes fewer but more interesting noises. And then there is Jeremy Coney.

Quite simply, the man is box office. Quirky, unpredictable and prone to outbursts of genius, he comes across like a particularly brilliant detective. He deserves his own series. Watch Inspector Coney as he solves such fiendish riddles as “The Affair of McCullum’s Missing Runs”, “The Strange Disappearance then Reappearance then Disappearance of Tim Southee” and his toughest case yet, “The Curious Incident of the Empty Whisky Bottle in the Nightclub.”

“Elementary, my dear Jesse. Just blow into this breathalyzer please…”

England: they’re in the running, you know © Getty Images

Saturday, 30th October
The Ashes build-up is a carnival of maddening irrelevance; a gigantic sack of junk mail pushed, one envelope at a time, into the letterbox of your consciousness, a carousel of pointlessness upon which the same players go round and round and round, being prompted to say the same things over and over again until we no longer feel like rational human beings, and start to get the strange urge to bludgeon Stuart Broad to death with an enormous haddock. Or perhaps that’s just me.

Anyway, today’s brain fluff came courtesy of Doug Bollinger, who, under pressure to entertain us with his thoughts, came up with the revelation that he might not swear at Kevin Pietersen. He couldn’t rule out swearing at the other English batsmen, or indeed their wives, girlfriends or extended families, but he is not going to swear at KP. Indeed, he hopes to “put him off his game by not saying anything”.

I have my doubts about this strategy. I’m not sure that KP will necessarily go to pieces just because a bowler doesn’t swear at him. In my experience, having people not swear at you is on the whole to be preferred. But Dougie’s plan might have a wider application. I suspect that our quality of life would be greatly improved if, for the next three weeks, everyone concerned with English or Australian cricket adhered rigidly to a “not saying anything” policy.

Sunday, 31st October
Fortunately, in between the speculation about games that haven’t happened yet, there is some real cricket going on. I don’t think I’ve seen too many better demolitions than the one Abdul Razzaq visited on South Africa today. Once again Pakistan got themselves into a tangle, once again it was left to Abdul to extricate his team, and once again he pulled it off, lashing the ball to all parts with the lusty vigour of a farmer taking a scythe to a field of wheat. If he isn’t in the IPL, I won’t be watching.

Monday, 1st November
The latest news from camp England - that Graeme Swann had bruised his thumb whilst trying to pick his nose - sparked pandemonium amongst the gentlemen of the press. With only three weeks to go before the start of that thing we are not going to mention, did this injury mean the team might as well come home right now? Would it traumatise his team-mates? Would Her Majesty react badly to the news and announce her abdication? Did it have any implications for global warming? How many words can we get out of this? What does his cat think…

Tuesday, 2nd November
Herschelle Gibbs’ new autobiography has not gone down well in some quarters. For a start, To The Point is possibly the laziest cricket-related pun ever to feature on the front cover of a soon-to-be-former-sportsman’s collection of anecdotes. Worse than that, Herschelle has used this autobiographical tin opener of truth to crank open a container of non-athropodic invertebrates. He has alleged that there was a “clique” in the South African team. It appears that this clique was made up of “reliable” players who would deliberately attempt to intimidate their more talented colleagues by turning up on time, trying very hard and not getting out in a ridiculous fashion in the first over. And after just 361 internationals, this sinister cabal finally succeeded in removing a promising 36-year-old youngster from the national team on the flimsy grounds that he had only scored 12 or so runs in the preceding five years.

“Yes, Cosmo want me to be on the cover of their ‘Boys You Could Have Taken Home to Mother But Not Anymore’ issue” © AP

Tuesday, 12th October
We all enjoy watching top-class administrators strut their stuff. Whether it’s live auditing from Dubai or accounts reconciliation at Lord’s, millions of us around the world are avid followers of the bureaucratic superstars of the modern era. But many people worry. Are there enough kids willing to try their hand at pen-pushing? Where are the administrative heroes of tomorrow going to come from?

Well, worry no more, because the Global Cricket Academy, unveiled in Dubai today, will not just be for players or umpires. It will become, in the words of the ICC’s President, “the centre of excellence for cricket’s best and brightest administrators”. This is exciting news and here at the Long Handle we have been fortunate enough to have a glimpse of the curriculum that awaits the chosen form-filling few.

It is a challenging course. Students must first master the “Post-Prandial Committee Meeting Endurance Simulator”, in which they learn how to avoid nodding off in the boardroom when Haroon Lorgat is talking. They will also face a test in which they are given 20 minutes to fill a blank calendar with as many fixtures as they can, and to help them keep on top of corruption, the pen-pushing hopefuls will be taught how to pop down to a newsagent to buy the News of the World.

Wednesday 13th October
After a not entirely successful trip to India and an unfortunate slide to a point some way south of England in the ICC Test rankings (which yesterday prompted the Australian government to declare a national state of emergency) Ricky Ponting has been defending his star No. 4 batsman against recent criticisms.

“Ah look, I don’t buy the argument that he’s not what he used to be. Sure, Pup’s nearly 30, but if you ask me, he’s as pretty as ever. You don’t become an ugly bloke overnight, unless you get your hair done like Doug. I’ve got every confidence that come the Ashes, he’ll be back taking his shirt off in a tasteful way for one of the better women’s magazines.”

Thursday 14th October
At long last, someone is to be held to account for the monstrosity that is the mid-over advertisement. Admittedly it is poor old Lalit Modi, who appears to be in the frame for most of the world’s ills, including, as I understand it, the hole in the ozone layer, the existence of reality television and the assassination of JFK. And technically he is not being charged for foisting this abomination on the cricket viewer, rather for the way that the advertising was sold. Still, it’s a start.

Next we need to go after the people who introduced the rotating sight screen that doubles as an advertising hoarding and mysteriously seizes up at inopportune moments. Let’s bring to justice the man who first thought a blimp would be an exciting addition to the cricket experience. And Interpol must surely by now be on the trail of Shane Warne for aiding and abetting some of the worst adverts in the, admittedly fairly undistinguished, history of the scalp-refurnishing industry.

Friday 15th October
The news that James Anderson has cracked a rib at England’s dangerous training camp for boys is unfortunate. Team England had previously earned some criticism for letting their chaps play football, so they decided to steer away from such risky activities for their end-of-season jaunt, opting instead to have their more important players punch each other in the stomach for an hour or two. The good news is that Jimmy should be fit in time to take on Graeme Swann in the morale boosting pre-Ashes sword-swallowing and scorpion-juggling competitions.

Andrew Strauss keeps his mouth clamped after the ECB issues him a warning that England's matches would have to be PG-rated if he showed any teeth © Getty Images

Wednesday, 6th October
For the second year in a row, the ICC attempted to steal the thunder of the Long Handle Awards by holding their own, smaller-scale ceremony on the same day. Happily, they did not succeed in deflecting attention away from the main event and this year’s winners were celebrated by a packed audience (Mrs Hughes and Hughes junior) in a plush auditorium (the Hughes living room) and hosted by a distinguished former player (yours truly wearing a Ronnie Irani mask).

There was a surprise winner of the Most Appearances In The Long Handle Blog By A Former Indian Spin-Bowling AllRounder Award as Mr Ravishankar Shastri scooped the prize. A clearly emotional Shastri made a moving acceptance speech: “Who? What? Look, stop calling me or you’ll be hearing from my lawyers! No, I’m not shouting! You want to hear me shout? I’ll shout, I’ll shout so loud I’ll make your eardrums pop!”

Twit Of The Year is a relatively new category for which there was fierce competition from the English contingent. Messrs Pietersen, Mascarenhas and Rafiq all put in sterling efforts, but in the end, the panel of judges went for Mr Simon Trundler of Anothershire, whose Tweet to his county captain (“Give me the new ball or I’ll burn down your house”) was judged to have communicated a clear message with brevity and a welcome dose of dark humour. Mr Trundler’s prize has been forwarded to the open prison where he is currently awaiting trial.

Finally, there was another new award up for grabs this year: Captain With The Most Sinister Grin. Here at the Long Handle, we shy away from seeking undue levity in the physical characteristics of our fellow humans, for obvious reasons. That said, we cannot let the cricket awards year end without giving due credit to the considerable menace inherent in the smile of Mr Andrew Strauss. One judge said, “It gave me the shivers,” and another commented: “It put me in mind of a great white shark trying to sell double glazing to a family of tuna.”

Thursday, 7th October
Hussey major has expressed his disappointment that Cricket Australia didn’t refuse to allow him to play in the Champions League Twenty20. This is an interesting new development. Cricketers have always whinged about burnout. But here we have a subtle variation in which a player criticises his own board for not forcing him to stop playing for a team that he had previously agreed to play for. Kudos to Mr Cricket for his ingenuity and for taking his whingeing to the next level.

Friday, 8th October
Congratulations to Mr Misbah-ul-Haq who became Pakistan’s fourth Test captain this year (and advance congratulations to Mr Younis Khan and Mr Javed Miandad for their appointments in January and April 2011 respectively). Four captains is quite an achievement and equals the record set by England in that crazy summer of 1988 when the nation’s selectors dispensed with skippers as freely as Henry VIII rearranged his marital affairs.

To mark his appointment as Pakistan captain, Mr ul-Haq performed the traditional ritual of drinking an unspecified noxious liquid from an ornate chalice. He was then presented with a framed photograph of Imran Khan lifting the World Cup, a letter of support from the PCB (written, due to stationery cutbacks, in invisible ink) and a Dummies Guide to Cricket Tactics. Finally, he had the benefit of a handshake with Mr Ijaz Butt and (for a reasonable discount) got to take away a copy of the big man’s autobiography: The Butt Doesn’t Stop Here. Good luck Misbah!

To throw off suspicion, Adil Rashid lugs the Graeme Swann kitty he nobbled in a XXL laundry bag © Getty Images

Tuesday, 21st September
Another 24 hours have passed and still the journalists camped outside Butt Towers maintain their vigil. His morning doughnut delivery arrives on time. A curtain twitches. But nothing happens. Down at Lahore Central Post Office, a team of postal clerks are on standby, ready to leap into action at the first sign of a robustly built silver-haired gent carrying a package for Dubai. The clock ticks on. The head of the ICC’s Anti-Corruption Unit stares intently at his inbox, waiting for an email from Butty@PCB.nogov.pk. Somewhere a cricket chirps. The tension is unbearable.

Wednesday, 22nd September
It is an unpleasant truth, but the fact remains that sporting events become more compelling when there is an element of antagonism between the competitors. Commentators even have a special cliché for use on such occasions: “a bit of spice”. They don’t specify which spice, though they probably have in mind turmeric or something similar, rather than, say, nutmeg. I can’t imagine David Lloyd declaring, “There’s a bit of cinnamon out there today.”

Spicy or not, there was a feverish, faintly ridiculous feeling in the air that after a truly horrible three weeks, today’s match would somehow settle everything, that through the simple method of one team or another winning a game of cricket, all manner of legal squabbles, unfounded accusations and unresolved punch ups would finally be resolved. It’s certainly cheaper than an ICC investigation or a libel case, but not, perhaps, as accurate in its conclusions.

Largely to blame for this, PCB chairmen aside, are certain tabloid newspapers. Having supped heartily from the broth of controversy, the Sun was today trying to dip its bread in the reheated dregs. The “newspaper” reported a “string of incredible bust-ups” which turned out to be a single not-very-incredible bust-up between Trott and Wahab, under the headline “Strauss: Pakistan must not win series”. You will not be surprised to learn that Strauss said no such thing.

Thursday, 23rd September
The announcement of an Ashes touring squad is always eagerly awaited, although if previous English tours have taught us anything it is that this list of names is a mere down payment, an opening gambit. By the time injury, late nights, defeat, verbal abuse and personal indiscretions have taken their toll; the bedraggled bunch that turn up in Sydney will bear little resemblance to today’s select band of travellers.

Conventional wisdom tells us that this is England’s best chance in a long time of leaving Australia with the Ashes. Mind you, conventional wisdom said that four years ago and four years before that. Back in 2006, conventional wisdom told us that Freddie Flintoff would be an excellent captain and a Churchillian leader of men. Conventional wisdom is, in my experience, a deceitful blighter.

Sadly, the chosen XVI was not listed name by name in alphabetical order by a senior MCC man with a plummy voice via a crackly radio. Instead, in keeping with the general mood of make-belief and wishful thinking that characterises this point in England’s Ashes cycle, we were treated to a video montage with each player given a five-second clip, as though we were watching a trailer for a particularly feeble action movie.

Adil Rashid didn’t feature in any of the clips, or indeed in the list of reserves who will be coincidentally holidaying in Australia on a sight-seeing tour of some of the nation’s renowned gymnasia. Short of donning a Graeme Swann mask or kidnapping the Nottinghamshire man’s kitten, it is hard to know what Rashid has to do to get into the England team. Personally, I think it’s a conspiracy. I’ll get back to you with the details.

"I don't know about you chaps but I had a lot of fun this trip. But next time we come, let's really take it to the courtrooms, shall we?" © PA Photos

Friday, 17th September
And so it begins. Not so long ago Eoin Morgan could do no wrong. His captain was calling him a genius and so frequent and nausea-inducing were the tributes from the Sky team that I frequently found myself scrambling to hit the off button in the split second between Morgan’s name slipping David Gower’s lips and David Lloyd’s eyes starting to go all misty. I understand that, thanks to a personal intervention from Nick Knight, the Pope was considering popping down to The Oval to administer a swift canonisation today.

But no longer. Eoin Morgan has played a loose shot and lost his wicket. Cue furrowed brows in the commentary box. What was he thinking? Having seen these English love affairs before, I know the signs. That initial infatuation is starting to fade. Plans to introduce Morgan Studies to the GCSE curriculum have already been shelved and that thrilling reverse-sweep will soon be the epitome of recklessness. The next stage is a little way off, but we’ll know we’ve reached it when Mike Atherton uses the phrase: “I’m one of Morgan’s biggest fans but…” and proceeds to elucidate the 127 reasons why the Irishman should be dropped immediately.

Sunday, 19th September
We have no live footage of the Spanish Armada 1588 or the Battle of Trafalgar 1805, so the Ashes 2005 will have to do. Why is this being shown again? Because it’s Sunday and we haven’t seen it for a few days. Jolly entertaining it was too, though to be honest, KP’s hair doesn’t look any better with the passing of the years. But it was proper cricket, no spot-fixing or mudslinging in sight. Just good old honest-to-goodness verbal abuse and petulance.

Monday, 20th September
And so we near the traditional conclusion of a Pakistan visit to England, a tour with its own rituals, as formal as any state occasion. First there are the pleasantries at the airport, then, after a brief pause for some cricket, comes the official hurling of the first accusation, the counter-accusation, the entrance of the tabloid hacks to general booing, threats to call everything off, wild conspiracy theories and a scuffle or two before handshakes all round and a promise to do it all again in four years' time.

A week ago we had a scandal, now we have a carnival of stupidity in which every internet crackpot, every deluded administrator, rabble-rousing editor and bitter ex-cricketer have brought along their favourite hobby horses and are riding them up and down, waving this national flag or that national flag. I’m sick of it, quite frankly; sick of non-cricketing friends approaching me with a smirk, sick of the name-calling, and sick of being squeezed into a position where I must side with either the Sun or Ijaz Butt. In an ideal world they would both sue each other and lose.

So to hell with the lot of them. What the world of cricket needs now is an entirely uncontroversial series between two teams who between them uphold the best traditions of the great game and who can be relied upon to go about things in the right spirit without any unnecessary animosity. But while we’re waiting for that, grab yourself some popcorn, sit back and enjoy India v Australia VI: This Time It’s Even More Personal. Embassies on high alert? Tabloid hacks ready? Then let’s play cricket…

Virender Sehwag realises belatedly that even his most melting look won't get Yuvi to share the secret to his schoolgirl pink complexion © Cameraworx/Live Images

Wednesday, 15th September
The curse of Twitter has struck down another unwary pro. This time it’s Dmitri Mascarenhas in the naughty corner for an X-rated, though anatomically inaccurate Tweet addressing the alleged failings of the current Selector-in-Chief.

It is hard not to feel sorry for Dmitri, KP, Phil Hughes and the others undone by Twitter. Technology offers us ever more ways to get ourselves into trouble. Be honest, we’ve all done it; whether it’s accidentally forwarding a dodgy email joke to your great aunt, faxing a naked photo of yourself to the Vatican or even posting a mildly satirical article about Sourav Ganguly on an international website.

And if you succumb to temptation, these days, public embarrassment comes instantaneously. One click and your fate is sealed. To achieve the same affect as the hapless Dimitri, a cricketer in the 1930s would have had to send a telegram to every cricket fan in the country or, alternatively, wait until writing his autobiography, by which time he might have forgotten all about the f****** chairman of selectors.

But DM’s expletive-laden electronic missive does present us with a challenge. There were an impressive number of swear words packed into his 140 characters, but I think we can do better. This, for example, is my Tweet, from March this year, upon discovering that Ronnie Irani had been let back into the studio to talk about the IPL:

‘****Irani!!****??!!****??!!***trousers!!****!?^^^********annoying accent****!!!??***^^^****b*****y******obvious!!***^^!!’

Not a Tweet of beauty perhaps, but I think it captures my feelings and after all, wasn’t that what Twitter was meant for? So out of solidarity for the Hampshire One, I invite all Cricinfo readers to see how many profanities they can squeeze into a single Tweet. There can be no monetary prize for the winner, but I think I can arrange a six-week ban from having to watch county cricket for the most impressive entry.

Thursday, 16th September
Yuvraj has weighed into the match-fixing argument, offering sound advice for cricketers anxious to avoid unfortunate entanglements.

“You need to give off strong body language that says, do not mess with me.”

Certainly a Yuvraj hard stare would put me off from approaching him with a financial proposition. I suspect he has been practising his Travis Bickle impersonation in the bathroom mirror. “You talking to me?” No, certainly not Yuvi, wouldn’t dream of it.

But suppose a cricketer isn’t possessed of Yuvraj’s intimidating air; suppose he’s Ian Bell or Nathan Hauritz, what then? Well such a player must resort to other methods of deterrence. He could perhaps take to wearing a badge that says, “Belly 8s Fixers” or somesuch. Maybe he could have his hair sculpted into a scary style a la KP of 2005 or cultivate a highly offensive body odour. There are many possibilities.

The ICC has not been idle on this front. Every international cricketer is being invited to watch a DVD in which former cricketers found guilty of misdemeanours are filmed doing menial post-career jobs, like scrubbing toilets or commentating on IPL games, to the tune of a sorrowful piece of music by Coldplay. And to ram home the message, Wing Commander Cholmendley-Warner, head of the Anti-Naughtiness Unit, will be holding dressing-room seminars at which, with the help of slides and diagrams, he will exhort his audience to steer clear of shady-looking coves in trilbies and raincoats.

Alternatively, we could try a simpler, less exciting approach. If you are a professional cricketer and someone asks you to throw a match for money, say no.

"Oi, will one of you help me out? His knee is jammed and won't bend" © Getty Images

Sunday, 12th September
No one likes fielding, apart from Jonty Rhodes and one or two Australians who have probably spent too much time in the sun. Fielding isn’t natural. Most players need to work incredibly hard at it just to reach a level where they won’t embarrass themselves on television and even then, they can only keep it up for so long. England started the summer well, but it’s wearing off and they too are back to stumbling and slipping about in the field like newborn foals taking their first tentative ice skating lessons.

It came as something of a surprise therefore to hear the estimable Mr Afridi castigating one of his own players, the genial green giant Mohammad Irfan, for not acquitting himself well in the field.

"I'm really disappointed with this guy," said The Boom, "Cricket is not all about just batting and bowling, nowadays fielding is very important.”

This is rather harsh, I feel. Irfan could be forgiven for complaining that they’d said nothing about fielding being important when he sat through the “So You Want to Play For Pakistan?” introductory video, nor had it featured at any of their training sessions. Pakistan don’t even have a fielding coach, which is just as well, because the poor chap would by now be heavily sedated and occupying a padded cell in one of the nation’s more secure facilities for the terminally bewildered.

Monday, 13th September
An odd little competition, the Champions League, but it was fun to watch Makhaya Ntini loping to the crease again today as some Warriors had a splendid time beating up some Bushrangers. And thanks to British Eurosport, or more accurately, to their accountants, we were spared the experience of a studio full of dull men in open-necked shirts telling us what we already knew. This no-frills, straight-to-the-stadium approach is excellent. Now if we could just get rid of those commentators…

Tuesday, 14th September
The never-interesting dispute between those abbreviated titans of Caribbean cricket, the WIPA and the WICB rumbles on like a persistent cough. Today’s meeting kicked off when Tweedledum, head quibbler for the WIPA, complained about the omission of Ramnaresh “Hamstring” Sarwan from the list of centrally subsidised failures. Tweedledee, official bickerer for the WICB, brushed aside these complaints and suggested that the WIPA were just arguing for the sake of it.

These formalities aside, the meeting turned to further hotly contested issues. There was an interesting discussion about the desirability of cats as opposed to dogs, a stimulating debate on the relative merits of the two gentlemen’s mamas and a most enlightening exchange concerning the correct pronunciation of “potato”. Proceedings were brought to a close after a brief but vigorous swapping of fisticuffs and some open and honest hair pulling. Both sides agreed to do it all again next week.

Shoaib Akhtar is so fast he shakes the confidence of light that it is the fastest thing in the universe © Getty Images

Saturday, September 4th
The events of recent days have brought back some unpleasant memories; memories of an episode in my past of which I am not particularly proud. Since I feel, though, that we are all friends here and since I am fairly sure that none of you work for a tabloid newspaper, I thought it might be cathartic if I unburdened myself.

It happened many years ago, when running around on a hot afternoon still seemed like a good idea. I was playing backyard cricket and with the game at a critical point, I assayed a glorious lofted shot, sending the ball straight over my brother’s head and straight through the glass of our parents' bedroom window.

As you might imagine, there ensued something of an enquiry. My hastily constructed defence rested on the following series of ingenious arguments:

1. I never done nothing
2. You can’t prove I done it
3. Your proof is fake
4. You’re biased against me
5. The Indian Secret Service made me do it
6. I am very young
7. Okay, I might have done it but I’m not the only person who’s ever broken a window with a cricket ball

Surprisingly, despite the fact that I’d been apprehended with bat in hand and that our next-door neighbour had caught the whole thing on video, I was let off with a gentle talking to and a suspended pocket-money reduction. But I’d learned my lesson and from that day to this, I doubt if I’ve broken that window more than a dozen times.

Sunday, September 5th
It’s Sunday, so it must be cricket scandal day. This whole affair has put the upstanding cricket fan in a tricky position. On the one hand, we want to know what is going on. On the other hand, we don’t want to be seen purchasing a certain publication. Even visiting their website makes you feel rather seedy and warrants a swift deletion of your browsing history. The good news for Pakistan cricketers, though not so good for Premier League footballers, is that the normally sex-obsessed paper’s temporary interest in investigative sports journalism seems to be wearing off.

And the good news for cricket fans everywhere is that the Rawalpindi Express is still chugging along. Good old Shoaib’s misdemeanours seem rather quaint with the benefit of hindsight and there have even been those who suggested that he might have hit Asif rather harder when he had the chance. His run-up has dwindled, he sweats up like a horse having its first canter of the season, but he’s unmistakably a thoroughbred and it was fun to see him blowing Kieswetter away and then blowing him a kiss. Now if he can just get himself fit and not do anything silly…

Tuesday, September 7th
Goodness me, that was dull. A drizzly Tuesday afternoon, a half-empty stadium and the limpest Pakistan batting performance since the last one. Their supporters have had to swallow a lot this week, yet still they journeyed down to Cardiff in the rain to cheer on the men in green. They deserved a spirited performance. Naturally, they didn’t get one.

But my personal lowlight was the interminable, matey post-walkover chat between Ian Ward and Paul Collingwood: England are brilliant; Eoin Morgan’s a genius; you must be very happy, yada yada yada. The problem is that Sky’s ex-pros are perfectly equipped, from personal experience, to deliver in-depth analysis of massive English defeats. When England win, they are forced to grope for superlatives and come across like sycophantic cheerleaders in sensible trousers.

'Boys, everyone expects us to behave like a circus act. So instead we'll behave like the English! Who's with me?' © Getty Images

Tuesday, August 31st
The art of Twittering is so often undervalued. One forty characters are all that the Twitterer has and within these artistic constraints, must make his or her magic. It is not, perhaps, as demanding a genre as the haiku or the tanka but it requires of its practitioners a certain brevity and incision. Sadly, not all Twitterers attain Parnassus.

“Yep.. Done for rest of summer!! Man of the World Cup T20 and dropped from the T20 side too.. Its a f**k up!! Surrey have signed me for l …”

This particular Twitterer leaves the reader perplexed. What might that teasing "l" represent? "Lots"? "Levity?" "Lettuce?" Sadly, the author has no room to tell us more, because he has indulged himself in an orgy of full stops, exclamation marks and superfluous ejaculations, whilst the omitted apostrophe in "it’s" looks as ugly as his dismissal by Shakib Al Hasan.

Wednesday, September 1st
Today we had another entry for the Lord Nelson Award for Blindly and Willfully Refusing to Look Events in the Face. Mr Shahid Afridi is in town, an arrival that often provides a boost for jaded hacks as they clamour for a bit of excitement from Boom Boom. But there are no bored journalists at the moment and Afridi’s pre-series clichés sound like a man blowing a tin whistle whilst a hurricane rages behind him.

“What has happened has gone.”

Technically, from a chronological perspective, he is absolutely right; there is no disputing the gone-ness of events past. But what is continuing to happen as a consequence of what has already happened and, furthermore, what has not yet happened but might happen as a result of what has already happened is all that people are interested in, sadly.

“We’re here to play good cricket.”

Nobody cares, Shahid, nobody cares.

Thursday, September 2nd
These are exciting times for 50-over cricket. If it were human, the 50-over format would be sitting in a consulting room, explaining for the umpteenth time that he felt perfectly well, that there was nothing wrong with him and that tens of thousands of people agreed with him. The consultant, however, is having none of it and he and his team of well-meaning professionals persist with their doom-laden diagnoses and ever more elaborate and invasive surgical procedures.

The meddlers seem to be getting themselves into a frenzy of late, with a spate of new ideas to mutilate the most lucrative form of international cricket and so only today did I catch up with the latest. It is called 5ives. You might think this an unnecessary cruelty visited upon the English language, but it turns out that the name is the best part. It is an idea as fiddly, as complicated and as pointless as the Powerplays. Ah, but why not give it a go? Well why not indeed, but then again, why? Fifty-over cricket is not, repeat, not in decline, unpopular or on its way out. Leave it alone, please.

'Straussy grabs asparagus stalks like this in a bunch, chomps off the tips and spits them out. Doesn't he know those are the most nutritious bits? © Getty Images

Tuesday, August 24th
Psyops was the least intimidating of all the monsters of Ancient Greece. His plan for overthrowing the gods by putting it about that Zeus was a bed-wetter who cried at romantic films and was frightened of spiders didn’t prove particularly successful. And yet, there are still devotees of Psyops around to this day, in the CIA, MI5 and even the Australian dressing room, where a touching belief in the value of virtual sledging persists.

Naturally, the teasing has become a lot more sophisticated over the years. Simon Katich has, for example, questioned whether the fence panels Matt Prior has recently installed were ethically sourced, Nathan Hauritz has already got in a dig about the lack of screwdrivers in the Swann household and Dougie Bollinger has had some pretty hurtful things to say about the way Andrew Strauss eats asparagus.

Ricky Ponting isn’t worried about the Pommies either. Why’s that Ricky? Because he’s seen all the English batsmen and the ones he hasn’t seen, he’s got footage of, so there are no surprises. Difficult to argue with that. Still, short of picking an entire team of complete unknowns, it is hard to see what might constitute a surprise in the England line-up. Gingerbread bats? Darth Vader in a tutu? Adil Rashid?

Wednesday, August 25th
I’ve never been inside a branch of the Clydesdale Bank. I’m sure it is a fine and upstanding institution. Nevertheless, I can’t help wondering whether they’re really doing themselves any favours by sponsoring a yawnfest that has spread across the English summer like a particularly virulent strain of fixture algae. My overriding impression of the CB40, and hence of its sponsor, is of dingy half-empty premises, scruffy employees in funny-coloured clothes and a vague sense of despair.

And of course, rain. The ECB showed how much they thought of the new competition by scheduling it during the wettest parts of the season (April, May, August and September). Today Somecounty and Anothershire didn’t even bother starting, it was so soggy. In the absence of any entertainment on the pitch, we almost got an interesting discussion in the booth when Mark Butcher threatened to tell us what he thought of county cricket. Luckily, Ian Ward was on hand to forestall any danger of excessive stimulation on the part of the viewer.

Thursday, August 26th
We all know about shadows: long, shady coves who follow you about on an evening. Scary, aren’t they. Well, just imagine how scary a batsman’s shadow is. All that protective headgear and extensive padding must throw some evil-looking troll-shaped shade. No wonder Ian Bell always looks so nervous. Fortunately, at The Oval last week, the umpires were on hand to whisk the players off the field the moment that the shadows began to spread their sinister menace across proceedings.

Today the umpires had to step in again, this time to protect the poor dears from the dangers of artificial light. You might think that that the presence of expensive floodlights at Lord’s means an end to the problems associated with dinginess. Well, you’d be wrong, no matter how much you’d paid for your ticket. The floodlights are not there to light up the ground when it gets dark, dear me no. That is a rather narrow interpretation of the role of a modern lighting facility. In fact, they are only there to “support” the natural light. At the precise moment when these towering £2.8million structures start to do their job and illuminate the pitch, all play must halt immediately. The batsmen can then shelter in the pavilion until the sun comes out the following morning, at which point they can safely drive back to their hotel.

“And now the piece de resistance: making an email leak spontaneously to members of the media” © Getty Images

Saturday, August 21st
The conclusion of the third Test at The Oval was an exciting affair, but not without controversy. As England pressed desperately for wickets, Matt Prior’s imaginative appeals were recorded at 9.7 on the Moin Scale* and resulted in umpire Tony Hill being taken to hospital with a strained incredulity gland. As a result, the shiny-headed Sussex glove-warmer was fined 50% of his throat-sweet allocation and warned that future infractions could result in the fitting of an ICC gag.

Meanwhile, the ECB’s Chief of Spreadsheets, Giles Clarke, professed himself baffled at the poor attendances for some matches this summer. “I really don’t know what else we can do. We’ve set ticket prices at £80 to keep out the riff-raff, and we’ve even laid on floodlights to illuminate the pitch and give the crowd something to look at when the players are off for bad light. Frankly, if the general public don’t up their game, we’ll be left with no choice but to start using smaller grounds, which will inevitably mean a modest 50% increase in ticket prices.”

Sunday, August 22nd
There was a further escalation today in the long-running but never interesting wrangle between the WIPA and the WICB. In a surprise move, a spokesman for the WIPA announced that as the WICB had completely failed in its duty to adequately represent West Indian cricket, the WIPA had little option but to assume this function and was therefore renaming itself the WICB with immediate effect. However, within minutes the WICB retaliated by alleging that the WIPA was not properly representing the interests of players in the region and so the WICB had no choice but to take over this role and change its name to the WIPA. Whereupon the WICB, formerly the WIPA, instituted legal action against the WIPA, formerly the WICB, who immediately lodged a counter suit against the renamed WICB (ex-WIPA) for breach of image rights, and in retaliation… (to be continued)

Monday, August 23rd
In an effort to boost morale, the Australian cricket board have drafted one third of legendary comedy act The Chuckle Brothers onto their selection panel. Greg Chuckle, often regarded as the straight man of the trio, has been working on his own material and this morning had a packed press conference in stitches with hilarious one-liners about how he was excited by the challenge of telling Michael Hussey to retire and how he thought Ricky Ponting was doing a great job.

The Chuckle Brothers were cult heroes during their heyday in the 1970s, when they toured the world entertaining packed stadiums with their funny moustaches and foul-mouthed on-field antics. Since the group disbanded, founder member Ian Chuckle has largely eschewed the world of entertainment, preferring instead to concentrate on his commentary career, but was quick to comment today on his former sidekick’s new venture. “It’ll be a bloody disaster,” he joked.

* The Moin being the internationally recognised unit of measurement for wicketkeeper-generated annoyance.

Graeme Swann is dressed to the nines for a party organised by the Ugly Duckling and its family © Getty Images

Wednesday, August 18th
There has been an angry reaction from some quarters following the apology and suspension of Suraj Randiv for his involvement in what has become known as The Great Dambulla Disaster. The Amalgamated Union of Effigy Burners and Associated Light Arsonists have written to both the BCCI and the Sri Lankan Cricket Board, protesting at the manner in which the issue has been allowed to fizzle out.

"We note with concern,” their letter states, “that both boards appear to have taken a cavalier approach to this issue and in stubbornly refusing to pour petrol on the fire, they have allowed the delicate spark of controversy to be extinguished. We urgently ask the BCCI, the Sri Lankan government and possibly NASA and the United Nations to vigorously poke the embers of this dying scandal, in order to offer support to the hard-pressed likeness conflagrators of the subcontinent.”

Meanwhile the campaign to give Viru back his century has gathered pace. All Indian cricketers are being asked not to score a century in their next innings, out of solidarity. Already it is believed that Ishant Sharma and Praveen Kumar have signed up. And a charity single: “A Six for Sehwag”, designed to raise awareness of the plight of Delhi-based batsmen with only 12 one-day centuries to their name is to be recorded next week by many of the world’s best singers and Brett Lee.

Thursday, August 19th
After the great injustice perpetrated against our nation yesterday, all true-born Englishmen were united today in raising a mojito to the ECB’s Emailer-in-Chief, Giles Clarke for his dynamic intervention that has salvaged our country’s pride. The crisis began less than 24 hours ago when the ICC announced the long list of nominees for some award or other. The precise name of the award and indeed the identity of any of the previous winners escaped most in these shores, but what did not pass us by was the total absence of any Englishmen on that list.

The sound of thundering jowls could be heard all the way back to Dubai, but in our hour of need, it was to our leader, Lord Clarke of Antigua, that we turned. A swift electronic mail, no doubt involving heavy use of the underline and bold font facilities and hey presto, sanity was restored to the ICC lists. I am proud to report that sitting at the head of the list of nominations for a brand new category, “Offspinners Named After Large Birds”, sits our own buck-toothed twirler, Graeme “Tiddles” Swann. Three cheers for good old Giles and God Save the Queen!

Friday, August 20th
The Sri Lankan Cricket Board, under fire for arranging too many matches against India have responded to the criticism that they couldn’t possibly find a new way to take on their rivals to the north by rising to the challenge. Rather than India versus Sri Lanka in India or Sri Lanka versus India in Sri Lanka, it was today announced that their next encounter will be Sri Lanka Versus India On Ice.

The two teams will tour the ice rinks of the world re-enacting classic moments from the recent past. Laugh as the hapless Yuvraj is teased by a group of small boys waving cups of water at him! Cheer as Murali collects his 800th wicket as the clock strikes midnight! Boo as wicked Randiv hides the magical ball from the hero Viru, then cheer as the heroic Sri Lankan administrator chases him from the ice!*

* Those buying tickets for this event will be guaranteed half price admission to Sri Lanka Versus India On Ice 2, due to tour next year. Book now to avoid disappointment!

Kids, daddy has to go and rescue a bunch no-hopers from the greatest ignominy of their lives. I hope you understand? © Getty Images

Saturday, August 14th
Today was Friends Provident Finally Finished Day; a thrilling eleven hours of cricket, featuring hovercrafts, cheerleaders and live white-line marking, played out in front of a typically English audience of transvestites, umbrellas and packed lunches.

Naturally, Dwayne Bravo was there; he can sniff a Twenty20 tournament from several thousand miles away and his compatriot, Kieron International was also in attendance, being a Somerset player again.

Neither enjoyed the best of days. Dwayne, unfortunately, had signed up for the wrong team and presumably will be speaking to his agent, whilst KP copped a horrible blow to the face that had the whole ground wincing.

And though the climax of this 151-game tournament was suitably exciting; rather like a Shoaib Akhtar delivery, it is not entirely clear that the final outcome necessitated quite such a long and exhausting build-up.

Sunday, August 15th
Not so long ago the Aussie cricketer ruled the world with a simple philosophy. He had his plans and he executed them. But times have changed and Cricket Australia is determined not to get left behind. Modern cricket is not just about believing in your plans, executing your plans or sticking to your plans: these days, success is determined by how well you plan the planning of your plans.

So today 200 of Australia’s senior cricket bureaucrats met at a top-secret Conference Centre in Melbourne to come up with a blueprint for benchmarking and attaining realisable goals going forwards. And thanks to a well-positioned insider (just behind a water cooler outside the Bryce McGain Seminar Facility) the Long Handle can reveal the seven-point plan in its entirety:

1. Win back the Ashes

2. Don’t fail to win back the Ashes

3. Remember not to forget to go to India in October

4. World Cup, blah blah blah

5. A rolling vote of confidence for Ricky Ponting to be renewed weekly

6. To support the vital work of Team Australia’s backroom staff, their numbers will be increased to 187 and they will be redesignated as the Strategic Unit for Performance Evaluation, Reinforcing Facilitation of Long-term Upskilling Objectives and Underpinning Success

7. Continuing to hold the Tait and Nannes families hostage until Dirk and Shaun accede to Cricket Australia’s entirely reasonable demands regarding their availability for the first Test in Brisbane.

Monday, August 16th
Following the unfortunate nocturnal difficulties of renowned cat lover Graeme Swann, it has emerged that Jesse Ryder has signed up with the RNZSPCA. A spokesman for Jesse claimed that the big left-hander had always been an animal lover and was prepared to go to any lengths to rescue his furry pals, regardless of his own or anyone’s else’s safety and no matter how tired and emotional he may be at the time.

Tuesday, August 17th
As India prepare for their 700th game of the year, the BCCI has denied that any of the team’s fast bowlers have written to them complaining about the schedule. A BCCI spokesman said that bowlers are free to ask for time off, providing they are prepared to accept the consequences. Pressed on what those consequences might be, the spokesman arched one eyebrow, adopted a sinister voice and explained that once you have entered Team BCCI, you don’t leave. He then cackled maniacally for several minutes.

I'll finance the sequel if you eliminate my enemies, 007 © Indian Premier League

Wednesday August 11th
We learned today of a cunning plan by Mr Modi in his long-running yet entertaining tussle with the BCCI. It appears that he had asked for two members of the disciplinary panel to recuse themselves. This, it turns out, is not an obscenity, but a legal term. His Modiness wanted the duo gone because he was concerned they were biased against him. It was a clever move, for had they accepted the principle that the deposed IPL Overlord could only be judged by people not in anyway ill-disposed towards him, the BCCI would find themselves unable to fill a panel, or indeed a phone box.

Unfortunately for Lalit, they did not accept this request and so the show goes on in the same compelling yet impenetrable way. The opacity of proceedings is partly due to the exotic tangle of business gobbledook and thorny legalese through which the outsider must hack his way in order to make sense of it all. Like a modern Hollywood spy thriller, the audience for The Modi Supremacy and its apparently endless sequels has only the merest sliver of a clue as to what the hell is going on but we do at least know who is supposed to be the bad guy.

Thursday August 12th
The Clydesdale Bank 40, for those who are unaware, is not the collective name for a group of individuals wrongly convicted of a theft of gold bullion. It is the title of a rather splendid little tournament that takes place throughout the spring and summer and that ends, hopefully, some time soon. Today I thought I’d catch up with county affairs and settled down to watch the Outlaws against the Bears. Once again, the team named after people triumphed over their zoologically titled opponents.

Before the cricket though, this being an English August, there was a certain amount of dampness, which forced Sky back onto their plan B. This involved Ian Ward talking to Mark Ealham and sometimes to David Houghton. I’ll be honest, it was quite dull. That isn’t their fault, of course. They are or were cricketers. Their job is or was the manipulation of a small round leathery thing about a field, not entertaining bored couch potatoes who should have better things to do of a Thursday afternoon. Still, next time that moisture seeps into proceedings, it might be better to go with Plan C and let us watch the groundstaff going to it with buckets and sponges.

Friday August 13th
Today I treated myself to watching something I’d recorded yesterday: highlights of the 1992 World Cup final. The early nineties was a golden era, a time when men were men and the moustache was still a fashionable means of self-expression*. Of course I enjoyed Inzamam’s nonchalance, Fairbrother’s guile, and Wasim's blowing away of Chris Lewis with an invisible inswinger. But there was even more fun to be had listing the subsequent careers of the participants. Coach, commentator, umpire, agent, journalist, Member of Parliament and drug smuggler: all human life was there. And the whole thing introduced by Richie Benaud from his mother-in-law’s back bedroom next to a giant vase of chrysanthemums. It was television cricket gold.

* No prizes, but a warm feeling of smugness to the reader who can come up with the correct number of moustaches on the field of play during that famous game.

“You know you’re going to have to give me all the licorice ones, don’t you? Else I’ll tell Dad” © Getty Images

Saturday, August 7th
I understand that Pakistan’s representatives at the ICC are seeking to amend the outdated rules on catching. Specifically, they will ask for the whole of Law 32 to be struck from the Laws of Cricket on health and safety grounds. A spokesperson for the PCB claimed that players risked a nasty bruise if they attempted to catch the ball, and abuse from television pundits if they dropped it, and that this constituted a violation of their right not to be laughed at in the workplace.

Sunday, August 8th
Just when you thought things couldn’t get any better for English cricket, it has been revealed that John Buchanan is to help the England players with their Ashes preparations. And big JB is already throwing up some fascinating ideas. For instance, the England management are said to be very keen on his five-captains-per-series proposal and are seriously considering the theories outlined in his bestselling pamphlet, “Setting Your Field the Feng Shui Way”. This innovative approach does away with the traditional method of placing fielders in areas where you expect the ball to go and instead focuses on arranging them at auspicious points on the field, to maximise the flow of cricket energy. Andrew Strauss has already implemented some of these suggestions, refusing to have more than two slips for long periods of the second Test on the grounds that negative energy usually escapes in the direction of third slip. As, from time to time, does the ball.

Monday, August 9th
The fallout from Edgbaston continues. It has emerged that during the tea interval yesterday, England’s prettiest fast bowler approached the ECB’s head nutritionist to ask whether it might be okay if he had some sweeties. Upon being refused on the grounds that f had some sweeties, he wouldn’t want his tea, Sulky Stuart stuck out his bottom lip, stamped his foot and stormed out of the dressing room, insisting that it wasn’t fair, and furthermore that he hated everyone. Broad was later fined half his pocket money and grounded for the rest of the week; punishment that his captain Andrew Strauss feels was over the top. “As everyone knows, it’s the summer holidays and forcing a young lad like Stuey to stay indoors when all his mates are hanging around outside the chip shop is harsh. Adolescent petulance has always been part of his game and if we made him behave like a grown-up, he wouldn’t be able to bowl as fast.”

Tuesday, August 10th
The latest from the Pakistan camp is that coach Waqar is contemplating some radical changes ahead of the third Test. The word is that the top six in the batting order will be dropped and replaced by Mohammad Yousuf. It is believed that top-secret analysis of Pakistan’s performances so far has demonstrated that dropping all these specialist batsmen is likely to have very little effect on the outcome of future games in terms of runs scored or catches taken, whilst it will offer significant savings in hotel and laundry bills and free up much needed bickering space in the dressing room.

Lancashire find a novel way to host matches in overcast conditions © Getty Images

Tuesday August 3rd

Some people have alleged that there is something rather futile, not to say tedious about the Clydesdale Rest Home Tea-Time Under-40s Inter-Regional Shield. Such cynicism is entirely unwarranted. Today’s televised game between a team in red and a team in powder blue was an absorbing affair, although sad to say, I was unable to watch the contest uninterrupted as I’d forgotten to deactivate the boredom setting on my new fangled Japanese television and it kept turning itself off.

I did manage to hear parts of Graham Onions’ return to the commentary booth and he appeared to be doing a sterling job in keeping viewers up to date in the matter of his incapacitation (I forget which Onions appendage is currently inoperable, but I gather it is one of the more important ones). He did though, make the mistake of implying that he regarded the latest architectural innovation at Old Trafford with something less than admiration.

David Lloyd was quick to put him right. I think we can all agree that The Point is the reddest rectangular structure ever to be erected at a cricket ground and as gargantuan scarlet oblongs go, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a better one. I understand that future developments will include a day-glo green hospitality pyramid, featuring a rotating restaurant at the apex and, in place of that outdated pavilion, an enormous blue hospitality bean bag, capable of seating up to twenty obese sales executives.

Wednesday August 4th

Dwayne Bravo has expressed his opinion that Trinidad and Tobago are the best Twenty20 team in the Caribbean. It is a bold claim, though I’m sure he knows what he’s talking about. Still, it might be more satisfactory if there could be some sort of arrangement by which we could establish which team was the best. I’m thinking perhaps of a tournament, maybe involving all of the islands of the region, perhaps divided into two groups and culminating in some kind of final? We could call it, “The Deciding Which Is The Best Twenty20 Team In The Caribbean Trophy”.

Thursday August 5th

According to his captain, Kamran Akmal has not been dropped, he is merely resting. Such consideration on the part of the Pakistan team management is admirable and maintains their strong record on staff welfare, coming as it does so soon after the career breaks granted to Mohammad Yousuf and Younis Khan and the Test captaincy work experience scheme that was instigated earlier this summer. By allowing Kamran and Danish to put their feet up, Pakistan are ensuring that they will be fully recharged and re-energised in time for their recall for the fourth Test, by which time Zulqarnain Haider and Saeed Ajmal will no doubt be in need of a little rest of their own.

Friday August 6th

Salman Butt said at the toss this morning that he was batting first because he wanted to get a score on the board. I don’t think anyone can argue that he hasn’t achieved that, indeed, it is definitely mission accomplished as far as getting a score on the board goes. His critics should note that he made no commitment as to the size of the score in question, or indeed the number of digits that it would comprise.

Didn't this guy explode? And not in a good way? © Getty Images

It turned out not to be a great day for zoologically-monikered cricket teams. I should have known better, really. The Bears were so named because of the popularity of bear-baiting in the fair towns of Warwickshire, a sport that didn’t usually end well for the bear. And now I come to think of it, the aquatic stars of the Jaws films didn’t usually finish on top either. In future I will stick to supporting teams with humans in their names, like the Outlaws, the Bushrangers or the Knight Riders.

Wednesday, July 28

The rain in Port-of-Spain made viewing hard to sustain. Nevertheless, I hung around. I rearranged my collection of in order of thickness, then in reverse chronological order, then finally by shades of yellow, from ripe cider to vivid sunshine. Finally, the Trinidad openers sloshed out to bat against Jamaica in front of packed stands. Ten dollars a ticket and a full house. Could there be a lesson here for certain county chief executives?

Trinidad were soon in trouble. Adrian Barath went early and was followed by the hapless William Perkins; undone by the modern mania for inventive strokeplay. We hear a lot about the Dilscoop, but it has an evil twin, called the Dilfail, that brings only mockery and amusement in its wake. Perkins did all the basics right, gave himself plenty of room, got down on his haunches but sadly, neglected to hit the thing and was castled in the reclining position, a most undignified demise.

You see, Twenty20 can make a clown out of any batsman. It is important, therefore, to try to keep one’s dignity in tact. Take Darren Bravo, for example. Things were pretty hot and sweaty out there and in attempting a delicate leg-side hoik, he found his bat slipping from his grasp and hurtling towards the boundary. But Bravo didn’t panic. After a suitable pause, he drew himself up, calmly strolled over to square leg, retrieved his blade and returned to his crease without a word, as though this kind of thing happens all the time. Chris Gayle himself could not have been cooler.

Thursday, July 29

Don’t mention Shakoor Rana. Or Mike Gatting. Or the series before that. Or 1992. Sky’s pre-game montage of exciting previous clashes between England and Pakistan avoided all that unnecessary unpleasantness and began in the dark of Karachi in 2001. It did include The Oval in 2006, but that unfortunate business was brushed over hastily. David Gower, clearly auditioning for a role in the diplomatic corps, wished for an entirely non-controversial series, with which Ramiz Raja was in agreement. But there was a third member of the panel, one MA Atherton.

Athers merrily expressed a wish for lots and lots of lovely controversy. He even scoffed at the Spirit Of Cricket, causing his genial host to splutter; the fixed Gower grin straining under the pressure. One day, mark my words, it will break and DG will go berserk on live television, probably throttling David Lloyd and assaulting Sir Ian Botham about the moustache with the thick end of a microphone. The hope of seeing such a day is the main reason I continue to renew my subscription.

Ask yourself: do you want this man, smelly kitbags and all, in your living room? © Getty Images

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.

Tim Bresnan signals the drinks trolley on to the field using his bright green armpits © Getty Images

But this time I was not reaching for my pillow and Chennai Super Kings slumber mask. I was agog, or at least, reasonably awake, because I hoped this would be the moment when I got the answer to one of the most pressing cricket questions of the day. As the Essex twosome droned on about self-belief incubation, skill sets, range-hitting and suchlike, I was hanging on their every word. “Ask the question, ask the question!” I kept shouting at the television. But Nasser did not oblige and so I turn to you, the Cricinfo readers, in search of enlightenment.

Why exactly do the England players sport fluorescent underarms? I won’t accept that these gaudy green ovals have appeared merely at the whim of a fashion designer. Mr Flower looks to me the sort of chap who is a stickler; the cast of man who takes care over arranging his sock drawer; the breed of coach who leaves no stone unmolested in the unending search for the burrowing beetles of excellence. The England players are green under there for a reason. But what is it? I can think of only two possibilities.

1. During the course of a game, a chap can forget himself, run around a little too much and completely overlook the fact that he is perspiring. What if he has to meet the Queen in the lunch interval? That is where the patches come in. Made from perspiration-sensitive material, they turn green on contact with sweat: the sweatier the player, the more vivid the green. Team-mates, noticing this chameleon like colour change, can have a quiet word and the player concerned can slip away to the dressing room for a deodorant break. And if you are using the emergency tactic of applying it without removing your shirt, the day-glow colour helps you to hit the right areas.

2. The bilious green colourings enable the England players to stay safe in the case of two relatively unlikely but potentially dangerous scenarios.

i. In the event of a localised power cut during a day-night game, traffic may become disorientated and end up on the field of play. By raising their arms, the reflective pit-patches will help stray drivers to steer clear of the England outfielders and a large insurance pay out will thus be averted.

ii. If, while on a "no fear" team bonding exercise, the squad should find themselves having to cross a rope bridge at midnight, carrying their kit above their heads, their underarm illuminations will act as a warning sign preventing low flying owls from becoming tangled in Ryan Sidebottom’s hair or mistaking Steven Finn for a poplar tree.

These seem to me to be perfectly plausible, but I accept that they may not represent the whole truth, so I invite the Cricinfo readers to help me solve this conundrum. Any solutions will be gratefully received, although logical, rational or sensible contributions will, as ever, be frowned upon.

Graeme Swann forgets it’s just an ODI and indulges in an unseemly spot of fist-brandishing © Getty Images

Fifty-over cricket is dead; I think we can all agree on that. It’s so last century; it’s a form of public spectacle as passé as karaoke and bear-baiting.

It is, therefore, regrettable that so many members of the general public chose to gather in Cardiff on Thursday to watch a performance of this outdated art form. Don’t they read the papers? Have they not listened to James Sutherland? The ECB had done their best to discourage spectators, holding the first two games of the series at the extremities of the island, but still, certain reactionary members of the public seem unable to get with the programme.

To mark their disgust at being forced to play such an antiquated format, Australia deliberately did not hit their straps. Failure to hit one’s straps is, as we know, a very serious matter in Antipodean circles. Outwardly they appeared the same. One or two of them retain a quaint attachment to peroxide. Shane Watson still looks as though he may burst out of his shirt, Incredible Hulk-like at any moment; indeed I believe he may have inflated himself a notch or two for the occasion. And Ricky still can’t bring himself to ride the hirsute train all the way to Beard Town.

But make no mistake, this was an Australian team playing under protest. And to reinforce the point they deliberately turned up without a single fast bowler. Instead, they wrote, “fast medium” next to Watson’s name on the team sheet; a description that frankly borders on the sarcastic. An Australian team without fast bowlers is like a bully unable to make a fist. Free from the threat of retaliation, England were able to batter their visitors with impunity and we were treated to the novel spectacle of a succession of sunset-clad tourists going to pieces at the merest sniff of leather.

The sight of Paine, Ponting, Clarke and Watson getting a little flappy with the short ball provoked Michael Holding to nostalgia. He reminded us that it was not so long ago that short-pitched bowling was considered, in England and Australia, to be, if you’ll excuse the pun, beyond the pale. This, of course, was a view not widely held in England in 1932, or indeed in Australia in 1975, but which became popular at some point during the summer of 1976 and remained so until roughly the moment that Courtney Walsh bowled his last nose-rearranging lifter.

Anyway it was a hollow victory in the end for England and their patented “no fear” cricket (a concept that boils down to a realisation, some 14 years after the introduction of fielding restrictions, that it might be a good wheeze to have a swing in the early overs). By allowing themselves to be spanked for the second time in a week, the Australians were clearly making a satirical point about the need for reform of the 50-over format. Sadly, it appears that this subtlety went completely over the heads of the spectators, who by turning up in the first place showed themselves to be completely out of touch with the modern game. Frankly, our administrators deserve better.

	If looks could kill, Jimmy Anderson's glare would struggle to make a baby bawl © Getty Images

So not a Bang, then but a whimper. At times during the England versus Bangladesh double-header (two matches, while it may paper over a crack in the Future Tours Programme, does not a series make) the viewers felt they were watching something rather beautiful in the making, that the glorious day on which the Bangladeshis would silence those dreary naysayers and silence them good and proper was imminent.

But it wasn’t to be. Now I long ago mislaid my patriotism, so am probably not best placed to hold forth on this subject, but like Kieron Pollard with his one big shot, I will plough on regardless. I think there is a frontier in the mind, a wall of the imagination. On this side are those of an English persuasion who had a sneaky desire to see the Tigers win and for whom an England win would be a ho-hum affair. Let’s call them the civilised folk.

I’m not too sure what happens on the other side of the wall; I’ve not been over there for some time, but from what I can make out it involves the vigorous waving of flags, the frequent application of water-based paints to one’s face (and frankly with my complexion, the last thing I need is extra whitening) and the replacement of each of cricket’s delicious complexities with a crude weighing up of whether England are winning (which is good) or losing (which is bad).

Those of us on this side of the one-eyed wall for example, would have enjoyed the drama of the ominous clouds and the imminence of swing-bowling doom on Sunday morning, but only in the same way we might thrill at the gathering storm in King Lear. Anderson and chums were the deliverers of the inevitable cruel thrusts but amid the carnage, it was the Bangladeshis we were secretly rooting for.

And there’s another problem. James Anderson. I’m not particularly well-disposed to him. It isn’t his fault. And I’m sure he won’t be losing any sleep over it. But yet I can’t get past it. My therapist says it is a healthy loathing for Lancastrians but she is from Leeds so I’m not sure that she is an objective voice on the matter. I suspect it is simply because Jimmy just looks utterly miserable most of the time.

Even on Sunday, with a cloudy backdrop, an entire stadium full of clammy Manchester air for him to breath and a long and tempting menu of batsmen who couldn’t play the swinging ball laid out in front of him, he grumbled, moaned and slouched, lumbering back to his mark with all the joie de vivre of an old-age pensioner with a dodgy hip on his way to the post office.

He is also the world’s worst sledger. His technique appears to involve a certain amount of muttering and what I imagine he thinks is a steely glare but which carries all the intimidating menace of a librarian raising their eyebrow at on overdue return. I don’t know who told these English chaps that they could sledge; apparently even Ian Bell was dishing out the trash talk earlier in the game. Yes, I know. Ian Bell.

Anyway, England won; Strauss is back, green and pleasant land, etc. etc. But perhaps Bangladesh may have their revenge in the fifty over format, particularly if England reverts to type after their Caribbean triumph. Previous successes have been followed by a long spell of nestling on the eiderdown of complacency to which the thoughts of most English cricket folk are always turning. Shakib may yet have his day.

	Yes little apple, I shall plant you at cover boundary © PA Photos

Personally, I find that the eclectic composition of the England cricket team is one of its redeeming features. Over the years, first, second and third generation immigrants have played in the name of England and no other team in world cricket has included such a diverse range of backgrounds. At the moment, a lot of them happen to come from South Africa, but there’s a reason for that: South Africa produce very good cricketers.

So, back to wee Trott. This Lord’s Test has given us a chance to get to know the little feller better, since we saw him only once at The Oval last summer and he spent so little time at the crease in South Africa. The first thing to note is that he appears to have picked up those comforting English traits of self-consciousness and chronic insecurity. We learned on Thursday that he only feels happy when the ball is coming out of precisely the middle of the bat and that he reads every word written about him in the press.

His most human characteristic though is his superstitious scratching at the crease. Over the first two days we watched fascinated as a tentative scratch became a defined drill, a definite rut and finally a deep trench. It would not have been all that surprising had he come out for Friday’s play carrying a watering can and a packet of seeds. Or was he combining his cricket duties with an archaeological dig in search of the lost gold of Thomas Lord?

I was never a fidgety player myself, I wasn’t usually at the crease long enough to establish any foibles, unless playing a forward defensive to every ball can be considered a superstition, so I am not best placed to judge on such matters, but I wonder whether other teams will be quite so obliging towards his horticultural excavations. In particularly, I foresee a certain amount of foot-tapping and lower lip pouting from our antipodean cousins this winter.

If Trott wants to eradicate this unfortunate aspect of his game, he could do worse than follow the example of his more illustrious countryman. For weeks now, the English press have praised the hard work that KP has put in to smooth out those little technical wrinkles and rid himself of that silly tendency to get out to Yuvraj Singh or indeed anyone else with a dominant left arm and an opposable thumb.

Thursday was his chance to put it into action. I am no expert, so I am not qualified to explain the detail of his technical recalibration, but I think it is fair to say that at first glance, the results appeared mixed. With the score on 227-2, he came up against Shakib Al Hasan. Stepping outside leg stump, he flailed wildly at a straight ball, with all the elegance of a giraffe caught in a treacle spill, and lost his off stump

But then what can you expect. He’s not even English.

	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.

	Douglas Jardine: not the sort to complain about rain rules © Getty Images

There’s nothing we Brits like better than a good old moan. Our current general election (which I am assured will mercifully reach a conclusion this Thursday) has once again turned out to be nothing more than a licence for us to indulge ourselves in our favourite national pastime. Everything is awful, the country is in a mess, there’s nothing on telly, we’re all going to hell in a handcart and so on.

It was not all that surprising, therefore, that on Monday evening one of England’s several cricket captains was seen on our television screens complaining in the rain, thus bringing together the two salient features of British life.* It did not matter that his chaps had batted in an impressive and entirely un-British manner or that they still only had to be beat Ireland to go through. He had a chance to moan and he seized it.

Now, I do have a smidgen more sympathy for Collingwood, P this time around than I did last summer. If you recall, back in June, England won the toss against the West Indies on a day on which rain was as inevitable as a Ray Price sledge. But rather than batting second, the reluctant skipper chose instead to bat first and moan later. At least this time he could argue that it was not his fault that he ended up in the field trying to defend a modest total against a team with all their wickets intact.

But hey, them’s the rules. Of all the methods that human ingenuity has thus far been able to invent, the jolly old Duckworth-Lewis is to the fore. There may be a case for a little tinkering with it here or there. But it is unfortunate that we only hear these impassioned pleas for mathematical recalibration of the D and L just minutes after defeat has arrived via that very method. If, Mr Collingwood, you have any suggestions for improvement, I’m sure the ICC will be delighted to read your proposals. Meanwhile, belt up and get on with it.

This also serves as a timely reminder of what the game would be like if the players were in control: one long, tedious squabble punctuated by whingeing. Nobody likes to lose, of course. I don’t like losing. I didn’t like losing when I was five years old and I made good and sure that everyone around me knew about it. But you get used to it. It is odd, then, when so many of the general public can adapt themselves to such an inevitable phenomenon, that sportsmen, who after all spend a good proportion of their lives losing, remain as five-year-olds where defeat is concerned.

The England captain would do well to remember another British tradition - not, perhaps as enduring as our predilection for moaning nor as dangerous as our cooking, but important nonetheless. It is the tradition of the stiff upper lip, a tradition preserved to this day in an annex of the British Museum wherein are displayed the pickled upper lips of Wellington, Marlborough, Churchill and many other notables. So play up and play the game, Collingwood, and in the meantime, I have sent you a parcel containing a can of easy-spray facial starch and a biography of Douglas Jardine.

* (It is also a little known fact that the song “Singing in the Rain” was originally an English folk dirge, sung by bitter old men as they trudged along the banks of the River Tees. It was known locally as “Complainin’ in the Rain”. Sadly the American version, for all its many qualities, does not accurately convey the misery and pessimism of the original).

	Sure, Adrian Barath got a century on debut against Australia but Zimbabwea's mighty army of ravenous spinners made short work of him © The Nation

Just how bad was the Twenty20 game between West Indies and Zimbabwe? There is as yet no internationally agreed scale by which we can measure cricket awfulness, so instead we must rely on the judgement of the experts. Alec Stewart played for England in the 1990s and so clearly knows a thing or two about staggering ineptitude. He declared Sunday’s game the worst international cricket he has ever seen. I think that says it all.

Both sides were equally dreadful, but in slightly different ways. Zimbabwe spent their first dozen overs swinging and missing, like blindfolded lumberjacks trying to locate something woody. They worked their way through The Book of Thwackery, exhibiting every variation of scything, lunging and groping that you could wish to see on a cricket field. Mr Stewart said it belonged on the village green. It wasn’t that good.

At 40 for 4 after 12 overs, it was all over and the Zimbabwean in the box, Neil Johnson, was expressing disappointment that at this rate, we would not get to see Keiron Pollard bat. But his companion, the legendary Tony Cozier, had been here before, on two or three dozen occasions.

“This is West Indies we’re talking about,” he said, “Let’s not get too far ahead.”

The man is a prophet.

Zimbabwe were noisy, keen and had the word “faith” sewn onto their tomato red jerseys. More importantly, they had spinners, dozens of them.

The spin bowler is the natural predator of the modern West Indian batsman. Apparently, even modest trundlers wreak havoc in Caribbean regional cricket. If Gareth Batty had been born in Port-of-Spain, he’d be on his 100th international cap by now. I understand that Kieron Pollard’s agent has insisted on a clause in his Mumbai Indians contract, exempting him from having to face anyone bowling slower than 70mph.

They tried charging down the pitch. They tried hitting them in the air. They tried missing the ball completely in the hope that it might catch Tatenda Taibu by surprise and sneak past for four byes. They didn’t so much collapse like a house of cards as sink slowly into oblivion like a house constructed on quicksand. At the end of game, the echo of booing drifted across the home ground of the second best Twenty20 team in the world. First Bangladesh, now Zimbabwe. Is there anyone left to lose to?

Bob Willis would have loved the carnival of comedy in Trinidad. Instead, he was stuck in Bangladesh, watching comparatively good cricket. But being a professional, he can adapt his curmudgeonly style to any conditions. I turned on late for Tuesday’s game but within 60 seconds he had already worked in two complaints. First, he bemoaned the effect of the new fielding restrictions on one-day bowlers’ economy rates. Then Stuart Broad had the misfortune to drop a sitter. "Playground stuff,” sighed Bob, keeping his own personal moan rate at a healthy two per over.

This game also produced the best banner of the year so far: “Tigers are hungry. Cook, go to kitchen.” Genius.

	The deep-conditioning and exfolliating worked. The big screen loves me © Getty Images

Saturday’s Twenty20 game was an intriguing desert clash between England and a Shahid Afridi XI at a venue that could have been renamed Afridi World for the night. Among the Aztec hats, carnival masks, fluffy toys and inflatable camels there was an abundance of banners and placards, and a brief survey revealed that 99% of them referenced Mr Boom. His appearances on the big screen (approximately once every 30 seconds) sparked waves of jubilation, and the entire occasion seemed to be building to one point: the moment when the man himself arrived at the crease. Time divided neatly into two periods: BA (Before Afridi) and AA (After Afridi).

One of the few banners not proclaiming Shahid-love exhorted the Pakistan players to “captain like Imran, bowl like Wasim and Waqar and bat like Aamer, Saeed and Ramiz”. But until Abdul Razzaq entered the arena, their batting had been more Mr Bean than Mr Raja.

British politician Dennis Healey had a habit of referring to people who behaved foolishly as “silly billies”. This phrase popped back into my head as I watched Imran Nazir set about the task of laying a solid platform for Pakistan’s run chase. The first ball was hit stylishly down the ground for four. The second was blocked. The third was dispatched swiftly to the palms of third man with a mighty forehand smash.

His opening partner proved no more resilient. Soon after Nazir’s departure, Imran Farhat hit the ball straight up in the air and watched the white sphere soar into the night sky, like a wide-eyed child amazed by a firework.

It got worse.

“Don’t do it, Umar!” pleaded Ramiz Raja in the commentary box as the younger Akmal tried to hit Swann out of the ground in exactly the same way that Afridi hadn’t. Umar did it anyway and was caught where Ramiz said he would be. Silly billies.

Once again, the hard work fell to Fawad Alam, the slightly built innings-repairman, who it seems is permanently on call, and Razzaq, who did pretty much what Nazir and Co had tried to do, but better and harder and with more swagger. His mighty timberwork bludgeoned England to the ground and supplanted Kevin Pietersen’s earlier biffery.

Pietersen, of course, provides more entertainment value than just his knack with the willow. He is an absolutely hilarious runner between the wickets, mainly because he does not regard it as necessary to notify his colleague of his intentions. He first collided with Trott when he took the wrong lane, and then a few balls later ran him out. He bats like a magician but he runs like a sprinter with a hearing problem who can’t be sure the starter has fired his pistol but isn’t taking any chances.

But it was Pakistan’s day and though they didn’t bat like Ramiz or bowl like Waqar, they do have an Imranesque captain in the wings, even though technically the little “c” on the scoreboard was next to someone else’s name. But all that Urdu you heard via the stump microphone emanated from Afridi. He was busy, enthusiastic, always on the move. In two or three years, his team-mates may find it annoying. For now, though, his energy can still jolt his team out of lethargy and he sets off little sparks of belief wherever he goes. Welcome to Afridi World.

	The pitch for the Kolkata Test? Why not? © Getty Images

Some weeks ago, I suggested that gagging orders for professional cricketers might contribute to the advancement of humankind. Not everyone thought it was a good idea, but it was gratifying to read last week that two more of the species have confirmed my faith in the benefits of an immediate restriction of their right to free or indeed un-free speech. In a moment, Paul Collingwood. But first, I give you Mystic Chris Gayle.

Last week he announced that West Indies would beat Australia 4-1 in a one-day series. Now, we all like a little bit of pre-game trash talk, Chris, and we all like fairy stories, but I’m not sure the two really mix. I mean, there’s got to be at least a hint of reality in there or the kids will lose interest. If you’d announced that you’d been kidnapped by aliens or developed the ability to travel through time by twitching your nose, then maybe you’d have had a little more credibility, but 4-1? In Australia?

It gets worse. In between packing suitcases, practising his forward defensives and having five lie-downs (or burnout-reducers) a day, it’s Paul "Chuckles" Collingwood, doing his bit to bring back the good old days, when pale-skinned types travelled the world, sticking their flag where it ought not to be and having a good old giggle at how jolly backward Johnny Foreigner really was.

“It won’t be easy to find a golf course in Bangladesh. If there is one, they’ll probably have wooden clubs.”

Wooden clubs, Paul? Why’s that? Oh I see, because Bangladesh is a relatively poor country. I get it. It’s a GDP gag. Good one, Colly! Got any good Haiti jokes? No? Probably not, best to quit while you’re ahead, eh. And thanks for giving us another reason to hope for a thumping England defeat, besides your part-time captain and the forestalling of Volume 2 of the Alastair Cook Story.

And now for a prediction of my own. The second Test of the Kumble-Tayfield Trophy (thanks to Hilton for that suggestion) will be played out on a pitch that is dryer than the Gobi desert, for which India will field ten spinners, with Dhoni available to turn his arm over, should the game go into a third day. India will win, South Africa will lose and much tut-tutting will ensue from certain quarters.

But I don’t see the problem. How warped is a game in which a "result pitch" is something shady and slightly disreputable, likely to bring a groundsman a sternly worded letter from the ICC Pitch Sterilisation Committee? The concept of the "fair pitch" is one of the dullest ideas in modern cricket. Why must every 22 yards be like every other 22 yards? Let curators give full rein to their imagination and let’s see the return of the minefield, the cabbage patch and the sticky dog.

	'This isn't what we ordered. Prior-y let's make an official complaint' © Getty Images

Take the upcoming tour of Bangladesh. A good opportunity to get some experience of Asian conditions? A chance to support the newest Test nation and give their supporters something to cheer about? Nope. It wasn’t so long ago, Mr Strauss that you were out in the wilderness of the shires, contemplating the futility of existence as you toiled away in front of two men and a dog. A handful of Test wins later and you’re suddenly too showbiz to go to Bangladesh. You need a rest. From what, exactly?

And there was something else I was going to talk about. Now what was it? It’s on the tip of my tongue ... Ah yes, I remember. Ball-tampering! I’m sorry, was that me? I don’t know what came over me. I sometimes have these explosive outbursts, usually involving highly inappropriate and profane language. Most unfortunate, particularly when it relates to something so seedy, so disreputable and so utterly un-British as the aforementioned interference with spherical objects. Ball- tampering! There I go again. Excuse me.

Still, I’m not the only one who’s said it. Some people were saying it on the television. Some ex-players, who really should know better, wrote it in newspapers. What was Michael Vaughan thinking? Children might have been reading! AB de Villiers said it at a press conference, but then he is South African and can be relied upon to completely misjudge the public mood. In fact, he used the phrase, “a little bit naughty”, which sounds delightfully camp when uttered in an Afrikaans accent (go on, try it).

Thank goodness then, for Wing Commander Strauss and the long hours he has put in with the Indignity Coach and the Chutzpah Co-ordinator. Just hours after his chaps had been caught live on television variously tenderising the ball with a boot or picking at it with a specially attached graphite fingernail, he managed not just to refute or deny it, he gave a sound tongue-lashing to those reprobates who had dared to offer the merest hint of a suggestion that an Englishman might have even contemplated contravening Law 42.3 or any of its sacred sub-paragraphs.

And backing him up in one of the tabloids was David Lloyd, employing a clever analogy to explain to us non-cricket folk why we hadn’t seen what we thought we’d seen. It went something like this:

Imagine Jimmy Anderson is a driver. Stay with it, it’s worth it, I promise. Now, imagine that Law 42.3 is a 30mph zone. Jimmy, in tearing at the ball with his fingernail, was merely doing the equivalent of 35mph in that zone. See what he’s saying? Jimmy was breaking the law, but only a little bit. Conclusive, I think you’ll agree. Although it does beg the question as to what 90mph might represent in this analogy? Presumably, destroying the ball with an acetylene torch and sprinkling the ashes onto Daryl Harper’s shoes?

You might think, then, that having scraped through that little difficulty, the England chaps might be keeping a lower profile. But not a bit of it. On Thursday they threw a team tantrum on the dressing-room balcony when Alastair Cook was dismissed. Then on Friday, another decision went against them and all of the England toys (officially merchandised rattles and dummies are currently available from all good retailers) flew out of the England pram. They made an official complaint. Against whom, for what reason and with what aim, it is not clear. But be in no doubt that it was a complaint and that it was good and official too, no doubt written in his bestest handwriting by the England coach. As you read this, Andy Flower is still sitting outside the match referee’s office, holding his breath in protest.

Fortunately, there are some former cricketers upholding the dignity of old Blighty. On Thursday afternoon, the day’s play had drawn to a soggy halt. In the Sky studio, David Gower, attempting to spark a little time-filling conversation, revealed that at dinner the previous evening he had been discussing with friends the prospects of any of the English players getting into a combined team. With undue optimism, he threw the subject open to his compadre from Lancashire.

“I haven’t given it any thought,” replied Athers, “It’s not the kind of thing I talk about at dinner.”

Ouch! This was the precisely the kind of deadpan comeback with which Atherton made such a fool of Allan Donald at Trent Bridge back in 1998. I remember it as if it were yesterday. Donald sweated and swore and ranted, but he just made himself look silly. I remember thinking at the time: get on with it, Mr Donald, show a stiff upper lip man. Don’t make such a scene. Yes, the ball bounced off the batsman’s glove and was caught. What do you want to do? Make an official complaint?

	The tri-series: an avant-garde celebration of the essential absurdity of human endeavour © Associated Press

Some have suggested that the Tri-Nations Tournament in Bangladesh is a less-than-gripping addition to the cricket calendar. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Triangular Extravaganza in Mirpur is an avant-garde celebration of the essential absurdity of human endeavour as seen through the medium of cricket.

Just as the abstractionists once stripped the figurative arts down to bare lines, so the Bangladesh Cricket Board has daringly done away with all that is superfluous in our sport. By insisting on playing the second half of every match in a paddy field, the 50-over game has been reduced to its essence: the toss.

So let’s have no more negative talk about this immensely significant, if ever so slightly damp, competition. I have enjoyed every minute of the Isosceles Cup and I have already planned my schedule for the final on Wednesday:

07:40 Secure my seat in front of the television
07:45 Cheer the arrival of the titles sequence
07:50 Whoop enthusiastically as the captains trudge out to the middle
07:52 Shout ‘Heads!’ or ‘Tails!’ as the mood takes me
07:52 Gaze open-mouthed in suspense as the coin hangs in the air
07:53 Listen intently as Dhoni (or it may be Sangakkara) utters those now familiar words, “I think we’ll have a bowl.”
07:54 Turn off television and go back to bed.

The Hypertridimensional Shield has, in addition to rendering overs 1-100 entirely superfluous, enabled me to watch some players I don’t see enough of. Amit Mishra is a case in point. Of the roughly 27 spinners employed by India during Sunday’s game, Mishra was the only one who caused the ball to rotate on its axis, and after a week of plucky tailenders hanging around forever, it made a pleasant change to see the batting duffers flail about like giraffes in a tar pit.

Skittling out the tail, of course, is part of the game that has gone out of fashion, like gentlemanly conduct or employing wicketkeepers who can catch. Which brings us to the curious case of Akmal, K. We learned this week that during the Sydney Test, the hapless keeper had been kept up nights trying to put his baby to sleep. But slow-motion footage obtained from the team hotel revealed some glaring flaws in his baby-rocking technique, described by Channel 9’s lullaby expert Ian Healy as "pretty ordinary". I’m afraid that the time has come for Mrs Akmal to seriously consider drafting in a replacement babysitter, at least for the remainder of the tour.

As for Kamran’s wicketkeeping, I don’t see what the problem is. I’m with the PCB on this. Five thousand dollars to teach someone to catch would have been an outrageous use of public money, money that could be better spent on desk stationery, name badges, executive trouser presses and the like. If absolutely necessary, I’m sure Ijaz Butt could be prevailed upon to give a demonstration. I mean, how hard can it be? Crouch like a frog, watch the ball, catch it if possible; it’s no big deal. And it’s not as if Kamran is getting the important stuff wrong. His chatter is some of the inanest and most annoying on the international circuit and that’s all you can ask for in a modern keeper.

Anyway, I hope the selectors see sense and retain him for the final Test, because he deserves to feature in the inevitable consolation victory. Yes, you read that correctly. By the strange laws of cricket physics currently affecting the game, it is blatantly obvious that Pakistan are going to triumph in Tasmania. I am as sure as if they were batting second in Dhaka. It’s their turn.

It is a lesson in the new cricket realities that the England management must absorb. I was somewhat dismayed at the weekend to see a twinkly-eyed Geoff Miller breathlessly extolling the virtues of his shiny new cricket team, with its multi-tooled bowling attack and devastating batsmen, reminding me of a 10-year-old boy telling all his friends what Santa had brought him. Long experience teaches us that Christmas Day’s glittery new toy is usually defunct by the time the snow begins to melt.

So delicately poised is the international balance of cricket power these days that for those who think they’ve reached the top, the taxi carrying nemesis is likely to be pulling in even before hubris has stepped onto the pavement. It would be far better, Geoff to describe your boys thus: "I believe England have the part-time batsmen to ensure that a likely defeat can be turned into a draw on a reasonably regular basis." Not sexy, I’ll grant you, but it might just satisfy the cricket gods and stave off the inevitable reversal in Johannesburg.

	Paul Collingwood rues not having been born in the days of timeless Tests © Getty Images

It is said that if you open any book by Cardus to any page, you will find what it is that you are looking for. By whom is it said? Well, by me, just now. Such is the genius of the great man’s writing, you may not even known what it is you are looking for until you find it. This morning, for example, I picked up my battered copy of The Summer Game, allowed the pages to fall open and came across the following:

“No lover of the game has a ghost of a reason for protesting against true and natural obstinacy at cricket.”

Quite right, Neville, straight out of the middle. As everyone knows, not losing is the essence of cricket. And the key to not losing is sheer, unvarnished, pig-headedness. Duncan Fletcher talks a lot about coming to the party. But he’s only telling us half the story. Cricket isn’t about coming to the party, it’s about refusing to leave the party, even when the other guests have gone home, there is nothing left to drink and the police are hammering on the door.

Ah, you might say, but what about Pakistan? Surely, they lost in Sydney precisely because they were trying not to lose. Not true, say I. Pakistan lost because they were trying to be too clever. Mohammad Yousuf has been incorrectly portrayed as a cautious skipper. That is a naïve view. His innovative in-out field (two men in, nine men out) was designed to puzzle Hussey and Siddle, which it did, to such an extent that they could only stagger the occasional bewildered run or 90.

But it was too clever. Pakistan were trying to fashion a delicate creation, a victory soufflé, when what they needed was something altogether stodgier and Durham-like. What they needed was a dose of Collingwood. Now, admittedly, the ginger-haired one is not a guru of grind - like, for example, the great Chris Tavaré . Tavaré’s Zen-like style has never been surpassed. He was rather like a knitter who only knows how to do scarves and so goes on row after row, knit one, pearl one, block one. Unfortunately, there is only so much scarf, or indeed Tavaré that you need.

But if Tavaré was the blocker’s blocker, Collingwood is a natural stonewaller, a man who only starts playing when the rest of the team have checked out of their hotel. Whilst Australians are at their best when sniffing victory, the English cricketer tends to rise to the occasion only when victory is completely out of the question. I was not privileged enough to see Ken Barrington play but my father speaks of him as a steadfast occupier of the crease. He was a rock, a cliff face; immovable, impassable.

By contrast, Colly is a lid on a jar of pickles. Not as awe-inspiring as rock face, I’ll grant you, but just as capable of defeating even the boldest opponent. No matter how hard you wrench, or pull or hit it with the blunt end of a screwdriver, the Collylid cannot be popped. You grunt and groan and roar with exasperation until in the end, your arms are tired, your hands are red raw and you drop the jar on the sideboard absent-mindedly, whereupon the lid pops off with a sigh. But it’s too late. You don’t care about pickles any more. In fact, you can’t bear the sight of them, and so you stomp off muttering something about lid-tampering.

I’ve never played cricket with Paul Collingwood, not even in my dreams, so I don’t know what it is like to see him plop your very best deliveries back into the dust like fizzled out fireworks. I imagine it isn’t much fun. I expect that when he closes his eyes, Dale Steyn can even now see that Colly crouch, that tap-tapping of the bat and that bow-legged forward poke from a shuffleboard player’s back lift. Block, tap, block, leave, block, tap. Repeat 276 times. Wrestling crocodiles was nothing compared to attempting to dislodge the obstinate Geordie.

	Giles Clarke, inventor of many valuable cricket laws © Getty Images

Life, friends, is a complicated, unsettling, sometimes dangerous business. We have to cling to what we know, to look to those truths that we can depend upon, which may not be for ever but which serve as useful beacons on the misty seas of 21st-century life. Fortunately there is one human foghorn in particular whose utterances always steer me in the right direction, away from the jagged rocks and into calmer waters. I am talking, of course, about Giles Clarke.

In the decades that have passed since he became ECB Chunterer-in-Chief, I have benefited enormously from his wisdom and even formulated some simple maxims to sum up his teaching. For example, Clarke’s First Law Of Cricket is a cornerstone of the English game. It states that if Giles Clarke declares his admiration for something or someone, then you can be sure that person or object is bad for cricket and entirely worth avoiding.

The elegance of Clarke’s First Law is that the converse also applies. Anything that gets old chubby cheeks blowing out hot air like a dirigible with a puncture is highly desirable and unquestionably good for the game. Only last week we witnessed a splendid pageant of colourful and spurious arguments as Clarke launched himself onto the airwaves to explain why the recommendation that the Ashes be on free-to-air television after 2013 was A Very Bad Thing. A Very Bad Thing Indeed.

Of course, under Clarke’s Law this means that it is A Very Good Thing. It has been easy to lose sight of this simple philosophical truth amid the barrage of disinformation and spin booming forth from the ECB’s media howitzers over the last five days. But like Luke Wright on his Test match debut, or a tabloid photographer trying to get a picture of Cinderella, we must keep our eyes on the ball. Though sultry Sky sirens such as Michael Atherton attempt to beguile us with their plaintive wailing, we must close our ears to it all and seek steadfastly for the truth by remembering Clarke’s Second Law of Cricket: Counties Come First.

This particular Law was born of a terrible truth. Deep down in the foul-smelling bowels of the ECB headquarters, just along the corridor from the Kolpak-cloning booth and past the boiler room where they store remaindered copies of Alastair Cook’s autobiography, is a yawning chasm of oblivion, the bottom of which is impossible to perceive. And a little way down into that unfathomed pit, clinging on precariously, is a hideous, slavering, 18-headed monster; deadlier than the Hydra and grumpier than Scylla with a migraine.

Each morning a Sky van delivers fresh sacks of currency notes, which humble ECB employees haul down to the basement and empty into 18 gaping maws, thus temporarily satisfying the beast’s appetite. But in 2013 there might be no more money trucks from Sky. After they have fed the young, the disabled and the women cricketers to the monster, what will the ECB do? Let the hideous beast starve, you might say. But Giles cannot. For long ago, he became King of English Cricket by making a pact with the creature. If he fails to keep it nourished, the magic will unravel and in a puff of hot air, he will turn back into a large, plump and slightly indignant rat.

	Thanks, I’ll pass © Getty Images

I don’t like the English cricket team. There, I said it. I feel no attachment whatsoever to this particular collection of blue-clad gym-botherers. It may be traitors’ talk, but I am entirely indifferent to the outcome of Friday’s semi-final. The match itself, I am looking forward to. The result is irrelevant.

So why don’t I care?

First of all, I’m not a natural patriot. The merest sight of a St George Cross and I begin to mumble angrily into my cocoa and feel an urge to whistle the “Marseillaise” or set fire to some Morris dancers’ handkerchiefs.

Ah, you might say, once a traitor, always a traitor. You may be right.

But ‘twas not always thus. Even though I grew up watching an inept bunch of no-hopers struggle desperately every summer, I took it for granted that I wanted England to win, and I took these losers to my heart. If I were asked to name my cricket hero, I would first lecture the interrogator on the inanity of the question, and then mutter something about Mike Atherton.

My levels of Englishness peaked in 2005. Watching reruns of that Ashes series, I realise that at the time I must have been blind to the drunken morons on the terraces, oblivious to the mindless, draining partiality of that summer’s prevailing mood and to the manner in which the subtle complexities of the great game were overwhelmed by a torrent of red-and-white jingoism. Australia were the cruel tormentors, the heartless tyrants, and we were finally overthrowing them. It was a victory for justice and freedom. Cry God for Freddie, England and St George!

But something happened during the post-Ashes hangover. You know what it’s like. A big night out, you wake up feeling depressed and you can’t remember where you left your shoes. Well, for me, it was my patriotism. I know I had it at the Oval. I’m sure it was around during the Trafalgar Square parade. But it had gone. And I haven’t found it yet. This summer, as England were being embarrassed by the Netherlands at Lord’s, I joined the worldwide club of neutrals and cheered the men in orange.

How did this happen? To be honest, I don’t know. There has been any number of disillusionments, disenchantments and irritations in recent years. There was Alastair Cook’s biography, Monty Panesar’s biography, the continued selection of Steve Harmison, the Stanford debacle, the canonisation of Andrew Flintoff, the total lack of anything approaching a global perspective on the part of the English press.

Or perhaps I just became bored of looking at the same old surly, unshaven, unsmiling bunch of really quite ordinary sportsmen. I grew tired of hearing how they were all very, very talented – despite all the evidence to the contrary. I began instead to take an interest in other, frankly more exciting teams. I began to enjoy the game for its own sake, without being tensed up in a clench of patriotic desperation.

And that is what I shall be doing on Friday, with a gin and tonic to hand. You are welcome to join me at Hughes Towers, providing you leave your flags in the foyer and don’t spill your lager on the Axminster.

	Full disclosure: your correspondent’s cellphone-alert tone is a song by this man © Getty Images

Burnout. It is the scourge of our times. And it can devastate lives. In fact, it struck this very morning. I had just sat down to my usual orderly breakfast, my eggs perfectly boiled, my toast symmetrically aligned and my butler standing ready with the Lady Grey. All that was missing was a crisp pile of fan mail. The clock ticked on inexorably. Eight thirty-one. Eight thirty-two. The toast cooled. Outside on the lawn, a cricket chirped. Silence reigned.

Then, instead of the comforting rattle of a brass letterbox, I was shaken by the shrieking of a polyphonic Freddie Mercury. I had received a text message from my local sorting office, informing me that my postman was unable to fulfill his contractual duties today. He had, it emerged, been delivering letters and parcels for 15 of the last 21 days and the Post Office management had decided to give him a rest, lest his letterbox-stuffing career be cut short.

My breakfast was ruined. The eggs were two degrees below their optimum edible temperature and my butler had sustained third-degree teapot burns. But I was not angry. You see, dear reader, I felt that poor mailman’s pain. I too have fallen victim to the curse of burnout.

Yes, I am ashamed to say that midway through the recent Natwest series between England and Australia, I experienced what can only be described as a spasm of ennui. I simply couldn’t watch another nudged single or another clumsy fielding pratfall. I was running on empty. I knew that if I didn’t take a break, I would be placing my sanity in jeopardy.

So I took off to the races and asked a chum to help out. He dutifully stood in for me during the fifth and sixth (or it may have been the ninth and 10th) matches, allowing me to return fresh and invigorated to catch the 17th game of the series and England’s statistically inevitable victory.

And it was whilst standing on the heath at Newmarket, watching those beautiful, athletic thoroughbreds galloping up the Rowley Mile, that a solution to the problem of player burnout occurred to me. Racehorses are sensitive, intelligent creatures. They are only in it for the hay, and yet in order to entertain us they are forced to run and run and run and occasionally thwacked with a leather whip, through no particular fault of their own.

So I have contacted the ICC’s disciplinary department to suggest a similar motivational tool for recalcitrant freelancers and lazy-arsed franchise employees. Take that, Mr Anderson, and get moving! Your job is to play cricket. We pay money. You play. That’s the deal. No, Mr Collingwood, I’m not interested in your bruised thumb, your dicky knee or your general feeling of world-weariness. Just shut up and play. And while you’re at it, do it better, too!

	“Hello, I’ll be your Ronnie for the day” © Getty Images

In less than three weeks time, the inaugural Champions League Twenty20 tournament will begin. Naturally, I assume you will all be watching. In these parts, the whole shebang is to be broadcast by British Eurosport, something of a coup for a channel more accustomed to bringing us the Baltic Wood-Chopping Grand Prix and Snail Endurance Racing from Calais.

None of this is a problem. I’m a broadminded kind of guy; I can live with getting my fix of the pyjama game via a rickety studio in Luxembourg. Anyway, thanks to the marvels of modern-day capitalism, I have no choice.

No, what is troubling me is the news that England’s very own Freddie Flintoff is to be part of the commentary team. Now Fred is a nice bloke, he does a good line in post-match self-deprecation, and I understand he has some interesting things to say on the subject of post-millennial immigration and its impact on standards of service in the hospitality industry.

Nevertheless, for all of his merits, he has one fault that renders him a commentary liability. He sounds exactly like Ronnie Irani. This is no trivial objection. For the last six months, I have been running a support group for traumatised IPL viewers suffering the effects of Post-Irani Syndrome. The symptoms they describe are invariably the same. Victims report seeing a yellow haze that they slowly recognise as the Setanta studio. They hear a man talking. The voice gets louder. They can make out the words, “I tell you what…” Then they wake up screaming.

The thought of this much-anticipated tournament being played out to a sound track of Lancastrian platitudes is enough to keep me up in the early hours, gnawing my pillow with anxiety. We can only hope that Freelance Fred is not being paid by the word.

I don’t know about you, but for a while now I have felt that there is something missing on Cricinfo. Sure, there’s plenty of informed opinion and pages of piercing analysis. Statistical weightiness? Check. Erudite journalism? Yep. Comprehensive information? You betcha.

That’s all very lovely. But what if you’re in the mood for some uninformed opinion? What if you have a liking for flawed arguments? And, while we’re at it, where are the wildly inaccurate recollections? Where are the vivid hallucinations, the ill-considered rants and the dangerously over-inflated metaphors? Look for these things on Cricinfo for as long as you want; you will not find them. In the march to the sunlit uplands of excellence, vast swathes of unexplored amateurishness have been overlooked.

Well, no more. I have been asked to venture forth into these territories, to pioneer on behalf of the dilettantes, the idlers, the malconents and the misguided; to speak for the silent minority, for those of us who like a little grit in our oysters.

My quest begins with a name: The Long Handle. What do we mean by The Long Handle? What is all about? Why is it here? Where has it come from? When will it stop? All of these questions will be answered over the coming weeks.

For those who can’t wait, all I can do is offer a little taste, a hint of what The Long Handle stands for. It is the look in Harbhajan’s eye just before he swings his handbag. It is the roar of an angry Sidebottom as Monty drops another sitter. It is the moment in a Shane Warne hair advert when you realise they aren’t joking. It is all these things and more. And sometimes less.