Shahid Afridi feels cheated after he finds the England team is not as pathetic as he was promised by the ICC © Getty Images

Can I be frank with you? I feel we’re all friends here and that I what I say to you will go no further. The thing is, I have a confession to make. For some time now, I have not derived any particular pleasure from watching the England cricket team. This will, I know, come as a shock to some of you, who were under the impression that the chaps in darkish blue were a throwback to the Golden Age of cricket.

But those of you not residing in long-term institutions for the mentally bewildered will understand. When England play cricket, they provoke many feelings. Boredom. Ennui. Fatigue. Apathy. Sporadic bouts of blind rage. Factory operatives are strongly advised not to watch England play cricket whilst operating heavy machinery. I can well recall one July morning when I fell asleep whilst Alastair Cook was taking guard and was only roused in the middle of the evening session by the squeals of my pet gerbil who could stand it no longer.

However, news reached me earlier this week of extraordinary developments taking place in the Caribbean and so on Thursday morning I taped my eyelids in the open position and tuned in. Immediately, I was drawn into a strange and unfamiliar land, an alternative dimension in which two aliens who looked a lot like Michael Atherton and Nick Knight blithely assured us that England would comfortably beat Pakistan. This was exciting, dangerous talk that told of a changed cricket landscape, of a new era in English cricket and possibly of a bottle of whisky behind Charles Colville’s cushion.

These two were, let us remember, prominent performers in England’s Cricket Circus of Calamity that toured the world in the 1990s, bringing hilarity, high jinks, pratfalls and exhibitions of staggering ineptitude to the comedy starved masses of the ICC member states. Now, here they were, large as life in their slacks and open-neck shirts, reclining in a television studio, adopting the blasé attitude of men who had placed a hefty wager on an event that had already happened. It was all most unsettling.

Of course, to an extent, any television appearance by Nick Knight is unsettling. I am no longer of the belief that he is running a mind controlling cult. You don’t have to worry, he isn’t dangerous. He is, however, starting to cause the indicator on my Irritation Gauge to fidget. Every question elicits from the former opener a pained frown, of the kind only usually seen on the faces of patients experiencing what might politely be described as lower intestinal difficulties.

Yet as the game unfolded, it appeared that, a mere seven years after the first ever Twenty20 game, the England players had actually been practising the art of despatching the ball to the boundary without it touching the ground. Previously the English method was to leave it to random instinct. If a chap was possessed of a certain robustness of limb, if the wind was in the right direction, if the moment was right, if the moon was in the right aspect of Mars and if he’d got his dander up, he might have been prevailed upon to assay an occasional lofted shot. Usually he didn’t.

But now the English are in possession of a Kieswetter, a Lumb and a Morgan and since they already had a Pietersen, their slogging goblet runneth over. Throw in Luke Wright’s one big shot and they have a team capable of going all the way, providing Australia withdraw from the competition in the next two weeks, Sri Lanka, South Africa and India continue to play below themselves and the twin evils of rain and mathematics do not ever again dare to conspire against Queen and country.

They are still English of course. Amid all the high-fiving, leaping and diving, there was the occasional scruffy overthrow, lack of communication and hands on hips indignation that tells of a nation for whom fielding is not something a chap does without being asked. And there was a touch of good old-fashioned Yorkshire surliness from Tim Bresnan and Ryan Sidebottom who both complained bitterly about being called for bowling bouncers over the batsman’s head shortly after bowling bouncers over the batsman’s head.

And yet, win they did. I am reminded of that old country proverb, often uttered by Warwickshire farmers on eerie mid summer nights,

“When the Knight be right, good folk take fright.”

I think we should all ponder that for a while.

	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).

	Gareth Hopkins closes his eyes, overcome by a wave of nausea at the sight of Dilshan's stroke © AFP

Last year’s World Twentysomething bash kicked off with splendid high farce as England slipped and slithered against Netherlands. This year’s edition began with one of those rare and happy events in which, if it were possible, you would like both teams to win. Let’s be honest, anyone who doesn’t like the way Sri Lanka play the game has a malfunctioning cricket gene.

And who could have a bad word to say about the chaps in black, everyone’s favourite semi-finalists, who have long been the acceptable face of the antipodes? It is true that (with the exception of big Jesse and the Welsh allrounder Scott –y – Styris )* they have the physiques of Olympians and, like their cousins in yellow, display a remarkable fondness for the tedious chore of catching the round leathery thing.

But there has always been something fragile and reassuringly human about the men from down under and along a bit. Like most of the rest of us, they know that they probably aren’t going to be successful and so they don’t get too carried away. Perhaps it is the black shirts, but they sometimes remind me of a collection of Church of England clergymen who have perhaps spent a little too much time in the vicarage gymnasium.

For a while it looked as though Reverend Vettori’s men would disappoint their congregation on a pitch that had the consistency of a Dundee cake and upon which Mendis, Murali and Jayasuriya had lots of fun. Mind, they didn’t always adopt the most sensible policy. I’m not sure, for instance, that the Jessescoop, a shot in which the batsman dances five paces to his left and blocks the ball with the toe of his bat, will ever catch on. But near the end, big Jake smote a couple of sixes, the grip of the blue-and-yellow constrictor was loosened, and McCullum the Lesser smote the winning six at the end of two overs of typically thrilling Twenty20 mayhem.

This tournament has also seen the welcome return of the Sky collective to the Hughes living room. Today’s studio guests were as comfortable and reassuring as a good long suck on a Murray mint or slipping your feet into a pair of old slippers. There was good old Sergeant Major Alec Stewart, sitting bolt upright and answering all questions directly and in a bracingly positive fashion. And to his right, Captain MA Atherton (Cantab) lounged in his easy chair, disagreeing with most of what his colleague said and generally regarding the whole event with an air of detached Wildean amusement.

And there was Nasser Hussain, on hand at a crucial point during the Sri Lankan innings to offer advice to Tillakaratne Dilshan, who was batting with the fluency of a man who can’t remember which way up the bat is supposed to go. Dr Nass recommended that Dilshan should just have a big old-fashioned mow at the next ball. Mere seconds later, Dilshan followed his prescription to the letter and was bowled playing a shot of such ugliness that even the local seagulls had to look away.

Welcome back, Nasser.

* This is, I believe, the first ever Celtic language joke to appear in the Long Handle. And quite possibly the last.