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?

Memo to MS: the calm impassivity thing can only take you so far © Getty Images

Monday, 13th February
In a leap year, strange things happen. February has an extra day, women can propose to men, and most bizarrely of all, England have won a one-day game. The last time they were any good at this stuff was 1992, also a leap year. Coincidence? Yes, probably, given that they mostly sucked in 1996, 2000, 2004 and 2008.

But the main thing is, they won a game. Pakistan finally collapsed like an exhausted school bully who’d already extracted all the lunch money and sweets he could possibly need.

Alastair Cook scored a one-day century, which is good news for English hacks who get to run the “Alistair Cook silences his critics” story for the hundredth time, despite the fact that even Alastair Cook’s most dedicated critics, including the retired colonel from Barking who used to follow Cook around the world haranguing him via a loud hailer about his substandard strike rate, have long ago admitted he’s not that bad.

But heading in the opposite direction on the career escalator is poor Kevin Pietersen. Today he was back in the role of “pinch hitter”, which in KP’s case means you pinch yourself if he hits it. Alastair Cook was so embarrassed for the man, he tried to play some Pietersen-style shots, just to remind Kevin what he was supposed to do, like flapping your arms vigorously to encourage a goose with amnesia to fly.

Sadly there was no take off for KP. Instead he gave us a painstaking 36-ball deconstruction of his own batting technique, before Shahid put him out of his befuddled misery. A few years ago he was swatting Warne and Murali into the stands. Now he plays spin bowling like a drunken trainee scythe operative tackling a field of hay in a force-nine gale. In the dark.

Tuesday, 14th February
International cricketers are pretty high profile these days, but they still have a lot to learn about how sporting superstars are supposed to conduct themselves in the 21st century. Take today’s game in Adelaide. India’s attempt to chase down Sri Lanka’s total ended in a tie but it turned out that they were a delivery short.

Now this is far from ideal. We don’t expect our crack units of elite umpires to nail every decision, but we do expect that between them, they will be able to count to six.

So what was the response of MS Dhoni, the wronged captain?

“It’s done and dusted…We can create a big fuss out of it, but what’s the point?”

Come on MS, you’re not really trying. I’ve been watching a lot of Premier League football of late, so I can explain to you how it should be done.

First, upon discovering the error, you should have “got all up in the umpire’s face”, as I believe the Americans put it. Convention demands that your team-mates surround the official, jostle him, wave their arms about and generally carry on like five-year-olds at bedtime. Cricketers don’t always get the chance to do this on the pitch, so you may need to stage the jostling at the umpire’s hotel, perhaps when he leaves his room to fetch his dry cleaning, or in the lift on the way down to the breakfast buffet.

You should then explain in your pitch-side interview that the umpire “was an absolute disgrace” before feeding your story to eager tabloid hacks who will regurgitate the half-digested controversy in headline form, perhaps: “Dhoni Blasts Umpire In Adding-Up Storm!” or “You Can’t Count Roars Skipper!”

Still, apart from the missed opportunities for controversy, it was an entertaining game. My highlight was the run out of Angelo Mathews. It is often said that men can’t multi-task, but as Angelo showed, we sometimes struggle with just the one task too. A reproduction of the Mathews thought process might go like this:

“Right, Irfan’s bowling, so focus Angelo, keep your eye on the ball, here it comes, oh it’s a full toss, I should hit that, damn missed it… ooh was that the microwave, my popcorn’s done, better hurry or it’ll go all cold and cardboardy… hang on, what am I doing in the middle of the pitch and why is everyone laughing?”

England were less than pleased to hear that Trott and Cook didn’t win the coveted Most Soporific Batting Performance by a Duo or Group © Getty Images

Saturday, 6th February
While the cricket world is engrossed by a fascinating Test series in Dubai and the Commonwealth Bank ménage-a-trois is just warming up, into our consciousness barges the IPL, like a messenger in a ten-foot-tall peacock outfit interrupting a village wedding to announce via a solid-gold loudhailer that the Maharajah will be holding a bacchanalian orgy and concubine market at the Palace and all are invited.

Or to put it another way, it’s IPL auction time. As usual, some of the world’s finest cricketers were on offer at completely random prices, which is what makes this game show so entertaining. The eager contestants queue for their chance to give the Wheel Of Crazy Money a spin and see what wacky prizes they end up with. Vinay Kumar $1 million! Sunil Narine $700k! Somebody bought Mitchell Johnson! Crazy!

In keeping with IPL tradition, there were a few English bridesmaids, and we now look forward to another post-auction ritual: guessing which of the unsold Englishmen will be the first to declare (whilst wiping away a tear) that they never wanted to play in the thing anyway and that their first priority has always been international cricket/turning out for Nowhereshire/spending April decorating the spare room.

Monday, 6th February
So, after a short but spectacular run, the England Test team’s touring show, Carry On Dubai is over. But if you’ve enjoyed their madcap mixture of clumsy footwork and hapless swiping, you’ll be pleased to know that the ECB has scheduled two more spin-themed farces later this year. Chaos In Colombo will open on March 26 and there are high hopes for the autumn production of Nonplussed In Nagpur.

Not all the reviews have been positive, but Andrew Strauss insists that England got better as the series went on and the stats back him up. They lost by a narrow 71 runs today, compared to a massive 72 last time and at this rate of improvement, they should finally be gaining the upper hand towards the end of the 2107-08 series.

Having already used up their stock of excuses, the English media have been a little short of plausible explanations for this unfortunate third outbreak of failure and so have fallen back on sniping about how slowly Azhar Ali bats, which is a little unfair. He may not be a dasher but the drowsiness induced by an Azhar innings is as nothing compared to the powerful sedative effect of a Cook-Trott partnership.

Anyway, enough of the losers, let’s talk about the winners, who are currently at the high point of the Pakistan Cricket Cycle, which is a bit like the economic cycle, or perhaps the life-cycle of the phoenix, and has four stages:

1. Chaos.
2. New captain harnesses the available abundance of talent to secure surprising triumph that promises much for the future of Pakistan cricket.
3. Someone does something silly.
4. Chaos.

At the moment it’s hard to see any of the players or coaching staff coming up with something silly, so I guess it’s over to you, PCB. There’s not a lot to work with, but maybe you could sack Misbah, appoint the Interior Minister’s nephew as opening batsman or even withdraw from the ICC? You’ll have your work cut out to turn this triumph into disaster, but I’m sure you can do it if you put your minds to it.

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.

Ian Bell practises the flummoxed batsman look for the next time he meets Ajmal © Getty Images

Thursday, 19th January
As a fan of the three-day game, it was great to see England doing their bit to promote one of cricket’s classic formats. There were no wacky declarations in their homage to 1980s county cricket, but they did bring on Jonathan Trott for some joke bowling and they managed to wrap the whole thing up by the third evening. Well done, chaps.

Saeed Ajmal was their nemesis, a smiling purveyor of psychological cricket warfare and cunningly fashioned straightish ones that kind of do a little bit. On the face of it, there doesn’t appear to be much devil in the Ajmal style. If he sold his deliveries in a high street shop, the customers would soon be complaining about the lack of choice.

“Saeed, where are the teesras you said you were getting in? And these doosras here look very similar to your offbreaks over there.”

“Ah,” he would reply, with a grin, “But if you look very closely, you can see that one bends slightly this way, and one bends slightly that way.”

And it’s true. Of course, Ian Bell’s visit to Saeed’s Supermarket of Spin would end after a couple of minutes of confused browsing, with the wee fella running out, screaming, “I don’t know which one to choose! I don’t know which one to choose!”

Bell is, remember, England’s officially nominated “best player of spin”, which admittedly isn’t a great claim to fame, a bit like being the tallest of the seven dwarves or the least unpleasant Republican presidential hopeful, but still, if anyone could handle Saeed, it was going to be Ian.

That didn’t work out too well and now England’s only hope of leaving the Middle East with any semblance of dignity lies in their batsmen finding a way to identify the doosra, preferably before it hits their pad. At the moment, I doubt they’d spot it even if the ICC were to introduce a new rule requiring the umpire to hold up a card stating “Warning: Doosra!” at the appropriate moment.

They will though have some behind-the-scenes help. I don’t mean Merlin the magical bowling machine. I’m talking about the Sky commentators. We should never forget one of the fundamental principles of modern cricket, known as Murali’s Law, which states that the extent to which a spin bowler’s action is a problem is directly related to the number of opponents he has dismissed in the current series.

We have already heard Bob Willis talking ominously about long sleeves and crooked elbows and ahead of the second Test, Sky are working on a giant rubber protractor which Nasser Hussain will hold up in front of the camera every time Saeed bowls in order to give us regular readouts on his angle of arm-bend. Expect more public tastings of vintage Chateau Sour as the series goes on.

Pakistan fans, meanwhile, were having a fantastic time, watching a match in which their team started off well, carried on doing well and utterly refused to throw it away in the most painful way possible right at the end. And in between watching the clatter of English wickets, there was the added entertainment of goading Ian Botham via Twitter, a pastime which obviously I could not possibly endorse.

This metamorphosis from embarrassing shambles to casual success would be remarkable for most teams, but for Pakistan, it’s just another 12 months. With their opponents in disarray, the series is theirs for the taking. Providing they don’t do anything silly…