Lasith Malinga helps out at the macaroni and fusili pasta section of Colombo's gourmet stores © Getty Images

Wednesday, 2nd November
Something strange is afoot. Back at the soggy end of September, Graeme Swann suggested that West Indies hadn’t bowled well enough to dismiss England for 88. And yet the scoreboard read, “England 88 all out”. Mysterious. And now history has repeated itself. “They hardly got us out,” said Bangladeshi captain Mushfiqur Rahim, after some bowlers or other had dismissed the Tigers for 278.

Every time West Indies roll into town, the home team suddenly and mysteriously begin losing wickets. What is going on? Is it a conspiracy? Have the men from the Caribbean finally managed to incorporate Klingon cloaking technology, making Marlon Samuels invisible to the naked eye? Or could it be that they’ve found a decent bowling attack and the rest of the world is being a little ungracious?

Thursday, 3rd November
Give praise to the god of satire, for Afridi is back! His unconditional unretirement (slight return) means that the cricket world is approximately 10% more interesting in real terms. So how have you been keeping, Shahid?

"I am strong, fit and in good shape to cover the wild period I had lost during the time of retirement.”

Wild period? Sounds intriguing. Tell us more about this wild period. Did you grow dreads and journey across Outer Mongolia in a beat-up multicoloured camper van? Did you have a tattoo of a man eating a cricket ball with the legend “Lala likes leather for lunch” across your upper back? Did you spend some time in the jungles of Borneo, learning how the orangutan deals with the outswinger?

Oh, you played for Hampshire. Well, that’s pretty wild, I guess. But his return to the one-day squad was not a formality and as always, the Pakistan selection committee carefully weighed up the pros and cons in an objective and dispassionate manner.

“He is like a son to me,” said interim selector Mohammad Ilyas, “And his selection is not unfair.”

Friday, 4th November
Colossal fiscal incompetence is everywhere it seems, so we shouldn’t be surprised to see cricket boards following the fashion for financial stupidity. Our old friends, SLC built a lot of grounds that they couldn’t afford to run and so, naturally enough, have handed them over to the military. I’m not entirely sure what the military would want with cricket stadiums, though if the SLPL ever happens, I guess Ravi could have fun spotting sponsored Abrams tanks and F16s rather than the accursed blimp.

But it isn’t just the stadiums that SLC are offloading. Many of the players are being handed over local businesses as the board can no longer afford to run them either. Kumar Sangakkara will be working for a Mrs De Silva of Market Street, Colombo, shouting out the prices at her fruit and vegetable stall; Mahela Jayawardene will be employed as a street sweeper by Galle District Council, tidying up the mess that others have left (similar to his current role) and Ajantha Mendis will be placed in storage at the Kandy Museum of Mystery, though may not be picked for every exhibition.

Tim Nielsen was horrified to learn his sun-screen was a mere SPF 45 © Getty Images

Saturday, 20th August
Australian inflation is out of control. Don’t believe me? Today Tim Nielsen said he was 100,000% behind Australia being the best team in the world. We live in hard times, friends, and 100% or even 110% just doesn’t cut it anymore.

Or perhaps he was hoping to scare off his potential replacements with the sheer numerical magnitude of his platitude. Maybe Mickey Arthur is sitting at home shaking his head thinking, “Damn, I was good for 1000% but even I can’t get away with claiming 100,000%. Reckon I won’t bother applying after all.”

It won’t work, of course. Nielsen is toast. He is toast that has been in the toaster so long that it has set off the smoke alarm, and when it is finally popped out will be going straight into the bin with the potato peelings, the cold coffee grinds and yesterday’s Daily Telegraph. Still, he shouldn’t worry. With such a cavalier approach to numeracy, a career in the investment banking industry surely awaits.

Sunday, 21st August
A few weeks ago Shahid Afridi announced he was retiring from public life, adding that this was a conditional retirement, which we could have guessed, since all of his other retirements have been conditional (on his remembering why it was that he retired). In fact, his entire career has been conditional, a litany of ifs, maybes and what-might-have-beens-if-only-he-hadn’t-done-that.

And now, in the least surprising piece of sports news since we learned that MS Dhoni was “a bit disappointed” with the way his summer had gone, we learn that the man with the lovely hair is un-retiring. In response, the ICC has moved the level of Afridiness in world cricket from Shahid 5 up to Shahid 3, in anticipation of the return of the prodigal. And Professor Spectacles, Head of Afridi Studies at the Lahore Institute of Chaos, is very excited by this latest Afridi-related development.

“I have been mapping Shahid bhai’s public statements on this graph, where the x axis represents time and the y axis represents degree of craziness, and as you can see, if you join all the dots on the graph, it actually forms a reclining profile of Imran Khan’s face. This is a hugely significant development for Pakistan cricket, probably.”

Tuesday, 23rd August
While the England players nurse tender heads and try to remember where they left their keys, swear to themselves that they will never again mix vintage Bollinger with James Anderson’s aunty’s homemade gooseberry brandy, and attempt to piece together what happened last night from the photographs in the tabloids, a collection of the toughest, roughest men ever to wear silly sunglasses has assembled at a top-secret location. Their mission: Destroy England. And do some other stuff first.

I like the fact that South Africa are calling their pre-season get-together a camp. It puts you in mind of a spartan facility somewhere on the savannah with tin-roofed shacks, rudimentary showers and barbed-wire fences, seven miles from the nearest water hole and surrounded by man-eating lions, psychotic rhinoceroses and mean-spirited giraffes. In reality it is the Arabella Golf Estate near Cape Town, although I hear that some of the bunkers are pretty brutal.

And though there is some tiresome business involving Australia and Sri Lanka to get through first, Allan Donald, South Africa’s new verbal-abuse co-ordinator, has already made a start on next summer’s sledging (because it’s never too early to tell someone you’re going to knock their f*****g head off), by leaving rude and frankly sarcastic messages on the voicemail of each member of the England batting order, and Ravi Bopara (just in case). And to ram the message home, every South African player has been asked to tick “Don’t Like” on the “England Are Number One” Facebook page.*

*Under the EU Satirical Remarks Concerning Countries Of Origin Quota Agreement, I am not allowed at this point to make humorous reference to the birthplaces of certain members of a certain northern European cricket team being not entirely and in every respect without the borders of a populous republic situated towards the southern end of the African continent. So please feel free to attach your own. And don’t forget Jade Dernbach.

“Fooled you again, didn’t I?” © AP

Saturday, 4th June
Shahid Afridi and the PCB are now officially in a state of feud and are settling it like men, the old-fashioned way: press releases and legal notices at dawn. Stopping Shahid from playing Twenty20 in England does have a hint of the playground about it. But then again, Afridi would try the patience of the most benevolent administrator. He is the boy (with the lovely hair) who cried resignation once too often.

So whose side are you on? It’s tricky, as Run DMC put it.

Though this revolution is timely, I’m not sure Afridi is the man to lead it. The Che Guevara of Pakistani cricket may look good on a t-shirt but he’s not the most reliable of figureheads around whom to rally. He is the embodiment of unpredictability. He lets you down, then he makes up for it, then he lets you down again. It's no coincidence that the founding members of the Afridi fan club all went grey years ago. As heroes go, he is from the shelf marked “flawed”.

On the other hand, he isn’t Ijaz Butt. Like I said, it’s tricky.

Sunday 5th June
Cricket Australia are toying with the idea of twilight play in some Sheffield Shield games next year. Not before time. It’s as timid as warm milk, but they’re reckless revolutionaries compared to the ICC. In most corners of their dominion, Test cricket has nearly ceased to be and is well on the way to being an ex-format. So what are they doing to reanimate it? We may, possibly, have some sort of Test championship playoff in 2013, a mere decade after the Test ratings were initiated. That’s about it.

How about day-nighters? Four-day Tests? Coloured clothing? Players’ names on the backs of their shirts? A slightly more robust approach to playing in the rain? A new ball every 40 overs? Sacrilege! Whilst (popular and profitable) 50-over cricket is fair game for all manner of wacky innovations and bizarre experiments, the five-day format must be perfectly preserved, like a museum exhibit, as the cobwebs accumulate and the spectators drift away in search of something more interesting.

But perhaps there is another angle. Maybe, instead of trying to find 21st-century solutions, we should seek inspiration from the past. I’m not talking compulsory beards, cravats or Bodyline (although there’s a lot to be said for all three). No other sport depends so much on the condition of the playing surface, so why not make a virtue of it and bring back the uncovered pitch? Hands up who wants to see how well Ian Bell or Thilan Samaraweera cope with a sticky dog at Old Trafford or a hard-baked turner in Chennai? Let’s make Test cricket a real test instead of a run-fest.

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.