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.

"No you don't understand. I had a visitation from Michael Jackson and he said these glasses are good for my chakra" © AFP/Getty Images

Saturday, 12th February
It was a false alarm, folks. KP is not quitting! Earlier in the week, tabloid newspapers alleged that he was about to retire from Twitter altogether in order to spend more time playing cricket. But today he confirmed that his commitment to regularly updating the world on the tedious minutiae of his life remains as strong as ever.

Despite a recent decline in the quality of his Tweets, few would contest that at his best he remains one of the most prolific Twits around. And ahead of the World Cup he has been putting in the hard yards with Stephen Fry in an attempt to widen his vocabulary and develop a more tactful Twitter technique.

“Stephen’s got a lot of good ideas, considering how old and fat he is. I’ve taken a lot of his advice on board and to thank him for his help, KP is determined to be twice as good a Twitterer than what he will ever be.”

Sunday, 13th February
World Cup co-hosts Bangladesh are leaving nothing to chance. Having eradicated beggars from the streets, slapped a curfew on motorists with tatty cars and arrested shop owners who refuse to repaint their premises in the tournament brand colours (aquamarine, tangerine and mauve) they are putting the finishing touches to their preparations by having Dhaka relocated. A government spokesman explained:

“We found that the view from some of the better hotels would be slightly more pleasant if the city was positioned about 100 yards to the right.”

Builders have begun demolishing the entire city and moving it down the road where it will be rebuilt brick-by-brick in a far more salubrious location. Dhaka residents will be rehoused for the duration in a comfortable tented village area a mere 200 miles away, where they will be able to keep in touch with the World Cup by listening to their official World Cup radios (on sale now at just $2000 apiece!).

Monday, 14th February
Ricky is back and has wasted little time in hitting his grumbling straps, getting in some quality whingeing about the state of Indian soil. Apparently it gets quite dry out there, on account of the sun. Yes, it’s true, and what’s more, when Indian soil is dry it can go all weird and cracky and these cracks make it easier for spiners to make the ball spin, which is pretty damn unfair as Australia haven’t brought any spinners with them.

In the same game Sreesanth demonstrated that he’s still got it, though no one is entirely sure what it is or whether he shouldn’t get it looked at. After failing to get the Australian captain out, Sreesanth stood in the middle of the pitch calling him names before attempting a Vulcan salute whilst moonwalking back to his mark. MS Dhoni defended Sree, saying that unpredictable idiocy was an integral part of his game and if you took that away from him, he wouldn’t be half as much fun at parties.

And Sree isn’t the only pace bowler hitting the headlines. Australia’s blondest billboard has been whetting our appetite for the feast of cricket ahead by telling us all about an exciting new development that will transform our enjoyment of the game and inspire millions of youngsters to try to be like their hero. I’m talking about the Castrol Ratings, produced by Castrol, the lubricant salesmen. What’s that, Brett?

“Their initiatives in the digital space are really innovative.”

Yes, thanks, Brett, most informative. With a down-to-earth comment like that you’ve certainly put an end to those rumours that you were long ago replaced by a sponsored android with impossibly white dental fittings. But this nasty little dribble of corporate gobbledegook isn’t the worst of it. Apparently Brett and his band, the Ill-Fitting Jeans have recorded a song that will be played at every World Cup match.

Oh, the humanity.

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.