“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.

Foreign Minister Dhoni announces a new trade pact while skilfully deflecting questions about India’s latest loss © AFP

Saturday, 30th July
Michael Vaughan found himself in a sticky situation today, thanks to a popular ointment, Britpop, and the perils of Twitter. An entire sewage farm of e-effluence was poured onto his virtual head when the world mistakenly assumed that he had accused VVS Laxman of applying slippery foreign substances to his bat. In fact, MPV was a hapless victim of circumstance. Earlier in the day he had received this tweet:

“@MPVaughan what’s your favourite petroleum jelly-themed chorus by an English indie band?”

To which he had little choice but to reply:

“Vaseline! La la la-la la la la la-la-la la! #Elastica”

Unfortunately this tweet was tweeted at precisely the same moment that television replays were showing no hint of hot whiteness on VVS’s ghostly grey bat.

I hope this clears up any misunderstanding and also defuses any hostility that might have been provoked by his later tweeting of “Cigarettes and Alcohol” just as Nasser Hussain was asking why Sachin is out of form, and his unfortunately timed reference to “Big Mouth Strikes Again” as Geoffrey Boycott began his commentary stint.

Sunday, 31st July
Poor Ian Bell. He was going along swimmingly, having scored 137 of the politest, most well-behaved runs in Test match history. The world was a lovely, happy place. Already his thoughts were turning to his tea-time glass of strawberry-flavoured milk and his post-game episode of Peppa Pig. He watched Eoin Morgan hit the ball towards the boundary, the little umpire in his head called over and he was off.

And well done to MS Dhoni for saving the day. His noblesse oblige belongs to a parallel universe in which Geoff Hurst went to check with the Azerbaijani linesman, because from where he was standing, he didn’t think the ball had crossed the line; the Greeks got back into their wooden horse and asked to be wheeled out of Troy because it just didn’t feel right; and George W Bush asked for a state-wide recount in Florida on the grounds that he wanted to win but he didn’t want to win like that.

There was more to it than that. Dhoni, in addition to being one of India’s foremost commercial endorsers, a jetsetting magazine interviewee, a national hero and an occasional cricketer, also holds down a part-time job in the Indian Foreign Office. Yes, Ian Bell scored another 22 runs, but those runs didn’t come cheap. This evening there’s a new Anglo-Indian trade agreement on the regulation of prices in the paper clip industry that wasn’t there yesterday. Nice diplomacy, MS.

Monday, 1st August
Zimbabwe’s new captain, Brendan Taylor, has declared that his team may have a few surprises for Bangladesh in their forthcoming Test clash, which is already being billed in some quarters as Bangladesh’s fourth Test win. But what, we wonder, could Zimbabwe have up their sleeves to surprise an opponent they have met 18 times in the last two years? Here are three possible surprise scenarios.

1. Zimbabwe don’t turn up at all, later claiming that the entire team developed Bell’s Syndrome, a rare and only recently discovered form of temporary cricket-related amnesia. The match is abandoned, which is officially not the same as losing.

2. Soon after arriving at the ground, they express indignation at the lack of a gluten-free vegetarian option on the lunch menu and remain in their dressing room for five days, hoping the ICC will declare the game a draw.

3. Just before the toss, Taylor goes into the Bangladeshi dressing room and asks Shakib Al Hasan if, in the Spirit of Cricket, he wouldn’t mind conceding the match. It’s worth a try.