Andy Zaltzman's Blog, page 4

Good-in-Tests-rubbish-in-ODIs XI - part one

Fed up of Vaughan's one-day ineptitude, the ECB allowed him to use a metal bat - though, only a miniature version - in the format, hoping it would change things around. It didn't
© Getty Images



Welcome to part one of the official and unarguable Confectionery Stall Good-In-One-Format-But-Rubbish-In-Another XIs.

England’s coach, guru, spiritual leader, bicker-mediator, and ego-guidance-counsellor Andy Flower suggested after the World Twenty20 that international players would increasingly specialise in one format or another, as the time-guzzling hydra that is the world cricket calendar, and its increasingly numerous and ravenous heads, make more and more demands of Planet Earth’s leading cricketers.

Several top-level cricketers have pre-empted this by failing to replicate world-beating performances in one format of the game in another. Garfield Sobers, for example, who appears on no one’s list of Most Useless Test Cricketers Of All Time – he is, at the very worst, approximately the 2675th Rubbishest Ever Test Cricketer, and some argue that he even challenges Don Bradman for the currently-prestigious 2682nd spot on that hotly-contested chart. However, the Bajan Beethoven had an ODI batting average of 0 – worse than the heroically, indefatigably inept Chris Martin.

Admittedly, Sobers played in just one ODI, compared with Martin’s 20, and batted just once, compared to Martin’s seven glorious innings, so can perhaps be forgiven for falling an agonising eight runs short of the Kiwi’s career total. Sobers’ solitary one-dayer was West Indies’ first, and he compounded his duck by conceding the winning runs to England batting legend Bob Willis. Had the West Indian not made the crucial error of almost completely pre-dating the ODI era, however, I think it is fair to assume he would have proved a more than useful ODI operator, and that batting average of 0 would have risen. Significantly. It is also fair to assume that, had Martin not been congenitally allergic to willow and with a lifelong phobia of having padding strapped to his legs, he might have had a more productive batting career.

Some ground rules for these XIs:

● I have ignored T20Is due to lack of evidence. When more T20Is have been played, I may revisit this. However, a third corner to this selectorial see-saw would complicate matters considerably – XIs of players who were adequate in Tests, awesome in ODIs and atrocious in T20Is, plus all the vices and versas involved, is a project for a very rainy day. Or the next Ice Age.

● Players must preferably have definitively failed in one format and unquestionably succeeded in the other, rather than just being significantly better in one. Lance Klusener, for example, was one of the most effective ODI allrounders ever, averaging 41 with the bat and 29 with the ball, and, whilst his equivalent Test averages of 32 and 37 are not in the same league, they still qualify him as a decent Test cricketer. Saqlain Mushtaq, Brett Lee and Andrew Flintoff were all statistically far more effective with the ball in the shorter game, but still formidable Test bowlers. Amongst the numerous top-class Test batsmen who did not fully replicate their five-day successes in the one-day arena, Allan Border (Test average: 50), David Gower (44) and VVS Laxman (almost 46) all averaged 30 in ODIs,
but cannot be said to have completely failed as one-day players. Leonardo da Vinci was notoriously good at drawing. He made an adequate spaghetti bolognese. Probably. That did not make him an appalling chef.

● Minimum Test appearances: 10. Minimum ODI appearances: 20.

● The above rules can be flouted at the discretion of the selectors if, for example, they are struggling to find a wicketkeeper who completely flunked his Test career but was a one-day superstar.

● The selectors’ decision is final and legally binding. All selected players must report for winter endurance training in Verkhoyansk, Siberia, next Monday.

We begin with the Test-Stars-But-One-Day-Flops XI, a keenly contested selection, for which many players have made persuasive cases through years of dedicatedly failing to replicate their five-day form in the one-day arena.

Dr Stumps, Agony Aunt

As per contract, every team-mate of Azhar Mahmood must have the team name tattooed on his head for quick reference
© Associated Press



The Confectionery Stall is taking a week off to prepare its latest XIs – the Test-Star-But-One-Day-Flops XI versus the ODI-Legends-But-Test-Match-Muppets XI. In its place, Dr Stumps, part-qualified unlicensed cricketing Agony Aunt, answers your queries.


Dear Dr Stumps
I am a long-standing cricket fan, and, although the Test game is my first cricketing love, I do not mind Twenty20 as a format. However, I have found it impossible to find any excitement at all in the Champions League T20. I have watched some of the games, and seen at times what ostensibly looks like “good cricket”, but it has left me unmoved. Am I normal, or just a hollow shell of a human being?
Yours sincerely, Vice-Cardinal Ethel Herzchelowitz, Vatican City, aged 92


Ethel,

Do not worry, your feelings are perfectly normal. Cricket has chosen to force its followers to pick and choose which shards of the game they follow, so choices must be made. If you do not have an umbilical tie to one of the various teams who have qualified for the tournament through the various random procedures available, or are not a blood relative of one of the players, owners, mascots or scantily-clad interpretative dancers, it is biologically natural to find franchise-based T20 as emotionally engaging as reading a telephone directory in a darkened shed.

Furthermore, even if you are a parent, spouse or child of one of the star competitors, you may struggle to remember which of his various teams your loved one happens to be representing this tournament. The footballing model from which cricket’s Champions League takes its name and inspiration is itself a flawed, if highly lucrative, competition, geared largely towards the ongoing dominance of a cabal of hyper-wealthy megaclubs. Teams seem able to depart from or ascend to this elite only through spectacular financial mismanagement, or the acquisition of a publicity-hungry billionaire owner. However, at least the players are attached to only one club at a time. And the matches are not, due to logistical necessity, played out largely on neutral grounds thousands of miles from the supporters of both teams.

Twenty20 has proved to be predictably popular, but also more strategically interesting than might have been expected. But it is psychologically and spiritually advisable for 21st-century cricket spectators to be selective in which tournaments they allow themselves to care about.


Dear Dr Stumps
My friend and I cannot agree on whom we think Azhar Mahmood is playing for at the moment. Can you help us?
Regards, Miley Cyrus, Skegness, aged 19.


Miley,

I will set my research team onto this complex task and report back next week. Some have suggested Azhar is representing the Auckland Aces, but the evidence is inconclusive and requires considerable scientific interpretation.

The rumour is that when Azhar’s T20 captains run over to him at the end of his run-up, they are not encouraging him, boosting his confidence, or advising him on field placings, but reminding him for which team he is playing.

Azhar’s all-round skills, which have flowered late in his career in the T20 arena after failing to find consistency and fulfilment in the international game, have sparked rumours that he is currently in talks with, amongst others, Real Madrid, the New York Yankees, the Swedish national handball team, Harlequins rugby club, the Bolshoi Ballet, the International Monetary Fund, and the Rolling Stones over short-term contracts for 2013. Cristiano Ronaldo is also said to be mulling over “a very tempting offer” from the Barisal Burners.

Well, that was all a bit strange

Unaccountable things about West Indies’ win: man in old-style India blue kit dancing along at the back
© Getty Images



The 2012 World Twenty20 final will go down in the annals of cricket as one of the oddest matches in the game’s history. Glorious, but odd. A magnificent triumph for a West Indies team that had comfortably avoided magnificent triumphs for most of the last decade and a half. But still odd. Few textbooks on How To Win T20 Matches would suggest not scoring a run off the bat in the first 16 balls of the match, or advocate the tactical merits of being 14 for 2 at the end of the six-over Powerplay, or sagely stroke their chin before strongly advising hitting only one boundary in the first 11 overs whilst limiting your score to 38 for 2.

Fortunately for West Indies, they had access to the only copy of that book, and followed its masterful strategy to perfection. Even after Marlon Samuels’ startlingly brilliant outbreak, during which he hit Lasith Malinga – a bowler rated by no less a source than the renowned cricket website and source of all truth and knowledge, ESPNcricinfo, as the most effective bowler over the history of the IPL ‒ for five sixes and a four in eight balls, they still posted a score of just 137.

The West Indian bowlers had been the least economical of any of the Super Eight teams until the semi-final stage (conceding almost eight runs per over), and they had never beaten Sri Lanka in a T20 international. In all T20Is between the top eight international teams, teams defending a first-innings score of between 130 and 149 had won just 12 of 41 matches, and on the ten occasions on which they had tried to defend a score of under 150 in a T20I, they had won only two, tied two, and lost six, the most recent of those defeats being when the same Sri Lanka side they now faced chased down 130 with nine wickets and almost five overs to spare just eight days earlier. And by chased down, I mean chased down in the manner that a police motorcyclist chases down an escaped tortoise on a pensioner’s mobility scooter.

It was, therefore, a surprise that West Indies won. And an eyebrow-singeing surprise that they ultimately won at a canter. Having taken 19 wickets in their first five matches, in both the semi-final and final they bowled out their opposition in under 20 overs. If the success of Sunil Narine was not unexpected, the other lynchpins of the Caribbean constriction of the Sri Lankan batsmen had been keeping their economical run-saving powder drier than the Atacama Desert through the rest of the tournament.

Captain Darren Sammy, who had taken 2 for 125 in his 15 overs in the tournament, took 2 for 6 in two overs in the heart of Sri Lanka’s innings in the final. Samuels had bowled eight overs in the first six games of the tournament – and taken a less than frugal 2 for 93 (2 for 110 from nine, if you include his almost-tournament-ending Super Over against New Zealand). In the final, he took 1 for 15 from 4. And conceded zero boundaries – those other nine overs had been spanked for ten fours and five sixes.

This was a match that left the cricketing world’s flabber well and truly gasted. The most devastating T20 batsman in the world scored 3 off 16 balls. The format’s most devastating fast bowler took 0 for 54 in 4 overs. It all ended with Caribbean cricketers doing a South Korean dance. (Until Sunday’s final, the only appearance of “gangnam” on a cricket ground had been the noise Mike Gatting used to make when chomping into a particularly appetising chicken sandwich.)

One of T20’s weaknesses as a format is that there can be a lack of narrative variety from one match to the next. This final had an unexpected destination, and arrived there via a completely baffling route, as if someone had spilt scalding hot chocolate over its cricketing GPS and said: “Right, fire her up and let’s see where this takes us.”

It was a grand climax to a tournament, which, after a week of phoney-war group matches, provided a ten-day frenzy of drama. A World Twenty20 has that rarest of all sporting commodities – rarity. It happens for two and a half weeks every two years, and is the only international T20 that anyone (a) takes any notice of, or (b) genuinely cares about, and is the only T20 cricket where the teams have any meaningful identity. Even if you are not especially enamoured of the T20 format itself, these factors, plus the unpredictability of the results T20 generates in any given match, allied to the format of the tournament, combine to create a heady cocktail that has rapidly become one of the highlights of the world cricket schedule.

● Why did West Indies triumph? Because ‒ and only because ‒ they followed the blueprint for World Twenty20 success, outlined in my podcast at the start of the tournament. They started badly. Perfectly badly. This historically flawless campaign strategy was established by India in 2007, and successfully mimicked by Pakistan two years later and by England in 2010.

This time, Sammy’s men won only one of their first five matches – in their two rain-shortened group matches, they lost to Australia, and had to settle for a no-result against Ireland, then, in the Super Eight phase, beat England, were obliterated by Sri Lanka, and tied with New Zealand. It was a textbook, beautifully orchestrated campaign, involving doing as little as possible to reach the knockout stages, to the extent that they only squeaked into the semi-finals courtesy of Tim Southee’s “Oh Whoops” Super Over.

Why Watson's going to cost Australia the World Twenty20

This week, we look at the road to the semi-finals, littered with question-raising stats, and the runway of defeat, which India, South Africa, England and New Zealand zoomed on to reach their respective home airports. Also, the really tough Andy Flower quiz.



Download the podcast here (right-click to save) | iTunes

For those of you unable to stream or download the audio of the World Cricket Podcast World T20 Preview Special, here is a link to a transcript of the show. However, it is supposed to be listened to, not read. Thanks. AZ.

The music in the podcast is by Kevin MacLeod at incompetech.com

Why the Super Over is the future of cricket

Endearing slapstick? We’ve got that too
© AFP



The World Twenty20 belatedly blasted into life yesterday, as the Super Eights power-launched what has become a ten-day bunfight. For the third global tournament in succession, the last eight could have been predicted at least 20 years ago, as the first eight Test nations eased their way through a group stage that will live as long in the memory as a goldfish’s tax return. Whilst this may raise concerns about the prospects of cricket ever truly extending beyond its historic boundaries as a global sport, even via the pimped-up high-speed vehicle of T20, what it has left us with is a week and a half of unpredictable high-stakes showdowns between old rivals, a rare commodity in any sport.

What do we know about the teams after the first week? Little more than we knew before the first week – in this format, on their day, or off their day, any of them could beat, or be beaten, by any of the others. South Africa, in essence, have not played yet – a facile ten-wicket defrocking of Zimbabwe and a seven-over microtonk against Sri Lanka offer scant evidence. All the other teams left in the tournament have both scored and conceded totals of more than 160, apart from Australia, who shipped 191 against West Indies but were well on the way to rocketing past it with ease when the rain intervened.

England look more likely to be bouncing up and down on the Being Beaten end of the see-saw, busily trying to work out which way up to read their How to Play Spin manual, but even they cannot yet be entirely discounted. An incapacitating dose of food poisoning affecting only mystery tweakers could easily strike at any moment. Or they could adopt the revolutionary tactic of giving more, rather than less, time at the crease to their best T20 batsman (or at least their best T20 batsman who is not cooling off on the selectorial naughty step [oddly located in a commentary box]).

The major talking point of the tournament has been the runaway success of yesterday’s Super Over, or One1, showdown between the hosts and the Kiwis, a glimpse into cricket’s rapid-fire future when the tedious longeurs of the T20 game are considered too much for the action-hungry TV consumer. On one level – with no boundaries and just two wickets in the entire match ‒ the Super Over match was eerily reminiscent of an entire day’s play in a 1950s Test. On another, it was a joyous celebration of how intense pressure can leave the minds of hardened sporting veterans as scrambled as an egg in a bobsled careering down an erupting volcano.

Kumar Sangakkara, one of the greatest and most influential players in recent cricketing history, an ice-cool man of competitive steel in his 482nd international match (or 482nd-and-a-bitth match), gave a two-ball exhibition of wicketkeeping ineptitude that even Kamran Akmal at his most creative would have struggled to surpass.

First, he fumbled a straightforward take to allow New Zealand two byes – 14% of their required runs in one clumsy-handed bloop. Next ball, he shelled an edge from McCullum, dropping New Zealand’s most likely six-tonker and allowing another unearned run, in one of the most clueless sequences of his stellar and largely clued-up career.

The McCullum drop completed one of the most error-strewn single deliveries that cricket has ever seen. Lasith Malinga, one of the universe’s leading T20 bowlers, needing to concede fewer than nine in three balls, flang down a half-volley far enough outside off stump that it would have been called wide had not McCullum, one of the solar system’s top T20 batsmen, slashed wildly at it, and connected with it enough only to (a) prevent it being called wide, and (b) snick a simple chance to Sangakkara, an undisputable cricketing legend with more than 500 wicketkeeping dismissals under his international belt, who, with hands as soft as a saucepan, clanged it. Amidst this mayhem of mistakes, it is a wonder that Umpire Taufel did not raise the finger and give non-striker Guptill out lbw due to sheer confusion, before awarding a free kick and telling the Sri Lankan fielders to stand ten yards away, giving Malinga 9.3 for artistic impression, and breaking down in tears.

‘Teams that start rubbishly always win’

Download the podcast here (right-click to save) | iTunes

The music in the podcast is by Kevin MacLeod

New Zealand to take the World Twenty20

Chiefly responsible for making following political party conference coverage less irritating than being a cricket fan
© PA Photos



As one of the odder English international summers continues to peter out in an amorphous sludge of tediously one-sided limited-overs matches, the world is turning its attention to the fourth incarnation of the ICC World Twenty20. Meanwhile, the numbingly irritating Pietersen saga continues to rumble on like the indigestible chimichanga of idiocy that it is, with ill-timed autobiographies and ill-conceived leaks further muddying the swamp. For England fans, therefore, the advent of a major tournament will be both welcome respite from the internecine bickering in the England camp, and a rather less welcome reminder of the cost of that bickering.

The absence of Pietersen might make for a more harmonious hotel, but it significantly diminishes England’s chances of retaining their crown. They are unlikely to win the tournament. Fortunately for England, all of the other teams are also unlikely to win the tournament. Some are more unlikely than others, and one of the 12 sides will overcome that unlikelihood to triumph. The bookmakers have India as favourites, at around 9-2, with six other teams priced between 5-1 and 7-1, suggesting that, as tends to be the case in the World Twenty20, the trophy could end up almost anywhere after the 20-day festival of skied catches, slower balls, even slower balls, thwacks, dab, hoicks, slaps, clobs, and excessive use of the word “unbelievable”.

Afghanistan are the outsiders at 1000-1 – only twice as unlikely to triumph as England were at their lowest ebb of the Headingley Test of 1981, so we should not entirely rule them out from completing potentially the greatest story in sport.

International T20 remains relatively scarce, so the pre-tournament form guide is minimal and largely irrelevant. Whether this makes the World T20 entertainingly unpredictable or meaninglessly random, or a bit of both, is down to the opinions and proclivities of each viewer. Personally, as a Test match devotee, I have enjoyed the international tournaments far more than any other T20 cricket, because the schedule is concise enough to create some of the tournament intensity so often wilfully absent from 50-over World Cups, and the teams have identity – Chris Gayle can choose whether to play for the Royal Challengers Bangalore, the Matabeleland Tuskers, Sydney Thunder, the Vladivostok Vipers, the Beijing Nincompoops, the Lillehammer Libidos, the Nuremburg Nutcases, the New York Yankees, the Rio de Janeiro Ethels, or any of their local franchise rivals, but West Indies are his only option for the World T20.

The Official Confectionery Stall Prediction: New Zealand to win. I arrived at this conclusion not because I think New Zealand will win (although they have enough potent hitters to reach the semi-final shootout), but by drawing lots from a hat. It seemed appropriate. It will probably be won by a team that (a) finds a streak of form; (b) hits lots of sixes; (c) contains either Shahid Afridi or someone a bit like Shahid Afridi; and (d) gets lucky.

Goodbye Strauss

Andrew Strauss isn't afraid to stand blindfolded on the edge of a cliff with doom behind him, because he knows he can't be pushed
© PA Photos




Greetings, Confectionery Stallers, to the first Confectionery Stall of the post-Strauss era. I have been on holiday in France for the last week and a half. Coverage of the England captain’s resignation after a distinguished and predominantly successful reign was bafflingly minimal in the French media (particularly given that it is a nation which seems to have designed the shape of its bread explicitly to facilitate games of breakfast cricket) (and not forgetting that France are reigning Olympic silver medallists at cricket, dating back to the Paris Games of 1900) (although most French people under the age of 112 modestly tend not to bang on about it too much) (it is also fair to say that England’s Strauss have emerged from his resignation with rather more dignity that France’s ex-IMF boss Strauss-Kahn did from his).

The year 2012 has been strangely and unexpectedly turbulent for the England team. The first three years of the Strauss-Flower regime brought increasing and carefully managed stability and success in the Test arena, culminating in a record-shattering 2011 of phenomenal dominance. This year, like a dessert trolley laden with battered rodents after a Michelin-starred meal, has brought five defeats out of six in their two major series of the year, sub-soap-opera squabblageddon with their most influential batsman, and now the exit of the captain who had helped power the England juggernaut along that impressive upward curve.

The juggernaut reached the end of that curve, crashed into a roof it had not seen coming, and started rolling back down what has now become a downward curve. At least they are not plummeting down a downward cliff, and the vehicle retains most of the engine that had driven it upwards in the first place, but new skipper Cook will be anxious to crank the handbrake on as quickly as possible. His team is not in meltdown, but he is certainly holding a much runnier ice cream than he would have been a year ago. With a giant elephant in the room. Or at least, a giant elephant in the Surrey dressing room.

Perhaps the team had their celebratory New Year’s Eve energy shakes spiked with a particularly jaunty consignment of rogue absinthe. Perhaps the coach and captain had signed a pact with the Devil to ensure success, and had not seen the three-year break clause in the small print ‒ and Dr FlowStrauss began to suffer the consequences as soon as they set foot in the UAE in January. Perhaps it was merely a result of the team having made the grave error of having too many players peaking from late 2010 to summer 2011, rather than spreading out their purple patches more wisely to cover a longer period of time. Something for the ECB backroom science wonks to apply their abacuses, test tubes, and wind tunnels to, perhaps.

Stop ruining cricket's schedule, you knuckleheads

"You've got to understand, the hero/villain dichotomy is a Hegelian artefact that impacts our understanding of the construct of cricket"
© Getty Images



Thank you, whoever (a) invented cricket, (b) thought of stringing it out over several days, (c) developed the modes of transport that enabled it to be exported to certain parts of the world, and (d) conceived the idea of countries playing against each other at sport instead of, or as well as, war. The fruits of your genius were laid out on a platter at Lord’s in a dazzling Test match with the kind of thrust and counter-thrust that would have made a couple of divorcing Olympic fencers proud, a game of constantly shifting balance and momentum, with more twists and turns than an ice-skating anaconda. It was a sinuously evolving drama that must have made the likes of film-making wiz Ingmar Bergman, novel-scribbling ace Leo Tolstoy and award-winning rom-com and rom-trag playwright Willie Shakespeare slap their collective foreheads in their graves and bark: “Oh nuts. I was wasting my time making stuff up. I should have cut out the middleman and just watched a good Test match.”

In the end, South Africa’s consistent excellence prevailed and England’s intermittent brilliance was undermined by a series of pivotal bloopers. Finn and Bairstow gave auspicious displays of their match-changing abilities, but too many of the cornerstones of England’s all-conquering 2011 were too far from their best, and, as they did over the course of the series, they failed the sternest examination of their careers. South Africa held the upper hand for most of the match. England kept bouncing back up off the canvas, but each time, one of the Proteas would step in and clonk them back down again, or England would slip up and punch themselves in the face.

It was the cricket that the cricketing universe had wanted to see from two excellent teams, one ascendant after years of underachievement, one struggling to arrest its decline from its peak. England gave South Africa multiple opportunities to choke, and Smith and his men impressively failed to take any of them. The frailties they had shown in failing to win so many series from 2009 to 2011 had been laid aside.

Thus, this fascinating rivalry between England and South Africa, which has produced so many intriguing series and subplots ever since the Proteas returned to Test cricket, has completed its latest chapter. It will now be taken to a barn, knocked spark out with a crowbar, and locked in forced hibernation in a cryogenic chamber for three and a quarter years. They will not meet in the Test arena until 2015-16. So, and forgive me for repeating a point made in another recent blog, between January 2010 and November 2015, two of the world’s leading Test teams will have faced each other in a grand total of three Test matches. If this is what the doctor ordered to aid the long-term health of the longest and greatest format of the game, then cricket needs to ask to see that doctor’s medical certificates. He is clearly an unqualified quack.

When leaving Lord’s yesterday, I did not overhear a single person saying, “Yes, three Tests was just right for this series. Absolutely bang on the banana. Always leave them wanting more, that’s what they say in showbiz. Besides, another Test could really undercut the delicate specialness of that ODI series.”

Thus, yet another fascinating contest has been sawn off prematurely by knuckle-headed scheduling (is there anyone in the known universe who genuinely cares what happens in the forthcoming three weeks of limited-over matches?) (and I mean “genuinely”, not “slightly, and temporarily, because it is a fun day out”).

A quick message to whoever is responsible for scheduling Test cricket: please stop ruining it.

On the evidence of the swathe of fascinating, fluctuating Tests between various countries over the last year, the “product” is in not merely rude health, it is directly insulting health. Stop sedating it and telling it to mind its language. I know that this plea, were it to be delivered directly to those concerned, would fall not on deaf ears but on a cash register with no ears, but still. The point stands.

Kids having banana fights in the back seat

”... And I’ll need a case of sedatives this big”
© Getty Images



There was always a likelihood that the potentially fascinating England v South Africa Test series would be overshadowed by events off the pitch. Most assumed those events would have involved Olympian athletes running very fast, champion cyclists pedalling as frantically as a newspaper boy being chased by a rocket-propelled Alsatian, the British sport-watching public suddenly remembering about rowing for a few days, and the tragic reunion of the Spice Girls (the alleged musical act who temporarily escaped from captivity for the closing ceremony before being apprehended, tranquilised and returned to their secret underground vault). And indeed, the Olympics duly enraptured the nation’s sporting attention as they proved to be a magnificent success for Britain, on and off the track/lake/banked-track/ road/sea/pool/court/pitch/range/ pretend-mountain-river/mat/ring/horsiedrome.

It would, therefore, have been preferable for the Test matches not to have been also overshadowed by the dispiriting bicker and counter-bicker of Kevin Pietersen’s ongoing battle with 21st-century communications technology, his employers, his team-mates and, above all, himself. It has been a game of squabble tennis that must have had the egg and bacon of the MCC members’ ties frying each other in annoyance, although it does make you wonder how differently Bodyline might have panned out if Don Bradman had had access to Twitter.

Pietersen and his errant mobile will be absent from the Lord’s Test, which is, respectively, bad and good news for cricket fans. When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, before excitedly ringing himself up to congratulate himself on his achievement, he cannot possibly have imagined that his well-meaning communications device would one day prove so damaging to English cricket. Hopefully the mysterious “advisors” who have apparently been directing Pietersen will take the opportunity of their man’s absence from the Test to read a book entitled How To Advise People Without Ruining Their Careers.

Somewhere in the midsts of all this, what had formerly been a long-awaited Test series is taking place, in which Pietersen has displayed the full extent of his cricketing talent to haul England back towards the parity that most had predicted before the series began. He had even started to resemble the useful offspinner that South Africa had once hoped he might prove to be.

Perhaps the continuing after-grumble of this avoidable dispute will serve to unify the England team and spur them into an improved performance. If it does, they may win at Lord’s. Or they may still lose, or draw. South Africa will be desperate not to fumble a series lead for the fifth time this decade. They have not lost at Lord’s since 1960, and have been bowled out twice in only three of their last 14 Tests against England, but they have lost all four previous final Tests they have played in England since readmission.

The home team’s task would have been easier with Pietersen, who, without ever finding a consistency of scoring, which may be impossible with his technique (and, perhaps, temperament), has played major, series-shaping innings four times in the last two years – double-centuries against Australia and India to facilitate England’s first victories of those ultimately triumphant series, an incendiary 151 in Galle to transform a slow match and a disastrous winter, and his recent Headingley masterpiece, which significantly shifted the momentum of the current contest.

This is not to suggest that England should have picked him for Lord’s. Without knowing, or caring, about the specifics of this disappointing shebang, it seems that Pietersen has been, to put it charitably, behaviourally erratic. When a team voluntarily leaves out its most dangerous batsman, it is fair to assume they have good cause to do so (unless that team is West Indies, in which case it is fair to assume nothing) (or unless that team is not a cricket team, in which case it is probably a reasonable selectorial call).

However, if Pietersen has unquestionably shot himself in the foot, his podiatrist will be removing a selection of different bullets fired from varying angles and from more than one gun. The episode is an embarrassment for the entire England set-up, about as edifying as a food-fight in a famine, and an individual and collective failure in an era that has been predominantly marked by individual and collective successes. Captain Strauss, who has conducted himself with characteristic care and dignity, has exuded the air of a parent trying to remain calmly focused on driving whilst his children are noisily smearing bananas in each other’s faces in the back seat of the car. That those children are in their 20s and 30s must add to his frustration. There will be some interesting chapters in autobiographies over the next few years.

It is a hugely important match for England, and only partially because of the battle to retain their position at the top of the world rankings, which is of tangential relevance and dependent on the ICC’s chosen bits of mathematics as much as results. If the team that had such a rampant 2011 was to lose its second series of 2012, whilst in a state of infantile internecine conflict, it would suggest a team in significant decline. Or, at least, a team returning to the level it had occupied before its spectacular peak, but in a worse mood for having scaled the mountain, before inadvertently slipping over whilst plonking its flag on the summit, and sliding on its backside down to base camp before it had taken all the photographs it wanted to.