Leg Side Filth

There were only ever going to be two ways this Test would end.

Wickets would either fall today like corn before the scythe, or the Indian team would bowl out Australia’s tail early and then chase down the runs needed to win with relentless superiority.

Today at Bangalore it was the latter. Bowled out for 223, Australia presented India with a target of 207 to win and this they did, without undue incident, for the loss of only 3 wickets. Bit of a stark contrast to the oxygen-starved tension of Mohali, but I did say yesterday that the unknowables are what make Test cricket great.

In this case, one of those unknowables, or unknowns, more precisely, was Indian debutant Cheteshwar Pujara. The 22 year old came in at 3 after the loss of Sehwag and proceeded to bat with a combination of freedom and maturity that bodes well for the future when India find themselves in the same situation Australian cricket did three years ago when Warne, McGrath and Gilchrist retired.

He went for 72 and it was left to those two redoubtable old stagers, Tendulkar and Dravid, to bring it home. In this match Sachin has made history – again – and so it was fitting that he scored the winning runs, giving India victory at a ground they last won on in 1995, and solidifying India’s lead at the top of the Test rankings.

If your name was Nathan Hauritz, you probably found you were in a nightmare from which you couldn’t wake up. I will be surprised if the selectors keep him after this, and I too was one of many who held their head in their hands every time he came on and an Indian batsman’s eyes lit up.

It was like watching a game of buzkashi, where the batsmen were the horsemen and Hauritz was the headless goat corpse being torn apart between them in the battle for possession.

His figures were grim – 3-229 for christ’s sake, but in the cold light (or warm glow, depending on who you were supporting) of an Australian defeat, let’s look at things a tad more sensibly. Firstly, the conditions are always tough in India. Hell, even Warne’s record there is average: only 34 out of his total of 708 wickets were taken in Tests in that country, and the only time he took more than 4 wickets in an innings it cost him 125 runs.

Secondly, Ricky Ponting’s captaincy betrayed an utter lack of faith in Hauritz. Fielders were scattered in the deep, moved into positions only after that area had been targeted. It was passive and defensive captaincy with fields set for bad bowling: not the best way to give your bowler confidence.

One man especially riled by this cruelty to his spinning brethren was Shane Warne – currently between poker tournaments and no doubt on a plane somewhere – who let rip on Twitter with:

It’s tough to disagree with this sentiment. Ponting’s captaincy has received much scrutiny since the days when, due to having Warne and McGrath at his disposal, the team pretty much captained itself. At best, some of his decisions have looked random; at worst, downright fucking stupid.

One can argue till the cows come home about the merits of Nathan Hauritz as a Test spinner. His favourite line seems to be wide of off-stump while hoping the ball will turn; a lot of the time it doesn’t. He is ironically more effective when he bowls a tighter line; Ponting seems to want an Australian version of Harbhajan, but this may be a step too far.

Hauritz has, however, put in some decent Test performances when his side have needed them, and Steve Smith, the man many think he should make way for, is arguably more effective with the bat at the moment. Smith still averages about 50 as a bowler, and is very much a work in progress still. Replacing Hauritz with Smith in the Ashes may be too early. Plus, it is very unlikely Hauritz will be quite this shit on his home turf.

Nathan Hauritz must now try and pick himself up in the upcoming ODIs followed by a couple of Sheffield Shield matches for New South Wales, and put forward a convincing case for Ashes retention. No doubt everyone and his dog will have an opinion on whether he should be part of the Australian line-up at Brisbane.

The selectors certainly have a lot of thinking to do.

Peter George had something of a tough day at the office yesterday.

Expectations were high for the young newcomer on his Test debut. His bowling for South Australia has been called “McGrath-like”, which is uncomfortably reminiscent of the fact Phil Hughes was compared to Bradman before Steve “straight to 2nd slip” Harmison rediscovered the killer inside himself and took Hughes apart with viciously directed straight lifters in last year’s tour match at New Road.

So the boy George would have been understandably nervy when thrown the ball for the first time during the evening session of Day 2. Faced with the task of bowling at India’s galacticos, his first over was all over the bloody place and Sehwag duly took a liking to him, pasting him for 2 successive boundaries.

George did manage the one maiden in that session, and as Sachin and India marched inexorably on the next day he seemed to settle down and find his line with more consistency. He also introduced us to the slo-mo bouncer, which we all had a good laugh at, but when we’d stopped pissing ourselves realised it proved quite effective in that when he bowled it no runs seemed to be forthcoming.

It did cross my mind during that nightmare first over that such is the irony, comedy, karma, providence of cricket, call it what you will – or maybe just the hand of a cricket god moved to mercy by a young man’s thankless exertions – that Tendulkar would probably be Peter George’s first Test wicket.

And so it proved to be. Whichever god it was who wrote the script did ensure that the maestro wracked up another couple of stratospheric achievements – 49th Test ton, another double hundred, and so it (and he) goes on – before a beautiful swinging delivery from the debutant found Sachin’s inside edge as he tried to cut and chopped the ball onto his stumps.

If there is anything guaranteed to give you a little confidence on your maiden appearance for your country, taking the wicket of the world’s greatest batsman must surely be it.

A couple of days ago this Test match was wandering along the flat road leading to the nowhere of a nailed-on draw. Tomorrow, Day 5 will dawn with the promise of a victory. For whom, it’s too tight to say. India hold a slight advantage but it all depends on whether they can take Australia’s 3 remaining wickets quickly. At the moment Australia’s lead is 185, and five of their 7 wickets have gone to the spinners. Can Hauritz replicate the success of Ojha and Harbhajan? Will Ricky Ponting trust him enough to let him try?

There will be heroics. There will be tension. Larynxes will be screamed raw as bowlers appeal for everything. Batsmen will go to the middle all guns blazing and get out playing stupid shots.

Or, the last three wickets of Australia’s innings will fall cheaply and India will do the cricketing equivalent of stealing confectionery from a small child in knocking off the runs required.

The not knowing is part of the excitement, and it is part of what makes matches like this great.

Welcome… to Test cricket.

Murali Vijay was only 5 years old when Sachin Tendulkar made his international debut in 1989.

Today he took his place at The Little Master’s side to help India to a total of 435-5 at stumps on Day 3 against Australia at Bangalore.

As usual, the focus of the large crowd’s attention was Tendulkar’s faultless batting – he scored his 49th Test hundred and finished the day not out on 191 – but his partnership with his young apprentice added 308 runs for the 3rd wicket, and has made it very unlikely that India will lose this match.

The only times I have seen Murali Vijay bat in Tests he has been filling in for someone else. His first Test appearance was in November 2008, when Gautam Gambhir was banned for elbowing Shane Watson during the previous Test at Delhi. The debutant acquitted himself respectably, scoring 33 and 41 and, probably more importantly, running out Matthew Hayden when the god-bothering flat track bully was on 16.

Since then he has been in and out of the Indian team, called up to the ICC World Twenty20 squad in April to replace Sehwag who was suffering from a back injury. He has played 8 Tests including this one, and, until today, his highest score had been 87. Today he went one better, and despite suffering a couple of nerve-wracking moments – a run-out chance early on when a Nathan Hauritz throw missed the stumps, and an lbw shout off the bowling of Ben Hilfenhaus – he brought up his hundred with a scampered run and a celebratory leap. It was an innings of composure, elegance, superb driving and invaluable in the support it lent to his more illustrious partner at the other end.

The problem with being a substitute is that you will invariably be outshone by the established superstars that surround you. Today Murali Vijay made some progress in emerging from their extremely long shadows.

As a footnote, I was amused and exasperated to learn that since scoring that magnificent 139 (his innings ended with a tired swipe at a wide delivery from Johnson), Vijay has received “an official reprimand for breaching the ICC Code of Conduct and regulations governing clothing and equipment”. He apparently was displaying too many logos on his pads.

The laughable bit about all this was that the forbidden logos received a good long camera close-up while they were being covered up with tape yesterday during a break in play.

Only in cricket…

“When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.”

Sachin Tendulkar does not have this problem, as he seems to break records and expand the limits of what is possible in our best loved game on a regular basis.

Today at Bangalore, on Day 2 of the 2nd Test against Australia, he punched Nathan Hauritz through the covers for 4 and became the first man in history to reach 14000 Test runs. In January this year he passed the 13000 mark. Altogether, his international runs exceed 30000.

Those are just crazy numbers. It’s like Monopoly money. Genius sets its own goals, redefines its own standards of greatness, dismantles them, and sets them again. It is genius that ordinary mortals can barely find words for beyond the same oft-used clichés, because Sachin is better at cricket than most of us will ever be at anything.

There is no flash or bluster about The Little Master. You wonder whether achievement piled upon achievement, records set from the day he took guard in international cricket as a 16-year-old, have jaded him. How much can one man possibly achieve before the extraordinary becomes commonplace? When fans in the crowd hold up placards saying “God is at the crease”, “Keep silent, Sachin is batting”, when the howl of a crowd thirty thousand strong reaches a roaring crescendo as the bowler starts his run and you wait for that delivery that could be right for dispatching to the boundary en route to another milestone… how long do you have to be the best at what you do before you ever get used to that?

He goes quietly about his business with the bat, letting the weight of runs and the beauty of his strokeplay speak for him. It is only afterwards, when questioned, that he tells you honestly and modestly exactly what each achievement means to him. “Last 20 years I have pushed myself really hard. Challenges are always going to be there for me. All I need to do is to focus as hard as possible, work on my fitness, lead a disciplined life and use my body cleverly. When I started playing, I didn’t think of all these things. God has been really kind. I’m enjoying every moment.”

He gives as one of the keys to his success the fact that he still enjoys the game, and that the ball still finds the middle of the bat. The ball finds the middle of his bat with such consistency because, after a difficult period accompanied by injury, India’s failure in the World Cup of 2007 and critics like Ian Chappell questioning his place in the team, he is arguably now in the best form of his life.

Sachin is 37 years old. In the words of Indiana Jones, “it’s not the age; it’s the mileage”.

There is a lot of mileage under Tendulkar’s belt, and one hell of a lot of runs.

And he isn’t finished yet. Because just when it seems there are no more worlds for Tendulkar to conquer, he goes and finds another one.

Realistically, this 2nd Test against India which started today at Bangalore is Marcus North’s last chance to secure himself a place in the Australian team for the Ashes.

His scores prior to today make for pretty gloomy reading, if you are a Marcus North fan. I wouldn’t say I’m president of the Marcus North fan club, or even secretary, or god help me club mascot  (even on the weekends, when there’s no one else to help out), but let’s just say I don’t have as big a downer on him as a lot of folk who think he’s not Test quality. He is stodgy as fuck to watch, and will make you cry with the sheer, mind-numbing tedium of his dour, earnest scoring, but 96 at Edgbaston last year as well as three hundreds in his first six Tests suggests he is of some use when he gets himself set.

Of course, this won’t be the first time he has left it to the last minute to pull his arse from out of the fire of imminent selectorial rejection. He saved his career in the series in New Zealand earlier this year where he followed up 112* in Wellington with 90 in Hamilton, only to have the pressure pile back onto his shoulders by not exceeding 20 and only reaching double figures a total of three times in the three Tests prior to this one. By any measure, his form coming into this Test was bloody diabolical.

The Australian selectors will want him to make a big score at Bangalore, not least because his success here will save them an almighty Ashes headache. More at home on flat decks than turning ones, he made the most of a drying wicket that had early on aided the spinners to finish on 43 not out at stumps, with his country on 285-5.

There were other performances that would have been similarly encouraging for Australia: Shane Watson continues to confound us all by posting consistently big scores while miraculously remaining entirely uninjured, and Ricky Ponting managed to steady the ship with Mike Hussey after a brief flurry of wickets fell after lunch.

But all eyes will be on Marcus North when he re-takes his guard tomorrow. He will be looking to kick on towards a big score*, and Australia will be eyeing at least 400.

*note that having written this, I have likely ensured he will be out first ball. Despite the best laid plans of mice, men and Australian batsmen, shit does happen.

Mohali, India v Australia. Day 5, India on 122-7 and needing 94 runs to win.

Harbhajan Singh comes to the crease on a king pair.

2 balls later, having managed to get off the mark, he fends a short ball from Doug Bollinger off his glove through to Ricky Ponting at slip.

At 124 for 8 and still needing 92 to win, that looked like it was pretty much curtains for India.

In the book Pundits From Pakistan, Rahul Bhattacharya writes that when VVS Laxman is batting, the window of the comm box turns “a delicate shade of rose”. Today he was less the rose and more the thorn, rigid with back pain and grim determination and spiky of temper, screaming with fury at Pragyan Ojha for not taking a single during their last wicket partnership. India were 76-5 when he came out to bat with Suresh Raina as his runner and he proceeded to work his way deep into Australia’s twitching hide.

Wincing with pain after twisting to put away a Mitchell Johnson delivery during his 81-run partnership with Ishant Sharma, he kept his head while at the other end his partners were losing theirs (Dhoni’s demise in particular being down to the almost inevitable confusion caused by the combination of a runner and a sense of desperation).

Sharma seems to have rediscovered the fact he can take wickets, and now he was showing he could wield a bat as well. India were 162-8 at lunch and needed 54 more runs to win; Sharma was on 14, Laxman 2 away from his half century, though for him physiotherapy and painkillers would probably have taken precedence over food.

A gloriously swivel-wristed pull off Ben Hilfenhaus brought up Laxman’s 50, and by the time Sharma perished for 31 to an lbw shout that looked plumb in real time but on replay seemed to be going down leg (another argument for UDRS at all Test matches, surely), only 11 more were required.

11 runs, 1 wicket. A simple equation, a task still verging on the impossible. Laxman had understandably little confidence in Ojha’s ability with the bat and so singles were turned down, hurry-ups issued, obscenities yelled in shrieking desperation. Mid-pitch conferences were held after every ball and 3 sets of gloves punched.

The ending came amid frantic chaos as a result of 2 leg-byes with 3 results possible. Laxman, surely now running on adrenaline alone, ran cheering towards coach Gary Kirsten as the rest of the India team charged onto the field to congratulate and celebrate with their wounded, conquering hero.

Laxman has done this sort of thing before, carrying the burden of rescuing his team like a fire-fighter with a smoke victim over his shoulder fighting his way out of a burning building, but unlike Eden Gardens in 2001 the stadium at Mohali was almost empty. If ever an occasion demanded a raucous, gladiatorial crowd cheering their team on to victory it was surely this one.

Given such great drama, it is a shame that this is only a 2-match series and that the Border Gavaskar Trophy has already been decided. The two teams meet next at Bangalore two days hence.

So Tim Paine missed out narrowly on his maiden Test ton.

It doesn’t matter.

Australia’s young backup keeper, filling in since May while Brad Haddin is injured, not only did himself proud, he did it in a way that ensured his team are in a comfortable position at the end of Day 2 against India at Mohali.

Watchful when he needed to be, content to let centurion Shane Watson do the bulk of the scoring and then to let Mitchell Johnson display his usual brand of unfettered hitting, he anchored Australia’s innings and helped them to a total of 428 after they started the day on 224 for 5.

By the end of Day 1 he had scored a single run off 14 balls. He made the most of a couple of moments of luck – dropped by Dhoni on 0; a thick edge that went between keeper and slip when he was on 86 – but by the time he went for 92, edging Zaheer Khan to VVS Laxman at second slip, he looked a different batsman from the nervous young man who took guard at Lord’s against Pakistan back in July in his first Test appearance with his family watching, so over-awed by the occasion that he himself admitted, “I couldn’t feel my feet”. Fluent and assured, he took a particular liking to the left arm spin of Pragyan Ojha, stroking him for two successive boundaries.

Brad Haddin’s rehab continues and he is set to appear for the New South Wales Second XI this coming Monday, with a view to achieving full fitness in time for the first Ashes clash at Brisbane on November 25th. Already though, there are those talking of the feasibility of a woefully out of form Marcus North being dropped; whether Australia would ever decide to play an additional keeper as specialist batsman, who knows. I have been singing the praises of Tim Paine for a while now, as I believe he is Haddin’s natural successor, with bat and gloves.

After an initial period furiously debating each man’s respective value to the Australian team, it seems we all have a collective hard-on for Tim Paine now. And this pleases me.

Well, thank Christ that’s over. Watching England’s joyous, enthusiastic celebrations at the Rose Bowl at the end of the current ODI series against Pakistan last night felt like the breaking of a fever, or the lancing of a boil – the relief is bliss, but you would rather the disease didn’t come back any time soon.

Don’t get me wrong, the cricket itself was fascinating and the fact it went down to the last game made it more so, but much of the fascination was from a morbid, rubber-necking car-crash perspective, given the background of spot-fixing, scandal and Ijaz Butt. I’m not going to go into all that again because I am really just glad it is over, as I’m sure you all are, as I’m sure the England team is. The only thing left to say is that I would love to welcome back a Pakistan team, bursting as it is with talent, but not until all corruption has been cleansed from its ranks. Signs are this is not likely to happen soon, but we live in hope. I am not one of those who advocate the scorched-earth policy of banning Pakistan entirely from the world cricket arena, but something tells me this is the last England-Pakistan series we will have seen for a long time.

Anyway, enough of all that.

2:30 this afternoon at The Oval gave us the ridiculous scenario of Mike Atherton, standing in front of a big screen, ready to introduce a film clip naming this year’s England Ashes squad, a clip produced with all the slick bombast the ECB could muster and giving us a list already in the possession of news editors ready to click “update” on their websites on the stroke of 2:30 while the great ignorant unwashed were still digesting the news.

In brief: Chris Tremlett and Monty Panesar are in; no room for Adil Rashid or Ajmal Shahzad. Shahzad is in the Performance Squad; Rashid is not. Another notable absentee – from both squads – is Ravi Bopara, who will be playing first class cricket in South Africa. I am very pleased to see Tremlett given this opportunity, as I’ve been a fan of the guy since I saw him at Trent Bridge in 2007, where he took 3-12 in India’s second innings when they only needed 73 to win. He got a lot of applause from the fans in the stands that day, and seems a bowler reborn this year after moving to Surrey after criticism that he wasn’t aggressive enough: I’m hoping his prodigious height and ability to bang it in will pay dividends on the hard, bouncy Australian wickets.

Monty Panesar is also back, and will add backup to Graeme Swann should they require two spinners at Adelaide or Sydney. He acquitted himself well at the WACA in 2006, taking 5-92, in a series that turned into a relentless drubbing for England. Australia are not the team they were back then, but England will still need to pull out all the stops to beat them; this will be no cake walk.

In other good news, Leicestershire’s own wunderkind batsman, James Taylor, has been included in the Performance Squad. I would have liked to have seen Nathan Buck picked as well – perhaps it is still too early for him – but Taylor will be in Australia, during the Ashes, and well, given an injury or two, who knows?

The countdown to the Ashes starts now. Am I excited? Oh hells yes.

Chris Tremlett bowling at Trent Bridge, 2nd Test against India, 2007

The match that took place at the Oval, August 20th – 23rd, 2009, was the last time Andrew Flintoff played Test cricket.

He didn’t play at Headingley and England were screwed. Kevin Pietersen didn’t play either which meant England were doubly screwed. Fred returned at the Oval and though he only took one wicket, he pulled off one of the great moments of the summer in his run-out of Ricky Ponting as England proceeded to regain the Ashes.

But regardless of what happened in that last Test, I’d already had my moment of magic that summer.

I’m talking about Day 5 at Lord’s. Some days are so damn perfect you couldn’t script them any better if you sat down and tried, and Monday July 20th 2009 was one of these.

My day didn’t start all that well: train was late, phone call from work about some irrelevancy, 40 minutes to get from St Pancras to the ground in time for start of play, urgent need to piss before taking my seat in the Mound Stand (5 minute bell rang as I was in the toilets). But I think that must have been the cricket gods’ way of taking pity on me and getting all the extraneous bullshit out of the way “early doors”, as they say, because I was settled in my seat just as the umpires were coming out.

It’s ironic now, after the fact, that I’d entered the ballot for Saturday tickets and hadn’t been successful, and even when Day 5 tickets had gone on sale I’d laughed and bought one with no real expectation that the match would even last that long. As it stood, unbelievably, Australia were still dragging their innings along by bloodied broken fingernails, with Michael Clarke and Brad Haddin the last twitching neurons in a short-circuiting batting order. The sun was out, and the wicket was still a belter.

Clarke had impressed me. There’s something about him that annoys the hell out of me, with his numerically-illiterate tattoos and his to-the-manner-born expectation of captaincy once Ponting hangs up his bat – but he had played some lovely shots the day before and showed doughty determination while wickets had fallen around him. Only Brad Haddin – a batsman I found myself warming to, not least after his hopping terror that the ball stuck in his pad was still a live one – had stayed with him.

It was perfectly possible that these two could pull off the runs needed for an improbable victory. Improbable-but-possible is usually enough to give any side a sniff of victory against England. Mitchell Johnson and Nathan Hauritz were still to come, so it could have been a long day.

But magic happened; Flintoff happened, thundering down like the wrath of god on anything human standing between him and the stumps. He got Haddin with his 4th delivery for 80 with a ball that was only a few overs old and he sent it down consistently over 90 mph. Jesus christ it was beautiful. The noise was tremendous. We were all on our feet. The floor was sticky from 4 days’ worth of spilled beer and Pimms. I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything but the fact I was here, and I was watching something that suddenly felt fraught with impending significance.

Clarke was tempted out of his crease by Swann with the 2nd ball of his over. Canny bit of bowling – Clarke walked down the wicket to the 1st ball of Swann’s over and I knew that’s how he would get out.

Mitchell Johnson was better with bat than with ball by an order of magnitude. His 50 came and went without me noticing until I looked up at the scoreboard and thought “shit”.

Fred again, got Hauritz, poor brave Hauritz with the dislocated finger, clean bowled him for 1. When he bowled Siddle he turned towards the Mound Stand and spread his arms and did that Colossus thing and we all went bonkers. Five wickets. Name on the board. Absolute magic. By this time I’d given up taking pictures because I just wanted to cheer and roar the lining of my lungs bloody along with everyone else.

Mitch’s resistance ended when Swanny got him for 63 and the reaction of the crowd was relief, disbelief, and crazy celebration. Fred was mobbed by the team and there was no way anyone in the crowd was sitting back down again.

It was all over by 12:40. England won, first time since 1934 against Australia at Lord’s.

The mood afterwards was one long cigarette after the orgasm of England’s victory. People were milling slowly about at the back of the Pavilion waiting for the Australian team; the museum was shut because there was a press conference going on inside; the amount of people just standing around was insane and no one seemed in any hurry to leave.

Fred’s career ended after England’s Ashes victory at the Oval and he went under the knife, yet again, for another procedure on his rickety knee. Increasingly, as time and rehab dragged on, his return to any sort of cricket became an ever-receding pipe dream, and while the announcement of his retirement from all forms of cricket on Thursday 16th September was criticized for its timing, coming as it did on the climactic day of 2010’s county championship race, it really came as no surprise to any of us.

Say what you like about Flintoff – the messianic wicket celebrations, the residency in Dubai, the polarizing dressing room presence – but he was a player who was, if not one of the all-time greats, a cricketer who gave England fans moments of genuine greatness, a man who gave his all every time he stepped onto the field.

No matter how many energy drinks he might pimp in the future, no matter how many witless reality TV shows he may appear on; none of this will ever make me forget his tremendous exploits as an England cricketer, and in particular that day at Lord’s when he ripped the heart out of the Australian team and gave England belief once again.

Farewell, Fred.

I saw an awesome day’s Test cricket at Lord’s on Saturday. Jonathan Trott knocked off the run needed to take him to 150 in a record-breaking stand with Stuart Broad, who with his maiden Test hundred seems to be rediscovering his stroke play in timely fashion for the Ashes. England ended on 446, Pakistan were blown away for 74 all out and following on, finished the day on 41-4. For £75 a ticket, I saw a lot of wickets for my money.

Then I got home and switched on the television.

I saw that the News of the World had broken a story (cleverly, too late for other papers to jump on, so all the other Sunday morning cricket reports were purely about England’s superb bowling performance), the facts of which are now burned onto our appalled sensibilities. It concerned a dodgy Pakistan players’ agent, £150,000 in used 50 quid notes, and three no-balls delivered on Days 1 and 2, in varying degrees of obviousness, by Mohammad Amir and Mohammad Asif, with the collusion of captain Salman Butt.

I loathe the News of the World with every fibre of my being. Their offensive, emotive brand of sensationalistic journalism sparks a brand of rage in me not much else does. In a crass opinion piece they not only devalued Broad’s maiden ton but sank low enough to mention his dead stepmother, Miche, to whom Broad’s thoughts turned on reaching his century: “Sorry Stuart, it means nothing.” A small boy, “pulling at his dad’s coat tails full of excitement”, his dreams betrayed, was also mentioned. I am surprised they didn’t manage to shoehorn in a drowning puppy, or accuse the Pakistan team of throwing cats into wheelie bins. Yes, I would think it’s fair to say my loathing for the News of the World is pretty much boundless. To coin a phrase, I wouldn’t wipe my arse with it if it was on fire.

But let us be honest, the evidence looks pretty damning. The only thing that could possibly have looked more suspicious about Mohammad Amir’s first no-ball was if Salman Butt had already had his hands full of sawdust as the bowler began his run-up. And the worst thing about it all is: how much of what we saw in this series, or indeed any other which Pakistan have taken part in over the last few years, is real? Test cricket is in the crapper, attendance-wise, but it does not need this type of publicity.

If there is a tragic figure in all this, it is, by common consensus, Mohammad Amir. Michael Holding was on the verge of tears on Sky Sports as he discussed how the career of this amazing young talent is now in doubt. Ramiz Raja thinks that due to his youth it is “possible he could have been drawn [into wrongdoing]”, and former Pakistan coach Geoff Lawson has reminded us not to judge these players “by the standards of our own country, when their situations are vastly different”. The possible threat of kidnapping and violence towards players’ families has also been mentioned.

Immediate reaction from cricket lovers such as myself ran the whole emotional gamut from disbelief, anger and sadness to “ban the whole bloody lot of them”. But it is clear that there are several things that need to happen.

Firstly, the ICC need to grow a pair. Pakistan cricket is worth saving, but not in its current corrupt state. Past punishments imposed by the Pakistan Cricket Board have been arbitrary and meaningless; vested interests and political manoeuvrings take precedence. Not only does the PCB need to get its house in order, but the ICC need to take charge when scandals like this threaten to ruin the international game.

Sadly, there are those in the ICC who have their own vested interests, and so this will not happen. And let’s face it, it doesn’t say much for the effectiveness of the ICC’s Anti Corruption Unit if it takes a reporter from a red-top scandal rag with a suitcase full of cash to expose only the tip of what may turn out to be a very large iceberg. Haroon Lorgat, the ICC’s current appointed deckchair-arranger, has given a statement saying that if any of the players are found guilty, “the appropriate punishment” will be handed out. At this point, such a promise sounds merely like empty bluster, and pretty meaningless given the ICC’s inability – or unwillingness – to tackle the root of the problem.

Of course, whether Giles Clarke has any right to be on his moral high horse in his refusal to shake Amir’s hand or look him in the eye during the post-match presentation is another question, considering the marked contrast between this and his welcome of a Texan, now being investigated for fraud, and his perspex box of dollars. Stony-faced and unsmiling at spot-fixing’s sullying of this series at the Home of Cricket, he obviously had no problem with Allen Stanford’s sullying of the Nursery ground by landing his gold-plated helicopter on it.

Unfortunately it seems, as with so much else, everything comes down to money – or lack of it, in the case of Pakistan’s cricketers.

While the angry bastard in me rages at corruption, nevertheless, the romantic in me clings to Stuart Broad’s comment that “whatever the true story is, I have absolutely no doubts that Pakistan were giving everything to try to win that match. It was proper competition, as it has been throughout the series”.

So while it may turn out that I have not been the only one who got my money’s worth from this Test I will also remember Trott and Broad’s partnership and Swann’s bowling for what they were – fine achievements that may have been over-shadowed by this story but not blotted out by it. Cricket is too precious to me for my enjoyment of it to be sullied by venality. And besides, there is an Ashes series to look forward to.

Mohammad Amir bowls (a legitimate delivery) at Lord's