The clash between Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff wasn't quite the 21st century version of Hector v Achilles © Getty Images

Global cricket continues to pound its own never-ending treadmill with the urgent ferocity of a marathon runner who has remembered mid-race that he was supposed to be at his own wedding, but is on course for a personal best which he is unwilling to sacrifice. The IPL has added further congestion, while proving that, contrary to scientific expectation, the best way to solve the problem of players complaining about an overloaded calendar was not to reduce the amount of cricket, but add to more and cover it with solid gold.

With so much of the world’s cricketing focus on the IPL, it has been easy to forget that the first Test of the English summer is just two weeks away – which is an entirely ridiculous sentence to be able to commit to cyberpaper on the 23rd of April. As the great cricket scribe EW Swanton once wrote: “An Englishman should never start a Test match when he can still catch frostbite by sneaking into Lord’s at the dead of night and playing nude cricket on the square. This Gubby and I learned by bitter experience on a moonlit evening early last May.”

The English domestic season is already in full swing – if ‘swing’ is the correct terminology for something that lurches spasmodically from one form of cricket to the next, like a drunk polygamist trying to cuddle the right wife.

I realise that the expanded programme of international cricket is necessary to fund the expanded programme of international cricket, but the current structure of the England team’s summer is designed to minimise spectator anticipation – Tests begin before the season, its characters and its form lines have properly started to take shape, without the curtain-raising, rivalry-establishing pre-fight sparring of a one-day series. The matches are then squeezed together into frantic back-to-back bowler-punishing wodges, with an ODI series tagged on as an elongated afterthought, dragging along through September to end the summer on a probably damp and quickly-forgotten squib. (By comparison, when Jimi Hendrix played the Woodstock festival, he was on after Herbert The Singing Labrador, not before. Otherwise, Herbert would have struggled, however good his barked rendition of Blue Moon.)

Nevertheless, the fact that this is an Ashes summer creates regular twitches of excitement, especially following the tumultuous winter England have endured, and the fact that it will be an almost entirely new Australian team for the first time in 20 years.

It is more than possible in these days of global media coverage to become overwhelmed with the sheer volume of cricket. I admit that, as an English neutral, I have had serious motivation problems psyching myself up for the IPL. (It hasn’t helped that Lalit Modi’s jamboree has also coincided with some distractingly intrusive building work in my house – what was once my kitchen currently looks as if Devon Malcolm has spent two hours bowling to himself in it. Debris and destruction everywhere.)

In an effort to engage myself emotionally with the IPL, I have tried to artificially create a personal link to some of the teams. I jumped a motorcycle over eight London buses in an effort to make myself feel like a Daredevil. I held a mobile phone and put my fingers into an electrical socket to convince myself I was a Charger. I jumped on Sir Ian Botham’s back and made him give me a piggy back, but still I felt little like a Knight Rider. I paraglided into Buckingham Palace and invited the Queen to wrestle me, but had I become a true Royal Challenger? Alas, no.

Next, I tried hypnosis, to convince my subconscious self that my father had been a Chennai Super Kings fan when he was a boy, and his father before him, and his father before him, because a schoolfriend of his once had trials for their youth team, but still I could not forcibly affiliate myself to the team.

I even tried auctioning my support, but none of the franchises sent so much as a financial director to the auction in my living room. Unwanted and unbought − I felt like a cross between a canoe made of salt and Samit Patel.

Even the much-hyped (in the British press at least) ‘head-to-head’ duel between Pietersen and Flintoff failed to spark my interest. In the end it amounted to the Lancastrian Leviathan scoring six runs off four balls by the Hampshire Hulk – not quite Hector versus Achilles for the 21st century.

So I consulted a sports-watching psychologist. “What’s wrong with me?” I asked. “I love cricket. The IPL is the spangliest cricket tournament in the world. But I don’t really care about it.” The shrink gave me a thorough physical and mental examination (although his methods – a mixture of prodding and growling – I considered to be somewhat Victorian). He bowled me across his surgery a couple of times, put some bails on the bridge of my nose, then noted my reaction to an ink blot which looked like Yuvraj Singh hoicking one over midwicket.

He put on his diagnosis hat, tucked his chin into his chest, and put on his most serious available face. “Mr Zaltzman. It’s bad news I’m afraid. You’ve come down with an uncharacteristic case of cricketing apathy.” “Oh no,” I screamed. “It’s like the 2007 World Cup all over again. Be straight with me, doc − how long have I got?”

He grasped my shoulders. “Calm down, big horse,” he soothed. “Yours is an increasingly common problem. Watching cricket on television has become a never-ending grind. If you don’t look after yourself and manage your schedule properly, your enthusiasm for cricket in general could wane. You will find yourself drifting off at key moments of matches, and soon you will want to spend more time with your family. It’s a slippery slope.”

I gulped a gulp of fear and realisation. “I can’t risk that – not with the Ashes so soon. You’re right, doc. I’m going to have to give the IPL a miss. Sure, I’ll check the scores, but I already cram far too much sport into my life. I cannot risk adding what is essentially a new sport without jeopardising my marriage or having my children try to put me up for adoption.”

The psychologist squeezed my cheeks. “Good boy,” he said. “Now go home, put the kettle on, take a passing interest in the IPL, and save yourself for the Tests.”

I suppose the problem is that, fundamentally, I quite like Twenty20. I find it sometimes entertaining if largely unengaging. Test cricket grabbed my six-year-old soul in 1981 and has never let go. Twenty20 has been a seismic phenomenon in cricket, and this year’s tournament – an Indian league featuring players from all corners of the world playing with and against each other in South Africa – is an incredible event that joyously must have old apartheid honcho Hendrik Verwoerd spitting fifty different kinds of feathers in his well-deserved grave. But I just can’t quite bring myself to care who wins. Does that make me a bad cricket fan?

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	Shahid Afridi has taken unpredictability to and beyond its logical extremes © AFP

After much deliberation, and the resignation of half of the selection panel (the nought-year-old Zaltzman junior), here is the remainder of the post-1980 World Unpredictable Test XI.

6. Shahid Afridi (Pakistan) (honorary captain)

The first name on the team sheet. Gives this team excellent balance, as he can be devastating with both bat and ball. To both his opponents and his own team. On and off the pitch.

Afridi – “the maddest of Mad Maxes” according to his Cricinfo profile – has taken unpredictability to and beyond its logical extremes, to the extent that the most unpredictable thing he could possibly do in the rest of his career (other than claiming that Asif Mujtaba was his role model and inspiration) is nail down a place in the Pakistan Test team and string together a steady run of solid performances.

Thus far, he has had a genuinely baffling Test career. Despite batting and bowling averages of 37 and 34 respectively, and despite scoring more centuries in his first 22 Tests than any of Ponting, Tendulkar, Lara, Inzamam, Dravid, Gooch, Yousuf, Gower, Kallis, Jayawardene, both Waughs, Saeed Anwar, Sangakkara or Hayden, Afridi has played fewer than one in three of his country’s Tests over the course of his career.

His average Test innings lasts for the same length of time as Jimmy Anderson’s, but contains more runs than Hussain’s, Cronje’s or Ranatunga’s. And with the ball, he dismissed Tendulkar three times in two Tests in 2005, which is as many times as Warne managed to snare the Mumbai Maestro in his entire career.

Afridi arguably had the potential to be Pakistan’s Sehwag and Kumble rolled into one explosive package, but it has proved impossible to predict whether he will blast an incredible hundred, swipe a less-than-incredible nought, spin out the world’s best batsman, get smashed about by Matthew Hoggard, retire, unretire, almost hit a spectator with a ball, almost hit a spectator with a bat, or audition for a part in the PCB’s annual charity ballet by pirouetting in the middle of the pitch.

Afridi therefore is honorary captain of this team. This XI would need little captaincy, if only because even attempting to mould it into a coherent, focused unit would be an act of wilful futility.

7. Kamran Akmal (Pakistan) (wicketkeeper)

In his short career to date, Kamran has veered from being a top-class keeper but underachieving batsman, to being the new Gilchrist with the bat and the new Coco The Clown with the gloves. After scoring five brilliant centuries in two months in 2005-06 (three in Tests, two in ODIs), he sunk into a fallow period in which his ineptitude with the bat often matched his seismically shaky wicketkeeping, in which he remained flawless apart from his glovework, footwork and headwork. At times, he has not so much been ham-fisted, as appeared to be keeping wicket with two live pigs strapped to ends of his arms.

His recent re-emergence suggests that he could have a long career of wildly undulating form, and cement a reputation for being both breathtakingly brilliant and utterly useless.

Kamran sneaks in to the team because MS Dhoni, who appeared to have the unpredictability world at his mercy, has disappointingly used the responsibilities of captaincy as an excuse to become disturbingly consistent and reliable, and ahead of Brendon McCullum – how did it take such an obviously extravagant talent with the bat four years and 35 matches to score a century against a major Test nation?

8. Craig White (England)

White was a curious cricketer. For the first six years of his sporadic Test career, he appeared to have been selected by mistake, or as one of the Australian double-agent players which the ACB intermittently plants in county cricket to undermine the England team. Then he emerged as an occasional master of reverse swing and a occasional player of brilliant innings.

He took 14 wickets in his first 10 tests, then back-to-back five-fors, then, after four more in his next test, took no more than two in an innings for 14 tests, before wrapping up his career with 12 in three innings in Australia. With the bat, he twice put together impressively inept sequences of eight single-figure scores in nine innings, but also played masterfully on turning wickets in Asia. By the end, it was hard to work out if he had overachieved or underachieved with both bat and ball. Or done exactly as well as he should.

9. Shoaib Akhtar

The man who puts the ‘liability’ into ‘unreliability’.There is a wealth of out-and-out pacemen from which to choose – Devon Malcolm, Patrick Patterson, Fidel Edwards, Lasith Malinga to start with – but the Rawalpindi Roller-Coaster is out on his own for both performance and behaviour.

On form, Shoaib has been the most spectacular sight in world cricket. At Colombo in 2002, he blasted out Ponting and the two Waughs in four balls, then Gilchrist and Warne in the next two overs – five legends of the game blasted out without requiring the assistance of a fielder in perhaps the greatest fifteen-ball spell in Test history.

With 178 wickets at 25, and a strike rate of 45, Shoaib clearly could have been one of the greats, if only his mood had not swung further, faster and more consistently than his yorker. The three Fs – form, fitness and focus – have been intermittent and reluctant travelling companions on his madcap journey through cricket, and he has played fewer than half of Pakistan’s Tests since his debut. He has not – how should I put this? – always taken a fast bowler’s tummy with him onto the field of play, and has broken down on the field more often than a cheapskate farmer’s home-made tractor.

He faced allegations of throwing, before his action was cleared due to natural hyperextension of the elbow. He has, however, been found repeatedly guilty of throwing tantrums, due to unnatural hyperextension of the ego.

Occasionally, amidst the controversies, injuries, bans, strops, drops, comebacks and court cases, there have been outbreaks of cricket. Against England in late 2005, Shoaib was a controlled, mature, focused match-winner, seeming to presage a vintage autumn to a turbulent career – since then, he has taken just 17 wickets at 34 in seven Tests. And tested positive for nandrolone, hit a team-mate with a bat, and faced a legal action from the chairman of his own country’s cricket board, amongst other escapades. He does not drink in Last Chance Saloon. He lives in it, has repainted it in his favourite colours, and is about to buy out the management and rename it after himself.

As Irving Berlin once said, “There’s no business like Shoaib business.”

10. Steve Harmison (England)

It is often said that England never know which Steve Harmison will turn up – the one who almost took Langer’s, Hayden’s and Ponting’s heads off on the first Ashes morning of 2005, or the one who almost took second slip’s kneecaps off with his first ball of the 2006-07 rematch with a delivery that challenged humanity’s assumptions about the laws of physics? Or the one who nibbles it about in the low-80s mph, trying to keep an end tight until Collingwood comes on to try to force a breakthrough?

Statistically, the Durham Dilemma’s career divides up into three distinct phases – not very good (28 wickets at 39 in his first 10½ Tests), very good (146 at 25 from his breakthrough second innings at the Oval in 2003 to his last triumph against a terrified Pakistan at a bouncy Old Trafford in 2006), and not very good again (47 at 46 in 18 Tests since then).

But even in his good phase, the wrong Harmison would pop up with alarming regularity (especially in South Africa in 2004-05), and in the midst of his struggles, there have been moments when he has looked a skull-shuddering world-beater once more (notably at the Oval last year). As the England selectors gaze lovingly at the fading, sepia-tinted photographs of the Australian captain dripping blood, and of a Jamaica scoreboard emblazoned with the figures 7 for 12, will they give this difficult marriage one last go?

11. Stuart MacGill (Australia)

This team has to have a front-line leg-spinner – until Warne spoilt the reputation of leggies by being persistently brilliant for almost his entire 15-year career, wrist-spinners had unpredictability written into their contracts. MacGill seemed like a throwback leggie, veering between unplayable and flayable, mixing genius with garbage like a drunken Einstein.

He failed to live up to his brief, brilliant early period of Warne supremacy – excluding relatively facile wickets against Bangladesh and in the so-called ‘Test’ against the ICC XI, he averaged 44 in his final 17 Tests with only one five-wicket innings − but remained one of cricket’s most compelling variables, with a fuse as short as some of his long-hops, and a glare as devilish as his googly.

MacGill narrowly edges out Abdul Qadir, who at one point followed up a spell of two wickets for 300 over five Tests by whirling out 40 victims at 16 in his next four matches. He then took only one more (expensive) five-wicket haul in the remaining three years of his career. Qadir’s Test average unsuccessfully tried to escape from both ends of the 30s throughout his career (excluding a one-match breakout to 29.64, after which it was recaptured and sedated back up to the mid-30s), but MacGill takes the main spinner’s spot in the team because the look on his face always suggested that something was about to explode, whether it was a fizzing leg break out of the rough, or, more likely, his own temper.

This then, is the full line-up:

1. Virender Sehwag (IND)
2. Marvan Atapattu (SL)
3. Aravinda de Silva (SL)
4. Kevin Pietersen (ENG)
5. Carl Hooper (WI)
6. *Shahid Afridi (PAK)
7. †Kamran Akmal (NZ)
8. Craig White (ENG)
9. Shoaib Akhtar (PAK )
10. Steve Harmison (ENG)
11. Stuart MacGill (AUS)

That is a team that I guarantee could win or lose any match by an innings and 400.

Try as I might, I couldn’t find a place for a South African – for all Herschelle Gibbs’ mercurial efforts, unpredictability does not seem to be in the their South African players’ cricketing soul (was this the real reason for Pietersen’s defection?).

Perhaps in selecting three England players, I am guilty of national bias, of wishing that English cricket was more flamboyant and exciting than it really is, but the application of personal bias is historically one of the perks of being a selector.

Comments (134) | XIs

	Kevin Pietersen confounds by being simultaneously consistent and unpredictable © Getty Images

Many thanks for your ample responses to Part 1 of the Unpredictable XI, especially for those containing the kind of statistical nuggets that make it worth getting up in the morning.

Unpredictability being what it is, Part 2 has been delayed by my unpredictable loss of my computer cable, and the less unpredictable failure of the company from which I ordered a replacement to take the trouble of putting it in the post. The rest of the XI will be unveiled to the world on Tuesday.

In the meantime, here are some further thoughts on unpredictability, and on your very interesting comments and counter-suggestions.

It is clear that there is no objective standard for unpredictability, nor a universal consensus on exactly what it entails. It certainly does not preclude cricketing greatness. Batting, by its nature, generates unpredictable results – Bradman scored ducks in almost 10% of his Test innings, while, at the other end of the scale, Jimmy Anderson has no ducks in 46 innings (making him an infinitely superior batsman to Bradman), and Matthew Bell has scored two Test hundreds.

Pietersen divides opinion in this matter, although it seems that he could prompt a violent disagreement between two stuffed penguins in museums on opposite sides of the world.

Responding to the previous blog, Aneeb argues that Pietersen is “easily the most consistent of England’s batsmen”. I would partially agree with this – he almost unfailingly plays at least one major innings in every series. But I would maintain that he scores high unpredictability points as he does not constructs long sequences of either success or failure. So is it possible to be both consistent and unpredictable? I’m not a scientist, but if some guy in a lab coat can claim to me that mercury is a liquid and a metal at the same time, I’m prepared to tell him that KP is simultaneously consistent and unpredictable. Before politely apologising, offering to replace his thermometer, and promising never again to throw a copy of Wisden through his laboratory window.

Michael Slater has had a few supporters, and the Wagga Wagga Wildcard makes a strong case for being preferred to Sehwag as a like-for-like swashbuckler to get the innings off to either a roaring or a spluttering start.

Slater had both an impressive 65% conversion rate for turning 50s into 90s (23 out of 35) and a stratospherically dismal 40% failure rate for converting those 90s into hundreds. Nine times he blew it just as someone was preparing to paint his name onto a pavilion honours board, and on six of those occasions he was within one shot of punching the air and smooching his helmet again. Capable of blasting aggression and old-fashioned steadiness, of controlled demolition and reckless self-destruction, Slater always gave the bowlers a chance and could concoct his own dismissal seemingly out of thin air, like a magician gobbled up by a man-eating rabbit he had just pulled out of his own hat. Properly unpredictable.

	Michael Slater is capable of controlled demolition and reckless self-destruction © Getty Images

Sehwag, however, has to my mind confirmed his place in the XI during the series in New Zealand – five blisteringly brilliant starts, five failures. He batted as if launching a heroic one-man protest against the grinding tedium of so much of this year’s cricket to date. If Sehwag had been a Formula One driver, he would have roared off the grid, sped away from the field, and driven straight off the track at the first corner after being distracted by an odd-shaped hat in the crowd. And if Donald Rumsfeld had been a cricket coach instead of a professional harbinger of suffering, he would have marked Sehwag down as a “known unknown”. The man is a global treasure.

Your other nominations – the likes of Gibbs, Ashraful, Jayasuriya, Astle, Martyn, Mark Waugh, and Sidhu – all have their merits, but I am the head selector and I stand by my selections (even if the more I think about cricketing unpredictability, the more unsure I am of what it is, and the leaked rumours about me having a blazing row with myself in the selection meeting are true). If the team performs too predictably in the forthcoming series against the World Reliable XI, then I will dutifully tender my resignation.

Thanks again for your contributions. I particularly liked D Clement’s unearthing of New Zealand’s top four from 1958, who had a career average of 52. Between them. At Lord’s that year, England scored a disappointing 269 after winning the toss – and still won by an innings and 148 runs. Bearing in mind, however, that only four of this New Zealand team had played England in Auckland three years previously, when the Kiwis redefined what is possible in cricket by striding out to bat in their second innings facing a deficit of 46, and managing to lose by an innings and 20 runs, we can safely say that the New Zealand selectors were, in modern parlance, “still trying to find the right combinations”. In the age before it was discovered by sports coaches that you can take positives even from total, abject humiliations, the 1950s must have been tough times for New Zealand cricket fans.

Ralph Zimmerman suggests that Chanderpaul might merit inclusion in the Unpredictable XI for his 69-ball century against Australia in 2003. He scored almost twice as fast in that innings as in the next fastest of his 21 Test centuries, and took 267 balls fewer to bring up three figures than he had a year earlier against India, making this a candidate for Test cricket’s most out-of-character performance. Which would also make an interesting list. One day.

I will also at a future point address Chathu’s idea of an XI made up of players with misleading beginnings to their careers – perhaps a hypothetical match between players who initially looked rubbish but turned out to be good, versus those who appeared to be all-time-greats-in-the-making but fizzled out, captained by Graham Gooch and Jimmy Adams respectively. (I half qualify for both teams.)

Later this week: Numbers 6 to 11 of the Unpredictables, plus a nation-by-nation review of 2008-09.

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