THE TOP SPIN: Can England really go one step further than 1992 and finally win a global cricket prize?

By Lawrence Booth for the Daily Mail Updated: 06:48 EST, 11 May 2010

In the quieter moments of the recent trip to Bangladesh, former England all-rounder and now Daily Telegraph cricket correspondent Derek Pringle would be assailed by mischievous colleagues with a barrage of what-ifs.

What if, went the joke – even less funny by the end of the six-week tour than it was at the start – Pringle had won his lbw appeal against Pakistan's Javed Miandad before he had scored in the 1992 World Cup final?

It was generally agreed the knock-on effect would have made chaos theory look like small fry: no landslide for Tony Blair, a guilty verdict for OJ Simpson, and the preservation of the polar ice caps. You get the picture.

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But there was another, more serious, non-repercussion. Because 1992 was the last time England possessed a limited-overs team worthy of the name.

Steve Bucknor's curious verdict that day – prompting Javed to tap his ankle and tell Pringle, 'Allah was with me today' – turned out to be the moment England failed to kick on.

The rest has been history of a particularly gruesome kind. Before we get too carried away with England's showing in the World Twenty20, it's worth pointing out that they still haven't won a global one-day event (Bangladesh alone of the Test-playing nations know the feeling).

But whatever happens in Thursday's semi-final – probably against either Sri Lanka or West Indies – Andy Flower's men can return home knowing they are in serious danger of putting 18 years of painful underachievement behind them.

Two weeks ago, this column may have given the impression there was more chance of Bucknor admitting he should have given Javed out than of England ending their drought. Last week, we were tempted to reassess.

This week – as they celebrate three straight Twenty20 wins for only the second time – we are wondering whether humble pie goes best with whipped cream or clotted. And yet remnants of our initial scepticism remain. Before this tournament, it's true, there were signs that England's limited-overs form was on the up.

But it was hardly cast-iron evidence: a sporadically promising Champions Trophy culminating in bad defeats to New Zealand and Australia; a 1-1 Twenty20 draw in South Africa that relied on the usual Duckworth/Lewis ineptitude of the hosts; a heartening 2-1 one-day triumph there which benefited from a two-match washout; and a 3-0 win in Bangladesh that could easily have been 1-1 going into the decider had Eoin Morgan not survived a couple of highly plausible shouts for leg-before.

Even out in the Caribbean, England have had their moments when the karmic wheel has appeared to turn full circle post-Pringle. Would they have lost to Ireland but for the Guyanese weather? Would they have beaten Pakistan if Saeed Ajmal hadn't dropped each of their top three? Would they have struggled against South Africa if Morne Morkel hadn't overstepped seconds before Craig Kieswetter was caught at third man?

The questions are futile, but they may illustrate a deeper truth: fortune is now favouring bravery, whereas before England were not even within a Dictionary of Quotations of Gary Player's dictum about luck and practice. Dammit: they're actually hitting the ball in the air – to the tune of 24 sixes!

(And before you point out that the reason for this is the essential non-Englishness of the side, bear in mind that six members of the team that lost the 1992 World Cup final were born outside the UK. When Kevin Pietersen returns from paternity leave, the figure in the current side will be four.)

When the effervescent Morgan hit one of those sixes on Monday, an absurd one-handed effort off Scott Styris that travelled 84 metres over long-on, his captain Paul Collingwood looked on in disbelief, before turning round to shake his head and chuckle in the direction of Flower. The coach was busy making notes, presumably along the lines of: 'Keep pinching self. This may not really be happening.'

What happens next is anyone's guess, and for the time being the Top Spin is steering clear of predictions. But England still have plenty to do. Collingwood has managed only 39 runs in five innings, Luke Wright has batted with gusto but may still not be a long-term answer at No 6, and it's hard to escape the feeling that the omission of Jimmy Anderson – the supposed attack leader – will not come into play at some point.

And yet England, New England, keep winning. Old England would not have recovered after losing three for six against New Zealand yesterday; New England has Morgan and a strong lower order. Old England would have relaxed had it ever experienced the luxury of not needing to win a group game; New England recognised the trap and knuckled down.

Old England would have celebrated on a pedalo; New England regards ice baths as the only acceptable water sport. Australia will probably still need to be beaten if England are to prevail in the Caribbean, and that's even if the semi-final is won. But the hope must be that, later this week, the Javed joke can finally be laid to rest.

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THAT WAS THE WEEK THAT WAS

Pigeon-hole! What pigeon-hole?

The Top Spin knew what Andy Flower meant when he said he was wary of ‘pigeon-holing’ Eoin Morgan, who held the batting together in the early part of the World Twenty20. But we wondered precisely which pigeon-hole the England coach had in mind? ‘Oh, he’s your typical Dublin-born, twinkle-eyed, reverse-reverse-sweeping, flip-blade-playing jack-the-lad, really,’ springs instantly to mind...

Modi and Test cricket: the truth. Allegedly

Until now Lalit Modi – former IPL supremo and cricket’s very own Moses (copyright: Ravi Shastri) – has done his best to pretend he values Test cricket, although his actions have tended to speak rather more loudly than his words. 

But an email purporting to come from Modi/Moses himself and forwarded by ECB chairman Giles Clarke to the Indian board appears to expose once and for all the biblical giant’s true feelings on the matter.

Moses’s thoughts allegedly go like this: ‘ODIs have reached a saturation point and though unlikely to disappear, cannot grow any further. Tests are almost redundant and only T20 has growth value.’

Another reason why his fall from grace won’t necessarily be mourned in certain sections of the cricket community.

Boot on the other foot

English teams have long been patted patronisingly on the head about their ability or otherwise to deal with mystery spin on the subcontinent, so it has been informative to watch India’s batsmen struggle against seam bowlers who stubbornly refuse to serve up a buffet-like diet of half-volleys. 

After only one of his batsmen passed 13 against Australia at Bridgetown, India captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni lamented his compatriots’ struggles on the pull – a statement which, if it surprised those who have seen India’s stars in action in the bars and clubs of Mumbai, was duly confirmed when India lost to West Indies on Sunday.

It’s heartening to see that clichés still contain a grain of truth.

With coaches like that...

In a boost for global perceptions of psychological illness, ex-Pakistan coach Intikhab Alam has been caught out decrying his former charges as ‘mentally retarded people’ following their horrible recent tour of Australia, where they failed to win a single game.

The comments were made by Alam to the Pakistan board, who cheerfully wrote up the report, then failed to prevent its leakage to the Dawn newspaper. Even more alarming is Alam’s understanding of what constitutes mental derangement.

‘They don't know how to wear their clothes and how to talk in a civilized manner,’ he is reported to have said, at a stroke condemning most of the rest of the cricket community as well.

Sachin storms Twitter

So what exactly does Sachin Tendulkar (266,752 followers on Twitter at 10am today) have that the Top Spin (2,032 at the last count) does not?

Apart from well over 31,000 international runs, 93 international hundreds and a Test average north of 55, the obvious answer must be not a lot.

But if you ever needed persuading of the man’s God-like status, witness his heady ascent to a quarter of a million followers since tweeting for the first time, at 11.21am on May 4, the following: ‘Finally the original SRT is on twitter n the first thing I'd like to do is wish my colleagues the best in the windies.’

Divine intervention, alas, has not been forthcoming for India’s cricketers...

King of Spain turned Captain Hook

There may or may not be something symbolic in the image of Ashley Giles – forgoing his tenuous links with Iberian royalty – dressed as a pirate and forcing Rikki Clarke to walk the plank (see http://www.t20.edgbaston.com/). But Warwickshire’s ‘cut-throat cricket’ theme for this summer’s Twenty20 is hoping to rise above inevitable jokes about being sick as a parrot. 

They are, in any case, hoping for better luck than that which befell Jonathan Trott, who turned up for a holiday in Las Vegas recently after a rough time with umpiring decisions in Bangladesh only to find his hopes of earning a dollar or two in the casinos thwarted by a city-wide power cut.