In which direction does your cricketing moral compass point? © Getty Images

Welcome to the Official Confectionery Stall Cricketing Morality Challenge, following on from Andrew Strauss actions in the Champions Trophy – first recalling Angelo Mathews like a benevolent shepherd allowing a naughty fox one more chance to prove he can cohabit with your flock, then spurning Graeme Smith’s supplication for a runner like Henry VIII definitively telling Anne Boleyn that it was over for good because he didn’t go for women without heads, if I may use two largely inaccurate similes. I now give you the opportunity to find out the direction in which your cricketing moral compass points. Will it be north, towards the good of cricket and humankind, or south, towards 'win at all costs and damn the consequences'?

SCENARIO 1

It is the final over of a unfeasibly crucial limited-overs match. Your team needs four runs to win with just one measly wicket remaining. The opposition’s star fast bowler, who has taken five for 15 from nine overs of helmet-clattering fury, is walking back to his mark. All the other main bowlers have completed their allocation. No one else on the fielding team knows how to bowl. As the bowler turns at the end of his run-up and prepares to run in, you notice that a man-eating bear has escaped from the crowd and is charging up behind him. You realise that your chances of victory would be greatly enhanced by the fast bowler being eaten by the bear. Do you alert him to the impending danger?

(A) Yes, immediately. You know in your cricketing heart of hearts that victory is not all that counts. It must be victory subsequently unsullied by people constantly saying that you only won because the opposition’s best bowler was eaten by a bear at the start of the final over.

(B) Yes. But only after the man-eating bear has got close enough to scare the bowler out of his mind, reducing him to a quivering, whimpering shell of a man, thus affecting the quality of his decisive over.

(C) No. It is the umpires’ responsibility to monitor on-pitch predators. Luck is part of cricket. Being eaten by a bear or not being eaten by a bear are simply elements of luck within the broader tapestry of cricketing fortune. Anyway, the number of players eaten by bears will probably balance out in the long run.

SCENARIO 2

An opposition batsman is blasting your bowlers to all twelve corners of the ground. Your twelfth man runs on in between overs with a selection of new hair gels for the wicketkeeper, a handful of hungry termites, and an instruction from the coach to sprinkle the termites in the batsman’s crease so that when he next settles to face a delivery, the ravenous insects will gobble his bat. Do you:

(A) Grab the termites off the 12th man, start shovelling them into your mouth, while shouting to your coach in the pavilion that you will not stoop so low in an effort to win a cricket match, and send the 12th man back to the pavilion to fetch some salt and tomato ketchup to make the termites tastier.

(B) Take the termites but refuse to go through with the coach’s cheeky scheme. Instead, spread the termites on a good length in front of the batsman, and hope that he has an irrational fear of termites. If he seems unconcerned by the termites, simply sit back and wait for one of the following to happen: (1) some local snakes smell the termites, slither to the crease, and eat the termites, then hope that the batsman has a rational fear of snakes; (2) the termites build one of their trademark mounds just outside off stump on a good length, rendering batting much more difficult (it is a fact that even Bradman never scored a hundred on a pitch containing a functioning termite mound); or (3) the umpires abandon the match due to a termite and/or snake infestation.

(C) Put the plan into action. The coach is boss – he calls the shots. You take the termites from the twelfth man, then stand by the stumps (which your wicketkeeper is surreptiously smearing with the hair gel, a notorious termite repellent) pretending to move your fielders around whilst furtively dropping the termites all over the crease. Then jog slowly towards the bowler and tell him to take the longest and slowest imaginable run-up, before crouching in the slips and deliberately distracting the batsman just as the bowler finally arrives, causing your adversary to pull away at the last second. This will give the termites maximum bat-eating time. Then, when the batsman notices that his bat has been eaten by termites, refuse him permission to replace it, on the grounds that the ICC Match Regulations do not stipulate that a batsman should be allowed to replace a bat that has become part of the food chain, for fear of destabilising local ecosystems.

SCENARIO 3

Your team needs two runs to win at the end of a pulsating match. Nine wickets are down. You are one of the last wicket pair trying to squeeze out a spectacular victory. You get an obvious thick edge to the wicketkeeper, who tosses the ball high in the air in celebration. The umpire however, had been distracted by a passing airship that he thought looked a bit like Inzamam-ul-Haq, did not see the delivery and gives you not out. What do you do?

(A) Either walk, or, preferably, persuade the umpire to give you out, or wait for the next ball and smash the stumps to pieces with your bat. Then return to your frosty dressing room and say: “Cricket was the winner,” before taking refuge in a cupboard.

(B) Refuse the runs, but stay at the crease. When the opposition players berate you for not walking, remind them that it’s only a game, and that there is no documented proof that famous names in history ever walked when playing cricket, so why should you? In the spirit of fair play, you decide that neither side deserves to win, so you bat out the remaining four hours of play without scoring another run to secure a draw.

(C) With the ball still in the air and the wicketkeeper and fielders celebrating like a giraffe who has just eaten a lion, you sprint through for two runs, screaming: “Yes, yes, yes, in your faces, losers, Almighty Zeus himself decreed that we should win this game.”

How did you answer?

Mostly ‘A’s: You are a hero, a cricketing saint, and, as such, have no future in the professional game.

Mostly ‘B’s: You are too philosophically indecisive for top level cricket. Retire.

Mostly ‘C’s: Congratulations. You have displayed the hard-edged practicality of all great captains. You have an ability to take tough decisions, even when those tough decisions are wrong. You’ll go far in cricket, life, and, potentially, politics.

	Andrew Strauss played the good cop in recalling Angelo Mathews after a mid-pitch collision led to a run-out © Getty Images

In the all-you-can-stomach fashion of modern cricket, no sooner has one major (or, more appropriately, quite major) tournament been whisked off your plate, than another is slopped onto it. The Champions Trophy left the customer neither wanting more, nor regretting his meal choice. It was an adequate spaghetti Bolognese of a tournament, befitting the current adequacy of international cricket. The fleeting hope of England fluking a major one-day trophy was snuffed out like the cheap imitation candle it was. Australia were excellent – the divots in their scalps from the head scratching they must have endured over how they lost the Ashes must be reaching close to skull level.

The absence of so many top players from all or some of the competition left it appearing a little mundane, and the fact that a new-look Australia won their semi-final and final so easily raised questions about the overall standard and depth of the world game. This year’s ICC World XIs are not exactly replete with must-see legends of the sport. A generation of modern greats has been gradually leaving the game in recent years – the new as-yet-unspectacular generation of cricketers understandably feels a little pedestrian by comparison.

For Mitchell Johnson to be named cricketer of the year, having flunked his biggest exam, shows that that the cupboard of cricketing greatness is largely bare. Paul Harris is rated the seventh best bowler on the planet in the ICC Test rankings. Yes, he is a steady performer, underrated by much of the cricket media, unfairly lampooned by English commentators in 2008. But the seventh best in the world? If Harris was playing an impromptu game in the street outside your house, would you watch? You might take a peek through the window, but you probably wouldn’t actually go outside.

Ten years ago the top eight bowlers in the rankings were, in order, Donald, Pollock, McGrath, Ambrose, Murali, Walsh, Kumble and Akram. All greats of the game, all bar Kumble averaging in the mid-to-low 20s, all bowlers who made batsmen pick nervously at their lucky omelette on the first morning of a Test.

This week, the top eight are: Steyn, Murali, Johnson, Ntini, Harbhajan, Clark, Harris and Zaheer. All good bowlers, but today’s batsmen wolf their omelettes down with relative confidence.

The batting (perhaps understandably) is in better shape, but to illustrate the lack of invigorating young blood being transfused into cricket, only one of the top 30-ranked Test batsmen is under the age of 25 (number 27, Alistair Cook, another who is not the kind of player to cause turnstiles sleepless nights). Perhaps more revealingly, only nine of the top 30 are under the age of 30, and just five have made their debuts since the start of 2005.

At some point, if time, work and wife permit, I will see how this compares with previous points in cricketing history – perhaps this is not unusual, perhaps it is just a slight quirk, but it seems to me that cricket urgently needs some new world stars to emerge in the threatened Test arena. For now, I challenge you to list 10 players currently under the age of 25 who will be welcomed to the wicket in their final Test with a guard of honour in recognition of their immortal services to the game. Anyone who correctly predicts all 10 will win a papier-mache macquette of Lalit Modi counting a colossal pile of Twenty20 cash in his garden shed. Results to be confirmed in the year 2029.

The Champions League Twenty20 has instantly replaced the Champions Trophy. To be honest with you, I had forgotten about this tournament. To be fair to the CLT20, however, I have forgotten many things in my life, including:

− almost everything I learnt at school and university
− almost everything I have ever learnt that is neither a sporting statistic nor the name of one of my children (the latter being an impressive feat, bearing in mind that I have not had them tattooed on me, so have to rely purely on my capacity for mental recall)
− where I left my keys this morning
− my own birthday
− why aeroplanes work, and
− who ultimately admitted to being afraid of the Big Bad Wolf.

As a neutral with no particular allegiance to any of the teams involved, and insufficient space in my diary and brain to invite another cricketing tournament to roost, my interest in the tournament is largely restricted to any evidence it may offer regarding whether Test cricket is doomed, and if it is, how soon that doom may loom.

For me, the highlights of the Champions Trophy were the complex moral and philosophical quandaries Andrew Strauss had to confront. Strauss played good cop in recalling Angelo Mathews after a mid-pitch collision led to a run-out, but bad cop in refusing Graeme Smith a runner after the poor big lambkin pulled up lame after a long day outdoors running around a bit. I think he was right on both counts, although I would have liked to see the England captain demand that Smith find a runner of near-identical build. Or that AB de Villiers be forced to put on extra clothing until he reached the same weight and girth as Smith. This in turn could have led to highly entertaining disputes about exactly how chunky the South African skipper currently is, with umpires having to measure with calipers the exact span of Smith’s tummy.

Cricket has always been a moral maze – should you walk when you snick one to the keeper? Should the fielder appeal for a catch when he knows that the ball bounced three times before it reached him? Should the umpire give a leg-before-wicket decision against a batsman who he thinks might be sleeping with his wife, even when he knows: (a) that the ball pitched marginally outside leg stump; (b) that his wife’s infidelity is the direct result of his own obsession with umpiring, leaving her feeling unwanted, unloved and used (how many evenings a week can a husband reasonably expect a wife to stand with pads on putting her legs in front of moving objects?); and (c) that the alleged Lothario batsman was at the non-striker’s end?

Over the weekend I will concoct some hypothetical scenarios to test your cricketing morality, including whether or not you should tell an opposition bowler that he is about to be eaten by a bear.