© Getty Images

After a few days of purported “cricket” squelched by what is reportedly the wettest British June on record, with its deeply unsatisfying array of fast-forwarded Twelve12, Ten10 and even Five5 farces, how heartening to see one reader, Michael Fernando, chiming with my fervent belief that the game’s latest golden goose needs surgery of the back-to-basics variety.

Ten years ago next month, on July 21, 1997, 5,343 spectators at Old Trafford witnessed the future of abridged cricket. In the first floodlit 11-a-side county match, a strictly experimental affair, Lancashire and Yorkshire decided to split their 50-over affair into quarters – alternate chunks of 25 overs – so that both teams would bat in daylight as well as under lights.

The half-time score was eerily well-poised, almost suspiciously so – Lancashire 122-2, Yorkshire 122-3. The hosts failed to double their tally, mooring at 239-8, yet it was enough to secure victory by 13 runs as the visiting batsmen’s unfamiliarity with the conditions told. The tension was taut to the end – precisely what limited-overs contests should be but so seldom are. Unfortunately, however enterprising cricket has proved by comparison with every other sport you could mention, the gauntlet was left on the floor.

The main drawback with the instant success of Twenty20 in the summer of 2003 was that it blinded the England and Wales Cricket Board to the possibilities proffered in Manchester. Admittedly, the sense that the 50-over variant sorely needed reinvention – and powerplays and substitutes would ultimately prove about as radical and useful as giving a leopard bigger spots – had yet to become as glaringly obvious as it is now. The excitement generated by Sanath Jayasuriya and Romesh Kaluwitherana’s thunderous opening alliances at the previous year’s World Cup had bought the format a few years’ breathing space.

As the pendulum swung ever further towards the batsmen, on the dubious and rather patronising premise that tomorrow’s audience could only be ensnared by an endless succession of sixes and fours, the impermanence of the 50-over game’s revival became ever more blatant. Since 1996, each World Cup has managed to outstrip its predecessor when it comes to generating apathy. That the ICC recognises as much can be gleaned from the rather unseemly haste to launch a Twenty20 World Cup.

But that doesn’t mean the panacea is beyond reproach. Nor even that the 50-over game should necessarily die. As it stands, the senior one-day form falls short in the most critical department: in the vast majority of cases, it deprives us of drama. By 1) belatedly getting shot of any restrictions on how many overs a bowler is permitted and 2) quartering games along the lines of that Old Trafford experiment (which was repeated spasmodically elsewhere before withering on the vine), or even allowing both teams two separate 25-over innings, there is a chance that the missing ingredient can be relocated.

In all likelihood, though, the 50-over format will be thanked for its services and given its gold watch, leaving Twenty20 to become the staple diet. In which case Mr Speed and his chums should instigate a major revamp. If the almighty US cultural dollar is valued as much as it seems to be, they could always go the whole hog and trim XIs to Xs and have nine alternate innings per side a la baseball, each expiring with the fall of a wicket. If, on the other hand, they want to restore the primacy of cricketing principles, so many of which have been consigned to the sacrificial bonfire, why not revert to two distinct innings per side?

This is also what Mr Fernando prescribes, along with the abolition of Duckworth-Lewis calculations in games of such brevity, thus preventing any more of these Ten10 or Five5 fiascos. You could even introduce a facility – let’s call it, oh, I don’t know, the “follow-on” – whereby, if the team batting second trails by, say, 50 runs, they could be asked to bat again straightaway. Team A might score 122-3 off their first 10, whereupon Team B limp to 54-6, then “follow-on” and rack up 134-6, leaving Team A chasing 67. The possibilities, if not endless, should certainly be pretty extensive. And it could still all be done and dusted inside three hours.

This is a rare opportunity – make that a unique one – for the game to profit by turning back the clock. It is also no job for the hesitant.

	This was one of the few bits of action between Kent and Essex in a shortened Twenty20 encounter © Getty Images

He is not a chap whose boots I would normally be prepared to lick, but I must express my gratitude to Lord MacLaurin for advancing the cause of 20-over cricket a decade ago. The hoots of derision with which the idea was initially greeted are not remembered now. And much as I’d love to see such games played over two innings per side – cricket without second chances is like a BLT sandwich without the B - I have few quibbles with the philosophy or the format. Unless, that is, it results in the sort of farce a friend of mine endured yesterday.

He went to Canterbury to see Kent entertain Essex with some friends. They were a little late, arriving in the middle of the fifth over, saw four balls bowled and then watched it tip down, driving the players off for about two hours. The match eventually resumed at 5.30, with a good two and a half hours of pristine daylight to go – oodles of time to complete the remaining 35 overs. Or so you would have thought. Instead, Kent had to stick on what they had and the visitors were left score 50 in five overs under the dear old Duckworth-Lewis.

Never mind that they received a damn good finish for their money. Never mind that James Middlebrook was caught about 10 yards in from the boundary going for the winning runs off the final ball. My pal and his pals went home in bright sunshine at 6pm. “Bizarre and rather unsatisfactory,” began his post-mortem. He also thought the “parking pricy (£10),
catering poor - almost exclusively of the burger and chips variety, and public address utterly inaudible on our side of the ground”.

“Isn't it about time cricket showed rather more consideration for the casual fan?” he wrote in an email when he got home. “If not 20 overs, they could certainly have played say 15 or even 10 and still finished before it got dark.” I didn’t think it appropriate to remind him he has
long been the fiercest defender of D/L I know, but that’s by-the-by.

In seeking to shoehorn games into baseball-sized chunks, cricket has done much to inspire a new generation of followers, broaden its constituency and show up the 50-over variant to be as fresh as a decade-old strawberry. All that said, incidents such as this underline the dangers of excessive dumbing-down. Let’s hope the South Africans don’t have the same nonsense planned for the World Championship.

	Hick and Caddick in 2000 © Getty Images

Caddick and Hick. Sounds like a shady law firm. If talent was the only passport required for entry into sport’s promised land, their Test curriculum vitaes would be festooned with 400 wickets and 10,000 runs, and a century of caps apiece.

As it is, notwithstanding the fact that Andrew Caddick and Graeme Hick are the leading active first-class performers in their respective disciplines, one is generally regarded as a byword for nerdiness and prima donnaesque truculence, the other as the flat-track bully who couldn’t stop Australians kicking sand in his face, the underachievers’ underachiever. Flags of convenience never were entirely convenient.

At 38 and 41 respectively, Caddick and Hick are now the grand old men of county cricket, as much a part of the furniture as Hove’s deckchairs. Indeed, Caddick, who played his 62nd and last Test in January 2003, has defied virtually every rule in the book by keeping his mojo working for as long as he has: only Danish Kaneria has taken more first-class wickets this summer than his 44. Yet unlike Hick, who at international level wore an uncertain heart on both sleeves and hence stirred sympathy, he has never quite inspired affection: that sensitivity about his ears and a certain social gauchness proved difficult to overcome. Has any England cricketer with 200 Test wickets to his name been so unloved?

When they chose England over New Zealand and Zimbabwe (to be fair, Caddick insists his native land showed scant interest after he played for them in the 1987-88 Youth World Cup while the prospects of Harare becoming a major international venue were pretty dim in the mid-1980s), Poms rubbed hands in gleeful anticipation. Caddick, we were assured, was Richard Hadlee on stilts, Hick a high-heeled Bradman. Most were quite happy to sheath their objections to so-called “equivocal Englishmen”.

Unfortunately, expectations were pitched so high that instant damnation followed early struggles. Hick’s first, fatal faux pas was not to score quadruple Test hundreds from the get-go; Caddick’s was to mosey into the pressbox in the Caribbean and call home without permission. In time, both recovered, albeit to varying extents.

	Second innings destroyer or first innings bottler? © Photosport

Caddick forged a highly fruitful alliance with Darren Gough that helped reboot the Test side under Nasser Hussain and Duncan Fletcher. Yet even then he was chastised as a second-innings bowler – 103 scalps at 20.81 compared with 131 at 37.06 in the first. Which always struck me as a tad absurd, not to mention grossly unfair, not least because, with draws increasingly scarce, second-innings wickets became more valuable as his career evolved. In all he took part in 21 Test victories, in which he claimed the not insignificant matter of 114 victims at 19.67.

While Hick’s 65 Tests saw him average an under-par 31, he saved his strutting for the ODI stage, where restraint is actively discouraged and meekness intolerable. Among Englishmen with 3000 runs, only Nick Knight, Allan Lamb and Marcus Trescothick have averaged more than his 37.12; for St George, only Lamb and Graham Gooch have surpassed his 635 World Cup runs. It was his 83 that won the 1992 semi-final against South Africa: the sight of Zimbabwe’s big brother so often spurred him to his best. The pity was the neglect. With an average of 34.20 and a strike rate of 41.20 balls/wicket, he leads all England spinners who have pocketed more than 13 scalps. Yet over the span of his 120 internationals he averaged well under two overs per game. If only he’d had Kevin Pietersen’s disdain for self-effacement.

Hick, much the more modest of the pair, has no such illusions, but it says much for Caddick’s seemingly untarnished self-image that he still believes he is good enough to play Tests. With his endlessly repeatable action and undiminished capacity for generating lift from a good length, a straight swap for Steve Harmison or Liam Plunkett against the West Indies would certainly have been beneficial to the efficiency of England’s attack. Nor would it have been at all incongruous but for the ruthless tyranny of age and the undue importance selectors place on the least significant numbers.

Instead, he has walked the walk for Somerset. At the mid-point of the County Championship campaign, Somerset sit atop Division Two courtesy of a multitude of factors: Justin Langer’s leadership and runs, a Taunton square that can play even the biggest duffer into form, six regulars with batting averages in excess of 60, and the circuit’s most venerable and dynamic new-ball duo. Last year, Caddick and South African Charl Willoughby (32) combined for 129 first-class wickets, a figure they are on schedule to exceed. In their most recent outing, they sealed a thumping of Gloucestershire with 19 of the 20 wickets. Caddick’s match haul of 12-71 was a career-best; no active non-spinner comes within a country mile of his 1114 first-class victims.

	'While Hick’s 65 Tests saw him average an under-par 31, he saved his strutting for the ODI stage, where restraint is actively discouraged and meekness intolerable' © Photosport

Hick is some way from his pomp, but he has just become the fifth-fastest player to 40,000 first-class runs. His two centuries this term, meanwhile, have hoisted his career tally to 134, eighth on the all-time list. He and Worcestershire are talking about another contract, and provided his appetite remains hearty, Frank Woolley, seventh in that chart with 145, may not be beyond reach.

Currently on a one-year deal at New Road, he insists he is “really enjoying it” and has no desire to heave his coffin into the attic just yet. “There will be somewhere along the line, whether it is this year or next year, that will suddenly make me think, ‘I am letting myself and other people down’ and it will be time to go. At the moment I am not thinking that way. I’d like to be here one day and gone the next.”

It is hard to imagine Caddick expressing those sentiments. They’ll have to wrench the ball from his hands and force him to sign an undertaking to spend the rest of his days flying that beloved helicopter. Instead, another quote rings long and loud. Talking to David Foot after being named one of Wisden’s Five Cricketers of the Year for his exploits in 2000 – the piece de resistance four wickets in an over against West Indies at Headingley – he thanked Hussain and Fletcher for the way “handled and encouraged” him. “I’m a quiet person, someone who needs his own space. I don’t like hassle.” His first 50 Test wickets came at 36 apiece, the next 110 at a jot under 24. That Fletcher and, to a lesser degree, Hussain were also geographical outsiders does not seem in any way coincidental.

How easy to imagine Hick uttering those very sentiments. In his 20s, he was too gentle by nature to impose himself on a dressing room chocabloc with larger-than-life personalities full of scepticism about a wunderkind from Africa for whose express benefit the registration rules had been revamped. Only latterly, like Caddick, did he feel a sense of belonging.

Now it’s Jonathan Trott’s turn to make the leap from imported fruit to national asset. How fortunate the young South African is to be selected in more enlightened, multicultural times, an age when Polish waitresses, Slovakian travel agents and Somalian shop assistants are part of the everyday scenery, when Team England newcomers are ushered into group hugs instead of being subjected to silent sneers and whispered resentments, when Kevin Pietersen can be twice as brash as Tony Greig and no-one bothers with phrases such as “equivocal Englishman”.

	Adam Hollioake practices in his new Essex kit © Essex CCC

The upshot of a spot of beach cricket with Graham Gooch on the Gold Coast in January, Hollioake’s return to arms prompts the odd wild imagining. Since he was arguably the first player to master the super-abbreviated game – Surrey’s first defeat came in their 14th match, the 2004 final, and he was the leading wicket-taker in each of the first two seasons – might it be that Gooch was acting under ECB instructions? Even in semi-retirement, Hollioake is still the best man to captain England in the inaugural Twenty20 World Cup.

At Surrey, he succeeded where Stuart Surridge’s successors had repeatedly and miserably stumbled, presiding over a gift-laden dressing room yet subsuming egos to the point where trophies flowed whatever the format. Strong-minded yet flexible, tactically sharp and a decent psychologist, it was entirely typical that the one time I know I offended him was with praise and admiration.

In 2002, his brother Ben died, a loss he still feels keenly and the reason his appetite for the game drained. During the ensuing county campaign, he played a match winning knock and, according to one colleague, told his charges that he had done it “for Ben”. I duly mentioned this in the Sunday Telegraph only to be upbraided by my source: Adam saw it as an invasion of privacy.

He led a star-deprived, profoundly maverick but one-for-all XI to victory in the 1997-98 Champions Trophy, the only one-day pot England have won in a tournament featuring more than three sides. He should have led them at the 1999 World Cup, and probably the next one too. He would certainly have been worth his place as a player. A feisty and creative batsman, he was also a prolific wobbler of the seam and arguably the first bowler to draw inspiration from baseball’s knuckleballers and change-up artists.

There are a few reasons a fully-qualified conspiracy theorist such as myself might cite for the decision to persistently overlook him. For starters, one suspects he was a tad too in-your-face, a wee bit too Australian, the latter of which took quite some doing given the prevailing lust for all things formerly baggy and green of cap.

During their years of dominance, Surrey, moreover, were detested by all but the Kennington regulars (Englishmen always were rather good at disguising envy as contempt). Nor did it help that Nasser Hussain, a man of Essex, was his rival-in-chief. When Hollioake was summoned to the 2002-03 Australian tour, many observers reckoned that Hussain felt threatened by his presence, a suspicion borne out by his ensuing paucity of playing time.

Is it too late to correct this rank oversight? I don’t see why. After all, this is a bloke who recently lost 11kg in order to box Eric Rush, New Zealand’s former junior light-heavyweight champ and renowned All Black wing, a sacrifice for charity that only saw him lose on a split decision. Raising a family, and funds for the Ben Hollioake Foundation, may be his primary goals these days, but if the selectors are looking for a scrapper with nifty footwork, a strong jab and a meaty right hook, they could do a good deal worse.

	'Has Michael Vaughan succeeded Steve Waugh and Brian Lara as cricket's least self-effacing man?' © Getty Images

Even in his leaving of the one-day captaincy (voluntary or otherwise), England's not-always-enlightened despot of a captain sounded like a self-seeking grouse, insisting that having different skippers never leads to success. Displaying an encouraging disregard for mindless deference, Paul Collingwood, rightly and properly deemed his likeliest successor, was quick to cite Australia - presumably referring to the Mark Taylor and Steve Waugh axis - as counter-evidence.

In some respects Vaughan should be arrogant, albeit inwardly rather than outwardly. All cricket captains must have a streak of intellectual - or at least social - superiority. How else to persuade men of often greater stature that they should defer to you? Nasser Hussain and Mike Atherton, his immediate long-term predecessors, both thought they knew better than anyone else, as their vibrant on-air debates bear out. The difference is that they had a touch of grace. They also knew when to go.

Let's do the maths. That Vaughan has led his country's largely feeble limited-overs combo a record 60 times and posted a winning ratio of 53.33%, superior to all bar Mike Gatting among those who have led England in more than 30 ODIs, masks a number of less flattering truths.

For one thing, of those 32 victories, more than half, 17 to be precise, have come against a clutch of sides of whom Bangladesh tower highest in the global pecking order. Which means that, in the other 43 games in which he has captained, England have prevailed 15 times, a 34.88% share. Nor are a highest score of 90 not out in 83 innings, an average of 27.15 or two man of the match awards irrefutable proof of an indispensable cog.

Heaven knows Vaughan has plenty to be immodest about. As a captain, the figures confirm him, statistically, as the Pom King. Under his stewardship, England have gone from revivalists to No.2 on the planet. Few would dispute his stature as a father-figure, motivator, strategist and placer of fields. The 2005 Ashes triumph may have owed more, on paper, to Andrew Flintoff, but he needed a captain willing to lengthen the leash, a friend who knew how to draw the best from him.

As a batsman, Vaughan has been a right-handed Gower, a sumptuously elegant, infuriatingly enchanting chancer but preferable to 99% of all rival brands. In terms of converting 50s into 100s, only Don Bradman, George Headley and Bill Ponsford bettered Vaughan's 53.33%. Among scorers of 2000-plus Test runs, only Bradman (29 to 13) enjoyed a bigger positive differential between centuries and half-Monties than his 16 and 14. Graham Gooch, Geoffrey Boycott, Walter Hammond, Len Hutton, JackHobbs ­ you boys took a hell of a beating.

However. And it's a big however. Since returning to camp during last winter's Ashes tour (gatecrashed would be the more accurate verb), Vaughan can scarcely be said to have exerted a wholly positive influence. First, by very dint of his presence, he undermined Flintoff's captaincy, however doomed that may have been from the moment David Graveney and chums decided that further burdening the team's overworked and recuperating talisman was the canny option. Then he presided over a World Cup campaign that might have been less calamitous had Mal Loye or Owais Shah been picked in his mostly unproductive stead.

Compounding all this was last week's barney with The Guardian, in which Vaughan accused Flintoff of fatally undermining team spirit during the World Cup with his Fredalo shenanigans. This did not seem entirely unreasonable. Unless, that is, one remembered the role Vaughan himself played by sapping Flintoff's authority in Australia. To then deny having said such a thing ­ fuelled in part, no doubt, by a pang or two of conscience ­ was surely evidence of a man ill at-ease, for all his self-portrayal as a "pretty chilled" sort of bloke. That the paper prompted an apology by rapidly producing the (entirely accurate) transcript was even more damning. And even more indicative of a man at odds with self and muse.

There is one exceedingly obvious explanation. In September 2005 Vaughan was at the top of his world; no-one, in John Lennon's immortal words, was in his tree. By Christmas it looked as if a recurring knee injury might prevent him from ever playing seriously again. To have to rebuild confidence - in his surgeons, in himself, in his charges, in his bosses - was no small ask. Is it all that surprising that he should over-compensate for the self-doubt by demonstrating that a superiority complex knows few bounds? If you can't walk the walk, at least you can talk the talk.

No other captain has been indulged the way the England selectors have indulged Vaughan, maintaining his job title and salary during a year in which he did not fasten on a chest protector in anger. Then again, not every England captain gets to regain that infernal urn. Wherein lies the tragedy. In his defining hour. Vaughan doubtless imagined himself unbeatable, unsinkable, invincible, only to be swiftly reminded of the perennial fallibility of anyone who feeds his family with his body.

When Atherton interviewed him at Chester-le-Street yesterday, in the emboldening glow of victory in the first Test series of the second phase of his career, Vaughan was asked to reflect on how far the wheel of fortune had turned his way. He responded by moving on swiftly, reiterating his misgivings about separate captains, revealing that the decision to step down for ODIs had been made weeks ago, stressing his desire to carry on as Test captain for as long as humanly possible. He probably didn't want to be reminded of that dice with athletic death, reminded of vulnerability and impotence, reminded of the indiscriminating capriciousness of fate's fickle finger. You could still see, in that ever-so-slightly glazed countenance, a man thanking his lucky stars, but also one hanging grimly on to the reins lest they fly from his grasp again.

The first time I saw him bat for England, I saw Stan Laurel in him, ­ the same rebellious tufts of hair, the same vaguely bemused expression, the same understated command of his craft. These days he reminds me increasingly of Ollie Hardy: all front and affront, self-righteous and self-aggrandising, begging to be pulled down a few pegs. And yes, a wee bit sad.

I am unstinting in my admiration for Vaughan pre-2006. If Atherton made England harder to beat and Hussain restored the smell of victory, Vaughan forged them into a class act capable of duffing up the best. It is hard, though, not to believe he wouldn't have been better off had those surgeons been less capable at their jobs.

	West Indies are certainly not better off without Lara, as their selectors calculated. Nor is cricket © Getty Images

Sod the Tebbit Test. Take the Bob Marley Test. How many Brits out there were rooting for Shivnarine Chanderpaul to prod and plod for another two hours? I know I was, and I can think of at least two and threequarter London-based friends who feel similarly disloyal to St George. I know this because I asked them the same question last week while the man with the sponsored eye-bags was threatening to pull off the greatest chase in Test annals. The final score was two “absolutelys” to one “almost”.

They were all too aware of that unpalatable but rapidly encroaching truth: cricket with an uninspiring, passionless West Indies is akin to soccer blighted by a charmless, defensive-minded Brazil – a sport incapable of fulfilling its potential. Now he knows how much he is missed (as if he needed any reminder), will Brian Lara’s hints at the speediest unretirement since Frank Sinatra bear fruit? Let’s hope so. For all his selfishness and untold other flaws, his countries need him. They are certainly not better off without him, as their selectors calculated. Nor is cricket.

	Peter May and Colin Cowdrey: instigators of torpor and ennui © Getty Images

Given cricket’s uniquely radical transformation over the final third of the 20th century, it is perhaps only to be expected, and certainly forgiveable, that worthwhile innovations have been hard to come by of late (don’t get me started on powerplays or any other pointless attempt to make life even easier for those spoiled-brat batters). Which is why the current umpiring revolution warrants a good deal more than three cheers.

If cricket were a normal sporting obsession, we Englishmen would be celebrating right now. June 4, after all, marked the 50th anniversary of Peter May and Colin Cowdrey’s fourth-wicket stand of 411 against West Indies at Edgbaston, still the highest stand for their country in Tests. For heaven’s sake, it almost inspired the second post-follow-on triumph in Test annals, pre-empting ’81 And All That by nearly a quarter of a century. Lordships have been awarded for less. Instead, the birthday passed with barely a whisper.

There were exceptions. While researching an article about the alliance, I thought I’d check out Cowdrey’s autobiography to elicit some first-hand reflections. Astonishingly, for all the extensive memory-riffing in May’s memoirs, the cupboard was as bare as that hearteningly cynical chapter in Len Shackleton’s autobiography about football club chairmen, which comprised a single wordless page. Do we assume that, reminiscing and writing a couple of decades after the fact, Cowdrey and his ghost, Ian Wooldridge, experienced a collective hard-drive crash? I rather doubt it. In which case, the only other option, from where I’m sitting, is embarrassment.

Let’s examine the evidence. Another legendary landmark established at Birmingham was Sonny Ramadhin’s 98 overs in that second innings, arguably the most untouchable Test figure this side of 99.94. Overburdened by the non-selection of little pal Alf Valentine and injuries to new-ballers Frank Worrell and Roy Gilchrist, “Ram”, who had maintained his decade-long mastery of Englishmen in the first innings with a smartly-spun (and, by his own admission, well-chucked) 7-49, was a broken man by the end. Come sun-up he was still “aching all over”. Small wonder he was never remotely the same force again.

He still went for well under two an over, but his opponents weren’t bothered about run-rates. They had a match to save. And they did their duty mostly by dint of thrusting pads ever further down the pitch and kicking the ball away, as recommended by selector Wilf Wooller. Cowdrey took the best part of eight hours to reach three figures. Trevor Bailey - who as next man in grew so worn out waiting he declined to do so by the time Cowdrey finally obliged – reckoned Ramadhin had at least 100 appeals turned down flat.

Fast forward and the legacy is twofold and doubly welcome. For one thing, had it not been for the torpor and ennui instigated May and Cowdrey, breeding as it did a veritable epidemic of pad play, it is tempting to wonder whether the clamour for the limited-overs revolution would have been so fervent. The Sixties, after all, proved rather longer on longuers than thrills.

For another, Law 36B, a pointed repudiation of pad-play, would eventually permit umpires to award leg-before verdicts if they did not detect any attempt to play the ball, curbing if not terminating such tactics. Now, finally, we are witnessing closure. Whenenever umpires, regularly if not uniformly borne out by Hawkeye, give a batsman out with his front foot well outside the crease, bat tucked shamelessly behind pad, I bet I’m not alone in letting rip with an inner yelp of delight. Those harbouring geometric objections, remember the philosophical justification, and from whence it sprang.