Alan Tyers casts his cynical, satirical eye over Peter Moores' would-be diary, reflecting on the Stanford Super Series at The Wisden Cricketer's blog:

As I said, the most important thing about Stanford was not the money but actually getting the players tuned up for India. One of the key skills about an England tour to the sub-continent is having your moaning in really tip-top order, so that when you arrive, you’re ready to hit the ground complaining.

“Bang… The hotel’s not up to scratch… bang… That bloke’s looking at my missus… bang… This foreign muck don’t half play havoc with my guts…”

At the same blog, Miles Jupp questions the excuses England gave for their performance in the Stanford money match:

Peter Moores said it was all about attitude, and that our thinking had all been wrong. He even implied there might have been too much thinking (which sounds dangerously like bollocks). It is hard to imagine anybody being able to use that excuse convincingly anywhere. “Your honour, although my client’s actions may appear thoughtless, the truth is in fact quite the opposite. At the very moment he took the staff of that depot hostage he was, if anything, thinking too much…”

The idea that England allowed themselves to think too much about the nature of the game and the contradictions it threw up seems far-fetched. Moores made it sound as if each and every member of the team went out to bat and immediately suffered an existential crisis. As if someone as happy-go-lucky as Paul Collingwood would suddenly raise an arm during the bowler’s delivery stride and howl plaintively “Oh never mind the cricket - what are any of us actually put on this world for?”

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