What a difference one player makes. Suddenly, with a batting line up that has some experience and some true, proven Test class, Pakistan look formidable.

Mohammad Yousuf is a craftsman and artist, so calm, so deliberate yet has stacks of flair. His best moment yesterday was first a drive from a slightly over-pitched delivery from Steven Finn then a beautiful late cut from a slightly shorter ball. The balls were not that bad – the batting was just brilliant.

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England’s excellent victory over Pakistan on Sunday did leave me with an ambivalent taste in the mouth – if ambivalence has a flavour. Great that England won, great that they bowled so well, great that Matt Prior and Eoin Morgan scored hundreds.

But the weakness of the opposition batting and catching made it easy. And it is this weakness that fills me with dread. Cricket cannot afford to have any more Test nations consistently performing so woefully.

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At Headingley, Hawk-Eye made a mistake.

Mohammed Amir was lbw to Shane Watson first ball in Pakistan’s first innings. The ball crashed into his pads, he was playing no shot and Rudi Koertzen did the rest. Hawk-Eye showed the ball clearly missing off stump.

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Kevin Pietersen has decided to leave Hampshire. You can hear a collective sigh of indifference travelling the length of the 90-minute drive up the M3 from Southampton to west London. “Geographically, it just doesn’t work – I live in Chelsea,” explains KP.

Yes, it would be a tough life commuting to the south coast a few times a season – best cut that out. And, as El Denv points out: “He can obviously just hop on the bus and be in Bangalore in 10 minutes.”

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On one of the many cricket blogs that is my – ahem – duty to spend all day reading, there’s been a debate about supporting a county cricket side. Durham have proved dangerously inept this year and there’s a Durham fan moaning about it. That fan then got accused of sounding like a Manchester United fan – if you don’t win everything, then the season’s a failure.

The debate (on the ever-excellent King Cricket) ended with a plea to embrace mediocrity, or, in the case of Gloucestershire fans, aspire to it.

The simple idea that unexpected and occasional success is way more satisfying than relentless winning is not new but it does feel peculiarly British: you can’t really enjoy the days of sun unless they’re surrounded by days of low-hanging murk.

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This is not an email we enjoy receiving too regularly: “I am writing to inform you that I wish to unsubscribe from your magazine.”

When we lose readers, it is hard not to take it personally. But what followed makes our efforts to produce a popular title feel futile. The (ex)reader continues:

“Here are my reasons. The international game lacks context. The proliferation of two-match Test ‘series’ shows that no one is interested in the best form of the game.”

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Lalit Modi is melting. Or being melted. Watching this from England, I am three-fold bewildered.

The actual IPL bewildered me first: its showmanship, its destruction of bowlers, its size, its money and its flamboyance. I watched it bewildered and entranced – there was so much going on that for everything odious (the DLF maximums etc), there was something great (the atmosphere, the strokeplay).

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Yesterday, Northants announced that Virender Sehwag will not actually be playing in the Twenty20 Cup this year. Boo – say all county cricket fans. Hurrah – say all county bowlers: “Sad for Northants, not so for all the bowlers! Collective sigh of relief,” says Middlesex’s Iain O’Brien via Twitter.

But why!? Why is the most exciting current player in the world, the No.1 Test ranked batsman, not coming to England this summer? It’s all about politics – India is flexing its muscles.

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The ECB says that if the Ashes goes free-to-air in 2014, four counties will go bust. Do they promise this will happen? Is there a downside?

If this happens then it eases fixture congestion, simplifies the competitions so there is a consistency in scheduling, gives time for rest and preparation. It sharpens the pyramid: only the best will play first-class cricket, so there might actually be something to watch.

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Put cricket on television and people watch it. Take cricket off television then you can’t watch it unless you are at the ground. This is a pretty simple concept. Lalit Modi understands.

So why does the ECB insist that it doesn’t want lots of people to watch cricket? What’s so bad about cricket that the governing body wants to decrease the amount of people who see it?

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