What was that at Edgbaston? Some Pakistani resolve? Zulqarnain Haider, forgiven a king pair by technology, taunting the English bowlers by showing them his stumps before covering up like a crab, then launching them over their heads and almost smiling as he did so. Saeed Ajmal, taking body blows to score his maiden fifty and make England fret.

Did you see the way Ajmal turned to the dressing room and pumped his fists? Did you see, when Ajmal’s innings did come to an end, Haider halting his partner’s return to the pavilion to shake his hand? Pakistan were never likely to come back into the Test, but that plain show of resistance – and unity – may yet salvage this one-sided series.

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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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If you go down to the St John’s Wood tomorrow, you’re sure of a big surprise. For the daddy bears of Middlesex cricket – Andrew Strauss, Eoin Morgan and Steven Finn – will all be playing. Not just any kind of playing, but the actual, proper four-day stuff.*

They’ll be up against Sussex – a Sussex team including Matt Prior. Today, Stuart Broad, Graeme Swann, James Anderson, Paul Collingwood and Alastair Cook are all turning out for their counties. It’s a pretty amazing development; akin to Russell Crowe, Kylie Minogue and Guy Pearce returning to Neighbours for a week. But with fewer Shane Watsonesque mullets.

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Will 2010 be seen as the beginning of the end for James Anderson? It’s a despairing thought; he is surely as skilful a swinger of the ball as England has had. But his interminable inconsistency is rapidly stealing the title of England’s modern enigma from Graeme Hick and Mark Ramprakash.

It has been a strange year for Anderson. After a decent show in South Africa (16 wickets at 34.25) he missed the Bangladesh tour through injury and was a spectator to England’s World Twenty20 win after a surprising – and inspired – decision to play Ryan Sidebottom instead.

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English cricket will learn in the next few weeks whether the new Government will back the proposal to return the Ashes to free-to-air television.

But the overwhelming probability is that David Davies’ recommendation, announced late last year in his review of sport’s ‘listed’ events, will be dropped, allowing the ECB to continue to sell their TV rights to the highest bidder.

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While Fabio Capello’s men huffed and puffed and blew themselves out against Algeria, the headlines it generated buried a significant English sporting achievement over the weekend: England beat Australia, at rugby union, in Sydney.

It was England’s first win against the big three – Australia, New Zealand, South Africa – since the 2007 World Cup and a first Down Under since Jonny Wilkinson dropped England to glory in 2003.

Such a victory would normally dominate the back pages but, quite reasonably really, not during the football World Cup and especially not when Wayne Rooney had just played like the baby elephant he resembled on the pitch. If he and the rest of the team continue to perform like that, what hope have our cricketers of getting any column inches for their ODI series against Australia?

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Trickling along under the current of this summer’s fixture fudge is the women’s game. England have a handful of T20s and ODIs against New Zealand and Ireland, beginning on June 29. What they mean, where they fit into the barely existent structure of the women’s game, is anybody’s guess. If the men’s game is coping with a crisis of context, its counterpart is struggling to give any meaning to any game outside of the global tournaments.

Games are infrequent, haphazard and largely restricted to contests between England, Australia and India, particularly in Test cricket. There have been seven Tests since the summer of 2005, five of which involved England. The last two Ashes ‘series’ have comprised one Test each. In the last decade South Africa have played four Tests, New Zealand three, Pakistan two and Sri Lanka none.

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As Tamim blazed away on Sunday, you may have noticed a fella named Imrul at the other end who was engaged in his own private battle that was of a very different sort but no less engrossing. Imrul Kayes, 23, had not made a fifty in Test cricket in 23 innings of trying – a record for a Test opening batsman. Kayes had 48 from 71 balls but then managed a single run in his next 25 balls as Tamim Iqbal raced from 37 to 77.

At last, Kayes swept with a conviction that had suddenly abandoned his batting. This was his moment. But it was also a moment for the Bangladesh selectors, who were rewarded with a faith in youth that bodes well for their continual improvement. That Kayes broke this odd sort of record is revealing: not many batsmen are given so much time. And Kayes isn’t the only Bangladeshi to have been so implicitly trusted.

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Matt Prior has always had to work harder than most. But thanks to Craig Kieswetter, the real work may only have just begun.

Cynics may dismiss that opening paragraph as a typical piece of journalistic mischief in an ongoing press-box game entitled: Right, Who Shall We Drop Next? But you only had to watch Prior’s first-Test performance against Bangladesh to realise that, even in chilly May, here was a player feeling the heat.

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It used to be the preserve of football managers. Now squad rotation is becoming cricket’s thing. It’s becoming England’s thing. Andy Flower likes a fiddle.

He’s spot on. In a general sense, because schedules are putting a strain on player’s durability; in a specific sense, because the opposition are of a lower standard.

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