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Unsure about your “corridor of uncertainty”? Worried that your “good areas” might not be up to snuff? Confused about exactly when you ought to “put your hand up”? Fret not: over the next 20 odd weeks, the Wisden Cricketer Online will bring you the Alternative Cricket Dictionary, edited by Alan Tyers, and we would very much like your contributions and suggestions. Please send your definitions to cricdic@gmail.com, or put them on twitter#cricdic or the comments below, and we will publish them.

V Type of cricket bat as made by Slazenger. Young kids wondered if the V on the bat stood for Vivian. Bowlers just wished he wouldn’t keep swinging it.

V, Playing Through The As in hitting it through mid-off to mid-on area; sign of all quality players, the exception being Tillakaratne Dilshan, who plays in the V between third slip and fine leg.

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Kevin Pietersen may not see it this way right now, but he may one day be thankful the selectors put him out of his misery. And that day may come very soon – as early, perhaps, as November 25 and the first day of the Ashes.

Being dropped may feel like a slap in the face, especially – as Pietersen tweeted, accidentally or otherwise – when you were recently named the best player of a global tournament. But reputations in international sport can be compromised more easily than they are made. And Pietersen’s form since he made merry in the Caribbean has not merely threatened brand KP: it has proved a luxury in England’s middle order.

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Take the positives out of this one. It’s like going for a picnic in a field full of dog turds and identifying the least offensive turd to lay your blanket next to.

The best I can do is say that currently the worst parts of the whole affair rely on the word of Mazhar Majeed. Arranging for the odd no-ball is bad enough, but actual match-fixing is a good few steps beyond that. I’d like to think that the arranged elements of matches didn’t stretch much beyond what appears to have happened in the Lord’s Test, but Majeed claimed he had fixed entire Test matches.

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I picked up a voicemail message from Sky News at about 9.45 last night. “Big cricket-related story,” the message said but they couldn’t tell me what it was until after 10pm. Returning to my Thai curry I wondered what it might be.

First thought – something relating to KP. Maybe he’s not going to the Ashes. Second thought, match-fixing.

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The fourth Test starting at Lord’s tomorrow has become the grandstand finale this strange summer hardly deserves. A week ago the talk was of a whitewash, accompanied by the complacent lament that this was no sort of preparation for the Ashes. Now, England feel like an hour of doosras and reverse-swing away from surrendering a 2-0 lead against the side ranked a distant sixth in the world. It’s precisely the kind of frisson Andy Flower may reflect he could have done without.

Because make no mistake: the situation has changed. Not only are England suddenly fighting for their pre-Brisbane credibility (and they really are: 233 and 222 on a decent Brit Oval track hinted at frailties we all hoped had disappeared), but they are still scratching their heads over how best to fit seven batsmen into six.

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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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Salman Butt almost gave the game away yesterday. Speaking about the perilous role of the Pakistan captaincy, he came close to implying that his job has more in common with leading no-hopers than would-be champions.

‘It is a challenge,’ he said, keeping a commendably straight face as he risked stating the bleedin’ obvious. ‘Everyone would love to be captain of Australia with seven quality batsmen and three quality fast bowlers and winning all around the world, but if the same guy became captain of Bangladesh then I don’t think he would want the job for long.’

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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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When I first started reading about cricket, I got it into my head that the England selectors were a malicious troop of macaques with a bottomless supply of throwing spanners. That was a long time ago; things change; and these days they’re lauded by pretty much everyone.

This is all the more astonishing when you consider the job’s tougher than the two-for-a-fiver steaks at one of those chain pubs with the plastic placemats/menus. Everyone’s got a favourite player and everyone’s got a few limp statistics to slap you with. Consensus is impossible.

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There was a revealing moment at Edgbaston on Sunday, when the entire England team went up for a caught-behind appeal against Azhar Ali in the second over of the day. The bowler, Stuart Broad, didn’t bother turning round – but that was not the weird bit. No, what happened next said much for one of the less-intended consequence of the Umpire Decision Review System: honesty, a notion often dismissed as naive in international sport, may be poking its head above the parapet once more.

These are early days, of course, and the players’ competitive juices will always flow in directions that upset the purists. But England’s failure to challenge the not-out decision (and it was definitely not out) shifted the spotlight on to them. Why, went the faintly disapproving logic, did they appeal so vociferously first time round, only to lose the courage of their convictions when faced with the prospect of technology?

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