Kevin Pietersen rarely conceals his emotions.

It was his impulsive decision making that first brought him to the UK, and those adrenalized assaults on South African and Australian attacks that earned him his reputation.

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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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Ah, pace! Welcome back. We’ve missed you.

Shaun Tait is the man. From Glamorgan’s overseas to the glamour attraction of the England v Australia ODI series in a week, he was the first man past 100mph in England and the difference between 5-0 and 3-2. He alone almost turned 2-0 England into 3-2 Australia.

Tait was magnetic. Raw pace is like sheer beauty. Many aspire to it, few possess it, and most are incapacitated by it. Tait has it and is belatedly discovering how to show it off.

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In sport, everything needs context. In a high-scoring one-day match, fours become mundane. However, when your team needs 20 to win off two overs, fours become that much more exciting, because the match situation gives them added meaning. Similarly, a tight finish in a knock-out match is that much more exciting than one in a dead rubber. Context matters.

I went to Old Trafford yesterday to watch Lancashire play Warwickshire in the Twenty20 Cup. The ground was half-full, but that was pretty much as good a crowd as there could have been – half the stands were shut. Somewhat bizarrely, the full half was all clustered around one side of the ground as well, meaning bowlers were either running in from the crowd end or away from the non-crowd end.

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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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On the launch of England: Champions of the World the ICC T20 2010 Official World Cup DVD, Sam Collins speaks to England and Sussex allrounder Luke Wright

How does it feel to be a World Cup winner?

It’s pretty special obviously, I still have to pinch myself. Now that the DVD is out I’m looking forward to watching it again and seeing some of the celebrations.

You opened in the 2009 tournament in England, would Craig Kieswetter and Michael Lumb have been able to hit with such success in the powerplays then?

I don’t know. England is one of the harder places to open the innings – it’s damper, the ball does a little bit more at times. But they played so well it wouldn’t have mattered, that’s how they naturally play. If one failed the other would get a good score, they dovetailed very well and always got us of to a good start, which made it easier for the rest of us to come in and keep playing strong shots.

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The relaunched, rebranded, regurgitated FP Twenty20 was never going to work. And it isn’t. The players know it, the crowds that aren’t turning up know it, the media knows it, the ECB probably knows it but doesn’t seem to care.

Like dressing Beyonce up in layers of clothing and giving her wrinkly old backing dancers, the ECB decided that a successful format needed far more games and Adam Gilchrist. The result? Smaller crowds. Well, duh.

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‘Less is more’ is a trite phrase. I myself have panned it into meaninglessness as much as anyone by overusing it when talking about cricket fixtures. I can’t seem to so much as mention the sport these days without descending into a rant that culminates in my standing on a table shouting: “Less is more, people! Less is more!” The boss hates it. So do restaurant patrons.

I’m feeling this particularly acutely at the moment with the Friends Provident Twenty20 taking place. All the talk is about whether the increase in the number of domestic Twenty20 matches will bring the average attendance down at the various county grounds. I think it probably will, because the ‘I can always go to the next match’ mentality that often keeps people away will be even more pronounced. But that isn’t it. The real reason why I’m so vexed is because I feel like the Friends Provident T20 should be an event – and it isn’t.

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This was an excellent tournament. I’m English, so I would say that. But even before this country (and, no doubt, the new coalition government) was celebrating its first significant one-day trophy, this event was a store of good cricket. For sceptics, it expunged the theory that Twenty20 provides the game with little more than garish commercialism and a bit of bish-bash. Here are some reasons why:

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Suddenly, almost like that, England have a limited-overs cricket team.

I blogged last week about the suspicion in team England, and about their unnecessary tetchiness in the post-Pakistan press conference.

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