This game is dead important so as we can prove that we are the best person to be number three for England so Nearly Coach Flower sent a txt msg to me and Keysey and Vaughany and says we should all gather in one of the offices at Lord’s and he was going to talk to us all on something called an important conference call which is a bit like when you are playing Murder Undead Kill IV on the Xbox and you are doing a multiplayer and you talk on a headset with your team-mates except obviously Nearly Coach Flower won’t be telling us to shoot zombies with a bolt gun or at least I doubt it. Nearly Coach Flower says the important conference call is very important and not to be late.

So I passes Vaughany in the corridor and I says “Are you coming to the important conference call Vaughany?” but he says it has been moved to another office just over by the Nursery Ground and if I set off there he will text me the directions on my iPhone and he’ll be along in a minute. Well there must have been some sort of mix-up because I followed the instructions to the letter but when I got to the office it was all dark in there and the door shut behind me real quickly and seemed to be locked from the outside. Well I waited for Nearly Coach Flower to start talking but he never said anything and after a while when my eyes adjusted, and I had a bit of a brainwave even though I say it myself and took off my sunglasses, I looked around and saw that there wasn’t desks and chairs and secretaries and other normal stuff that you see in an office but just lawnmowers and pots of paint and things like this and I’m thinking maybe this isn’t an office after all.

I didn’t panic though because I’ve done a lot of work on my temperament over the last couple of seasons and you’re seeing a very different Ian Bell to the one as first exploded onto the international scene with big runs against the West Indies and Bangladesh and a Highly Commended in Bella Magazine’s Best Hair On An International Sportsman 2005.

I took a deep breath and I thought “Right if I’m going to get out of this I’ve got to puff my chest out and dig in and put my hand up” but that actually seemed a bit confusing so in the end I just sat there and played Pokemon Regeneration Nine on my iPhone and sure enough Vaughany turned up a few hours later and says I missed the important conference call and Nearly Coach Flower was as mad as anything and it was A Black Mark Next To My Name but not to worry as Keysey had missed the important conference call too because someone texted him that they were giving away free sausage rolls down at St John’s Wood tube station but when he got there there weren’t none left so in the end only Michael Vaughan was at the important conference call, says Vaughany, and that’s probably what they’re talk about when they talk about the value of experience I guess.

Alan Tyers has no ambitions to bat at three for England