The scoreboard at the Feroz Shah Kotla stadium in Delhi is almost as watchable as the cricket – and certainly more entertaining than that slow-low pitch.

It is a huge, old-fashioned thing that looms halfway up the side of the imposing north stand. All the players’ names are painted in white on big metal strips in a quazi-batting order – if someone moves up or down the order, chaos reigns – with the basic match information buried somewhere in the middle. There is sense there, it just took four Twenty20 games to work it out.

At the top of each batting order is the team name – ‘NSW Blues’, ‘D Daredevils’ – the emphasis given to the nickname. This proved troublesome for one of the English teams whose name couldn’t quite fit and became the worryingly titled ‘Sex Sharks’ for an innings.

And for those who are sticklers for accuracy in grammar and spelling, you’d be delighted to hear that the scoreboard operators are too. The Diamond Eagles from South Africa, with their Afrikaans and African names such as van Schalkwyk and Tshabalala are beyond many – certainly me without looking them up – but there were no mistakes on the board.

Except for one. The poor New South Wales wicketkeeper – with a figure suited to the more hungry parts of old South Wales – probably didn’t think his name would be the one in trouble. Daniel Smith became ‘D Snith’ – and to rub salt in the wounds Dwayne Smith appeared perfectly. Then, when he got budged up the order to bat at No.3 in one game, he disappeared altogether, for the rest of the match.

Maybe there’s just a shortage of Ms in Delhi.

Edward Craig is deputy editor of The Wisden Cricketer