Sometimes we focus so much on what is wrong with Test cricket that it is easy to forget the joy it continues to provide, never more so than in this particularly frenzied period of Tests.

The recent series between India and Sri Lanka may have been too batsman-friendly but it provided some extraordinary passages of play. Who could not have wished to see Virender Sehwag’s assault in the third Test, elegant and brutal in equal measure? For Sri Lanka, Tillakaratne Dilshan’s innings were also moments when you had to bin ideas of work and focus on some ball-by-ball Test cricket. There were personal narratives too – Sreesanth, suddenly the grounded, almost geeky bowler of immaculate line and length, Murali suddenly lacking in fizz and accuracy. And Angelo Mathews – doing an Atherton when on 99 and in sight of his first Test hundred.

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I never thought I’d feel so anti-England’s men’s team as I did watching Andrew Strauss pick up the team award at the BBC Sports Personality awards last night. Like the Ashes, it was an utter steal.

England suffered unedifying internal meltdown losing captain and coach at the start of the year. They went to the West Indies, were all out for 51 in Jamaica and lost a series they should have waltzed. They also got thumped 6-1 in a brutal Australian one-day series.

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