England's best are no match for the wily Ramastanis

THE captain of Ramastan comments on the English Test performances of recent years.

The first thing that I thought of when asked to write this piece was our kitchen serving girl in Ramastan. She comes from the Suranaya class - rather pretty in a provincial way. She has been brought up in the traditional manner: she has her knees hobbled together when she goes outside and has elected as a mark of merit to wear a metal collar with spiky goads in it to discourage expansive movement in the upper body (she is a very pious girl).

Now, in spite of - or, if you will, because of - these restrictions, she has developed a certain dexterity of movement in short bursts. The point about Tasheera is that she has a better Test cricket average than two-thirds of the English bowlers and all the lower half of the batting order.

Is she a cricketing prodigy? In England she would be considered so. For Ramastanis, she bears the same relationship to our team as Felicity Kendal bears to yours.

It is important for me that I am not misunderstood in this commentary. It would be mortifying for it to be thought that I was indulging in injurious, point-scoring, dog-eat-dog criticism of my most valued colleagues in the Test arena. English cricketers have many admirable and wholly enviable qualities. But playing cricket is not among them.

The admirable Atherton has a great sense of leadership (he always knows what tie to wear). The dynastic Gooch's collection of 19th- century French miniatures is beyond reproach. Graeme Hick is always very clean. Believe it or not, Robin Smith knows his social security number by heart. And Devon Malcolm is a popular godfather.

Should they retain their places in the team? I don't suppose it matters much, but were I asked to take over the chairmanship of the board of selectors, I would play more to the strengths of the country and try to concentrate less on the weaknesses. For instance, incompetence should, in my view, no longer be the only dominating criterion for selection.

Phenomenal ugliness could play a part in depressing the opposition. And the release of loathsome odours at important points of play. Also an ability to talk to batsmen during the bowling: 'It may interest you to know that I have not had carnal knowledge of your wife, but I am the only player on the pitch who can truthfully make such an exclusive boast.'

But though this may change the style of your play for the better, we cannot believe it will change the substance. The truth is that England has been exhausted by its history, it has nothing left to offer the world - or even itself.

When we set out to play England we feel . . . how can we communicate our feelings? You've tried explaining to Hottentots how you feel about Keats's odes to one of those birds? That's rather how we experience the difficulty of talking about world-class cricket to the English. Shall we confine ourselves merely to make this comparison: when we step out to the crease we feel as you would feel when you step out to play Wales.

Now I'm suddenly wondering how accurate my analogy is. The Welsh, after all, may not have any tradition of international Test cricket, but they have seen it on television. They know, therefore, which end of the bat is more usefully held in order to hit the ball. They know they ought to use their little legs to run quickly up and down the wicket; they have experience of swinging pickaxes in hot, confined circumstances - they do have a chance. That's the problem with my comparison. England versus Wales at Lord's is not a foregone conclusion.

If you want to truly and accurately gauge our levels of confidence when we play England, you will have to imagine yourselves playing Vietnam, or the Yanomani, or the giant frog-faced toads of the southern marshes of Ramastan.

That is how we approach our matches against you. You see, we have convicted thieves with double prostheses who deliver more convincing spin bowling; our toads bat better.

That is why we play against you confidently, because we see that we are playing a Toads' XI. And even though we allow you to play one-hand one-bounce, and we play tip-and-run and six-and-out, and even though we play with the bat behind our backs, and we run between the wickets on our hands, we know that we shall win by several dozen wickets, and our supporters will writhe and gyrate in their loins to emphasise quite how utterly you have been humiliated.

So, farewell, and thank you very much for asking me to write this piece for you.