'I Don't Want a Holiday in the Sun...'

Yes, the guy is one of the best five batsmen in the world – and so far ahead of anyone else we’ve got in our line up it’s frightening.

Yes – without the runs he’ll score this summer we’ve got no chance whatsoever of beating Australia – and even with him it’s becoming an increasingly long shot.

But, heck, he does try your patience.

It’s like having someone in your local club side who always turns up late, normally with the club kit in the back of his car, saunters round the field like he couldn’t give a toss, but then goes out and blasts an extraordinary hundred to win you the game in the last over. Then when you go to the pub after the game he spends all his time either winding up the opposition so you end up in a hostile stand off across a crowded bar, or chatting up the girl behind the bar, but then pulls out a wad of cash to cover all the drinks and the post match Ruby Murray.

You can imagine him sitting in his 5 star hotel room looking back through the English papers and noticing a distressing lack of articles on his favourite subject – himself, so decides there and then to rectify matters. Hence his ‘homesickness’ blast in the Daily Liar, backed up a day later by his comments about ‘sicknote’ Chanderpaul – poignantly followed up during the fourth ODI with him doing an ‘oh, me back’ act worthy of a geriatric old lady at the Boots Prescription counter.

Actually, in terms of the length of the tour, he does have a point. I’m not sure whether this makes me odd, but whenever I go on holiday, I’m always ready to come home after 80% of the holiday is completed. So if we go anywhere for a fortnight, after ten days I’m counting the hours down until we can get on the plane home. Likewise, if we have a week away, I’m mentally packing the bags after five days. KP has obviously reached that position.

It’s daft. They left Barbados on Sunday night, and arrived in St Kitt’s a few hours later. But rather than leap straight into the final game, they now have to hang around until Friday. We’re not talking about flying to the other side of the world here for heavens sake – so why not start the game on Wednesday? We saw the same ‘stretch the elastic until it breaks’ attitude to scheduling during the last World Cup – there have been world wars that lasted almost as long as that fiasco, so why not inject some reality into the scheduling, accept that size or length isn’t everything (allegedly…) and get the whole thing over and done with in a reasonable time.