THE nation’s cricket enthusiasts earnestly hoped this old joke would remain in the rubbish bin for some time yet but all too soon it’s been retrieved, dusted off and is topical once more.

The phone rang in the England dressing room and the caller asked: “Can I speak to Kevin Pietersen please?”

“He’s just gone out to bat,” was the reply. “Oh, that’s okay, I’ll wait.’’

That’s no direct slur on Big Kev. It could have been any one of England’s alleged “top” order.

Watching their second-innings surrender in Abu Dhabi was agonising and the widespread excoriation of all of the batters was totally justified.

They were totally mesmerised and then traumatised by the spin-twin sorcery of Rehman and Ajmal, a kind of Rawalpindi equivalent of Siegfried and Roy without the codpieces (they were being bowled at) who manufactured a succession of illusions inducing “the best in the world” to meltdown and dissolution.

Granted, the pitch was conducive to the rotating delivery but hardly the pit of spitting cobras our nonplussed culprits clearly believed it to be.

Considering their propensity to sweep at anything straight, surely a broom would have been more useful than a bat?

The surrender was even the more inexplicable when you consider that batting coaches Andy Flower and Graham Gooch were supremely confident and skilled when facing spin yet have failed miserably to instil similar disciplines among their present illiterate pupils.

Strauss and company weren’t alone in getting it all hopelessly wrong.

With only 145 needed for victory Geoff Boycott encouraged the listeners of Test Match Special to put their house on an England win, in fact “all three of my houses” insisted this outspoken martyr to materialism.

Sky’s David Lloyd had earlier recommended Martin Kaymer as the likely winner and therefore worthy of a punt for the HSBC golf championship also taking place in Abu Dhabi. The German failed to make the cut!

It was also reported that Ian Botham was being investigated by Twitter for allegedly using his tweets to advertise learning to play the cello, which conjures the most anomalous of images.

The giant paw of Beefy reaching out to grasp this most delicate piece of handcrafted maple and it instantly disintegrates to matchwood.