“Shafiul's English, it must be said, is limited (although as one wag pointed out, not as limited as his interrogators' Bengali). So when he was asked whether he had deliberately tried to disrupt Trott's elongated guard-taking procedure by aborting his own run-up, he insisted there had been no plan. Pushed moments later on whether [Jamie] Siddons had spoken to the team about the need to disrupt Trott's elongated guard-taking process, Shafiul nodded jubilantly. We were left none the wiser.”

“History generally records that Michael Vaughan quit the England captaincy in tearful circumstances following the Test-series defeat to South Africa in 2008. But the Top Spin can reveal this version of events is little more than a smokescreen. For it appears that what actually tipped Vaughan over the edge was a phonecall from a stricken team-mate - a call so harrowing Vaughan decided he could cope no longer.The ex-skipper was enjoying a barbecue at home with friends two summers ago when he took a rare call from Monty Panesar. 'Hello, Monty.' 'Hello Vaughany. I've got some bad news for you.' 'Oh?' 'Yes, you know I was telling you about my parrot Gary last week?' 'Er...' 'Well, he's gone missing. Just thought you'd like to know.' 'Sorry to hear that Monty.' 'Bye.' 'Bye.'So aghast was Vaughan that captaincy duty now extended to fielding calls from team-mates about escaped pets that he knew his time was up. Sure, the tears at the farewell press conference left an impression on us all. But it was Monty's ex-parrot that sealed the deal.”

“Speaking of Vaughan, his claim in the Daily Telegraph last week that the story of a senior county pro being offered money to fix domestic matches was 'the tip of the iceberg' did not go down well with one former England captain contacted by the Top Spin. 'I played the game for almost 20 years,' he seethed, 'and I don't know a single player who has been offered money, either for information or to fix a game. To say it's the tip of the iceberg is absolute rubbish.'The fact that the player in question had just registered a mediocre Stableford score of 20 playing off a handicap of 14 had nothing to do, I was assured, with his foul mood.”

“The Top Spin would raise a glass to Rudi Koertzen, the popular veteran South African umpire who will stand in his 107th and final Test when Pakistan meet Australia at Headingley in July [2010]. But we're slightly worried about being misunderstood. A few years back, in a light-hearted series of profiles of the elite umpires for a newspaper supplement, we suggested Rudi was a 'sociable' character who enjoyed spending a no-more-than-inordinate amount of time at the '19th hole'. Cue a concerned phonecall from the ICC, who wanted to register Rudi's displeasure at the implication. Whoops. Presumably it will be orange juices all round when he finally hangs up the white coat.”

“Some day the laws of glamour must be discovered, because they are so important that the world would be wiser now if Sir Isaac Newton had been hit on the head, not by an apple, but by a young lady.”

“No longer expecting to be beautiful and touched with grace till the end of her days, she was coming to the realization that whereas once, in his courtship, Father might have embodied the infinite possibilities of loving, he had aged and gone dull, made stupid, perhaps, by his travels and his work, so that more and more he only demonstrated his limits, that he had reached them, and that he would never move beyond them.”

“This was very bitter to Gerald, who had never known what boredom was, who had gone from activity to activity, never at a loss. Now, gradually, everything seemed to be stopping in him. He did not want any more to do the things that offered. Something dead within him just refused to respond to any suggestion. He cast over in his mind, what it would be possible to do, to save himself from this misery of nothingness, relieve the stress of this hollowness. And there were only three things left, that would rouse him, make him live. One was to drink or smoke hashish, the other was to be soothed by Birkin, and the third was women. And there was no-one for the moment to drink with. Nor was there a woman. And he knew Birkin was out. So there was nothing to do but to bear the stress of his own emptiness.”