Micromanagement

Well, here's my 'in'. I can hardly hold back when the English go and put out a tour cookbook for the team. Mostly it looks like the sort of thing you'd get at an upmarket health spa. Lots of 'superfoods', lots of things chopped up and mixed together and a sort of faux multiculturalism - dishes that are Indian/Thai/Moroccan/Greek/Japanese 'inspired' or 'flavoured' rather actual Indian/Thai/Moroccan/Greek/Japanese dishes. Not much you'd need a knife for and no bones at all. The standout of the Herald's sample of recipes was the "Butternut Squash and Falafel Coronation", a sort of Coronation Chicken (above) as if interpreted by Mollie Katzen, which looked pretty vile, and hence will have to be tested out immediately.

Looking through the cookbook and catering requirements, I was mainly overcome with 'variety fatigue': tired of too much of the 'different' thing instead of too much of the same thing. It's deceptive, because obviously the idea is to cater to a variety of tastes rather than impose variety on one person, but if I was on tour I would want more food that could have come out of a home kitchen instead of a sanatorium. It's an openly over-designed diet – "Every item in the ingredients listings is there to aid the performance and recovery of the England Cricket Team" – and I think they should relax a bit for everyone's sake.

***

It wasn't a bad off season, though I thought I'd blown it when I missed Finch's 156 runs off 63 in England: surely there wouldn't be anything better to look forward to. There wasn't, in a way, because there were so many other spectacular runs fests that by the end they all ran into each other and lost their edge. I felt for poor George Bailey who managed to score so many runs and still be a charisma-free zone. A Cricket Australia honcho said that if he was picked for the Ashes team the deciding factor would be his 'character', and I laughed, but actually I'm starting to think the vacancy has a Zen edge and I suspect that's what's appealing to CA.

I'll be back for the Coronation.