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"It's just a huge honour to play alongside a legend of the game like Chris Read," says Sachin - five points

Shaun Tait looks pretty rapid - one point

The football World Cup hasn't been kind to the various Test nations, so most cricketers seem to have arbitrarily selected another team to support. Approximately 80% of all their tweets have been on this topic. None are produced below. Cricketers, take note: no one cares whether Brazil or Belgium are "your team". Shut up about it.

The results
Andrew Flintoff alludes to England's football performance, as well as their defeat to Sri Lanka.

Clarke: So, Alastair, how are you doing?

Cook: Well, not terrific, to be honest. People keep being horrible about my captaincy.

There has been much ridicule directed at the ECB for its recurrent pleas that this is a new era for the national side, but in my opinion this particular criticism has been entirely unjustified. After all, who says eras have to involve winning?

One definition of "era" is simply "a long and distinct period of history". With England's previous era having been one of the more successful in the team's history, it therefore makes perfect sense that the next one should involve an endless series of embarrassing defeats. That stark contrast simply provides us with the means to distinguish between the two.

What else defines this new England era? There was much talk after the Ashes of how England were going to move towards playing a positive, attacking brand of cricket. What was conspicuously lacking was any real detail as to what this actually meant. Fortunately we've had two Tests now, so we can see the changes for ourselves.

And so, for no reason, some interesting people I've talked about cricket with are:

The World Cup runneth over
The modern English cricketer is generally quite an abstemious sort. However, the football World Cup appears to provide a reason to indulge.

Within mankind there exists an extraordinary sub-species that captivates, delights and enthralls naturalists and anthropologists: the Lord's cricket fan, or to give them their full Latin classification, homus cricketus.

Although this group's appearance has remained largely the same for 200 years, even through the relatively short period of a day's play in a Test match, this fascinating beast undergoes significant changes before regenerating itself seamlessly for its next foray into NW8.

Before play begins
To get the optimum view of the early stages of the Lord's cricket fan, it's best to position yourself in the vicinity of St John's Wood tube station at around 10.15am. It is here their migration ends and from where they emerge with their beautiful plumage on display. They are mainly white males between the ages of 21 and 80, but they all almost universally seem to look 52. Their faces are homely but determined as they set off down Wellington Road towards their Mecca, and a slight rouging of the cheeks can be determined in many cases. They are dressed in smart but raffish jackets, worn over collared shirts, which, to various degrees of success, cover up paunches of various degrees of prominence. Below the waist an array of tailored shorts and trousers can be viewed, but a pastel red is often favoured, and each one of this terracota-legged army carries with him one or sometimes two squarish bags laden with food and drink that have been foraged for in their natural habitat, the aisles of Waitrose.

Keep your chin up, cricket. Just because it's World Cup football season, there's no reason for you to be down in the mouth. While it may seem at times that all the attention is being lavished elsewhere over the coming days, you will always remain, like a less obviously successful sibling, special in the eyes of those who claim to love you. Here are a few things to remember that should help boost any flagging self-esteem and help you remain relevant over the course of the next month or so.