Pursued by the long handle of the law

Since I last wrote to you, Dessie and I have had rather a torrid time of things, and I am sorry to say that we are now wanted by the authorities on two continents.

The Indian secret service is extremely keen to speak to us after Dessie's calamitous attempt to kidnap Sachin Tendulkar and persuade him not to enter the political arena. It was only the Little Master's sure footwork and powerful wrists that enabled him to break free from Dessie's grasp at a sponsor's function in Mumbai. By sheer luck, we managed to leap onto the bonnet of a passing taxi and make good our escape before Sachin's "people", to use the modern argot, had a chance to capture us. It is a source of great regret that we were in too much of a hurry to tip our driver.

Even with the full force of the Indian legal system focused upon our capture, we might yet have got away without too much fuss had it not been for an ill-considered idea of my own.

Despite my repeated entreaties to him on Twitter, Chris Gayle has persisted in putting on the motley of the Royal Challengers Bangalore rather than representing the team of Wes Hall, Sir Garry and my own personal favourite West Indian cricketer, the peerless Dave Mohammed. I had planned to collar Chris at a Bangalore IPL match with the hope of convincing him to see sense and play for West Indies at Lord's, but with the Indian police joining forces with Sachin's marketing division to hunt us down, there was nothing for it but to get out of India as swiftly as possible. Given that the airports were being watched, we had to exit the country overland through the Punjab. It was perhaps the most hair-raising voyage I have undertaken since Ted Dexter and I attempted some yogic flying after a good lunch at the Army and Navy club back in 1968.

After a gruelling journey overland we eventually re-entered the United Kingdom by hiding in the diplomatic bag of a high-ranking diplomat whose mother country I will not embarrass by naming here, other than to say: even if they do get booted out of the Eurozone, there is certainly good money to be made in the smuggling business. We hastened straight away to Lord's where I set my plan in motion.

It was the work of a moment for us to infiltrate the indoor school at the Nursery End and procure a pair of whites and a cricket jumper belonging to Steven Finn. With Dessie now standing on my shoulders we donned the cricketing garb and tottered towards the pavilion, Dessie now clad in a woolly red, gold and green hat bartered from our taxi driver in exchange for a few litres of olive oil liberated from our diplomat's possessions. My plan was to impersonate Chris Gayle, join up with the West Indies team and play so slowly and badly that no IPL team would ever require his services again.

Sadly, the strategy fell at the first hurdle when Dessie hit his head on the door frame of the away dressing room. We were pursued from the pavilion by Lord's stewards and it has been announced on the PA system that we are to be charged under MCC Regulation 345 (b): Impersonating A Visiting Former International Captain. Interpol has become involved, and we may yet be the quarry of an unholy tripartite hunt between the MCC, the Indian government and the UK's Commission For Racial Equality, which is considering bringing a complaint against Dessie for his appalling cod Jamaican accent while posing as Mr Gayle. We are currently hiding out in Lord's groundsman Mick Hunt's lawnmower hut, and I fear that are tormentors are closing in fast.

I remain,