Welcome to the 3000th Test

3000th Test: Match Report from the year 2061
The much-anticipated 3000th Test ended in farce today. The ICC had hoped the showpiece match would be contested between the USA and China, but despite pleading, guarantees of a huge slice of TV rights (China), and promises of free soda and Chinese government bonds (America), both countries declared themselves "not remotely interested in cricket. Like we keep telling you" and went to play basketball with the West Indies instead.

Instead, England once again stepped into the breach. The Test stalwarts have contested 975 of the last 1000 matches played in the game's longest format, and arrived in Qatar on the red-eye flight the day after the conclusion of their seven-month home Test series against Patagonia.

"Some of those Patagonians found the New Year's Day conditions on the Isle of Harris pretty challenging," said England's boyish skipper Alastair Cook. "But in the end it was a good workout for us, and who knows, if Patagonia's top players hadn't been off competing in IPL 808, it could have been even closer."

"And fair play to the Patagonians: it's a short career (although not for an English batsman who has bunkered down into the Test team, obviously) and they have to take the paydays where they can find them."

The landmark Test itself, contested between England and England A at Lord's (recently transported brick by brick to the emirate after a successful bidding process overseen by the reanimated corpse of Sepp Blatter, head of the ICC's Anti-Corruption and Lunch Division) was a muted affair. With cloned versions of Jonathan Trott dominating both middle orders, batting - on a "drop-in" pitch of rolled Victoria sponge - tended towards the attritional.

The match appeared to be heading towards a draw when Cook threw the ball to his Enforcement Droid Series 209 Bowling and Tantrum Unit. The robot produced a fiery spell of short-pitched bowling interspersed with glaring from its twin head-mounted laser sockets and a ticker-tape print-out of obscenities; reaching a crescendo of bad-tempered beeping and whirring when a low catch by Ian Bell (grandson of the elegant, if occasionally frustrating, England and Warwickshire batsman Ian Bell, and son of the elegant, if occasionally frustrating, England and Warwickshire batsman Ian Bell) was adjudged to have touched the turf.

After reviewing the catch from 173 camera angles, in four dimensions, and even probing Bell with a Waugh-o-tron lie detector projection ram, it was ruled that the evidence was inconclusive. "You have 15 seconds to comply and give him out," barked the Enforcement Droid Series 209 Bowling and Tantrum Unit, before short-circuiting and stomping off to the third-man boundary with smoke coming out of its CPU. It was fined half of its match fee, but Cook insisted: "It's just a young droid learning its trade, and we wouldn't want to lose that aggression." A draw leaves the series nicely poised at 0-0 with 94 to play.