Are you pro-KP or anti-KP?

These are tense times in England. A nation is in turmoil as we wait to find out who will be chosen to lead us from our state of doubt and uncertainty into the sunlit uplands of prosperity, happiness and not being utterly humiliated in the Ashes.

The post of ECB managing director is probably the most important job in the country. Get this appointment wrong and English cricket could endure a miserable decade of mediocrity. Get it right and the outcome will be pretty much the same.

There are two main candidates. For the Troll Party, we have Michael Vaughan, whose manifesto includes a commitment to introduce county-specific tea to the England dressing room and a promise to spend less time annoying us all on television, radio and social media.

Opposing him, for the Boring Party, is Andrew Strauss, who is promising a significant increase in dull yet impenetrable management speak. There is also a third candidate; Michael Atherton's former butler, Stewart, is standing for the Trustworthy Old Retainer party, in the hope of finishing an unobtrusive but reliable third.

Of course, there's only one issue in this non-election, a topic that has divided the nation more bitterly than anything since the time of the Civil War, including the Civil War. Are you pro-Pietersen or anti-Pietersen?

You might have thought that this problem had gone away. The KP-Ometer set up by scientists at ESPNcricinfo to monitor the likelihood of a KP England return had been stuck on "Cat In Hell's Chance" for months. But in the last few weeks, the needle has been moving steadily and is now at KP Danger Level 3, causing sirens to go off in Alastair Cook's kitchen every morning. So it is vital that we know where the candidates stand.

Andrew doesn't like Kevin. He takes a staunch anti-Kevin stance. But Michael is broadly pro-Kevin. He is regarded in some quarters as "The Kevin Whisperer", the man who can get the best out of Kevin; he is Mike Brearley to Kevin's Ian Botham.

So which of the two will win? On this decision could hang England's chances of maybe winning a Test match in the next year before Kevin retires anyway. A nation is agog.

And as if that isn't enough of a tense administrative cliffhanger for you, there's an international diplomatic incident brewing at the ICC.

It seems that after an interim committee was appointed to run Sri Lankan cricket the ICC withheld a $10 million payment. A nominee from the interim committee was invited to attend a meeting at the ICC. But when Mr Mohamed took his seat at the table, he was surprised to find, next to his complimentary water bottle (half-empty) a name card describing him as "Mr X from the SLC" and an official ICC gag.

When he declined to wear the ICC gag he was invited to take the lift to the executive waiting room. Regrettably the floor of the lift turned out to be a trapdoor and the lift had somehow been built on top of a chute that fed directly into a tank full of hungry lawyers. Fortunately, Mr Mohammed is a former Olympic swimmer and had taken the precaution of bringing a spare can of lawyer repellent, so was able to escape.

All this has led to criticism of the ICC, which is unfair. I am a big fan of the ICC. It's my favourite international cricket governing body and, like the UN and the League of Nations, has built itself a substantial reputation. What was SLC going to spend that money on anyway? Most of it was going to be used to pay back loans from the ICC, so by withholding it, the ICC was just cutting down on administration costs.

No, you may call me naïve, but I think we should have full confidence in the actions of the ICC, a body chaired, lest we forget, by a man who has cemented his own substantial reputation, a man renowned throughout the world as one of our leading examples on the subject of ethical sports administration, the indefatigable Mr N Srinivasan.