Now that's what I call humiliating

Within seconds of Danish Kaneria's dismissal in the first innings of the Lord's test between Pakistan and Australia last week, the Test Match Sofa Twitter feed was inundated with howls of despair.

Shane Watson had just taken five wickets in an innings and was assured of cricketing immortality. His name would be the first to appear on a special neutral Tests honours board at Lord's. Where Warne, Lillee and Thomson had failed, the watery-eyed military medium of Watson had cleaned up.

Listeners from such diverse locations as Karachi and Epping Forest were furiously searching for floor plans, investing in crampons and balaclavas, and planning a midnight raid on the visitors' dressing room to steal the board and eradicate this blatant injustice from history.

But fury soon turned to sympathy for Kaneria. To have been the unwitting agent of Watson's unalloyed pleasure must have been hard to take. Parallels were sought. What is the worst way to get out? This question brought some eye-bulging responses from the Twittersphere that broke down into two distinct categories.

First, a combination dismissal such as c Panesar b Pietersen - this has not yet happened but when it does, expect to find the batsman being talked down from the roof by his team-mates. And second, grotesque misfortune such as that heaped on Harry Wilson, who was run out for a duck in both innings of his only first-class match, for Northants against New Zealand in 1931.

Jack Simmons found a particularly humiliating way to go in a NatWest quarter-final against Middlesex in 1984, when he was hit-wicket off the very gentle trundlers of Simon Hughes. But it is Wasim Akram's lbw to Mike Atherton at Headingley in 1996, gifting Athers his second and final Test wicket, that's more what we're after. At what point in pre-season training for Lancashire will Wasim have tired of Atherton's references to his "bunny"?

Many correspondents took the view that for anyone to get out to Paul Harris is humiliation enough. Were that dismissal to be Pietersen c Smith b Harris then our cup would run over. Sadly this has never happened, though Alastair Cook did go that way in Centurion last December. The sheer outpouring of smugness must have haunted Cook for months. Other near-misses in this category include Imran Khan not being dismissed c Lamb b Botham, or Boycott c Illingworth b Close, and most inventively, anyone given out caught behind off a no-ball from a Rudi Koertzen decision referred under the UDRS by Daryl Harper as third umpire. But Javed Miandad did trap Dennis Lillee lbw for 15 in Sydney in January 1977 - a dismissal that may have sown the seeds for their famous altercation four years later in Perth.

For utter existential despair, not much could surpass Dirk Wellham's dismissal in an Ashes warm-up game in 1979. An encounter between Australian Universities and the touring England party would not normally attract much attention. But when studious, bespectacled nice guy Wellham was caught by Botham off the bowling of Boycott for 95, even the placid Dirk must have lost his cool. He got his own back two years later at The Oval, when Boycott dropped him on 99 in his debut Test, staunching at a stroke the flow of repetitive triumphalism that would otherwise have stalked him to his grave.

Still, it is hard to beat Ricky Ponting's run-out in the 2005 Ashes by substitute journeyman Gary Pratt, if for no other reason than the volley of abuse - or should I say verbally expressed disappointment - that spewed from the Aussie skipper's mouth.

In the more general category of utter misfortune there were numerous examples tweeted in. Alan Revill's hit-wicket after being struck on the hand by Alec Bedser and shaking said hand so vigorously the glove flew off and dislodged a bail, is right up there. As is HJ Heygate being timed out because, crippled by rheumatism, it took him too long to walk to the wicket. In more recent times there is Marcus Trescothick's slog sweep that lodged in Russel Arnold's shirt, gifting Dinuka Hettiarachchi one of his only two Test victims.

But my favourite has to be William Scotton, batting for the Smokers against the Non-Smokers in Melbourne in 1887. He played out the last ball of the match to the covers for a single, secured the draw, then picked up the ball as a memento - only to be given out handled ball because the umpire hadn't called time. Super Aussie sportsmanship there.

However, the answer to our conundrum lay in the future. Had we just waited 48 hours we could have saved ourselves the bother of enquiry, as the hapless Kaneria managed the unique feat of two diabolical combination dismissals in the same match by being the last man out, c Ponting b North. Australia won the Test and North finished with even better figures than Watson, of 6 for 55. Now where are those crampons and balaclavas?