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Spirits appeared to be high in the England dressing room at the prospect of a short holiday away from cricket.

Paul Collingwood, wearing a knotted handkerchief on his head and reclining in a deckchair, declared that he "was going freelance for a bit". He revealed that he had received "a tempting three-figure offer" to play club cricket in Kazakhstan for the next couple of weeks.

Team-mates agreed that they would use this brief downtime wisely, advising each other to get agents, write an autobiography or two, and investigate the possibilities of getting involved in Pro-Celebrity Bungee Jumping on BBC8.

Team members were observed fighting over the Official Team England laptop as they competed to update their Twitter accounts.

An argument broke out when Tim Bresnan, in the middle of typing "F*** off I'm not fat, I'm just big-boned, you c***. Anyway, it's me glands," managed to spill curry sauce on the keyboard.

Ryan Sidebottom appeared frightened by the computer, asking if it "was magic" and revealing that he had heard it could steal your soul, "voodoo like."

Some of the younger and more switched-on members of the team reassured him, but Sidebottom remained wary of the machine, saying that he "heard it had pretended to be Ian Bell and looked into Belly's mind and everything".

A discussion about identity theft finished inconclusively, with the group unsure as to how an impostor could have possibly fooled everyone into thinking that a series of pleasant but insubstantial and basically pointless posts were the work of Bell.

Owais Shah was asked by team-mates if he wanted to have a go. Shah became confused, appeared agitated and shouted, "Yes… no… sorry" before dropping the laptop over the balcony window.

Coach Flower reacted violently. "All our clever plans for bowling at opponents were on there, Owais, you dolt," he shouted. "The tactic to bowl it short to Ponting took hours of computer wizardry from our top boffins. Have you any idea what other tactical brilliance you might have destroyed?"

Andrew Strauss addressed the team about the outbreak of torn buttock muscles, suggesting that the strange epidemic might be a result of clenching nervously at the sight of Ponting walking out to bat.

It was agreed that the team would attempt to search the internet for medical advice and a Tweet was hurriedly composed to Jeremy Snape.