ISLAMIC jihad, the murderous inefficiency of the NHS, the collapsed state schools system, the problems with Putin and the housing crisis. I must turn my attention away from these hilarities and write about something serious for once.

Cricket then. It’s time Alastair Cook resigned the captaincy. Leave aside the fact that he hasn’t made a good score for yonks and consider his stunning tactical incompetence as a skipper.

Bowling changes and fielding positions are a foreign language to our Alastair, and it’s well-known that often during the 2013 Ashes series in England, the coach and other technical bods were rendered apoplectic by Cook’s blunders out on the field and had to resort to issuing instructions from the pavilion and changing team tactics during the tea interval.

That’s only the start of it. Cook’s manmanagement skills score epsilon minus.

Mike Brearley would have handled the narcissistic Kevin Pietersen, as he handled Ian Botham. But Pietersen strutted and postured while Cook only fretted and went wimping to the selectors. The result was a protracted dressing room feud which ended in the loss of our best batsman – and, incidentally, the Ashes.

Captain Cook has continued his cackhanded career in the current matches with Sri Lanka.

He told the press that Jos Buttler “is not quite ready” to play in the Test side. This the day after Buttler came in at Lord’s with half the side out, proceeded to score the fastest one-day century ever seen at the home of cricket and came within a whisker of winning the match single-handed. If Buttler is not quite ready, where does that leave Cook who, for the record, scored just one run?

Cook’s captaincy is a nightmare but last week there was something much worse than mere incompetence. The action of Senanayake in running out Buttler for his being marginally out of his ground as the bowler ran up was a disgrace. He and his captain, Angelo Mathews, argued that the bowler was playing to the laws. That’s not the point. There is much more to cricket even than its sacred laws. There is its tradition and the spirit of the game.

Sananayake should have said: “That’s a warning Jos.” And when the umpire asked Mathews: “Do you really want to uphold that appeal?” Mathews should have had the grace to say: “No – it’s a warning.”

Cricket is an affair of genius, myth and legend, played with diligence and infinite concentration in an atmosphere of trance and ecstasy. Cricket approaches the status of religion. Its ritual movements – rolling the pitch, setting the bails on the stumps, the umpire’s calling, “play!” verge on the sacramental.

And the language of cricket – like the words of the Prayer Book – are really only comprehensible to the wholehearted participant and devotee; and perhaps not fully even to the devotee which reminds me of an old tale.

A lady was taken to her first match and spent the whole of the day learning the lingo.

Finally she was flummoxed. She said: “I thought I’d got the hang of it – ducks, maidens, googlies, the lot. Until I heard the commentator say: ‘The spinner’s bowling chinamen and the night-watchman’s on strike’.”

Howzat then?