This was not the Twenty20 we have come to know and tolerate.

England's game against Middlesex had several intriguing little sub-plots but it was, by and large, an unsatisfying affair.

The sight of centrally-contracted Andrew Strauss playing for Middlesex and his county team-mate Owais Shah lining up for England raised half an eyebrow. Andrew's dropped catch, though, will live forever in the memory. Can anyone remember a more howling miss by a pro, ever?

The presence of Warwickshire's Neil Carter, playing for Middlesex, further muddied the water and was an unpleasant hint of things to come. Without meaning any particular ill-will towards the player himself, who has to eat (quite a lot, one would think - he looks the trencherman sort), it is a bit of a joke that he can be loaned from a rival county on such an ad hoc basis.

Steve Harmison's shirt took to the field, lacking not only its customary backbone but in fact the entirety of the Durham personage: the injured quick had lent his personalised jersey to Best Friend Forever Freddie Flintoff, who had left his own back in the hotel. One England seamer who played against Middlesex will probably miss out on the cash when Harmy returns.

Flintoff-dressed-as-Harmison was a gentle reminder that, no matter how razz the matazz and how much gravy there is sloshing around an event, England cricket is only ever really one or two steps away from gentle farce.

The England batting performance was a perfect miniature of their ODI efforts over the last decade or so: a couple of decent shots at the top of the order but the openers never really getting away, taking up useful overs before getting out for neither-here-nor-there scores. A run-out. A total inability to score against spin. People trying to force it and getting out heaving.

But 120-odd turned out to be "a very competitive score", in the parlance, and England bowled well to earn a victory of no importance.

The game really hinged on the pitch, slow-ish, a bit of uneven bounce, hard to score off. In fact, the very opposite of what the format demands. The out-cricket was absolutely dreadful, really shambolic, with catches going down all over the place and the lights being held accountable. As was pointed out several times in the commentary, it will be interesting to see how people handle a steepler at long-off in Saturday's big-money pressure game.

In fact, the conditions actually made for rather an intriguing little game, with the ball dominating the bat and batsmen forced to play with technique and some guile rather than just mindlessly thumping the ball over tiny boundaries.

And that's just not Twenty20 cricket: Mr Stanford must act fast to save the game we all love.

Alan Tyers