This is a newsletter for people who spend their time wondering about their best-ever England XI or working out, if India were to select three separate teams in the different formats of the game, who would play in each. It is a newsletter for people who enjoy sitting under a newspaper at the Buxton Festival or who want to be reminded of the time that VVS Laxman scored 281 at Eden Gardens to help India beat Australia after following on. If you care at all about who should open the batting in the Ashes or ever speculate that Cameron Green might be the first world class all-rounder Australia have produced since Keith Miller, then you are in the right place.

Michael Henderson is a former cricket correspondent of The Daily Telegraph. He began life as a cricket writer on the Rochdale Observer and since then has written on cricket for Western Morning News, The Guardian, The Observer, The Times and The Daily Mail. Michael has also written regularly on cricket for The Spectator, The New Statesman and The Cricketer. He is currently the radio columnist for The Critic. The heroes of his childhood were Farokh Engineer and Franny Lee. The heroes of his adulthood include Schubert, Chekhov and Billy Wilder. His best pal used to bang the drums for The Sex Pistols and the writer closest to his heart is Philip Larkin.

The pinnacle of Philip Collins’s life as a writer was his entry on cricket and the media in The Wisden Almanack. He is also a contributor to The Cricketer. Most of his writing, though, is on politics. After a spell as the Chief Speech Writer to the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, Philip wrote political columns for The Times for 13 years before joining The New Statesman and The Evening Standard.

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The picture above is the pavilion at Ramsbottom cricket club, a place Michael and Philip have in common.