ENGLAND cricketers have historically maintained that a tour to the sub-continent can be a stiff challenge from a dietary point of view. The intrepid and soon-to-be-disappointed viewers who joined Sky Sports, pre-dawn, in Pakistan yesterday learnt exactly what they meant. Because how early in the morning can a person reasonably be expected to stomach an advertisement for Peperami?

England were 67 for four and had just lost Paul Collingwood to the bowling of Mohammad Sami when the audience at home was first invited to weigh the merits of the salted snack that is known for being “a bit of an animal”. The pickier eater will want to ask at this point: “Which bit? And of which animal?”

But that’s irrelevant for now. The point is, it was 5.25am when this advertisement went out, potentially upsetting those among us who prefer to keep the discussion of pressed meat products, pre-breakfast, to the bare minimum. On an empty stomach, before sun-up, just the mention of Peperami can be enough to churn the insides, irrespective of whether or not a match-costing, full-scale England batting collapse happens to be under way at the same time.

Still, we weathered it. We had no choice. As with Collingwood’s dismissal, so with the Peperami commercial — the best thing was to put the image out of your mind, refocus and move on. After all, the match was still there to be won at this point. True, 131 runs were required, but Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff were together at the crease. Remember them from when cricket was sexy? The loss of those three wickets since the start of play on the final day could yet be rendered academic. And reassurance, of a kind, was available from Ian Botham in the commentary box. “It’s all a cunning plan to liven the game up,” he said.

Sure enough, Pietersen was soon hoisting a six over the leg-side boundary in a cavalier “it’ll all be over by lunch, or, in your case, breakfast” kind of way. And, as a consequence, Billy Bowden, the umpire, was turning to the scorers to produce that now famous mime of his, in which a man indicates the presence overhead of inverted commas while climbing a small stepladder. It’s his signal for a six, of course, but, much more broadly than that, it ’s the sign that, when his time as a cricket official has run its course, an entire world is ready to open up for Bowden in children’s entertaining.

Yet Bowden was to have no further opportunity yesterday to mount his invisible stairs. Pietersen and Flintoff were soon gone. And then Shoaib Akhtar bombed out Ashley Giles with a missile so destructive that it appeared to make rubble not only of Giles, but of the remainder of England’s batting. Only one stump remained in the ground after this blow. And by “ground”, one means the area described by the grandstands. “I think it’s safe to say the bails were dislodged,” Botham remarked. Indeed, the bails were later intercepted by a passing aeroplane.

Shortly after this act of violence, we were treated to what was cannily described as “the rare sight of a bubbly Inzamam-ul-Haq”, indicating to anyone with eyes that the game was truly up. The Pakistan captain does not do bubbly any more than a decent glass of red wine does.

David Lloyd was inspired to see lessons here, but they were mostly for children. Thus when Ian Bell, in a rare moment of fluidity, cracked a four, Lloyd took the chance to step up to the blackboard: “For young cricketers, his elbow is very, very high, which ensures that the bat is straight, his weight is coming forward into the shot, the ball goes for four.” Are you taking this down? To Shoaib’s dismissal of Giles, meanwhile, Lloyd offered the following footnote: “All young bowlers, all aspiring cricketers, this is what you are looking for.” You’ve got to hand it to Lloyd. Even when it’s all going wrong and others are hiding their heads in their hands, his coaching manual is still open.

Elsewhere, the notion loomed, as it tends to on the white-knuckle occasions, that it all came down to “wanting it”. “Who wants it most?” Charles Colvile, who was in the studio, asked. This mantra was repeated, much later, by Botham. “Who’s got the bottle?” he asked. “Who wants it most?” It certainly quickened the pulse to think of it that way.

But does “wanting it” or “not wanting it” really explain what happened yesterday in any useful or meaningful way? It was, surely, about playing the balls that were bowled — or, as it may be, failing to play them. Supposing one could straightforwardly trace in these relative performances conclusive evidence of the greater desire to triumph is a neat idea, and a resonant one.

But, alas, there is no sporting contest of any calibre whose outcome can be reduced to a simple question of wanting it or not wanting it. We do well to remember this. It is, after all, what separates top-class sport from Peperami, the latter being something you genuinely can want or not want, depending on your mood and the time of day.