The summer of 2005 without Pietersen? Imagining World Test finals of the past

Michael Vaughan and Ricky Ponting in 2005. England and Australia would have met in the final in 2005 – but that would have been before the Ashes series. Photograph: Tom Shaw/Getty Images

This, dear reader, is the 1,126th edition of The Spin. For the past 23 years it has been a weekly source of news, views and automated data about the unread message count in the deleted items folder. As such it is hard to find new journalistic frontiers. But, in the face of some molten competition, this week’s Spin stands alone as the nerdiest, the most anal, the one grounded furthest from reality.

We say this not to boast, only to flag that it may not be for everyone, and that we feel for those unfortunates whose neurological disposition means they have precisely no interest in imagining what a World Test Championship final might have looked like in May 1989.