Who's your second team?

The build-up to every World Cup has the same rusty scaffolding every time. The House of Words has the English moaning of tiredness, India talking down the pressure but in the process revealing they're bricking it, South Africa coyly denying knowledge of the C word, and nobody saying anything about New Zealand. The overblown palace of a tournament is finally built over several weeks and come the end it crashes down on a weary cricketing world. One figure usually remains, standing tall amidst the rubble: a grinning Aussie with a gleaming trophy. And then everyone goes home and uses their colourful replica shirt as a tea towel.

In Pakistan we make embarrassing rip-off adverts. The closest that branding has come to art is transformed into the closest cricket has come to a ballet performance by theatrically challenged five-year-old girls. But then we say to ourselves, "At least we're not India."

For me, one ritual is an ever-present: selecting my second team. Keeping half an eye on another side's progress and smiling at their fortune is a handy way of, firstly, tricking the mind into thinking all is not lost, even when it is, and secondly, regarding oneself as a more well-rounded human being through the heroic act of empathising with others - rather like those people who read novels to become better people. All a bunch of bushwah, but compulsory to retain sanity for every obsessive fan.

Incidentally if you're wondering whether you're an obsessive fan or merely borderline, there is a universal test: Have you ever stayed awake in bed 10 minutes later than you should have, agonising about whether a certain player in your favourite team was really able to bat at No. 8 because, truth be told, he was probably more of a No. 9? If you have, you are a certified nut and that moment, though you didn't know it, was when you cracked.

Those who've cracker-jacked it up to "cricket tragic" level even have a third team at every tournament. Mine is always the wonderfully unthreatening New Zealand. However, I am yet to pick a second team this year, a Sancho Panza to my team's Don Quixote, a Danny Glover to my team's Mel Gibson, a Robin to my team's Shoaib Akhtar. (The secret is out: Shoaib is The Creature of the Night.)

Sri Lanka are eternally likeable but they won the last subcontinental World Cup. If you're entertaining guests it's unbecoming to make it about yourself. England are now a team with infectious gusto but they won the Twenty20 World Cup. It's unbecoming to go to parties and upstage everyone else.

I actually like the current Indian team a lot, Yuvraj Singh excepted (with a belly like that, I'm sorry, you've either got to have Inzy's magic or Ranatunga's mettle). But in Pakistan it's unbecoming to support India; in fact it might legally be blasphemous.

Australia have become the new West Indies, a team in continuous decline, sad to watch, their players like a falling middle-eastern dictator refusing to leave. West Indies have become the new South Africa, i.e. their players rarely seem to show up. And South Africa… ahem, something seems to be stuck in my throat. So that leaves Bangladesh. A young side full of energy, belief and talent, who I am confident my own team will beat if we play against them. In other words, the ideal "second team".