Majeed gets his Tefl on

If you’ve ever flunked your chosen career and find yourself teaching English in a quiet, yet really quite nice, central European outpost, then you’ll be well aware of the value of ‘time-savers’ in the classroom. A bit misleadingly titled, these are activities to be called upon when you’ve got the odd five, ten or fifteen minutes left at the end of a lesson because you’ve miscalculated how long it should take your students to complete a reading comprehension on, for example, the discovery of new species in Papa New Guinea.

To be honest, really these are ‘time-wasters’ and can take many forms, from variations on Countdown conundrums to proverb wheel of fortunes to, an endearing favourite, adverb blockbusters. By far the most popular in my experience, however, is ‘two truths and a lie’ whereby the class is divided into groups of three and then two of each group tell a truth about themselves and the other tells a big fib. The rest of the class have to root out lying toerag. Not only does it add intrigue and high drama to the end of a lesson, it also allows you to ask students, ‘Why is it a good idea to pretend you are Lady Gaga for this game?’.

I mention it in relation to cricket because, at first glance, it seems that Mazhar Majeed, the alleged fixer of spot-fixing, has been having a merry old time at Southark Crown court enjoying his own inverted variation of the game as he trots out all manner of fanciful revelations under cross-examination and previously tape-recorded evidence is played to the gallery. It’s impossible to say for sure if he’s really been playing ‘Two truths and a lie’ or just ‘A mass of fantastical bullshit and a dollop of bollocks’, but, if you want to play along at home – and remember this is just for fun since that Ant and Dec furore – why not try and decipher which one or ones of the allegations below are the truth?

- Pakistan President, Asif Zardari, killed his wife.- Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis were involved in fixing matches.- Australians are the biggest match fixers on the planet.- I, Mazhar Majeed, am not a massive, deluded fantasist who is secretly getting off on all this attention and the world being held in thrall to my every smarmy, cocksure, cricket-buggering up word.

I’d like that in by Thursday morning, please, or by close of play at Southark Crown Court come verdict day.