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Once upon a time, there was a spinner of some repute with a knack for getting up people's noses. For the best part of a troubled decade, he was his country's leading scapegoat, winning battles single-handedly yet the constant butt of jokes and jibes about everything from the length of his hair to the cut of his jib.

His romantic life and domestic strife gave the nation's elders every excuse to consider him a bad lot, never to be trusted. At 32, his international career, the one thing that had kept him sane amid all the craziness, seemed for all the world to be well and truly over.

Then, totally unexpectedly, shortly after he had discovered a vestige of serenity, he found himself in favour once more, albeit mostly through a lack of alternatives. Better still, he did his country proud, a folk hero hugged at last to the establishment's bosom, a rebel embracing the cause. Why, with the prospect of living happily every after, would he risk it all by telling a couple of young autograph hunters to eff off?

That was the key question yesterday as Philip Clive Roderick Tufnell, quite the unlikeliest owner of three initials to ply his wares on an English sporting field, sought to dampen the latest flames of controversy. ``Um, yeah, I was a bit disappointed,'' he said of the allegations made by the father of one of the boys. ``I certainly don't go round swearing at young children.'' Did he have any message for them? Cue the gentlest of smirks: ``The bogeyman will get you if you tell lies, boys.''

A close friend of Tufnell's says he spoke to him on Thursday night, in the wake of the reported indiscretion, and received not the slightest inkling that anything untoward had occurred. For a fellow who wears his heart on his sleeve, this was reason enough, felt the friend, to believe his innocence without compunction.

How ironic that the Oval, scene of Tufnell's highest highs, should be the stage for this affair. Not that his form appeared to suffer. Those imaginative bods at Sporting Index had made him the subject of one of their wittier/sillier spread bets: runs made multiplied by wickets taken. The first part of the equation went much as anticipated - he struck the one ball he faced firmly to mid-on and emerged unbowed; for the majority of New Zealand's second innings, the second part also drew a blank, but that was no reflection on the way he bowled.

That inimitable hop, step and jump were perfectly grooved, the control and flight equally so. Rarely breaking the 50 mph barrier, his first two spells either side of lunch were monuments to his craft, creating the pressure that saw Adam Parore fret and ultimately surrender his wicket to Andy Caddick. The honour of driving the final nails into the Kiwi coffin was no more than his due.

Granted, Chris Cairns' forthright footwork and ozone-busting biffs turned the tables - and quite possibly the match - yet through it all, neither arc nor optimism wavered. When Tufnell came off after his battering, he plonked on his cap and merely pursed his lips, the sign of a chap who has come to terms with the slings and arrows.

Much the same, of course, could be said of England's other semi-reconstructed bad boy, Ed Giddins, whose probing outswing and three strikes before lunch fully justified his selection ahead of the hapless Chris Silverwood, even if two of his victims did have grounds to consult their lawyers.

The parallels between Tufnell and Giddins, needless to say, are endless. Both have been party to damaging allegations involving drugs; both have had their actions questioned and debated; both have refused to tug forelock with the requisite conviction. Both, moreover, chose to cock their snooks at Lord's, Giddins losing his job on the MCC ground staff after throwing a ball at one of his superiors.

The throwing charges levelled at the Warwickshire man exemplify the plight of the English sporting iconoclast. According to John Harris, the umpire who initially called him, Giddins was in one of the skittish moods that once prompted him to claim that his mother played cricket for England. Ever eager to mix things up on an unsympathetic pitch, he twice served up deliveries left-handed without due notice. It was amid the subsequent confusion that the chucking theory arose. How easily myth hardens into fact when your face refuses to fit.

Once voted among the land's 50 most eligible bachelors, Giddins wears his notoriety as lightly as his sex appeal. Ever ready with a telling quip or mischievous aside, here, patently, is a man determined to grab life by the throat and not take anything too seriously. The philosophy has got him this far; whether it can carry him from contender to achiever remains to be seen, but the omens are nothing if not heartening.