As Pakistan's batsmen queued for the couch after the second Test against Australia at Sharjah, they could comfort themselves that they were not the first to suffer humiliation. The last two decades have had plenty of shockingly low totals. But no team lately had been quite so embarrassed. It is as well they have a psychologist. "My name is Waqar Younis and my team was bowled out for 59," you can hear the captain saying. And before the shrink gets a comforting word in, the confession continues. "Wait! There's more. In the second innings we did it again, all out for 53 … " Now he knows what it is like. In 1994-95 Waqar destroyed the Sri Lankans for 71 at Kandy. More recently, in 1999-2000, Zimbabwe were skittled for 63 when they needed only 99 to beat West Indies.

Then there was the England team of 1993-94, whose performance on the fourth day of the Trinidad Test still astounds the nightwatchman Ian Salisbury. "We had them effectively 67 for 5. We thought we were going to win," he recalls. "Looking back, I should have realised how difficult a session that fourth evening was going to be." In the end England needed 194, with an hour to bat before the close – ample time for Ambrose or an act of God. Salisbury recalls an atmosphere of "total bewilderment like being hit by a tidal wave".

From the first ball – an ominous golden duck for the captain Mike Atherton, leg-before to Curtly Ambrose – the small crowd bayed for blood. "I remember the noise and pandemonium: it was electric," says Salisbury. "The changing rooms fan open and you can't close yourself off. There were batsmen coming in and out and a rush of people clambering to put their pads on." It happened almost before anyone could draw breath, like fire or flood. And what was said to each departing hero? "Not much. We were just passing each other in the corridor."

That night England returned to the hotel at 40 for 8. Atherton had famously retreated to the shower and did not emerge until the end of the day. Salisbury, who had batted confidently for 36 in the first innings, had seen himself shrinking as the stadium grew larger, neutered by fear; he made a three-ball duck. The team could not even face one another, let alone supporters or hotel staff. It was headphones and room service. West Indies have had their own humiliations since. Again in Trinidad, against Australia in 1998-99, they made 51 and for half that team lightning struck twice when, the following year at Lord's, England bowled them out for 54.

Roger Knight, secretary of MCC, was captain of Surrey in 1983 when Essex bulldozed them for 14 in a Championship match. As Knight's team had come off the field he told them not to worry about making runs in the final hour ("With hindsight not such a sensible thing to say"). Events overtook him and he was helpless to stop them. "What do you expect me to say to them? Go out and get me a quick two?" he asked afterwards. "It sounds ridiculous but we were quite fortunate," he recalls now. "We were 8 for 8 when Graham Monkhouse was dropped at slip." Surrey's 14 stands as the fifth lowest first-class total and the second lowest in the last hundred years. "I had a lovely letter from a headmaster of a prep school who said his boys' team had been out for 17, 21 and 19 in their last three games and would we like a fixture."

"Sometimes it can be fate," says Salisbury. "Like Brian Lara's 375 these things can be almost preordained." Collapses happen with a momentum too fast for a psychologist, except to pick up the pieces. But Pakistan's 112 was only the the fourth lowest Test aggregate. As Shakespeare put it: the worst is not, while yet we live to say this is the worst.

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