A semi-interested Wigan side, third in the Premier League, prove only limited opposition for the Tigers as a Stuart Elliott strike sees City into the hat for the Carling Cup Third Round.  Caleb Folan, who signed for the Tigers three days later, looked the only Wigan player that was genuinely interested.

It would be churlish to dismiss the League Cup as of no consequence to the supporters of Hull City - we had a wonderful night at Selhurst Park under the leadership of Mark Hateley and ten years earlier played very well for an hour at Old Trafford until the home side noticed we were there and squashed us - but the competition has spent most of its 40-odd year existence booting us out in the early stages, often with contempt and even more often at Sincil Bank. In fact we've never got through three Rounds of it. Not even once. It might happen this year. We're through two Rounds of it already. And we fully deserve to be.

This was a wonderful evening.

City turned over Premiership opposition, and did it with convincingly crafted football. There was nothing between the sides. Really: nothing. Wigan are currently embarking on their third season in the top echelon but at no stage did they look able to set us insuperable problems, at no stage were we forced to defend desperately, at no stage were we unable to get hold of the ball and pass it around with freedom. None of their players looked any better than ours, and several looked much worse.

Where the win at Crewe was refreshing, this was exhilarating. Crewe was fun, this was utterly joyous. We were assured at Crewe that there was at least some talent and commitment among the players. Now, four excellent performances in a row behind us, we can afford to wonder whether a summer whose highpoints seemed to arrive with the death of Bernard Manning and the conviction of Conrad Black may also have delivered rather more shrewd business from our manager than I must admit I had imagined.

On a balmy Lancashire summer evening, in front of a hugely impressive travelling support which must have made up more than one-third of the reported 5400 attendance, we lined up:

Myhill
Dawson Turner Brown Delaney
Featherstone Hughes Livermore Elliott
Bridges McPhee

The Duchess of Cornwall had, I learn, been expected to play at right-back but had given backword for 'fear of causing offence'. A gracious gesture, I think we can all agree, while perhaps leaving that surface scratched no further.

Wigan, meanwhile, carded a smattering of Premiership names who've not proved their mettle at leading clubs and are now pottering around feasting on Sky's largesse, more anxious to purchase the latest sleek Porsche and Giorgio Chinaglia fashionwear than to get their boots dirty when confronted by a club they've never even heard of. On this evidence Wigan are doomed to the relegation they escaped last season only on the final day and, with a team last night including the likes of Fitz Hall, Kevin Kilbane and Henri Camara and a squad dotted by proven top-level failures such as Emile Heskey, Jason Koumas and Titus Bramble, one can only conclude that they'll get what they deserve for short-term addiction to feckless foreign names and disregard for a youth policy and, at bottom, footballing honesty.

Off we go, and it's an appealingly lively and well-balanced beginning. For them Caleb Folan shoots, Myhill saves. For us, Hughes slip a shot just wide of the near post. For them Cotterill swirls in a cross from the right which trundles untouched out of play beyond Myhill's far post. For us Dawson crosses to the back post, Elliott heads the ball intelligently square but McPhee, on his heels not his toes, is unable to dart in and nudge an inviting chance goalwards.

As the first-half reaches its middle stages there are signs that our boys are getting on top. Playing proper calm, well-organised football we're visibly getting the better of a rabble of highly-paid individuals. Fitz Hall errs gruesomely and lets the ball slip under his boot, allowing McPhee a shooting opportunity with only Pollitt to beat. But McPhee boots the ball guilelessly straight at the exposed keeper. The chunky Scot gives no indication he's a natural penalty-box finisher and, without that, I worry whether he's got enough about him to prosper at this level. And a few minutes later, on 25, he is released behind the defence by a fine Elliott through ball, only to sky the chance horribly and wastefully. I pursed my lips then, and I do it again now. Fierce, me.

On 29 a foolish Elliott tug gives away a dangerous free-kick, headed behind by Livermore. The corner is headed meatily goalwards by Hall but Myhill tips it over. A goal is imminent. But not for a home side that appears able to play only in snatches.

Let me set the scene. I lampooned the likes of Kevin Kilbane and Henri Camara above. Rightly so. They were shoddy, disinterested and sloppy. But, like a wilfully contrary miser hoarding dross instead of glitter, I have saved the worst for last. Let me unveil to you the very paragon of sneering Premiership extravagance. Mario Melchiot. Right back. Right disgrace. Compared to Melchiot, Kilbane and Camara are horny-handed sons of honest toil. Compared to Melchiot, Kilbane and Camara's ineffectual displays last night deserve to be rated on a par with going over the top at Passchendaele in 1917 to confront merciless gunfire. Go on to Wikipedia this morning and seek a definition of the word 'shirker' and it is a grinning picture of the absurd Melchiot that will appear. He didn't miss tackles, because he was never close enough to an opponent even to think about making one. He avoided the game entirely. Were you a casting director seeking someone to play a blazered fop lounging in a punt sipping Pimms then Melchiot may well be an ideal selection, but if your concern is less for Brideshead Revisited and more for the gritty business of a League Cup tie with Hull City then Melchiot could not have been less well-chosen.

That, however, is Wigan's problem and, specifically, it is a problem for manager Chris Hutchings, who gave Melchiot a full 90 minutes (to be more precise, an empty 90 minutes) last night and who therefore for that alone might well be sacked this morning. On 31 a poorly struck attempted defensive clearance loops across the face of the Wigan box. Melchiot, standing still, inspects it curiously. 'You want me to get that?', he appears to be asking his teammates, in the style of Benson the Butler on Soap. Probably they do want him to get that. But Melchiot has better things to do, such as inspect his fingernails and reflect on how his underpants probably cost more than the entire Hull City team that he has been asked so humiliatingly to play against when he could be doing something more important like frequenting a very expensive Mayfair nitespot. Melchiot scarcely breaks into a trot, but Stuart Elliott is flying through the air, poking a left-foot at the ball and diverting it thrillingly past Pollitt's despairing right hand. It's brilliant opportunism from the fast-improving Elliott, but how he must wish he could play against such gutless opponents every week.

Three minutes later and Melchiot is stripped bare again as McPhee feeds the ball to Elliott at the back-post and the Ulsterman, little inconvenienced by Melchiot's quarter-paced and half-hearted challenge, heads into the side-netting. Then Bridges rips through the defence and fires a powerful rising shot against the outside of the goalpost.

It's terrific stuff. Wigan offer only a sporadic threat and, when they do, both Brown and Turner are in supremely confident form in a hearteningly sturdy Tiger central defence. There are four added minutes at the end of the half, and Camara heads feebly into Myhill's hands in the second of them, but at the break we lead and we deserve it.

Second half. A harvest moon rises silently above the hoarding advertising Uncle Joe's Mintballs. Rum folk, Lancastrians. There's them as says and there's them as knows. As Cyril Washbrook used to have it. Possibly. David Lloyd, Bumble. He's a Lancastrian. You’d guessed? Really?

On we go.

They have a shot on 54. Myhill saves it.

I mean, that's about it. Rarely, if ever, can a team from a higher Division have looked so lacking in flair and invention when confronted by supposedly inferior opposition. And there's little hard graft from Wigan to compensate for their dull pattern of play. Their best source of pressure is the referee who hands them a series of free-kicks, but they're too witless to profit.

There's anxiety that we've largely surrendered any attacking ambition, but with a well organised 4-4-2 the plan is clearly to deny Wigan any space at all, to keep pressing them when they're on the ball and to discover if they've got any ability to open us up. They haven't. Credit us with determination and, in the shape of Wayne Brown, a proper leader from whom the other players, especially the defenders, are very ready to take instructions. This is a wonderful education for Michael Turner and, with Brown regularly shouting him into position, Damien Delaney suddenly looks a more-or-less reliable left-back.

Livermore off, Ashbee on. Ashbee likes this. He gets in the way of Wigan passes and (occasionally) shots. And he points a lot. He isn't called on to do anything creative.

On 69 the flaxen-haired Cotterill breaks through a couple of tackles and is tumbled to the turf a short distance outside our box. It's up the other end from us but it looks a foul, and the Wigan players aggressively demand one, but on this occasion the referee spares us.

Five minutes later Wigan's incompetence spares us. The shockingly uncommitted Camara is replaced by the muscular Aghahowa, and the former Shaktar Donetsk striker is presented with a glorious opportunity when the otherwise saintly Brown simply fails to connect with a through ball. Aghahowa has time to settle himself for a shot and he has only Myhill to beat but fireworks go off inside his head and a pitifully wild and frantic smear sends the ball careering many yards wide of the goal.

The home side won't get another chance as good as that. In fact they'll scarcely get another chance at all.

Marney arrives for McPhee, and we switch to a 4-5-1 which compresses the available space even more tightly. Not to say we can't break out - on 80 a composed Featherstone run down the right leads to a corner which Hughes heads over the bar - but the main aim, entirely justified on the night, is simply to let Wigan show just how little they've got to offer.

Windass comes on for Bridges and offers a masterclass in time-wasting but only a Myhill tipover in the second of four added minutes offers even a glimpse of alarm. Terrific performances all over the pitch (and boisterously in the stands too) and a thoroughly deserved victory.

I would be tempted to jab a bony finger at you and instruct you with severity that there's nothing notable about Hull City defeating a club only recently out of the Northern Premier League were it not for the fact that this was a sufficiently magical night to dissolve such stern iconoclasm. City were superb last night. The players deserve acclaim. So does the manager. The opening day reverse at the hands of Plymouth seems to have jolted him every bit as much as it did us, and he showed great strength of character in immediately abandoning his chosen 4-3-3 and in also sidelining Danny Coles. How much stronger we now look. And with this victory, our first away from home against a top Division side since Coventry were defeated at Highfield Road in the FA Cup in 1972, we've got a proper Cup run going too.

HULL CITY (4-4-2): Myhill; Dawson, Turner, Brown, Delaney; Featherstone, Livermore, Hughes, Elliott; Bridges, McPhee.  Subs: Ashbee (for Livermore, 67), Marney (for McPhee, 77), Windass (for Bridges, 82), Ricketts, Myhill.

Goals: Elliott 31

Booked: Elliott, Livermore

Sent Off: None

WIGAN ATHLETIC: Pollitt, Melchiot, Granqvist, Hall, Boyce, Cotterill, Brown, Skoko, Kilbane, Camara, Folan.  Subs: Koumas (for Boyce, 71), Aghahowa (for Camara, 74), Bramble, Landzaat, Nash.

Goals: None

Booked: Cotterill

Sent Off: None

REFEREE:  E Ilderton

ATTENDANCE: 5,440