Reading the recap of the 1979-80 Australian season was, at the risk of descending into cliches, a trip down memory lane. For that season was the first time that I tuned into radio commentary from Australia for a match not involving India (my uncles and I had spent many hours glued to the radio during the 1977-78 season when India went down 2-3).

Whether it was the impressionability of youth or the magic of radio commentary, that season stands out quite clearly in my mind (and I have not seen, or at least I don't think I have, a single second of video footage of that summer). On a purely cricketing level, I was excited by the return of the Packer cricketers to the fold. I had been shattered by the schism in world cricket: it had taken all the worlds best players to the WSC and threatened a great deal of confusion in my mind between official and unofficial cricket.

But all was well. The Chappells and the Lillees and the Marshes were back in my then favorite team, the Australians. The West Indies were back as well, and to top it all off, the English had obligingly agreed to play the part of the Prissy Poms by refusing to contest the Ashes. And the icing on the cake was that Kim Hughes and David Hookes, who I worshipped, were going to play in the full-strength side. More than anything else I wanted to see how my two new heroes would do.

The first time I tuned in to the morning commentary from Australia, Joel Garner and Colin Croft were putting on 56 for the last wicket at Brisbane in the first Test. Croft, amazingly, hung around to make 2 off some 70 odd deliveries while Garner bashed 60 at the other end.

It was during this session that I discovered that despite all the distortion from the radio set, ones comprehension of the spoken word improved over time, almost as if the audio-processing component of one's brain was carrying out its own corrections and filtrations over time. My mother walked into the room where I was and was flabbergasted at the sight of her son listening to what sounded like a banshees wail. But to me it had become crystal clear.

That winter, once I had figured out the best frequencies and timings for the commentary from Australia, I became a diligent listener. There was plenty to admire and mourn from a distance, plenty of material to imagine and let grow wild: Richards batting, the hostility of the Windies quicks, the mixed run that both Hughes and Hookes had, the heartbreak of Hughes 99; the oddness of Boycott carrying his bat for 99 not out; the blast from the past vibe associated with Ian Chappells presence in this series (Ian played his last Test in it); and so on.

But retrospectively, the real heroes were the radio sets: the large GEC set at home in Delhi (which seemed to take forever to 'warm up'), and my grandfather's portable Phillips set in Central India. For hours and hours, they became my portal to a distant land where giants roamed, fantasies were realized, dreams were crushed and cricketing drama was enacted. If I have overblown impressions of the cricketers in that season, its because my imagination did double-duty that memorable summer.

The response to NSW signing Brendon McCullum for their Twenty20 Final against Victoria on Saturday night has divided certain sections of the local cricket population. Andrew Symonds lit the fire by claiming that it was “not Australian” and Dave Gilbert, the CEO of Cricket NSW has responded by labelling Symonds a “hypocrite”.

It’s an amusing little by-play to a competition that needs to be kept in context. It is Twenty20 after all, a bit of a circus, a bit of fun but never meant to be taken too seriously. Unless of course the Champions Trophy prize money warrants it being taken very seriously indeed. So seriously that a team is prepared to fly in an international ‘import’ to help them win a game.

To Symonds’s comments first though: he is obviously referring to the fact that a local NSW player must make way for McCullum in the final. By invoking the ‘un-Australian’ theme, he has chosen to follow the lead of opportunistic politicians and aim a blow at the very heart of the national psyche. For those of you unfamiliar with the gravity of being labelled “un-Australian”, it is a tactic that is regularly used in this country to describe the lowest of low acts. Once you have been labelled thus, you are nothing but a cad and a bounder, lower than a snake’s belly, deserving of contempt. Being called un-Australian is about as shameful as it gets (apparently).

Politicians use it all the time to describe anyone who unfairly sacks their workers or someone who steals a pensioner’s handbag or deserts a friend in need. It is an act that goes beyond being merely wrong – it strikes at the very heart of national pride. With these cutting words, Symonds has ensured that all of NSW will choke on their barbecued prawns and sausages on Australia Day on Monday. It is a mortal wound, this un-Australian business.

As trivial as this particular incident is in the larger scheme of things, it begs the question of why Australia seems to have monopolised some basic human qualities and turned it into an exclusive moral high ground, firmly contained within our own borders. We like to think of it simplistically as a “fair go”. I’m sure the rest of the world has other names to describe similar qualities but is it couched in nationalistic jargon? Some things are just wrong or right, regardless of which culture or country you identify with.

If one was to ever take politicians seriously (fortunately, no one here does – that would be un-Australian of course!), one could be forgiven for thinking that no other country on Earth shared these common values of mateship, decency, honesty, loyalty, generosity etc. It’s almost become a joke now when people label something universal as un-Australian because it is so clearly something that would apply to any people of the world. As if knocking an old lady down in the street, stealing her purse and kicking her dog is perfectly OK in any other part of the world. How ridiculous.

Cricket NSW is not going to stand for that sort of insult though. Anything but that. Once you’ve been called un-Australian, you have no choice but to defend your honour to the bitter end. They’ve fired back by asking how Symonds can justify his moral stance against the McCullum signing when he is happy to play for an IPL team and deny a local player a spot in his local team. What about Symonds’ stints in county cricket? Is that not denying a local his place in the team? Using that logic, surely playing a whole season and denying a local boy his spot for 6 months is worse than McCullum's cameo.

There are slight differences of course. This is a final, McCullum hasn’t played any of the lead-up games and most Australians love hating NSW. It’s un-Australian not to. What about the fact that Sohail Tanvir and Umar Gul have played for other teams in the competition? What about the fact that if the Deccan Chargers reach the final against his beloved Qld Bulls (if they hadn’t been knocked out), Symonds would be happily playing against his own mates, against the team that nurtured him to his current stardom? Would that not be un-Australian?

There's another twist in the tale. Apparently Victoria are thinking of hiring Adam Gilchrist or Shane Warne to play for them in the final. Is that un-Australian too or is it different if one Australian player replaces another, despite not having played a single game for this team in the current competition? Warne is at least a Victorian but Gilchrist is as removed from Victoria as McCullum is from NSW.

Perhaps where big money is involved, misplaced notions of national pride conveniently disappear. Is it un-Australian to have a selective memory? Or is that a trait that mankind shares in common?

It’s only Twenty20 cricket, a bit of fun and not to be taken too seriously. I write this in that vein, tongue-in-cheek and irreverently poking fun at my own country. With Australia Day just two days away, it’s positively Australian to take the mickey out of your own mates. Anything less would be…….yep you guessed it……un-Australian!

What with captains resigning, bombs going off, or arguments with Stanford (whether about over-familiarity with the WAGs or huge sponsorship), there has been a deal too much off-field nonsense for both England and West Indies these last few months. We can but hope that dramas in the forthcoming series are confined to the field of play.

England start as favourites, a position they usually dislike but will have to learn to cope with if they are ever to fulfil their stated ambitions. West Indies are near to having a very handy bowling attack, with Fidel Edwards and Jerome Taylor looking increasingly convincing and Suleiman Benn’s height making him an unfamiliar and therefore awkward sort of a spinner, but their top order is still far too dependent on Chris Gayle and the Rock of Guyana for any sort of comfort. England ought to be too strong for them, but Australia got a bit of a fright in the Caribbean last year so there will be no room for complacency.

Captain Strauss and his fellow tour selectors have three main decisions to make, so the warm-ups will be of considerable importance.

Stuart Broad’s incipient all-rounderism guarantees him one spot, which leaves two for Anderson, Steve Harmison and Ryan Sidebottom to fight over. Sidebottom is probably the one who most needs an eye-catching performance to get picked, but his prospects will rise quickly if either of the others turns up unable to bowl fast or straight.

Monty Panesar was clearly short of match practice in India but has now had some bowling in South Africa to get into shape. Further in his favour is that his best bowling for England was when Strauss was captain before: not being the greatest player of spin ever probably leads him to treat Monty with a bit more respect than Vaughan or Pietersen did. On the other hand, not every pitch is suited to a spinner who bowls at a robotic 90kph, and Graeme Swann’s experience of canny variation asked a lot of questions of the Indian batsmen before Christmas; they may only have been in a spirit of courteous enquiry rather than searching interrogation, but they were much more numerous than those which Panesar posed. Swann can also field and bat a bit, which Monty still cannot do to anything resembling the standard we ought to be able to expect. For my money, Swann did enough in India to get first crack.

Lastly, Ian Bell or Owais Shah?

Unlike Strauss or Paul Collingwood, say, Bell finds the atmosphere in the Last Chance Arms stifling rather than stimulating. It is time for the bartender to tell him he is depressing the other patrons of that convivial watering-hole and should go home.

However, Shah lacks the gravitas ideal in a number three, and making him play there has every chance of making him look a twit. Unless Collingwood has some debilitating superstition about coming in first drop, he would be a far more reassuring presence at three, leaving Shah to go in at five.

The Windies problems are not so much who should be picked as how to get them all to play well at once, and the main obstacle to it is their lack of experience. The first stage in rebuilding a side is to become hard to beat, but they are still some way off. But if they make progress towards that, this should be an interesting series.

Let’s just hope we can spend the next few weeks talking about cricket rather than whether Andy Flower ate breakfast alone because everyone hates him.

A recurrent feature of the Indian cricketing landscape, especially since the Azhar-three spinner era of the early 1990s, has been the optimistic expectation of a New Dawn in Indian cricket following a win or two, perhaps in a series, perhaps in a solitary game. Such optimism (whether journalistic or fan-based) has, ever since the first Indian Test win (Chepauk 1952), never flagged in its timing or its hopefulness. And nowhere is it more manifest than in the period immediately following a home season that has gone well for the Men in Blue (or White).

We are in a similar period now, following the Test wins at home over Australia and England. Sure, no one is going overboard in their claims (leaving aside some suggestions that the Indian bowling attack was the most varied or the most incisive or whatever, in the cricketing world). But the feel-good vibe is present, with the twin Test series (and the 5-0 ODI thrashing of England) putting a convenient distance between the team and its recent past. But the anxiety that underwrites this bluster has, for me, been most intriguingly revealed in the discussion over whether Dravid should remain in the Indian team, especially for the forthcoming tour of New Zealand.

For the central claim of the pro-Dravid camp in this regard is that Dravid is needed in Kiwiland, on its spongy, seaming, pitches. That without him, the Indian middle-order will be at the mercy of those dreaded seamers, cutters, swingers that are the hallmark of the New Zealand attack.

On the face of it, there is something very odd about this claim. The Indian cricketing world is currently glowing in the glory of its new opening pair (confidently proclaimed by some to be the best in the world); we have rediscovered the glories of Tendulkar and Laxman; and only one batting retirement, that of Ganguly, has taken place. The Indian team has not replaced its entire middle order and the New Zealand team is judged by most folks to thoroughly deserve its position in the Test cricket rankings table. Given the bluster about India and the brick-batting of New Zealand, it would be plausible to claim that India should do just fine and win comfortably (we do have a very effective pace attack, after all).

Whither this anxiety then? Will the replacement of Dravid by a relative newbie (and not necessarily at No. 3) do such damage to the Indian team, if it really is poised for greatness? I think what this argument reveals is that there is considerable worry about the Indian batting. Most of Gambhir's heroics have come at home; Yuvraj remains untested overseas as well; Laxman might be going off the boil; and you can insert your favourite worries about Sehwag (loose cannon) and Tendulkar (will age catch up soon?) here. (I only worry about Yuvraj and Gambhir but I sense insecurity about the entire order out there).

The caution that pervades the latest spell of boosterism for the Indian team is appropriate. Much needs to be done: the Holy Grail of away wins over South Africa and Australia will only come when the batting order can do well there and if the quicks can remain injury-free and turn in consistent match-winning performances over an extended period.

For what its worth, I cannot make up my mind on whether Dravid should stay or go. But the arguments made on his behalf have been very revealing of the justifiable guardedness the Indian fan has at this point in Indian cricket.

	Wellington's Graham Napier could strike gold in the inaugural Big Hits Competition © Getty Images

Down here in New Zealand, wannabe national heroes can be spotted executing standing barbell curls, lying barbell extensions, reverse curls and dumbbell wrist curls as they strengthen up their arms for next month’s assault on cult hero status.

Why? Because, in an echo of baseball’s homerun derby and golf’s world’s longest driver competition, the quest to find the nation's most monstrous six-hitter is on, via the inaugural Big Hits Competition. New Zealand's longest tonker of a white cricket ball will be found at the final of the domestic cricket Twenty20 competition at the Cake Tin in Wellington on 26 February. Here, qualifiers from each of the six provinces, a nominee from domestic cricket, and one of the New Zealand team will be pitted against each other in an 8-way slog-off.

The domestic player will be found at the official launch event in Auckland early next month where nominees from each of the teams will unleash. My nominees would be: Central Districts (Mathew Sinclair), Northern Districts (Peter McGlashan), Wellington (Graham Napier), Auckland (Chris Martin – surely someone has to take the piss), Canterbury (Peter Fulton) and Otago (Dimitri Mascarenhas).

The challenge could be made harder if the pace of the bowler is not utilised – if it is lobbed then the hitter will have to generate all the horsepower. I was never a Physics maestro but I would rather have someone like Mark Gillespie bowling at me if I was trying to thrash one over the fence, down the road and into tomorrow.

The Hawke’s Bay Today has called for an end to speculation about the biggest six-hitter on the world cricket stage later this year: “If the ICC is prepared to dig deep into its pockets, that question can be answered once all the cricketing protagonists let the dust settle in their respective countries to send their delegates to the 2009 Twenty20 World Cup in England from June 5-21.”

The lustiest blows that I have sighted in the flesh would include a couple by Chris Cairns out of the Basin Reserve into Kent Terrace and onto the roof of the stand at Eden Park respectively, Andre Adams in the nets practising for Auckland at the Outer Oval, and Ricky Ponting bludgeoning one onto the ASB Stand at Eden Park in the moustache/afro/beard/beige-out Twenty20 match.

For the record, the biggest six in the world (according to the Wisden Cricketer) seems to be the one at the end of the arc of Charles “Buns” Thornton's swing while netting at the County Ground at Hove on 25 August 1876: “Thornton is generally considered to have been the longest hitter the game has ever known. He was a well-built six-footer, and though he had small forearms and biceps, he was very strong in the hips, and he jumped in at the ball with a tremendous free swing of the bat…He seldom wore batting gloves, and believed that the absence of impedimenta helped his freedom of movement and the swing of the bat.”

The distance travelled sans impedimenta? Nobody knows for sure, but it was around about a humungous 168 yards or 154 metres.

In terms of more recent numbers bandied about, these are the top efforts according to some late-night research at Beige Brigade HQ and the wisdom of crowds:

Albie Morkel - 124m
Yuvraj Singh - 119m
Ross Taylor - 112m
Misbah Ul-Haq - 111m
Shahid Afridi - unconfirmed (WACA)

Honourable mentions:
Lance Cairns monstering Geoff Lawson at the MCG
Mark Waugh pummelling Daniel Vettori at the WACA

As you can see, Thornton’s gargantuan effort dwarfs the contemporary players’ tonks. Another sad fact is that the winner of the biggest slog competition will probably receive more coverage than the domestic team who win the centrepiece final – the sideshow to a sideshow. Let’s hope not.

	Will India's batting crumble with the exit of Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid? © AFP

Politeness dictates that when a long-serving player retires, it is said by all and sundry that he will leave a big hole and be missed greatly. For Shane Warne, it has obviously been true or we wouldn’t have had people wishfully hoping that he might come out of retirement for the 2009 Ashes, but for plenty of others it’s merely a gracious fib.

Nobody will miss the Matt Hayden who played in 2008, for instance. Were the 2007 version still available, it would be a different story, but Hayden’s retirement was that of a man who in earlier times would have been provided with a bottle of whisky and a pearl-handled revolver. After his horrible performances against South Africa, there’s little doubt the selectors would prefer to see Phil Jaques playing instead. Since Jaques had almost established himself before his injury and Katich has since done so, Hayden’s departure simply completes the handover from a great opening partnership to at least a pretty good one.

It is only partly a reflection of the merit of the retiree, though, whether he is missed. Losing the greatest batsman of the age in Viv Richards caused the Windies only a year or so’s worry before Brian Lara exploded on to the scene. Assuming Ajantha Mendis is not this generation’s Narendra Hirwani, Muttiah Muralitharan will be able to make his farewells without inflicting on Sri Lankans the deep feelings of bereavement which Warne’s departure has caused Australians, and Amit Mishra is already easing the pain of Anil Kumble’s passing.

Fred Flintoff was the end of a search for the new Ian Botham which had lasted 20 years – for the first seven or eight of which England made do with the old but very unreliable one. But when Fred rides off, England may well be able to take it in their stride: at least one of Adil Rashid, Stuart Broad and Matt Prior should then be a convincing No. 6 and worthwhile out-cricketer while the other two will make for a very strong lower middle-order.

I will not be surprised if Sachin Tendulkar is replaced fairly quickly. It’s pretty unlikely his successor will be as near to being a replica as Lara was of Viv, but finding a forceful middle-order batsman who can dominate attacks should not be too hard. Despite my long-held doubts about him, it could even be Yuvraj Singh. What will be much more difficult is replacing Rahul Dravid; what’s the betting that five years from now, as India have their third embarrassing collapse in five innings, people will be shaking their heads wondering when a new Wall is going to be erected?

Sometimes, what people miss most is not a player’s primary skill but his back-up. Sanath Jayasuriya was usually unrecognised as the allrounder he was, but his left-arm spin was very much of Test class. From his final really-and-truly retirement until Mendis turned up, Sri Lanka got themselves involved in various experiments involving Farveez Maharoof in an effort to balance the side, with little convincing success. Underwhelmed by his bowling though I remain, it’s not Jacques Kallis’s batting that South Africa will miss. Prince can easily do what Kallis has been producing recently with the bat, and quite probably more, but he is no more a bowler than any of the others in the SA top six (since the spin of Graeme Smith or JP Duminy are little more than mildly amusing jokes), which will leave them rather unbalanced.

But problems like that pale before the humdinger soon to confront West Indies. Where in a group of countries whose batsmen have always accentuated the positive do you find someone to replace Shivnarine Chanderpaul?

Matthew Hayden’s decision to finally hang up his boots has sparked lots of debate about whether he is Australia’s greatest opening batsman and where he sits in the list of All-Time-Greats. I played with Matt from his early days in Grade cricket and watched the development of a batsman with the most incredible self-belief of any human being in any walk of life that I have encountered. In that respect, he is the greatest "positive thinker" I have ever met. Being dropped or overlooked was only a minor speedbump to him. There was always another comeback, another reason to prove selectors wrong. Until now of course!

Who are the greatest cricketers? Is it based on total runs/wickets, averages, match-winning innings, match-saving innings, quality of opposition, helpful pitches etc. It’s a fascinating question that has no definitive black and white answer.

There is no real way to settle this argument is there? We’re all entitled to our own opinions and personal favourites and we’ve all got our own reasons for arriving at that decision. I’ve come up with one interesting benchmark to come up with one such list. Let’s try to find a list of players who have never been dropped in their entire Test careers. We’re not talking about injuries, team rotation policies or voluntary unavailability but actually “not selected” when available.

For ease of comparison, let’s restrict it to anyone who has played 50+ Tests and let’s start with anyone making their debuts after 1970. Even The Don was dropped at some point in his career so it just proves that this theory is not foolproof. Nonetheless, it might prove a fascinating exercise. Please join me in adding to the list or correcting any mistakes. I’m not using Wisden Almanacks, Statsguru or any research tools so I’m relying on my imperfect memory to start the ball rolling.

Let’s start at the top of the batting tree then. Have Tendulkar and Lara ever been dropped? I suspect not but perhaps early in their careers, they may have suffered that ignominy. I can’t think of it in recent times. Ricky Ponting, Steve Waugh and Allan Border were certainly dropped early in their careers but I don’t know if Sunil Gavaskar ever felt the axe. What about Javed Miandad? Likewise, my gut feeling is that Viv Richards was never dropped from a West Indies team. Gordon Greenidge is another that makes me scratch my head and wonder.

Bowlers – has Muttiah Muralitharan ever had the tap on the shoulder since he began his career? Shane Warne was famously left out for Stuart MacGill in the West Indies and I’m fairly confident that Wasim Akram, Courtney Walsh and Dennis Lillee have all been dropped at some point. Perhaps Lillee was just injured? Curtly Ambrose – I’m guessing that he was always first person picked in his era.

Wicketkeepers may have escaped relatively lightly. Was Ian Healy dropped or did he jump just in time? Adam Gilchrist has certainly never been left out of a Test team. Kumar Sangakkara probably makes that list too as does Andy Flower but it’s a bit tougher to assess the Zimbabwe situation because of their relative lack of depth. Mark Boucher has certainly felt the selector’s wrath in his Test career. Anyone know if Rod Marsh was dropped in the early part of his career (apart from World Series Cricket)?

Some less than obvious candidates may be Mark Taylor, Rahul Dravid, Richard Hadlee, Michael Holding, Allan Donald, Hansie Cronje and perhaps Malcolm Marshall. Kevin Pietersen hasn’t played enough Tests yet to qualify but I can’t see it happening in the near future. Who’s to say what indignities he might yet suffer? Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Michael Hussey are certainly heading in the right direction but they still have some time to go before serving the 50 Test qualification that I arbitrarily imposed on this list.

I’m not even pretending that this is meant to be the ultimate judge of the greatest players of all time. Most great players credit the disappointment of being dropped as one of the turning points in their careers so it is clear that missing selection at some point is a mere speed bump to many luminaries of the game. I’m just curious to see what sort of list we can come up with if we all rack our brains. I don’t think I’ve missed too many.

As for Matt Hayden – my personal view is that he probably mistimed his jump by a few weeks. Like Gilchrist and Lara, his legend may have been better served by retiring at a time when people would say “why?” rather than waiting just that bit too long and have those same people saying “when?”. It’s easy in hindsight though and Hayden was never one to die wondering. Live by the sword…….

Looking forward to reading your responses.

“The Pietersen Captaincy” ought to be a Robert Ludlum thriller. All the ingredients are there. We have the central character being thrust into a position for which he is woefully under-qualified and over which he has no control, with the strings being pulled by a shadowy cabal (in this case, the ECB). The action zooms from one exotic location to another, strange foreigners turn up with huge quantities of money which suddenly disappear, bombs go off, presumed allies turn out to be working for the other side, and in the end the shadowy cabal decides to eliminate our hero, though he escapes their clutches – in this case by resigning before the hit man turned up.

The merciful difference is that the average Ludlum doorstop weighs in at 700 pages, whereas the KP-as-captain interlude lasted less than five months.

The point to realise is that it was inevitable. Whether it’s Bradman, Sobers or King Viv, Botham or Flintoff, Lara or Tendulkar, whenever you have a superstar towering above a team, especially a team of relative nobodies, the superstar will inevitably be made captain at some point whether or not he is fitted for the job.

There are two possible good outcomes to this: one is the Bradman result, where it turns out that he is a brilliant captain; the other is what has happened with KP – it takes very little time for it to become apparent that he is the wrong man for the job and he leaves, whether voluntarily or not. The saga of Brian Lara, who by the end was so hated by his team that only Dwayne Bravo was prepared to speak his name, shows what disasters await the team which does not lance the boil early.

So it’s much better to have had the inevitable row now, when the team can go and pull itself back together on Caribbean beaches, than in the middle of an Ashes series in six months time. Pietersen will no doubt be very disappointed, but I expect him to get over it quickly. His overriding aim has always been to be recognised as the world’s number one batsman and after this setback, the only route to the king’s castle lies over mountains of Test runs.

It’s unfortunate for Peter Moores that he got frazzled in the shootout, because his reputation has been unfairly tarnished. His failure to inspire the England team of 2007-08 only means that he was wrong for this team at this time, not that he’s a rubbish coach who shouldn’t be employed by anyone. He would have been praised to the skies by Graham Gooch as being just the man to instil some discipline in a squad infected by the Botham-Lamb-Gower wine-quaffing axis of the late 1980s, and when he was captain, Alec Stewart would have been totally sincere when saying “Very much so” in response to Charles Colvile’s question as to whether Moores was a good coach.

The pleasant surprise in all this has been the thorough and decisive way in which the ECB have dealt with it. Hugh Morris quickly assessed the true levels of support that KP and Moores had from both the playing and support staffs, and the board did not temporise, appeal for calm and set up a working party. There’s been a big foofaraw and a lot of heated language, but it’s blown up and been settled in less than a week where under previous adminstrations we’d have been subjected to months of faction-fighting in the press while the team disintegrated. When we come to look back on this episode, we will see that it was a relatively painless rite of passage.

It is poignant that Kevin Pietersen was on safari in Africa last week. Inspired perhaps by the roar of a young lion, in the prime of youth, on the cusp of inheriting a kingdom, KP threw down the challenge to the ECB, confident that his ageing rival would realise that the new King had arrived and make way without the need for a dangerous fight.

Cricket, like other professional sports before it, had better get used to this. It will happen increasingly so, as cricketers fully come to terms with the massive shift in power that comes with huge salaries and multiple paymasters.

To that extent, the ECB’s alleged disenchantment with KP’s ultimatum is a breath of fresh air. Rumour has it that if he hadn’t resigned from the captaincy, the ECB may have removed him from that honour anyway. If true, it is a brave but ultimately futile attempt to redress the balance of power between employer and employee. In this instance, KP may have sensed that his earlier brinkmanship was a miscalculation but it is a portent of the way things will be in international cricket.

Professional sport, especially the big money team sports like football, rugby, cricket, basketball, baseball etc, is a curious beast to describe. In some senses, players, coaches and administrators like to think that they inhabit an industry that is no different to the world of business and commerce. Instead of trading in widgets and whatsits, they trade in runs, wickets or goals.

CEO’s run the business with a ruthless eye on the bottom line. Employees justify their exorbitant salaries and cosseted lifestyles, replete with a veritable army of medical staff and personal trainers by claiming that they are merely doing a job like any other normal person in the community.

This argument breaks down a little bit when these same athletes want to be treated as ‘special’ when it suits them but also claim that they are just normal people when their excessive behaviours attract any unwanted media attention. Which is it? Are you a normal person living by normal rules or are you someone quite special with role model status and high-roller salary?

What I really want to explore though is the difference between sport and business and why they can never really be treated the same. Professional sport is possibly the only industry where the employees wield considerably more power than the CEO or coach/manager. With few exceptions, this highly unusual situation is at the root of the future problems that cricket administrators will face.

Where else does the CEO earn a fraction of what his ‘workers’ make? Same applies to coaches and managers and those charged with maintaining discipline. In business, the Chairman, President or CEO truly holds the whip hand, both in real power and probably in earning power too, which translates into real power anyway. In most team sports, it is the athlete who is the ultimate asset. And he knows it!

Think about the superstars like Warne, Lara, Tendulkar or Pietersen himself. They know full well that cricket needs them more than they need their CEO. They make ten times the money (at least), they get a hundred times the media attention and they put bums on seats in stadia or on TV. No CEO or coach has that sort of pulling power.

With the advent of the IPL cash cow, these marquee players feel an even greater sense of empowerment. Playing for one’s country may still be the ultimate honour but the cheques are bigger in ‘private enterprise’. It’s no different to signing up to fight for your country’s army for good wages or as a mercenary for a rich warlord who pays handsomely for performance without emotional ties to any national flag. Discipline becomes extremely hard to enforce because the players can choose another employer who will pay just as much, perhaps much more!

There’s no real solution to the problem, not when the players continue to command the lion’s share of the money, compared to their so-called bosses. If it honestly came down to a battle between Ricky Ponting and James Sutherland, who do you think would win that battle? How can the zoo keeper really expect blind obedience when the lion knows he is unarmed and defenceless? In football, try telling someone like David Beckham that his coach has more power than him? By the way, who is his coach? See what I mean?

In this instance, KP may have misjudged his power play slightly but the writing is on the wall. The lion tamers know that they are the bosses in name only. On the open savannah, the young lions know full well that their bite is more powerful than their master’s roar.

It remains unfathomable, preposterous and ridiculous that Shane Bond is not considered for the New Zealand team, yet is being watched and no doubt admired by selectors as he tours the country wreaking a little havoc here and there for his domestic team, Canterbury. In recent weeks he has played at obscure venues such as Mainpower Oval in Rangiora and Fitzherbert Park in Palmerston North, thundering in before “crowds” comprising just a few hundred fans.

It is utter nonsense.

This week Bond was at the 1974 Commonwealth Games venue, QEII Park, on the outskirts of his home town of Christchurch. He delivered a genuinely hostile spell of fast bowling (10 overs, 3 maidens, 1 for 24) to the Wellington top order and impressed his domestic coach Bob Carter who told The Press: “I think when he bowls like that and with that pace, our attack becomes that much more potent. I think they were 94 for eight at one stage and a lot of that could be put down to the pressure…in the first 10 overs." NZ coach Andy Moles was behind the rope watching, along with selection panel convenor Glenn Turner.

The landscape of international cricket has been transformed with the rise of Indian domestic leagues, and New Zealand has paid a hefty price. The Indian money men have reaped a rich harvest from the relatively low-paid meadow of New Zealand cricket. Along with Bond, Stephen Fleming, Craig McMillan, Nathan Astle, Hamish Marshall, Andre Adams, Chris Harris, Chris Cairns, Lou Vincent and Darryl Tuffey all had the pin pulled on their international careers and headed off to play on the sub-continent.

Fleming is the only one of the 10 to have joined the establishment-endorsed IPL, where he plays alongside several current international players. These include Scott Styris whose withdrawal from Test cricket also coincided with the emergence of the Indian domestic league, robbing the NZ Test team of yet another experienced middle-order batsman.

Initially there was much gnashing of teeth about the prospect of the domestic associations daring to select ICL players. The BCCI was reportedly “seething in anger” when Darryl Tuffey was selected to play for Auckland against Bangladesh in a warm-up game last season, given that NZC was part of the “gentlemen’s agreement” to encourage the non-selection of any player involved in an “unauthorised tournament”.

The official position in NZ is that ICL players can play in domestic cricket as non-contracted players (earning NZ$1425 for a first-class match, NZ$710 for a 50-over match, and NZ$450 for a Twenty20) but will not be eligible for selection for any national representative teams. In other countries the players are variously banned, overlooked or embraced depending which way the wind is blowing (and which way the BCCI is looking).

The irony is that “outlaws” like Bond, Marshall, Tuffey and Harris continue to do their bit on the home front by playing on the New Zealand domestic cricket circuit - showing their wares, testing their skills, and sharing their experience and nous – but IPL player Stephen Fleming is nowhere to be seen.

The second irony is that although any cricketers who dare take part in unsanctioned tournaments will be sidelined from involvement in national teams, that doesn’t apply to the selectors themselves. Selector Dion Nash and recently appointed “domestic cricket selection panel adviser” Mark Greatbatch won’t be out walking the dog like Andrew Hilditch, but they will be on the Gold Coast of Australia playing in the 2009 XXXX Gold Beach Cricket tournament from January 10-25 alongside Sky commentator Martin Crowe (captain), Danny Morrison, Fleming and ICL players Astle, Harris and McMillan.

The beach cricket is unofficial – and the naming rights sponsor is a competitor to the official beer sponsor of Cricket Australia. Similarly, the NZ beach cricket team is sponsored by Speight’s, a NZ beer and stablemate of the Australian XXXX brand that is also a direct competitor of NZC’s beer sponsor Export Gold.

NZC CEO Justin Vaughan told the Dominion Post: “Players go off to the IPL and we've accommodated that and selectors sometimes have the odd commitment. It's only for two weeks so I'm comfortable with it.”

Like the ICL, the beach cricket is a non-establishment tournament, but the crucial difference is that the BCCI don’t care about it so there are no arbitrary ramifications for those who participate.

All this goes to show that “overlooking” players who dare to try and earn some mortgage money in an Indian domestic cricket is a complete and utter nonsense. It is depriving New Zealand of the ability to select from its very limited pool of quality players and the world game is weaker for it. The sooner common-sense is applied to resolve this issue the better.

As great a batsman as he is, Ricky Ponting has recently had to endure some conjecture about whether the blame for Australia’s current problems can be levelled at his captaincy. I don’t think for one moment that this will amount to anything but mere trivial speculation – Ponting’s tenure as captain is not under any serious threat and he will probably remain captain until the day he retires.

It does highlight the cultural differences that exist with the issue of captaincy from country to country. Australia (and perhaps NZ too) seem to embrace an old-fashioned view of the captain and his relationship within the team dynamic. It is almost taken for granted that the job is reserved for a relatively senior player, arguably the best player in the team. More revealing though is the unspoken assumption (tradition) that past captains are unlikely to keep playing under a new leader. It’s something that Australia and NZ are generally uncomfortable about – once your position as captain has been usurped, it’s normally the end of your career too.

I can only think of a couple of recent examples when Greg Chappell played briefly under Kim Hughes’ captaincy and then Hughes himself had a few horror games against the West Indies in 1984/85 under Allan Border. Neither situation was likely to last very long, adding to my theory that it is almost not the done thing to remain in the team once you are no longer the captain.

I’m not that good on my NZ history but the same rationale seems to apply there too. Stephen Fleming had a brief period as a player after he gave up the captaincy but it just didn’t seem right. His legacy as a great leader and elder statesman seemed to choke rather than liberate his successor. Nothing obvious but it just appeared that way from the outside.

Why is it that the other cricketing countries don’t seem to have a major problem with this? Is it a good thing for the skipper to be able to be re-absorbed back into the team or do the Antipodeans have a good reason for rarely embracing former leaders? I would be curious to hear your views from around the world.

Think about it – England have never had an issue with former captains continuing to play in the same team. Most famously, Ian Botham performed his heroics in 1981 immediately after being sacked as captain. Other recent examples include Gooch, Gatting, Stewart, Atherton, Hussain and Vaughan. What is it about the England set-up that allows this to happen with relatively little angst?

Pakistan has had a long history of this. I’d be curious to hear from our Pakistani friends whether this process creates any underlying tension or whether it all happens amicably. Pakistan cricket even goes one step further and sometimes gives a former captain another tilt at the crown. This would certainly never occur in Australian cricket but it never seemed to affect the performance of players like Miandad, Imran Khan, Wasim Akram and Inzy. Is it a cultural thing that allows this fluid leadership situation to flourish without any bad blood?

India and Sri Lanka are no strangers to this either. Jaysauriya and Atapattu seemed perfectly comfortable about being foot soldiers after an extended captaincy stint. The Indian team often has up to 4 former captains in the one team and it looks pretty harmonious. Is there more to it than meets the eye or can it be assumed that players like Tendulkar and Dravid, sanguine souls, are more than content to sit in the background?

At the height of the West Indian dynasty when they had incredibly strong captains like Lloyd and Richards in charge, one would never have imagined a situation when players like Lara, Hooper, Chanderpaul and Sarwan would all be playing under each other, having once been captains themselves. The South Africans are probably much more like the Australian model except for the period when Shaun Pollock played out his days under Smith’s orders.

Bangladesh and Zimbabwe too, despite not having enough history to call on, seem comfortable enough with the notion of ex-captains continuing to play in the team. The Zim team of the last ten years had a number of former captains in the same team and it all looked like happy families.

So, is it just coincidence or does the Australian system have a cultural predisposition towards this trend? Is it the former captain who feels uncomfortable about returning to the ranks of the infantry, does the new captain feel awkward in the presence of the old leader or does the team itself feel uncomfortable when a past captain is now one of the boys?

It’s a uniquely Down Under phenomenon but as the cricket calendar gets busier and player burn-out becomes an issue (including captains), I can see it happening more often in Australia but not just yet. Will Ponting ever give up the captaincy voluntarily (and keep playing) if the team keeps losing? I doubt it.

	Moores was a hugely successful coach of Sussex but he had grown up with the club, playing for them for 14 seasons before his appointment © AFP

In England the new year has begun with a row, as the simmering dissatisfaction with Peter Moores as head coach of Team England boils over into the public domain. My estimate is that Moores is now a dead man walking since neither the current captain nor his predecessor seem to have any confidence in him, and that makes his position just about untenable.

I have to disagree with Samir’s scepticism about the value of international coaches. A coach is as important to an international team as a wicketkeeper: a great one can be the fulcrum of a side and a bad one can be a major weakness.

At the most basic level, every player has occasional need to work on eradicating faults in his technique or improving his play against different types of opposition or in different conditions. And on the international merry-go-round, players are continually experiencing things for the first time. With the possible exceptions of very stable great teams, every touring party includes players who have never played in or against India or England or Australia or wherever it is. With hardly any time now spent in-country before the first Test, someone has to be the fount of knowledge about conditions and opposition on whom at least the newbies, but more usually also the experienced ones, can call. And someone has to make sure that there will be the proper facilities for practice, that there will be enough net bowlers of the right types, and so on.

What a good coach does is make sure that his players are as well-equipped to play the next game as they can be, but who is best to do that differs for any group of players.

John Buchanan was a great success with Queensland and Australia but a disaster with Middlesex. He was hampered in part by reactionary forces in the county club, but the fundamental problem was that he was simply too advanced for a team of youngsters. He was a professor trying to conduct postgraduate seminars on advanced cricket science with students still struggling with their secondary school leaving exams.

Moores was a hugely successful coach of Sussex but he had grown up with the club, playing for them for 14 seasons, one as captain, before being appointed coach. Just about all his players were ones whose development he had overseen and who had responded to his coaching from an early age. He seems to be brilliant at basic skills, but first Vaughan and now Pietersen (and several senior players if the rumours are true) have found him unable to deliver the expert-level training they require, and found him inflexible in his methods.

Stephen identified Duncan Fletcher’s advice as a likely factor in South Africa’s defeat of Australia as it most certainly had been in England’s in 2005, and as it certainly was when Glamorgan won the county championship in the 1990s. He seems to have a magic touch with any team.

	The fundamental problem for John Buchanan at Middlesex was that he was simply too advanced for a team of youngsters © Getty Images

One of the main reasons for his success is his own understanding of what he is for. He sees himself as a consultant, not a dictator. In an argument with the captain, the captain always has the last word and makes the final decision. The press may have talked of “Fletcher’s England”, but Fletcher thought it was Hussain’s England or Vaughan’s England or Flintoff’s England and behaved accordingly.

He isn’t unique, of course. The late Bob Woolmer, John Buchanan, John Wright and Graham Ford have all operated in roughly similar fashion and have achieved a fair amount of success.

What does not work is allowing the coach to assume serious authority. Most failures as coaches fail because the players they are meant to serve object to being treated as puppets or naughty children. The worst examples are Ray Illingworth and John Bracewell, who demanded supreme powers and ruled with an iron hand, in both cases with the result that their teams descended to the foot of the international ranking table.

No, Samir, not just anyone can coach. Not just anyone could be Leo McGarry for Jed Bartlet or Obi-wan Kenobi for Luke Skywalker. But the right man is often the difference between moderate achievement and outstanding success.

It’s been an incredible couple of weeks and I had my little gloat after Day 3, Duminy Day, in Melbourne. Some more serious reflection is in order.

But before that, let me clarify. In saying that South Africa is the new Australia, I wasn’t arguing that SA are the new number one (though they may be in a few days). I was simply enjoying the role reversal which has been especially surprising and enjoyable over here on the Indian Ocean’s west. For South Africa to be organised, skilful and confident while the other lot were chaotic, disunited, choking, and generally blowing it – that was really a change. Usually it’s us who carry the latter labels. (As always, I’m talking about more than cricket only - see Olympics, football - or even only sport - see electricity, crime-fighting, AIDS, Zimbabwe…. ) For years, Australia have been organised, machine-like, and confident to the point of arrogance. But suddenly, we’ve swapped hats and black is the new white.

Anyway, serious point one. After closing out the Perth run-chase, AB de Villiers said he never doubted SA would make it. His faith may be religion-based, but it’s also true that large totals don’t carry the intimidation they used to. As if to prove this, Bangladesh made 413 today chasing 521 against Sri Lanka, slotting in at 11 on the all-time highest 4th innings scores. If we look at the top 20 on that list (excluding the 654/5 in the Timeless Test), seven were in the past 18 months, and another three since 2002. This has something to do with ODIs, but in fact its cause is the incredible leap in overall run-rates in Tests. This is the lasting legacy of the now-ended Taylor/Waugh/Ponting Mark I era of Aussie dominance. ODIs had been played for more than two decades before Test run-rates went up, after all (and run-rates rose before T20s were on the scene). One of the keys to successful chases in Chennai and Perth was the lack of time pressure so that batsmen could play ‘normal cricket’. Fast scoring in the first three innings now means there’s lots of time left in the game for the chase. Of course, the pace of Sehwag, and to a lesser extent Smith, made it easier for those following, but isn’t their approach itself founded on the Taylor-and-after Aussies? Wasn’t Michael Slater the pioneer here?

Serious point two: the English contribution to SA’s victory. As far as I can tell, only one journalist has noted this - well done, Simon Briggs in the Telegraph. Briggs focussed on Jeremy Snape, SA team psychologist and Professor of the Dark Art of transference of choking to the other team. Even more important in my guesstimation has been Duncan Fletcher, Strategist of the Year 2005 and the only person in SA’s dressing room who had actually been there and done that when it came to beating Australia. When Jacques Kallis batted so much better in Perth to emerge from a slump of Dravidian proportions, I suspected Fletcher’s hand at work. Especially when Kallis and AB smashed 48 off 64 balls on the evening of Day 4, which for me was the key passage of the chase. And when Graeme Smith suddenly became a brilliant tactician in the field at Melbourne, I had no doubt at all that the ideas originated behind Fletcher’s permanently attached Raybans. I know Fletcher isn’t English, but he is an English coach, and it’s nice to get something back from the English after all the players we’ve given them over the years.

But serious point three: credit where credit is due. I am not a big admirer of Smith’s tactical nous, and I agree fully with Samir about Mickey Arthur’s. But one cannot doubt Smith’s leadership abilities and his courage. And one must respect Arthur for bringing Fletcher and Snape - people with greater expertise than his own - into his management team. It’s the mark of a good leader to take advice from experts, and to bring in someone like Fletcher who could conceivably take your job needs courage and a sense of security. In fact, Arthur and Smith’s main achievement may have been to create a climate in which SA cricket has overcome its collective insecurities, something which not even the late and great Bob Woolmer was able to do.

Now if the Cricinfo blogmeister will indulge me with a few hundred words more, I’d like to pose the question as to who is now No. 1 in the world - India or South Africa? Of course they drew their last series back in April, but both have gotten better since then. I’d compare the teams as follows. Opening batsmen – pretty much even between Sehwag and Smith, and between Gambhir and McKenzie, perhaps Gambhir by a nose after McKenzie’s mini-slump in Australia. In the middle order, the two rocks – Kallis and Dravid – cancel each other out, even to their matching slumps. On the left-handers, I’d give it to Prince/Duminy over Yuvraj (or late-career Ganguly for that matter), but de Villiers and Amla can’t be expected to match Tendulkar and Laxman, not at this stage of their respective careers (though 10 or 12 years from now it could be a pretty tight contest). The wicketkeepers are also pretty even, Dhoni the better batsman but Boucher the far more experienced gloveman. The tail must be a toss-up, given Harbahjan’s consistency with the bat and SA’s recent heroics. Turning to the attack, South Africa surely have the better overall pace attack: for all the excellence of Zaheer and Sharma, India’s third seamer is either absent or much weaker, whereas Steyn and Ntini are followed by Morkel and the bonus of Kallis. But it’s no contest in the spin department, though Harris remains highly underrated. So far, India has a slight advantage due to Tendulkar and Laxman. But notwithstanding my comments above on Smith and Arthur, I think India’s leadership – Dhoni and Kirsten – clinches it for them. What a pity these two rising powers aren’t scheduled to play each other until February 2010!