The English counties voted this week to scrap the 50-over and retain a 40-over competition from next year, and were quite open that the decision was made on the financial grounds that 40-over cricket gets better gates than 50-over.

This may not be because 40-over cricket is more appealing than 50-over: the Pro40 is mostly played in July and August and the 50-over Friends Provident mainly in May and June. For Pro40, normal dress is shirtsleeves but for the FP it's three layers, at least one of them waterproof; the Pro40 is in school holiday time and the FP is largely played on midweek days when kids are at school and dad is at work. Swap them over, and maybe 50-over would be more popular than 40. I doubt it, however. A 40-over game is a longish afternoon out, whereas a 50-over game takes up the whole day.

Chief selector Geoff Miller and Paul Collingwood, pro tem one-day captain, are saying that is very bad from a cricketing point of view because we ought to be playing domestic one-day cricket that exactly mirrors the international form in order to prepare future England ODI players.

But, if playing the same length game is so essential, should not Test cricket's training ground, the county championship, be a five-day rather than a four-day competition?

Test matches expanded over time from three days to four and then to five because top-class batsmen would not obligingly surrender their wickets in time for games to be resolved. And all the batsmen in Test cricket, just about, are top-class. Domestic teams do not in general have line-ups consisting entirely of top-class players. They have some pretty average players mixed in with the two or three who might catch a national selector's eye. Give them five days to play their games and they will usually be over in four. It therefore makes sense to schedule it as four-day from the outset.

Playing 50-over cricket domestically in England does not do anything to train people for the international 50-over game. In fact, far from giving people experience of tactical situations they will encounter in the ODI arena, it gives them all sorts of incentives to play very differently.

An ODI team typically has five top-class batsmen and two lower-order power hitters. Between them, they can play aggressively and usually last the fifty overs. A county team, on the other hand, has three pretty good batsmen and two average ones, a big hitter and someone who is really a big misser. If the good batsmen play the way they could if they were surrounded by other good players, it's very likely that their team will be all out in forty because the lesser lights can't keep up. 35 overs to go and only two decent batsmen left is a position that you rarely encounter in an ODI but is not uncommon in county 50-over cricket. So the good batsmen learn to play more conservatively, and we wonder why we can't find anyone who is convincing in ODI Powerplay overs when nobody plays that way domestically because it would be stupid cricket if they did.

Playing domestic games which are shorter than their international equivalents compensates for the lower standard of player. It is no coincidence that South Africa play 45-over games at home and are the most consistently successful 50-over ODI side year in year out – even if they choke in World Cups.

Though the counties made their decision on commercial grounds, they have inadvertently stumbled on the best thing they could do for the England ODI team.

Here is a question I'm often asked by people who know of my obsession with cricket: why don't you play cricket in the US? The answer to that is a little tricky and I struggle to express it clearly. It goes something like this: I prefer playing cricket in a context where the game fits in organically with the rest of its surroundings. I know this is not entirely rational, and I welcome feedback from folks who do play cricket in the US on how they experience the game here.

I've played cricket in India and Australia, and indeed, after arriving in the US some 22 years ago, played a few games at my university (with the usual grab-bag of Indian, Pakistani and West Indian students). Since then, I've never picked up a bat or ball in the US. And given my present location in Brooklyn, which is one of the hotbeds of cricketing activity in the US, this is a surprising business.

For, somehow, I do not feel a strong desire to play the game here. I often see students at Brooklyn College playing a quick game on the grounds; I often see Bangladeshi boys practicing close to Prospect Park, and more than once I've seen young men walking around with cricket kit bags on their way to a game. But I never feel the compulsion to walk up and ask for a bowl or a bat.

It’s not because I've become too old. In the intervening years, I've played cricket in Australia and will do again in Sydney this January. But I look forward to those games in a way that I don't in the US. When I played cricket in Australia, I was surrounded by the game and its trappings. Walking around in the city center in whites, carrying a cricket kit bag, felt normal. We played on city council grounds meant for cricket; during innings, as I relaxed on the sidelines with my team, we checked cricket scores on the radio; when games were over, we retired to pubs where we ran into other cricketers as Test cricket was shown on a big screen. And when I went to parties later at night, my other friends would ask me how the day's game went, and would respond appropriately when I told them of a duck or a four-for.

In short, cricket was everywhere, and we contributed to the big picture. In contrast, in the US (in a way well described in Joseph O'Neill's Netherland), cricket, despite being proudly played by large, important, immigrant communities, sticks out, and is played on sufferance. To play cricket meant participating in an oddity, something out of whack with its surroundings.

Perhaps the best way to explain this state of mind is to draw a parallel with my music tastes. I noticed on my trips back to India after living in the US that many artistes and genres that I was fond of listening to in the US, sounded discordant when listened to in India. In 1992, I played Ministry in my brother's living-room in Ambala, and quickly turned it off. Al Jourgensen felt jarring in those surroundings. And conversely I felt less comfortable with listening to Indian artistes and genres here in the US; somehow Pandit Jasraj didn't blend with Manhattan street sounds. It’s almost as if I needed an organic, seamless meshing between the music and its setting to become fully lost in the listening experience.

I know this is an entirely personal, idiosyncratic and possibly ill-founded reaction. But I cannot deny its presence in my decision to abstain from cricket in my present setting. It's not as if I decline invitations to play cricket; if I were to be asked, I would probably say yes, because, what the heck, it is cricket. It's just that I've never taken any active steps to play the game.

The music example is perhaps illuminative in other ways: cricket, as a game, has a cadence and a rhythm of its own, one that demands a certain location, a certain tuning with its setting. In the US, that co-relation has been missing on a deeply personal level. Perhaps, as the game grows, even if only in small ways, - like becoming a recognised school game in New York City - that adjustment will take place and I will be able to play my beloved game in my adopted home.

	Johnathon Trott: Better value will be obtainable when market fever subsides © Getty Images

The Holmans Consulting Group (HCG) presents another market survey, this time covering leading English stocks. Investors are advised that this is a highly speculative market in which there is the potential for both substantial gain and considerable loss: market sentiment is extremely volatile, leading to regular outbreaks of panic buying and selling which distort the market considerably.

Strauss Hold. Has achieved outstanding results since adding a management services division, both in management itself but also in the batting, which is now one of the world's leading suppliers of opening products. Trading conditions in South Africa will be extremely challenging and dividends may well fall back in the short term, but the medium-term outlook is bright.

Cook Sell. Impressive when a newcomer, performance has declined significantly over the last twelve months as the competition have ruthlessly exploited technical defects which have not been fixed despite bullish reports from the research labs. Up-and-coming firms such as Denly of Kent or Carberry of Hampshire could well displace Cook in the short term, although the underlying strength of the company makes recovery probable.

Bopara Sell. Many observers were very surprised at the appalling performance in the most recent trading period after outstanding success in some Caribbean ventures. HCG believes that the stock will eventually have considerable value but it will take time for markets to regain confidence in it.

Bell Weak sell. While famed for its elegant products for the luxury market, consumers have long been demanding an extension into the steel grinder field. The product unveiled at Oval09 goes some way to allaying concerns but a more substantial version needs to be brought to market soon. HCG reiterates its belief that Joyce of Sussex would be a more appropriate vehicle but recognises that long-standing ties between Bell and central government are likely to see the relationship continue for some while.

Pietersen Hold. It is expected that once refurbishment has been completed this powerhouse company will resume high levels of production.

Collingwood Sell. By holding firm at the beginning of the reporting period, Collingwood averted a complete meltdown in the market, but subsequent performance was extremely disappointing. The emergence of strong competition makes its hold on market share very precarious.

Trott Await developments. Given that the markets were so febrile that many brokers fell for a PR offensive from the venerable firm of Ramprakash, it is not surprising that the IPO was received with suspicion. Those who took up the offer made huge immediate profits, but there is no guarantee that these will be maintained. HCG believes this stock now to be massively over-priced and that better value will be obtainable when market fever subsides.

Prior Buy. The perky batting division had some good returns, although doubts remain about its ability to cope with crisis conditions, but heavy investment in training for the wicketkeeping division has resulted in products of considerably higher quality, leading HCG to believe that its position is unchallengeable.

Flintoff has regrettably ceased trading.

Broad Take profits. Freddy's medical bankruptcy opens up a market gap for a multi-purpose agency which many analysts hope Broad will fill. While HCG predicts a profitable long-term future, Broad is currently trading at a price which will not be justified by asset values without another two years of steady growth and refinement of the product range.

Swann Hold. Like several other English bowling firms, Swann has some excellent specialist products but is not well-equipped to deal with unfavourable trading conditions, though it should be noted that considerable value is also derived from the dynamic batting subsidiary.

Anderson Weak buy. Now the world's leading producer of swing goods, but much more work is needed on the general-purpose bowling products, which have very basic functionality and contribute very little to sales revenue. The batting company is gaining respect despite the first complete failure of a project in the final trading week; HCG believes that the popular Nightwatchman range has an outside possibility of three-figure returns if market conditions are particularly favourable. Unusually for a fast bowling group, they also have a very high-quality fielding division.

Harmison Sell. Post-Freddy's, Harmy's is the only recognised supplier of Ultrabounce items left but quality control is poor and too many are defective. There are strong rumours that the company will withdraw from the market entirely unless government is prepared to offer contract guarantees but there seems to be little incentive for government to do so.

Onions Hold. This recent market entrant has so far performed satisfactorily. Unexpected celebrity endorsement from Lily Allen will assist the PR efforts.

Panesar Sell. The Cardiff Expo saw the unexpected introduction of an excellent batting product, but the main bowling line has fallen away badly. Even in the domestic market, returns have been far below expectations and the future looks bleak for this popular enterprise. HCG would instead draw investors' attention to Rashid of Bradford, which has been demonstrating three-figure batting returns concurrently with bowling that reaches the 5W standard.

For the moment, the general trends in this sector remain very unclear. Investors are urged to be cool in their judgements and not allow themselves to be swept away on one of the market's frequent bouts of insanity. HCG accepts no liability whatsoever for investment decisions taken by readers of this survey and strongly urges that investors take professional advice, preferably from a psychiatrist.

	Phillip Hughes: Short-term sell, long-term buy © Getty Images

Cricket markets are notoriously volatile and have become even more so in recent times, and investors may be unsure where to put their money. The Holmans Consulting Group (HCG) is therefore pleased to offer this analysis of the Australian market's leading stocks. [Potential investors are reminded that past performance is not necessarily a guide to future returns and should take professional advice before committing any funds.]

Ponting. Hold. The dominant company's batting division is and will remain a world-class performer for the foreseeable future. The management division has posted its third loss in five reporting periods, which clearly gives cause for concern, but there are signs that it will be concentrating more on improving its own performance rather than explaining disappointing results by referring to unfavourable conditions, competitors' business practices or perceived failures of regulation.

Hughes. Short-term sell, long-term buy. Technical defects in the product line have forced a retreat from international markets for retooling. Testing of an updated range in the domestic market should be carefully watched, however, as it is anticipated that this highly innovative entity will prove one of the leading performers over the long term.

Katich. Hold. Since repositioning in the openers sector, Katich has yielded solidly reliable if unspectacular returns which should continue to satisfy the conservative investor.

Watson. Weak hold. Government has long regarded Watto's as a preferred long-term partner, and early results from entry into the openers sector are reasonably promising, but the bowling division has declined from an already weak position to the extent that it should probably be shut down.

Hussey. Sell. There is considerable loyalty to the Mr Cricket brand, and many will be hoping that the strong performance in the last couple of trading sessions signals a return to previous dividend levels. HCG is less optimistic and regards Hussey as extremely vulnerable to takeover, especially if strong domestic competitors emerge.

M Clarke. Strong buy. Long-standing predictions that Clarke will become as important a force as Ponting seem on the verge of fulfilment, and bumper returns are to be expected from this quarter. Especially fine are the products for the spin-facing niche, which for flexibility and agility rival any of those offered by the traditionally-dominant Asian producers.

North. Buy. Well-engineered batting coupled with some very handy spin-bowling accessories should ensure a prosperous medium-term and make the long-term prospects very hopeful.

Haddin. Weak hold. Those with nostalgia for former giants of the keeping industry such as Gilchrist, Healy or Marsh will continue to regard Haddin as yielding very poor dividends. On the bright side, the batting performs somewhat above lowish expectations, but the keeping is of extremely variable quality. An absence of serious competition in the field means that the stock should be retained pending developments.

Johnson. Partial sell. Investors who piled into the Mitch on the back of exceptionally strong performances in the South African market should seek to reduce their exposure. The sling-based technology is inherently unstable and prone to malfunction while offering the potential for very high returns when it operates correctly. It is worth retaining a holding as part of a diverse portfolio, but not as the main focus of investment.

Siddle. Hold/weak buy. Only a recent market entrant, Siddle has already established a reputation for reliability and should provide very steady returns. Optimists may wish to increase their holdings, but HCG sees little potential for further growth and would advise against.

Hauritz. Buy. This stock was badly underrated and deserves more attention. While not offering the earnings potential of a Warne or a MacGill, failure to include this stock can in some circumstances result in catastrophic losses.

Hilfenhaus. Weak sell. This may seem an odd recommendation given that the Hilf was the leading performer in the last reporting period, but similarly swinging trading conditions may not be encountered often enough for him to continue to lead the market.

S Clark. Sell. A loss of oomph in the main power unit has rendered this product line largely ineffective unless the targets are already on the brink of failure. It will be of very limited usefulness going forward and there is little chance of an improvement in the stock price. A more likely option would be the Lee, but it has been absent from the market for some time and future performance is therefore uncertain.

To sum up, batting stocks remain relatively buoyant. Returns may be down compared with the historic market highs of the 1995-2006 boom years, but they remain in the market's upper quartile. However, bowling stocks have fallen significantly, particularly when compared with South African equities, and considerably improved performance will be needed from them if Australian industry is to resume its world-leading position.

Our next report, to be published shortly, will be a survey of the English market.

In an interesting, perhaps even slightly provocative article today, the Sydney Morning Herald raised the issue of whether the Australian cricket team is “too white”.

I hesitated before deciding to writing this piece because I realise it is likely to engender polarised opinions that sometimes descend into unnecessary nationalistic vitriol that moves away from the original debate. I’m hoping that this time, the comments that inevitably flow will avoid the usual temptations to take an entrenched ethnic stance and view it instead as a friendly chat over the neighbour’s wall.

As a dark-skinned Australian who began his cricket career in Australia, I cannot claim any discrimination or disadvantage based on my ethnic background. Any bias that I’ve experienced has been down to the fact that I’ve been limited by this ridiculous obsession with picking the best players! I suffered from simply not being good enough.

The debate is one worth having though. Why has Australia lagged behind say England, South Africa and New Zealand in terms of players from Asian or indigenous origin pulling on the baggy green? I can think of a few very rational reasons to explain this anomaly, especially the Asian angle.

To begin with, many young boys from South Asian backgrounds have family expectations to deal with. Speaking from personal experience, I know that they come under immense pressure to follow academic pathways and ‘safe’ careers rather than chasing exotic cricket dreams. It’s ironic because these same families will watch every game of cricket and worship the stars but for their own sons, there’s a genuine desire to set them on a traditional career pathway that requires an emphasis on study. That will change but it might take a decade or so to show. Don’t ask me why this doesn’t manifest itself in England – I can’t figure that one out myself.

From a pure cricketing perspective, the nature of Australian pitches lends itself to bigger, stronger physiques dominating senior club cricket. You have to be strong and robust enough to hit the deck and get bounce, therefore more suited to the Anglo-Saxon body shape. In England and New Zealand, the nagging medium-pacers and spinners come into their own, thereby opening up the field to bowlers who may lack the pure ‘grunt’ but can do enough with the ball at 125 kph. Australian pitches need to offer more variety full stop. It will automatically create more opportunities for players with different body shapes and techniques. The added bonus is that it will allow our players to adapt better to foreign pitches too.

Put it this way; at 4 pm on a hot summer’s day when the pitch is flat and the ball isn’t swinging, players with my slender physique simply lack the power game to extract that little bit of extra bounce. Where I became cannon fodder late in the day, some of my stronger Aussie mates who were 15 kilos heavier, with strong buttocks and shoulders managed to hit the deck that little bit harder and get something out of the pitch. Ask yourself – how many wiry, Asian fast bowlers consistently dominated in Australia, especially after the new ball burst? Guys like Wasim Akram, Imran Khan, Safraz Nawaz, Kapil Dev and Ishant Sharma are strong chaps with height and bounce.

As a batsman, you need to be able to play the horizontal bat shots in Australia if you are going to make it into the top six of a Sheffield Shield team. Again, that has not traditionally been an Asian strength, although that too is changing slowly. If you can’t score off the short ball, you become too one-dimensional on these pitches. Give it a few years and the young lads from Asian descent will have been spoon fed on these shots from birth and they’ll be hooking and cutting instinctively. It’s certainly not an instinctive shot for my migrant generation.

Psychologically, it’s no secret that Australian club cricket is played hard and uncompromisingly, sometimes too much so perhaps. It’s easy enough to mistake some of the sledging as ‘racist’ but from my experience, I found most of it to be opportunistic rather than redneck. They’ll do anything to put you off your game and if you react to a jibe relating to colour or race, you’ve then got a reputation for taking the bait and the vicious cycle continues until it then becomes a bit personal or heated. That’s where the trouble really begins. Believe me, the white cricketers get sledged just as much but their sensitive points might be fat/ugly/cowardly/parentage/whatever. Don’t get me wrong – I find this whole sledging thing distasteful in the extreme but I cannot honestly say that any of the sledging I’ve experienced has been motivated by pure racism. Normally, I don’t bat long enough to hear the rest of the repertoire anyway!

That style of cricket may not come easily to players from Asian or Aboriginal descent so perhaps that filters a few youngsters out of the game. That will change too as more young kids are born and bred in Australia, rather than having learn to cope on the run as I did when I came here as a 15-year old. This abrasive style is not easy to get used to but once you accept that there’s generally no malice in it, you tend to laugh it off and they leave you alone. That’s been my experience anyway.

Of course there will be exceptions and individual tales of discrimination. That happens anywhere and it is a travesty of justice for the victim. But I cannot agree that it is systemic in Australia. I can only speak for myself but I cannot truthfully claim to have been disadvantaged for any other reason than a plain absence of talent.

Change will come but when it happens, I hope it happens naturally and to those who deserve it. Perhaps we need to make sure that we don’t lose talent to the game at a younger age for all of the reasons described above but I’m sure the Australian cricket team of the future will have an ethnic diversity to it that will one day make this essay redundant. It’s not a black and white issue – just shades of glorious colour!

	Andrew Strauss got the bowling changes right when it mattered most © Getty Images

The biggest difference for me between the 2009 Ashes and most recent editions of this long-running soap was that the Australian bowlers were never alarming. During the 90s and most of this decade, I usually had a reaction to a change of bowling. Either dread at what Warne or McGrath or Alderman or McDermott or Gillespie might do in the next few (or, in Warne's case, many) overs or relief that they were taking a rest and England's batsmen - or, more to the point, their supporters - could breathe somewhat more easily.

It's not that Ben Hilfenhaus or Peter Siddle are bad bowlers. Hilfenhaus is the nearest approach Australia have made to an Alderman-a-like in ages and Siddle can bustle in like a truck for hours of lung-bursting effort, but one never felt that they put batsmen in imminent danger of dismissal. Nathan Hauritz, Marcus North and Stuart Clark are usually competent at what they do, but rarely rise to incisiveness. And the bowler who had ripped through South African batting orders like so much tissue paper, Mitchell Johnson, only managed to bowl well in one innings of the fourth Test – if anything, his introduction to the attack was the signal for the batsmen to get their shovels out and start filling their boots.

But apart from remembering to give Hilfenhaus the new cherry and not put a spinner on until the shine was off the ball, Ricky Ponting's bowling changes were basically an exercise in working out whose turn it was next. Wickets would fall because whoever was on bowled enough good balls for the inevitable lapse in a batsman's concentration to prove fatal, but there was rarely a sense that any of the bowlers had the force with them.

England's bowlers, on the other hand, were wildly inconsistent. Though quite capable of sending down hours of dross, they also turned on the magic for the odd spell and a clutch of wickets disappeared in puffs of smoke (or, at The Oval, dust). At Lord's, Jimmy Anderson and Fred Flintoff got five-fors, and at The Oval Stuart Broad got one for real and Graeme Swann had a moral one - though the scorebook says that Michael Clarke was run-out, an entry of st Strauss b Swann would give a slightly more accurate picture of what happened. Australian bowlers only managed two five-wicket hauls, both at Headingley. Graham Onions managed a couple of very destructive spells, and even Steve Harmison came to the party on the last afternoon, rattling Mike Hussey's cage enough to get him to run Ponting out and then wiping up the tail in no time flat - a task at which Australia failed repeatedly. England's tail usually wagged as if a lifetime supply of dog food had been plonked down in front of them.

Strauss had a wider range of bowling styles available to him, but every change was a bit of a gamble because until they started sending them down, he had to guess which of them was going to bowl accurately, at the right pace or on the right length. Fortunately for England, he got it right when it mattered most.

Much has been made of Australian players dominating the series aggregates and averages, but the statistical table which really tells the story of these Ashes is the one showing the best innings strike-rates, which has Siddle's and Johnson's performances from Headingley at or near the top, followed by a swathe of Englishmen scything Australians down in every match bar Cardiff.

A constant complaint about England's players is that they are too inconsistent. On this evidence, English inconsistency which has deep troughs and soaring highs is preferable to Australian consistent competence.

The charm of sport lies in the warm afterglow of careers like Andrew Flintoff. Sport allows for charisma and romance to overshadow mere statistics. It recognises that sheer force of personality and the ability to galvanise a nation counts for more than runs and wickets, averages and strike rates, win/loss ratios. Flintoff has the humility to recognise sport’s forgiving nature and he has the personal brand to capitalise on that sense of being bigger even than he deserves to be.

In a revealing interview with Jonathan Agnew of BBC’s radio commentary team, Flintoff speaks determinedly, yet without arrogance, about the next stage of his cricket career – to become the best player in the world in the short form of the game. Despite his optimism and the warmth surrounding the man in these hours of celebration, I simply can’t see that happening. Not by a long shot.

To say that is not to decry his talents or question his skill. Flintoff is an easy champion to like and to wish him well is not a difficult thing, even for an Australian, even after an Ashes loss. My reasoning is based purely on cricketing ability and durability. I don’t think Flintoff has the game or the body to possibly come close to realising this dream.

To begin with, to become the best limited-overs player in the game, he must first raise his game to hitherto unscaled heights to begin matching the pace-setters like Sachin Tendulkar, Jacques Kallis, Ricky Ponting, Chris Gayle, Kevin Pietersen, Sanath Jayasuriya, Muttiah Muralitharan and a host of others whose numbers stack up over a long period of time. Flintoff will probably not have the luxury of playing enough cricket, without interruption, to keep racking up performances to even be considered in that elite company. His fragile knees, ankles, back and shoulder (well, his whole body really) will make it virtually untenable to be considered for back-to-back ODI games, especially when you add the travelling and training requirements of a packed international calendar.

As a batsman, he will probably need to bat somewhere in the top five to have time to play enough innings of substance to be considered amongst the very best exponents of this craft. He will need hundreds, fast hundreds, slow hundreds, boundary-laden innings and others that require milking spinners and scampering runs when conditions dictate it. That’s why some of the great batsmen mentioned above have flourished for so long. They have a completeness to their batting which Flintoff doesn’t possess. Nor should he – he’s batted at 7 for most of his Test career and has played a totally different sort of role. Scoring hundreds against quality spin bowling in run chases on slowing tracks requires a range of strokes and a level of fitness that is probably beyond the big man. His power game is probably too one-dimensional at the moment. To be fair, he admitted as much in the radio interview, conceding that he needs to invent other strokes in his repertoire that go beyond the big booming drives down the ground. Modern ODI cricket can choke predictability all too predictably!

As a bowler, he needs to take wickets, lots of wickets, to rank amongst the genuine match-winners or game-turners in the shortened version of the game. That requires a body that doesn’t need the luxury of easing into his workload, short, sharp spells and the ability to cool down and warm up at short notice to return for game-changing moments. That’s not Flintoff’s body, especially not if he has already batted and has flung himself around in the field, as he would inevitably have to do once the slips have been dispensed with.

His economy rate is certainly no problem. 4.32 runs per over is more than satisfactory if he is striking at an average of close to two wickets per game. That’s the sort of territory that the Muralitharans, Warnes and Pollocks own – less than four runs per over and almost two wickets per game, playing every game in long tournaments. They also tend to have lots of big hauls that win matches singlehandedly, sometimes from impossible positions.

Flintoff’s natural length, shortish and tight in at the body will be frugal enough but without the luxury of slip fielders, he will simply lack the bowled and lbw dismissals that the best ODI bowlers need on predominantly flat tracks. Straightforward nicks to second slip will go flying down to third man for boundaries. He will need to change his length and develop a very good slower ball that is aimed at the stumps. I suspect it will be a bridge too far at his stage of evolution.

His safe hands and powerful arm will be adequate but the great fielders in the modern game need a lot more than that to regularly change games with consistent moments of brilliance. Again, his cumbersome frame will count against him. Mind you, what can you say about his ‘Ponting moment’ at the Oval?

At the end of the day, ODI’s and Twenty20s require the quintessential modern athlete to conquer it. To Flintoff’s eternal credit, he is anything but that. To me, that is his charm and his appeal. His fierce competitiveness doesn’t come at the expense of a broad smile. His lusty hitting won’t be sacrificed for the percentage ‘nurdle’. Flintoff is an old-fashioned buccaneer in a new age that has moved to a more scientific, clinical, innovative focus. The best player in the world he will never be but he will always embody what’s good about sport. Beer over boor. Heart over head. That’s the Freddie I’d like to remember!

Everyone is talking about The Oval, so I might as well get into the act.
But not by talking about the fifth Ashes test, but about a match that took
place 38 years ago. The 1971 Oval Test remains the only Test match whose
scores are committed to my memory. England 355 all out. India 284 all out.
England 101 all out. India 174 for 6. India wins by six wickets as Abid Ali
hits the winning runs. India's first Test win in England.

It’s a little strange, really. I didn't see this match live (or even hear
any radio commentary). The only parts of it that I've seen on television
highlight reels are those clips that feature BS Chandrasekhar's 6 for 38 (one of
those few Indian bowling figures that I also know by heart). It just
happens to be one of those matches that is hard to forget, whose memories,
by virtue of being so frequently imprinted by the written word, are now
locked away securely, impervious to the ravages of time.

But I've seen a little bit more this weekend. And a tiny video clip
reminds me of how much the cricketing world has changed. And what makes
this clip puzzling is that it is not clear to me whether the change is for
the better or worse.

Pay attention, then, if you will, to the closing moments of this Test in this linked YouTube
video, pay attention from 3:15 onwards. India need two runs to win.
It's 170 for 4. Farokh Engineer and Ali are at the crease. After hearing out
Engineer's advice that he stay calm and knock off the single required, Ali
square cuts for four. As the crowd invades the pitch, the players scramble
for the pavilion, but only after the obligatory scramble for stumps.

Here is where things get interesting. Ali is rushing off, but without a
stump, and so, tries to take a stump from Alan Knott, presuming that stumps are
victor's booty. Knott, however, is having none of it, and a little tugging
match ensues (there are some verbals but obviously, we can't hear those).
Finally, Ali, who was not expecting this resistance, turns and sprints for
the bowler’s end, where the stumps are still standing. Knott turns and gives
the stump to the umpire coming up behind him. After this, the video shifts
to scenes of the milling crowd carrying Engineer on their shoulders, and
then cuts to a black and white photograph of the Indian team. I do not
know what happened to Ali and whether he managed to get himself a
little souvenir.

I've played and replayed this little clip and still don't know what to
make of it. I know a similar scene would not occur today. For one thing, a
losing team simply does not bother with the stumps. Secondly, it is hard
to imagine a losing team's player actually resisting a winning team's
player's attempts to obtain a trophy even if the stump happened to be in
his possession. It is even more unlikely that the player, having
successfully resisted the invading marauder, would then turn around and
hand the stump over to the umpire.

So, what was Knott up to? Was he disapproving of the process of
trophy-grabbing? Was he simply collecting stumps to make sure they didn't
go to the crowd? Would Knott have resisted an Australian player's
attempts to obtain a trophy? Were crowd invasions a new enough thing in
England at the time that the "right thing" for Knott to do was to make
sure they stayed with the umpires after the game was over?

These questions might seem trivial, but answers to them would be useful I
think, in figuring out English players' perceptions of various opposition
teams, the proprieties of souvenir hunting, the changes in crowd behavior
as a function of the success of teams other than Australia in England, and
lastly, the changing standards of player behavior on the field (on what
was considered proper and what wasn't).

Knott's actions appeared to be petty and ungenerous to me, but perhaps he
knew of no other way to react, and perhaps my perception of his actions as
such, reveal a great deal of how much the cricket world has changed since
that memorable day in 1971.

	Ed Joyce deserves serious reconsideration © Getty Images

A quiz question: who is the only player to have scored a one-day hundred for England against Australia who has not played a Test?

We'll come back to that in a moment, but first, some applause to the selectors for agreeing with my last post and sticking with their original judgement that Jonathan Trott is the batsman most deserving a chance. Presumably this was a decision based on rational assessment of his capabilities, such as averaging over 90 this season in Div 1 of the championship, although since two of the last three debutants were Swann and Onions, one cannot entirely avoid the suspicion that having a name which makes for good punning headlines is now the primary qualification for selection. (Actually, come to think of it, perhaps “Amjad Khan't” counts as well.)

Like Australia's casualty Phil Hughes, Ravi Bopara is too young and too talented a player not to get another chance in the fulness of time, but his failure to establish himself gives Ian Bell his third shot at convincing people that he should be England's No. 3.

A Bell century is a thing of beauty full of fluency, timing and elan, which is why he has many admirers (including me), but it is also the problem with him. Substantial Test batsmen also make ugly hundreds, prising out runs when the team is in trouble and the bowling implacable, and Bell has never gritted such an innings out. That is why it is a little unfair to brand him this generation's Mark Ramprakash: one thing Ramps quite often did for England was run out of partners as he uncharacteristically blocked and nurdled for 47*. Bell is far more aptly termed this generation's Graeme Hick, who scored several Test centuries and for most of his Test career had figures at least comparable to his England peers but who never quite gave the impression that he belonged at the highest level while clearly outclassing everyone else in the county game.

Bell has been out too horribly too often for me to have much further patience with him. Mike Selvey has been labelling him mentally flabby for some months now, and unless he can correct that impression at The Oval, I'd be in favour of junking him entirely.

But if you are going to recommend dropping someone, you have to have a candidate to take over. That brings us back to the quiz question, to which the answer is Ed Joyce, now of Sussex. In the recent round of championship matches, Bell got a hundred after his team-mate Trott had reached the mark first. Such is Bell's way. In the previous round, Joyce came in at three for Sussex and was ninth man out, scoring 183 out of 308 while everyone else failed. Such is Joyce's way.

Slightly to my surprise, for he is not anyone's image of a successful hit-and-giggle merchant, Joyce has been this season's most prolific run-scorer in the medium-length forms of the game, topping the table in both the 50-over Friends Provident and the Pro40. But his 94 against Somerset was on TV last night, and he batted the way he does in first-class cricket, as an anchor around whom the big hitters can bat - though in this case, he stood firm but the others didn't and Sussex lost.

Whereas a Cook or Collingwood trades in singles and a Pietersen or Flintoff in boundaries, Joyce deals in twos. He plays later than the nurdlers, guiding his shots into the gaps between fielders, relying more on precision and timing than on power. He has very pleasant attacking shots – his whipped off-drives are reminiscent of Brian Lara and some of his cutting has the deftness of David Gower – but he deploys them judiciously rather than using them to storm barricades. His substantial innings are memorable less for their brilliant shotmaking than their solid effect: he is the kind of player who reaches 40 before you realise he's there. On an international continuum, he is a little to the Rahul Dravid side of Hashim Amla.

His first-class average may not be all that special, but neither were Michael Vaughan's or Marcus Trescothick's when they were picked: they had the ability but also the character to
play Test cricket, and character is what the current England middle order (oh, all right, Bell and Bopara) apparently lack and Joyce seems to possess.

I have no quarrel with the selectors for picking Trott, but his selection creates a vacancy for the heir-apparent: my contention is that Joyce was the baby thrown out with Duncan Fletcher's bathwater and deserves serious reconsideration. He even offers possibilities for headline writers.

Yesterday, on my personal blog, Eye on Cricket, I penned my 1000th post. In a comment offered in congratulation, one of my readers complained about the excessive use of cliches in sports journalism. To use a nineties Brooklynism, word.

One persistent complaint of mine is the East versus West cliche in cricket journalism. A glaring display of this came in the aftermath of Pakistan's World Twenty20 win (I'm not referring to any particular article for these sentiments were present all over the place). In this art versus science view of cricket, Pakistan's victory in the World Twenty20 was a triumph for flair over persistence (this sentiment was especially on display after the semi-final win over South Africa). While believing this story about the modern cricketing game would certainly aid in the construction of a narrative that says 'unpredictable, divine genius' will always trump 'solid, old-fashioned, mechanical competence', it did nothing to help us understand South Africa's loss to Pakistan from a cricketing perspective.

Pakistan beat South Africa in the Twenty20 semi-final because, in fact, they did certain very ordinary cricketing things better. They had the better spin bowlers on a turning track (how extremely unpredictable to pick good spinners and bowl them on a track that turns) and they had a better exponent of reverse swing in their bowling line-up (how delightfully erratic to have a reverse-swing bowler saved up for when the ball gets a little older). Pakistan's batting was not particularly different from the Twenty20 efforts of many other teams: an opener that flails away in the opening Powerplay, a hard-hitting allrounder, some canny single collection when the pace went ever so slightly off the ball.

Pakistan played better cricket and won. There was nothing mysterious, or oriental, or wholly unpredictable about their cricket. South Africa did not match up to the Pakistani spinners and to Umar Gul's dead-set accurate bowling. If Gul had been an Englishman or a South African, everyone would have been raving about how his bowling spell reflected a "canny, pragmatic, level-headed, strangulation of the opposition."

But because this young lad possesses a Pakistani passport, suddenly he becomes a poster child for the dark arts. It is not surprising then that when so much of what he does is classified as mysterious and strange, that he suddenly becomes the dusky assassin, mysteriously strangling the white explorers in his part of the world's cricketing jungles, and provoking complaints by the New Zealand cricket captain.

I'm not sure cricketing teams from 'that part of the world' are done any favours by the maintenance of this mystery about the game they play. It aids in the construction of a narrative where Indian, Pakistani and Sri Lankan cricketers are representatives of the Strange East, all dazzle and no substance, who do no hard work to master the skills of this difficult game, who have no tactical nous. That virtue seems to be reserved for the science side of the aisle, inhabited by dour, businesslike Englishmen, South Africans and Australians, all grit and no flair apparently, who don't play cricket as much as execute a business plan in their flannels.
This description of their cricket is no less an injustice, disregarding as it does the very real dazzle that they are able to bring to their cricketing performances.

These descriptions of a supposed divide in the way cricket is played and understood and mastered by its various exponents worldwide have some truth to them, just because players from different parts of the cricket world do display some differences in their approach to, and execution of, cricketing skills. But to insist on it as a lens through which the cricketing world must be viewed is to ultimately do disservice to talented and hard-working cricketers. Their cricketing skill, rather than being viewed as the understandable result of what happens when perspiration meets inspiration, is lost in the rush to shoehorn it into a tired old storyline about the Pragmatic West versus the Mysterious East.

In the 1988 NatWest final, Middlesex were set a modest target of 162 in 60 overs. They made a poor start, and things took a disastrous turn when Mike Gatting, the side's main batsman and captain, was run out without facing a ball. The young lad who had called him through for the cheeky single needed to stay out there and get runs, at least until his captain had calmed down, which he did to such good effect that his 56 won the cup and the Man of the Match award.

Over the next couple of years, Mark Ramprakash revealed himself as the finest batting prospect England had had for decades. It was surely inevitable that he would go on to play for England, score thousands of Test runs and be acclaimed as an all-time great. So confident of this outcome was I that when I saw him in a pizza joint in Cardiff the week following his Test debut, I waited until he had finished his meal and then asked him to autograph my Headingley match tickets, figuring that they would be worth a packet some day.

As we all now know, this was not one of my most accurate predictions, but at least I am not alone in having been wrong, wrong, wrongitty wrong.

In his excellent “What Sport Teaches Us About Life”, Ed Smith says that no subject has taken up more dressing-room conversation these last 20 years than why Ramps failed to succeed as a Test cricketer. In the current Wisden, Nasser Hussain pays tribute to Ramprakash and Graeme Hick, and whereas he can see how Hick failed to adapt to the harder world of Test cricket, he remains as puzzled as anyone else that the Ramprakash legend failed to materialise.

Thinking about calling him up as the knight in shining armour to save the Ashes would be a triumph of hope over experience. There is precedent, of course, in the shape of Cyril Washbrook being called up in 1956 after a five-year gap, or of Wilfred Rhodes making a reappearance at The Oval in 1926, but a crucial factor about them was that they had previously been major Test successes. All they had to do was remember how to perform magic, a very different requirement than to have to turn it on for almost the first time in your life.

For what it's worth, my Ramprakash theory is that he thrives on being the acknowledged top dog, the No. 1, the composite of Indiana Jones, Luke Skywalker and James Bond who will always save the day, a status in which he has luxuriated at Middlesex and Surrey, but that when he has to prove himself all over again, as he clearly has to at Test level, he freezes. If this theory is correct – and there is plenty of evidence to back it up – then picking him for The Oval would be the usual disaster, and there would not even be the compensation of feeling that a new player had been blooded who might profit from the experience in the future.

Ramprakash was not the answer when the selectors asked who the next batting cab off the rank was before Headingley: they picked Trott in the squad. Surely if they are going to change the middle order, it is Trott who should be stepping in – otherwise what was he doing in Leeds last week?

I hero-worshipped Ramprakash through the 1990s. I desperately wanted him to succeed, and the romantic in me still does, but this is not the match for the Ramps Romance. The forthcoming Test is the Final Flingtoff. If English cricket is to fete a hero for winning us the Ashes, then the appointed talisman is Fred. Because if he can't do it, nobody can, not even Ramprakash.

There are plenty of ways to watch a cricket match: up close and personal in the middle of a general admission stand in one of India's concrete behemoths; sprawled out, esky, sunscreen, and maybe children, close at hand, on one of New Zealand's grassy slopes; natty and prim in a members stand; or perhaps, dressed in a manner not fit to be seen by man or beast, in front of one's television set at home.

To this list, one must add, "alone, slumped in a work chair, in front of a nineteen-inch flat screen monitor." Well, at least, that is how I watch a lot of cricket these days. On broadband video, at home (the work connection is a little slow, unfortunately). And in general, these pleasures of cricket watching are experienced in splendid isolation.

When the hours are right, I can turn on the speakers and enjoy the sensation of the crackle of crowd sounds and commentators permeating the ambience of my apartment, otherwise, when the timezones are not favorable, I have to slip on a pair of headphones and enter further the illusion of being confined to a tiny sphere, my activities incomprehensible to most around me. Nothing confirms my sense of isolation as an immigrant, an exile in the world of cricket, quite like that feeling which steals over
me when India play their home games, when my hours of vigil commence just
as my wife turns out the lights and goes to bed, and I stay up in the living room, headphones strapped on, struggling to stay awake, as a cricket game goes on, thousands of miles away.

But watching cricket like this is a frustrating business. Because those that watch cricket games like to talk about it, to offer an opinion, to do both in real time, and sometimes, to even listen to what other folks might have to say. In the old days, even if I watched part of a game alone at home, I was guaranteed conversation about it if I stepped out on the
street, or on the university bus the next morning.

This role, obviously, has now been taken up by the internet, with all its attendant mixed blessings. Like legions of graduate students in the 90s, I whiled away many hours on rec.sport.cricket, delaying a dissertation and a healthier bank balance for the love of cricket. I finally left in 1995, exhausted by the flaming and the inevitable recycling of discussions. A few years later, living in Australia meant a return to the pleasures of off-line conversations about cricket, to the day-after office conversation, the discussions of scores throughout the day.

But that relief was temporary and soon I found myself back in the world of the polite New York Times references to cricket, the late-night telecasts of World Cups, and the social query of "You're really into cricket, aren't you? How come you guys wear so much body armor?"

Under these circumstances, starting blogging was a non-brainer. I began in 2004, got nowhere, tried again in 2005, and only made some headway in 2006. But blogging has not removed all of the isolation; I still detect in the writing of bloggers, writing from cricket playing lands, a level of connection with the game that I do not always experience. Sometimes the disconnection is mundane: I'm not always as familiar with all of the world's players that folks exposed to more telecasts are. Sometimes it is about failing to catch a mood: I've been assured by many friends that I would not be able to resist the IPL fever if I was back in India. There is a distancing from the game that is not always physical.

But like many other aspects of my stranded position, I've come to appreciate this place, set slightly apart from the cricketing world. It lets me offer a slightly different perspective, an alternative take, if you will, on cricketing affairs. The value of that perspective, admittedly, is sometimes only visible to me (as the comments section assures me). Still, it offers one more viewing panel, and in our more generous moments, I'm reasonably sure we could acknowledge that wasn't such a bad thing.

But at most times, the isolation is a chilling one. Hooping and hollering at a computer monitor is a strange business at best; dashing off a few words on a keyboard for an instant display of one’s emotions on a blog takes some of the edge off that jonesing for an audience, but not all. When it comes down to it, there is still nothing quite like having a fellow fan at hand to receive, amplify, and enhance, one's immediate, unvarnished take on a game of cricket.

	Philip Hughes has struggled in England © Getty Images

There are always mysteries in cricket, though they change from decade to decade and even from year to year. Here are three which I have given up trying to solve for myself and which perhaps the readers of Cricinfo can shed some light on.

First, what happened to third man?

I am unaware of any edict prohibiting captains from posting a third man. I have consulted the Laws, ICC's playing regulations for Test matches and the ECB's similar regulations for first-class cricket in England, and I can find nothing which says that it is an illegal position, even if there are eight other fielders on the off side already, yet nobody ever fields there. New ball bowlers especially tend to bowl some form of off-theory and have plenty of slips and gullies but unless the ball travels at something like catchable height, batsmen quickly rack up the boundaries as the ball flies under, over or through the cordon. One-day cricket has emboldened batsmen to play the angled slash designed to clear the almost non-existent slips, yet modern captains seem perfectly happy to allow them to get clean away with it and thereby leak hundreds of runs.

Second, why do some people have an all-consuming passion for rubbishing players who fall short of greatness?

To be a regular in a Test team for a period of years is in itself a pretty special achievement. There are millions of cricketers around the world, but at any given time only sixty or seventy of them can hold down regular spots in their countries' Test XIs. Only a few of those, the greats and near-greats, are consistently brilliant; most work hard and try their best, having odd days of excellence or lousiness but making, overall, a useful contribution to their teams until their powers wane and the selectors decide that someone else should have a go.

Yet offer an appreciation of a middle-ranking player on the occasion of their retirement in a Cricinfo blog, and it is virtually guaranteed that it will be greeted with a volley of comments to the effect that he was rubbish, very ordinary, or a waste of space who deserves little more than abuse. There are, thankfully, a lot of more generous souls only too glad to raise a kindly glass, but it puzzles me that so many seem to get their cricket kicks by concentrating on players' faults and imperfections.

And third, why do England bowlers insist on persevering with barrages of short-pitched bowling when it is blindingly obvious that the batsmen are having no trouble at all in dealing with it?

Phil Hughes was bounced out of the current Ashes because he was unable to cope with it, but there is plenty of evidence that the rest of the Australians have the technique to do a lot more than survive.

Ricky Ponting is often an uncertain starter and may well be vulnerable to an early bouncer, but after he's reached about 10, all he does with short stuff is pull it or hook it powerfully in the general direction of mid-wicket. Unless the England bowlers are trying to make amends for the crowd booing him, it is hard to understand why they insist on serving him these delicious snacks for over after over. Bowlers with the height and speed of Flintoff or Harmison, who can extract steepling bounce from only just short of a length, have more excuse for it because they can make batting extremely uncomfortable, but why Onions, Broad or Anderson bowl more than the odd short one as a surprise variation is quite beyond my limited understanding.

So those are my questions. Can anyone help me out with some explanations?

	Mitchell Johnson doesn't need to get into the batsman's ear to prove he 'is around' © Getty Images

Predicting the final outcome of the Ashes Series is a tough call. Glenn McGrath was probably being a bit mischievous when he predicted a 5-0 whitewash to Australia but even he would not have expected a 1-0 lead to England after three Tests. What might be easier to predict though (and this will no doubt warm the cockles of McGrath’s heart) is that the remaining two Tests will be feisty and spirited, perhaps even bordering on spiteful and venomous.

I make this prediction, hoping fervently that I will be wrong, yearning for another repeat of the 2005 Ashes when both teams played entertaining cricket without the ‘mongrel’. I’m clearly on the conservative side of the debate when it comes to sledging and on-field theatrics and I will no doubt cop a volley of abuse from those who firmly lean towards a less genteel culture. Fair enough – we’re all entitled to our preferences. Not that it is likely to make much difference to the combatants – they will dance to the tune of their own masters and mentors.

Let’s take Mitchell Johnson for example. Apparently his form slump can be fixed with a bit of sledging and on-field aggression. Paraphrasing the great Shane Warne, Johnson needs to let the Englishman know that he’s around (presumably, that is a euphemism for “give them a bit of a spray”). It matters not that Johnson’s wrist position may not be behind the ball or that he is dropping his front shoulder or that he is scrambling the seam. According to those who know best, it should all fix itself if only he could manufacture a bit of hatred and aggression towards those nasty, selfish batsmen who keep plundering him for boundaries. Let them know you’re there Mitchell!

Interesting theory…my guess is that they are acutely aware that he’s there all right! His name is on the team sheet, he’s bowled a few overs, thumped a few boundaries at Lord’s and he’s not the Invisible Man. Of course they know he’s there.

What about the “let them know you’re in a contest” line? Another statement that seems to state the bleeding obvious. It’s a Test Match for goodness sake. Of course it’s a contest. Since when did any Test cricketer (match-fixers apart) not want to give 100%? I can’t see how getting verbally aggressive and glaring at batsmen will suddenly change Johnson’s form. He’s a damn good bowler, going through a temporary form blip and whether he comes good or not will have more to do with the quality of his bowling rather than the range of invective.

Johnson’s slight improvement in the second innings at Edgbaston was attributed to this sudden shift in aggression apparently. Fed this psychobabble often enough, both teams will come to believe it and the rest of the series may descend into a bit of a sledgefest. Flintoff, totally likeable character that he is (as is Johnson by the way), seems to have got a headstart in this regard with his constant snipings after every semi-dangerous ball. With Flintoff though, you can almost see an apologetic smile lurking beneath, a boyish grin peeping out from underneath the steely glare. It’s almost like he’s putting on an act, all this huffing and puffing.

The signs are there already of a series that is threatening to boil over. Anderson and Watson have exchanged pleasantries, Siddle and Broad feel obliged to stoke up the heat and Ponting has never been shy of a word or three (except when it comes from a spectator). Personally, I prefer just watching good cricket without the Hollywood tantrums and the unseemly manners that sometimes get confused with great performances. McGrath was a great bowler, full stop. Not because he was a serial sledger. In fact, I would go so far as to say, DESPITE that distraction he was still a great bowler. Michael Holding, Malcolm Marshall, Sachin Tendulkar, Brian Lara, David Gower and even genial souls like Mike Hussey prove that real class owes nothing to verbal abuse. It’s just a sideshow that threatens to distract from the sublime pleasures of watching a beautiful game.

For those who argue that this sort of behaviour adds to the contest, I will not argue with them, lest it becomes another online sledgefest. Despite the eloquent and polished interview Matthew Hayden gave to BBC’s HardTalk program recently, I still can’t bring myself to see cricket as 'war'. It may only be a euphemism for “competitive cricket” but I’ve seen enough of wars to not want to taint my love of cricket with something as abhorrent as that. Cricket's cricket. Nothing more, nothing less.

I'd stand accused (and rightly so) of being an utterly naive fool were I to say that I had not anticipated some of the comments section flaming that followed on the heels of my post about Ricky Ponting. But that doesn't make it any less depressing. I'm not counting the posts here that simply criticized Ponting as a captain, batsman or whatever; I mean the posts that were pointedly personal or generalized remarks about the respective countries' teams, players and fans. The India-Australia bickerfest shows no sign of abating, and while it might provide the occasional entertaining moment, it is by and large, a very unedifying business.

Now, I have gotten into net spats myself. I have not followed the simple policy of thinking long and hard about whether I really want to post the angry retort that I've just typed up. I'm a flame war veteran, and will be the first to acknowledge that I've exploited the anonymity the Internet affords when it comes to online disagreements. But in the particular context of the India-Australia rivalry, there is a certain line I don't cross (or at least, I hope I haven't), and the reason for that is quite simple.

I have Australian friends. Most of whom are passionate cricket fans. Very knowledgeable ones. And I love discussing cricket with them. They know their cricketing history, they are very appreciative of Indian cricketers. I've lived in Australia for two years and played cricket with Australians and loved every single minute of it. This winter (the southern summer) I will travel to Sydney again and hopefully play a game again with my old team.

In these circumstances, there is no way I can bring myself to negatively generalize about the country, its cricket teams, fans or the cricketing culture. If I've ever done it in the heat of the moment, I've regretted it deeply.

So in that spirit, I'd like to make a simple suggestion as the fourth Ashes Test gets underway. I might be accused of being cheesy but I'll take that risk.

Find a way to watch a game with a fan from the Other Side. This won't be easy for Indians in India, but if you're a member of the Great Diaspora, try and find an Aussie expat and a venue for cricket watching. If you're an Aussie, you won't have a hard time finding an Indian cricket fan in your town. Find a pub that shows the game, buy a few rounds of pots, middies or schooners (or whatever the standard measure happens to be in your state) of beer, and watch a game of cricket together.

It's hard to be rude and offensive when you have to do it in person. It's easier to listen when the other person is talking face to face to you. And it's harder to generalize when there is a concrete counterexample to your generalization sitting in front of you.

The India-Australia relationship in cricket is a special one. On the cricketing field, it has provided some of the best cricket of recent years. Indian fans know their history and their game. So do the Aussies. This constant puerile flaming online does no one any credit. The rivalry is intense sure, and I've even joked about it here, but really, does everything need to get so personal?

And besides, the Ashes are on, and there is a Common Enemy to confront! If that doesn't bring us together, what can?

	Andy Caddick may fall short of being an international great, but was an absolute giant for Somerset © Getty Images

Amid the welter of high-profile retirements from Test cricket, one which has not been noticed very much is Andy Caddick's – the consequence of his retiring from all cricket at the end of this season.

The great mystery about Caddick was the enormous disparity between his performances in the first innings, which were usually insipid, and those in the second, which were often devastating. It is particularly appropriate to take note of his retirement on the eve of a Test at Headingley, scene of one of his most spectacular feats of brilliance and of one of his most abject disasters.

In 2000, West Indies struggled to 172 in their first innings, with Craig White taking 5-57. That England managed to gain a lead of 100 was entirely down to a stand between Michael Vaughan, in his 11th Test innings, and Graeme Hick, who scored his last Test half-century. When West Indies batted again, it was Gough who took the top-order wickets, but then came Caddick's over of overs: W . WW . nb W, crashing WI from 52-5 to 53-9. Sarwan managed a three off Caddick's following over, but the second ball of his next knocked Walsh's off stump back and England had achieved their first innings victory against West Indies in 34 years, Caddick's second-innings return being 5-14.

Two years later, he was by a long distance the senior bowler in the England attack for the game against India. There were gasps around the ground when it was announced that Sourav Ganguly had elected to bat on winning the toss. The sky was dark grey and there was dampness in the air – ideal conditions for pace bowling – and when Sehwag departed in the seventh over, it seemed as though Ganguly's gamble was a loser. But we had reckoned without Caddick's inability to bowl well in the first innings of a match. Ball after ball was banged in far too short and went sailing harmlessly over the stumps as Rahul Dravid swayed patiently out of the way. By the time the clouds cleared and batting became a much less daunting proposition, the match was effectively over.

His last Test was the fifth of the 2002-3 Ashes, a dead rubber to be sure, but one which England won through one of Caddick's classic performances – a weak 3-121 followed by a brilliant 7-94. He was not officially dropped, as he never ceased to remind people, but England under Michael Vaughan had moved on.

Two-hundred-and-thirty-four Test wickets is no mean tally. Only seven England bowlers have taken more, and most of them have claims to greatness. A new-ball bowler who fails to take first-innings wickets can have no such pretensions, but he did enough to re-establish the idea that England could win matches after the barren 1990s. He was too diffident and too grumpy to win many fans' hearts, especially since his main England partner was the ebullient crowd-pleaser Gough, but his contribution to England's revival under Nasser Hussain was profound.

But even if he was not an international great, he has been an absolute giant for Somerset for whom he has taken 873 first-class wickets (and counting). Of post-WW2 players, only Brian Langford took more, and he was never required by England. That 75 of them at 23 apiece were in 2007, when he was 38, behind only Mushtaq Ahmed and Ottis Gibson was remarkable, but that he took more than half of them at the Taunton bowlers' graveyard was little short of phenomenal.

The body won't take any more pounding, and so he has announced that he will not be back next season. For the remainder of this one, the collection boxes for his testimonial deserve to overflow, and may he have a long and happy retirement on the proceeds.

Question: What do a snowball in hell and an Indian fan of Ricky Ponting have in common?

Answer: They are both non-existent entities.

Yes, that is an exaggeration. But such hyperbole captures one uncomfortable fact about the Australian captain: he is not popular among many, many cricket fans all over the world. Given that Indian fans make up a majority of the world's cricket fans, it's a fair call to say he isn't a very popular man in the world of cricket. So as a corrective, I'd like to offer a tribute to Ricky Ponting on the occasion of his having surpassed Allan Border's run aggregate in Tests. And I do not for a second think that I'm alone, even amongst Indians, in holding these opinions of Ponting.

The truth of the matter is that Ponting is one of Test cricket's best batsmen of all time, has been one of its most entertaining, dynamic and attacking batsmen for the last 14 years, and is a superb fielder to boot. He has been a classically Australian cricketer: an aggressive, purposeful batsman who loves, besides all the fierce cuts and drives in his repertoire, two quintessentially Australian shots: the hook and the pull, and is a great slip catcher and a quality patroller of any part of the cricket field he happens to be placed in. I have never seen a boring innings by him (yes, I'm including the ones where he has struggled against spin), for Ponting is attacking down to the core of his being when he has a bat in his hand.

One innings that always stands out in my mind's eye was the first one I saw him play in a Test match. It was a little gem of 88, played at Brisbane in the first test of the 1996-97 series against the West Indies. Matthew Elliott had gone early for a duck and Ponting strode out to face Ambrose, Walsh and Bishop for the first time in a Test (it was the fifth of Ponting's career). Taylor and Ponting added 126 runs for the second wicket; Taylor's contribution was 39. Ponting's innings was full of his flashing pulls, hooks and squaredrives; but he had to work for it.
There were edges through slips aplenty and some evasion as well. It was a classic, hard-fought session of test cricket which continued after lunch.

The West Indian quicks pressed for another breakthrough but to no avail. I watched it utterly spellbound; Ambrose and company could have broken through that morning and wrested the initiative early in the series but a youngster had resisted and counterattacked.

There was a buzz while Ponting was at the crease. Part of it had to do with his restless, shuffling, body language, one that suggests early vulnerability in his innings (especially when he appears to fall over as he plays across), but which later, is more indicative of a coiled energy
waiting to strike. Once he left, Australia buckled to be 5 for 196 before the old firm of Waugh and Healy bailed them out again.

Over the years, Ponting has lived up to his early promise (Ian Chappell was one of those talking up this new Tasmanian Bradman in his debutant days). While small weaknesses have been found by opponents over the years, such as against high-quality swing (but really, who doesn't have a weakness against this?) and offspin, he still remains a quality batsman, one to be feared, whose wicket is prized over any other by the opposition when they play Australia.

He has hit purple patches (like those double tons against India in the 2004 series), he has hit lows (like those off-spinning blues in the 2001 series against India), and as Australia
struggles in the post-McGrath-Warne-Langer-Waugh-Hayden era, he has struggled too.

Still, whatever his problems as a captain, and a communicator, and he has quite a few in that regard, I have nothing but admiration for him as a batsman and fielder. I like watching him when he steps on to the field; he is, as he might like to hear, "very good value."