In the coming months, Mohammad Aamer will put more meat on that thin, almost wiry frame, and learn more tricks © Getty Images

Pakistan fast bowlers have a tradition of first unveiling their menacing intent in Australia. The last two men who did this were named Imran Khan and Wasim Akram. Now there is a new kid on the block answering to the name of Mohammad Aamer. By an ominous coincidence, Aamer has taken a five-for in a losing cause in Melbourne, something Imran and Wasim also did.

Ominous, because after Imran took 5 for 122 in a 1977 Test that Pakistan lost to Australia by 348 runs, he went on to take those 12 wickets at Sydney that stand out as one of the great milestones in Pakistan's cricket history. Wasim's gratification was more delayed but no less grand. In early 1990 he took 6 for 62 and 5 for 98 in a Melbourne Test that Pakistan still lost. Two years later he was back in Melbourne, this time to be crowned Man of the Match in a World Cup final.

For the budding fast bowler, a tour of Australia offers an unparalleled growth curve. The pitches are hard, the atmosphere intense, the competition unforgiving. There is no more utterly sink-or-swim scenario in world cricket. Imran first came here in late 1976 with a reputation
as a bits-and-pieces allrounder capable at best of wayward medium-pace.

He returned a few weeks later recognised as one of the foremost fast bowlers of the world. Wasim came here as an unknown in early 1985 and immediately took 5 for 21 in a crucial one-day tie against Australia.

"Everyone had to sit up and take notice," says Brian Murgatroyd of Cricket Australia in an ESPN documentary on Wasim. It marked the beginning of a career that would see Wasim counted among the great fast bowlers of all time.

Mohammad Aamer hails from Gujjar Khan, a town of about 70,000 that you pass on the motorway going from Islamabad to Lahore. Seventy thousand may seem substantial, but in Pakistan, a country of 160 million, it's the boonies. Now, however, it is on the cricketing map. This is where Aamer learned his bounding leap and wind-up action, and his ability to slant it
across the right-hander down the corridor of uncertainty. Presumably, this is also where he picked up an attitude, including a tendency to mock impertinent batsmen by throwing flying kisses down the pitch. Less clear is where he picked up his disregard for renown. Before a Champions Trophy match against India a few months earlier, Aamer announced his desire to
dismiss Sachin Tendulkar, and before this Melbourne Test he told Ricky Ponting to beware of the short-pitched delivery. Mission accomplished, in both cases.

He lacks the typical fast bowler's height, but a demon like Malcolm Marshall wasn't particularly tall either. And he is not fully adept at bringing it in to the right-hander, but even Imran took a while before he began moving it both ways with equal ease.

Most importantly, Aamer has shown he is full of fight. In a recent ODI against New Zealand in Abu Dhabi, he came in at 86 for 8 and posted the highest score ever by a number 10. The point is not so much that he is a capable batsman - although he did play some fine groundstrokes - but that he has a lot of heart. Certainly, a five-for in Australia on an unsporting wicket shows that he has the potential to get on top of any team.

He is still only a teenager. Although his official age of 17 may be under-reported, you can tell just by looking he is not a day over 19, at the most. Already he can clock at 150 kilometers per hour. In the coming months, he will put more meat on that thin, almost wiry frame, and learn
more tricks. The evidence suggests Aamer is preparing to fill the shoes of a fabled fast-bowling dynasty that has preceded him. If history is any judge, they will take him far.

	Graeme Swann is the second-highest wicket-taker this year© Getty Images

In the recent Australia-West Indies series, Suleiman Benn was the joint leading wicket-taker for the visitors. Nathan Hauritz took the same number of wickets as Benn, though he was outdone by teammates Johnson and Bollinger. As I write, the leading wicket-takers in the South Africa- England series are Graeme Swann and Paul Harris.

There was a theory floating round in the early part of this decade that the conventional finger-spinner was an endangered species, and that fairly soon he would be confined to Asian habitats. Wrist-spinners, and weird finger-spinners like Muttiah Muralitharan, would survive and even thrive elsewhere, but the common or garden tweaker was destined to die out. Yet here we are with series in Australia and South Africa with the spinners in rude health and doing very well.

And it's not as though these four are particularly special. Neither Swann nor Hauritz is a Jim Laker or Erapalli Prasanna, neither Benn nor Harris are a patch on Bishen Bedi or Derek Underwood. They don't have mystery balls, they don't turn it square, they don't try doosras. They are merely good bowlers, with Swann perhaps verging on the borders of very good by dint of having the wit to exploit what he has learned in a dozen years on the county circuit.

It is most heartening to see them being decently successful, especially since I have been watching these games on TV. When the fast men are on, you can perhaps see the keeper, first and second slip in the far distance and it is not visually obvious that the batsman is in serious danger, whereas when a spinner is on and there are four or five fielders crouched round the batsman, you can feel the steam building up in the pressure-cooker - and these last few weeks, we have had gratifyingly extended views of batsmen being boiled like sponge puddings. (At the ground, it is all too likely that the crowd of close catchers serves mostly to obscure one's view of the batsman and all you see of a wicket is a hand emerging from a heap of fielders, clutching an Excalibur which has suddenly become small, red and round rather than long and steely.)

The key is that those fielders are crouching round the bat. Harris and Benn are not really any better as slow left-armers than the likes of Ashley Giles or Nicky Boje who were plying their trade in the early years of the decade, but they have the benefit of captains who think they have a chance of taking wickets and give them the fields to do it with. You can generate all the bat-pad chances you like, but the wickets column will remain empty unless there is someone there to snaffle them, and far too often in the '90s and early '00s, perfectly respectable spinners were presented with fields which indicated that the skipper just wanted them to keep the batsmen quiet for a bit.

Mike Atherton was good player of ordinary, rather than extraordinary, spinners and therefore did not think that they would get anyone else out and set Phil Tufnell almost exclusively defensive fields.. Saurav Ganguly the batsman used to view slow left-armers much as a hungry man views an all-you-can-eat buffet and treated any of the breed unfortunate enough to be sent along to play for India with barely-disguised disdain.

Andrew Strauss and Graeme Smith, on the other hand, have both had periods of being found out by spin bowlers and Ricky Ponting's inability to play more than an over of Harbhajan Singh without getting out is the stuff of legend. Captains who have had trouble batting against spinners are obviously more likely to repose their confidence in them as bowlers.

But it is still up to the bowlers to perform, and Benn, Hauritz, Swann and Harris - with the help of their captains – are doing a fine job of proving the doomsayers of a few years ago wrong.

	Shane Watson begins his antics against Chris Gayle© Getty Images

Pride. Passion (passionate). Competitive (ness). Fierce competitor. Honour (of representing state or country).

Some of the most over-used or inappropriately-used words in modern sport these days. Manufactured by media machines that churn out chillingly cynical, homogenous statements in order to protect their ‘product’ (note: no longer a game but a product/investment/franchise). Voiced by professional athletes (ad nauseaum), who do not realise words like pride, passion and honour actually contradict many of the actions they seek to excuse by invoking such cheap emotional blackmail.

Kevin Pietersen will no doubt be using some of these words when he returns to his hometown, Durban, a place where rejection and bitterness spawned his pride of playing for England. Perhaps some of his ex-countrymen haven’t yet forgiven him for deserting South Africa and their sense of misplaced pride may prompt a hostile response. Let's hope not.

Boxing Day for the Australians is all about such noble sentiments like pride, passion, honour etc. Well, supposedly every international match played by Australia evokes this nationalistic fervour. Hence, cussing, swearing and undignified conduct of any description can be attributed to such emotions coursing through the veins. It’s an easy excuse - “I’m so proud/passionate/honoured to play for my country/state/franchise/club/sponsor/paymaster that I got carried away and behaved like a complete idiot but I’m sure you’ll understand that my motives were entirely due to my fierce competitiveness and it comes from the heart blah blah blah”.

Rugby league players in Australia have this nonsense down to a fine art. Engaging in acts of violence that would see them charged with assault if it happened outside a rectangular patch of grass with goalposts at either end, they then elevate it to an almost holy plane by referring to the pride and emotional highs that they were experiencing from representing whatever (highly paid) jersey they were wearing on that particular day. Like cricket, behaviour that would not be tolerated at a lower level is almost eulogised at the highest representative levels, presumably because it shows off a player's commitment and passion for the cause. The greater the honour, the more we are expected to condone.

Lately, cricketers around the world have trotted out poor excuses for any behaviour that would normally be classified as childish or just plain rude. The Australians used it last week to try to defend themselves from their behaviour lapses this summer, Sulieman Benn is apparently a “fierce competitor” which is meant to excuse his abrasiveness. Going back a few years, players like Andre Nel and Sreesanth have used similar pathetic and patriotic appeals to hide behind when embarrassing self and country. Every country has its own culprits but the theme is universal; refer to national pride, passion, honour, competitiveness etc and that buys you immunity from good manners.

It’s particularly amusing to hear that rubbish in Australian cricket circles this week, coinciding with a survey by the Australian Cricketers’ Association that highlighted this ‘national pride’ thing for the woeful charade that it is. 67% of respondents claimed they would seriously consider playing Twenty20 cricket as freelancers. Of the CA contracted players (those very same individuals who waffle on about pride, passion etc), 22% of them would consider turning their backs on national contracts now and a further 39% of them were unsure of what they would do. Clearly, those heart-wrenching excuses about getting carried away in the heat of the moment because they were playing for their country don’t get in the way of becoming a hired gun for the next gunfight in the East.

It’s not a problem isolated to Australians mind you. Many “passionate and proud” countrymen have chosen to miss national tours because of more pressing mercenary commitments. After all, pride doesn’t buy BMW’s, bling or beach houses.

Not that I have a problem with players taking the money and running. It is their talent, their livelihoods and their decision to make. So long as they don’t pretend that passion, pride or honour plays such a significant role in their lives when they seek to justify their idiocy.

There was a time not so long ago when exactly the opposite was true. A time when representing your country/state/province/school was a time when you felt under even more pressure to behave in exemplary fashion, such was the pride you felt in representing that cause with honour. Bringing shame to that famous cap was deemed the ultimate betrayal and teachers or parents the world over exhorted schoolboys to learn this lesson at a very young age. One wonders if contemporary Watsonian excuses would have carried much weight in the headmaster’s office as he wielded his cane like a scythe.

“Honestly sir, I only called the opposition captain a **** and asked the umpire if he needed a f-ing guide dog because I was so proud to represent this great school and my fierce competitive spirit refused to allow me to sacrifice my honour by accepting defeat gracefully. Surely I’m a candidate for the captaincy next year sir. Or at least give me just 15% of the caning I deserve. And what’s more sir, he baited me!”

	Was Suleiman Benn that much more at fault than Brad Haddin or Mitchell Johnson? © Getty Images

The spirit of Christmas and the Spirit of Cricket: two abstract concepts that are more about misty-eyed, mushy sentimentalism than about anything you can actually see and touch and feel. Humbug!

The ‘spirit’ of Christmas seems to be a very literal interpretation in Australia, with a record number of drunk drivers getting arrested on the way home from Christmas parties, presumably celebrating the season’s goodwill and peace to all men. Clearly, that goodwill doesn’t extend to anyone sharing the road with them!

Likewise, the cricket scene too is full of little incidents that show up the Spirit of Cricket for the joke that it is. Administered by an ICC that bumbles about in its own inconsistency, handing out vastly differing punishments for similar offences and new playing conditions that have been poorly thought out (or not enforced), the sport cannot make up its mind about where it sits – is it a business, is it a gentleman’s game, is it a war between countries or is it about setting good examples for young children? It certainly can’t be all things to all people.

Let’s start in Perth – Sulieman Benn, Brad Haddin and Mitchell Johnson are all involved in an unseemly incident, all of them with varying degrees of blame and totally contrasting punishments. Regardless of who pleaded guilty or not, if Johnson was fined 10% of his match fee (which in itself is a joke), even if Benn was deemed to be ten times more culpable, his punishment should then have been 100% of his match fee. Was Benn that much more at fault than Haddin or Johnson where his penalty could be equated to twenty or thirty times more (in rough terms) when you think of what a match suspension really counts for? Is that meant to be justice?

The commentators keep talking about the passion and pride of playing for one’s country when excusing childish acts of petulance like Doug Bollinger’s behaviour in Adelaide. Why is it then that only one team is allowed that leeway? Surely all cricketers can show pride and passion, in whatever way their culture deems appropriate? Looks more like pride and prejudice to me!

Ian Healy keeps talking about setting an example to young kids (with the Benn/Haddin/Johnson incident) and I agree totally with him. What do those young kids make of the penalties then? Different strokes for different folks? What do they make of Shane Watson’s childish behaviour, offset by a 15% match fee penalty? Gosh, that’s really going to hurt him! Just about everyone at my cricket club last night, watching Watson’s performance, cringed in embarrassment. Yet, Chris Broad deems it worthy of docking him some pocket money. If that had been Harbhajan Singh or Shoaib Akhtar or Benn himself, would the match referee have applied the same penalty? We’ll never know but I reckon there’s more chance of Santa Claus going on a diet.

Billy Bowden, faster than a speeding reindeer when it comes to theatrics and showmanship, took far too long to intervene and hose down the Perth incident before it got to the ‘push’n’shove’ stage. What was he thinking? Didn't he realise the cameras would be on him?

Across the Indian Ocean in Pretoria, England made a mockery of the review system by calling for a referral when the last wicket fell, just because they had one up their sleeve, in the hope that it may have been a no-ball. That’s just corrupting something that was created for an entirely honourable purpose: to eliminate the absolute shockers from the game. Perhaps England was still seething over the delayed Stuart Broad referral when the South Africans waited forever to get a signal from the dressing room before they asked for a review. Commentators are now talking about teams using their quota of referrals on a strategic basis - when they desperately need a wicket or a partnership, rather than the original purpose of rectifying major errors.

To cap off the spirit of Christmas, I read today that Andrew Symonds and Michael Clarke are apparently no longer on speaking terms, presumably after Symonds’ much celebrated love of distilled spirits led to a dilution of the many things they apparently had in common (anyone who’s seen the mischievous emails will know what I mean when I refer to their little ‘bingle’ – an Aussie term for minor accident!). If Symonds is to be taken seriously, the Australian cricket scene is in danger of losing its characters because they’re too concerned with a squeaky-clean public image. More drinking, jostling, sledging, turning up drunk to games etc please – presumably that’s what he means by ‘character’?

Spirit of Cricket indeed - pigs might fly first. Or was that just Santa flitting past, on his way to Perth to collect the donations from Haddin, Johnson, Benn and Watson? He can rely on the impartial match referee to tell him who’s been naughty and nice!

	Rahul Dravid has a style that is even more reassuring than the Kallises and Gavaskars © AFP

While Tim McIntosh was painstakingly putting his 74 together on Saturday, a few of the people mailing the Cricinfo commentators were moaning about his slow scoring. Then one of McIntosh's mates piped up that it was a five-day Test and this is how Test cricket should be played.

That “should” needs considerable qualification, but first-class and Test cricket are indeed the only forms of the game where long periods of defensive batting make good tactical sense – and McIntosh certainly did a useful job for New Zealand: building a platform and wearing down the bowlers on the way to an imposing team total.

I was brought up, so to speak, on batting like that. When I started watching, the England openers were very likely to be John Edrich and Geoff Boycott, who were both masters of the craft. Indeed, I'm not sure I've yet seen anyone better than Boycott at the pure business of batting for as long as possible – but as I grew up in Yorkshire, he was a childhood hero and that may introduce a certain bias.

The legacy of idolising Boycs is an enduring appreciation for the stonewaller in his various guises, though it has to be said he does not always make for riveting viewing. Often one is admiring patience, restraint, courage and stubborn determination more than the actual batting.

The sheer class of some asserts virtual supremacy – only someone who bowls as superbly as Boycott, Jacques Kallis or Sunil Gavaskar bat is going to get them out. You are watching a supreme technician at work, and even against the top bowlers, it is a tussle of equals. Every so often though, along comes a bad ball, and they play it to the boundary with a stroke of similar class. Boycott's cover drive, when he played it, was one of the finest you'll ever see; my enduring memories of Sunny include the sudden punishment of the cut or sweep after three solid overs of soft-handed killing of the spin. Shiv Chanderpaul follows roughly the same methods as those three, with about the same result, but without the functional elegance of their classical technique.

Then there are those who do not give off quite the same air of permanence: top-class bowling could easily dislodge them, one feels, although in practice they often stay in for ages. Michael Atherton, Marvan Atapattu and Dilip Vengsarkar all played great defensive innings, but somehow just weren't quite in the Boycott-Gavaskar class.

But they still had attacking strokes they could play. Gary Kirsten may have had them, but his main trait was invisibility. I know I sat in the stands and watched him compile at least two centuries, but I cannot remember a single scoring stroke. Even at the time I couldn't remember them: glancing at the scoreboard, there was 64 against his name, but I had no idea how he had accumulated them. Perhaps people just awarded him the occasional run without him actually having to hit the ball.

Then come those who really do just drop anchor and don't play any shots at all. Neil McKenzie, Brendan Nash and Thilan Samaraweera are prime examples of this wholly introverted style, but at least they seem to be doing it deliberately.

There are a few, however, who are teeth-grindingly tedious to watch. They may well have done a job for their team, but did they really have to do it like that? Zimbabwe's Trevor Gripper was awful. Worse still was Deep Dasgupta, whose hundred at Mohali in 2001 has to be the most mind-numbing I've ever seen – but he would surely not have earned that dubious distinction if Chris Tavare had ever reached three figures. Fortunately, Tav's career came fifty years too late for the timeless Test he would have needed to reach the mark. (There is, by the way, no truth to the story that umpire Gothoskar became so concerned by Tavare's immobility at Bangalore in 1981 that he insisted on checking his pulse to make sure he hadn't died at the crease.)

My favourite, though, is Rahul Dravid, who has a style even more reassuring than the Kallises and Gavaskars. The aforementioned masters would always make it clear that what they were doing was difficult, beyond the reach of mortal men. Dravid, however, seems to treat the most challenging conditions like a crossword puzzle which he is enjoying figuring out. He looks vaguely amused that the last ball was a real screamer which almost cut him in half; when a bowler delivers a relatively easy ball, Dravid peers back quizzically, as if asking why he bothered. That does not make him the greatest – my suspicion is that the title belongs to Len Hutton – but it does make him the most entertaining to watch.

I was going to say “long may he continue”, but it would be redundant. It's just what he does.

	Iain O'Brien will be a great tonic for Middlesex © Getty Images

In a few days' time, Iain O'Brien will be a former Test cricketer, since he retires after New Zealand's current match against Pakistan. Barring exceptional figures like 0 for 250 or 18 for 80, he will finish his career as a Test bowler with about 70 wickets at about 34 apiece. He may improve on his tally of one five-for in 21 Tests, but his career figures will even then be unimpressive. But the figures tell only a part of the story: much of his contribution over the last two or three years of being a regular in the side is less tangible than is recorded in scorebooks.

New Zealand will always need a bowler who can bowl into the teeth of the howling gale at the Basin Reserve even though the main reward for doing so is exhaustion, and every team needs someone to bowl on flat tracks against well-set top-class batsmen when the best hope of a wicket is a run out. Those are the really hard yards, and Iain O'Brien will run them all and still be disappointed when he is finally taken off. Captains dream of commanding soldiers like O'Brien.

Not only does he do the jobs no-one else wants to do; he always does them with a huge smile on his face. He appears to be just so thrilled to be on the field at all, and the enthusiasm he exudes cannot fail to lift flagging spirits. Bundles of energy like him spur the top players on – if he is still charging in, they have no excuse for slacking even when things look grim.

He has therefore been an important cog in the New Zealand machine even though his tally of wickets has been somewhat smaller than one might have hoped. His announcement of retirement did not exactly depress an entire nation the way Freddie Flintoff's did in England, but that does not mean he won't be missed.

New Zealand's loss, however, is Middlesex's gain. A bowler who is only just good enough for Test cricket ought to be very much a top-ranker in county cricket, particularly at the bottom of Division 2 where Middlesex currently languish, so I'm delighted that Angus Fraser has signed him up. And we get him for the whole season, fitness permitting, rather than just have him flit in and out between serious engagements. Someone with his outlook on playing cricket will be a great tonic in a dressing room which has been rather deflated whereas on the field, his straight-ahead bustle will nicely complement Tim Murtagh's swing and the very promising Steven Finn's height and awkward bounce. With the experienced spin of skipper Shaun Udal, that's the nucleus of an attack which can win promotion - if only the batsmen could string a few good innings together, which almost none of them did in 2009.

It is a one-year deal, with a view to making it three years if his body can stand it – which is as yet unknown because 33 is a fair old age to be embarking on a gruelling county career playing more cricket than he has ever done in his life. But, if one reads his character aright from his blogs, he will just say “Bring it on. I'd play every day and bowl at both ends if I could.”

So, while congratulating him on a worthwhile Test career and wishing him all the best for his final international game, I'll lay out the welcome mat for his entry to the Middlesex fold and hope that his best is yet to come.

	Despite Kaneria's ability and success, we are still left with a sense that he has not lived up to his promise © Associated Press

During the course of the second Test against New Zealand in Wellington, wrist spinner Danish Kaneria inched past an important milestone on the ladder of Pakistani wicket-takers. With 238 wickets (from 55 Tests), he has now become the most successful spinner (and the fourth-most successful bowler of any type) in Pakistani Test history. Ahead of him lie only the truly hallowed names – Imran Khan, Waqar Younis and Wasim Akram. Kaneria is almost 29, and still has several years of active playing life left. If he continues at his current rate of 4.3 wickets per Test and six Tests per year, he could well end up with 400 wickets.

He is no Shane Warne, but then nobody is. Still, Kaneria is potentially a great bowler. His numbers (an average of 34.04 and strike rate of 67.9) stand up well against Pakistan’s other leggies; an accomplished fraternity by any standards. Abdul Qadir took 236 Test wickets at an average of 32.80 and a strike rate of 72.5. Mushtaq Ahmed had 185 at 32.97 and 67.7, and Intikhab Alam, the first Pakistani wrist-spinner to go past 100 Test wickets, took 125 at 35.95 and 83.7.

Although Kaneria has done exceptionally well against Bangladesh (34 wickets at an average of 16.41 and strike rate of 36.1), he has succeeded against all the frontline teams as well. His Man-of-the-Match awards have come against South Africa, Sri Lanka, and West Indies, in addition to Bangladesh. During Pakistan’s 2005 series in India that was drawn 1-1, he performed better than his revered Indian counterpart Anil Kumble.

Kaneria’s assets include a highly effective googly, an accurate stock ball, and the will to strike back after coming in for some stick. Nevertheless, despite his ability and success, we are still left with a sense that he has not lived up to his promise. There is a feeling that he has not continued to grow as a bowler (he still cannot bowl a flipper, for instance), but to be fair, unimaginative selection is also to blame. With a respectable limited-overs record in domestic English and Pakistan cricket, he deserves greater opportunities in ODIs and Twenty20s. But in nine years of international cricket, he has played only 18 ODIs and not a single Twenty20 international for Pakistan.

Kaneria’s poor batting and fielding are cited as unacceptable limited-overs liabilities, but Saeed Ajmal, a tight spinner who is no better at batting and fielding than Kaneria, has shown you can be effective in limited-overs cricket on the basis of spin alone. The greater barrier is the presence of Shahid Afridi, a transformed wrist-spinner who these days can do no wrong. In the 1920s and 30s, Clarie Grimmett and Bill O’Reilly wreaked havoc as an Australian wrist-spinning partnership, but these days it is sacrilegious to suggest that you play two wrist spinners together. So long as this stale mindset prevails, Kaneria is unlikely to play ODIs or Twenty20s for Pakistan.

He is certainly the best wrist-spinner in Test cricket today, although that isn’t saying much. His natural comparison is with Qadir, but he lacks Qadir’s intensity and repertoire, and has yet to rip through an innings the way Qadir did on a few memorable occasions. Unlike Qadir, he has not mastered the art of flighting the ball and don’t expect him to bowl the ball of the century, because unlike Warne, he cannot get serious turn from balls pitching outside leg.

The flip side of this argument, of course, is that if you just fall short in comparison to the likes of Qadir and Warne, you’re really not doing too badly. Bhagwat Chandrasekhar, Qadir, and Warne, along with Grimmett and O’Reilly, are five wrist-spinners who have made it into Christopher Martin-Jenkins’s ranking of the top 100 cricketers of all time. Will a similar compilation in later years find room for Kaneria? If he can learn one or two more tricks, it just might.

	Andrew Strauss has been positive with the bat and his captaincy © PA Photos

Maybe one day we will look back on the South Africa v England ODI series and think “This was where it all began.” We probably won't, of course, but should England win the 2011 World Cup, the roots will be traceable back to South Africa 2009.

They will not be the best team in the world by then, but it is entirely possible to win the World Cup without being the best team in the tournament, as India showed in 1983, by being the best on the day - several times, if need be. That's the nature of tournament play. And what England have managed, when the weather allowed, is to beat a superior team by being better on a couple of days.

As against Australia during the Ashes, they grabbed hold of some key moments and never let go. It is not the holding on that is the difficult part, though, so much as the creating of key moments to grab. The difference about England in this series is that they now have a number of players capable of doing it.

Kevin Pietersen is one, according to past experience, and so is Fred Flintoff if he's ever fit enough to play, but neither of them made any contribution at all, whether or not they were physically present, so we can now see Jimmy Anderson, Stuart Broad, Eoin Morgan, Paul Collingwood and even Tim Bresnan as blokes who can play a momentum-grabbing innings or bowl a critical spell, whether wicket-taking or strangling, and in Strauss see a captain with the acumen to think on the hop and capitalise on opportunities.

Few previous England one-day captains would have had the gumption first to bring Anderson back in the 21st over at Port Elizabeth and then to bowl him out rather than holding an over or two in reserve. Most of Strauss's predecessors would have carried on fiddling around with lesser bowlers for another ten or twelve overs, by which time the middle order could easily have recovered some equilibrium and South Africa gone on to make 211/9, sub-par but a score which England would probably have found challenging.

His batting is still pretty hit or miss by international standards but it sets a moral example to the team. If the skipper is prepared to push himself to play more aggressively than he is naturally comfortable with, the rest of them have no excuse to hang back, and one can sense the feeling of freedom as the middle order come out to bat.

Because of Strauss's leadership, England are now playing optimistic one-day cricket: they have no idea whether they are going to win the next game but they will give it a decent shot because – at last – they believe in themselves.

This does not make England a team to be feared in one-day cricket. They still deservedly inhabit the lower parts of the ranking table, and will very likely lose a lot of games as well as winning some. But long-suffering fans of the team can, with any luck at least, now sit down to watch an ODI without that awful foreboding that it is all going to go horribly wrong over the next two or three hours and can even expect England to provide some of the day's entertainment rather than just be the stooges for an exhibition by a team which really knows what it is doing.

It is only a start, but if things go on like this, Andrew Strauss may yet be remembered as the captain who made a sought-after designer handbag out of the sow's ear of England's one-day team.

	In the seven Tests in which he opened, Shoaib Malik averaged 42.60 © AFP

The usual answer is that he doesn’t want to, but that is hardly good enough. After all, he’s an experienced professional. He has ability, depth, and a clever cricketing head. He can look opponents in the eye. Most important, he is playing in a team that has not found a successful opening pair in over a decade. Pakistan’s opening troubles have become so entrenched that the team mentally reduces itself to 10 for 2 even before the start of an innings.

If there is anything this team needs, it is an opener with a steady bat, and Malik has one. Out of 27 Tests played so far, he has opened the batting in seven, for an average of 42.60 in the opening slot that is a cut above his overall Test average of 37.57. Nor are these inflated figures: Malik has opened only against authentic opposition, including West Indies, England, India and Sri Lanka. His highest Test score of 148 not out was made as an opener in a defiant fourth innings against Sri Lanka in Colombo. Of the seven Tests in which Malik has opened, Pakistan have won three, drawn four, and never lost. Admittedly, a span of seven Tests is not much of a trend, but at the very least it is a good omen.

In ODIs too, Malik has fared better as an opener than lower down. Of his 167 ODI innings, 15 have been as an opener, with an average of 37.35 that compares favourably with his overall ODI batting average of 34.76. On three occasions he has opened against an associate nation, but the other matches have been against the likes of India, England, Sri Lanka, South Africa and New Zealand. Of his seven ODI hundreds, two have come as an opener (against New Zealand and India).

Indeed, Malik’s batting average as a Test opener is superior to the several other openers Pakistan have tried in the last few years, including Imran Farhat (32.26 from 28 Tests), Salman Butt (29.23 from 22 Tests), Taufeeq Umar (39.29 from 25 Tests), Khurram Manzoor (27.66 from six Tests), and Kamran Akmal (35.77 from six Tests).

And why else is he in the team, anyway? With Saeed Ajmal in the side, Malik’s offspin is redundant. Even if Ajmal gets replaced with Danish Kaneria for the Wellington Test, Malik’s spin will only be a back-up option.

On the other hand, here we are waking up with great anticipation at unearthly hours, only to find Pakistan with tormenting scorelines like 6 for 2. There is a gaping vacuum here and Malik should be man enough to fill it. He has been included in the team primarily as a batsman. It is only logical that he be used in the spot where not only has he performed the best, but also where his team needs him the most.

	Simon Taufel made some pretty tight calls that were vindicated under closer scrutiny © Getty Images

Prompted by a thoughtful email from a loyal Different Strokes reader, Jamie Droney, I thought it might be a good time to further explore the issue of the video referral system in relation to neutral umpires. I touched on this topic in my previous blog piece and the first Test at the Gabba proved to be a fascinating insight into the tactics and horrendously poor decisions made by the players. The umpires emerged with enhanced reputations, by and large. In fact, around the world this weekend, umpires had a pretty good time of it overall. Simon Taufel (New Zealand vs Pakistan) and Rod Tucker (South Africa vs England) made some pretty tight calls that were vindicated under closer scrutiny.

Put bluntly, the way I see it, with the new referral system, there is no more need for neutral umpires, if ever there was a need in the first place. I’ve never subscribed to the theory that umpires were ever biased on a patriotic basis. Perhaps there were perceptions that certain umpires had ‘issues’ with particular teams or individuals and this may have created tensions that the ICC tried to resolve with neutral umpires. It clearly did not work.

For example, both Sri Lanka and Pakistan seemed to be uncomfortable with Darrell Hair. Likewise, India expressed reservations about Steve Bucknor. Neither of these problems would have been satisfactorily resolved with the neutral umpire solution anyway. So what’s the point?

I think it far better to just work on improving umpiring standards and rewarding the best umpires. That way, if some umpires are constantly being complained about, the ICC can investigate the reasons why and then decide if it is indeed a case of poor umpiring or a relationship/personality clash that needs to be addressed.

The basic question is: do we really think that umpires are biased towards their own country? Whatever the answer, the video referral system makes that question now redundant. If YES, umpires can no longer afford to favour their home country because it will soon show up in overturned video decisions. If NO, then why bother with neutral umpires at all? Keep giving the best umpires the best fixtures, even if it’s in their home country. The video replay statistics should ensure that any crooked umpires will soon find themselves out of a job.

Why should the best umpires never be allowed the privilege of umpiring Test cricket in their home countries? We’ll end up losing good talent if we don’t allow the Dars, Taufels and Doctroves to spend a bit more time on home soil (not that Aleem Dar has much opportunity to do that until they resume playing cricket in Pakistan again). Peter Willey, an excellent umpire and an experienced former Test cricketer (surely that is not a coincidence?), has already voted with his feet, choosing to leave the flock rather than forever live out of a suitcase, far from his home in the Midlands.

I’m still struggling to understand the ICC’s logic when it comes to the neutral umpire theory, especially in ODI cricket. Are umpires biased or not? Simple question - how does having one home umpire and one foreign umpire adequately answer it? Either we believe that home umpires cannot be trusted or we believe in their absolute impartiality. Whichever theory you subscribe to, it doesn’t make sense to have a split team. Is the home umpire less likely to ‘cheat’ if he is partnered by a foreign colleague? Perhaps it is a purely financial decision, saving a few airfares. That seems an unlikely answer.

Now that we’ve got to learn to live with the video referral era, let’s judge umpires on their pure decision-making abilities. They simply can’t afford to be biased because their very careers will depend on their integrity. As my friend so eloquently put it - “I'd rather face the risk of a top umpire destroying his career by being biased in a match than face the risk of a less skilled umpire making a complete balls-up of a match, but doing so in an absolutely impartial manner”.

Speaking of a ‘balls-up’, I bet Chris Gayle’s team-mates must be hoping that he’ll be a little bit less selfish in Adelaide this week. Wasting a referral on lbws as plumb as his were smacks of a selfishness that does not befit a captain’s honour. Even a biased umpire would find it hard to overturn those decisions!