Why is it that a batsman who steals (cheats) an extra metre instantly becomes the "poor victim" if the bowler runs him out in his delivery stride? © International Cricket Council

As Gideon Haigh so eloquently put it in his most recent Cricinfo piece, the Australian sporting public are apparently betrayed and shocked by recent revelations about their champion rugby league team's salary cap rort. Well, perhaps only those who actually care about rugby league are actually shocked. But amongst that demographic, there is almost a universal sense of betrayal and shock, a universality that has been noticeably lacking in recent years when women were allegedly sexually assaulted or treated as group sex playthings by half a rugby league team. It's a measure of the morality of a sport when it feels more betrayed by salary cap cheating than the sense of shame that comes with numerous examples of poor behaviour where real people actually get hurt sometimes.

But for some reason, the issue of systemic 'cheating' carries with it a sense of deep outrage. As I discussed in my most recent post, the issue of double standards is a troublesome beast that simply won't go away and die quietly in peace. The ICC World Twenty20 in the West Indies is about to showcase another curious aspect of cricket's inconsistency that would surely confuse anyone trying to make sense of the rules. I refer to the 'Mankad' law.

Fairly recently, the laws of cricket were amended to ensure that the non-striker could virtually cheat at will. He can steal a metre or two and be almost immune from being run-out by the bowler. If the bowler had the temerity to actually effect a 'Mankad dismissal', it would generally be seen as a churlish and mean-spirited thing to do. The fielding captain would almost be obliged to call the poor batsman back.

Yet, for a sport that relies on the third umpire to make decisions based on millimetres and split video frames, it is utterly inconsistent to allow the non-striker to gain an advantage of this magnitude. Why is it that a batsman who steals (cheats) an extra metre instantly becomes the "poor victim" if the bowler runs him out in his delivery stride? Can this be the same game where the third umpire will watch endless replays to see if a run-out decision can be decided by the narrowest of margins? Can this be the same game where every possible camera angle will be used to decide if the boundary fielder touched the rope with any part of his body in contact with the ball?

In T20 cricket especially, if a bowler even cuts the popping crease with the mere shadow of his boot, he gets penalised one run and a free hit next ball. In a shortened game, a genuine mistake which probably does not even give the bowler any real advantage (unless he is deliberately bowling no-balls and that is likely to be a blatant breach anyway), a free hit can often be the difference between winning and losing. That's how tight cricket can be. And yet, the lawmakers have somehow deemed it appropriate to allow the non-striker to virtually back up as far as he wants so he can then get the benefit of the doubt if there's a run-out decision that has to be decided by an inconclusive split video frame.

Perhaps in a bygone era when non-strikers gently strolled forward as the bowler delivered the ball and no unfair advantage was sought, the bowler whipping off the bails was probably seen as a bit beyond the pale. But now, in a clinically professional environment where it's the 'one percenters' that determine success or failure, it seems an incredible oversight to allow only one aspect of the game to effectively steal territory that is ruthlessly policed in every other sphere. If batsmen are doing this deliberately, especially in a situation where it's the last ball of the match and the batting team needs to scramble one or two runs to win the game, is this not tantamount to cheating? If you need two to win and the full length ball gets choked out to long-on/long-off, it's almost impossible to stop the non-striker getting back for the second run if he's already halfway down the pitch when the batsman hits it. Athletes like AB De Villiers, Michael Clarke, Kieron Pollard and MS Dhoni would back themselves every time to beat the ball home if they had that sort of advantage.

If cricket is going to be fair dinkum about consistent rulings, this anomaly needs to be addressed. Just watch the non-strikers in these next few weeks and freeze the point at which the ball is delivered. It's not really cheating because the law says you can do it but it's an inconsistency that makes no sense in a sport that is often decided by the smallest of margins. Go figure.....

	How much of the BCCI's fortunes have flowed back into local development schemes for cricket? © PA photos

India, we are told, is the world's richest cricketing nation. I presume the wealth in question has something to do with its "burgeoning middle-class", the IPL, and something called TRPs. But what of the cricketing wealth in India? How does the Indian balance-sheet stack up on that account?

Years ago, when comparisons between "blue-collar Bankstown boy" Steve Waugh, and "Maharajah Snooty" Sourav Ganguly were common (and invariably unfavorably inclined away from the Indian captain), I was struck by the absurdity of it all. Ganguly might have grown up in a household with hired help (an unimaginable luxury in the Waugh household, I'm sure) but in cricketing terms he was a pauper when it came to Waugh. I do not doubt for a second that Captain Courageous grew up with access to an established, well-organized, cricketing structure, to cricket nets provided by the local council, to high-quality equipment, and all of the rest. And I'm willing to wager good money that Ganguly's access to anything similar was far more attenuated. When it came to cricketing riches, Steve Waugh was the true millionaire.

In 2000, shortly after I moved to Australia, I was asked by an office-mate (and future team-mate) whether I'd like "a net". A few days later, I was staggered to find out that we could just stroll up with a kitbag and lay claim to a pair of cricket nets at the Waverley Oval. We batted and bowled for over an hour, and repeated the process over the next few weeks as the suburban cricket season started up.

There never seemed to be a shortage of cricket nets all over Sydney; access was simple and free. Most city councils featured a large and beautiful oval (Bankstown has one; I saw a limited overs game there between New South Wales and Queensland). When we wanted to get fancy, we booked a net at the SCG (the practice facilities for which featured 12 nets with playing surfaces varying in bounce and pace). (The major cricketing grounds were, of course, comfortable more often than not, and spending a day at them was the furthest thing from an imposition).

My reaction to this cornucopia of cricketing affordances was one of unbridled amazement. Precisely how easy was it in this country to play cricket, to nurture it, to foster its future growth? Very, it seemed to me. Of course, this assessment grossly understates the hard work and the effort put into the creation of such an environment. And it also understates the financial backing for the creation of such cricketing nurseries. Be that as it may, the final evidence was there for all to see. Cricket had been woven into daily life; playing and practicing the game was made easy and pleasurable.

Which finally, brings me back to India. After three years of the IPL, and several more years of the financial domination of the BCCI, how much richer in cricketing terms is India? How much of the BCCI's fortunes have flowed back into local development schemes for cricket? Do we have a cricket net in each major urban neighborhood, or perhaps BCCI-subsidized cricket nets at schools and colleges? I know that space and population constraints in India are severe, and do not allow for a direct comparison with countries like Australia. But I'm still genuinely curious. Besides the attention paid to endeavors like sponsoring the India A tours, or age-group tournaments, will the BCCI ever take a crack at upgrading cricket facilities across the country so that the next generation of cricketers can grow up with ready access to the game?

If and when that happens, the descriptions of the cricketing wealth will ring a little truer and displace the current sensation of watching the relentless accumulation of non-cricketing wealth by a select few. That includes those domestic players lucky enough to be selected for an IPL-paypacket. The fortunes of these players have certainly improved, but that does not diminish the need for the creation of a cricket environment that can nurture the next generation of Indian cricket.

It has been good to get back to watching cricket live, even if it was perishingly cold for the first two days. It would be pleasant to record that it was also a fine match, but one cannot have everything, so a few random reflections will have to suffice.

I arrived for the summer's second day at Lord's just as a Middlesex wicket fell. As is the modern way, out trotted the Glamorgan twelfth man with the drinks for the fielders. Usually the drinks waiter is a lowly young hopeful but on this occasion it was the former Test player and captain of the county, Robert Croft. It was a poignant reminder of the passage of time, of how the end of a lengthy career can often resemble its beginning.

After sixteen years of being picked whenever fit and available, Croft is no longer Glamorgan's number one spinner, a title which has now devolved on this year's beneficiary Dean Cosker. Croft is back to where he started, hoping that conditions will favour him getting picked – which may well depend on who is injured and who isn't, or who has been called up for England duty.

This is part of the attraction of watching domestic cricket: you get to see the whole story of a career, the rise through the ranks, a peak possibly involving international recognition, and then the gradual decline and fade before more or less voluntary retirement.

Some take offence at being dropped and retire almost immediately, others recognise that you are a very long time retired and seek to hang on for as long as possible: we will find out over the next few months how Crofty will react to this early portent.

At the other end of their careers are Middlesex's Sam Robson and Adam London. Both made their championship debuts last season but neither would have been playing if it were not for the IPL, which has stolen Owais Shah and Eoin Morgan.

Last season, both Robson and London made their maiden first-class centuries but between them they have managed 92 runs in eight innings so far this season. With Scott Newman, the experienced opener signed from Surrey over the winter, having scored only 16 in four attempts, the Middlesex batting has basically failed so far, leading to two comprehensive losses.

Unsurprisingly, then, Middlesex members could be heard grumbling all round the ground. Traditionalists expostulated about Shah and Morgan's lack of loyalty while pragmatists could not blame the players for seeking to maximise their incomes but would happily have shot Lalit Modi for his selfish scheduling.

Of course, the real problem is that Middlesex's bench strength is more like bench weakness. While one does not expect stand-in batsmen to produce double centuries, it should be taken for granted that they will at least reach double figures. The only comfort to be taken from the youngsters' failures is that Robson was playing for Australia's U-19 team a couple of years ago and if he's representative of the cream of new Australian cricketers, England will be regaining and then holding the Ashes for many years once we've got over the pain of losing them again this coming winter.

Though we won't be losing them if Steve Finn has his way. His opening spell on the first day was extraordinarily impressive to those who had watched him last year. In 2009, he could bowl good balls but interspersed them with regular loose deliveries of uncertain direction, and he tired easily. This time, he opened with eight overs of superbly disciplined bowling, just about every ball on the stumps and on an unhittable length. That he got only one wicket was more down to ill fortune than any great competence on the parts of Powell and Rees. Finn at least has used his winter profitably.

	The county championship is underway © PA photos

This is the first year that the IPL has been available on a channel in my satellite package, and it has been fun to watch it. It has also been enlightening: I have learned that for me, watching cricket is essentially partisan.

If England, Yorkshire or Middlesex are playing, then I am already hooked and know which side I want to win (Yorks to beat Middx when they meet). If Surrey or Australia are playing, then I know which side I want to lose. If anyone else is playing I generally want the result which will be of most benefit to one of the sides I actually support - although if it's international cricket, I'm usually in favour of West Indies or Pakistan with the proviso that I don't want the result which will put England out of the tournament.

But none of those considerations apply when I watch an IPL game. It makes no difference to any of my teams whether Delhi beat Chennai or Bangalore lose to Kolkata - except perhaps in some roundabout way involving the availability of players when the Champions League is on.

This is not a criticism of the IPL, just a recognition that in my psyche Mumbai v Rajasthan is of less emotional significance then even Derbyshire v Northants, two counties to which I am basically indifferent. When watching the counties play, I can at least do some scouting for potential England players among the supporting cast of players I know little about, but in the IPL, the support cast are up-and-coming Indians and I simply don't have enough time or interest to maintain a mental log of potential Indian internationals as well as English ones.

Of course I can get caught up in the drama of a close finish, and I can easily appreciate a virtuoso display by a master of the game, but a lot of cricket involves neither a maestro nor much in the way of tension, so I need to find something else to hang my hopes on.

I need to hope for something from the next ball. To put it crudely, if my side is batting I want a boundary (or simple survival in the latter stages of a Test which needs saving), and if we're bowling, I want a wicket. And if I couldn't care less which happens, then my attention can quite easily wander; if there is something more interesting to watch on another channel or something more interesting to do, I don't feel any regret about turning the cricket off.

Sport is at one level simply a display of athleticism and in a yonks-ago post, Michael Jeh effectively said that display is why he watches cricket – so he can watch neutral games with just as much enjoyment as any. But for me, sport is about conflict and competition, and watching it is about taking sides, about being elated or depressed as fortunes swing.

With the IPL, I find that all I want to do is watch certain players. If an English player is on show, I want him to succeed personally; I always enjoy seeing Dwayne Bravo, Anil Kumble or Ross Taylor doing well and Yuvraj Singh or Jacques Kallis doing badly (not that I've been much rewarded for that latter hope). But cricket is a team game, and if you're only watching a few individuals, you are not appreciating the whole event.

There may be less immediate action and it isn't on the telly, but now the county championship has started I've got cricket to get my teeth into – and, next week, to go and watch. So it's thanks very much to the IPL for filling in some dead time, but now the real thing is underway....

Now that the IPL is on (and on and on) there is, as might be expected, plenty of talk about big-hitting, and especially talk of the biggest hits and hitters. Indeed, to hear IPL commentators (and some of its fans) go on, one might think that six-hitting was invented by the IPL. But my point here is not to complain about IPL coverage; there are plenty of folks already engaged in that worthwhile task. Instead, I'd like to talk about the biggest hitting I've ever seen, which funnily enough, didn't happen in the IPL. But it didn't happen in a Test or a one-day international either.

Because what I mean by big hitting here is not necessarily an objective assessment of the distance covered by a cricket ball after it left a batsman's blade. Rather, my assessment of the biggest hitting of all is very much a subjective notion, a reaction to the awe-inspiring power that I was able to bear close witness to. I've seen Kapil, Richards, Botham on television; their hitting was some of the most brutal ever, but there was nothing quite like this spectacle, just because one could hear the bat, hear the sound of the ball's trajectory, and track its flight clearly. And it was made all the more impressive by the context of the game.

Permit me then, to set the stage. In my last post I had written about my cricket watching experiences during my university days. In those days, the trials for the college cricket team were a major event on the sporting calendar. Many folks tried their hand; a select few made it through. Those rejected sometimes took it with grace, sometimes with resentment, mutterings about nepotism, and sometimes with an ostrich-like denial of their lack of playing ability.

At the end of such one trial, when the smoke had cleared, a happy band of twenty or so players had advanced to the next stage, and a larger bunch of young lads were left disappointed. But there was a chance at partial redemption, at partial confirmation of one's sporting self-esteem; the intra-departmental tournament was around the corner.

The hero of my story, a young man whose name I can remember as Manish, decided the only way to deal with the disappointment of his rejection from the cricket team was to let the coach know just how bad his bowlers were and how faulty the process of team selection at the trials had been. To this end, he decided (I'm making these intentions up; they are the only rational explanation for what followed) to direct his particular ire at the bowlers who played in the tourney.

In the matches that followed, in each and every single game, we were treated to an amazing display of power-hitting. (The games were 40-overs a side; I do not remember if he ever scored a century but there were definitely a string of fifties produced). I was called out to watch the first time he went on a rampage and thereafter, every time we heard Manish was on strike, the crowds grew at the boundary edge. The sixes (and there were many in each innings) were giant hits; they lacked neither elevation nor distance. The sound of bat and ball conjured up visions of cracking whips and gunfire. A diligent chiropractor could have made a killing treating all the whiplashed necks at the ground.

Manish's resentment over his lack of selection was a well-known fact amongst those who watched. This gave his hitting a particularly distinctive flavor: every shot was a defiant flip of the bird at the selection panel, who were invariably spectators at the game.

The pleasures of watching cricket at close range are many and varied; while visual and aural proximity can render the action clearer and more dynamic, a true connection to the action in the middle, one that emphasizes its particulars, arises from knowledge of the context of the game. The knowledge of the cricketing history of nations has always enhanced the serious spectator's experience of Test cricket. In this case, knowledge of the (probable) psychological context made one young man's actions appear larger than life. The passage of time has ensured that his feats have only grown in my mind. They are still bigger than any DLF Maximum out there.