Praveen Kumar will run through brick walls for his captain © AFP

Dear Mr Strauss and Mr Dhoni,

Thank you for my birthday present of an excellent Test match at Lord's. It was very kind of you to give me such a lavish gift, which I was able to share with my good friend Bharat, a gentleman originally from Hyderabad who now runs a research lab in Pennsylvania and has said that he will be in the Warner Stand for England-India Tests at Lord's until either one of us is too decrepit to manage it. Even though he didn't care for the result as much as I did, he too says that it was a very enjoyable match.

I particularly appreciated your arranging that two of my favourite batsmen should score centuries.

The one by Kevin Pietersen was very unexpected. Not so much that he got one – I've seen him get several before – but the way he got it was most unusual. I hadn't known that he had it in him to play so carefully for so long. He often goes slowly for the first three-quarters of an hour or so, during which time he usually gets the chance to have a look at most of the main bowlers before deciding how he is going to approach the serious business of destroying them, but I've never before seen him play himself in until he reaches 130.

Of course the main reason I like watching him is his power to devastate bowling attacks, and I don't really want to see him block, leave, prod and nudge for hours on end; however, it is very gratifying to know that he can do it when that is what the situation and the quality of the bowling demand. We all know he wants to be the world's No. 1 batsman, and with this innings he has taken a giant step towards realising his ambition one day.

And then there was Rahul Dravid's hundred. He has always been my favourite among the phalanx of marvellous batsmen India have had these last 15 years or so, and this was a classic example of why. His batting is wonderfully serene and effortlessly economical. Without any fuss, he calmly treats every ball with appropriate respect, good ones defended or left, bad ones gently dismissed towards the boundary. You hardly ever see him hurried into a shot, even by the fastest bowlers, and he plays late enough to incur library fines. How reassuring it must be for his teammates when they are under pressure to see him contentedly grazing runs out there in the middle.

You also gave me a new hero to watch out for in the future.

Praveen Kumar looks like the kind of cricketer Nasser Hussain once described as being prepared to run through brick walls for his captain, and thus a captain's dream. When one of your main bowlers breaks down mid-match, the others have to shoulder more of the burden to make up for it. In England's first innings, Harbhajan Singh and Ishant Sharma with their combined 130 Tests conspicuously failed to take up any of the slack whereas Praveen the Lionheart, a young man in only his fourth match, performed titanically.

Pietersen was the only one of England's strong middle order who succeeded in preventing him from getting them out, and even KP did not find him easy to cope with. He may not be quick and he may be pretty much cannon fodder if the ball won't swing for him, but when it does move around, his lack of pace is irrelevant.The England backroom staff are going to have to do some very minute examination of the videos to see if there is any reasonable way of detecting which way a given delivery is likely to swing, but I doubt they will come up with anything helpful. Ian Bell seems in particular need of assistance: even though he managed to get 45 runs, he was completely at sea when Praveen was bowling to him.

And Praveen also batted appropriately in both innings. He is obviously not very good, so chancing his arm with a few lusty blows to try and boot the total over the crossbar of the follow-on target was a perfectly reasonable approach in the first innings. Second time around, he did his best to hang around for Suresh Raina by dead-batting deliveries. It didn't work for very long, but at least he was doing what the team wanted him to do, unlike Harbhajan's ridiculous skyer. (Remembering the little contretemps Matt Prior's bat had with a dressing room window earlier this season, I was rather expecting to hear that Mr Dhoni had had to go down and apologise to the MCC members who were hurt when they had a spin bowler dropped on them from the balcony after he returned to the dressing room.)

Gentlemen, I could go on for a lot longer about the various delightful nuggets I found in my present but you no doubt have practice to supervise and fitness reports to digest before you pick your teams for Trent Bridge so I'll just leave it at those three highlights.

Thanks again,

Michael

Matthew Hayden's self-belief is his standout feature © Indian Premier League

Matthew Hayden has come out of retirement to sign up with Brisbane Heat in the Big Bash League. My first reaction was ...’gosh, not sure how to react!’ The Hayden Way (as his company is called) is a brand that clearly trades on his reputation for being tough and uncompromising, winning at all costs. Wonder how history and hindsight will judge this reincarnation?

I've known Matt since we were both young men, both of us trying to break into First Grade cricket in Brisbane. I was a couple of years senior to him and had already played for the first team when he burst on to the scene and "announced himself". And I mean, announced himself. Whereas my goals, in keeping with my talent, were fairly modest, Matt suffered from no such inferiority complex. Blessed with enormous self-confidence, a powerful physique and a work ethic to match, I watched this young pup write his own autobiography in his mind and then fulfill it. It was quite a bizarre way to live the dream - he wrote the script, convinced himself that it was his destiny and, despite many who doubted him, went on to live the dream.

Early doors, I must confess that I feared for this perceived arrogance. As the runs piled up, after he predicted they would, that fear grew into a kind of morbid admiration. I realised soon enough that his self-belief wasn't so much arrogance as utter confidence in himself. I shared too many dressing rooms with him early in his career to put it down to a fluke. The guy was just on a different planet when it came to making bold statements about scoring big runs and then backing it up in totally emphatic fashion. When he returned to the dressing room to our congratulations, his reaction suggested there was no relief or sense of vindication in his own mind. It was more like a sense of "well, what did you expect? I told you I'd get some today. What's so surprising about that"?

I remember taking him to see a Test Match at the Gabba in 1989. Aravinda De Silva scored a slow century and Asoka De Silva (of umpiring fame these days) batted for some time as a nightwatchman, eking out runs until he got cleaned up just before lunch. It was fairly ponderous going by today's standards but not ridiculously slow batting in the context of Test cricket at the time. Halfway through the day, Matthew got up from his seat, thanked me for the free ticket and said "this is just bull****. When I play for Australia, I'm not going to allow anyone to tie me down like this. I'm not going to sit here and watch this rubbish".

And true to his word, he rarely allowed anyone to tie him down. He might have holed out trying to break the shackles but every time he batted in Test cricket, I was reminded of this young man who had barely started playing senior club cricket, telling himself that this was "bull****". Renowned later on in his career for much more colourful language than this, he nonetheless batted in this vein throughout his career, always looking to dominate and refusing to allow the innings to drift aimlessly. It is that sort of memory that makes me hesitate about writing off this latest comeback.

I suppose at some point age will catch up with self-belief and he might make one rash statement too many. Maybe this will be his Waterloo. There will be many around the world who frowned upon the abrasive way he played the game but don't let that emotion be confused with doubting his ability to succeed at something he puts his mind to. It certainly wasn't the way I played my cricket. I did not have the talent or inclination to play the game The Hayden Way but what I did learn from him was that self-belief can be the most potent drug in sport.

There's still a little bit of me that wonders if he can pull off this latest stunt but I'm not prepared to bet against it. Yes, I wonder why he's risking his reputation at this stage to get knocked over by some fresh-faced youngsters, and, yes, I wonder if his reputation or bank balance really needs this adrenaline surge but one thing's for sure - you can be 100% convinced that Matt Hayden truly believes that Matt Hayden will score big runs. He knows no other way of thinking. That is his brand.That is The Hayden Way.

Should West Indies have been allowed a draw in Dominica? © Getty Images

In 1978, seven years after the Bangladesh War, India and Pakistan resumed cricketing ties in a three-Test series played in Pakistan. After playing out a draw in the first Test at Faisalabad, drearily in conformance with the cricketing history of the two sides, Pakistan beat India in the Lahore Test, thanks to Zaheer Abbas’ magnificent 235, and a very enterprising run-chase on the fifth day in which Pakistan scored their runs at 6.19 an over, and galloped home with 8.2 overs still left in the day. This was heartening enough for fans of Test cricket, but it was the third Test that really showcased positive Test cricket at its best.

Sitting on a 1-0 lead against their archrivals, in a series fraught with emotional and political significance, Pakistan chased down a victory target of 164 runs in a maximum of 100 minutes. At times, the asking-rate had mounted to seven an over. No matter; the Pakistan batsmen, especially Asif Iqbal and Javed Miandad scrambled singles like a pair of amphetamine-crazed ravers, drove the Indian fielders batty, and then finally, thanks to Imran Khan’s assault on Bishen Bedi’s bowling late in the game, Pakistan scampered home with an over to spare.

That was 33 years ago. Well before Twenty20 cricket had been conceptualised, and only three years after one-day cricket had staged its first World Cup. Just like India going into the Dominica Test that concluded on Sunday, Pakistan enjoyed a 1-0 lead in 1978. They could very well have shut up shop, strolled over to the victory dais, picked up their thousand-rupee cheque (I’m guessing that’s what the prize money must have been in those days), and posed for the post-series victory shots. Mushtaq Mohammad could have given us some pablum about not being disappointed, about how Sunil Gavaskar had held them up on the final day, how the Karachi pitch was a bit slow and not conducive to penetrative bowling and so on.

Instead, Pakistan chased down the runs. There was a match to be played, a contest to be engaged in. Pakistan were not the world’s No. 1 Test team; India was not one of the world’s weakest teams (they might have been one of the world’s worst fielding sides though). Rather, what made Pakistan go for victory, I suspect, was how that lot, Majid, Zaheer, Asif, Javed, Mushtaq, just played the game.

We should keep this in mind when we think about what transpired in Dominica on Sunday. The Test was called off by mutual agreement between both captains with India needing 86 runs from 15 overs after having been set a target of 180 in 47 overs. Abhinav Mukund’s first-ball duck might have put a damper on things, but M Vijay and Rahul Dravid had at least scored at three an over, and Suresh Raina had sensibly been sent up the order. But the Indian balloon deflated rapidly after his departure and, in one of the most-bizarre abandonments of a Test match I’ve ever seen in my life, India walked off with 90 deliveries still left.

There are some Indian fans out there, including me, who are still surprised that India agreed to call off the 1979 Oval Test with one ball left and nine required to win. They, and I, will certainly never understand the shutting up of shop against West Indies on Sunday.

To be a true champion it is not enough that one sit on top of a numerical ladder of rankings and points; it is necessary the putative champion show the desire and the ability to respond to challenges, to find a way to transcend limitations and rise to the top of the game. This Indian Test team is certainly one of the most consistent in Indian cricket history and MS Dhoni is certainly one of its shrewdest captains. But the Dominica result shows that there is a long way to go before it can attain the status of champions. For the spirit of Melbourne 1986 - when India scored at 2.36 runs an over while chasing 126 on the final day and had bad weather force a draw - still lives on apparently, and the desire and wherewithal to force a win when not everything is in ones’ favour still seems missing.

As for Test cricket, in such dire times, you need better guardians.

Should anyone have been surprised by Alastair Cook's one-day form against Sri Lanka? © Getty Images

Mission accomplished, and then some. Rarely has a newly-appointed England captain achieved so much in his first series in charge. Not only did the team beat the World Cup runners-up 3-2, but he was the outstanding player from either side and shattered the preconceptions with which he had been saddled. Quite something for someone people had been queueing up to denounce as an impostor.

Very few people outside the inner circles of the England management or, presumably, Alastair Cook's family and friends had been enthusiastic about his appointment.

Some were openly hostile and pointed to his career ODI strike-rate as proof that he was not and could not be an effective opening batsman in limited-over cricket. Following the disappointing World Cup campaign, the last thing that the ODI squad needed was a lame duck captain who had clearly only been given the job so that he could gain some captaincy experience before taking the reins of the Test side. I had considerable sympathy with that view, but was prepared to wait and see.

I had had exactly the same reservations about the appointment of Andrew Strauss two years ago, saying that he should not be allowed within a hundred miles of a limited-over team. If anyone had then tried to tell me that Strauss would win a Man-of-the-Match award for his batting in a World Cup match in which Sachin Tendulkar scored a typically-classy hundred, I'd have laughed myself silly. As we all now know, though, he did precisely that. It may have been his only good innings in 2011, but he had played quite a number of similar ones during 2010, thus affording me several fine dinners of roast words with all the trimmings.

If Strauss could expand his game that dramatically, it would have been daft to assume that Cook was incapable of doing the same. He at least deserved a chance to show what he could do.

He failed at the Oval. At Headingley, 48 off 52 balls was encouraging even though the game was resoundingly lost. Then came Lord's, where his innings did a lot to convince me.

The write-ups the following day made much of his slow scoring in the first half of his innings, citing it as evidence that he was still basically the plodder he was suspected of being, but that was not the innings I'd seen.

There were indeed a lot of dot balls, but there are several ways in which a dot can occur. If Cook were plodding, they would indicate blocks and leaves, but in reality a large number of them were balls which had been hit powerfully to fielders or which he had attempted to heave over the boundary but had missed completely. This was not a man trying to hang around but one who was trying very hard – though failing – to get on with it as fast as possible.

The sensible criticism of his play was that it was unwise: with Kevin Pietersen going well at the other end, Cook might well have done better to nudge and nurdle the singles to get off strike. I suspect, though, that he was playing to his critics rather than properly playing the situation. Strike-rotation would not have convinced anyone that he had the power game people thought he lacked: they wanted to see him slogging, so that's what he attempted to give them.

The difference in the second half of his Lord's effort was not that he changed his approach but that he started to connect with his big shots – and then the runs flowed freely. As they then did at Trent Bridge and Old Trafford, with the result that it will be a long time before anyone again questions his suitability for the role of ODI opener.

The thing is, the many with low expectations of him (including me) had been guilty of ignoring the evidence that had been there for all to see.

His ODI record was pretty old. He had been dropped, rightly, in 2008 because his scoring-rate of 68.15 was pathetic.

But he was then 23 years old, still a relative baby in international terms and it was rather early for an ambitious young man to accept that his ODI career was over. So he went back to Essex and worked on his limited-over game.

In 2009, he went to The Oval for a Twenty20 match against Surrey and hit 100 not out off 57 balls. In the 2010 Friend Provident t20, he hit 51 off 36 against Kent, 73 off 53 against Gloucestershire, and 63 off 44 against Sussex. In the domestic 40-over tournament, he hit centuries in both 2009 (against Hampshire) and 2010 (against Yorkshire), and a 96 this year against Nottinghamshire, all at strike-rates in the 90s or higher. These are not the performances of a plodder.

Also last year, he stood in for Strauss as both opener and captain for England's ODI series in Bangladesh, where he scored 156 runs in three innings at a strike rate of 90.69, again hardly evidence of plodding.

Why did we all fail to register any of this and continue to pigeonhole him as a Test-only classicist?

Perhaps because Team England did not see fit to bring him back on a regular basis. How many comments on his recent appointment, for instance, made reference to the fact that he was not in the World Cup squad?

The trouble with that superficial analysis is that it ignored a pretty significant question: whose place should he have had? Pietersen's? Collingwood's? Go back to that Bangladesh series, though, and the answer makes everything plain: his slot was Strauss', and it made no more sense to pick him as well as Strauss as it would have done to pick two wicketkeepers in the XI.

And then there was his Test play: his marathon performances in the winter's Ashes were models of patience and discipline, the complete antithesis of Powerplay batting. For those with eyes to see, though, there were hints to pick up. After all, it's not as though it's unknown for class players to be highly methodical in Test cricket while being free scorers in the shorter forms - Jacques Kallis and Shiv Chanderpaul to name but two.

Cook may not have blazed away at Brisbane, but the attacking shots he did play were a lot more natural-looking than they had been in previous years. I noticed that his knee was bending when he drove, making for a more-flowing as well as a more-powerful shot, but I failed to make the connection.

This is why we have selectors and a continuous England team management, of course. It's now obvious that they have been carefully monitoring and grooming Cook for his new role for a good couple of years and have known precisely what they were up to.

The moral is that those of us who have been astonished by Cook's performances against Sri Lanka have only got ourselves to blame.