From James Adams-Pace, United Kingdom

Clearly the better choice © Getty Images

The media coverage of England’s team selection for the Test series against Sri Lanka went a long way towards proving that Edward Eggleston’s assertion about journalism is correct: it is “organised gossip”. For weeks, a number of journalists argued Ravi Bopara should be chosen to replace Paul Collingwood in England’s Test team.

It was argued that, as a batsman of supreme potential, Bopara should be given another chance to prove his worth on the world stage. If not solely his batting, his above-average bowling should earn him a place, as he was seen as a like-for-like replacement for Collingwood, who had chipped in with a few medium-pace overs in the past. Indeed, if not for these reasons, then Bopara should be held up as a paragon of integrity and rewarded for his decision to stay in England and play in the County Championship, rather than slither away to the IPL and play Twenty20 cricket like Eoin Morgan.

What a surprise Sunday morning must have been, then, when Morgan was selected ahead of Bopara, leading many to claim that one innings, of 193 against Sri Lanka in the tour game, swayed the selection in Morgan’s favour. For all their rationale and grapevine whisperings, many seem to have missed three key factors that made the selection of Morgan a more appealing, and rational, proposition.

Firstly, because of the way England cricket is currently run, politics does not factor into selection: ability and form does. The England team isn’t a body that chooses players because of the bold stands they make, no matter how admirable such a stance is. The basis for selection is, and quite rightly should be, meritocratic; the best players are picked ahead of those who are not as good. When Tim Bresnan was chosen over Steve Finn for the fourth Ashes Test last winter, he was not picked because of his favourable opinions on county cricket, but because he was believed to be the better player for the MCG. The point, here, is that precedent-setting was not on the ECB’s agenda; picking the best player was.

Secondly, for those with short-term memories, Bopara does not have a favourable record for England. While he has averaged 118 against an ordinary West Indies attack, he has more recently struggled against an Australian team that will hardly go down in history as ‘great’. In the 2009 Ashes, Bopara averaged a paltry 15.00 with a highest score of 35, suggesting there was something missing from his game, preventing him from establishing himself as an international player (and this is not taking into consideration his first international series against Sri Lanka where he averaged 8.00). Ten Tests with modest returns do not help Bopara’s case.

While Morgan’s Test average is roughly the same as Bopara’s, he has played fewer Tests and has scored a century against a very good Pakistan attack in a game where England’s batting had begun to wobble. Morgan’s previous Test innings have shown greater promise than Bopara’s.

Finally, if England are a team that plan ahead, then why did everyone forget that Morgan has been the No. 6 elect for some time? Having been chosen to play against Bangladesh and Pakistan in the summer and used as the reserve batsman in the Ashes series, England have believed for a while that Morgan is the best player to replace Collingwood, and have nailed their colours to their mast since the summer. Maybe closer attention to previous squads would have this point obvious.

The selection of Morgan, then, should have been less of a surprise than it was and should be seen as more positive than has been portrayed. Indeed, for those who have deplored the ECB for setting a terrible precedent – making the County Championship seem secondary in importance to the IPL – they should instead be commending the board for sticking to a selection policy that puts merit above all else.

From Philip and Alan Sutherland, Australia

Australians do not have a great track record in watching cricket not played by their national team © Getty Images

In 1858, the talented allrounder Tom Wills was posed with something of a problem, namely, how to keep his fellow Victorian cricketers fit during the off season. The solution he helped find was the birth of a robust new sport in Australian Rules, said to be something of a mix of rugby, Gaelic football and the similar pastimes involving possum-skin balls of some of the indigenous peoples of the Western District of Victoria.

Over a century and a half since, cricket and the sport it helped spawn, Australian Rules, are uneasy bed-mates. Together, they rule the sporting landscape in Australia’s four “southern” states – Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and Western Australia. Yet, despite sharing grounds they inhabit totally different environs. In 1997, Australia’s regular free-to-air broadcaster of cricket, Channel Nine, had something of a problem too. Its problem was how to keep viewers entertained during the 40-minute Test match lunch breaks. The answer was The Cricket Show, a half-hour magazine-style programme hosted by former Australian allrounder, Victoria captain and Australian Rules footballer, Simon O’Donnell. As successful as it has been, however, perhaps The Cricket Show will ultimately tell less about the state of the game in Australia than another programme from WIN TV, a Channel Nine affiliate in Victoria – The Country Footy Show.

Of course, The Country Footy Show has nothing to do with cricket and therein lies the point. There is no country cricket show, nor will there ever be. Footy may have began partly as a means of keeping flannelled fools fit in the winter, but now cricket is more likely to be a way of keeping footballers entertained in the summer. Australia’s pre-eminent farming paper, The Weekly Times, tells a similar story. Its sporting section is packed with country football ladders, stories and statistics for six months of the year. This includes a small Legends of the Bush column which looks at prominent people and families in the country game. When the cricket season comes around, the only bit that is left is this one, small column, now converted to the bat and ball. This different reporting only reflects the different perceptions of football and cricket. The situation is similar in the rugby states of New South Wales and Queensland as well.

Football is the realm of club loyalties, whether to Melbourne FC in the AFL or South Sydney FC in the NRL and it is clubs that people are most passionate about. That cricket has survived so well Down Under has more to do with its long history of international rivalry, especially with the Ashes and in more modern times against the West Indies at their peak. How this support will transfer to a local IPL-style 20-over competition is difficult to say. This season of the IPL is not being telecast in Australia. In previous seasons, it’s unlikely to have attracted massive audiences here. Australians do not have a great track record in watching cricket not played by their national team. Only the short stuff of the Big Bash came close. To many Australians, the presence of the likes of Shane Warne in the IPL has probably more curiosity-value than anything else.

The coming season is to have two 20-over teams in both Sydney and Melbourne, a radical departure from the strictly state structure that cricket has maintained. Club loyalties in the IPL are reshaping cricket and a similar process is beginning here. We cannot simply blame the IPL, however. Our own attitudes are at least equally responsible for the changes occurring. As a young footballer from the club we support was once reported as saying, “It was nice to be involved (briefly) with cricket again – you forget how much you enjoyed it.” As cricket is dwarfed by its back-sheets son, we forget too that cricket needs space, not just for grounds and deeds, but thoughts as well. When Australians stand at a cricket match and talk footy, do we ever stop to think that the reverse, irrespective of the different time-lengths involved, hardly ever happens.

From Mrinal Kumar, United States

The only genuine pace bowler right now? © Getty Images

Lasith Malinga’s retirement from Test cricket marks yet another instance of a fast bowler’s career being curtailed by injury. Fast bowlers are a breed in steady decline, as the strains of excessive schedules take a toll on their bodies. The physical requirements of pace bowling - an endless run-up, a slinging arm, a fearful grimace at the end of it all - have not meshed well with innumerable number of matches their team plays. As bowlers look to push the speed barrier, they push their bodies beyond the limit. Brett Lee, Shoaib Akthar, Shaun Tait- the three fastest bowlers of this decade. The other similarity they share? They have all played less than 55% of their team’s Test matches since their respective debuts.

Injuries ranging from a troublesome knee to genital warts have kept the fastest men in the game on the sidelines. With Malinga the latest addition to that list, Dale Steyn stands as the only genuine fast bowler left in the world (it is too early to gauge young Kemar Roach). Steyn’s clean injury sheet can only be attributed to the excellent way he has been handled. He has been rested from several ODI series to save his fitness for the purest form of the game- Test cricket. By reducing his workload, South Africa have managed to extract the best from their premier fast bowler - the last of a dying breed.

Fast bowlers of yesteryear had significantly fewer fitness problems. Malcolm Marshall, the face of that West Indies quartet, played more than 75% of his team’s Test matches since his debut. With a schedule unclogged by a limited-overs match every three days, Marshall was able to leave his mark on history without giving up an ounce of pace. Men who try to replicate him these days, however, are met with nothing but frustration and pain- how can one expect their body to survive that type of physical exertion on such a regular basis?

The advent of Twenty20 has served the perfect arena for fast bowlers to express their art - in short, fiery bursts. This comes at the expense of the longer form, however, and one dreads to ponder upon the future of genuine pace. How long can speedsters wage the battle against this elastic schedule? It is time for the ICC to step in and breathe life into the most spirited members of the game. As Steyn hustles into the crease, ball in hand and scowl firmly entrenched on his face, hope – pray - that the ICC takes steps to save this species before it withers away.

From Matthew Davies, United Kingdom

Spinners who don’t really turn the ball have become an essential part of the game © AFP

Recently, Graeme Swann stated that spinners who don’t attempt to spin the ball should be “banished from the first-class game”. Spinners who don’t spin the ball have often been criticised, such as the criticism that fell on former England trundler Ashley Giles, especially when he was selected for the 2006-2007 Ashes instead of Monty Panesar, and the results of that series seemed to vindicate all the criticism. Yet, are spinners that don’t turn the ball really as bad as all that?

Swann may have been thinking more of finger spinners when he made his comments, but 619 Test wickets would seem to rebuke Swann’s sentiments. Anil Kumble relied little on spin, especially in later years. Daniel Vettori is another great bowler who depends more on changes of pace, flight and unrelenting accuracy, especially in the one-day game. Vettori’s Test bowling average of 33.98 might not look excellent, but it has to be remembered Vettori often bowls with not much pressure at the other end, a factor someone such as Shane Warne could always rely on when partnered with great pacemen such as Glenn McGrath and Jason Gillespie.

Yet there is some truth to be extracted from Swann’s words. It is not in the first-class game where spinners who don’t really turn the ball are most effective. It is the advent of the one-day game, and especially twenty-over cricket, that has seen them really come into their own. Looking at the 2011 World Cup, there were three spinners who stood out who do give the ball a rip: Swann himself, the legendary Muttiah Muralitharan and new boy to international cricket Imran Tahir. Yet the leading wicket-taker in the tournament was Shahid Afridi, a man who relies again more on variation than big spin. Sulieman Benn, Robin Peterson and Yuvraj Singh also took 42 wickets between them. Tillakaratne Dilshan also took eight wickets, with what was termed by many as “straight-breaks”, at just over four runs an over, and who can forget the trouble he caused Andrew Strauss in the quarter-finals?

Going back to the World Twenty20 of 2010, George Dockrell, Nikita Miller, Ray Price, Johan Botha, Vettori and David Hussey all had economy rates under six, which is very handy in that form of the game, and none of them give it a rip like Swann. Spinners who don’t really turn the ball are an effect of limited-overs cricket, and have become an essential part of the game, as shown by statistics showing their effectiveness. In a form of the game where it is paramount not to bowl loose deliveries, it doesn’t matter how much you turn the ball if you cannot find the correct length and lines or are too predictable, and this is true from the highest level of the game to the lowest. So Swann might have to wait until one-day cricket implodes in on itself before he gets his wish.

It is mostly classicists who criticise this breed of bowler, but it should be recognised that pitches are giving less and less help to spinners, especially those of the finger variety (Jim Laker himself might struggle a bit to take 19 wickets at Old Trafford nowadays), so there is less encouragement to give the ball a rip if the pitch isn’t going to aid your cause. It will take a radical change of direction if we are to see the death of non-turning spin bowlers, and we might as well encourage them while they’re around.

From Apoorv Tiwari, India

The growing number of Twenty20 matches means a Dravid masterclass becomes less frequent © AFP

Cricket has been endearing to me for a variety of reasons, its successful accommodation of two different formats for over 42 years now not being the least of them. But the introduction and subsequent success of the latest, brashest, most precipitate form of cricket, particularly the IPL, has thrown up a unique conundrum for the cricket enthusiast. We have always been comfortable with our favourite cricketers, based on our own interpretation of the game and who makes it the most watchable for us. Let’s face it, our likes and dislikes are almost invariably based on what we see, rather than statistics and numbers thrown at us every day. But when the consistency in what we watch continues to diminish in the name of variety, would we still be able to able to sustain an unwavering allegiance to players we like and dislike?

Consider for example, a Rahul Dravid fan. Someone who admires the temperament, tenacity, and doggedness that Dravid brings to the crease. If suddenly, the same fan watches his favourite player batting as though he were trying to cement his place in a Twenty20 team, while the Pollards and Pathans make merry around him, would that not force the fan to think? There will, of course, be people talking about how the Pollards are mere flashes in the pan, and that consistency of performance counts for more than anything else in sport. But the fan is, at the end of the day, a cricket watcher. What he sees over four IPL seasons and a million matches is his favourite player coming to terms with a format that certain other players seem inherently comfortable with. And with more Twenty20 being dished up at the expense of the other formats, a Yusuf Pathan cameo would definitely be more frequent than a Dravid masterclass.

The resilience of a cricket fan is unquestionable, and therefore no amount of T20 cricket at the expense of Tests can permanently disillusion him from following the game. But a very important component of fans' loyalties comes from admiring individual players within their teams, and in case of the IPL, team loyalties often follow player loyalties, instead of it being the other way round. For example, someone would want Rajasthan Royals to win, because Dravid plays for them. But how long can he or she remain an exclusive Dravid fan, when seeing him being outscored by obscure young men like Paul Valthaty season after season in the IPL?

They say the greatness of true greats would always transcend trifling variables such as pitch, conditions, match situation and the like, and we've come to believe this. But now, game format is a variable that evidently seems to contradict this assertion. Dravid would undoubtedly be remembered as one of India's greatest cricketers, and the purpose of the IPL is apparently being best served if lesser known cricketers make their presence felt. But for someone like me, who is a fan of Dravid among other Indian greats, it is painful to see these stars clear the sky for lesser mortals to shine.

From Brad Hinds, Australia

Among the many players who have drifted in and out of the Australian side over the past few years, Shane Watson is one of the few who have solidly remained © AFP

Shane Watson may best be described today as the product of a 'long-term investment plan’ by Cricket Australia. It’s been an interesting development for Cricket Australia, whose managerial and administrative decisions over the past few years have become increasingly dubious and contentious. Very few have paid off. In Watson's case, the returns have been exceptional.

Watson always had respectable first-class batting and bowling figures, but the first few years of his professional career on the international stage playing for Australia were plagued with a seemingly insurmountable array of problems. Primarily, there was little confidence in Watson’s longevity. He was continuously hampered by injuries between 2005 and mid 2009 (ranging from stress fractures and hamstring problems). Even more problematic, there was little confidence in his ability to make valuable contributions in the batting order despite his useful medium-pace bowling. In his first 13 Test Innings – spread sparsely between 2005 and the middle of 2009 when he alternated between sixth and seventh in the batting order - Watson scored 257 runs at only an average of 19.7 with a solitary half-century.

He had a solid but noticeably exploitable technique, and Watson had a tendency in the early stages of his career for being trapped lbw. Of course, these forgettable performances (and subsequent injuries, evidently) were easily overlooked when Australia’s normal line-up consisted of great players performing at their prime; Adam Gilchrist, Matthew Hayden, Brett Lee, Shane Warne, Justin Langer, Damien Martyn. Watson was only ever a substitute. He was never called in as a permanent replacement.

But since the retirement of those players (with the exception of Lee in ODI’s), Watson was a key figure that Australia seriously needed to consider in trying to rebuild the team. Watson had Test experience, and this was an advantage when mulling over the many players available who had no international experience at all. When Matthew Hayden retired in 2009, someone had to take his place. The decision, therefore, to give Watson the opportunity to open the batting with Simon Katich – with his apparent fragility and flawed technique - was understandably met with harsh criticism and deep apprehension. It was a precarious gamble; one whose result could be decided only by Watson.

The result? Years of hesitation and apprehension has given way to profound respect and admiration. Despite the myriad of reasonable concerns since that decision, Watson has developed into an enviable cricketer, and one that Australia simply couldn’t be without. Through the tribulations – physical, mental, social – he has emerged perhaps as one of the world’s most complete international allrounders. The board’s faith in him and the guidance of Ricky Ponting, who Watson credits as being a large contributing factor in his development as a professional cricketer, has paid off.

Indeed, when you consider how far he’s come and the extent of his current achievements, his story is almost a romantic one. He is a fighter – a typical Australian quality. Whereas other cricketers in his position may have buckled under the pressure, Watson did not. Rather, the criticism seems to have propelled him to perform above and beyond even the highest of public expectations. Among the many players who have drifted in and out of the Australian side over the past few years, Watson is one of the few who has remained. He has never been in any danger of losing his spot since receiving it. He has embraced the new role that he plays, despite it having been foreign.

As vice-captain, a promotion he only just recently acquired since Ponting stood down and Michael Clarke took over, he is already a leader in every facet of the game. As a batsman, he is the very embodiment of the modern cricketer; an obvious product of the increasing importance placed on the shorter formats of the game. He is powerfully built, relies more on brute strength as opposed to delicate timing, and is very versatile. He is shaping to be an outstanding fielder despite his bulky physique, and he is exceptionally handy as a medium-pace bowler who frequently takes wickets.

He has shown the capacity to adapt well to changing conditions around the world and especially with regards to the differences between cricket formats. On the field he can be a force to be reckoned with. He is both very aggressive and completely dominating. Watson has rarely been bogged down by bowlers. That said he is also a very humble player. When off the field he maintains a calm and collected disposition, and he appears to be both quiet and oddly gentle.

Since he gained the opening position in Tests, he has scored 1696 runs at an average of 50 with 14 half-centuries, two centuries, and a top score of 126. On the ODI scene especially, Watson has even more impressive figures and is becoming an increasingly feared individual across the world with his ability to dominate the scoring from the get-go on almost any pitch and against any opposition. Between 2002 and April 2009 Watson scored a total of 1263 runs across 36 innings at an average of 35 with a top score of 126. In 2009, he scored 1013 runs across 20 innings at an average of 50.6 with a top score of 136 not out. From 2010 to today he has hit 1589 runs at an average of 48 with a top score of 185 not out. (Click for Watson's career summary in Tests and ODIs.)

The frequency at which he scores fifty or more has increased over the years. In Tests he scored only one half-century between 2005 and 2009. In 2009, he scored six half-centuries and one century. In 2010 he scored eight half-centuries and one century. In ODIs he scored seven half-centuries and a century between 2002 and 2009, an average of one per year. In 2009, he scored three half-centuries and as many centuries. In 2010 he scored seven half-centuries. In 2011 he has already scored five half-centuries and two centuries, including that knock against Bangladesh.

Despite his accomplishments, Watson isn’t free of criticism or ridicule. His tendency to fall after getting himself in, persistently plagues his batting. His particular tendency to get out in the 90s has been the source of much humor in the cricket community. That is a phase that he will probably grow out of as he settles even more comfortably into his role as opening batsman. The run won’t last forever – the runs won’t always keep coming. But if Watson maintains his positive approach to his game, there’s no doubt he’ll continue to be a defining symbol of Australian cricket for many years to come.