West Indies are soon to take on Australia in a three-Test series and, while some are writing them off, others say it could be a close contest. "It could be interesting, really interesting", writes Tony Becca in the Jamaica Gleaner.

Although Sourav Ganguly may have upset Greg Chappell and Andrew Flintoff, Angus Fraser writes on his several redeeming features. The Surfer was a bit intrigued with the ending where Fraser pulls out his crystal ball:

It is hard to believe Ganguly is not preparing something special for England's tour to India in March next year. Whether Chappell is still the India coach is, however, questionable.

More support for Ganguly - with a political bent. Read how the CPI(M) party is happy over Ganguly's "victory" in his spat with Chappell.

Writing in The Indian Express Harsha Bhogle looks at the whole crisis in Indian cricket from a business perspective and writes:

Indian cricket has been one of the most astonishing brands in the world. It has had huge demand, huge investment but has at best shown average quality. It has brought society together, in celebration and in mourning, and brand loyalty has been unmatched, if a touch irrational.

Despite the success of the Ashes series, in The Guardian Mike Selvey flags that all it not well in many areas of world cricket.

While the good ship England sails on serenely from success to success, spinnaker billowing like Shane Warne's flares on a windy day, the rest of the cricket world appears to be struggling, either in the doldrums or shipping water in Southern Ocean storms.

And none so troubled as India ...

Producing emails and letters for public consumption is the in-thing these days. Avirook Sen of Hindustan Times takes the lead and writes an open letter to Ranbir Singh Mahendra, the president of the Indian board. He emphatically states:

If you ever asked, I’d say between you, Chappell and Sourav, you should sit out. You get the resonance, surely, Mr Mahendra.

But what of the patch up? Will it last? Can Chappell and Ganguly sort out their differences? Rohit Brijnath, writing in The Hindu thinks "this makeshift union promises to be the most tenuous of truces".

Life since England's Ashes triumph has been hectic for a high-flying Kevin Pietersen, writes Greg Baum in The Age. In one part he says:

Pietersen, of course, would stand out in a crowd anyway because of a hairstyle seemingly modelled on a toilet brush. He said it was a joke, perpetrated by himself, on himself.

Also read The Surfer's earlier mention of Kevin's antics.

Standing on a pitch all day and concentrating over every ball is hard and tiring work. You’d think, though, that someone would give umpires a break. Well, now they may get one, or at least, an extended one, if they have their way. The Times newspaper reports that the first-class umpires have asked the ECB for extended lunch and tea breaks to squeeze in a well-deserved second cuppa.

Time for extra cream cakes? Even David Shepherd could be changing his mind about retirement at this rate.

At the end of the most-awaited Review Committee meeting in recent times, Ranbir Singh Mahendra, the Indian board president, said, "No player, captain or coach will write or have any interaction with the media on this issue."

The Surfer chuckled because the media always has one resort that will never fail it - 'reliable sources'. The problem, though, is that the first part is often absent.

The Calcutta Telegraph found out that the "BCCI would have considered doing away with both [Chappell and Ganguly] if an understanding wasn’t reached."

Mid Day, a Mumbai-based tabloid, reported on Ganguly's fiery counter-attack where he responded to many of Chappell's allegations.

Mumbai Mirror, another Mumbai-based newspaper, found out that Ganguly, in a six-page report, said Chappell was trying to be "boss" of the team and gave numerous incidents describing his "controlling nature" while Hindustan Times listed six issues that Ganguly brought up during the meeting.

Cricinfo's Anand Vasu was there too. Check out his take on the events, his description of a chaotic day, and what he found out about happenings behind closed doors.

Richard Boock warns against writing off Chris Cairns, who was recently dropped for the South African tour, and writes: "Cairns might be in the autumn of his career, but he remains a cut above most domestic practitioners."

The key, though, according to Boock, is whether Cairns can convince the selectors that he's a better bowler than Kyle Mills and James Franklin, or batsmen than Craig McMillan, Hamish Marshall and Lou Vincent.

As if being King of Spain wasn’t regal enough, Ashley Giles has now been made an Honorary Citizen of Droitwich. Wowsers. Gilo must be pretty excited about this, you’d expect, what with all the freedoms it must convey and all that.

Afterall, his England team-mate Andrew Flintoff can now drink bars dry in his home town, having been given the freedom of Preston – where he can also drive a flock of sheep through the streets. But closer inspection of Giles’s new rights reveal that, er, nothing much will change for him on his jaunts in Droitwich, as he’s to be made a citizen rather than freeman.

"He really didn't fit into the criteria for an honorary freeman," said a spokesperson. "He hasn't carried out any community service.” Still, it’s all pretty glamorous … although not as glitzy as the new world which is opening up to KP.

Pietersen is living the highlife out in LA at the moment, partying with Mickey Rourke and, as the London-based People newspaper revealed, schmoozing with Paris Hilton.

... David Hicks would have much less of a chance of getting out of Guantanamo Bay.

(Link via email from Aditya Shrivastava.)

Now that the excitement is just about dying down, The Guardian asked
a swathe of professionals - including Shaun Udal and Mark Ramprakash to
rake over the Ashes by recording their personal highs and lows, and
picking out who, for them, had been the key players. Finally, they were
asked to note where they were the moment the Ashes were won.

Peter Moores, the head of the national academy, remembers that at the end of
the Oval Test, he was left to celebrate alone: "I was sadly on my own at
home at the time England won the Ashes. The family had gone out. But I had a
beer for company."

Nottinghamshire's coach Mick Newell also celebrated with a bit of pop. "I
had just finished a committee meeting at Trent Bridge, and we cracked open
the champagne [.] We all had a bit of a slip, but nothing like Freddie
Flintoff."

One of the reporters for this piece, Lawrence Booth, has also been busily
writing his humorous cricket email for The Guardian, called The Spin.

It is published weekly and you can read his latest piece here. This week, Booth considers the five stages of an Englishman and sums up the latest comings and goings in
cricket.

Telford Vice reports that Garth King's "The Hansie Cronje story: an authorised biography" has surged to the top of South Africa's non-fiction bestseller list. In Cronje's hometown, Bloemfontein, where he remains a hero to most, the book reportedly outsold J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince" in the first week of its release.

The Sourav Ganguly-Greg Chappell saga has dominated the front pages of most of the Indian newspapers but The Surfer picked out two outside views on the whole issue. Steve Waugh writes:

The review committee that meets on Tuesday might try to work out a compromise, but I think that would be unrealistic. The spat has been too ugly, too public and too bitter, and therefore one of the two gentlemen at the helm of Indian cricket will have to leave.

Also check out Peter Roebuck's piece on the dynamics between coaches and captains.

He may be able to do the fandango, apparently, but, mama mia! - Darren Gough’s England career could be thrust right into jeopardy … because of ballroom dancing.

Dazzler, as he his known, will soon be twinkling on the dancefloor in the latest series of the BBC light entertainment show Strictly Come Dancing but David Graveney has warned that he could be quick-stepping off the England stage at the same time.

“We will now see how other people do in his place,” Graveney told the BBC, “and it is a great opportunity for them.” But he refused to give an opinion on Gough’s dancing: “I've no idea what he's like,” he said. Read the whole story on the BBC website.

Bowled Shane © Getty Images

In the Sydney Morning Herald John Huxley reports that four Australian sports scientists have worked out the reason for Don Bradman's freakish ability. The researchers point out to Bradman's unorthodox technique - including his grip and stance - and psycho-physical tests which showed that he had a slower reaction time than the average university student. And they add that both these helped him develop a "perfect" technique".

Another Australian, another legend, another freak. Shane Warne is a unique specimen and cannot be aped, writes Robin Mckie, the science editor of the Observer. He says:

His firm clutch of the cricket ball; the powerful fingers that send it swerving on unguessable trajectories; and the sweeping arcs of his arm propelling it on pinpoint flights: all highlight attributes that have sent Homo sapiens to planetary domination. It may seem unlikely, but the lad from Ferntree Gully [Warne] is a pinnacle of human evolution.

The Surfer wants to investigate why only Australia produces these freaks of nature. Oh, silly Surfer. It's the beer, mate.

One played cricket for Zimbabwe and currently coaches England; the other turned out for England and coaches Pakistan. The two will go head to head soon as England travel to Pakistan for a Test and one-day series. Check out Steve James's interview with Duncan Fletcher - titled "English cricket's reluctant hero" - in the Sunday Telegraph and also read Stephen Brenkley's chat with Bob Woolmer in the Independent, as he plots to make life gruelling for the English tourists.

As for the Indian coach ... well, let's just say he has a bit more on his plate at the moment.

Ray White, the former president of the South African board, puts forth his suggestions to improve Test cricket. Read the piece in Natal Witness.

In the Barbados-based The Nation, Tony Cozier celebrates the revival of schools cricket in the island. He describes the occassion:

Family, friends, teachers and past and present pupils were there by the score to cheer them [the two teams] on. But the euphoria extended way beyond the immediate supporters to the wider cricket community, indeed to the community as a whole. It came at a time when there is great pessimism over the future of our youth and, by extension, the national sport.

Shahid Hashmi of AFP tells a stirring tale of two women who were rarely allowed to go out in public, overcame several societal barriers and yet made it to Pakistan’s women’s national cricket team. Armana Khan, one of them, says: "In an era when tolerance and equality are promoted in all sports, cricket give us girls a way to live freely."

But what of the men's side? In Dawn, Qamar Ahmed previews Pakistan's forthcoming series against England. Conquering Australia in familiar conditions is one thing, he says, but beating Pakistan in their own backyard could turn out to be a different kettle of fish.

"Every country has two sides playing for it," writes Harsha Bhogle in Indian Express. "India’s cricketers, one of those two sides, were playing in Zimbabwe. India’s administrators, the other side, were scheming, politicking, adjourning, quarrelling ... choose a word from that family and you won’t be wrong. If what they were doing had anything to do with Indian cricket, it was remarkably hidden."

David Sygall remembers a stout little batsman from Sydney who stood up to - and conquered - the might of the British Empire's fastest bowlers. He writes:

While Stan McCabe's dauntless 187 not out against England in the infamous Bodyline series did not win Australia the Ashes, the team that lost the urn at The Oval this month could draw some inspiration from the bald-headed battler's unyielding innings at the SCG in 1932.

He adds that the bat with which McCabe mastered Harold Larwood and Bill Voce has re-emerged and will be auctioned next month at Cromwell's Auction House.

McCabe's classic came against a Douglas Jardine-inspired England side. Check out Christopher Douglas's tribute to Jardine as well.

Tim de Lisle picks out the highs and lows from a memorable English summer. The Surfer enjoyed his take on the best spell of the summer ...

Glenn McGrath at Lord’s, with five for seven in his first 8.1 overs. That’s not bowling, it’s perfection.

... and the choice of Greatest Showman:

Shane Warne, pipping his protégé, Pietersen. A conjuror and pantomime villain rolled into one.

Read the whole piece in The Times.

Also check out a selection of special moments chosen by writers from The Independent.

Peter Roebuck profiles Waddington Mwayenga - who he calls a "likeable, determined, polite, bright and athletic lad" - and goes on to lament the deeper problem surrounding cricket in Zimbabwe.

Mwayenga might have enjoyed a fairly impressive debut Test but the root of the problem persists. Roebuck writes:

What was it all about, all that fighting and posturing? ... Complacency amongst whites. Revenge amongst an angry and self-serving bunch of black administrators. Two rotten emotions that can destroy this continent as they are destroying Zimbabwean cricket. Two self-indulgences Africa cannot afford. Two wretched outlooks calculated to crush youthful idealism.

Copying KP is against the rules © Getty Images

Kevin Pietersen has attracted loads of attention of late, and his hairdo hasn’t been far behind. The Skunk seems to have taken on a life of its own - and it’s now causing havoc at a school in Cornwall, where its appearance caused one unlucky pupil to be sent home.

15-year-old Daniel Pethick dyed for the KP cause and his copycat crime resulted in being banished. Some may say bearing that garish blond streak was punishment enough, but not this school who said the hair-style wasn’t in their rules. Presumably they’re now fast amending their code of conduct to include a ban on £10,000 diamond earrings. Read the sorry tale here.

There is something about KP, though, apparently. Cricinfo writer Will Luke’s independent blog on cricket, The Corridor of Uncertainty, has been besieged by girl fans of late who have uploaded post after post after post about KP. What started as a cricket-centric summary of his career has fast moved on to an assessment of his, er, finer qualities.

“I ain’t a teenage girl but I must say I act like one,” sighs Kirsty in the 199th post on the topic. “The things I like bout KP are his body, eyes, smile, biceps, hair and his dreamy accent.” Pretty much everything then – although no mention of the skunk.

Not one to be overshadowed by a dab of peroxide, Andrew Flintoff is in the news again. As Freddie Watch rolls on undaunted, this time we bring you news that Flintoff is to appear in Shameless, a sitcom based in Manchester as, er, a drunken extra. Not only that, but he is on the front cover of this month’s Hello magazine. It was only a matter of time.

Haresh Pandya reports that an emerald and pearl necklace estimated at 1.6 million pounds belonging to Ranjitsinhji has been forbidden from being auctioned at Christie.

What intrigued The Surfer more was that nobody still knows how and when the necklace vanished from the royal family. Eagerly awaiting responses from all in the know.

It’s rugby league and AFL finals time in Australia but Shane Warne and Damien Martyn manage to steal some of the attention. Warne’s extra-curricular activities are raised again via The Sun and The Mirror, but for cricket fans his attack on the county tactics of David Fulton, the Kent captain, from the Press Association is much more interesting.

Damien Martyn’s disappointment at missing the Super Series is clear. Cricinfo’s report is here but for the full story see the interview with The Australian’s Malcolm Conn.

Freddie Flintoff - master of candid cameos © Getty Images

Freddie won the Ashes on a Monday; his book was serialised on a Tuesday; there were further revelations on Wednesday and Thursday – and no doubt there will be more on Friday and Saturday and Sunday, too.

Andrew Flintoff’s revelations, like that irritating Craig David song, look set to run and run.

Today’s startling news is that he (Freddie, not Craig) fears his career may be precariously positioned.

"Every day I bowl I wonder how much longer it is going to last," Flintoff writes in The Times, "because I am never quite sure what is going to happen with my back." Read that article here. The newspaper does say that today's extract is the last - but just wait until the book itself comes out.

And if you want to know what Cricinfo make it of it all, then click here for Andrew Miller's comment on fantastic Freddie's candid cameos.

R Kaushik of Deccan Herald meets Tatenda Taibu, the Zimbabwe captain, and finds out what goes on within the mind of a 22-year-old leading a weak side. While talking about off-field pressures, Taibu says:

Obviously, you just try and control the controllables and forget about what you can't control. If you try and control things that you can't control, your mind will have excess things to worry about.

Read on here.

Also check out Cricinfo's interview with another African captain - Graeme Smith talks to Nagraj Gollapudi.

In the Hindustan Times, Sandeep Bamzai says the Sourav Ganguly-Greg Chappell issue may be connected to the BCCI elections:

This unhappy confluence comes on the eve of the BCCI’s annual general body meeting. If one looks at the sequence of events coming up, then the contours of a Great Game begin to unravel.

For more on the politics and intrigue surrounding the elections read R Mohan's piece in Asian Age where he feels that the board dynamics have shifted from a South-West alignment into a North-West versus South-East battle for control.

Harsha Bhogle comments in The Indian Express on the nineties made by Gautam Gambhir and Rahul Dravid yesterday:

These nineties often draw unreasonable comments for it is what has been achieved rather than what has been missed that is often of the essence. Centuries are happy landmarks, they are indicators of good batsmanship but we worship them too much for they can sometimes become an exercise in self-indulgence.

Indeed. And yet, the difference between 102 and 100 will always be far less than that between 100 and 98. They're only numbers, but we're only human.

Umpires have come a long way since Mike Selvey’s county days. In The Guardian he looks at the current elite panel, and stops briefly to analyse Duncan Fletcher’s defining off-field moment.

Brian Lara has “one of the greatest days of my life” when he meets Nelson Mandela and gives him a bat with the message “I love you President”. Mandela felt Lara was “a handsome young chap”. See what it was all about here.

G Rajaraman of Outlook magazine traces a tale that has developed into Bollywood masala - involving a bar girl, betting and cricketers. But are the cops anywhere close to the right trail?

"The future's bright," says England bowling coach Troy Cooley of the emerging English pace bowlers who are waiting in the wings. Paul Weaver spoke to Cooley for The Guardian, as the ECB gear up keep the conveyor belt of English bowling talent well-greased, and his article also spotlights some of the current crop who could be appearing for their country in future, as nominated by England Under-19 coach Andy Pick. Read about them here.

In a candid interview in The Sportstar, Sourav Ganguly chats with S Ram Mahesh about his batting form, captaincy, Indian cricket and more. In one part he says:

When you play for a span of 10-11 years, it's not going to be the same standards that you have set for yourself. I am pretty much sure that it's my performances before this because of which my standards have been set pretty high which I have not been able to match.

Read the whole thing here.

Also read Rohit Brijnath's article in The Hindu where he offers a long-term solution for Indian cricket - reshaping a culture that is out of date.

Cricinfo's Sambit Bal has his own thoughts on the matter. Read on here.

Rohan Connolly of The Age is not joining the England’s-win-was-great-for-cricket tribe. He loves the Australian team and can’t wait for 2006-07.

The Super Series squads have signalled a shift in Australia’s thinking but Malcolm Conn writes in The Australian the selectors shot the wrong man by dropping Damien Martyn from the Test team.

Brad Hodge is Martyn’s replacement but The Age’s Mark Fuller reports his Test debut is likely to depend on whether Shane Watson or Stuart MacGill are picked for the six-day match.

See the squads here and look at Peter English's view.

England have only just won the Ashes, but they must not allow the dust to settle, says Peter Roebuck. He writes in The Independent that defeating Australia is just the start for England: they must now build on that success - and their first test will come soon enough, when they travel to Pakistan in November.

Roebuck says that most of Pakistan’s hopes will rest on their captain’s shoulders, and you can click here to read what Inzamam-ul-Haq himself has to say on England’s upcoming visit – he even hints at a possible recall to the Test side for a veteran bowler.

With all the talk of cricket being the new football, The Daily Telegraph’s Sue Mott takes a humorous look at what the future could hold if this idea was really to become a reality. Teddy Sheringham will still be playing football in 20 years’ time, she suggests, while Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff will still be basking in adoration after their Ashes success.

The post Ashes cash-in is underway, with nine books in the pipeline (and counting) and a swathe of DVDs being rush released. One of the best sellers will be Andrew Flintoff’s Being Freddie (written with Myles Hodgson), and the serialisation gets underway in today’s Times. And he starts with a dig at previous England captains.

“I have played in some sides when there has been a disgraceful attitude, when even some of your team-mates were half- hoping you failed, but that’s not the case with the present England team.”

Derek Pringle profiles Alex Loudon, the offspinning allrounder from Warwickshire chosen for the Pakistan tour, and tells us why it wasn't a surprising selection:

Loudon's call-up, after a decent season with Warwickshire that yielded 26 wickets and 748 runs, came as a surprise, though not to those who feel he has begun to ally consistency to his undoubted talent.

Read the whole piece in The Daily Telegraph here.

Update: David Hopps of The Guardian writes on Shane Warne's influence in Shaun Udal regaining his place in the England side

Update 2: Glenn Moore talks to Matt Prior, the Sussex wicketkeeper, on touring the subcontinent, the Ashes and more in The Independent.

Also check out Cricinfo's player pages of Alex Loudon, Shaun Udal and Matt Prior.

England's success this summer has aroused the interest of politicians whose love affair with football appears to be on the wane. Always keen to tap into the public mood, a number are now commenting on a game they probably would have dismissed a elitist and irrelevant a year ago. Even Tony Blair was described as being a "cricket lover" by Sky News (probably a reflection of Mr Murdoch's relationship with New Labour as much as anything). In his excellent Daily Telegraph column, Michael Parkinson bemoans this new phenomenon.

It seems to be the topic on most England supporters' lips. Frank Keating answers the Ashes question in The Guardian.

Welcome to The Surfer.

It was inevitable, sooner or later, that Cricinfo would start its own blogs. In the first of a series of them, we present The Surfer. This blog, as the name indicates, will aim to showcase interesting cricket writing across the internet. These will encompass features, interviews, opinion pieces, debates -- anything that we find stimulating reading.

The Surfer will replace our popular feature, Best of the Web, as it does what that did and more. It will be managed by Siddhartha Vaidyanathan, Jenny Thompson and Peter English, with occasional guidance and help from Amit Varma. We hope you enjoy it. Feel free to email your feedback to surfer@cricinfo.com.

And watch out for our other blogs, coming soon.

We all know that this is a good age for batting, a shirtfront of an era, as it were. Kunal Ganju, in a piece titled "Batting through the ages", reinforces this belief with a couple of graphical illustrations.

Also see these two pieces on the same subject from Cricinfo's archives: "Bowling's dark age" by Gideon Haigh; and "Is there a crisis in cricket?" from 23 Yards.

In an essay in the London Review of Books titled "Cricket’s Superpowers", David Runciman contends that the Ashes is not cricket's biggest rivalry. He writes:

The rivalry in international cricket that counts at present is the one between Australia and India. If this were geopolitics, then Australia would be the United States, the one unquestioned superpower for over a decade, used to getting their own way ever since they saw off their rival superpower, the West Indies, in the early 1990s (the West Indian cricket team, like the Russian state, now seems to be in a condition of permanent and rather squalid decline). India, meanwhile, would be China, the superpower of the future, with all the resources needed to beat the Australians at their own game – the manpower, the talent, the raw nationalist passion – so long as a way can be found by their often corrupt and incompetent administrators of harnessing these obvious advantages. And England? England would be the EU: once the centre of the world, but currently engaged in an urgent and not always pretty attempt to modernise in order not to get left behind.

Read the full piece.

(Link via email from Ish.)

In a piece in the Times, Aki Riihilati talks us through a heady period in English sport through a foreigner's lens:

Excitement, big personalities, drama, sportsmanship, skill and a highly competitive mentality — the series offered everything that is good in sport. Most of all it made so many people happy and enthusiastic. From my car window I could see these people didn’t think of their mortgages or were worried what their bosses were going to say the next day at work. It was pure joy.

But Michael Parkinson, in The Daily Telegraph, warns that the future is not all hunky-dory. "[The ECB] exist to support a county system which is as wasteful of money as it is inadequate in providing cricketers of Test calibre ... Which is why it will take Australia considerably less time to find a team capable of winning back the Ashes than it took us."

The unsure future of Australia’s previously dominant line-up has been a hot topic over the weekend. Mark Waugh knows the workings of the Australian dressing room as well as anybody over the past decade and his main area of concern in The Sun-Herald is the fast bowling.

Robert Craddock, the News Ltd. journalist, says England did more than steal the Ashes – they destroyed the current side’s hopes of a group farewell at the 2007 World Cup. He tips as few as three players who won the prize in South Africa to defend the trophy.

Michael Vaughan "hasn't finished yet," writes Vic Marks, as he compares Vaughan's captaincy to Mike Brearley's.

Michael Atherton takes us through the eight Ashes defeats he was present at, and contrasts them with this series. Memorably, he describes his presentation of the Ashes to Michael Vaughan as "the perfect exorcism".

... could be bigger than the Ashes by the end of this century, writes Will Buckley in the Observer.

There are a few certainties in Australian cricket, writes Tim Lane in Sydney Morning Herald and explains why Shane Warne cannot be elevated to the captaincy, irrespective of what Ian Chappell, Dennis Lillee or an entire generation thinks.

Ponting himself admitted, in an interview with Malcolm Conn of the Australian, that, "for Dennis [Lillee] to sit back and say I should be sacked and be replaced by Shane Warne, it hurts to a certain degree."

What do you do when an entire nation is collectively mourning the loss of the Ashes? Giles Smith, writing in The Times, offers an innovative solution:

Get the urn down there right now and start parading it around as soon as possible. Embed it in a huge, glass block in the middle of Melbourne, with a plaque on it: “The Ashes: Holders — England.

Now that thought makes the Barmy Army's bus ride through Sydney look like a birthday gift.

Read also the thoughts of his fellow columnist in The Times, Tim De Lisle, who guesses what might actually change once everyone has gotten over their mighty hangovers.

But is this the mightiest hangover in history? Greg Baum, writing in The Age, casts a look back at some epic Ashes encounters while Martin Flanagan, in the same newspaper, celebrates a series that was a reminder of what makes cricket thrilling.

Andrew Culf writes in the Guardian that England must "bottle this feeling", and grasp "an extraordinary opportunity to reinvigorate the game at the grassroots."

Hugh Robertson of the Daily Telegraph agrees, and feels that the government has a big part to play, as he extols the "benefits of sport as a tool of government."

Meanwhile, John Westerby reports in the Times that one of the primary aims of the ECB, that "three England players would be recognisable by 10 per cent of the population by 2009," is already within reach.

And in case you haven't read them yet, here are celebrations of the Ashes by our own writers, Andrew Miller and Sambit Bal.

It was as if instead of Sourav Ganguly there was an imposter at the crease, writes Harsha Bhogle in the Indian Express, as he evaluates Ganguly's century at Bulawayo. Bhogle writes:

[H]is innings [was] a six-hour exercise in self-denial.

In all fairness, Zimbabwe had laid out a buffet for him. He merely nibbled at the lettuce. He was capable of demolishing the buffet, but this was not the day for it.

Bhogle feels that Ganguly's "redemption will come from strokeplay not denial." But will that redemption ever come? In an inside account, LP Sahi of the Kolkata Telegraph tells us the story of how Greg Chappell wanted Sourav Ganguly to step down from captaincy because he didn't merit a place in the side. Much drama on during this tour, and not all of it is on the cricket field.

Update: Whatever happened to Team India, wonders Anand Vasu.

Mike Haysman celebrates Richie Benaud's unique style behind the microphone - calm, warm and polite.

Also check out tributes by Ivo Tennant in The Times, Dan Nicholl in iafrica.com and Nick Hoult in The Daily Telegraph.

Cricket has so many theatrical moments, characters, plots, sub-plots, twists, sub-twists ... Why, wonders Sarah Crompton in The Daily Telegraph, is there a dearth of suitably awe-inspiring fictional depictions of the game?

England hadn't won the Ashes in 16 years. England haven't won the World Cup ever. Mike Selvey writes in The Guardian about how England need carry on the momentum and aim for the biggest one-day prize. After all, he writes, Australia's dominance of world cricket was kickstarted on that memorable day at Calcutta in 1987, when Allan Border lifted the glittering trophy.