Darren Lehmann and Mark Waugh have backed Phil Jaques’s delayed re-entry into the one-day squad. The pair say in the Sydney Morning Herald Jaques now needs time to settle in the international game.

“It's great to see him in there - he's a player of the future and he's had an outstanding one-day series," Lehmann said. “The selectors have just got to give him a good long run at it now, give him time to settle in and improve his game at this level. Phil's just a real cricket tragic who loves the game and enjoys the challenge. His temperament is as good as gold, and he's a guy who plays the game the right way and is enjoyable to watch."

"He should go well,” Waugh said, “as long as he doesn't put too much pressure on himself. He seems a fairly intense sort of cricketer. I just hope he relaxes and plays his natural game, not worry about whether he'll get one game or two games.”

Richie Benaud tells AAP Shaun Tait should be rated ahead of Jason Gillespie and Michael Kasprowicz for the South Africa Test series.

It’s worked for other teams, it could work for Pakistan – they are considering employing a baseball coach to help with throwing techniques. They have their sights set on Mike Young, who is currently working with the New Zealand team on a short-term basis. Read what the Khaleej Times has to say on the matter here.

Another tour, another bunch of guys clutching their stomachs,writhing in pain.Akshay Sawai in The Hindustan Times traces the history of the legendary stomach bug which plagues visiting teams in India.

Spinners may be India’s chief weapons against visiting cricket teams. But often, it is Delhi Belly that makes the first inroads into the opposition.

A Johannesburg DJ disrupts the sleep of Australian players before the Twenty20 match on Friday with a host of prank calls. Andrew Ramsey reports in The Australian the man posed as a family member to get through to eight rooms before playing sheep noises.

Graeme Smith’s tough-talking tactics in Australia were apparently a ploy to take attention away from the senior players. Read The Courier-Mail report here.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni has risen rapidly through the Indian ranks to be the latest star in the team. A series of thrilling innings against Pakistan has thrust him up the world rankings and now he has England in his sights. Chandrahas Choudhury profiles the latest wicketkeeper-batsman to take the world by storm.

The man clearly has a strange and unpredictable effect on people. Among all India's Test wicketkeepers, only Farokh Engineer can have matched him for dash and brio.

Ramachandra Guha writes about watching the Ranji Trophy final in 1998:

In his first over, Srinath bowled one batsman and had another caught at slip. Those early wickets brought to the crease a young, fresh-faced boy who had chosen to bat bare-headed. For close to two hours he played with complete assurance. Where his helmeted colleagues ducked and weaved against India's fastest bowler, this lad of 17 got solidly into line.

To know more about the young man, read here.

When we get bored of playing cricket with Pakistan, it'll be time to celebrate normality, writes Mukul Kesavan.

Mark Richardson, of lycra running suit fame, is bringing out a book about his career. It will be an interesting read as he began as a slow left-arm bowler before developing into a gritty opening batsman. In one part of the book he discusses how Stephen Fleming lost faith in the New Zealand team as results went against them. The Herald on Sunday gives a taste of what he has to say.

"In Australia I saw Flemo's shoulders slump," Richardson continued. "You could see he must have felt it didn't matter what he planned, his bowlers couldn't effect it for him, and he became quite introverted."

Greg Chappell has endured a mixed time as India's coach but the recent 4-1 win over Pakistan in the one-day series sent the country into huge celebrations. Now preparing for the visit of England he tells Richard Edmondson he's ready for the challenge.

Difficulties over ticket allocations will not stop the Barmy Army travelling en masse to this year’s Ashes in Australia. But they won’t all be able to sit together. Find out why by reading this piece in the Melbourne newspaper, The Age.

England A's warm-up win against an Antigua XI this week may not class as one of the most important results of the year, but it was a significant start for David Parsons, England's new spin bowling coach, as Gareth Batty, Alex Loudon and Jamie Dalrymple shared 14 between them. Here he tells The Times that he doesn't believe his lack of a first-class career should be a problem.

I can tell you that in the six years I have been working for the ECB, I haven’t bowled a ball. I just don’t believe that it’s appropriate or necessary

English and Indian schools are to link up to talk about cricket and learn about each other’s cultures as part of the Chance to Shine initiative. Read about it on Rediff here.

Alex Brown writes in the Sydney Morning Herald Damien Martyn's right index finger should come with its own M-rating. Martyn returns to the venue where his digit was eternally disfigured during the 2003 World Cup final.

Much to the surprise of the Johannesburg crowd - and Australian team management - Martyn declared himself fit to play. And the rest, of course, is history. Martyn defied the jarring pain to record a defiant, unbeaten 88 and combine for a match-winning 234-run third wicket stand with Ricky Ponting

Andrew Symonds also has fond memories of that 2003 tour. The Australian’s Andrew Ramsey reports before Symonds’s hip injury about his joy at arriving in South Africa.

As the bus disgorged its load of weary travellers into the lobby of a ritzy Johannesburg hotel last Monday, one of the jet-lagged party was unable to suppress a delirious grin. Despite the ravages of a 15-hour journey from Australia which came on top of a relentless summer schedule of Test matches and one-day internationals, Andrew Symonds had returned to what he unashamedly refers to as his "happy place".

Hello! Mark Nicholas and Geoffrey Boycott have been snapped up by Channel Five to cover the highlights of England's summer.
Read about it here.

"It's simply a great victory. With the superb win against Sri Lanka, Bangladesh hold a lot of things as far as Test matches are concerned. I don't understand why some people unnecessarily criticise the Tigers," writes Wasim Akram in The Daily Star.

Ponting, you just keep your mouth shut and look back to what they did against you people in Cardiff last year and take a note of the latest one against Sri Lanka. And I would suggest everybody: Don't think you are going to play a warm-up game when you take on Bangladesh.

The pitch for the first Test against England at Nagpur is brown and bare with no trace of moisture, writes K Shriniwas Rao in The Indian Express. No chance of a repeat of the infamous 2004 greentop then!

For good measure, the groundsmen have been asked to work on the pitch with a scarifier, a thin-bladed mower that cuts grass to the minimum and loosens the soil. If anymore grass (the little dry blades that are difficult to sight) is removed, it will only be pulled out along with the soil.

The felicitations will never end for Mahendra Singh Dhoni in Ranchi.IBNLive.com follows the local hero

The Jharkhand government on Thursday felicitated team India’s swashbuckling wicket keeper-batsman Mahendra Singh Dhoni and alloted him a free plot of land in a prime locality, while yoga guru Ramdev gave him some 'tips' to improve concentration.

Trevor Marshallsea reports in the Sydney Morning Herald about Moises Henriques, the boom New South Wales allrounder who is in the squad for the ING Cup final on Sunday.

The long-heralded emergence of the 19-year-old this summer has sparked the most excitement in NSW cricket since Michael Clarke started rising through the grades.

Cricinfo’s profile of Henriques is here.

Monty Panesar is to file six audio diaries for the BBC's Asian network during his tour with England in India. Panesar, who today has been struck down with a stomach bug, is fighting for a place for the first Test against India at Nagpur on March 1.

A fit and firing Simon Jones is key to England's attack argues Derek Pringle in today's Daily Telegraph.

Simon Jones' career trajectory may not be a smooth arc, following a run of serious injuries, but England rarely lose Tests when he is fit and firing down his skiddy swingers.

[...]

Jones has played 18 Tests for England. He has been on the winning side in 11 of them and the losing side in only three, including against Australia in Brisbane, where he shredded his knee ligaments on the opening day and played no further part in the match or indeed any proper cricket for the next 18 months.

The World Cup is 12 months away from its opening ceremony, but they're still looking for an official airline sponsor. The Global Cricket Corporation (GCC) failed to entice Air Jamaica into securing a deal. More details at The Gleaner

A security official who travelled for 45 days with India's cricketers on their recent tour of Pakistan has said the popularity of the Indian team had certainly gone up among ordinary Pakistanis:

"The popularity of the Indian cricketers surely went up compared to the Indian team's tour of Pakistan in 2004, the first full-fledged one after almost 15 years," Sohail Khan, a senior superintendent of police with Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency, said in Karachi before the team's departure for Mumbai.

More on this at Times of India

Geoffrey Dean argues that Ian Blackwell's fine innings - he also took several wickets - might well seal his place in the squad to face India for the first Test:

If England want balance to their team, Blackwell will make his debut in the first Test, which starts on March 1 in Nagpur. Duncan Fletcher, the England coach, praised Panesar’s performance, singling out his control, but to pick him as the only spinner in a five-man attack would mean Matthew Hoggard batting uncomfortably high at No 8.

More at The Times

After his four wickets yesterday and a fifty today, Ian Blackwell is the spinner in waiting for England, argues Derek Pringle in today's Daily Telegraph

Ricky Ponting writes in his column in The Australian about his expectations for the South Africa tour.

If the recent round of Tests and limited-overs internationals in Australia provides an indication, it's not just the South Africa players who will be fired up come the opening Twenty20 match in Johannesburg on Friday. We're expecting to cop our fair share from the notoriously outspoken crowds over there.

People have asked whether there will be a sense of "Groundhog Day" in locking horns with the Proteas so soon after they toured here. But we haven't played them for a couple of weeks now, and because those matches came in the middle of a hectic home summer, those few weeks seem like a long time in the grand scheme of things.

Mark Waugh believes the limited-overs game has increasingly become very predictable and lopsided and has suggested some changes to make them more interesting.

No leg byes. Batting teams should not be able to be rewarded with runs when the batsman is not good enough to make contact with bat on ball. This rule would obviously benefit the team with the more skilled batsmen.

Click here to read Waugh's proposals.

A former captain, the iconic Hanif Mohammad looks back at his career in an interview with the Kolkata-based daily The Telegraph. He talked about his standout memory from his famous triple hundred (337 in Barbados,1957-58) against West Indies.

That of a West Indian, who would sit on the branch of a tree... Initially, he would taunt, but then began to appreciate my batting and our fightback... On the fourth day, the poor chap fell and had to be hospitalised. Yet, he returned the next afternoon... ‘You’re still there? I’m back, my friend... I’m back’ he kept saying. After the Test got over, Kardar and I invited him to our dressing room for tea and sandwiches. We thanked him for his support and gave a couple of mementos...

Ramachandra Guha, the social and the cricket historian, had once written about that knock and Hanif's meeting with Don Bradman, whose record the short Pakistani had broken.

When they played South Australia at Adelaide, Sir Donald Bradman walked into their dressing room and asked to meet the man who had broken his record score of 452. Hanif got up, and apologetically said, ''Sir, you will always be the greatest.'' The Don looked him up and down and replied, shaking his head: ''So you are the fellow. I always thought that the batsman who broke my record would be six feet two inches tall. But you are shorter than me!''

Martin Blake tells how Australia’s loveable larrikin became a key figure in the cricketing establishment.

England are going to be looking at the world through rose-tinted, er, contact lenses on Saturday. Michael Vaughan and four other of his team are trialling some new eyewear which aims to enhance light and remove the need for sunglasses. More details are here.

Rajdeep Sardesai, says the proliferation of the game has had its impact, not just on the way the game is played but also on the manner in which it is covered in the media.

Ian Blackwell, who has often been criticised for his weight, has insisted his change in lifestyle - although, as he concedes, long overdue - will improve him as a player:

"I feel I'm strong and physically fit enough to do my job, but if you don't look right in today's game you don't tend to get too far. The added responsibility of being a captain means you've got to be doing the right thing and leading by example.

"With me, it's probably more to do with diet than fitness. It's just understanding foods and what to eat at certain times. It's something you have to do to get the best out of what you eat."

More at the Daily Telegraph

Paul Weaver reports in The Guardian about Cricinfo’s record-breaking day of more than two million page unique users on Monday.

Only the official websites of NBA (basketball), NFL (American football) and MLB (baseball) enjoy comparable success among global single-sport sites. Cricinfo currently records in excess of 250 million page views per month, with the homepage alone recording more than 50 million page views per month.

Sreesanth treasures the moment Sachin Tendulkar handed him his India cap.

The day Sachin paaji handed me the India cap in Nagpur where I made my debut versus Sri Lanka. He is like god to me. This I what I had aimed for, and when it happened, I didn’t know what to do.

Patrick Smith, The Australian columnist, points out the delicate side of the national team, using Ricky Ponting’s back-pedalling catch as an example.

The catch was not the best ever seen. It wasn't even the best taken on the day. Andrew Symonds took a superior catch when he threw himself forward to hold a mis-whacked drive from Chamara Kapugedera. Technically, there was no comparison ...

We have acknowledged earlier that coming to any sort of conclusion about an Australia cricketer that is not overwhelmingly positive is to ask for a bouncer to the head. But there remains a danger that the hyperbole surrounding Ponting's pluck to immortality might just obscure the skill and audacity shown by Symonds.

Robert Craddock sums up Australia’s one-day summer in The Courier-Mail and hopes for a series of testing against South Africa.

The BBC report that Mark Richardon will hang up his famous and hilarious lycra suit on Thursday. Richardson, New Zealand's former opener, used to challenge and race the least athletic member of the opposing team at the end of each series (see here); his final sprint will be against the West Indies after their Twenty20 encounter on Friday.

Richardson, infamous for taking on the opposition's slowest player, will race John Afoa and Jerome Kaino from the Auckland Blues rugby side at Eden Park.

The batsman, whose suit will then be auctioned by the Beige Brigade, said: "Even if I lose, I'll look the best."

A half smoked cigar of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf is the most precious memento that Judy, wife of Greg Chappell, is carrying from her Pakistan visit.

"I picked up the cigar with a tissue paper and am carrying it with me to India."

The BBC's Test Match Special messageboard has been closed today following a torrent of racist and abusive messages, as reported in today's Times:

Part of the site was suspended after the BBC received complaints that a number of users were sending insulting religious messages and promoting terrorism on the South Asian section of the Test Match Special website.

A trail of messages described as “absolutely sickening and reprehensible” is being investigated by the BBC in an attempt to trace the authors.

Sachin Tendulkar missed the whole of [Mahendra Singh] Dhoni’s 46-ball power-knock.

"Mohammed Kaif was out almost immediately after me. I went for the ice bath and shower a little later… Once I was in the shower, I could hear my teammates screaming, ‘great shot’ and ‘well played’. I realised Dhoni was going great guns. I decided not to come out of the shower thinking the momentum might just get lost. I asked Harbhajan (Singh) to keep me updated on the score from outside.

"I must have had the longest shower of my life… It almost stretched to 40 minutes. I came out only when I knew that we were some seven/eight runs short of the target."

Alex Brown writes in the Sydney Morning Herald that bomb threats were made to Ricky Ponting during the second VB Series final at the SCG.

AAP reports that players at Sydney could soon get to the ground by a tunnel after a spectator was pushed away when trying to hug Andrew Symonds on Sunday. See what Leon Azzopardi, the man at the centre of the incident, had to say here.

Although it is thought Michael Clarke will beat Phil Jaques in securing a spot for Australia's tour to South Africa, Steve Waugh reckons Jaques deserves his chance:

"The time to pick him is now - he's a form player and it's hard not to take him," Waugh said.

"I think it's time to give him an extended run.

"He provided a glimpse of what he can do when he made 94 (in his only one-day innings for Australia).

"It is getting to the stage where Australia will be really looking to get their plans ready for the World Cup - and if he is to be part of those plans then you would like to see what he can do now.

The Guardian has what will no doubt be the first of many interviews with Simon Jones. He talks about his fitness, the need to prove himself (again) and Cardiff.

The Daily Telegraph has a Q&A with Ricky Ponting, including insights such as:

Who would you like to invite to dinner, and why? Tiger Woods. I would love to talk about the excellence of his game and book a few lessons with him. Nelson Mandela - he has an interesting life story to tell. Don Bradman would be good, as would Sir Anthony Hopkins, whose films I enjoy.

Cricinfo's own Andrew Miller also spoke to the same man recently.

In the Daily Telegraph, Derek Pringle writes that beating Australia might earn a gong and champagne with the Queen, but winning a Test series in India is a prize achieved by only a few.

"India is a forbidding place in which to play cricket and was the final frontier on Australia's way to world domination.

"For Michael Vaughan's tour party, who landed in Bombay this morning, the trip could be seen as simply settling the battle for second place in the world rankings, which India briefly pinched off England last month.

"Yet a more telling truth is at stake - namely whether England are genuine contenders for the Aussies' Test crown or simply a side who enjoyed a freakish peak during last summer's Ashes. "

The Sydney Morning Herald’s Trevor Marshallsea tracks Ricky Ponting’s week, which culminated in his 124 against Sri Lanka last night. “Good, bad and ugly hardly do it justice,” he writes.

In the same paper Peter Roebuck covers the 237-run Ponting-Symonds partnership that broke the Australian record for all wickets.

Ponting has learnt to be civilised, yet a part of him yearns for the old days when he could play his shots and speak his mind. Symonds has heard about tact and discretion but tends to regard them much as children view vegetables. Both men yearn for the blowing of the bugle, the ringing of the bell, the sounds of battle in their ears.

No, we're not talking about the Rolling Stones or even AC/DC. Ian Healy and Mark Taylor are among some of the Aussie legends to tour the Queensland outback to pass on their knowledge and vast wisdom:

The Players Own Legends Cricket Tour will travel to large regional centres, including Longreach, Mt Isa, Townsville and Yeppoon, promoting the sport through coaching clinics and fun matches against locals.

They will share tips and stories with cricket lovers and join in local activities to help raise money for local cricket clubs along the way

Phil Jaques is the country’s most exciting batting prospect since Michael Clarke, but while Australia trained at the SCG he was playing club cricket.

Cricket fans were dumbfounded when Australia's most dynamic opening batsman played at Caringbah Oval in front of a handful of people … This is the same batsman who has scored four ING Cup one-day centuries for NSW this summer and a sensational 94 off 112 balls in his limited-overs debut for Australia.

The Sun-Herald reports Clarke will edge out Jaques in the South Africa touring squad.

Shane Warne was also in club action, scoring 105 for St Kilda.

A bunch of New Zealand cricketers have been spending time at an alleged "haunted house," and each has come down, rather spookily, with injuries:

Otago provincial representatives Greg Todd, Aaron Redmond, James McMillan, Neil Broom and South African Jonathan Trott have all suffered injuries while living in the former hospice, now converted into a five-bedroom town house.

Todd dislocated his right knee and broke his leg in a freak bowling accident, Redmond dislocated his knee taking a catch while McMillan, Broom and Trott suffered serious muscle strains in a two-week period which left the five players laid up simultaneously.

"These injuries have been a shocker. In the space of two weeks everyone in the flat (apartment) has gotten injured. It's just too bizarre," Redmond said. "None of the other boys in the (Otago) squad have tended to get injured. It's ironic because at the top of our house is a medical Red Cross. It's like an ambulance cross on the roof - too bizarre."

We had an unfortunate period of downtime which lasted 48 hours and affected all our blogs. We're back live again, so will start ploughing through the news here at The Surfer once again.

In 2002 former West Indies allrounder Rawl Lewis was seriously thinking about packing in cricket. At the time he was playing in New York and the chances of any international future appeared non existent. In an excellent interview on caribbean cricket.com, Michelle McDonald charts Lewis's stop-start career and how this month, more than seven year after his last international appearance, he will be travelling to New Zealand as one of the West Indies squad.

He had stopped bowling; he was skylarking in the leagues in New York and was just waiting on failure with the bat to say "right, that's it." But his natural gift as a cricketer didn't allow that to happen, even as he paid little or no attention to his game.

Richard Hinds, the Sydney Morning Herald columnist, analyses the Australian sense-of-humour failure caused by Phil Tufnell’s Ashes digs.

Forget that Tufnell's rave was well scripted, funny and delivered with a devilish glint in the eye. When a to-and-from dares to remind our boys that the year's real cricket highlight came at their expense, suddenly they start to take themselves very seriously. Then we see the humourless side of Australian cricket. The side that says winners are grinners. And if you beat us? Just shut the hell up. We get to see Ricky Ponting make pointed reference to Tufnell's remarks as he accepts the Allan Border Medal, warning the comments would be motivation for the next Ashes series.

Sadly, the reaction to his comedy instead said more about the nation we're becoming: triumphant in victory, precious, thin-skinned and defensive in defeat. One radio news bulletin described the light-hearted routine as a "spiteful send-up". Talkback callers lamented how such un-Australian sentiments could be uttered on this sacred night of nights.

Ponting’s take on the events in The Australian is here.

Robert Craddock writes in The Courier-Mail it’s a shame Shane Warne will never collect the Allan Border Medal. Ricky Ponting won his second award on Monday night ahead of Hussey, Lee, Gilchrist and Warne.

Warne slapped his world record 93-Test wicket year on the table, but, almost inevitably because he is a Test match specialist, he managed nothing more than a distant fifth in the medal voting. Warne's chances of winning the medal are effectively gone forever because surely he will never have a better year than his last.

The Sydney Morning Herald’s Alex Brown says there’s an opportunity for the rebirth of two former internationals this month.

Jason Gillespie, discarded from the Australian squad after a poor tour of England, has announced his candidacy as a replacement for Glenn McGrath, should he withdraw from the early stages of the South African tour. And former England batsman Graham Thorpe is favoured to return to the first-class ranks before the end of the summer, albeit for his adopted state of NSW rather than his old county side Surrey.

Shahid Afridi reigns supreme in Peshawar. An example of the region’s love for its star, was when half the Arbab Niaz stadium vacated after the very first ball of the match! Why? Simply because Afridi was dismissed by a little known Zimbabwean bowler Matambandzo in 1997. They chanted "try ball, try ball", in a hope that Afridi would be called back.

Pathans dominate 70 percent of all public transport in Pakistan. It is a very common sight that their trucks, buses, rickshaws and taxis adorn the picture of their beloved cricketer. "Afridi Afridi hai, us jaisa koi nahi, jaisa zalim batsman woh hai aur koi nahi (Afridi is Afridi. There is no one like him and no one can be as cruel a batsman as he is)," said Amanullah Zai, a taxi driver.

In the lead-up to the first ODI, Virender Sehwag spoke to the Kolkata-based daily The Telegraph. Among other things he clarifes his stand on the minor controversy that erupted about his alleged ignorance about former players - Vinoo Mankad and Pankaj Roy.

Where would you place Sourav as a captain?

The best after Steve Waugh... Among other things, a good captain has to make things happen... Both did that... The captaincy is tested when partnerships have to be broken. Steve, in particular, was brilliant in creating pressure... The batsmen would be forced to give it away. Both Steve and Sourav were positive.

Nowadays, Sourav isn’t a certainty even in the Test XI. Do you feel for him?

Click here to continue reading.

It's not just the Indian cricketing fortunes that dipped in Pakistan but the Indian flag too. An upside down Indian flag on the match ticket for today's one-dayer has prompted the team management to file an official complaint with the Pakistan cricket board. Apparently its not the first time either. Even on the fourth floor of the Pearl Continental hotel, where the Indian team is putting up, the Tricolour had green on the top and saffron at the bottom. It was only after Sachin Tendulkar insisted that it was set right.

The VB Series may have had a romantic beginning but now,the visitors look like a bunch of ragged souls.Peter Roebuck questions the format of the annual tri-series and sympathises with the players who could be cursing their respective boards for accepting such a preposterous fixture list.

Glenn and Jane McGrath had everything - international acclaim, success, true love - everything you could possibly hope for in life. And then something else happened to them that threw it all into perspective - cancer. How they dealt with it, what it's meant to them, where they are now, well, it's the stuff of life.

Click here to read this rare interview. It's a May 2004 interview but worth a re-read now, considering the current circumstances.

In the Sunday Telegraph, Scyld Berry writes that Zimbabwe's time is now up, and the takeover of cricket by the government has left an administration who can intimidate and bully, but know little about the game of cricket:

These Zanu chaps, they know their realpolitick, even if they couldn't tell the difference between a googly and Google.

Not since the West Indies arrived in India in 1983 and 1994 have a team been so woefully short of spin ammunition on the sub-continent, writes Mike Atherton

Technical expertise is fine, but the ability to inspire trust and respect from the players is more important still. Bob Woolmer has achieved that says Vic Marks.

Bet you didn't know. Dhoni says he wants to fly a fighter aircraft. Read his interview where he talks about sitting in awe-inspired silence at his first meeting with Sachin Tendulkar.

Trevor Chesterfeld, the veteran journalist, feels Shoaib's action was dodgy at Karachi. Hmmm...

There was something decidedly peculiar about Shoaib’s action when he bowled in Karachi.Watching on television is, admittedly, hardly the same as being at the venue. But Shoaib’s action was noticeably slingshot and thus suspect at times and it appeared he was out to deliberately hit the batsmen.

Michael Holding does a post-mortem of the Karachi Test and identifies the areas where India slipped. The bowler who was nicknamed 'Whispering Death' has a word of advice to the Indian batsmen and believes Sachin Tendulkar would hit form soon.

Zaheer Abbas, the great Pakistani stylist, talks about the art of batting, his guru Hanif Mohammad, and picks his top 5 batsmen (playing currently) whom he would pay to watch. "I love watching stroke-makers and there was nobody better than him," Zaheer raves about a special batsman in the article. No, not Hanif or Lara.Click here to find about which batsman he is talking about.

Asif Iqbal, former Pakistan captain, reckons Mohammad Asif could be the next Glenn McGrath

Despite his wife’s cancer, Glenn McGrath writes in his Sunday Telegraph column he has no plans to retire

Let me make this perfectly clear - my priority is helping my wife Jane and two children, Holly and James, through this tough time. But I have no intention at this stage of retiring from international cricket. I have some goals I want to achieve for Australia and I am hopeful I will get the chance to complete them. However, my family's interests are first and foremost, so we'll see what happens.

Chris Waters looks back at Fred Trueman's start to international cricket in today's Yorkshire Post:

On June 7, 1952, a strapping young fast bowler walked on to the Headingley field with a spring in his step and a knot in his stomach.

As he surveyed a capacity crowd of 34,000, and as he caught sight of his father amid the tightly packed throng, a thought crossed the mind of this wide-eyed Yorkshireman.

"Being one of their own, I knew all eyes would be on me," recalled Fred Trueman, who was making his Test debut on the stage he knew best. "I just hoped and prayed that I wouldn't let them down."

He didn't.

Simon Katich is surprised by his role as a one-day opener. He speaks to The Australian’s Andrew Ramsey about how he moved to the top of the order.

"One-day cricket lends itself to guys going out there and blazing fours and sixes, but I guess I have had to try and adapt because I know I can't hit big sixes into the crowd. I might be able to do it later on in the innings if I have been in for a while, but I can't do that right from the start.

In the same paper Malcolm Conn says in a comment piece on crowd behaviour that all countries must “look in their own backyard”.

Before anyone climbs too far up the high moral ground pointing the finger at Australia regarding crowd abuse and racist behaviour, let's be clear that every Test nation has numerous instances sitting in its shame file.

Sunil Gavaskar lashed out at the Indian batsmen for a spineless performance in the third and final cricket Test against Pakistan.

It was never going to be easy to survive for almost two days but what was utterly disappointing was that India could not even bat out the day and lost well before closing time on the fourth day itself. For far too long, there have been the so-called experts who have been talking about how attacking batting is the only way to win. That may be true, but there has to be the ability to be able to lower a few gears and bat to save a game that can’t be won and so live to fight another day by surviving.

Peter Roebuck wonders about the plethora of left-hand batsmen around the world and suggests a change in lbw rule.

Why are there so many more highly productive lefties around in cricket than in any other sport? Why so many more successful left-handed batsmen than can be found in the general population?

Javed Miandad believes India lost the Test even before it began. Targeting Virender Sehwag in particular he said, "Sehwag, I am sorry to say, looked frightened. It is all right to bang the ball around on featherbeds, but the truest test of your cricketing ability comes on tracks that offer some assistance to the quick bowlers. Sehwag failed on that count".

Aaqib Javed, former head coach of Pakistan’s National Academy, talks about how Mohammad Asif showed character to bounce back after being dropped. Aaqib, who worked with Asif for 3-4 months at the academy, also feels India missed the services of Lakshmipathy Balaji.

"After he [Asif] had played just one Test, the selectors turned around and said that he wasn’t good enough. They said that ‘he doesn’t have the quality to bowl at the international level. In fact, Asif hasn’t had an easy time at all. When the selections for the regional cricket academies were being made in 2000, his name didn’t even figure among them. Javed had to present his case to just get him included in that academy.

"When you look at Asif bowl, you instantly recognise his talent. He has the height, a good wrist action and it is rather difficult for the batsmen to pick him because he gets movement in the air and off the pitch too. So there are times when the ball moves one way in the air and does the complete opposite off the pitch. The only Indian bowler who does that is L Balaji and he isn’t here".

"Pathan's achievement is unique to Test matches. Six years ago the gangly Sri Lankan Nuwan Zoysa actually claimed a hat-trick against Zimbabwe with his first three deliveries of the game, but Chaminda Vaas had already sent down an over," writes Mike Selvey before recounting how Andy Roberts was denied a hat-trick.

Dilip Vengsarkar, the former India captain, feels ignoring Ramesh Powar is a blatant case of indifferent selection. "There is a clique. I want to know why he can't be accommodated when he fared well on the few opportunities he got on the last tour of Pakistan. Harbhajan Singh has not claimed a wicket in two Tests."

click here to read about what's eating Vengsarkar

Cricket’s most controversial delivery, Trevor Chappell’s underam, has been turned into a play and will be shown in New Zealand in September. The stage version of the February 1, 1981 incident will include a re-enactment of the ball that split two nations and the family described in the performance.

Another famous bowling style, that of Muttiah Muralitharan, is also being talked about in the Sydney Morning Herald. Bruce Elliott, the University of Western Australia biomechanics expert, says he is worried about his doosra.

"I have no doubt about his offbreak because he can bowl that quite legitimately and has a lot of leeway in his elbow extension. The doosra, I have more concern for. Warning bells should ring and it should be looked at more carefully from an umpiring perspective."

Ricky Ponting writes in his column in The Australian that he’s surprised by the reaction to his two-game rest.

I'm still not sure if the outcry was caused by the fact that I missed a couple of matches, or if it was because one of those games happened to fall on Australia Day. I also remain uncertain as to what was the main point of the criticism. The fact is I have missed a few games here and there over the last few years, and that hasn't caused anywhere near the same uproar as we've seen over the past week.

The Guardian's John Plunkett is enraged about England's contract with BSkyB:

There is an easy solution - stick cricket back on the A-list of protected sporting events and live cricket need never disappear from terrestrial schedules again. But will MPs recommend that? Will they heck. They should put up - or shut up.

Also see more at Cricinfo on the Commons' attack of the ECB today.

The crowd problems seen in Australia this summer have rightly caused concern. although some feedback to Cricinfo has insisted that no more than a handful of people are to blame. But the Sydney Morning Herald carries an account of a day at the SCG from an average punter which suggests that the problem is more widespread:

"Blokes were bringing grog in. Because of the new regulations, a lot must have filled up before the match. It's the only explanation for their state. We were about 10 rows back. A few rows in front there was a bunch of about 10 20-year-olds mouthing off. Most of them were drunk as skunks."

And general abuse then became racist as the drunks turned their attention to the Sri Lankan fielders:

"These youths kept calling them names, taunting them, trying to get a rise out of them but they didn't take any notice. It was a constant bombardment. The language was dreadful."

But there seems to have been little done to try to stop them, until a couple of spectators decided they had had enough:

"[They] tried to settle them down. One 60-year-old bloke told them to pipe down so they turned on him and abused him. That stopped others in their tracks."

The Sydney Morning Herald’s Alex Brown talks to Ricky Ponting about his charity work with cancer patients at the Sydney Children’s Hospital. The Pontings have already raised more than A$1 million for cancer research.

"Having visited maybe 15 or 20 young cancer sufferers [on the first day], my wife and I walked out holding back tears and we both felt that we could do something to help. We both became ambassadors of the charity very soon after that.”