In the Herald Sun, Ben Dorries reports from Jamaica that one year on from the death of Bob Woolmer, the place where he died has become something of a tourist drawcard.

Room 374 of the Pegasus Hotel in Kingston, Jamaica, has been refurbished since the Pakistan coach was found dead in its white-tiled bathroom. But that hasn't stopped curious cricket fans and business travellers from ringing the hotel and requesting to stay in the 12th floor executive room.

"We have had quite a few occasions where people have asked to stay in the Woolmer room . . . and others have asked to stay on the same floor," hotel manager Eldon Bremner said.

"Woolmer's death here has not affected business and bookings are high. We thought about closing the room or even dedicating it to Mr Woolmer. But I didn't think that was appropriate to his memory, and I also did not want to offend his family."

In the Weekend Australian, Peter Lalor writes that although a Test comeback for Shane Warne seems positively ridiculous, that has never stopped the legspinner before.

Love him or hate him, you just cannot ignore him. Most former Test champions fade quietly into retirement. At best they adopt a blazer and a polished media persona, at worst they man the machine guns for hacking attacks on the game and players who have diminished so much for their absence.

Not Warne, however. No, when he left the stage the spotlight followed.

He has been gone from the national team for an entire summer, but has made sure he is rarely forgotten and so it was on Monday morning that the world woke to hear that the leg-spinner was open, after a fashion, to making a comeback for next year's Ashes.

The thought was tantalising, but there was a lot of fine print that needed to be taken on board before anybody got the steak knives in this deal.

The Kolkata Knight Riders may have underachieved through the IPL, but on the bright side, have managed to draw the maximum supporters throughout the country. Much, if not all of it is due to their team owner Shah Rukh Khan, whose brand value in Bollywood has successfully made the transition to cricket. An eight city survey commissioned by the Economic Times and carried out by market research firm Synovate shows that Shah Rukh is the undisputed winner in the business end of IPL sweepstakes. Read more.

While a cricket crazy Kolkata is firmly behind SRK’s team, he has managed to charm followers across cities to root for his team rather than their ‘home’ franchisees. KKR is the first choice team for nearly a third of cricket followers across India. Fans even in big metros, which have strong corporate-backed teams of their own, seem to be cheering for eastern side with greater gusto. While just 21% of Mumbaikars supported the Reliance-owned Mumbai Indian’s, 30% backed SRK’s team.

While plenty remain in denial about Twenty20 as an acceptable form of cricket, Greg Chappell begs to differ. Writing for the Times of India, he feels Twenty20 is legitimate cricket that demands great skill from the participants. He recounts his early days as a one-day player and how the pressure to score quickly could easily become stifling.

As the bowler began his run to the wicket my mind began to race and the noise inside my head became distracting. I need a boundary; the run rate is going up; this game is getting away from us; what is a good total to set under these conditions? Where can one possibly get a boundary? I had better take some chances.

Before the ball was bowled my heart was racing, my blood pressure was rising, the rushing sound in my ears was deafening and the tension in my arms was causing them to ache. The veins in my arms and hands would have been clearly visible had one not been wearing gloves and had my cream shirt not been long sleeved and buttoned down at my wrists. My eyes were darting from the bowler to the vacant areas in the outfield where a boundary could possibly be scored. I must get a boundary; we need a boundary; the pressure is becoming intolerable; to hell with the consequences. I'm going over the top, this ball.

Yusuf Pathan's performances with bat and ball in the IPL should push his chances of joining his brother Irfan in the Indian squad. Speaking to the Hindu, Pathan Yusuf remembers the days of struggle with Irfan.

“We used to travel around 15 km a day in Vadodara for practice in the same bicycle. We used to toss about who would be the pillion. I miss those days”

Alex Brown reports in the Sydney Morning Herald that Andrew Symonds took the chance in Jamaica to catch up with another sporting superstar, Asafa Powell.

On a sweltering morning in Kingston, Symonds and Stuart Karppinen, Australia's strength and conditioning trainer, assumed the roles of spectator as Powell continued his comeback from a chest injury in the shadows of Long Mountain. Both snapped photographs and compared observational notes as the Commonwealth Games gold medallist - who has broken 10 seconds for the 100m a staggering 33 times and holds the world record at 9.74 - went through his paces.

Though dreadlocks are de rigueur in this part of the world, Symonds's trackside presence did not go unnoticed. The burly Queenslander's shoulder charge, which floored an errant streaker at the Gabba earlier this year, attracted as much discussion as his exploits with bat and ball. Powell, for his part, was delighted by the Australian's visit.

"Everybody knows who he is and what he's done," Powell said. "He's a great player. With travel and training it, can be hard to keep up with the cricket, but I'll definitely try to get down to Sabina Park this week to watch him."

In the same paper, Brown looks at the new-look Australia line-up being used in the first Test, which includes some faces from the past.

Mike Selvey considers the position that young England international players find themselves in and when, if ever, it would be better (financially at least) for them to take the IPL money and run. He is interested in particular in the case of Ravi Bopara and writes in the Guardian:

What concerns me, though, is how long a player in Bopara's situation, having sworn loyalty to the cause, would give it in reality were success not to come his way in a relatively short time span and with the increasing Lorelei lure of riches elsewhere. Would a Ryan Sidebottom, say, hang around for six years honing the skills that make him the cricketer he is today had there been an IPL, or indeed ICL ,back then to draw him in. It is a difficult one. Which do you think Ryan himself would choose: a million or two in the bank and recognition as a one-Test wonder; or the success he has now and the prospects that go with it?

The cricketers who won India's first World Cup in 1983 should be lauded not ignored by the BCCI, writes Dileep Premachandran in the Guardian.

As things stand, the month of June, monsoon time in the south, will witness four six-a-side games featuring the squad of 1983. Soon after that, there will be a dinner in Dubai, following which the Long Room at Lord's will host the big bash on the 25th. "Let them do whatever they're doing," said Ratnakar Shetty, the BCCI's chief administrative officer. "We haven't got any invitation from them or any intimation."

This, mind you, is the same board that spared no expense in arranging ticker-tape parades and handing out Goodyear-blimp-sized cheques after India's triumphs in the T20 and Under-19 World Cups, insignificant baubles next to a trophy lifted by the likes of Clive Lloyd, Allan Border, Imran, Steve Waugh and a certain Kapil Dev Nikhanj.

"The IPL is not just a competition between cricketers. It is also a competition between management styles," writes Amit Varma for NDTV. "Contrast Bangalore and Mumbai, for example. Both had a similarly bad start to the tournament - if anything, Mumbai's was worse, what with their acting captain, Harbhajan Singh, involved in Slapgate. But the management of both teams handled it differently."

Mallya used the whip, trying to bring about what some newspapers bizarrely called "corporate-style accountability". (How many corporates can you name that would sack someone on the basis of a week's results?) Mukesh Ambani, on the other hand, kept faith in his side and gave them space. As Lalchand Rajput, their coach, told Outlook: "Even after four defeats, we were not put under pressure. Even I was a bit surprised by this, but they only said as long as you put in your best efforts, it is fine." See the difference in results. Isn't it obvious that Mallya is already being held accountable for his mistakes? Isn't the brand value of his side slipping and sliding even further because of his public tantrums? And when he tries to hire top players or a much-wanted captain for the next season, do you think they will choose to work for him if equivalent offers exist from other franchises?

	Steve Waugh wears his cap with pride © Getty Images

Ricky Ponting is excited about the Test series starting in the West Indies, but he also uses his column in the Australian to justify the cap controversy of the opening tour match. A sponsor’s hat was worn instead of the white floppy or baggy green.

Some former players were upset that we did not wear the cap during our warm-up game, but they do not understand what happened or why. There has been an evolution in what the baggy green means to the Australian team and I would argue that there has never been a time when it was more respected.

In the Herald Sun Ian Chappell says too much is made of the baggy green and it is a “$5 bit of cloth”.

"It is a cap, a nice cap, but has only become more than a cap since Steve Waugh started to jump up and down about it," Chappell said. "Cricket memorabilia has also played its part, going for ridiculous prices. It is a $5 bit of cloth. I haven't got one, haven't had one since the day I finished. I don't need to look at an Australian cap to remind me of what I did."

"The cricketers who won India's first World Cup in 1983 should be lauded not ignored by the BCCI," writes Dileep Premachandran in the Guardian blog.

Over the past few months, Kapil, Madan Lal (who dismissed Viv Richards in the final) and Balwinder Sandhu (that inswinger to Gordon Greenidge) have been treated like the untouchables were in the pre-Gandhi days because of their involvement in the Indian Cricket League, the so-called rebel league. The ICL was the first to come up with the idea of city-based franchises, but is now in danger of being run out of town by the infinitely more powerful and rich IPL. By taking on the BCCI, whose attitude to cricket seems to be little different from that of the mafia to a protection racket, all those involved with the ICL have become pariahs. Sadly, that includes talented young players who might otherwise have thrived in the IPL.

... Strange indeed are the ways of Indian cricket. A nation's real cricket culture can be gauged from the way it treats its heroes.

	Star quality: Dwayne Bravo © DigicelCricket.com

Dwayne Bravo made a rock-star entry into the West Indies-Australia series, landing in Jamaica on a private plane which was apparently arranged by his IPL team, AAP reports.

Bravo's appearance was restricted to a brief - albeit colourful - cameo as he arrived in designer clothes and Calvin Klein shoes, looking a million dollars, before retreating to the team hotel to try and escape any lingering jet-lag. The rumour he had been flown in via private jet after staying on to play for the Mumbai Indians on Sunday began to spread like wildfire around Sabina Park, with Sarwan eventually confirming the report.

"We actually knew it a couple of days ago," Ramnaresh Sarwan said. "He first mentioned it to me when I was in India, so I found it funny that he did actually want to come back on it.”

	Larger than life: Shane Warne © Getty Images

Peter Lalor, writing in the Australian, says Shane Warne’s fanciful suggestion of an Ashes comeback has been met with rolled eyes and laughter in Australian cricket circles, but was enough to send a shiver of fear down the spines of England's batsmen.

Those poor, long-suffering souls have seen enough horror movies to know that no matter how dead the bad guy looks, he always manages to reach a gnarly hand out of the grave one last time ... The greatest leg-spinner of all time admitted the whole notion of an Ashes comeback is a "fairytale" and Cricket Australia treated it as something of a joke, but Warne has never tired of the spotlight and knows that even the peak of his nose through the velvet curtains is enough to raise excitement in the cheap seats.

In the unlikely event Warne does attempt a comeback, allow yourself to rejoice, writes Richard Hinds in the Sydney Morning Herald.

And save the pity for Stuart MacGill.The great bridesmaid spends more than a decade in Warne's colossal shadow. He suffers serious injury when Warne finally walks away. Then, after he has taken seven wickets in a tour match in the West Indies, Warne muses he might step in should MacGill break a leg.

Tehelka's Nisha Susan meets Kunal Deshmukh, the director of Jannat (Heaven), a Bollywood film which revolves around the life of a bookie.

Deshmukh’s two passions, movies and cricket are predictable choices for a young Indian. But at 26, Deshmukh has been able to bring both these passions together. Relatively new in the business, he has been an assistant director to the equally youthful Mohit Suri in three films. Jannat, his debut film, which releases on May 16 in India and premieres in Lahore, explores scandals from the cricketing world and readily lends itself to a Mahesh Bhatt banner. Emraan Hashmi plays Arjun, a small-time bookie who is propelled by love and greed into the higher echelons of match-fixing. One strand of the story is also a fictionalised account of cricket coach Bob Woolmer’s death.

Deshmukh says, “I have been cricket-obsessed all my life. When the Azhar story got out, my heart broke. I couldn’t bear to remember the Titan series and how much I had loved Kumble and Srinath in it.” Deshmukh, who is an advocate of legalised cricket betting, originally intended to make a movie that was steeped in betting lore. “Left to me I would have had no love story in the script at all. But Bhattsaab insisted and I decided to sound out the idea with my friends and family. I came reluctantly to the conclusion that most people wouldn’t be able to understand or want to understand the nitty-gritty of match-fixing.”

In the Age Greg Baum looks at Australia's decision to wear a sponsor’s cap during their tour match in the West Indies and says it is one of a series of events that makes it hard to treat the Tests seriously.

All of the Australians are in the Caribbean and, unlike the West Indians, are not conflicted about who they are representing. They took the field against a Jamaica Select XI on the weekend wearing blue baseball caps bearing the name of their brewery sponsor. Plainly, they were playing not for us, but for yet another franchise.

This was a breathtaking contempt, not just morally, because of the campaign against binge-drinking, and not just aesthetically, because it made the Australian team look like a pack of Sunday afternoon pub players. Always, the baggy green has held special significance in Australian sport. As the commercial era dawned, it was the only thing Cricket Australia quarantined from the clutches of marketeers.

Michael Vaughan's 106 on the fourth day against New Zealand silenced the doubters over his place in the Test line-up. There were glimpses of Vaughan's best, with his cover-driving in good order, but as Simon Barnes says in The Times it wasn't a vintage innings, yet does it really matter?

At one stage, coming in at 121 for one, he seemed to have the idea of filling his boots and forcing a win. Daniel Vettori changed his mind with three quick wickets, leaving Vaughan to play an intriguing half-and-halfer of an innings: leaving the ball a lot, spending plenty of time off strike, looking for ones and twos. But every now and then he would make that profound genuflection, right knee kissing the turf, as the prettiest cover drive in England made its little hop over the boundary rope, a shot breaking out of a cautious innings like Superman leaving a phone box.

In the Daily Telegraph, Simon Briggs says that Vaughan predicted he would make a hundred.

After Michael Vaughan's ropey start to the summer, there had been plenty of recent speculation over his form, focus and future. But the man himself is not given to self-doubt. At Monday's Vodafone dinner, he boldly predicted: "I'm going to make a hundred at Lord's."

Vaughan's ability as a soothsayer almost matches up to his talent as a batsman. He has had these flashes of certainty before, most notably in the lead-up to his comeback match at Headingley last year. "I was driving the car and just felt I had a hundred in me," he said then. "It was almost like it was destiny."

Amit Varma does a hilarious take on Facebook and the IPL - who slapped/hugged/nudged who. Read on in India Uncut.

Muzamil Jaleel of the Indian Express profiles Mohammad Mudasir, the 19-year-old Kashmiri medium-pacer who has signed with Kings XI Punjab. He also writes about how the IPL has "confused the decades-old cricket loyalities" in Kashmir.

Mudasir was discovered during a pace hunt conducted by Javagal Srinath and TA Sekar of the MRF pace foundation at Sher-e-Kashmir Stadium, Srinagar in 2006. He represented the J&K under-19 team last season and bagged 35 wickets.

Mudasir has not yet made his debut but IPL has already confused the decades-old cricket loyalties in Kashmir which were always an expression of separatist politics here.

The cricket pitch was, in fact, the first platform for separatist politics. On October, 13, 1983 when West Indies came to play India in Srinagar, the separatists dug the pitch to protest. The police arrested Mushtaq-ul-Islam and Showkat Bakhshi — who later became militant commanders — inside the stadium while Hurriyat leader Shabir Shah too was charge-sheeted.

Also, check out Deepak Narayanan's article in the Indian Express titled 'T20 and the art of forgetting.'

Mixing the corporate culture with cricket seems to have affected the Bangalore Royal Challengers big time. Rohit Mahajan of the Outlook has more.

Insiders say meddling in the Bangalore team has reached ridiculous proportions. "They join the team meetings and point out mistakes to the coach and players," a Royal Challengers source told Outlook . "They even berate the video and statistics analyst for not providing enough data to the team to form its plans." Besides this piecemeal cricket analysis, the corporate minders even insisted players must double their practice time, arguing that "when we fail to meet our targets, we work doubly hard".

There's more hard-hitting material on the plight of the Royal Challengers. Sharda Ugra, writing in India Today writes that Vijay Mallya’s swift abandonment of his struggling team has shown just how far big business’ attachment to cricket goes—only until the next victory, exactly like the fickle, effigy-burning fan. She adds that some of the Indian players are feeling the heat much more in the IPL than when they represent their countries.

When Sourav Ganguly’s KKR lost three matches in a row, a teammate watching him in his next game remarked, “The only time I’ve seen Sourav so much under pressure was in the World Cup final.”

In the same magazine, Charu Sharma, the ex-CEO of the Royal Challengers, says owners of the IPL teams should be sensitised about what cricket means.

Buying a sports team is one thing, administrating it is different. It's a new business for them, and they've got to learn it.

	Shane Warne's talents are freakish © Getty Images

Bruce Loudon writes in the Australian about the battle tactics for the Rajasthan Royals and how Shane Warne is code-named “The Leader of the Pack”.

Warne's leadership has followed to the letter the pre-tournament game plan he set out for the side of which he is captain-coach. He hand-delivered to each of his players a four-page document [which was published in the Hindustan Times] that set out his expectations of each and every one of them, including himself.

In the battle plan, Warne had three tasks: "(1) Spin to win. Take the big wickets and impose yourself on the contest. (2) Match-winning temperament in closing overs with the bat. (3) Marshal the troops [from] slip or short cover/mid-off."

In the Herald Sun Robert Craddock says the Indian Premier League has confirmed Warne is a “freak”.

In his last great challenge in cricket, Warne has submerged himself in Indian culture in a way he never did when he made three Test tours as a player. On one of those tours I remember watching him at a breakfast buffet awkwardly clasping tongs that held a piece of naan bread with vegemite on it on one of those conveyor belt toasters.

As we spoke, one end of the naan bread was catching fire. "How are you going there?" I asked. He looked up with a furrowed brow and said: "I've lost three already."

	McCullum's now batting at five which makes him more a batsman-wicketkeeper and very soon will be unquestionably the best - so long as Kumar Sangakkara keeps the gloves off © Getty Images

"He made the number eight spot in one-day internationals his own, very quickly becoming the best ODI closer in the world. Over time, and after a few failures, he finally made the opener's role his own in the Black Caps' ODI team and, as Adam Gilchrist fades with age, he'll soon be the best at that game too," writes Mark Richardson in the Herald on Sunday.

I was not overly keen to see McCullum elevated in ODIs because I believe in the importance of bite in the tail and not just strike power at the top. However, what he has shown of late at the top of the order you simply cannot downplay. I've not the same reservations when it comes to his elevation to five in test matches. The difference between batting five or seven in test match cricket is nowhere near as drastic as the difference between opening in ODIs or batting in the lower middle order.

Also check out Dylan Cleaver's piece on Lord's in the Herald on Sunday.

The cameras love to pan to the Pavilion where bacon-and-egg blazered members make the most of their good fortune, sometimes choosing an afternoon nap over the opportunity to see Jacob Oram poke around for 146 minutes and countless thick edges. But that is their prerogative. It takes approximately 18 years between application and acceptance to become a member of the Marylebone Cricket Club - is it any wonder, then, that they look so smug when they finally earn the right to wear the blazer and tie?

"On April 26 Dr Nasim Ashraf told the Senate’s Standing Committee on Sports that the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) had “nothing to hide.” The truth is that it has a lot to hide," writes Masood Hasan in The News. "No single chairman of the board has created controversies like Dr Ashraf, who has been around for just 18 months. The stories, the details are different, but through it all, there is one common strand. Dr Nasim Ashraf. He sails on, despite open and proven evidence of incompetence and fiscal waywardness."

Mark Ramprakash is on the verge of reaching 100 first-class hundreds - a remarkable feat, joining a select club of rare, brilliant batsmen. And yet, the big question remains: how and why could he not transfer his matchless talents onto the world stage? Paul Kimmage meets him for The Sunday Times, and Ramprakash is as fired-up as ever:

A profile on Cricinfo that divides his England career into five distinct phases: adhesive beginner (1991), nervous wreck capable of shining only as a stand-in (1992-97), solid achiever lacking only a top gear (1997-99), blatant scapegoat (1999-2000) and seasoned spare part (200102).

He is not impressed. “I’m not interested in what Cricinfo think of my career.”

An observation (my favourite) that during his first life he played with a mind ticking like a room full of a thousand clocks. “In all the decades, I’ve never met a young man who so much needed to succeed. He was obsessed, and it took him a long time to become merely single-minded.”

He’s had enough. “I don’t know where you are getting these quotes from,” he responds, testily.

“That was from Peter Roebuck,” I reply.

“Okay, well let me throw this back at you: why would I be interested in what Peter Roebuck has got to say about me? He has never shared a dressing room with me. I have hardly ever spoken to the man. You are giving me these quotes but I don’t know why you are expecting me to comment on them.”

“I’m interested in whether you agree with his assessment of who you were? What you were?”

The Observer's Will Buckley is delighted to find that old friend Joseph O'Neill has completed his novel, and even more so because "cricket is integral to the plot".

So it was I read that on the cover of the Sunday Book Review there was a review of Netherland by Joseph O'Neill, by Dwight Gardner. It described O'Neill's book as 'the wittiest, angriest, most exacting and most desolate work of fiction we've yet had about life in New York and London after the World Trade Center fell.'

This would be the Joe, born in Ireland and raised in Holland, who had moved to New York a decade ago and with whom I had been friends for years. The Joe who batted first wicket down for the Royal Burundi cricket team - an XI with an undistinguished record, at their least dangerous when on tour. A nadir occurred during a match at Joe's club, Den Haag, when we were beaten by a bunch of girls.

About the novel, Buckley writes…

Netherland looks as if it might top the lot. Here he is on New York cricket: 'This degenerate version of the sport - bush cricket, as Chuck more than once dismissed it - inflicts an injury that is aesthetic as much as anything: the American adaptation is devoid of the beauty of cricket played on a lawn of appropriate dimensions, where the white-clad ring of infielders, swanning figures on the vast oval, again and again converge in unison toward the batsman and again and again scatter back to their starting points, a repetition of pulmonary rhythm, as if the field breathed through its luminous visitors.'

Click here to read the New Yorker's review of the same book.

Stephen Fleming looks forward to making his debut at the Eden Gardens when he plays for the Chennai Super Kings against the Kolkata Knight Riders. He writes in the Kolkata-based Telegraph:

The only time I was inside the stadium was during the opening ceremony of the 1996 World Cup, and I spent exactly a day-and-a-half in Calcutta then on that occasion. Having played at venues such as the MCG and Lord’s, I am no stranger to cricket history, which makes it all the more satisfying to finally get a game at Eden Gardens.

Plenty of players have described their disbelief at the level of noise and excitement that the Eden crowd can generate and I anticipate a great experience.

Meanwhile, in the Hindustan Times Mahendra Singh Dhoni plans to play Shoaib Akhtar just like he would play any other bowler.

	And there are the Australians in their famous, er, blue hats © Getty Images

There were no baggy greens in sight on the opening day of Australia’s tour match against a Jamaica XI and Greg Matthews, speaking to the Sunday Mail, is furious. Cricket Australia says the players chose to wear the sponsor’s hats because not everyone has played in a Test and earned the traditional cap.

"Money talks, you're selling your pride, selling the baggy green, what price is it? It just cheapens things," Matthews said. "Personally, I would have worn my baggy green. I wouldn't have given a razoo what they told me.”

Brendon McCullum's elevation to No.5 in the order was an immediate success as he hit 97 on the opening day at Lord's to haul New Zealand out of trouble. Mark Richardson, his former team-mate, says in the Herald on Sunday that it was the right move, but it shouldn't mean that he needs to give up the gloves any time soon.

His 97 in the first innings of this current test was a fine example of Brendon McCullum in total equilibrium and an innings from which he should grow more comfortable, confident and clear in his test game. Where I do have reservations is in the possible discharging of the wicketkeeping duties simply because he is batting in the top six. Having your keeper in the top six provides for options in balance.

Meanwhile, Dylan Cleaver gives a New Zealand viewpoint on the Lord's experience and notices that the exchange rate isn't very friendly.

Its famed Nursery is transformed into a veritable theme park of food stalls, liquor outlets and merchandising caravans. It is here the Lord's proletariat gather, dressed in their newly purchased MCC polo shirts - a snip at just $63, down from $140 - munching $17 burgers and quaffing Foster's ($9 per pint), Pimms ($11 per glass), or, if you're in the mood, a little Veuve Clicquot.

	Ryan Sidebottom wrapped up New Zealand innings by taking 4 for 55 © Getty Images

"In 61 balls of brand-enhancing frugality, Sidebottom single-handedly turned New Zealand's overnight score of 208 for 6 into 277 all out," writes Lawrence Booth in the Guardian. "He hit the stumps three times and allowed a team-mate in on his one-man show only when Andrew Strauss held a straightforward slip catch off Jacob Oram. It was the stuff of bowlers' dreams, but for Sidebottom they are becoming part of Test-match reality."

Sidebottom joked that his colleagues had ribbed him for "burgling a few wickets" at the end of the New Zealand innings, but the best seamers earn these salad spells by doing the chips-and-gravy graft in less favourable conditions over a long period of time: in Sri Lanka during the winter Sidebottom bowled far better than his figures suggested. You do not need to see the world rankings - Sidebottom is currently 10th in the Test table - to tell you that "best seamers" is a category in which he now very much belongs. These are early days, but his 57 Test wickets have cost just 25.70 each. To dip under the 25-mark would be to enter the realms of Fred Trueman, Brian Statham and Alec Bedser in the pantheon of English seamers.

Simon Barnes writes in the Times that when you’re playing the team ranked seventh in the world you don’t just want to beat them, you want to hammer them, which England have failed to do in the first two days at Lord’s.

In the Daily Telegraph, Simon Hughes reflects on a day of play that featured insipid cricket, "not helped by the umpires reaching for their light meters like nicotine addicts fingering their cigarette packets."

	Is accountability a new word in the sport? © AFP

As cricket moves into the era of corporate management, and profitability, image and return on investment become key criteria, everybody will have to become accountable. At one level the cricketers are, because they get dropped if they don’t score runs or take wickets and that will be extended to coaches and managers...

Which is why I must reiterate my great desire; that cricket be slowly corporatised so that first all limited-overs cricket and in course of time, all cricket is run by franchises. I am not suggesting that all corporate houses are perfect or that everything the BCCI and its affiliate bodies do is wrong but corporate entities have to worry about things like image, return on investment, profitability and the consumer and often when that happens, you are forced to be right most times because otherwise you don’t survive.

Would you read a book on cricket written by an Irishman, raised in Netherlands, educated at Cambridge, now living in New York?

Joseph O’Neill's third novel, Netherland, is the story of Hans van den Broek, a Dutch investment banker working in New York, who after the 9/11 attacks finds himself exiled to the Chelsea Hotel. After Hans’s British wife leaves him and takes their child back to England, he finds solace in an unlikely friendship with a Trinidadian wheeler-dealer named Chuck Ramkissoon, who dreams of starting a pro cricket league in New York. And he finds a second home in the subculture of New York cricket, a world at once exotic and familiar to him from his own cricketing days in The Hague. Read about it in the New York Times:

New York cricket is “bush cricket,” one of the characters in the book complains, played on wickets of cocoa mat instead of grass and on weedy, substandard pitches, where to score a run you need to bat the ball in the air instead of elegantly along the fast ground of a proper pitch. But it has a charm of its own and is played with unusual devotion, in remote corners of the city, by a surprisingly large number of people unable or unwilling to shed their cricketing heritage.

Christopher Martin-Jenkins, the former chief cricket correspondent of The Times, and BBC's Test Match Special commentator "corpsed" live on air yesterday when he referred to a batsman's "rod" in an elaborate fishing analogy while Daniel Vettori was at the crease.

"But Vettori stays on the bank… and keeps his rod down, so to speak." Cue giggles, and near-uncontrollable laughter from CMJ's colleagues. "I don't know if he is a fisherman, is he?"

The Guardian has the audio of the blooper.

From gracefully adjusting to a life as a commoner, Sourav Ganguly finds himself in a leadership role again with a golden helmet on his head, writes Sandeep Dwivedi in the Indian Express.

The one big difference between the sides Ganguly has led in the past and Knight Riders is Akhtar. During his days as India captain, Ganguly had one big regret - the absence of an express quick in his line-up. "I think I'm destined only to face real fast bowlers. I never get a real quick in my side," he had said.

...

Akhtar provides him with the fire-power that he so desperately wanted. At Kolkata the other day, as Akhtar was running through the Delhi top-order, Ganguly jumped around like a child who had finally got what he had always dreamed of And the big smile on Akhtar's face on Tuesday had not faded at Wankhede today, providing an interesting off-shoot to the story: If Ganguly has never got a pacer like Akhtar in his line-up, some experts say the Rawalpindi Express has never quite got a skipper who backed him to the hilt.

	Lord's a citadel of cricket? © Getty Images

Lord’s is truly a citadel of cricket. Every single one of you must come here before you die. Cricket oozes from these pores in St John’s Wood – there is nowhere better to be watching cricket. But while it is a magnet for cricket-lovers from around the world, the weird and wonderful eccentrics of London also gravitate toward it. For example, as I waited at the MCC reception, I heard grunting and groaning and a chap emerged with a weird looking racquet, in top to toe white towelling. He’d been unleashing on another bloke similarly attired, as they played what must be one of the most ridiculous sports ever invented: real tennis. Just what the point of a court promoting another sport is doing at the home of cricket is not clear to me, but there you go. And sitting in front of us in The Mound Stand was a match made in heaven: a husband and wife listening to the BBC’s Test Match Special via one cheeky earphone each. A beautiful thing.

Hamish McDouall is less enamoured by the ground. He writes in Googlies & Grass Stains.

Lord’s has long been called Headquarters, but I reject that. I don’t want to let this lozenge-shaped part of St John’s Wood dominate world cricket. I prefer the spongy banks of the Basin Reserve, or the urban grubbiness of the Oval, or the hedonistic chaos of Queen’s Park Oval in Port of Spain. I also prefer cricket at Liardet Park, or Glover Park, or Sunnyvale. Or on a beach where the lick of the waves at square leg means six and out. Cricket does not need busts of W.G. Grace, rolled up copies of The Times and the whiff of Pimms to buoy it. It is a better game than that. It is a game that has made as many coalminers as accountants famous, a game that embraces Indian princes, and Taranaki farmers. It is also a game that doesn’t need, or even desire, umbrellas. Of any hue.

Victor Trumper has emerged as the favourite to have a Sydney Cricket Ground stand named after him, AAP’s John Coomber reports.

The SCG Trust has decided that its new stand, currently under construction in the old 'Hill' area, will be named after a cricketer. But the Waughs are out of contention because the trust has decided the player needs to have been retired for at least ten years. Steve Waugh retired in 2004, leaving Test immortal Victor Trumper as the favourite.

See Trumper's player page here.

In the Dominion Post, Jeremy Coney runs his eye over the current New Zealand team - he calls them the Bleak Caps - and finds plenty of reasons for concern.

In an ideal world, Jamie How and Ross Taylor would be two of our young stars poised for development. An England tour is an ideal place for them to progress. However, compared to their top- order teammates, they are senior statesmen. And Taylor himself was dropped as recently as the Bangladesh series. Is this the way to develop long-term players?

Despite circumstances, the squad looks unbalanced. Five seam bowlers (an aging population of 29-33) and Jacob Oram. It does appear heavily weighted – six into four (test requirements) when the batting looks so inexperienced and unknown is a luxury. The top five batsmen register 19 tests between them. Similar batting positions for the Bangladesh side that played New Zealand recently held 115 tests and their current opposition 221. All England whiff crumbly collapso.

Duncan Fletcher in the Guardian shows he is still thinking about the importance of a strong lower order. He believes Stuart Broad can become a genuine allrounder.

Ideally, you want your allrounders to be batting allrounders in the Jacques Kallis mode. Broad, like Flintoff, is a bowling all-rounder and he will find at his young age that it is hard to concentrate properly on both disciplines. But he has serious potential, not just as a bowler whose height is a crucial extra dimension on what might be another flat Lord's pitch, but as a No. 8 capable of scoring fifties. I remember our bowling coach Kevin Shine bringing Broad to my attention, and he wasn't wrong.

	Better than his dad: For a long time Ryan Sidebottom was level with his dad on one Test cap, now he is England's leading bowler © Getty Images

Angus Fraser in the Independent looks at the different face of cricket from the time Arnie Sidebottom was playing to his son Ryan’s era.

The careers of Arnie and Ryan top and tailed my own but it is the cold, overcast days at Headingley in the late Eighties on pitches where the ball nipped around, when Middlesex used to regularly get the better of a grunting, disharmonious Yorkshire, which bring back the fondest memories. A day of hard cricket was followed by a short drive to the Three Horseshoes pub in Headingley, where Bairstow, Sidebottom and Mike Gatting would trade banter next to the bar over a couple of pints of Tetley. Gatting would then lead his Middlesex team next door to Bryan's, a wonderful fish and chip restaurant, where baby haddock, chips and mushy peas were consumed by everyone, washed down by a pot of tea.

By the time Ryan came on the scene in the late Nineties attitudes had changed dramatically. Fraternising with the opposition was no longer encouraged and very few evenings were spent in the pub. Pasta, rehydration drinks and ice baths were in vogue. Undoubtedly cricketers are now better prepared when they turn up for a day's play but it seems a far duller existence.

Over in The Guardian, Mike Selvey says it's too early to write off Michael Vaughan but he needs to build some big innings, not just pretty 30s and 40s.

And thus does the spotlight fall on the England captain, who promised anew with an incredibly determined century last May, on his return to the Test side after yet another operation on his dicky knee, but who has gradually allowed the curve to dip. He averaged 62 against West Indies a year ago, 49 against India with another hundred at Trent Bridge, but then 35 in Sri Lanka and 20 in New Zealand. As declines go it looks pretty convincing.

Yet with the first Test due to start at Lord's today, weather permitting, these are early days to be writing him off, as some have done. He is still 33, young by the standards of today's career cricketers, looks slenderly fit, although in his very best years he appeared to weigh significantly more, and - you could put the inheritance on it - is hitting the ball sublimely in the nets.

	Marlon Samuels will not be seen in West Indies colours for at least two years © AFP

For all his talent, Marlon Samuels remains a boy-man; someone who remains arrogantly juvenile, seemingly incapable of either understanding or coming to terms with his own talent. In that regard, he may mirror an image of a generation of politically and culturally estranged West Indians, about whom social scientists ponder so much. For this group, talent is a personal asset, a mere gift possessed by minstrels.

Jamaicans, unwittingly, perhaps, abetted in arresting Samuels' development. We not only forgave his many alleged disciplinary indiscretions, but usually cast any accuser in the role of villain.

	Vijay Mallya has cracked the whip after the Bangalore's poor performances © Bangalore Royal Challengers

Before everything went up in smoke, perhaps appropriate given their TV commercial, the owner of the Indian Premier League's Royal Challengers lapped up the attention. No matter what the function or the photo-shoot, Vijay Mallya's portly frame would be there, providing stark contrast to the athletic physiques that surrounded him. He even drafted in cheerleaders from the Washington Redskins, missing no opportunity to be photographed with them.

In response to Mallya's statement: "Unfortunately in cricket, unlike in any other sport, the captain is the boss," Premachandran says…

Unfortunately? Is Mallya suggesting that he was better equipped than Dravid to select a side? Things may not have gone Bangalore's way for a variety of reasons, but Dravid has forgotten more about cricket than Mallya and his number-crunchers, some of whom have allegedly been sitting in on team meetings, will ever know.

When I spoke to Dravid in Mohali on Monday, hours before another humiliating defeat against the King's XI from Punjab, he was still in shock at the owner's outburst. Weeks of being ridiculed over the "Test" team that he was leading had clearly taken their toll, but he would not be drawn into a riposte.

	Could Ashley Noffke play his first Test next week? © Getty Images

Robert Craddock, writing in the Courier-Mail, argues the case for Queensland’s Ashley Noffke to make his Test debut against West Indies next week. It is almost certain a reshuffle will have to occur to replace Michael Clarke, who stayed home due to a family death, and Simon Katich is also a contender for the spot.

Given the emotional strain Clarke has been under and the marathon two-day trip from Australia and his recent lack of cricket, the Test selectors may be reluctant to play him. If he is unable to play then Noffke, because of his valuable batting ability in a side which would feature a five-man tail, would be the logical inclusion.

New South Wales have found Josh Hazlewood, a 17-year-old bowler, who reminds officials of the young Glenn McGrath, the Daily Telegraph reports.

"If you look at Josh's height, action and his background, it's hard not to draw comparisons with McGrath," Dave Gilbert, New South Wales’ chief executive, said. "You never like to saddle a young bloke with enormous expectations, but I think you'll see some really big things from this kid in the next few years."

In the Herald Sun Jon Pierik writes Simon Taufel, the world’s No. 1 umpire, has not yet signed a new contract with the ICC.

	England's new Test strip has caused some concern for its players © Getty Images

The Independent's Nick Harris writes about the stand-off between the England board and their kit suppliers, Adidas, over advertisements on the players' trousers. The situation has arisen since the players have previously worn trousers from different manufacturers, which allowed for the particular company’s logo to be placed on each players' left thigh. The board's "all-inclusive" contract, which allows Adidas to place to small logo on the same spot, was reportedly signed without the players' consultation.

The colour of England's new kit further complicates the issue. Historically, cricket whites have always been off-white – a cream colour – but the clothing Vaughan's side will wear for the first time at Lord's is brilliant white. The trousers have red piping down each leg, too.

In an attempt to avoid the embarrassment of players wearing trousers that are different in colour to the shirt and sweaters they don, kit manufacturers such as Gray Nichols have sent Alastair Cook, Andrew Strauss and James Anderson identical whites to those issued by the ECB with their company logo replacing that of adidas. If the kit they are sent does not look right, they may yet wear their official trousers, but with tape covering the sponsor's logo.

	Mark Ramprakash is all set to become the 25th batsman in first-class cricket to score a hundred hundreds © AFP

It is still his first century that Mark Ramprakash remembers most vividly. And he thought of it again yesterday morning as he packed his bags for the Rose Bowl where today he may become the 25th and probably the final cricketer to score 100 first-class centuries.

"It was for Middlesex against Yorkshire in 1989. Batting at Headingley can be challenging at the best of times and I was up against [Paul] Jarvis, Sidebottom - not Ryan, but his dad Arnie - and [Phil] Carrick. The ball was moving about, I got 128 and we won the game."

As Surrey go into their match against Hampshire today the England batsmen - all substantially inferior players, from a technical perspective - will be finalising their preparations for a Test at Lord's, cricket's grandest stage. It is a poignant backdrop to Ramprakash's potential piece of history-making.

Shantanu Guha Ray, writing in Tehelka, analyses the perform-or-perish mantra that has been on display in the IPL.

The leaguing of cricket has ushered in corporatisation, fabulous salaries and high voltage drama on the playing fields, but it’s come at a price — punishment for non-performance is swift. Worse, the execution is very, very, public. Midway through the IPL season, the first CEO axing has been effected: liquor baron Vijay Mallya pulled the plug on his Royal Challenger team boss, Charu Sharma, who resigned last week, citing ‘personal reasons’.

With the Challengers bottoming out the points table, with two wins in seven matches, you didn’t need rocket science to know what those personal reasons were. Coach Venkatesh Prasad (also India’s bowling coach) could also face the axe. Hours before the firing, Sharma called his counterpart in Kolkata, Joy Bhattacharya, and asked whether he was facing tension from Shah Rukh Khan or Jay Mehta. The Knight Riders, with two wins in six matches, are ahead of Bangalore, but not by much.

Makarand Waingankar, in the Mumbai Mirror, says the bottom-placed teams are suffering as they are constituted more of ”sifaarshi (recommended) players than of performers.”

The Indian Express’ Sandeep Dwevedi reveals how old friends L Balaji and Ashish Nehra, who last played together on the tour to Pakistan in 2004, have enjoyed each others’ success in the IPL.

	Guilty: Marlon Samuels © Getty Images

Jon Pierik writes in the Herald Sun that while the Marlon Samuels scandal is a blight on cricket, the guilty verdict is more a win than a loss.

It proves the ICC's anti-corruption unit is doing its job, despite there being few high-profile victims in recent years.

Ask any anti-corruption officer at an international match if there are investigations in progress, and most will suggest there are.

Pierik writes that while Samuels has been a failure with the bat, his greatest success may be now. “He has served as a warning to all cricketers to remain true to themselves, and their sport.”

Ellyse Perry, the dual international, is a teenager with cricket and soccer vying for her long-term attention. The Sydney Morning Herald reports the battle between the sports is intensifying after she was named in the football squad for the Women's Asian Cup in Vietnam.

The call-up comes amid speculation Perry, 17, will be used as the promotional face for the Women's Cricket World Cup, to be held in Australia next March. However, the Matildas coach Tom Sermanni says Football Federation Australia won't be pressuring Perry to choose between the two games.

Writing in the Jamaica Gleaner, Tony Becca is baffled by the West Indies selectors.

I still believed, up to a few days ago, that a selector should travel with the West Indies team, that the regional selectors should travel around the islands to see the players in action, and that although he played for the West Indies while living in England, Lloyd, in spite of his greatness and his knowledge of the game, should not be a selector as long as he lives outside the region.

The reason why I have changed my opinion is that, based on the selection of the squad for the coming series against Australia, it seems, it is a waste of money flying the selectors around, paying their hotel bills, and offering them out of pocket expenses and whatever else they may get from a board that is short of money.

Apart from the waste of time and money to transport and to accommodate those who do not have the chance of a snow ball in hell to make the team, in selecting 17 players plus 'sure picks' Chris Gayle, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Ramnaresh Sarwan and Dwayne Bravo, the selectors have baffled the fans.

Frank Keating is almost apoplectic at the England selectors’ continued refusal to include Mark Ramprakash in a Test squad. Ramprakash is one century away from a hundred first-class tons, and Keating would relish it if he could bring up the landmark (becoming only the 25th player to have done so) in Surrey’s match this week while, in Keating's ideal scenario, England’s batsmen collapse in the first Test at Lord’s. Writing furiously in the Guardian, not even Keating's fellow journalists are safe from his anger:

It was (and continues to be) infuriating, almost shaming, how for the past half-dozen years successive Lord's mandarins (the dreaded po-faced politburo of Graveney-Fletcher-Hussain-Vaughan-Moores) have with such wantonly brazen impenitence refused, it seems, to so much as even glance at the batting averages. Those in the media who closely follow the game have, to my mind, been just as grievously culpable at kowtowing to, and finding simpering excuses for, the official party line. The exasperated, knowing public laugh at them as well.

Over in the Telegraph, Steve James is also irate. He has taken issue with the proliferation of Kolpak players, a subject he has touched upon regularly but his ire is deepening by the day. It was "too much” for him to see so many non-English-qualified players in a county match on the weekend:

Most fair-minded observers agree there are too many counties. And these Kolpak-kitted counties are merely emphasising the point that not enough English-qualified cricketers can be produced to fill eighteen counties. So the number will have to be reduced.

Back to the first Test for a second, and NZPA have analysed how the English press have considered New Zealand’s arrival.

In the Age, Greg Baum gives his view on the ICC's move towards player referrals to the third umpire.

It is perverse that within seconds of an umpire's decision, the only interested parties who do not know whether it was right or wrong are those most affected by it. It was this dynamic that embarrassed the umpires in the Sydney Test earlier this year and contributed to the escalating nastiness.

This technology will not be resisted, and nor should it. In this, other sports also are instructive. Tennis teaches that players used their limited referrals wisely. Experience teaches that the pause in play, as long as it is not protracted, adds an agreeable tension. But the cricket committee was wise to exclude from consideration the more speculative aspects of technology, such as what would have happened to the ball after it had hit a batsman's pad.

The Australian’s Tim Albone looks at cricket in Afghanistan and finds their coach, Taj Majik Alam, desperate for his side to qualify for the 2011 World Cup and with bigger things to worry about than rain delays:

Alam has been threatened by a suicide bomber for not picking a particular player, one of the star bowlers has been shot in the chest and his training facilities amount to four nets.

The piece also contains a link to Albone’s video documentary of the team’s bid to make it to their first World Cup.

This Tuesday marks the 140th anniversary of the first team to play under a national Australian banner. The 1868 side completed a six-month long tour of England, a trip which Jamie Pandaram looks at in the Sydney Morning Herald, while also considering the new generation of emerging talent:

The players have not been recognised as being among Australia's 399 Test cricketers - no full-blooded Aborigine is on the list - but they would have been proud to know that nearly one-and-a-half centuries later, the new generation of indigenous cricketing talent is as proficient with books as bats.

NSW's top male and female Aboriginal prospects, Josh Lalor and Samantha Hinton, plan not only to excel on the cricket field but in the fields of business and medicine. Lalor has just started a Business/Commerce degree and Hinton will begin a nursing course this year.

When Ryan Sidebottom was 14 he was told to go and find something else to concentrate on as he'd never make it in cricket. This week he will lead England's bowling at Lord's after a memorable year where he has burst back onto the international scene and quickly established himself as his country's key weapon. As he tells the Mail on Sunday he is determined to make the most of his time at the top level.

Ryan's mother Gillian thought something was up as he was unusually quiet in the car on the way home. When she stopped to drop off one of the other Huddersfield-based boys, she found out why — between the sobs and gulps and tears.

'I cried my eyes out,' admitted Sidebottom. 'I was just a schoolboy like any other, wanting to do well for my mum and dad and my grandad, who had been driving me all over the place to play. It was hard enough to be told I had no chance of making it. But to do it in front of all the other lads, that was unnecessary.'

Are we naming the coach in question? 'No. He knows who he is,' is all Sidebottom will say.

	Michael Vaughan knows he needs runs but is focussed on leading England through to the next Ashes series © Getty Images

England are preparing to embark on 14 months of cricket that will lead into next summer's Ashes series. Even though that includes the forthcoming series against New Zealand, a tough series against South Africa then winter assignments in India and West Indies it is difficult not to let the mind drift towards next July.

Michael Vaughan begins this summer under pressure, his form with the bat has not impressed in recent times and early-season hasn't been easy. But as he tells Stephen Brenkley in The Independent on Sunday he has no intention of moving aside yet and is enjoying a period of his career where he is pain-free.

By the time the 2009 Ashes are done, he might conceivably have led England in 65 Test matches. The whole topic is complicated by his long lay-off with a knee injury that still requires careful management. He missed 16 consecutive matches, but the selectors still insisted he was captain. It was an odd period of limbo which led to a 5-0 Ashes reversal and paradoxically reinforced Vaughan's position. Around the team now he exudes easy authority, but you wonder if this might stray into the divine right of kings territory.

There is no question that Vaughan wants to hang on and that he believes he is doing so for the right reasons. "Part of this job is dealing with a lot of the external stuff, and a lot of that is people writing and saying stuff about the captain," he said correctly. "They're possibly not looking at it in the best interests of the England team. There will be a time when there is a right time but I honestly feel this isn't it.

Meanwhile, in his column in the same newspaper, Ian Bell says England can't afford to take the New Zealand team lightly and that it's time he kicked on to the next stage of his career.

I came away with a great deal of respect for them from that tour. They have a lot of players who would get into a lot of teams. They probably aren't as good as many other Test sides, but they have a lot of fighters in there who won't budge easily, and you have to work hard to beat them. So it's important that we start the summer off on a high and take that momentum into the rest of the summer and the Test series beyond that.

New Zealand aren't blessed with an array of world-class cricketers and begin the series against England as distinct second favourites. However, in Ross Taylor they have a batsman capable of forging an successful career and the top level. He already has a Test century against England, 120 in Hamilton, and produced some powerful hitting in the Indian Premier League.

In The Sunday Telegraph, Scyld Berry profiles Taylor and why he goes against the mould of many New Zealanders.

Blessed with a role model in Taylor, New Zealand can now spread cricket far more quickly among the one-third of their population which is not of European ancestry. To date, out of the handful of non-white Test cricketers they have had, only the wicketkeeper on their last tour of England, Adam Parore, can be said to have had a fair go.

Sir Richard Hadlee, New Zealand's greatest player, tells the Observer's's Will Buckley that Test cricket should never be compromised by the shorter versions. He also talks about New Zealand's forthcoming series against England.

'The players we have are more suited to one-day cricket. We have made five World Cup semi-finals and the Twenty20 semi-finals. Tactically we are pretty good in the one-day game. We believe we can go and win. But in Test cricket we are inconsistent. You have to bat time, not overs, in Test cricket, whereas in the one-day game you bat overs, not time. We might score well in the first innings, but then be bowled out for a paltry score in the second innings. We may surprise, but England are hot favourites.

Mark Richardson, writing in the Herald on Sunday, is also not very optimistic about New Zealand’s prospects against England and thinks their best chance of winning a Test is at Lord’s.

John Bracewell has repeatedly called the current tour the second part of a six-match series and right now I can't see anything other than 5-1.
…

One thing the team can draw strength from is that England doesn't have a particularly dominant record at the venue for the first test, Lord's. That can be put down to the motivating effect the occasion has on touring teams.

Four of eight teams in the ongoing Twenty20 are owned or managed by individuals with links to either BCCI or IPL Commissioner Lalit Modi, writes Shriniwas Rao in the Indian Express.

One of the owners of Kings XI Punjab is Mohit Burman of the Dabur family. His brother Gaurav, who is based in UK, is Modi’s step son-in-law. When contacted, Mohit Burman said: “It’s not just me alone, there are three other investors and naturally they won’t be putting their money because I am related. The IPL is a good business opportunity and the relationship with Modi is a mere coincidence.”

The Hindustan Times' Pradeep Magazine feels a corporate culture will leave cricket shaken.

Meanwhile the Hindu's KP Mohan asks if there is any relevance to dope testing in IPL?

In rushing through with an anti-doping code, the IPL has exposed younger domestic players to some risk.

Also read Anand Vasu's piece in the Hindustan Times where he mentions the punishment precedents that the board can lean on in the Harbhajan - Sreesanth row.

With his IPL success, Rohit Sharma has jumped the queue to take the tag of Indian cricket’s ‘next big thing’. Sandeep Dwivedi, writing in the Indian Express, profiles a youngster who has retained his grace in this slam-bang format.

Also read Rohit's interview to the same paper, where he says: ‘People don’t remember you for the number of innings but for the number of years you played’.

From the moment he arrived at Middlesex as a precocious 17-year-old in 1987 and won the man-of-the-match award in the 1988 NatWest Trophy final, he has always been English cricket's 'Special One' writes the Daily Telegraph's Simon Hughes of his former county team-mate Mark Ramprakash.

Viv Richards came up to me in 1994 and said: 'You seem to have just about everything, but there's something missing. I feel you don't quite believe you're good enough to play at this level.'

	Kapil Dev: worries for the future of cricket © Getty Images

It's too early to predict the future of cricket but it is quite likely that competitive Test cricket will draw an audience comprising both the hoi polloi and purists, writes Ronojoy Sen in the Times of India.

Shah Rukh Khan, India's most successful actor and the owner of the Kolkata franchise, speaks to the Calcutta Telegraph on how he has won the confidence of the side.

The Guardian's Barney Ronay is confused about whether he should join the IPL or not.

Imagine my excitement, then, when I received a call at home from Shahrukh Khan this week. At first I was suspicious. How could I be sure this was indeed Shahrukh Khan, the brightest star in the Bollywood Milky Way and the driving force behind the IPL's blend of excitable showbiz and showbiz excitability.

In the Hindu, Kapil Dev laments the frills associated with the Indian Premier League.

“In times to come you would see teams struggling to survive even 50 overs to save a match because of the mindset of the modern batsmen. I don’t think you will ever get a player like Sunil Gavaskar or Rahul Dravid now."

Herschelle Gibbs speaks to the Cape Times about the standard of the IPL, playing with his new Aussie team-mates and those black boots.

In the Age, Chloe Saltau meets Beau Casson, Australia’s second spinner on their Test tour of the West Indies.

Casson started bowling leggies for a simple reason — Warne — and with three brothers and three sisters was never short of someone to try out his new tricks on. "I tried everything, bowled a few offies, but I just found leg-spin a bit more exciting. We could almost play a Test match out the back of our house. I loved it," he said.

Casson's talent was obvious from the moment he shone for WA in a tour game against England in 2001, and NSW officials wanted him from after he captured the wickets of the Waugh twins and Michael Slater. They later found he had the work ethic to complement his talent and the discipline to manage a congenital heart problem, which he says does not affect his cricket.

	Mahendra Singh Dhoni, the most valuable player at $1.5 million can, technically, be bought by another franchise © AFP

Raghuvir Srinivasan, writing in the Hindu's Business Line website, says that the IPL’s financial structuring remains a mystery to the larger public who heard and read about the astronomical sums that a Dhoni or a Symonds was bought for. Srinivasan draws up two simple tables and analyses the way the IPL has been structured, sizing up the main revenue streams for the franchisees - the sale of broadcast rights, sponsorship, gate receipts in matches at their home grounds and team sponsorship - with two big ticket expenses - player costs and the franchise fee payable to IPL - before asking the question: will the franchises break even in the first year itself? Read on to learn more.

The real action will begin from the next edition in 2009. That is when the franchisees will get a grip on the concept and build on the experience of the first year.

Besides, trading of players could start in right earnest, especially if the BCCI decides to remove the cap of $5 million that is now placed on player purchase. The final proof of the success of IPL will come when the franchisees decide to list their teams. This is a live possibility at least by the third year of the IPL, which is 2010, assuming the concept succeeds.

The more successful teams could be prime candidates for listing, especially if player trading takes off aggressively. That is when the franchisees will feel the need for more capital and what better place to raise it than the stock market.

Sharda Ugra, the deputy editor India Today, says the Royal Challengers owner Vijay Mallya has responded to his team's defeats like a disgruntled fan.

	"If you make decisions, then the game will move forward at the right pace and you’ll be on track" © Getty Images

Speaking to Kolkata's The Telegraph, the 45-year-old Crowe says that captaincy requires one to articulate thoughts and ideas and handle people well. Interestingly, he also ranks the current Test captains and reveals that he learnt from Ian Chappell and Mike Brearley’s The Art of Captaincy. And that Stephen Fleming was the captain who impressed him most.

The Indian selectors, in particular, have made a smart move by appointing Dhoni as the one-day captain… This will allow him to grow into the full job step by step… Dhoni has charisma and has a manner… He’s learning from the Sachin Tendulkars… New Zealand Cricket should’ve done the same thing as India instead of rushing and giving Vettori everything all too soon. Fleming could’ve been the Test captain for a couple of years more. Definitely one year, if not a couple… England have Paul Collingwood in the ODIs… He’s a fighting cricketer, yes, but is tactically inept… Tactically, I haven’t seen a worse captain but he’ll try and make up for that by fighting performances.

Most cricket fans love watching Ricky Ponting on television and the batsman has joined the craze. A big screen was wheeled in while Ponting was in the nets during the camp in Brisbane so he could play a shot and then see how he did it, the Daily Telegraph reports.

"It's the first time I've used that, it is the best little coaching session you can have," Ponting said. "It's good to have a coach or someone standing by that knows your game. But to have it explained to you is one thing, to see it for yourself and be able to identify yourself what you are doing during a shot is fantastic."

Sabermetrics has helped transform baseball, and Andy Bull in the Guardian wonders if it could do the same for cricket, which is known for its scorers and statisticians.

The statistics traditionally used in baseball weren't necessarily much use, and as such they were ripe for re-evaluation. It was [David] Barry who pointed me towards the work of one man who had been recalculating the measures applied to cricket statistics in an effort to find fresh, objective, information on the game, Charles Davis. His book, The Best of the Best, was published in 2000. In it Davis spends a chapter debunking "the myths of cricket".

It is fascinating reading (for a cricket fan). Amongst other things, Davis objectively proves that using a nightwatchman is fundamentally flawed (you can read his analysis here). Ultimately though the book led me to think that there is a third major factor hindering cricket sabermetrics. Cricket is excessively obsessed with its past, and the majority of Davis's book is spent comparing players from different eras and trying to determine who is best. Which is all good fun, but it means that the statistical innovations he makes - such as the calculation of an 'under-pressure average' for batsmen - are squandered on pub-table debate. What Billy Beane did - by contrast - was to take such stats and actually apply them to team training and selection.

Mike Atherton in the Times weighs into the Andrew Flintoff debate and suggests the England selectors should let him find form in county cricket before letting him return to Tests.

And what is the rush? England should beat New Zealand with the most frequently invoked relative in broadcasting - Geoffrey Boycott's mum - at the helm. Why not let Flintoff continue to bowl for Lancashire so he can take time to build confidence in his body and try to find some batting form before the tougher questions that South Africa will ask in the second half of the summer? Flintoff's bowling is rock solid, but his batting is flaky and he needs matches and runs under his belt before he takes Test-match examinations again.

In his Guardian blog, Mike Selvey believes Lord’s needs to be more accessible to the general public.

Test matches, in particular, are fine occasions at Lord's, where decorum reigns over the need to dress up as nuns or whatever, there is the buzz of conversation rather than raucous chanting and applause is polite and wholehearted. This, without being po-faced about it, is refreshing at times. But Lord's is also elitist, and hideously expensive. It caters too much for the corporate market and scarcely at all for the casual spectator, restricted as it is by size: it is too small for the demands of international sport. A day out for a family, say four people, will cost around £250 just for tickets, if you can get them, so well ahead do they tend to sell. You cannot blame them for cashing in, but it hardly goes out of its way to being accessible.

The laws regarding bat composition were changed by the ICC this week and Angus Fraser in the Independent believes the move is long overdue.

The balance between bat and ball is fundamental to the game. Inevitably, there will be times when conditions allow batsmen to have a better time of it than bowlers, and vice versa, but it is not in the interests of the game for one component to dominate the other totally. It is meant to be an even contest. Golf has similar problems, although they do not concern one element suffering a disadvantage. Modern clubs and balls are reducing many of the world's greatest courses to nothing more than a pitch and putt, and in an effort to keep up with technology and preserve relatively high scores the game's administrators are having to amend courses. Holes are being lengthened and the layout changed by placing bunkers and water hazards in unfavourable positions. Cricket does not have such luxuries. Most grounds are arenas and the size of boundaries is limited by the presence of stands.

An editorial in the Guardian also looks at the new bat-handle regulations, and concludes that: “anyone who loves the classic contest of bat and ball will surely applaud.”

	Would a referral have saved Michael Kasprowicz in 2005 and won Australia the Ashes? © Getty Images

Peter Lalor argues in the Australian Ricky Ponting could have made a ton on debut, Australia should have won the 2005 Ashes and India may have won the Sydney Test if the proposed ICC rules on umpire referrals were already in use.

Errors have at times changed the course of a match and a career. Ponting was given out lbw on 96 in his debut Test at Perth against Sri Lanka to a ball clearly going over the stumps.

Andrew Symonds was given not out in Australia's first innings of the Sydney Test against India this summer when he admitted he hit the ball. That and a number of other decisions in the match had many Indians believing they had been robbed. And, of course, England may never have won the 2005 Ashes had the umpire seen that Michael Kasprowicz's hand was not on the bat when the ball hit his glove, with the Australians three runs short of a remarkable victory in the second Test.

In the Age Chloe Saltau looks at the rise of Brad Haddin, the son of a Gundagai publican.

In the Daily Telegraph, Simon Hughes meets Stuart Broad, who is hoping to make himself a permanent member of England's Test side.

Discipline is undoubtedly the root of his success. You can see it in the way he prepares to bowl, placing his feet meticulously on his bowling mark, planting his fingers carefully on the ball, standing tall and briefly contemplating his delivery before setting off. He idolises Glenn McGrath, and he seems also to have been born with McGrath's other major attribute - desire. There is a bristling, apparently unshakeable determination which has enabled him to leapfrog more experienced practitioners.

	Matthew Hayden perfects the art of 'moving on' © Getty Images

The Indian Premier League has been a journey of self-discovery for Matthew Hayden, who's come a long way from the infamous "obnoxious little weed" remark on Harbhajan Singh, part of a confrontational summer against India. What Maharishi Mahesh Yogi did for The Beatles, the IPL has done for Hayden, writes Phil Lutton in the Brisbane Times. Read on in stuff.co.nz

"We're quite subtle and we'll give each other a high five and a bit of a hug. Generally speaking, our levels of celebration are quite subdued. From our point of view, we've always looked at the other side and thought 'that's a bit over the top'. But that's the melodramatic nature of their sport - the belief that they have in their culture - and they love success equally as much as Australia."

The IPL has got heads turning and Somini Sengupta, attempting to strip down the Twenty20 tournament for an American audience in the New York Times, says it is "is trying to spin off India’s colonial inheritance into a money-making symbol of a brash, emerging nation". The writer throws in the views of fans of different ages (a flustered mother with a front-row seat, a bored 20-year old), CNN-IBN's Rajdeep Sardesai, yet to convert, and Ramachandra Guha, also dwelling briefly on the cheerleader brouhaha and how loyalties are yet to be formed.

At the game between the Mumbai Indians and the Deccan Chargers, Ambani was in his box with his wife, Nita, and their three children. The whole family wore blue, the team color. Nita Ambani had slapped a Mumbai Indians sticker on the back of her flowing chiffon salwar kameez. The team logo, she pointed out, was a ball of fire, a divine weapon known as a chakra lifted from Hindu mythology.

No matter. Mumbai was losing badly. The Ambanis’ children looked ashen. “I have to keep reminding myself, it’s only a game,” she said.

The MCC is in the news as it contemplates changing the laws relating to the make-up of bats. In the Australian Peter Lalor looks at the recommendations to limit the amount of carbon in a handle.

The law will state it must feature 90% cane, rubber and glue. However, Gray-Nicolls is already one step ahead and has developed a bat which replaces the rubber with 10% carbon. The company said it believed the handle for the Fusion II was within the proposed new law.

Read Cricinfo’s story on the changes here.

It's too early to say for certain, but Simon Jones has shown encouraging early season form (in spite of his stiff neck), writes Steve James in today's Daily Telegraph:

He did, and faced his mates early in the season, as all movers seem to. In truth he didn’t bowl that well, recording so-so figures of 6-0- 43-1 in a shortened game, but the more important pointer was that the venom appeared to be back. A couple of slippery bouncers to Glamorgan skipper David Hemp showed that. The accuracy will come, just as it suddenly appeared in 2004/05 after his wayward early years.

VVS Laxman has wowed fans across the globe, not least in Australia, with his wristy elegance and sweetly-timed jabs and cuts. And despite his struggles in the Twenty20 format, fans in Hyderabad are buzzing to get a glimpse of their hero, finds out K Shriniwas Rao of the Indian Express.

Today, the fever of Twenty20 has gripped Hyderabad. Both the Indian Cricket League (ICL) and the Indian Premier League (IPL) have seen fans queuing up at the stadiums. Players such as Shahid Afridi, Adam Gilchrist, Andrew Symonds and Herschelle Gibbs have been recruited as ‘locals’.

And yet, it is VVS Laxman who happens to be cheered the loudest. The Deccan Chargers website has seen some anti-Laxman messages, but not once has the right-hander been booed at the ground — even as his team lost three matches at home and he’s struggled to come to terms with this extremely short format.

“He’s not one for masala cricket. We’re sure he’s playing here because he is Hyderabad’s biggest name in cricket,” says a fan at the Rajiv Gandhi International stadium.

In the Rediff website, Srinivas Bhogle, Purnendu Maji and Arthur D'Silva crunch numbers to figure out the most valuable player in the IPL so far.

The chief value of the MVP is that it factors in a lot of performance indicators (runs scored, strike rate, wickets taken, economy rate, fielding prowess) into a single index. Better still, the MVP value can be looked upon as a simple "run equivalent". If Shane Watson has a MVP of 292, it means that his combined effort as a batsman, bowler and fielder is equivalent to having scored 292 runs.

Stephen Brenkley in the Independent assesses New Zealand’s chances in England, with a side bolstered by the return of their five players who were competing in the IPL.

Now they are fully assembled, it is still not a prospect to float many boats. No doubt this is grossly unfair - and it may also play straight into the tourists' hands - but to think of New Zealand cricket is to think of an afternoon in dullsville.

David Gower puts forth some candid views on a range of topics, mostly cricket, in an email conversation in the

Independent. A sample of the questions and answers is here:

Does the IPL spell the end of Test cricket and should England's players be allowed a crack at it next year?
What? Six weeks razzle-dazzle enough to consign over a hundred years of Test cricket to the dump? You must be off your rocker. Twenty20 is here to stay and will energise the game around the world, but players, however grateful for IPL and, in the future, EPL cash, still know that they will be judged by their record as Test players. The ECB might well make some concessions to their contracted players re the IPL, but a lot depends on how plans for an EPL develop. Until those are clear we need to hold fire.

Some of your peers have been playing beach cricket Down Under. Would it interest you?
The second word is "off".

How did you feel about Prince William's recent flying antics?
Can't fault him. His equipment is a bit too modern for me – you can't beat the old Tiger Moth for real flying – but I like his spirit!

Michael Atherton, meanwhile, has also been dealing with emails, this time those that have come in to him at the Times Online, having just completed his first full week as chief cricket correspondent for the Times.

In the Indian Express, Leher Kala writes on the demands placed on the IPL cheerleaders.

"On the first day we didn't understand cricket at all. Now we get it a litte," says Evgenia Guseva, who is a trained gymnast, ballet dancer and who's been a cheerleader for four years for football matches in Russia. Currently she's learning hip-hop and salsa in Moscow and plans to open her own dance school soon.

The IPL is in desperate search of a new grammar where emotions are on a raw edge and everyone is so passionately involved that he needs to hit to opponent to prove his commitment, writes Pradeep Magazine in the Hindustan Times.

In the same paper, Varun Gupta writes on the mystery over Shane Warne and his love for No.23.

In the Sunday Times, Richard Rae meets the Barbados-born Surrey fast bowler Chris Jordan, who at 19 is already impressing good judges.

Dennis Lillee, who saw Jordan bowl in Perth last winter, has no doubt he will play Test cricket. The question is, for which country? Like Kevin Pietersen before him, Jordan needs to fulfil the residency qualification, meaning he will not be eligible to play for England until 2010.

If they have any sense, West Indies will come calling long before then. If they do, Jordan faces a difficult decision. “I’m a Barbadian and I would have loved to play my cricket in the West Indies, but England has given me opportunities. This is where I’m playing my cricket, I feel comfortable here. It could be hard to choose.

In New Zealand’s Sunday Star Times Richard Boock makes the very pertinent point that the criticism that has been leveled at the ICC is actually aimed at the wrong target.

“The invective has flown thick and fast. Murderers and rapists have escaped with lighter criticism. The world body has been charged with endorsing corruption and racism, of being broken-backed and weak, and by one writer, of being amoral, unprincipled, shallow, self-centred, ill-informed and contemptible. Oh yes, and pathetic.

But the point is, it doesn't make any sense for the cricket community to roast the ICC over this, because the ICC is the cricketing community. The world body's voting members are the chairmen and presidents of the 10 test-playing nations. They are the face of world cricket; a representative image. Buffoons maybe, but what does that say of us?"

Boock goes on to say that rather than the faceless ICC who protected Zimbabwe and ousted Malcolm Speed, it was the heads of the national boards … our national boards.

“I understand that it would be nice to imagine the world body as a separate entity, a mythical bogeyman that we could tar-and-feather and pelt with fruit, but the reality lies a little closer to home. If we want to think of them as a pack of idiots, that's fine - but we should always remember that they're our idiots, and we chose them.”

Three weeks into the IPL, James Robinson of the Observer makes his observations on cricket's traveling circus and catches up with a few fans along the way.

Exhaust fumes rise, mixing with the smoke from a spectacular firework display, but through the haze and smog the floodlights glimmer in the distance, soaring high above the street vendors and crowds of spectators swarming into the stadium. When the cacophony of engine noise and police sirens subsides, the rhythmic beat of traditional Punjabi Dhol drums floats through the night-time air.

	Brendon McCullum played fly-half for his schoolboy representative side © Getty Images

We knew Brendon McCullum was talented. And now we discover he once kept Dan Carter out of a schoolboy rugby representative side. For the South Island secondary schools team McCullum played fly-half (or first five-eighth as New Zealanders prefer) and Carter came off the bench to appear on the wing.

In case you aren't aware, Carter, the All Black fly-half, is God's representative on a rugby field. He is that good, and McCullum was once deemed better. Wow.

James contends that McCullum is now in the big league…

He is the story right now. One felt sorry for Daniel Vettori at New Zealand's press conference in deepest Essex last week. After the bog-standard top table stuff where Vettori spoke with customary common-sense, the New Zealand captain was then left waiting alone in a corner, fiddling with his mobile phone while journalists surrounded McCullum, hanging on his every word. McCullum had better get used to it. There will never be another Adam Gilchrist but McCullum is now a pretty exciting alternative

The series against New Zealand will be Peter Moores' second home season as coach of England. He talks to Mike Selvey on the year gone by and the IPL. Read on in the Guardian.

You can imagine Peter Moores on The Apprentice. In fact you can imagine him winning The Apprentice. He is personable (not that that appears a necessary quality), diligent, wonderfully well-organised, enthusiastic, intelligent, innovative, ruthless where necessary, speaks management lingo as a first language and is such a dyed-in-the-wool optimist that he could find a positive at the bottom end of a Duracell.

	Is Shane Warne really angry or upto one of his masterful mind-games? © Getty Images

Sharda Ugra, the deputy editor of India Today, doesn't think Warne v Ganguly will mean as much in the context of the IPL.

Yet there is an air of the ho-hum about this Warne-inspired needle-fest. His grouse(s) against Ganguly may be justified but the blond bad boy has, after all, made his reputation not just as the king of spin but also as the master of the mind game. His late-night press conference in Jaipur where he launched his offensive seemed more theatrical than enraged. As fine a piece of theatre as it was, it hasn’t quite generated the frisson of animosity it would have in another context.

That other context is, of course, international cricket; when playing for Australia, Warne may have yet said what he did about an opponent, probably not at a press conference but a syndicated newspaper column. His words would have loomed over every other encounter and involved every man on either side.

Elsewhere, the Telegraph's Austin Peters, reveals how Jeremy Snape, the Rajasthan Royals' performance coach, has impressed the side and won Shane Warne's confidence.

	So who's telling the truth now? © ICC

Why Saheba has decided to deny a conversation that took place with his consent at his residence in Ahmedabad over several plates of yummy kesar-pista ice-cream as he happily posed for pictures is a mystery to us.

The conversation with Mirror's Tapan Joshi, in fact, was the third time that day Saheba was going over what had transpired during the Mohali match. Earlier that morning, Saheba was part of a talk show on Radio Mirchi with RJ Dhwanit and Tapan Joshi.

Instead of being banned for 11 matches by the organisers of IPL for having slapped Sree Santh, Harbhajan Singh should have been given a medal, writes a cheeky Jug Suraiya in the Times of India.

By giving Sree Santh a high-five across his face, Bhajji not only subsumed the noble traditions of cricket into the even nobler traditions of pugilism, but also brought the sport back into consonance with present-day Indian culture, as manifested by road rage, mob rule and fisticuffs in Parliament, another once-British institution which has been thoroughly indigenised thanks to the vernacular rituals of chappal-throwing and storming the well of the House.

Both Harbhajan and Sreesanth have a history of abuse and both could be in deep trouble, says Shantanu Guha Ray in the Tehelka magazine.

It is now evident that under the guise of this entity repeatedly and tiresomely called “fearless, young India”, all lines of conduct are being treated as mere patterns in the sand, writes Sharda Ugra in the India Today.

	Simon Katich got up close and personal with Glenn McGrath © Getty Images

Peter Lalor, writing in the Australian, speaks to Simon Katich about his brief Indian Premier League stint. He faced Glenn McGrath for the first time in a match, judged a talent contest and was reluctant to leave because he was having so much fun.

"There was a lot of hype with the tournament and the amount of money invested at the start," Katich said. "But in a way that has helped the intensity because everybody knows this was high stakes which put extra pressure on the performance.

"The other thing was that you always want to perform in front of big crowds and that spurs everybody on to play really good cricket.”

	Muttiah Muralitharan: enjoying his stint in Chennai © Getty Images

Muttiah Muralitharan says he never wanted captaincy because he felt he didn't have the qualities to be a good leader. R Kaushik interviews him in the Deccan Herald.

It’s essential for the captain to stay cool and not put pressure on the players in the team, even if he is upset. If the captain shows he is upset, the bowlers get upset and commit more mistakes. But if the captain is relaxed, the bowlers will draw confidence from that. Mahela is a lot like that, he doesn’t take pressure and he doesn’t put pressure. But Dhoni is cooler than any other captain because he takes it so easy.

Read the Sportstar for a piece on another spin wizard. More than a year after he retired from international cricket, Shane Warne continues to show he has few equals in making things happen, writes S Ram Mahesh.

However, foreign cricketers have found few takers in terms of brand associations, writes Ratna Bhushan in the Economic Times. Sports management agencies attribute this to most Indian advertisers still preferring local players, there not being enough time in the itinerary of the foreign players and the season not being long enough.

With that in mind read GS Vivek's story in the Indian Express where he speaks to Chennai's two unheralded stars in the IPL.

The euphoria of having discovered a new world of cricket cannot be at the cost of certain enduring traditions, writes Rajdeep Sardesai in the Hindustan Times.

Sport is ultimately about a deep emotional connect between players and fans and not about transient pleasures derived from being part of a three-hour extravaganza. There is almost something sacred about this relationship that cannot be diluted by flashy music videos, glamorous cheerleaders and even more magnetic film stars. When on-field tension is matched by off-the-field hype, when the camera focuses relentlessly on the stars and the dancers instead of the cricketers, then questions must be raised about the direction the sport is headed.

Also read Rohit Mahajan in the Outlook.

The IPL's first week has revealed a flaw that could prove fatal, an identity crisis that looks like it will need the last million dollars of the marketing men to be resolved.

Jon Pierik writes in the Herald Sun cricket is ready to fight off soccer’s push to become Australia's most popular sport in the next 100 years.

Cricket Australia has commissioned extensive research in a bid to protect and promote the sport - and its brand - and is confident soccer will never dampen the interest in cricket. The Cricket Australia spokesman Peter Young has suggested soccer could even work hand in hand with cricket.

In the Australian, Peter Lalor looks at the Australians who have returned home from the Indian Premier League ahead of the Test tour of the West Indies this month.

If there is a queue at the international airport of late, it's because Australia's cricketers are lining up to pay excess baggage fees for the sackloads of rupees they plundered during their brief, but profitable, excursion to India. Cricket has seen nothing like the Indian Premier League and the players' bank accounts have seen nothing like it either.

At least two of the Australians have earned $3000 or more per run scored. And it didn't matter what sort of run. A nice cover drive and an ugly outside edge were equal in the eyes of the benevolent bean-counters.

"Sumit Khatri is only a fringe-local featuring on the Rajasthan Royals’ extended roster of 25 and the only chinaman bowler in the IPL," writes Shivani Naik in the Indian Express. "But his oddity may be lost, especially since Khatri might not see any real action in the tournament. Even some cricket websites have slotted the left-armer as right medium-pacer or off-break bowler."

At 20, Khatri has survived the biggest storm for a chinaman spinner. That of retaining his bowling-style, which comes with copious cautionary notes, equal in length to a chinaman’s definition. Predominantly a batsman in his seven years at Sawai Mansingh Stadium’s RCC nets, Khatri was called aside one day by the late Hanumant Singh three years ago. His left wrist had twisted a couple of deliveries prodigiously from off to leg, during what Khatri calls a “faltoo, time-pass practice session”, and Hanumant was impressed.

	'Despite Malcolm Speed's vehemence that the KPMG report should be published - the obvious course of action, one might have thought - the ICC board voted him down. It was appalling' © Getty Images

Speed's early exit is expedient, an exercise in damage limitation at a time when the ICC is in turmoil. He has been made a scapegoat, just as he once made Hair one. Speed had been at loggerheads with the ICC's South African president, Ray Mali, over the non-publication of an independent forensic audit of the finances of Zimbabwe Cricket, an audit that found evidence of irregularities.

Despite Speed's vehemence that the KPMG report should be published - the obvious course of action, one might have thought - the ICC board voted him down. It was appalling. But it was little surprise: Mali has an especially cordial relationship with Peter Chingoka, head of Zimbabwe's cricket board and a supporter of Robert Mugabe. The ICC's president-elect, England's David Morgan, attempted diplomatically to broker a resolution but Mali's refusal to climb down meant Speed could not continue.

Selvey echoes many in the media with his scathing view of the ICC.

But even by its own standards the sacking of Speed, a mightily efficient, calculating administrator, if a little cold to the touch, has opened it up to ridicule.

"I am hopeful," said Mani, "that, with David Morgan taking over, the ICC will come through this." Plenty to read between the lines there, with the possible unwritten codicil being "when we see the back of Mali". The Zimbabwe issue may resolve itself in the not-too-distant future, but Morgan will still have a tough couple of years if he is to claw back lost ground.

Neil Manthorp writing on the Super Sport site also has little time for the ICC’s handling of Zimbabwe’s finances.

Perhaps the tirades of abuse that ZC have received for their alleged abuse of finances have been unfair. The ICC authorised an audit and, upon receipt of it, aknowledged it. How on earth can people be so cynical about the ICC when they have a) aknowledged the contents of the report and the fact that that are b) taking note of it?

Taking note of things is a gravely underestimated skill. The ICC have 'taken note' that their money is not being spent as it should be. They have have been made aware that the money which is supposed to be revatalising the game in that has been compromised. But at least they have "noted" this anomaly. They can't be accused of doing nothing.
Next to nothing, but not nothing.

Michael Atherton, in his first week as The Times’ chief cricket correspondent, casts his eye over the IPL Twenty20 and then the ramifications of the shorter format on all forms of the game. Here he is on the Indian tournament:

Crucially for its future success, the players have taken to it wholeheartedly. This is not surprising when you consider the financial rewards on offer, but when, after the first match, Brendon McCullum, the New Zealander who scored 158 for the Kolkata Knight Riders, said that he could not feel his legs for the first eight balls he faced because of nerves, it was a good sign.

For sports fans are discerning enough to smell a fraud. They need to sense that it matters to players how they perform and whether they win or lose, which is why mere exhibition matches have never taken off. H.L. Mencken's dictum that you never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the public may work for daytime television producers and Hollywood directors, but not for sport. The players care, the public want it and on that basis alone Twenty20 is here to stay. It will drive the finances of domestic cricket the world over.

Over in the Telegraph, Simon Hughes writes that English cricket needs to copy the IPL model. Whatever happens, he says, players will do well financially, concluding: "All in all, not a bad time to be a professional cricketer, eh?"

Being backward in coming forward with his opinions is one charge you could never level at Geoffrey Boycott. In the Daily Telegraph he pours forth his opinions on life, the universe and everything… almost. First in his sights is Darrell Hair’s return to umpiring for the first time since Ovalgate in 2006:

The best umpires have a rapport with the players, but Hair's bullying tactics were never going to earn him any respect. Without wishing to rake over old coals, I thought Hair was wrong at the Oval. He was too hasty and too inflexible. Now he has had time to sit down and reflect, I hope he will come back as a better umpire and a better communicator. I have no dislike of the man, nor do I want to see him hounded out of the game.

Here is a sample of his thoughts on another comeback, Andrew Flintoff’s potential return for England:

Flintoff can't be Roy of the Rovers all the time. And let's face it, do we really need him in the side to beat these New Zealanders?

And he pours forth on a hot topic - Twenty20:

There has been plenty of cobblers spoken and written about Twenty20 overtaking Test cricket - a format that has been around for 130 years, and survived wars, revolutions and match-fixing scandals. For me, it's not going to happen. Or, at least, it shouldn't, as long as the people who run the game get their act together.

"One of the reasons why the Indians run foul with authorities is because there is very little sledging in first-class cricket in India," writes Mahendra Singh Dhoni in the Hindustan Times. "It's when these youngsters get into the international level that they see and hear what the other teams are saying and some of them try it, but without the expertise of their foreign counterparts. I have said this in the past: sledging is an art, and our players must learn it well before practicing it. Otherwise bans and fines will always be handed out to them."