Michael Atherton in the Times hopes the Ajantha Mendis' mystery spin remains unravelled, despite the presence of numerous slow-motion replays.

Every time Mendis fools a batsman - which is often - he does so with the ghosts of Bosanquet, Iverson, Gleeson and Ramadhin looking on proudly. Are there common themes that bind these strange creatures together? Mystery is an obvious prerequisite.

In the Guardian, Paul Weaver writes that Andre Nel's, huffing, puffing chuntering and unathletic energy typified South Africa yesterday.

His bowling action should be reproduced in coaching manuals which should then be ceremonially burned at cricket academies throughout the planet. In his delivery stride he impersonates an exploding man. Legs, arms, head and shoulders fly in different directions. It is, one might say, a mixed action. This is a pantomime villain of a fast bowler. Remember Ole Mortensen, the Danish tax inspector?

Andrew Flintoff's batting was the only bright spot in an otherwise abject display by England, writes Simon Hughes in the Telegraph.

At a ground where the packed stands have roared England on to some famous victories, it tells you that Wednesday starts are unpopular with punters' traditional viewing routines, that five Twenty20 matches in quick succession at this venue may have dulled people's appetites for cricket, and that, as the credit crunch bites, ticket prices of £55 are exorbitant.

	Tyron Henderson in action on Twenty20 finals day © Getty Images

And the star of the day? A burly bloke from South Africa, of course, even if he was wanting for a moustache. Out walked Tyron Henderson like Buzz Lightyear on steroids - epic name for an epic occasion. He might as well have been called Butch Biblical. He looked at his bat, and his bat looked at him as if begging for clemency. No chance. Seven sixes later Middlesex were in the final with 26 balls to spare. The biggest of the day was heaved straight down the ground. "Oh what a beauty, I've never seen one as big as that before," sang Bumble [David Lloyd] louchely. This was more up Pompeii than conventional cricket.

"We think long and hard when to deploy Tyron," said Middlesex's crocked captain, Ed Smith. The missile metaphor was not accidental. Henderson's philosophy is simple - smack it. "If I see it, I hit it."

	Michael Vaughan will be aiming for a change of luck at Edgbaston, both for the team and his batting © Getty Images

Derek Pringle in the Daily Telegraph can't fathom England's selection for the third Test, leaving out Stuart Broad and bringing in Paul Collingwood, who has scored 92 runs at 13 in first-class games this season. Pringle writes:

With that kind of form it looks a cosy selection steeped in the nepotism of central contracts, especially when Ravi Bopara is in superlative touch and reeling off hundreds for Essex. But rather than figures, Michael Vaughan appears determined to place his faith in a familiar face, though not Steve Harmison’s, following the disruption to team morale caused by Collingwood’s omission at Headingley.

In the Guardian, Duncan Fletcher sees a bit of sense in Collingwood's return, but is puzzled that Stuart Broad is tired.

He's a young cricketer and he's had a decent break: eight days off should be enough. The problem comes when the guy who plays instead of him does well enough not to be left out the next time. Then the selectors need courage to bring Broad back again.

In the same paper, Paul Weaver says it's the wrong time for Michael Vaughan to pick a fight with the selectors at a time when his own performance is on the wane.

Read Michael Atherton's thoughts on England's selection in the Times.

Andre Nel is likely to be the only new face in South Africa's XI for Edgbaston. Jon Culley profiled the player in the Independent.

	Muttiah Muralitharan: Bringing a smile to faces with his bowling ... and charity work © Getty Images

As destructive as he is on the field, hurling the ball with untiring menace, off the field Muttiah Muralitharan is a creative force doing good deeds that go well above the call of duty, writes Anand Vasu in the Hindustan Times.

While sportsmen and celebrities of all kind usually turn to philanthropy now and then, it's hard to find someone who has done so much, personally, for a cause. To see for yourself you have to take a 22-kilometre drive from Galle, towards Colombo to the village of Seenigama, one of the worst affected by the 2004 tsunami. Over there you will find the Foundation of Goodness, an organisation that has touched the lives of people from 25 villages.

Also read an interview with Murali about the Foundation of Goodness.

I did an advertising campaign with a cement company, and the deal was that instead of paying me, they would provide cement worth $100,000 because cement was then badly needed.

Richard Dwight, though, feels that Murali missed out on a exemplary gesture at the SSC. Read more in the Daily News.

	Dav Whatmore: Keeping his boys on their toes © George Binoy

In an interview to S Dinakar in the Hindu, Dav Whatmore reveals an interesting strategy he used with the victorious India Under-19 team before the final of the World Cup earlier this year in Malaysia.

“We set the clock forward to the next day. We visualise the next day. It is action time. We are in the final. We make some costly errors. The opposition catches up towards the end. We eventually lose the final.”

Whatmore continues, “Then we set the clock to the present time. I ask the boys how bad would it feel to come so close and then lose? To see the other captain holding the trophy, the media rushing to the other team for interviews. I then ask the boys whether they would like to go through the losing feeling.”

	The Matara Marauder © AFP

Sandeep Dwivedi passes by Matara, famous for being the town Sanath Jayasuriya hails from, and he can't resist visiting the Sri Lankan batsman's home. More in the Indian Express.

Mother Breeda recalls her Tsunami experience to drive home the point. “I was in the market buying vegetables that day when the place got suddenly flooded. Somehow I got hold of a tree but I was losing my grip. Then I shouted, ‘I am Jayasuriya’s mother’, and soon I was rescued,” she says, with a smile on her face even as she narrates the harrowing experience of getting unconscious and being taken to a hospital in Colombo.

Dwivedi also speaks to Sri Lanka A coach Chandika Hathurusinghe on the transformation of Thilan Samaraweera, whose century perhaps went unnoticed at the SSC.

The man who changed Samarweera’s approach to the game happens to be the ‘A’ team coach, Chandika Hathurusinghe, who explains the turnaround. “Once when Samaraweera was dropped, I had asked the then Sri Lankan coach, Tom Moody, about what he could do to make a comeback. He had said Samaraweera needed to improve his strike rate,” said Hathurusinghe.

So before the start of the season, a target was set for the batsman. “Previously his strike rate was in the 30s and I asked him to get to about 60,” recalled the Lanka ‘A’ coach. Things changed as Samaraweera changed gears and more importantly retained his consistency. A call to the West Indies saw him continue his form.

Lokendra Pratap Sahi, in the Telegraph, traces Jagmohan Dalmiya's demise in Indian cricket politics, and how he plans to make a come-back via the elections for the Cricket Association of Bengal, which will be held on Tuesday.

Dalmiya’s casting vote had denied Pawar the top position and one didn’t have to be a fortune-teller to forecast that the influential Union minister would, sooner rather than later, get even.

Thirteen months after Pawar’s win, Dalmiya was banned from the BCCI, an act of vindictiveness which got challenged in court. Days later, he stepped down as president of the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB). That was in end-December 2006.

Come Tuesday and Dalmiya, who has a favourable order from the Calcutta High Court, will be in an unsual role: Of a challenger, out to unseat Prasun Mukherjee, whom he’d defeated two years ago. Actually, Mukherjee’s in the chair without winning an election.
To regain even a toehold in the BCCI and again become relevant, for starters within the East Zone, it’s an election Dalmiya must win.

The same newspaper details the goings-on in the camps of Mukherjee and Dalmiya a day before the elections.

Mike Selvey, in the Guardian, while looking at the ICC's decision to retain Pakistan as Champions Trophy hosts, calls for consistency with regard to how players view security issues.

Meanwhile I await further evidence of what might at best be viewed as double standards by the players, and at worst hypocrisy. In 2005 Australia and England played one-day internationals at Lord's and The Oval just days after the July 7 atrocities in central London. If memory serves, there was no clamour to leave. Last winter England toured Sri Lanka even as bombs were exploding in Colombo and its environs. My family and I remained in Sri Lanka after the tour to enjoy a memorable Christmas and to appreciate that sometimes the reality outweighs the perception.

But there has to be some consistency. Many of those who express fears about touring Pakistan are the same players who have played a season in the Indian Premier League. On May 14 six bombs exploded in Jaipur causing at least 80 deaths and injuring 150. Three days later, in the Sawai Mansingh stadium, Rajasthan Royals beat Bangalore Royal Challengers, the players including Graeme Smith and Jacques Kallis of South Africa and Shane Watson and Cameron White of Australia. I have not heard any concerns about the future of the IPL if such incidents continue. Would Kevin Pietersen, say, be so adamant about not touring Pakistan if he had just signed a £3m contract with Lahore Lightning in the PPL? Saturday's bombs in Ahmedabad, venue for England's first Test against India later in the year, give further cause for thought.

Rajesh Padmanabhan in the Economic Times looks at aspects in which companies can benefit from emulating strategies implemented in the Indian Premier League. One such example relates to enjoying your work.

Fun is an essential ingredient for life and the IPL format has this in abundance. Right from the high profile launch, to peppy theme songs, to adrenaline pumping cheerleaders, the tournament was like a carnival. Entertainment replaced the classical version of the colonially dictated approach to the game. The corporate world needs to take a leaf out of the format and include an ideal proportion of fun at the work place.

In a freewheeling chat with Daily Telegraph's Simon Hughes, Kevin Pietersen talks about his batting and says he won't change his style of play.

His second innings lasted five balls: 4, 4, 1, 4, W. "After nearly being out first ball I got down Kallis's end. And I know his first ball is always a loosener and it was a wide half-volley and I drove it for four, then I played at the next which angled in and then nipped away. It was a beautiful ball and I tried to withdraw the bat but I nicked it. It was disappointing but what am I supposed to do, block the half-volleys? I play how I play. I love batting. I love entertaining. Some days I come off and some days I don't. But I like to think that so far I've come off.''

... I like the way the South Africans play. And the Australians. The faster they bowl, the happier a lot of us are. Those New Zealand dibbly dobblers! I'd far rather face Steyn, Morkel or Brett Lee than Oram, Mills and Styris. I like to be in a confrontation.

Sixteen bomb blasts rocked Ahmedabad, which hosts England's first Test in India on their winter tour, but England's players - reluctant to jeopardise potential Indian Premier League contracts - may only push for a change of venue, says Derek Pringle in the Daily Telegraph.

Like insurance companies, cricket players seem to have a sliding scale when it comes to assessing risk. The more on offer, the more emboldened they become.

...

I'm with them on the ICC Champions Trophy, which although well-intentioned when it began back in 1998, serves little purpose except to clog the itinerary with more 50-over cricket.

But I'm against them on Pakistan, which is one of the more beautiful and fascinating countries to tour, providing you can escape the featureless Punjab triangle between Multan, Faisalabad and Lahore.

	Owais Shah is jubilant after winning his first major trophy © Getty Images

Patrick Kidd in the Times says the Twenty20 Cup has matured since its launch on June 13, 2003. He sees a trend in this year's competition:

The noticeable thing about this season's competition is that it is now a game for clever cricketers. Not flash ones - though as the first semi-final between Kent and Essex wound to its conclusion on Saturday evening the cameras showed Middlesex's batsmen practising reverse sweeps and shovel shots before their match against Durham - but those who use their brain, play the right shot for the right occasion and, above all, master the basics, are the most successful.

Kidd also takes a look at the tournament's evolution.

I had never won a tournament before so I was praying hard for victory in the Twenty20 final, says Owais Shah in his blog on the Guardian website.

Fans made the most of the Finals Day, Andrew Baker reports in the Daily Telegraph.

Off-field battles are the only threat to Twenty20 revolution, Nick Hoult points out in the Daily Telegraph.

Though the ECB and counties shelved a franchise format for the English Premier League, it might not be the end of the road yet, Hoult reports.

	Steve Harmison's selection is as uninspiring as his recent record in international cricket, says Michael Atherton © Getty Images

It is a reflection of a deep and prevailing lack of confidence that the England selectors have been forced to turn to a bowler who has caused them more grief over the past two years than any other cricketer, Michael Atherton writes in the Times.

His selection is as uninspiring as his recent record in international cricket and his attitude and, surely, it is a return that sends a terrible message: that it does not matter if, time and again, you underperform; that it does not matter if, time and again, you do not so much cherish and nurture your talent as abuse it; and that it does not matter if, time and again, you turn up unprepared, there will always be another chance. Nor does his record against South Africa (18 wickets at 59.55) or his record at Edgbaston (five wickets at 68.20) inspire confidence.

	Hosting the Asia Cup successfully demonstrated that Pakistan can organise the Champions Trophy, says Asif Iqbal © AFP

Asif Iqbal, the former Pakistan captain, hails the ICC decision to go ahead with the Champions Trophy in Pakistan. He writes in the News:

Looked at dispassionately, the arguments were in the PCB’s favour. The successful holding of the Asia Cup in June-July this year showed that Pakistan was fully equipped to do the job. All the teams that participated in that competition went away thoroughly satisfied and had no apprehensions of any sort.

The ICC security experts also had recommended in their report that the tournament should be allowed to go ahead in Pakistan. Cricket grounds have never been the target of terrorist violence in Pakistan and given the philosophy — if one can call it that — under which the militants operate, it is difficult to see why they should target a cricket match. The idea of catching the world’s attention through high profile strikes is simply not the way they operate.

In the blog Sideline Slogger on stuff.co.nz, Paul Holden lists the reasons why the Champions Trophy should not be held in Pakistan in September.

	Batsmen still can't master Muttiah Muralitharan © AFP

Sandeep Dwivedi of the Indian Express analyses Muttiah Muralitharan's bowling in the first Test against India, and finds that most of his wickets came while bowling round the wicket. While Ajantha Mendis may have a bagful of tricks, Muralitharan too has managed to reinvent himself.

Sri Lanka A team coach Chandika Hathurusinghe, who was Murali’s first captain at the Tamil Union cricket club way back in the early 90s and a close friend till date, was instrumental in the bowler frequently changing his run-up route from the conservative ‘over the wicket’ a few years back. And with the referral system coming into play, the coach is delighted that the new path will get Murali more dividends

In the Hindustan Times, Anil Kumble reiterates that India weren't solely focussing on Mendis, and says the team needs to bounce back after a poor game. He doesn't blame the loss on lack of preparation:

People were raising questions about us not playing more warm-up matches before the Test series and our preparation but that was not the problem. What is crucial is attitude and character and we didn't show that in this Test match. We will come out strong, it's not as though all has been lost.

Vic Marks, in the Observer, writes that Twenty20 cricket is no longer the preserve of the young, at least in England. The Twenty20 championship, which concluded yesterday, saw players thought to be past their prime, perform above expectations.

Tyron Henderson, 34 this week, cottoned on to what it takes to be a Twenty20 specialist before anyone else. No one has taken more Twenty20 wickets than Henderson, but it was as a batsman that he excelled yesterday, thrashing the Durham bowlers to defeat and then giving similar treatment to the men of Kent, with whom he played a couple of years ago with modest success. His philosophy is uncomplicated: 'If I can see it, I hit it.' Despite his years, he saw it pretty well. It doesn't matter much that Tyron cannot run very fast, either. For fairly obvious reasons he answers to 'The Blacksmith'.

In the Independent on Sunday, Nick Townsend observes the big bash at the Rosebowl and talks about the financial impact of the Twenty20 tournament on the coffers off the counties.

The disciples of Twenty20 believe there is also a hitherto untapped potential of women and children spectators. A none-too-scientific survey suggested that the crowd here were mostly men, attending an event that was male-orientated. Beer was being consumed copiously behind the stands, not too far distant from where women queued for too long for the toilets. An all-blonde posse of npower (one of the sponsors) girls, in clinging outfits, parading in front of the stands was, at best, a little passé.

The BCCI's decision to bar Indian cricketers from even remotely associating with those who have participated in the Indian Cricket League is not just ludicrous but repressive, writes Ayaz Memon in DNA. However, the BCCI finds itself in a prickly situation regarding Sachin Tendulkar's association with Lashings. Would it have the guts to censure such an iconic figure?

The logic in this is not just cock-eyed in a funny, ha-ha sort of way, but unacceptably exploitative. The BCCI has sought to override common sense — and even common legality — with a mix of threat and emotional blackmail. Few players will obviously immediately dare take the BCCI to task for this, but even fewer will be happy at being choked in this manner, which means a confrontation could be building up in the near future.

In the Indian Express, Kunal Pradhan feels that the ICL could be scrapped sooner rather than later, considering the way the cricket world has shoved it to the corner.

It’s funny that Packer, a businessman who we now celebrate as a visionary, got money, clout and recognition for threatening to split world cricket. But Chandra, another businessmen whose idea will end up having as deep an impact as Packer’s, is getting nothing. Even his players are now kicking themselves for putting their professional careers in jeopardy.

Supple wrists lost out to nimble fingers as Sri Lanka recorded their biggest win at home. In the Indian Express, Sandeep Dwivedi takes VVS Laxman as a case study on how the egos of several Indian batsmen went for a toss after facing Ajantha Mendis and Murali at the SSC.

In an instance, Laxman’s languid strokeplay was forgotten as he was made to look ugly. After beating Laxman repeatedly outside the off-stump with the away-going ball, Mendis bowled a loopy googly. As the ball sailed between the bat and pad of the confident-looking batsman, there was a new debate about the ‘ball of the match.’ The house was divided over which one was better: the leg-spinner that did Rahul Dravid in on Friday or the one that castled Laxman.

The new umpire review system could even things out between bat and ball and importantly, bring down batsmen's avarages. Read more in Times of India.

Umpires who feel pressurized not to raise their fingers with notable batsmen at the crease and succumb to the stress of appeals by top-rung aggressive bowlers will find life easier. There could, however, be a flip side to the story. The review system might tempt on-field umpires to keep their fingers in their pockets. Because they will be aware that the fielding team has the technological option of getting to the truth by themselves.

	A new post was created in the ICC for IS Bindra © AFP

Scyld Berry charts the rise of IS Bindra, the newly appointed principal advisor to the chief executive of the ICC, in the Sunday Telegraph. Among other things, Bindra's achievements include bringing the world table tennis championships to India, being the brains behind the staging of the 1987 World Cup, and building the cricket stadium in Mohali.

Bindra was staying in his London flat, next to Regent's Park, until last Wednesday. He wears western-style suits – after giving up the last vestige of Sikhism, his turban, in the early Nineties – and with his urbanity and fluent English he has always given English administrators the feeling that he is One of Us; unlike Jagmohan Dalmiya of Calcutta, the first Indian to become ICC president, who was always One of Them. But there is an Indian nationalist beneath the surface. When the Australians tried to find off-spinner Harbhajan Singh guilty of racism last winter, Bindra threatened to call off India's tour.

Meanwhile, Vic Marks, writing in the Guardian, blames the ICC for the surfeit of confusion and the surfeit of cricket. Doubts still linger over the participation of leading players in the Champions Trophy, the Champions League may not take place, discussions are still on over Sri Lanka's tour of England next year.

They say that sufferers of obsessive-compulsive disorder are often cricket lovers. In which case there must be a lot of distress out there this weekend.

A day after Pakistan's newspapers said players considering boycotting the Champions trophy were applying double standards, Richard Boock, writing in the Sunday Star Times, has the same message for New Zealand's cricketers.

It was apparently fine that New Zealand arrived in England for this year's winter tour at a time when terrorist attacks were deemed by the Home Office to be "highly likely"; just as it was when Australia continued to play in London as the bombs were going off in 2005.

The same paper has an extract from Boock's biography of Daniel Vettori. Check out the New Zealand captain's views on the increasing politics of cricket, and his take on whether New Zealand should have toured Zimbabwe in 2005.

Cricket has brought Zimbabwe to the New Zealand public's attention - it created a window through which we could watch and debate the topic, and make it relevant for us. It gave us a chance to take cameras and reporters, and with that the eyes of the world, into a place that's pretty well cut off in terms of scrutiny.

Is this such a bad thing? Certainly not. Is contact worth abandoning on the very subjective grounds that to do otherwise is to support Mugabe? Again, I doubt it somehow.

In the Herald on Sunday, Dylan Cleaver says the Champions Trophy is unlikely to be anything other than a "complete wash-out".

In the Sunday Times, Rod Liddle ponders how money changes the attitudes of professional sportsmen.

We are indulgent towards our professional sportsmen, expecting them to be wholly selfish and amoral. Urged to consider the morality of taking part in sporting events in Soviet Russia, or Zimbabwe, or China, they whine that these are political matters and that, possessing no capacity for reason, they should be excused the responsibility to consider them. Show them a huge sack of moolah, however, and they have, over the years, demonstrated a remarkable sense of purpose and conviction, which allowed them to play - for example - in apartheid South Africa.

The Pakistani newspaper Dawn, in an editorial, praises the ICC's decision to not shift the Champions Trophy out of the country, while criticising players from South Africa and Australia over their fears over security.

As for the hue and cry raised by players’ association in Australia and South Africa, it is too flimsy to be taken seriously. Just recently, many of these players were taking part in the Indian Premier League when seven blasts left some 80 dead in Jaipur, which was the base camp, among others, of South African captain Graeme Smith as well as a couple of Australian stars. Besides, there were quite a few big names in other teams that also visited Jaipur without so much as making a noise. They all stayed back and fulfilled their commitments even though they were not on national duty and could have taken their own decisions. Certainly, IPL mega bucks were the only deciding factor. When it comes to national duty, however, their reaction is reflective of an entirely different mindset. If this does not constitute double standards, what else does.

While picking the side for the third Test, the Guardian's Mike Selvey thinks the selectors should include Steve Harmison and rest Stuart Broad, who has impressed more with the bat than with the ball in the Tests against South Africa.

Steve Harmison has done all that has been asked of him since he was omitted from the England side at Wellington back in March. He is bowling fast, into the ribs and is the country's leading wicket-taker. He should be brought back.

In the same paper, journalist Barney Ronay lists the attributes he shares with Darren Pattinson and wonders whether a national call-up is around the corner while David Mitchell has an interesting explanation for Pattinson's inclusion.

Meanwhile, over in the Times, Michael Atherton demands more accountability in the selection of the England squad. He also looks at the issue facing the selectors ahead of the third Test.

And the Independent's James Lawton thinks there has been a lack of professionalism in the England set-up since the 2005 Ashes and wants more responsibilty to lie with the team manager.

An editorial in the New Zealand Herald ponders the consequences if countries send under-strength teams to the Champions Trophy in Pakistan. It also thinks the ICC's decision to not change the venue of the tournament is ill-advised.

If a string of suicide bomb attacks in the past 12 months had killed more than 1000 people in a country scheduled imminently to host soccer's World Cup or the Olympics, the event would undoubtedly be shifted to a safer venue. The international purview of such occasions would guarantee as much. So why has the International Cricket Council decided to keep its Champions Trophy tournament in Pakistan?The answer lies in the financial power of its Asian members.

In the same paper, David Leggat outlines New Zealand Cricket's predicament.

	If the bowlers don't bowl his line, KP will change sides © Getty Images

It was negative tactics in county cricket that prompted Kevin Pietersen's switch-hit, Frank Tyson writes in the Sportstar. He believes the innovation has added more excitement to the game, like other initiatives in the past.

Initially his counter was to employ his long reach, lengthen his open stance and slog the ball through the fielder-packed covers or, dangerously, over long-on.

But the bowler’s direction went wider and to follow was to risk rupture! Pietersen’s lateral thinking then moved him to adopt revolutionary batting methods. With the right-hander’s off-side field blocked, as the bowler moved in to deliver, Pietersen switched his stance to that of a left-hander. His right side was now his leading side. Importantly, the crowded off-side field, stripped of its packed off-side population became the left-hander’s leg-side and full of gaps. Scoring on that side of the wicket suddenly became much easier as instead of driving as a right-hander, he hooked and pulled as a left-hander!

Tunku Varadarajan, the academic, narrates his experiences while watching two days of the first Test between England and South Africa at Lord's. Click here to read his article in the online edition of the Wall Street Journal.

The thing to understand about a day at Lord's is that it is as much about the cricket as it is about the sybaritic senses. No one would go to watch a Test match there without calculating in advance precisely what to eat and drink. Old Etonian (OE), a sublime host, had undertaken to fulfil the role of victualer. And here, I must digress again, to note that nowhere is England's class structure more visible than in the rules governing spectators at sporting events.

Contrast cricket with soccer. No one can bring into soccer stadiums, or purchase there, a drop of alcohol. The soccer-watching classes are not trusted to handle the stuff in a civilized way. Cricket grounds -- visited by a more genteel demographic -- have few such restrictions. At Lord's, for example, although spectators are permitted to bring in only one bottle of wine per head, there are bars dotted conveniently around the ground, and tents that sell wine and champagne. (In any case, the rules aren't strictly enforced: OE brought in three bottles, saying one was for his wife, the other for his "friend already inside," and was waved through by the steward.)

One of the correspondents of the Economist also saw the first Test. Click here to read his dairy.

The flood of Twenty20 tournaments in England, at least from 2010 onwards, could seriously affect the future of the County Championship and the Friends Provident Trophy, writes Christopher Martin-Jenkins in the Times.

The more tournaments there are, the more each special event is diluted, which the ECB seems unable to grasp. Pile 'em high and sell 'em for as high a ticket price as you dare seems to be the policy. For the time being it is laughing all the way to the bank, but the ice is thin. It desperately needs England to win the third Test against South Africa at Edgbaston next week, for a start.

Angus Fraser in the Independent, isn't in favour of the new umpire referrals system as it could devalue the experience of watching cricket at the venue.

Those watching live at a venue will no longer have the best seat in the house, they will be left in the dark every time a referral is sent to the third umpire. It can take a minute or two for the third umpire to get the images he is looking for from the television broadcaster, with an over containing two or three referrals taking seven or eight minutes. After a while punters will question whether it is worth paying £75 for such a view when a better one can be obtained on a sofa at home.

That the Champions Trophy has been given the go-ahead in Pakistan and Chingoka had a vote is a disgrace, writes Mike Selvey in the Guardian.

Zimbabwe, a country effectively outlawed from international participation, and one not involved in the eight-team Champions Trophy even if it were not, has retained an equal say on matters as the other nine countries. As it happens, a non-vote from them would have made no difference. So England will trawl the country looking for willing participants, but will force no one to go against their wishes, and may even risk a fine of $10m by sending no side at all.

The BCCI is refusing to allow its contracted players from repesenting English counties with ICL staff and Harsha Bhogle, in the Indian Express, wonders if the board's tough stance is world cricket’s new apartheid.

I can go so far as to understand one body not picking players who have played for another set-up. But not to take the field in the company of those that have played the ICL, in a third country, seems cruel and unfair. Even at the height of South Africa’s isolation, Bishan Bedi bowled to Barry Richards in county cricket, Sunil Gavaskar batted with Graeme Pollock in a world eleven and nobody raised a hue and cry over it.

Also read the paper's editorial on the BCCI's "unbridled intimidation" of the ICL .

In his column for the Telegraph, Alastair Cook feels people have rather conveniently made a scapegoat of Darren Pattinson after the Headingley defeat, forgetting that England were actually outplayed in all departments.

It must have been difficult for 'Patto' to come into the team when he didn't know anybody. And yes, there was a disruptive effect on Friday morning when the changes were made. It always takes that little bit longer to get into the game when you have a turnover of personnel. Even Andrew Flintoff probably had to get used to being back after all the time he has missed.

Staying with Pattinson, Michael Atherton in the Times says no such selection has provoked more comment, most of it adverse.

Jonathan Agnew, the BBC's Cricket Correspondent, was incandescent. Trying to gather some last-minute information on the internet about Pattinson, he was redirected to the Cricket Australia website. Then, interviewing Pattinson shortly after he received his cap, Agnew was taken aback when, in response to a question that asked of Pattinson whether this was a moment he had dreamt of all his life, he simply said, with disarming honesty: “No.”

He also feels the idea that an English upbringing makes for greater commitment in the middle has never struck him as having one grain of truth in it.

With his strong, repeatable action he did not look out of place and if he was trying any less hard than the others, it was not apparent to me. But for most this was irrelevant. Because he had not spent his formative years drinking warm beer in a village pub, somehow he was not as worthy.

As Mark Ramprakash looks set to record his 100th first-class hundred, Mike Selvey in the Guardian looks at previous instances of English batsmen reaching the milestone and the agonising wait for some.

No one, though, has taken longer than Walter Hammond, and he could play. His 99th hundred came early in 1935 for MCC in what was then British Guiana, but thereafter he entered a slump. Twenty-three innings came and went and just three times past 50 and none more than 71. He was, according to his biographer David Foot, ill, with recurrent sore throats and permanent tonsillitis. When Somerset arrived at Bristol on June 12, he took his colleague Reg Sinfield to one side. "I'm feeling rotten, Reg, and my confidence is going out there. Should I give it a miss for a few weeks?" Sinfield told him to go out and give it a blast instead.

"In sport, we often hear that a team are not as good on the pitch as they look on paper. For sports writers it's the other way round: a piece rarely looks as good on paper as it does on the pitch. This piece might be the exception, in that it looks awful on the pitch as well. Defending the career of Martin McCague, the spiritual predecessor to Darren Pattinson, makes devil's advocacy seem like the dream job," writes Rob Smyth in the Guardian.

McCague's Test record (three Tests, six wickets at a cost of 65 runs apiece) is clearly mediocre, but he is barely alone in that. Others from that 90s group who were even further out of their depth, such as Gavin Hamilton, Min Patel, Aftab Habib and Richard Blakey, were allowed to slide peacefully into anonymity. What makes McCague different? There's his Australian upbringing, although this is barely relevant in view of what has gone before and since, his perceived lack of fibre (he pulled up lame in two of his three Tests), his fuller figure, but most of all the fact that, like Pattinson, he was picked ahead of a hugely popular English workhorse who was controversially perceived by the selectors to have lost his nip.

In the dispute between Digicel and the West Indies Cricket Board over the sponsorship of the Stanford All Stars match, Fazeer Mohammed wonders whether Digicel are farse and out of place to insist that their rights as official sponsors of West Indies cricket and the West Indies team are being infringed. Read on in Trinidad and Tobago Express.

Is this all part of a top-level powerplay in which Sir Allen who, having seen the phenomenal success of the first season of the Indian Premier League, is prepared to throw even more of his millions around to ensure that his name is reflexively identified with the increasingly popular Twenty20 version of the game?

Have the top administrators of the WICB been caught out of their crease in lunging at the tantalising delivery tossed up by the Texan billionaire, prompting the Irish-based telecommunications company to call for the third umpire?

	Geoffrey Boycott is of the opinion that England need to temper their attacking approach by batting according to the situation © Getty Images

“Just go out and play your natural game,” he [Michael Vaughan] likes to say. “Express yourself.” But Test cricket is not that simple. It is time England swallowed their egos and started playing the situation, writes Geoffrey Boycott in the Daily Telegraph.

Vaughan has to accept responsibility for the shambles at Headingley. Captaincy takes many forms: it includes setting the right fields, dealing with personalities, and leading from the front with bat or ball. But just as important is the guidance a captain gives his players in the dressing room, explaining how he expects them to play. Vaughan has to tell his batsmen to abandon this one-size-fits-all approach, and show a bit more brains.

Boycott also sees "a touch of Gary Sobers in [Stuart] Broad" and says it was wrong to play Darren Pattinson.

Also in the Daily Telegraph, Derek Pringle lists five ways England can turn the tables on South Africa at Edgbaston.

Find the right role for Flintoff: He has returned to a hero's welcome, but without a hero's role to play. In fact, Flintoff's function in the team appears confused. Is he seen as an all-rounder who can take the odd wicket and be depended on to make runs when needed, or as a strike bowler who can slog the odd fifty?

"I have to say I found the selection of Darren Pattinson very strange," writes Duncan Fletcher in the Guardian. "That is no disrespect to him, and he didn't actually bowl all that badly at Headingley, but as a captain it is vital you go out there with a team you feel comfortable with. It was surprising enough when he was brought into the squad after only 11 first-class games but even more incredible when they actually gave him a Test debut."

Also in the Guardian, Mike Selvey writes: "I'm not sure whether to feel sorrier for Darren Pattinson or Michael Vaughan. On the one hand we have a man - not a "lad" or a "promising youngster" - plucked bemused from obscurity with every chance of returning there, and on the other, the captain of England with an opening bowler on whom he had never clapped eyes until Pattinson rolled up at Headingley on Thursday."

Nasser Hussain, writing in The Daily Mail believes there has been too much passing the buck over the selection of Pattinson for the second Test.

The bottom line is that the selectors chose to bring Darren Pattinson into the squad but it was Michael Vaughan, as captain, and coach Peter Moores who decided he should be included in the side.

The whole point of having Miller as a full-time national selector is to be answerable for all selections so, instead of talking about the issue on Monday night, Vaughan should have referred all questions to the man with overall responsibility.

Should England replace Ambrose behind the stumps? Micky Stewart, a former England team manager, says yes while Richard Blakey, the former England and Yorkshire wicketkeeper, disagrees. Click here to read their debate.

	Dale Steyn removes Tim Ambrose at Headingley © Getty Images

It was a day of conflicting approaches to England's intractable problem - a deficit of 269. There was the Ian Botham Headingley '81 approach - attack, and attack some more; and the wearisome but also proven grind-them-into-the-ground method. Neither Kevin Pietersen's flamboyance nor Andrew Flintoff's patience had worked, writes Tanya Aldred in the Guardian.

Kevin Pietersen stood on the balcony in the morning session watching Jimmy Anderson and Alastair Cook. He twisted and turned his tall primed body for everyone to see. This was a warrior and you could smell his anticipation . . . and the crowd's . . . and the South Africans'.

In the Telegraph, Simon Hughes feels there is frequently a one-day impetuousness about England's batting in Test cricket.

England showed only flashes of such precise judgment. They couldn’t sustain it. The South Africans plugged away outside off stump knowing that 'leave’ is something that only applies to some English batsmen when their wife’s having a baby. They are drawn to widish balls like moths to the light.

In the same paper, Derek Pringle feels England should make note of the fact that South Africa have not gone on to win their last three Test series in the country despite taking the lead. He says England need to recharge quickly and reclaim the energy with which they rocked South Africa early into the Lord's Test.

Back-to-back Tests may be commercially seductive but they often punish the team making the running in the first instalment, in this case England, whose players were mentally jaded after three successive days in the field at Lord’s.

In the Independent, Chris McGrath praises James Anderson's gutsy display as a nightwatchman, something the rest failed to mirror.

What makes diamonds unique is not their lustre but their hardness, and there is no mistaking which of these sides is best equipped to resist abrasion. For this success was hewn from a stratum that often seems to lie far beyond the reach of an Englishman with a bat in his hand. In fairness, the bravest performance yesterday came from one such in James Anderson – and the frothiest, come to that, from a son of Natal in Kevin Pietersen.

Ajantha Mendis should be careful in not getting too predictable with his variations, writes Makarand Waingankar in the Hindu. He adds that freak bowlers like Mendis should be prepared to get thrashed a bit early on, especially against effective players of spin like the Indians.

Mendis and his captain Jayawardene will have a set plan against the Indians. Since Mendis is an attacking bowler, he tends to try out all the deliveries he possesses every over. At the international level, especially against top Indian batsmen, keeping the secrets guarded will be very difficult. They will watch him more at the non-striker’s end so that they should be comfortable at the striker’s end.

	Darren Pattinson finished with figures of 2 for 95 in South Africa's first innings © Getty Images

With barely a murmur of complaint Pattinson has done a lot more in the last few days than take the new ball for the country of his birth, if not his upbringing. He has placed Grimsby and Dandenong on the Test-cricket map. He has given Australians another excuse to guffaw at the old enemy. And he has encouraged the pessimists' perennial grouse that English cricket is going to the dogs. What he was not supposed to do, after just 11 first-class matches for Victoria and Nottinghamshire, was expose worrying holes in England's masterplan, both for this summer and next.

His selection here has offended on non-cricketing grounds. His dad has described him as a fair-dinkum Aussie, and Pattinson himself has admitted he never harboured any dreams of playing for England. But he has also held up a mirror to the nation's supposedly plentiful ranks of seam bowlers. The reflection makes uncomfortable viewing.

In the same paper, Vic Marks feels Geoff Miller's selection committee would have done enough to make Steve Harmison hopping mad.

Meanwhile those who have been selected to bowl for England are causing their employers a headache. If nothing else think of the cost. All those new balls are expensive. For the second South African innings in succession a third shiny red ball has been removed from its wrapper. As one wry new ball wag once observed after another run glut: "we must be onto the colours soon."

Derek Pringle, in the Telegraph, lists six cricketers who qualified to play for England: Tony Greig, Allan Lamb, Devon Malcolm, Graeme Hick, Adam Hollioake and Kevin Pietersen.

In the Telegraph, Simon Briggs writes that England's top order continue to live on past glories since Marcus Trescothick lost his will to play. The averages have been gently dwindling. The South Africans, by contrast, have been on the up ever since they axed the underperforming Herschelle Gibbs at the beginning of the year.

The Aussies take their lead from Ricky Ponting, a man who plays more shots than a hacker at Royal Birkdale. But Graeme Smith and his men prefer to grind out results. They have scored at two-and-a-half an over in this series, subjugating their opponents through cruel implacability rather than outrageous flair.

In the same paper, Simon Barnes feels Andrew Flintoff needs a lethal sidekick if England are to progress on what appears a benign pitch.

England's star allrounder has a double personality. There is Andrew, the doting husband and new dad, dutifully feeding his tribe their breakfast cereal, as he was in the players' hotel yesterday morning. And there is Freddie, the cricketing warrior, national icon and tormentor of Australians.

The whole point of Test cricket is an eponymous one – the examination of character – and few can any longer question where that leaves Abraham Benjamin de Villiers, writes Chris McGrath in the Independent.

On the first morning, he had been cast as pantomime villain after claiming to have caught a ball that might well have killed a mole first. None was more incensed than Michael Vaughan, who left him in no doubt of his views at the lunch interval. De Villiers listened to the England captain in silence, reserving his own response until he had a bat in his hand ... No doubt the few, obnoxious boos that leavened the applause for his century were of similar authorship. By that stage, however, the majority had come to acknowledge the fortitude, forbearance and flexibility of an exceptional cricketer.

Morecambe were locked in a top-of-the-table clash with Barrow yesterday afternoon, but at least half an eye was kept on the progress of one of their own at Headingley, says Andrew Longmore in the Sunday Times. The reason:

For two seasons as a young man, Ashwell Prince was the professional at the Northern League club and it is a tribute to the allure of club cricket that he still keeps in touch nearly seven years after he forsook the northwest for wider horizons.

	David Gower thinks that was taken cleanly © Getty Images

It is amazing there are not more off-field confrontations similar to that between the England captain, Michael Vaughan, and South Africa's AB de Villiers, Angus Fraser says in the Independent on Sunday, given the close proximity of the opposing dressing rooms at most venues. Fraser recollects one such rare flare-up.

There was an ugly incident in a one-day international I played in Barbados when Gladstone Small, one of the nicest men to play cricket for England, pointed to the dressing room when he dismissed Gordon Greenidge, the rather angry West Indian batsman. At the Kensington Oval the dressing rooms are divided by a narrow walkway, and at the end of the match an England player stuck his head in our room to inform us that an irate Greenidge had Small by the throat

Both Vaughan and de Villiers were at the centre of controversial catches, both of which were given not-out after being referred to the third umpire. In the Sunday Times, David Gower says he thought Vaughan's catch off Hashim Amla was clean, and feels perhaps the player's word should be taken.

My view was that Vaughan had caught it. Sky tried before play yesterday to demonstrate how the ball can look to be on the ground to the long lens when in fact it is safely in a fielder’s hands. The method of Vaughan’s catch, with a dive involved, left it open to suspicion that the ball might have just touched the grass. In our commentary box there was little agreement. I can sympathise with the third umpire and understand there was enough doubt for him to deny the catch.

So here is the key question: should we return to the days when players were trusted to say if a catch was good or should we be heading for greater use of TV pictures to help in the decision making? The answer has to be a bit of both, including selective use of the latter, which could be extended from its current scope to include a second look to check on whether a batsman has hit the ball for a catch or inside-edged it when the arms are up for an lbw appeal.

	Ajantha Mendis is surely not the last of unorthodox cricketers Sri Lanka is going to produce © AFP

Lasith Malinga and Ajantha Mendis may have awed the world with their unconventional styles, but there are more in the pipeline from Sri Lanka, Sandeep Dwivedi finds out in the Indian Express.

Jerome [Jayaratne] is the current head of the system that has produced unconventional cricketers such as Muttiah Muralitharan, Sanath Jayasuriya, Lasith Malinga and now Ajantha Mendis. And, as one takes a look at the display window of the academy, one finds that the supply-line isn’t going to stop any time soon. A Malinga lookalike, a leggie who delivers the ball from an awkward angle, and a pacer who till yesterday was a star on the tennis-ball circuit, are a few of the ‘works in progress’.

A lot of effort, though, goes in to unearth that ‘different’ bowler.

The Sri Lankan board has about 700 active coaches spread across the country, who are all linked to the national academy. The complex network explains how tough it would be for a talented cricketer to go unnoticed. Head coach Jayaratne has national coach Trevor Bayliss and the Lanka A coach under him, along with the national pace and spin coaches and their assistants.

There is a Coaching Education Department with three members, looking after batsmen, pacers and spinners, who are under-studies of the national pace and spin coaches. The coaches from the ‘education department’ travel to provinces — comprising of three to four districts — on regular scouting trips. Helping them are coaches with provinces, districts and schools who have a ready data of players from their region. With such a labyrinth spread over the small island, where virtually all districts or villages are wired, the red lights frequently flicker at the academy in Colombo when an unusual talent is spotted. With the coaches having a common agenda, uniformity in the system is maintained.

The secret of Mendis' dramatic success, is not merely his variety, but his pin-point accuracy, says team-mate Kumar Sangakkara in the Sunday Telegraph.

Indeed, while people talk of his variations, his mystery deliveries, his amazingly complicated method of delivery, when I keep to him I see only simplicity. I see a someone adhering to the age-old basics of bowling. Up until the point of delivery, when his fingers rub their magic, his action is perfectly orthodox. This gives him a strong foundation.

Referring to Cricinfo's Round Table, Tony Becca in the Jamaica Gleaner analyses the role of coaching in the development of great players.

In an interview with the Sunday Times, Shane Warne talks about the Indian Premier League experience and captaincy, his family and his views on Monty Panesar, Kevin Pietersen, Andrew Flintoff and sledging. He reveals what he told Paul Collingwood during the Ashes in 2006-07.

“I will tell you exactly what I said. He was ripping into me, saying stuff, so I said, ‘Mate, you’re actually making me concentrate, so thanks for that’. He kept going, so I hit back. ‘Paul, tell me, are you embarrassed about your MBE? Don’t you think you should send it back? You’ve played one Test match in the Ashes, made seven and 10. I mean, mate, I would be embarrassed if I were you. But if you do send it back, I’ll pay for the envelope and the stamp’. He went pretty quiet after that. Sledging is actually made out to be more than it is and 10 years ago it was far worse. Now there are too many cameras, too much super slo-mo, and the players have to be politically correct.”

	Darren Pattinson: The most numb-skulled of choices? © Getty Images

In a week full of decisions, the most numb-skulled of all was England's decision to select, from nowhere, the uncapped Darren Pattinson, says Steve James in the Sunday Telegraph.

Pattinson's inclusion proffers a depressing statement, the antithesis of the England and Wales Cricket Board's desired message. For they are desperate for their counties to rely more on talent reared in their own academies than ready-made hired hands from abroad. And now this from the national team. It is a dreadful example for the head boy to be setting. And Pattinson doesn't even look that ready-made.

Pattinson's was an extraordinary selection, writes Vic Marks in the Observer.

Our selectors have been boring us to tears for six matches. Same team, same team. Meanwhile, the hacks have been pining for change - just to have something to write about. Geoff Miller has smiled enigmatically when announcing yet another unchanged side; his function is not to make life easier for journalists. Miller, we had decided, was meticulous, logical and conservative in his selections: a policy that would breed trust among his players, boredom among the scribes.

Then, out of the blue, Miller - dear, dour old Dusty - has pretensions to be another Uri Geller: to pluck from his flat, Derbyshire cap some gobsmacking magic in the form of the former roof tiler. A fresh face, albeit a fresh old face.

The selectors have failed their first big test. That's Stephen Brenkley's verdict in the Independent on Sunday.

Read John Stern's take in the Sunday Times. He says:

Seven years ago on this ground, a man whom nobody recognised walked out to bat for England in an Ashes Test. It turned out to be the serial hoaxer Karl Power, whose other stunts included having his picture taken with the Manchester United team on the pitch in Germany against Bayern Munich and playing on Centre Court at Wimbledon.

In a way, history repeated itself on Friday, in that there was a man bowling for England whom almost nobody recognised. It quickly became apparent that the only remarkable thing about Darren Pattinson is his selection.

Pattinson did not appear to have the resources to deal with the leap into Test cricket, Mike Brearley says in his blog on the Guardian website.

Pradeep Magazine, in the Hindustan Times, calls for a reasoned analysis of the Indian Premier League.

Back home, our "best-loved commentators" and voices who are on the payrolls of either the IPL or the franchises, are not stopping in praising this revolution and the economic benefits it has provided, and will provide, players in the future. They're giving us sermons on the wonder that is T20 and it would appear that anyone who does not agree with them would be told to shut up.

	Is two Twenty20 tournaments the right preparation to win a 50-over World Cup? © Getty Images

The ECB's decision to have two Twenty20 tournaments in the domestic season comes at a time when the 50-over game is in an abysmal state, says Scyld Berry in the Telegraph. He writes:

Last week, when the ECB decided on a new domestic structure, the county chairmen last week had the opportunity to do something about the abysmal state of 50-over cricket in England - and did absolutely nothing. England are the only one of the eight major cricket-playing countries never to have won a global tournament (the World Cup or Champions Trophy) and the ECB, by their actions, are manifestly happy for it to stay that way. They want to line their pockets with two 20-over competitions. A successful England team at 50-over cricket? Empty words.

He says that if "the ECB staged a domestic 50-over competition in July and August, with time for the players to practise, England might have a chance of winning a World Cup."

Exploiting the 20 overs of powerplay is essential to a 'successful' 50-over team. But how can that be done on early-season pitches when survival has to be the aim, not power

Match-winning spin is another essential if a World Cup is to be won, especially the next one in Asia. In this year's Friends Provident Trophy only two spinners have taken four wickets in an innings: both modest off-spinners born several thousand miles from Britain, Gareth Breese and Greg Lamb.

In the Observer, Vic Marks says although the ECB have retained the County Championship's current format, there are threats it needs to be protected against.

The rich counties will get richer and may start to use their wealth more ruthlessly to acquire the best players. In the past this has hardly been worthwhile. In 2002 Essex were promoted from both divisions and, according to Graham Gooch, this cost the club money. We are now approaching an era when success may be rewarded financially, which constitutes progress.

There may also be a disparity in the quality of overseas players counties can afford. The commercially minded will contemplate Twenty20 cricket only in India and now with the EPL, provided the appropriate salary is available. Mahendra Dhoni, a must for the TV audience in India, is unlikely to leave his continent for anything short of six figures for three weeks' work.

New Zealand's decision to tour Zimbabwe in 2005 was a farce and any decision to tour in 2009 will be tragedy indeed, writes Paul Lewis in the Herald on Sunday. He lambasts the ineffective decision-making last time around and call on the government to ban the tour instead of sending letters to New Zealand Cricket outlining reasons why the cricketers should not go to Zimbabwe.

	Jacques Kallis, in the more traditional vanilla by Hummel, cleans up an Ian Bell sporting the bright Mr Whippy white by Adidas © Getty Images

While England trot out at Headingley togged out in bright Mr Whippy white by Adidas, South Africa are in more traditional vanilla by Hummel, which is the subject of Rob Bagchi's article in the Guardian.

The latter, particularly, seems a strange marriage - the chevron merchants first gaining prominence with Alan Ball's white boots in the early 1970s and Denmark's "we are red, we are white, we are Danish dynamite" Euro 84 strip worn by Preben Elkjaer and Soren Lerby.

...

They are not the first half-forgotten brand to latch on to cricket in a bid for renewed prominence. Admiral, manufacturers of iconic kits for England and Leeds United in the 1970s thanks to their close ties to Don Revie as well as that infamous "chocolate" Coventry City away strip, recently finished an eight-year contract with England that put them back on the radar after two relatively moribund decades.

If cricket works wonders for retro brand chic, this trend will surely continue. Give it five years and Bangladesh will be decked out by Patrick, Sri Lanka by Bukta and New Zealand by Stylo Matchmaker. Old labels never die, they just change sports.

Peter Roebuck reserves special praise for the seniors in the Sri Lankan team for their careful handling of Ajantha Mendis in the Hindu.

Far from rushing him along or trying to change him or claiming all the glory, his coach at Army club was wise to leave him to his own devices, contenting himself with filming his action and showing him the footage whenever things went wrong. The best coaches are not dictators but mirrors. As the months passed, Mendis added other balls to his off-break and leg-break. Nowadays he has numerous deliveries in his repertoire, all of them under control.

Apparently, he sends down most of them every over. Mendis’s next stroke of fortune was that the national team had fallen into thoughtful and mature hands. A lesser leader than Mahela Jayawardene, a lesser lieutenant than Kumar Sangakkara, might have insisted on including the youngster in the team to tour Australia last season.

Harsha Bhogle is not too perturbed with the ECB's announcement of the English Premier League, instead suggesting that the franchise-driven system, with more localised loyalties is critical to the future of the game. He believes that market forces will decide the future of the game. He put forth his point in the Indian Express:

The stage is set then for the football model where there will be T20 leagues in each country; some more lucrative than others. That is why I was amused when I read of a proposal in England to ‘counter’ the IPL. You don’t need to. The Bundesliga exists, so does La Liga as does the EPL. And France, Belgium and Turkey and everybody else has its own league. The leagues with bigger markets draw the better players, the smaller leagues effectively become feeder leagues and that is how it could well be with cricket. Having said that, it raises the question of how much T20 cricket is good for the game.

The key here is the definition of the “game” as we have traditionally known it. If the “game” is Test cricket, it is a valid question but I don’t think any one person decides what the “game” is. The markets decide. We didn’t decide how much rap was good for the music world, people buying cds did. We didn’t decide how much of computer animation and special effects was good for the storytelling style of movie-making. The box-office decided that. So too it will be with T20 cricket. If we believe we can control how much T20 should be played, we will seed another Packer for human enterprise fuelled by finance will always find a way.

Billy Bowden and Daryl Harper had a moderate day, but their reputations could have been saved by use of television replays and a greater trust of the player's word, writes Simon Hughes in the Telegraph.

Unfortunately, the ICC, who rule on how technology should be used, display a total lack of comprehension of its benefits. Television can quickly evaluate whether a ball has brushed a pad or a glove, but cameras used to adjudicate whether a catch has been grassed present a flat image and usually cloud the issue. Yet the umpires are allowed to refer the latter and not the former. They are effectively umpiring cock-eyed.

	Protests during the rebel tour of South Africa © Cricinfo Ltd

Jim White in the Telegraph focuses on Out of the Wilderness, a three-part documentary in which Sky's Charles Colville retells the story of the South Africa's sporting isolation. White says:

What is somewhat dispiriting about Colville's investigations is how many of the rebels remain unrepentant. At least John Emburey admits he went solely for the money. Colin Croft, on the other hand, casts himself and his fellow rebel West Indian side as cricketing Rosa Parks, there to show racist South Africans that the black man could play cricket as well as the white and thus helping to accelerate the end of apartheid. Perhaps Croft should talk to Peter Oborne, the author of the definitive book about the D'Oliveira case, who tells Colville that the tourists "should never be allowed to forget they were giving comfort to a wicked, barbarous regime".

But it was Gatting who finally demonstrated how far a cricketer's moral compass can go awry. By 1990, when he led a tour to South Africa, no one could claim ignorance. The moment he signed up, Gatting was subject to unrelenting opprobrium. At a press conference, he was hectored by a journalist who wondered how he would spend his blood money ("fancy a yacht, Mr Gatting?"). Unlike even the West Indies team whose presence was greeted largely by sullen disappointment among black South Africans, Gatting arrived in Pietermaritzberg into an organised maelstrom of demonstration. Indeed, his very presence highlighted the growing absurdity of a dying regime: a month after his tour was abandoned in embarrassment, Nelson Mandela was released from prison and the swift gallop to normality was unleashed

	Ryan Sidebottom's injury has surely put the focus on his surprise replacement Darren Pattinson © Getty Images

Darren Pattinson's surprise selection in England's XI for the Headingley Test against South Africa has not just bemused Englishmen, but also a few Australians. Pattinson, two weeks away from his 30th birthday, had spent the last 24 years of his life in Australia, is a roof tiler by trade and has played 11 first-class matches. (Read more in the piece by Cricinfo's Andrew McGlashan.)

Damien Fleming tells Chloe Saltau in the Age:

"It's unbelievable. I don't reckon he'll be doing any roof-tiling for a while."

Jonathan Agnew is surely not impressed. He writes in the Test Match Special blog:

What message does this send to English county cricketers who dream of playing for England - and, specifically in this case, to Chris Tremlett, who was actually called into the squad before Pattinson?

Graham Gooch terms it one of the most leftfield decisions he's seen.

Vic Marks has an interesting take on Pattinson's selection in his blog on the Guardian website.

Headingley can do odd things to selectors. It was here, for example, that David Graveney had a brainwave. He opted for Mike Smith, the little Gloucestershire swinger, rather than Andy Caddick against Australia. A catch went down; the ball refused to swing, England were thrashed and Smith never resurfaced again. Moreover Graveney's confidence and standing as a selector was dented.

As for Pattinson, it's too early to tell. CMJ had a Machiavellian theory: that Miller had picked him as a prelude to next year's Ashes encounter. Until yesterday it might have been possible for Pattinson to play for either country. Now he is English, despite what his father has said - "Darren, he's Australian"- when he was called into Champions Trophy 30. Having been selected Pattinson is committed to England; the Aussies can't have him. So when he takes seven against the Aussies at Headingley next year I shall be leading the calls for Miller's knighthood. Until then I remain confused.

Just the thought of Headingley makes fools of wise men, writes David Hopps in the Guardian.

Remember Martin Bicknell. Well, he too made his debut at Headingley like Pattinson. England selectors have often made interesting picks to exploit the conditions in Leeds, Cricinfo looks at how they fared.

Things like this are not supposed to happen any more. Not in this regimented era of central contracts, national academies, selectorial continuity and all the other trappings of Team England, says Alan Lee in the Times.

Chris McGrath writes in the Independent:

If we learned one thing here yesterday, it is that obscurity and celebrity are just different shades on the same spectrum. All it takes to bring them together is unreasonable expectation. We may think we know an awful lot more about Andrew Flintoff than Darren Pattinson, whose names stood out like neon when the team sheet was handed out on a dank, melancholy morning in Leeds. But just as the superhero exists in only two dimensions, the judgements that brought Pattinson here can hardly be deemed any less trite.

	The one that comes in © Getty Images

When I faced Freddie on Wednesday, I was expecting him to push the ball across me, as he has always done in the past. So I was leaving one that started out wide - and suddenly it came booming back in and hit me on the knee. I was about three hours late on the shot, and was left hopping about in pain.

Allan Donald has called for the inclusion of Andre Nel in place of the left-arm spinner Paul Harris in the South African team for the second Test. Click here to read his article in the same paper.

In the Guardian Mike Selvey wonders whether Flintoff's return will disturb the ecology of a side that has been put together for a record six successive matches.

In the same paper, John Ashdown chats with Ian Bell about pedalos, pork pies and pints of Carling.

The New Zealand Herald looks back at the good and bad sports news of the week.

A good week for ...

Cricketing acronyms

Stunning news from the ECB this week, which is to launch the EPL T20 in a bid to rival the ICL and IPL. An ECB release said the tournament would replace Pro40. It will involve all 18 counties and two sides from overseas, probably the winners of IPL plus a side assembled by Texan billionaire Allen Stanford (RBs or Rich Bastards). No word yet on the fate of the ICL rebels, but when we hear we'll let you know ASAP.

The announcement of the English Premier League yesterday came without much fanfare. And in The Times, Richard Hobson questions whether this really is a "premier" competition:

There is a fundamental problem about England and an equivalent of the Indian Premier League (IPL). We can have an English Premier League by name - Giles Clarke, the ECB chairman, coined the term when the 2008 season was launched in April - but what is “Premier” about a competition with at least 18 teams?

If the EPL is to really blossom as a viable commercial product, England will need support from India, Hobson continues.

Talks on refreshing the Twenty20 format, which was born in England in 2003, began long before the notion of “New Twenty20” and Collier, who is trying to finalise details of the Champions League with India, Australia and South Africa, said that the ECB has “received enormous broadcast and sponsor interest from around the world”.

The success of the tournament - and value of broadcasting deals overseas - is sure to be enhanced if the ECB can reach agreement with the Board of Control for Cricket in India over the release of its leading players, with the quid pro quo that England players will be allowed to feature in the IPL.

Keith Bradshaw and David Stewart's leaked plans, which proposed a city-based set-up of nine teams, was thrown out by the ECB, but many are concerned that a competition involving 20 teams might lack the cutting-edge talent which the Indian Premier League offered. Over in The Telegraph, Nick Hoult has a rather simple explanation to why Bradshaw and Stewart's plans were rejected: television.

It is believed they threw out Bradshaw's proposal after being told by television companies a nine-team city based tournament was worthless as a broadcasting deal. Sources within the broadcasting industry last night cast doubt on that view.

Paul Newman at the Daily Mail believes that the counties have locked themselves into a "Twenty20 prison".

The 18 first-class counties will all play a full part in a Twenty20 revolution that ends any possibility of city franchise cricket but leaves the domestic game in danger of reaching saturation point in the short format that is taking over the cricketing world.

There is also the possibility of EPL teams being backed by team name sponsors to generate more income. Kentucky Fried Middlesex, perhaps? Or how about Utterly Butterly Lancashire?

At The Guardian, Lawrence Booth was particularly concerned about overkill, but recognised that politics had scuppered any prospect of a slimline tournament.

The announcement confirmed what had become obvious in the days since proposals for a nine-franchise EPL, drawn up by Keith Bradshaw of the MCC and David Stewart of Surrey, were leaked to the press last Friday: namely, that many of the 18 first-class counties were unwilling to be marginalised and the ECB did not want to cede ownership of a potential milch cow to an outside company, in this case New Twenty20 Ltd. It has also been pointed out that any ECB-sanctioned tournament involving anything but all 18 counties would have been unconstitutional in any case.

A sixth-successive draw at Lord's is indeed a dubious distinction for the ground and Mike Selvey reckons the swanky new outfield, despite having one of the best drainage systems, is to blame. Read on in the Guardian.

I happen to think that the new outfield is a contributing factor, for it will have helped lower the natural water table, sucking moisture from beneath the square and making preparation a different task from that which the Lord's head groundsman, Mick Hunt, would have had when he first took over the job in the late 70s. There is so much more artificial watering required now which, when added to a top-dressing that binds, results in a true surface but one which has discovered the secret to eternal youth, like anti-wrinkle cream.

Also read Neil Manthorp's Lord's diary in Supercricket, Manners on Tour

Holding, meanwhile, is not as affable and friendly as he was a couple of years ago. He is far, far more so! There appear to be no minutes in the day when ‘Mikey’ doesn’t have a smile on his face and when he boarded the lift to descend from the famous UFO-style media centre after Saturday’s play, he seemed well-prepared for a party with half a case of rum under his arm.

There's plenty of confusion in India and Pakistan about the rules that govern anti-doping measures in the world of sport in the wake of the Mohammad Asif scandal. The Hindu lists out the various myths and realities of doping.

Myth: A Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE) is the way to dope.

Reality: True, a TUE gives an athlete the chance to take a prohibited substance in certain medical conditions, but a TUE is granted by a panel of experts only after satisfying that such a medication is absolutely necessary for the athlete’s health and there is no substitute. For example, an athlete applying for a TUE for an asthma medication is expected to produce results of a series of tests and if the authorities are not satisfied the competitor may be subjected to on-the-spot tests to verify whether he actually suffers from asthma and the TUE he is carrying is in order.

	Not a bad trio: Sachin Tendulkar (11782 Test runs), Anil Kumble (608 wickets) and Virender Sehwag (4813 runs and two triple-hundreds) © AFP

If wealth of cricketing experience was something that could have been deposited in banks, the cricketers from India and Sri Lanka would have formed the creamy layer of a Forbes list and their congregation at Colombo for the three-Test series would be akin to that corporate thing they have in Davos in January every year, writes Sandeep Dwivedi in the Indian Express.

Seven of the 11 active members in the 100-Test club are here and that includes the top four longest-serving present-day cricketers. Sachin Tendulkar, Sanath Jayasuriya, Muttiah Muralitharan and Anil Kumble made their Test debuts in the late 80s or early 90s — that’s an era with which no other international team, besides India and Lanka, has any remote connection with. West Indies with 1994 debutant Shivanarine Chanderpaul in their side comes close, but that’s all.

...

Even if one does a real needle-in-the-haystack kind of search, it will be tough to find a series where record-breakers will so frequently brush shoulders, where every other bat versus ball contest is a high-profile face-off with several layers of intrigue. The 55,035 vs 1686 is a kind of contest that has never happened before and the chances of it happening in the near future aren’t very bright either.

	Abdul Razzaq now plays for the Indian Cricket League © AFP

In an interview to PakPassion, a cricket forum, Pakistan allrounder Abdul Razzaq says he was handled poorly in the later stages of his international career, and that led to a decline in his performance. Razzaq explains why he couldn't replicate his form during Wasim Akram's tenure under other Pakistan captains:

There's only so much a player can do by himself, the captain's backing and his correct utilization of each players skills is also critical to a players success. Imagine if you've spent the whole day practising your batting and you've got yourself worked up to go out there the next day and bat, then when the next day comes you are slotted in at number 7 or 8 and you either dont get a chance to bat or you only face a dozen balls. How disheartened would you feel? Wouldnt it get you down mentally to know that you were fully fit and mentally ready but you didnt get a chance because you are batting too low in the order?

In the same way if you're confident about your bowling ability but you dont get a proper chance to show your skills then what can you do about it? Fast bowling in cricket is about the new ball, the best time to pick up wickets in an ODI match is within the first 15 overs. That's when the batsmen are unsettled, the ball is new and the batting team is willing to take risks off your bowling. The first 15 overs is when bowlers can either take a bad beating or pick up some crucial wickets, it's the best time to bowl. What's the use of introducing one of your most experienced bowlers between the 20th and 40th overs?

	No numerical recognition for Mike Procter from Cricket South Africa © The Cricketer International

Although the likes of Bruce Mitchell, Roy McLean, Robert Catterall, Alan Melville and Percy Sherwell feature on the honours board at Lord's alongside South Africa's latest entrants in Ashwell Prince, Neil McKenzie and Hashim Amla, in the eyes of Cricket South Africa they remain "illegitimate children", writes Gary Lemke in the Independent Online.

You might have noticed that McKenzie wears the number '42' below the Proteas badge on his shirt, Prince has '48', Smith '49' and Amla '60'.

This is where they are recognised in CSA's numerical system, a controversial badge of honour that starts with Kepler Wessels, who captained the first unified South African team back into Test cricket. The official excuse a few seasons back was that the "older" generation, like the above- mentioned, plus the likes of Mike Procter, Barry Richards, Graeme Pollock and Eddie Barlow, lived and played in a "parallel universe" and as such could not be honoured in such a manner for having represented their country.

Andrew Flintoff's return to Test cricket from injury should be handled with care and importantly, shouldn't be used as a strike bowler straightaway, writes Derek Pringle in the Telegraph.

Becoming a strike bowler is not something a player can just wake up one morning and decide to do. It requires a nose for wickets, a sharp mind with an even sharper bouncer, and a swagger that falls, usually, to those who take the new ball. Flintoff possesses most of these attributes except taking the new ball, which, apart from the odd desperate foray in the last Ashes series, he has tended to leave to others.

In the same paper, Geoff Boycott feels England may have missed the trick by not selecting Steve Harmison for Headingley.

I would have added Steve Harmison to the squad. I have been critical of his attitude and his bowling in the past but he has gone back to county cricket, is bowling better and getting wickets. It was obvious during the first Test that on a flat pitch England lacked pace. After three days of bowling, our three fast-medium guys are knackered. If England bowl first at Headingley, they could be bowling five days out of eight. That is a tall order, let me tell you.

Malcolm Conn welcomes the return of the Sheffield Shield, which he finds refreshing in an age where crass commercialism have taken over tradition and history. He says in the Australian:

Nine years after the state four-day competition became the Pura Cup, much to the chagrin of cricket lovers around the country, Cricket Australia has found a sponsor which does not want to put its name at the front of the award.

...

State captains were lined up for a promotional photograph with yoghurt smeared across their top lip to make it look like they had been drinking milk.

"I felt like I was committing treason," then Victorian captain Paul Reiffel confided later.

Meanwhile, Maddy Hogan, who has represented Victoria at under-17 and 19 level despite a congenital limb deformity on her left arm, will also feature in 2008 Paralympics in Beijing. Read more on the Cricket Australia website.

	Why was the light offered when the batsmen weren't really in any danger? © Getty Images

OK, the game was going nowhere, but surely the only reason you forfeit the final hour is if neither side can win. By declaring 47 runs ahead, hadn't Smith given England a chance of winning? Scoring 47 shouldn't be beyond England in an hour. Of course, Smith's declaration was only made because England had promised not to chase it, but it leaves a nasty taste in the mouth.

Kidd and other Times cricket correspondents pick their World XI based on the players they have seen.

In the Telegraph Simon Hughes in unimpressed by the bland pitch, which according to him was was like a cover girl's face after it had been airbrushed: pale, smooth and blemishless: beauty in the eye of the batsman.

The culture needs to change. Batsmen don't want bland pitches any more than bowlers. More risks must be taken. At the moment grass, which can add life, meets the same fate as body hair on Olympic athletes, and is unceremoniously shaved off. Steve Rouse, at Edgbaston, has the right idea and is more expermimental. He relishes a low scoring match. Maybe we need more ex-bowlers as groundsmen.

On iafrica.com, Rob Peters and Ebrahim Moola debate whether Kevin Pietersen is a loss to South African cricket.

Moola: KP could easily be in Hollywood or the House of Lords, such is the man's charisma. He represents the evolution of the game from a twee, limp-wristed game of rounders to a high-octane slugfest suited perfectly to an audience with a concentration span about the length of Glenn McGrath's batting average.

Peters: If cricket was not a team game I might have conceded that Pietersen was a loss to South Africa. If for example, he was a loud-mouthed and far less humble version of Roger Federer, I would admit that I would find it hard to see him turning out in English colours at Wimbledon. But Pietersen is nothing like Federer, not in ability and certainly not in the way of humbleness.

The proposed itinerary for England's tour of India in November includes only two metropolitan cities - Mumbai and Delhi - and it prompted the ECB to express its disappointment at the schedule. But the Guardian's David Hopps takes time out from watching the Lord's Test to give a list of hidden attractions that the venues offer to England supporters.

Rajkot (1st ODI)
Rajkot is a city in the no-alcohol state of Gujurat, about 70km from the Gulf of Karachi, and offers an insight into the life of Mahatma Gandhi, who was educated here. Visit Gandhi's ancestral home (1880) which now houses the Gandhi Smriti, a memorial museum containing photographs and personal effects. The Watson Museum and Library includes a huge 19th century marble statue of Queen Victoria and is fascinating. Drinkers should stay in Mumbai as long as possible - or even find an excuse to skip the first ODI entirely.

Jamshedpur (4th ODI)
Jamshedpur is a modern city in the state of Jharkand. The city is dominated by the Indian steel industry. It is named after Late Jamshedji, founder of the Tata steel empire. For recuperation, try Jubilee Park, a 200-acre park with fountains, a zoo, a mini golf course and a lake. The park is modelled on the Vrindavan Gardens in Mysore, which is slightly more famous. The Keenan stadium is one of India's better grounds. And you can visit the Dalma Wildlife Sanctuary, where you can expect to see some wild elephants, barking deer, porcupines, and perhaps even a leopard and tiger.

With cricket having gone far too commercial to take a break, Mahendra Singh Dhoni's honesty in deciding to skip the Sri Lanka Tests needs to be respected, writes Makarand Waingankar in the Hindu. He lists examples in the past when previous captains like Tiger Pataudi and Sunil Gavaskar drew a lot of flack for opting out of tours.

Dhoni certainly has built his image through the electronic media. His utterances are measured with honesty and purpose. His demeanour presents the character of a true team man willing to do anything for the team. It’s when one has this image, reasoning for any act is accepted without murmur.

However, Amrit Mathur in the Hindustan Times wonders if Dhoni's honesty could lead to a wrong perception in the eyes of the Indian public.

There are some in the Board who are okay with players choosing what to play and what not to. Others, driven by a sense of outrage at this insensitivity towards the country, will wait for an opportunity to pounce on him. To them, the issue is not about a tired player wanting a rest but one of power. In this game, the rules say the ones in authority choose who plays when and where and not, as Dhoni has done, the other way round.

The popular metaphor for Frankenstein's monster is of something new running amok. In cricket that thing is Twenty20 cricket, its manic spread and brazen allure conquering all before it, Derek Pringle writes in the Telegraph.

The England and Wales Cricket Board created Twenty20 five years ago, to widespread acclaim and profit. But those by-products now threaten to destabilise a game several centuries in the making, a situation the ECB can perhaps best serve by shackling the thing it loves.

...

Twenty20 is undoubtedly a hot product but the frightening thing for people who prefer progress and change to be considered and gradual is that eight months ago only one of those competitions existed - the Twenty20 Cup. The indecent haste to fill those gaps that still exist in the itinerary seems driven by the need for a fast buck, which in turn suggests that the product is a fad and not especially robust. As some sage pointed out recently, cricket needs to make money to exist but should not exist simply in order to make money.

	Monty Panesar hogs the attention at Lord's © Getty Images

Wimbledon has its Henman Hill and yesterday afternoon Lord's had its equivalent: Panesar Lawn, reports Richard Hobson in the Times. The MCC have installed a big screen on the Nursery Ground - the stretch of grass behind the Compton and Edrich Stands - and on a good-day for lazing around, one man stole the attention.

Panesar continues to grab the popular imagination but, as the game moved well beyond its halfway stage towards the climax of today, he started to resemble Henman on semi-finals day. He tried, tried again and then tried harder, but for all the optimistic whoops, balls narrowly missed the edge or fell short of fielders.

A delay between the real-time action and transmission on the screen created a double echo whenever Panesar bellowed one of his famous appeals. First would come Panesar's roar, then a chorus from the 25,000 or so watching live and another cheer from those following the big screen.

	Smith and McKenzie: Positively frisky © Getty Images

Call this dour? It was positively frisky compared with the habits of Jackie McGlew, who once entrenched himself for more than nine hours to reach a century against Australia in Durban in 1957-58. McGlew was one of Test cricket's great stonewallers. He was first pictured waving a cricket bat at four years old and it may well be that he never waved it so fearlessly again. South Africa dubbed him "the little general", with memories of Napoleon, and praised his orthodoxy but there were others who would have happily exiled him to Elba.

Cricinfo's Sambit Bal feels in the context of this match, and the series, it was a compelling day: slow, but always simmering; lacking in action, but not plot and intrigue.

In the Telegraph, Simon Hughes writes that McKenzie on the crease yesterday was entirely different from the eccentric guy batting in South Africa's middle order on their last tour to England.

It is hard to imagine someone suffering from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder ever being in an ideal frame of mind to play a major Test match innings. Such behaviour is a serious energy drain. Judging from his demeanour at the wicket yesterday he has purged himself of these affectations. He remained calm and unflustered during a crucial morning session when he would have known that early wickets spelt the end for South Africa. He has an idiosyncratic way of leaving the ball, withdrawing the bat inside the line at the last second, a method referred to as the 'curtain rail' because the movement is similar to drawing the curtains.

A thrilling final day at Lord's may be on the cards but the England papers can't stop speculating on who will make way for Andrew Flintoff in the second Test. Lawrence Booth writes in the Guardian that bringing in Matt Prior at No 6 could be an option though he adds recent research reveals Prior has so far cost England more runs in byes and missed chances than he has actually scored with the bat.

Sean Morris, the new chief of the Professional Cricketers' Association, is trying to negotiate a share of the new spoils for the England team while preserving the soul of the game. He spoke to Martin Baker in the Independent.

As a journeyman county cricketer himself, who went on to various jobs in the leisure promotions world before joining the PCA, he certainly feels his members deserve a bit more money: "Players are central to delivering the future of the game. We have to work with the ECB and the BCCI [Board of Control for Cricket in India] in a world market nowadays. As the players' representatives, we must play a more effective role in securing financial rewards, but we've also got to for players coming into the game."

...

Meanwhile, although he welcomes the "massive opportunity" provided by the short form of the game, Morris is determined to preserve five-day test cricket, which he and 90 per cent of his members regard as the ultimate form of their sport. "We have a responsibility to protect the game we've got. Test matches in this country bring in £50m to £60m per annum. It would be stupid to kill off the skills required for test cricket [which aren't easily acquired in the limited-overs game]. That would be killing the golden goose."

The proposal for a new Twenty20 league in England has hammered a nail in Test cricket's coffin, writes Stephen Brenkley in the Independent.

Well researched, even well meaning though it may claim to be, the report cannot dispel fears. It offers a stay of execution that it cannot deliver. The intention is that New Twenty20 will complement the smash-hit IPL (and good luck in convincing Lalit Modi, the accomplished and extremely satisfied IPL commissioner, of that).

Forget for a moment the ridiculous business of the world's best cricketers playing for one team in the IPL and then merely weeks later for others, mixing and matching, in the New T20. The IPL would run for 42 days, NT20 for 25 with a salary cap of £1m. If players could earn so much so quickly, why would they want to play international cricket beyond it? And while the players are bred by international cricket at present, that does not have to last. T20 can find its own stars. It already has.

Now in Israel as part of a unique Israel team with several Jewish cricketers, Jonty Rhodes says he's excited by the talent in a country with no cricket culture. In an interview with the Jerusalem Post, he says the book Exodus by Leon Uris really drew him to the country.

"My knowledge of Israel comes from the 'Exodus' and how tenacious and determined the people here are to have transformed the desert into this thriving economy. It's genius, and the people here are tenacious to be able to make a living in a really harsh environment."

Eden Gardens, India’s largest cricket stadium, is readying for a nip-and-tuck before the 2011 World Cup. But will it be any better? The Kolkata-based Telegraph investigates:

The tournament is two-and-a-half-years away but the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) that reigns, with the army’s boots on the throne, over Calcutta’s most famous patch of green has only a foggy idea of which apple to pluck for the Eden or which snake to let loose. Architects have not been spoken to, a budget is not in place. Prasun Mukherjee, the CAB president who took charge in a blaze of publicity around this time last year, said: “The land belongs to them (the army). We cannot start construction unless the lease is renewed.”

While that is true — the application for renewal has been lying with the defence ministry for over a year — Eden Gardens has already fallen behind the Wankhede stadium in the nip-and-tuck run. Wankhede has already submitted its plan to the Board of Control for Cricket in India, hired an architect and set its budget at Rs 100 crore.

	Graeme Smith wasn't proactive enough © Getty Images

Smith had nowhere to turn, no variety to offer. Jacques Kallis? He often looks a reluctant bowler and it is counter-productive to bowl him into the ground when his runs are so vital. Paul Harris? So far, he gives the impression of a journeyman left-armer who makes Ashley Giles look like Hedley Verity. Even so, it was odd that Smith was not more proactive. Kevin Pietersen dominated all too easily and the South Africans took their punishment all too passively.

Contrast all of this with Vaughan. Any criticism of him in recent times has been triggered by the notion that his captaincy has become too quirky, too restless - but, with so many runs on the board, he was allowed his quirkiness yesterday. So we saw Paul Collingwood bowling to Ashwell Prince with seven on the off side and three fielders at point who could almost hold hands with one another. James Anderson bowled to AB de Villiers with three fieldsmen loitering randomly on the leg side in no man's land.

Marks also highlights the similarities between Pietersen and Basil D'Oliveira.

For all the grandeur of his stroke play Pietersen, like D'Oliveira, spends plenty of time in reconnaissance. Both players have been reviled in the country of their birth when successful for England albeit, in D'Oliveira's case, by the potent minority. And there is the small matter of the 158s against Australia at The Oval.

In the Sunday Times John Stern writes that ever since Troy Cooley, England’s Ashes-winning bowling coach, returned to Australia two years ago, England have been trying to rediscover the art of taking wickets with the “old” ball.

In the same paper, David Gower tries to work out who will make way for Andrew Flintoff, if he is picked for the next Test. While Gower feels Tim Ambrose should be dropped for Flintoff, Angus Fraser, in the Independent believes it's Paul Collingwood who should be left out.

In the Telegraph, Andrew Strauss writes that this series against South Africa - even after only three days - feels like 'proper' Test cricket for their bowling attack, despite having to bowl on a particularly placid pitch in our first innings, have that vital ingredient, pace.

Neil Manthorp believes the first two days of the match have been the two worst consecutive days of Tests for South Africa since its readmission in to international cricket. He writes in supersport.co.za:

Only Ashwell Prince's century on Saturday prevented it from being their worst three days ever. It is now a very, very long way back for Smith and his men. If they needed a kick up the backside, they have got it. As well as a several slaps in the face and a fist or two in the teeth. It is time to show England, and the rest of the world, that the recently 'earned' number two ranking is not a computer joke.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni was given permission by the Indian board to opt out of the Sri Lanka Tests starting this month. In the Hindustan Times Sunil Gavaskar remembers the time in the late 70s when as captain his request for a West Indies tour to be postponed by a week was flatly refused by the BCCI. When he announced his decision to opt out of the tour and step down as captain, there was a furore and plenty of criticism.

I approached the then-BCCI president and asked if the departure to the Caribbean could be delayed. The president flatly refused after I explained the reasons. Instead he said there were 5000 players waiting to play for India.

One can continue analysing the wisdom of Mahendra Singh Dhoni's decision to pull-out of the Sri Lanka Tests, but in the larger context, it's hard to find fault with him, writes Pradeep Magazine in the Hindustan Times. That the BCCI continues to cram the schedules with meaningless tournaments speaks of their arrogance and that only denies the public the chance to watch players play to their optimum potential.

Is there any point in making an effort if the pursuit of excellence takes away the joy and celebration of living? Watching listless, tired Indian faces running around the field in searing heat and humidity during the Asia Cup in Pakistan could not have been too enjoyable for the spectators.

Dermot Reeve has been appointed the Central Districts coach and talks to Dominion Post's Sam Worthington about the challenges ahead, as he relocates to New Zealand without his family.

Reeve brings to Central a reputation for improvisation that is likely to endear him to the likes of the flamboyant Ross Taylor, though he claimed that was a tag thrust upon him by others. "Innovative is something that someone else puts on you and I just weighed up the pros and the cons of where to put men in the field and what degree of risk you might take with a certain shot. I was lucky to have played and captained at a time at Warwickshire where myself and Bob Woolmer, we did analyse the game and give it the attention I believe it deserves. To me, playing the reverse sweep when the field is set a certain way is just the right thing to do. Other people would describe the shot as innovative, but if you practice it, it's just like playing any other shot."

	After Pietersen departed, Bell was the one in charge of the hammer © Getty Images

To get the ball in the gap behind square leg, Pietersen had to rotate his wrists as if turning a car steering wheel sharp left at the lights. Bell may lack that kind of elasticity in limb but not in mind, and his late cut for four off Ntini, through an empty slip cordon, was like a deadly kiss, delicate but lethal in its effect on South Africa's morale. Before that his finest shot had been a lofted six off his eventual nemesis, Harris, but this came with that delicious cruelty closer to sadism than sport.

In the Guardian, Neil Manthorp catches up with Gulam Bodi, the man KwaZulu Natal picked ahead of Pietersen ten years ago, a selection which turned KP's career for the better.

"We had a couple of issues but we resolved everything afterwards. There's no problem now. Just a couple of misunderstandings."

In the Times Mike Atherton feels Bell's transformation from youth to manhood has been almost overnight.

The Guardian 's David Hopps writes that in Test cricket terms, when Bell finally opened his own bank account.

Allan Donald, the former South African bowler, has seen him progress at Warwickshire and his loyalties seemed with the batsman when he predicted before the Test: "It's only a matter of time before Ian Bell absolutely nails it." Well, he has nailed it, with utter certainty. And, after Pietersen departed, Bell was the one in charge of the hammer.

"Although its architects will deny the charge of plagiarism, the similarities between the radical new Twenty20 competition leaked yesterday and the Indian Premier League (IPL) are so clear that it seems the ground-breaking tournament has simply been transported thousands of miles from Bombay to London," writes Richard Hobson in the Times.

In a different slot, the New T20, as it would be called, is being projected as a complement rather than a rival to the IPL. The organisers will save themselves a lot of tedious politicking with Lalit Modi and his friends on the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) if they can make friends early. But the tone of the early part of the document written by Keith Bradshaw, the MCC chief executive, and David Stewart, the Surrey chairman, is that England must act quickly to ensure that India, already the biggest market for the world game, does not gain a monopoly on the most lucrative staging of the format.

Also in the Times, Christopher Martin-Jenkins writes, "Profits are estimated, with questionable precision, at £7 million a team, but let us have some cricketing honesty here. It should be either this revamped nine-team extravaganza with profits genuinely shared, or a continued county league. In a properly balanced programme there is no realistic place for both."

"The Twenty20 format proposed by the Marylebone Cricket Club, Hampshire, Lancashire and Surrey is imaginative and has some merit but it threatens the fabric of the domestic game in England. Despite what the project team state, the creation would cause an insurmountable split among the 18 first-class counties. It threatens overkill of Twenty20 cricket, a product that has achieved so much good in the six years since its inception," writes Angus Fraser in the Independent.

Reacting to the proposal for an Indian Premier League clone in England, Stephen Moss in the Guardian asks: Do we really want to replace the grand narrative of county cricket with mock dramas starring the Headingley Humdingers.

If and when this English Premier League is launched in 2010, dominating the key cricketing months of June and July, the county championship, which has already been made virtually meaningless by the comings and goings of star players for the odd fortnight, will wither. It will carry on in some form, but in effect it will be a second-eleven competition, a place for the Premier League stars to get some practice and for young players to stake their claim to the big bucks of Twenty20.

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Cricket is a great game because it lasts long enough for character to express itself. Twenty20 allows for no such niceties. Mock drama replaces narrative; money overwhelms love; celebrity usurps true character.

Jonathan Agnew, in the Test Match Special Blog, doesn't believe the franchise system will work in England.

Not only is there no attachment to a team from Birmingham if you live in Leicester, but Twenty20 cricket is so short, that any journey of more than an hour hardly makes the experience worthwhile.

On the same blog, Alec Stewart feels Twenty20s must be given room to breathe, and that the ICC's futures tours committee must try avoiding a situation where Sri Lanka might send a second-string side to tour England.

Billy Bowden, the umpire, shares his experience of officiating on the first day of the first Test between England and South Africa. Read his thoughts in the Times.

I thought the fact that my mother was not at Lord's to watch me - she died three weeks ago - would hit me hard when I took the field yesterday .. The one intervention that I needed to make came when I picked up Pietersen's necklace when he was hit on the helmet.

Telegraph's Martin Johnson writes that the Lord's Test was a welcome dose of Twenty20 antidote.

There were 41 dot balls in the first six overs of this game, but it didn't mean it was any less intriguing than the instant biff-bang-wallop of Twenty20. Did those spectators who turned up to see whether the self-proclaimed South African mean machine would live up to their arrogant pre-match propaganda feel disappointed when it turned out their fast bowlers couldn't hit a cow's arse with a banjo?

Writing in the Times Mike Atherton believes Kevin Pietersen has passed the test of character.

Rather than verbals, this time South Africa gave Pietersen the silent treatment, the cold shoulder. So much so that he was reduced to striking up a conversation with Billy Bowden, the umpire, within his first few minutes at the crease. Not that the silence equated to a softly-softly approach. South Africa's plan for Pietersen clearly involved a liberal sprinkling of bouncers and, er, a few more bouncers ... But after that there was precious little evidence of the planning that Smith had spoken about before the match. Mid-wicket, for example, Pietersen's favourite area, was constantly left untenanted.

Read Stuart Broad's weekly diary ahead of each Test in the Daily Mirror .

Wednesday: The game is at the forefront of my mind and I'm trying to visualise my first ball - hitting the bat hard or over the top of off stump. We had a good net session and Fred was back, which was great to see, although I had to face him and he nearly took my nose off!

Azeem Rafiq, the 17-year-old at the centre of Yorkshire's Twenty20 eligibility furore, is gutted and just wants to play cricket. Read the thoughts, in the Yorkshire Post, from the men who know him at the Barnsley cricket club.

As far as we are concerned, there is no reason for him to feel upset," said the club's development officer David Clayton ... "He's absolutely gutted. He just wants to play cricket. He is obsessed by cricket, so driven. He loves the game. I offered him a game with our Under-17s (last night) and he said he'd better not – that was the first time I've ever seen him turn down a game. I remember when he first moved over here with his family. He was so keen. He practised every night. If there was no one to practise with, he would practise on his own. Even though he's been playing with the Yorkshire Academy for the last two seasons, he's still down here all the time.You could tell he was good right from the start – he's the best I've seen at that age. He's also a top lad. I'm sure he'll bounce back from this."

Yorkshire Post cricket writer Sam Wheeler gives his views on the ECB's decision. Listen to the audio programme CricketTalk.

In the Indian Express, Harsha Bhogle writes how Ajantha Mendis' marvellous bowling performance was the only silver lining in a week that saw the game suffering grievous wounds at the ICC meeting.

The funny thing is that every country got what it wanted and the game suffered. Zimbabwe got the best deal. They wanted money, they got it; they didn’t want cricket, now they don’t need to provide it. And England got what they wanted; the money that will flow in from organizing the next world T20 and a political victory by denying Zimbabwean players a world stage. It has very dangerous implications ... Worse still is the decision to change the result of the Oval Test between England and Pakistan.

Michael Atherton previews the upcoming Test series between England and South Africa, and is happy that the home side is going to play a new opponent after a while. Click here for the article in the Times.

Not since the beginning of the Ashes series three years ago has there been such anticipation about the start of a Test series. Yesterday, Michael Vaughan suggested that a series against South Africa is “nearly up there with the Ashes” and if the England captain overstated the case a touch, it was partly in recognition of the fact that the bland fare offered up by 19 consecutive matches against New Zealand will be replaced by something much richer and more varied for the palate.

The Guardian's Mike Selvey says it will be series that "defines England's progress" since Peter Moores took over last year.

The Times' Ivo Tennant talks to the eccentric Billy Bowden ahead of his maiden appearance as an umpire at Lord's.

Meanwhile, the punters, as revealed in the Guardian, are backing South Africa to claim the series.

Meanwhile, Paul Collingwood talks candidly to the Independent's Glenn Moore about the controversial Grant Elliott run-out.

The Telegraph's Simon Hughes writes about the Loughborough University's scientific study on helmets.

In a project financed in part by the government, in part by the ECB, Loughborough's sports technology institute - an organisation that works with sporting bodies and manufacturers to produce cutting edge equipment - has been subjecting various helmets and gloves to a severe assault. In a transparent box a typical betting helmet is positioned on the head of a mannequin which is screwed onto a steel post. Balls are fired at the helmet from close range using a bowling machine.

The speed is about 65mph, similar to that of James Anderson bouncer once it has reached the batsman. The process is recorded by cameras filming at 10,000 frames per second. Once slowed down the images are similar to those ads featuring crash-test dummies. A similar process is used to test a glove on the hand of a prosthetic arm.

Michael Atherton, in the Times blasts the ICC for its handling of the Zimbabwe issue.

The ICC no longer has the moral authority to run the game. Given one final opportunity to lift decision-making out of the morass of self-interest, deceit and compromise into which it had fallen, it flunked the test. The outcome on Zimbabwe - self-censorship in return for the loot - was in many ways a triumph for Giles Clarke, the ECB's intelligent and forceful chairman, but it should signal the end for the ICC. Like flared trousers, string vests and the Bay City Rollers, what once seemed a good idea has had its day.

Brian Moore, in the Telegraph, is not in favour of sporting sanctions.

If cricketers should not play against Zimbabwe, why are English companies allowed to trade with impunity? The moral matrix differs not when it comes to trade. Indeed, economic sanctions were the real reason for the change in South African politics, not the sporting ban; anyone who believes different is naive.

Chloe Saltau, in the Sydney Morning Herald, says Cricket Australia (CA) is lobbying for an AFL-style mediation plan to resolve racial disputes before the ICC.

The AFL is considered a world leader in confronting racial vilification, and won a United Nations award for the code established after Essendon champion Michael Long reacted to Collingwood's Damian Monkhorst racially abusing him in 1995. Since then, the first step in resolving incidents of racial abuse has been for the two players to attend a mediation session. If that fails, the matter proceeds to the AFL Tribunal.

Cricket Australia is advocating a similar system, in which mediation would ideally be confidential, and prosecution a last resort. The ICC is understood to have been unconvinced, but CA is determined to keep pushing for a less combative process that, in the first instance, aims for the offender to understand why a particular remark is unacceptable.

	Jonty Rhodes: "Hashim Amla gives us something different, as he isn't really a 'South African' batsman. He is much wristier than any of our other batsmen, which gives the team something different" © AFP

What went right during the tour in 2003:

"We got input from many cricketers that knew conditions intimately and passed on that advice in a camp we held. We had a young squad with a strong self-belief that through youthful attitude wanted to make a statement. Englishman Mike Finnigan did amazing work with the squad after the one-day series and developed real self-belief and desire to make this statement. Mike had worked with Sam Allardyce at Bolton Wanderers and is now with David Moyes at Everton."

Where it went wrong:

"Ultimately, we could not handle the pressure when it came down to the wire in the final Test. A team should never score 480 in the first innings and lose the way we did at The Oval. England did not win the last Test from that position — we lost it. In some ways we were the victims of our own success as we scored the runs in 128 overs which meant the match moved on very quickly — so by lunch on the second day we were virtually bowling already whereas 484 would previously take you till at least tea, and then the time factor makes it difficult for team batting second to come back."

Prins also caught up with Jonty Rhodes and asked him who he thought would be South Africa's performers on this tour.

"Obviously Graeme Smith and Jacques Kallis are very important for us. Graeme has played some County cricket now and scores his runs very quickly. Neil is batting out of position a bit, but he is very experienced. Hashim (Amla) gives us something different, as he isn't really a 'South African' batsman. He is much wristier than any of our other batsmen, which gives the team something different. AB de Villiers is another to look out for. Ashwell (Prince) is probably the only one of our batsmen that hasn't scored much in the last series or two. All of our top six can score big scores though, which is something we've not had before."

In supercricket website, Mike Haysman explains how Hawkeye works.

Nari Contractor,who played Jack Iverson in 1953, believes Ajantha Mendis is similar to Iverson who could bowl off-break, leg-break and googlies without a change of action.But Contractor believes the Indian batsmen could have done much better than what they did in the Asia Cup final.Read his thoughts in the Mumbai Mirror.

Jasu Patel pocketed nine wickets for 69 against Australia. How long did he play?” he fumes. “Yuvraj Singh and Rohit Sharma were undone by Mendis’ pace. Had they played him off the front foot they would have negotiated him easily.”

Makarand Waingankar, in the Hindu, feels local coaches should be given their due.

The argument of the associations inviting the foreign coaches is that they have the experience to get the desired results whereas the qualified Indian coaches get too technical for the comfort of the players. More than the technicalities, it’s the strategy which helps you get runs and wickets, and that’s something these foreign coaches are good at. At least that is what is projected.

Getting foreign coaches who have not performed to replace proven coaches like Chandrakant Pandit and Vijay Dahiya is a dangerous trend. If qualified Indian coaches are not wanted, the NCA should immediately stop all the coaching courses. It’s a waste of time and money to train someone and then fail to utilise their expertise.

	Will Kevin Pietersen to able to keep his cool against South Africa? © Getty Images

Will he be able to restrain himself when the wind-ups come, though? I recall how Shoaib Akhtar got him in Faisalabad by suckering him into indiscretion and then producing his chicken dance to send him away. This is a more mature batsman now, however, who plans and prepares meticulously. He has probably had his wife shouting insults at him just to get used to it. I think Pietersen will have a great series.

Brian Viner of the Independent interviews Graeme Smith, who talks about South African cricket's controversial transformation policy among other things.

"Look, transformation is something you have to face. We are a young sporting nation since readmission, and we face many challenges. One of them is developing the country, what's the right way to handle that, to make it a representative nation? That's not something we can hide from. But one thing I can say in terms of these players here is that I've never seen a team before in which no one doubts anyone else's ability. That shows we're getting somewhere."

Angus Fraser, in the Independent, laments the lack of an established wicketkeeper in England's ranks while interviewing Mark Boucher.

In the Cape Times, Zaahier Adams picks the 10 most memorable moments in South Africa-England Tests.

Alastair Cook, in his column in the Telegraph, says he is happy with the extra pace that will be provided by the South African attack.

In the Guardian, Paul Nixon and John Buchanan debate on whether the Ashes 2005 quartet - Flintoff, Harmison, Hoggard and Jones - should be reunited.

Steve James, in the Telegraph, calls for the increased use of technology to assist umpires and backs the umpire referrals system

For it might have been the first Test series in which the controversial umpire referral system was trialled. But the respective boards could not agree on the finer details, so Sri Lanka and India will become the guinea pigs later this month.

It is a shame. Those believing that such a system will never be in general use at international level are deluded. Believe me, it's coming whether you like it or not. And so it should be. Technology must be embraced.

Why should television viewers at home be able to see an umpire has committed a howler while the side wronged against has no right of appeal?

Derek Pringle, in the Telegraph, writes about the Ashes and England's chances of reprising their series win in 2005.

Make no mistake, cricket's greatest brand is what the Ashes are, no matter who sponsors them or how much money the rupee rajahs of the Indian Premier League want to dangle before our eyes. It will endure, too, for as Kevin Pietersen made plain in his newspaper column at the weekend - money cannot buy the feeling he and his team-mates experienced when they won the Ashes at the Oval in 2005.

For those who see that incredible series as an anomaly, a return to the result of that heady summer may not be out of the question despite the 5-0 drubbing of England by Ricky Ponting's side in Australia 18 months ago.

	Hashim Amla has one of the more prominent beards in international cricket © AFP

Revelling in the suggestion that Lord's will see the best set of whiskers in cricket since WG Grace, Amla contemplates his beard proudly. But as his father and sister are both doctors, like Grace, he is not about to claim precedence over the bearded master.

"I have seen pictures of his beard but mine is definitely shorter. The optimum length for me, as a Muslim, is for the beard to be of fist-length. But it is not purely a tribute to Islam. If you go back many years the beard is a tribute to all the faiths stemming from the biblical Abraham - or Ibrahim, as we say in Islam. In the Christian tradition Jesus, peace be upon him, has a beard. In the Jewish tradition Moses has a beard. And in Islam we have Muhammad, whom Muslims believe is the final messenger, and he kept a beard because it was the tradition of all the other messengers before him. We see it as universal."

Anil Kumble says he was surprised how the Indian batsmen played Ajantha Mendis. Read his piece in the Hindustan Times.

When you're struggling to pick a bowler out of his hand, the usual thing is to play him off the wicket. What was surprising was that many Indian batsmen did not pick his length early enough. The safest option, when you're not quite sure which way the ball will turn, is to play straight and some of our batsmen made the mistake of playing across the line and paid the price.

Bishen Singh Bedi, the former India player, is very impressed with the new mystery bowler. Read his thoughts in the Times of India.

It's wrong to say Mendis is totally unorthodox. His grip is freaky, yes, but his run-up (a busy, shuffling gait), delivery stride and follow-through are technically very sound. Also, his biggest strength now, the straighter one which is closer to a flipper than a top-spinner, is possible only because he bowls with the shoulder, and has a perfect long-arm release. It's incredibly impressive and correct. He doesn't resort to the laxity in the ICC's elbow flexion rules for effect. He's a delight, the first person after Sachin Tendulkar I would pay to watch

Laxmi Ratan Shukla, the Bengal and Kolkata Knight Riders player, tells Indian Express' GS Vivek that he didn't have any problem facing Ajantha Mendis.

“I was very curious and wanted to play him in the nets very next day. When he bowled to me, I played defensively to his first two balls. Because I had heard a lot about him, I focused a lot more on his hand when he was releasing the ball. Next thing I knew, I could easily tell which one was going to cut out and which was going to zip in. He tried all his variations, but I was picking the straighter one as well,” he says.

Shukla’s effort in the nets allowed his team mates to play him freely as well, something that helped shed that ‘mysterious player’ tag. So much so that despite joining the Knight Riders as a mid-season signing to shore up their ‘foreign player’ resources following the departure of Ricky Ponting, Brad Hodge, Brendan McCullum, as also injuries to Chris Gayle and later, Shoaib Akhtar, Mendis still only got to play in a single game.

John Dyson, the West Indies coach, has said that the West Indies players must realise that they have to curb the ‘natural West Indian way’ in order to achieve consistent success. He spoke on a range of issues plaguing West Indies cricket in the press conference after Australia swept the five-match ODI series. Read the full Q&A in the Caribbeancricket.com.

Unfortunately, we're getting players that have only played a handful of games in some cases that have been playing not a lot of cricket and I've got to say that some of the stuff they're bringing to us, we need to change dramatically. One person or one management team at this level can't change that overnight. We can make changes along the way but it does take time. To say 'we want to be from there to there in two or three months, it is totally unrealistic. Mathematically you can't do it. To change the habits of the players once they get to this team, overnight, it's just not going to happen. They need to start working on things before they get there.

"The passing of radical bowler Bryan 'Bomber' Wells reveals how far old bonds of comradeship in cricket have declined," writes David Foot in the Guardian blog.

He came from the same rather incestuous, ecclesiastical city as two other slow bowlers of infinite cunning and eyes like an Edwardian poacher from the Forest of Dean, Charlie Parker and Tom Goddard. There was a natural anti-feudal sting to their words, especially that of Charlie, the farm labourer's boy who years later in his cups would quote Marx and the scriptures with equal fervou

Bomber Wells played cricket for fun. There are quite a few funny anecdotes involving his exchanges with his amateur captain to the mix-ups running between the wickets. "For God's sake, call," Sam Cook once begged him and back came the reply: "Heads."

"The 'chokers' tag attached to South Africa's cricket team since their return from sporting isolation 17 years ago may be due a revision following the appointment of a bit-part England one-day player called Jeremy Snape to their coaching staff," writes Derek Pringle in the Telegraph.

If Snape had been involved back then [1999 World Cup semi-final], he could have told [Allan] Donald that what he and [Lance] Klusener did was not choke but panic. The responses look similar to the untutored eye but, according to studies in America, they are actually poles apart. According to research, choking comes from thinking too much, panic from thinking too little. Ergo, if Klusener had thought about the broader context of his situation, that a World Cup final was as good as theirs (a big thought beyond the present), he might not have been able to hit the ball, which would have been a choke. But if he had thought a bit more about that over in hand, focusing on the fact there were still two balls left (a small thought very much in the present), then he might have averted the panic that saw him set off for that risky run.

"Days before England face the first stage of a pace ordeal against South Africa, Michael Vaughan, the captain, has expressed his desire to create a reunion of the fast bowling club that helped deliver the 2005 Ashes," writes Mike Selvey in the Guardian.

In Supercricket, Neil Manthorp feels the typically English attitide of sporting pessimism has made South Africa favourites to win the series. The stalemate at Taunton is an example.

It won't be Dale Steyn's or Morne Morkel's wickets, or Jacques Kallis' runs or Graeme Smith's captaincy which will win this series, it will be the team's collective ability to recognise the look in the eye of whichever Englishman is calling upon his last reserves of desermination and strength.

"As it stands, if NZC were to withdraw from next year's tour of Zimbabwe for reasons other than security or safety issues, they would be liable for an automatic fine of US$2m, plus all liabilities suffered by the host board (television rights included) as a result. Their ICC membership status could also be questioned," writes Richard Boock in Sunday Star Times. "However, there is an escape clause in the agreement that waives all penalties should a team be barred from touring by government decree."

The Australian government used it last year to help their national cricket team avoid a tour of Zimbabwe and the British government followed suit last month; issuing a ministerial communiqué that allowed the ECB to back out of their commitments. Far from proving controversial, both decisions received widespread support at home and abroad.Despite this, the New Zealand government continues to baulk at taking such action, arguing that interfering with ci tizens' freedom of movement was an extreme and draconian measure, and that it wasn't prepared to withhold passports in order to reinforce its feelings on Zimbabwe.

Scott Styris fired a salvo of harsh text messages at Mark Richardson, a former New Zealand opener turned journalist, because of what the allrounder thought to be a negative article written by Richardson. Read Richardson's response in the Herald on Sunday.

I've no doubt this attack came about due to the delicate balance an ex-team member faces when they step out of the dressing room and straight into the media. I believe the player involved would not have been motivated to approach the likes of a professional journalist in the same way they did me when they were angered by what was written. Within the group you see things similarly and, even when disagreements arise, the dynamics on the inside are vastly different than dealing with disagreements that arise between the team and outside media. When you leave that pack, I believe it is easier for the person leaving the group to sever ties than for those who remain to cut that person loose.

	Kevin Pietersen: Bring it on... © Getty Images

It's time to wave goodbye to New Zealand's trundlers and welcome Dale Steyn and his charismatic chums. South Africa's pace attack should inspire their English counterparts to crank up their pace, which means more fast bowling thrills and hostile spells. Kevin Pietersen's duel with the fast bowlers will form a vital strand of the series, writes Steve James in the Sunday Telegraph.

A pace attack of Steyn, Makhaya Ntini, Morne Morkel and Jacques Kallis merits careful consideration. It not only has gas, but variety too: the skiddy, swinging Steyn; the wide-of-the-crease, hitting-the-pitch-hard Ntini; the unadulterated bounce of the 6ft 6in Morkel and the sparingly used Kallis, with know-how of when best to release an increasingly creaky handbrake.

In the same paper, Scyld Berry feels England need to be wary of Neil McKenzie, South Africa's new opening batsman whose Test career has entered a refreshingly-new phase.

The obvious option would have been to emigrate to English county cricket, and the pound sterling, but McKenzie saw Test cricket as the ultimate; and he has more roots, more depth. "It would have been easy to run away, and at Somerset there were some talks about 'Kolpaking'. But the will to play for South Africa and the unfinished business - I'd let myself down giving my wicket away and averaging only early-mid thirties."

In the Sunday Times, John Stern looks forward to an exciting duel between Dale Steyn and Pietersen.

There has been so much water under the bridge, so much trash talk, so many ego clashes that this contest cannot fail to move. This will not be a goalless draw. In one corner is KP himself, his star back in the ascendant after a moderate winter. In the other corner is Dale Steyn, the irresistible force of world cricket, the fresh-faced 90-mile-an-hour quick who has taken 78 Test wickets at 16 since the start of May last year and the rightful heir to Allan Donald’s “White Lightning” throne.

In the same paper, Simon Wilde compares the two captains - Graeme Smith and Michael Vaughan - and feels Smith's side has a more settled look.

Smith has matured greatly since Vaughan last crossed swords with him in the Test arena. In those days, Smith exhibited the insecurity of a young man who had been catapulted into the captaincy. He went out of his way to convince everyone, not least himself, that he was worthy of the job. But now, Smith has plenty of younger players under him prepared to follow his lead unquestioningly.

In the Observer, Allan Donald chats with Will Buckley on the forthcoming series, his famous duel with Michael Atherton at Trent Bridge, South African cricket post readmission and the fateful final over at Edgbaston which cost South Africa a shot at lifting the 1999 World Cup.

"It was the most disgusting thing that could happen. A shocking place to be. Not a lot of people came up to me and said "bad luck". 'To get over it I had to watch it. And I watched it again and again and again.' The headlines in South Africa were not friendly. 'There was one saying "Donald, don't bother coming home". And when I arrived back the first person I met at one of the gates looked at me and said, "What are you doing back here?" That's how serious it was.

In the Observer, Kevin Mitchell writes: "What matters to the ICC is they have been saved from making a judgment call (which they would have fudged by suspending Zimbabwe temporarily because 'they are not good enough'), and England don't lose their big-money gig. While England and South Africa suspended cricket relations with Zimbabwe last week, the ICC, their strings pulled by the Asian bloc, are adamant Zimbabwe will keep full membership and funding. All that has been saved is a tournament. Nothing else changes."

"The stand taken by the ICC to save the savage Mugabe’s Zimbabwe from being expelled from the international cricketing fraternity is something that may be easy to understand and explain. But, is it desirable and justified? And shouldn’t India, which never loses an opportunity to flex its financial clout to ride roughshod over many cricketing decisions, be the last country to say politics and sport never go together?" asks Pradeep Magazine in the Hindustan Times.

"England and India are engaged in a struggle for power and influence which will determine the direction of the sport. They are fighting over its soul," writes Stephen Brenkley in the Independent on Sunday.

To observe this titanic clash unfold at the International Cricket Council's annual meeting was both enthralling and disturbing. Two bulls locked horns, suddenly aware of their own strength and unprepared to cede ground. The primary tussle, a narrow win in a bowl-out for England, concerned Zimbabwe. England wanted them out, India wanted them in: they are out of next year's World Twenty20 in England but still in (for now) the ICC.

Click here to read more on the Zimbabwe issue.

"There are some captains who remain captains, and there are some who grow into the role of a leader," writes Imran Khan in the Hindustan Times. "Dhoni belongs to the latter category. I was impressed that he has started coming up the order, playing sensibly rather than explosively, and is able to set an example for his team to emulate."

Anil Kumble was also "impressed by the manner in which Mahendra Singh Dhoni has used himself in a floating position up and down the order".

Also in the Hindustan Times, Kumble says: "Bowlers have to be assigned clear roles and if someone’s job is to take wickets, then the captain needs to back him even if he goes for runs. On these pitches, you can’t succeed if all five bowlers are just looking to restrict the batsmen. You have to find a couple of bowlers who can pick up wickets. In times like this strategy becomes very important, because taking wickets is the only way to keep the run-rate down."

"The last few months have seen an amazing churn. With the selectors moving beyond Dravid and Ganguly, the new generation has steadily changed, both, the team's look and outlook," writes Bobilli Vijay Kumar in the Times of India. "The most significant development, though, has been the coming together of Sehwag and Gambhir."

"Over the years you begin to realise that your life is not in peril every time you walk out to bat against the likes of Donald, Walsh, Ambrose or Malcolm Marshall. A blow to the ribs, knuckle, shoulder or elbow can be mighty painful but fast bowlers don't kill you, they just chip bits off you," writes Angus Fraser in the Independent.

During the next five weeks it will be just such contests that dominate the sporting landscape here and it will be the ability of Alastair Cook, Andrew Strauss, Michael Vaughan, Kevin Pietersen, Ian Bell and Paul Collingwood to handle South Africa's hostile and much vaunted pace attack that will ultimately decide the result of the four-Test series. If England defeat the Proteas they can look forward to next summer's Ashes with confidence. Lose, and the international future of a couple of players in Michael Vaughan's side must be in doubt.

Meanwhile, Lawrence Booth meets Allan Donald and talks to him in the Guardian about how South Africa are seeing Ian Bell as a threat in the Jacques Kallis mould.

	Relieved man: The new ICC president David Morgan © Getty Images

In The Age Alex Brown writes that “the outcome might amount to a triumph for politicking and face saving, but it will do little to improve the standard or appeal of international cricket.”

Cogniscant of the British government's threat to ban Zimbabwe from the tournament, the ICC's executive committee moved to avoid a potentially fractious fall-out by leaning on the ZC to withdraw its team. The ZC's reward was to retain its current level of funding and full voting power, which will almost certainly ensure India's virtual hegemony on the council for years to come.

In the Australian, Malcolm Conn described the ICC’s solution as an “embarrassing backdown”.

“The ICC continues to pour millions of dollars into Zimbabwe. There are serious questions about where the money ends up, with cricket at all levels in Zimbabwe destroyed and the administration closely aligned to dictator Robert Mugabe. One frustrated member of the cricket establishment yesterday told The Australian: "The ICC should just write out a cheque for $10m to Mugabe.”

Anand Vasu, writing in the Hindustan Times, is critical of the decision.

Worst of all, those governing the game in Zimbabwe have been given the license to eat their cake and have it too. Already they were freed of the effort required to produce a Test team, hardly bother with their ODI side, and now they won't be playing the World Twenty20.

In The Times, Richard Hobson says the outcome is a triumph for ECB chairman Giles Clarke, adding:

The supine ICC should be ashamed at continuing to give money to an organisation whose links with the Robert Mugabe regime were detailed forensically by Norman Arendse, the Cricket South Africa president. It is a disgrace that the ICC constitution does not allow Zimbabwe to be stood down on political grounds when cricket and politics are entwined in the country.

"Many suspected that Giles Clarke's negotiating style would be too brusque for ICC tastes. They reflected upon a history of disastrous ECB negotiators and feared the worst. He might yet prove too volatile. But in Dubai, as England won the right not to host Zimbabwe in next summer's World Twenty20, he enjoyed a striking personal triumph," writes David Hopps in the Guardian.

Also in The Times, Dileep Premachandran looks at the reasons behind India's support for Zimbabwe.

It came down to Zimbabwe being the fifth vote. Financial considerations mean that the Asian bloc will invariably vote as one, but with South Africa now having broken off cricketing ties with Zimbabwe, it was imperative that India retain its power base at the ICC. And if that means supporting a board whose links to Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party are not even in doubt, then so be it.

And Stephen Brinkley writes in the Independent how Nelson Madela mentioning "the tragic failure of leadership in our neighbouring Zimbabwe" last week influenced the ICC meeting.

Simon Barnes, in the Times, criticises the ICC for changing the status of the controversial Oval Test in 2006 from that of a forfeited match to a draw.

Certainly, it [the ICC] has decided that history can be undone and put together again in a new form. In a strange, and rather disturbing, precedent, it has said that the match between England and Pakistan at the Brit Oval in 2006 was not, after all, a win for England. It was a draw.

Julius Caesar lives, Pyrrhus survives and the history of the world is thereby changed for ever. It’s a bizarre business, the more so because on one level, the ICC seems to have got it right. That match in question ended when Darrell Hair, acting on a half-baked hunch and an overcooked sense of his own importance, called the match off.

Alec Bedser, who turns 90 today, narrates his recollections about him and his brother Eric's battlefield experiences in World War II to the Telegraph's Simon Hughes.

They were called up in September 1939 to join the Royal Artillery at Didcot. "For some reason, we got a note cancelling it. So we joined the RAF instead. We were pretty lucky. A lot of those Didcot chaps I was at school with were caught at Dunkirk."

The Bedsers were posted to a squadron on the Belgian border. "We were being bombed by the Germans, they were coming through. All we had was a Colt 45 and six rounds of ammunition. There was an air raid and someone said get out, so we ran away - me, Eric and another bloke - in to a field. This German bomber came at 500 feet and strafed us. The bullets went between us, and then we got up and ran off. I never knew what happened to the other bloke. Never saw him again. Then, about seven or eight years, I ago got a letter from him, saying he was the other chap and he was now living in Newcastle. Incredible."

Experiences such as this, and the twins' last-ditch rescue from the side of an occupied French road in a rickety van driven by a Surrey member who recognised them, explain why Alec was so relaxed on his England debut in 1946. "All that - it gives you a different perspective," he says

Harsha Bhogle, in his column in the Indian Express, praises Sanath Jayasuriya for continuing to play the game despite being 39 years old.

It’s funny how your view of the world changes once you stop playing. But Jayasuriya hasn’t stopped playing even though there are some in his country who believe he should. Instead, he is still taking attacks apart and thrilling his legion of admirers. One of them is writing this article.

He must enjoy it. That must seem a strange statement because surely everyone enjoys playing cricket. Not quite true. Often time dulls the instinct, selectors and administrators take the fun away, children tug at the heart, training becomes a chore, injuries seem to hurt a bit more and muscles take longer to recover. It is a battle most people lose by the time they are 39. And while Jayasuriya has had a few arrows aimed at him, he is still up and around, taking on young kids, sometimes closer to half his age. Yes, he must enjoy it.

In the Times, Michael Atherton says that on cricket alone, the situation in Zimbabwe is a complete disgrace. The first-class structure has fallen apart, wicketkeepers don't have enough gloves, there are no lunches or teas provided and there is no diesel to fuel the tractors and mow the outfields.

So what has happened to the millions of dollars given to Zimbabwe Cricket by the ICC? If only we knew. On the ICC's website there is a mission statement of values, one of which, under the heading “Openness, honesty and integrity”, reads: “We work to the highest ethical standards. We do what we say we are going to do, in the way we say we are going to do it.” Presumably, because the ICC is simply an amalgam of its constituent parts, these constituent parts sign up to such mission statements, too. But Zimbabwe Cricket has issued no accounts for public consumption since 2005.

Just how important is education in a sportsman's career? Brian Moore writes in the Telegraph, writes that better educated athletes are easier to coach, understand quicker and have a longer attention span. They make better team players and leaders. He gives the example of the controversial run-out of Grant Elliott at the Oval, when several England players failed to think sensibly and alert Paul Collingwood to reconsider his decision to continue appealing. Education teaches you to think independently, but unfortunately it wasn't evident that day.

One of the reasons why the Australian Institute of Sport has been phenomenally successful is that it insists on its athletes studying properly alongside their training regimes. They have no difficulty ensuring athletes study because it is a captive market; all the athlete wants to do is play sport and they are prepared to do whatever is required of them; including reading books.

In the Times, Stuart Broad says he loves Test cricket, despite his friends telling him all the time that it's boring. He also talks about his formative years and relationship with his parents.

“To be fair, my mum's been the one who watched most of my cricket when I was younger. She is the one who carted me around the country. She'd be sat there in a deckchair all day watching and then drive me home. So she's the one who has always watched my development.”

Andy Burnham, Britain's secretary of state for culture, media and sport, in the Telegraph, explains the government's instruction to ask the England board to sever ties with Zimbabwe Cricket.

This direct intervention in the affairs of a sporting body was not one I took lightly. I firmly believe that sport should operate autonomously from government, and intervention is a last resort. The government had previously called on the International Cricket Council to reconsider their rules to allow teams to forfeit tours to countries, such as Zimbabwe, where serious human rights abuses are occurring. Unfortunately, the ICC have declined to do so

But the serious human rights abuses in the recent election, and the close ties of the Zimbabwe cricket team to the Mugabe regime, presented the kind of exceptional circumstances that justified exceptional measures.

As a result, the ECB announced they were to sever relations with Zimbabwe's cricket authority, and the tour was cancelled.

It is, perhaps, indicative of just how far Zimbabwe has descended into despotism that there has been barely a murmur of disagreement since.

The Guardian brings out the opposing views of former Zimbabwe cricketer John Traicos and Goolam Raja, the South African team's general manager, on whether sports-based sanctions have an influence on politics.

Dale Steyn has had a phenomenal year in Test cricket and is now getting ready for his first tour of England. Bigstarcricket.com caught up with him for a chat.

Everybody can bowl the ball 135kmh and put it in the right areas. You can go and get a school kid nowadays to do that. But if anyone can run in and bowl 145 or 150k’s is something special especially if you can swing the ball at the same time. Pace is definitely my biggest weapon but pace combined with the swing is deadly. And we have a few guys who can do that like Makhaya (Ntini) and Morne Morkel. It’s important to me that I am always outwitting the guy next to me and staying a step above those guys because it raises the bar all the time. It’s healthy competition within the team. The more they are pushing the better I have to become so it doesn’t allow you to relax, it means I am always fighting for a spot. I have always got to be better than the guy next to me.

The ICC is set to meet this week in Dubai to discuss, among other things, whether Zimbabwe should remain a Full Member or not. New Zealand's prime minister, Helen Clark, has said the government would prefer that New Zealand Cricket cancelled its tour of Zimbabwe next year. Paul Holden, the Sideline Slogger, says it's not possible for the team to just no show up for the tour.

If NZC decide to bite the hand that feeds and pull the pin on the tour for an unacceptable reason along the lines of: “Sorry chaps, we find Zimbabwe a morally reprehensible place to play”, they will be staring down the barrel at an initial fine of US$2m from the ICC. Then there will be a killer blow: an obligation to pay Zimbabwe Cricket millions more as reimbursement for any losses incurred as a result of our no-show. If you sucked US$10m out of NZC, that would cripple the organisation and the sport of cricket in New Zealand. Hardly a practical option.

On the other hand, the players are contracted to NZ Cricket and must make themselves available for each and every tour - as much as some of them would like, they cannot pick and choose. Even if there were some allowances made for players who wanted to opt out on moral grounds, a New Zealand team of some description would still be obliged to front up in Harare.

	Shaun Marsh bats with his special gloves © Getty Images

Should Marsh find himself short of inspiration, he need only glance at his batting gloves. There, scrawled in black marker pen, is the word "Chemo" - a reference to the bond he has forged with several young cancer patients in Perth.

For more than a year Marsh has worked with "The Chemo Club", a joint initiative between Aspire Gym and SolarisCare which encourages those undergoing chemotherapy to exercise in a bid to help their recovery. Justin Langer also has close ties to the group.

For Marsh the simple five-letter message on his gloves serves not only as a tribute to the kids with whom he is particularly close, but also as a source of inspiration. "To me it just keeps things in perspective," Marsh said. "No matter how hard I might think I have it, I only have to look at the gloves and that message and think about what they're going through, and know that what I face is really nothing."

	'The man was a champion' © Getty Images

How beautifully Donald bowled that summer. The bare bones reveal that he took 33 wickets at 19. They do not tell you how fast he bowled, for so long, in all conditions. His performance at Old Trafford, where Shaun Pollock was absent, and where injuries robbed him at different times of the support of Lance Klusener and Jacques Kallis, was one of the great feats of fast bowling in the modern age.

However well the South Africans bowl this summer, and Steyn in particular looks primed, they will do well to rival the Donald of '98. He was a magnificent athlete, an admirable competitor and, yes, a great fast bowler. Sometimes, when people reflect on the outstanding fast men of the past three decades, of whom there have been so many, his performance can be overlooked. It shouldn't be. The man was a champion.