Never mind what Lalit Modi’s motives might be in letting out the premises of the Rajasthan Cricket Academy to the Australians for a camp in the run-up to the Test series. India has always been this way for visiting teams whose cricketers are made to feel quite so privileged and special. India also have a right to expect the same in return, writes Sharda Ugra in her blog on India Today.

The RCA’s was merely a yogic extension of Indian cricket’s routine backward bend. True sabotage, on the other hand, is what happened during the 2004 Nagpur Test versus the Aussies, which was where that Final Frontier actually fell.

Nagpur cricket authorities produced a wicket that was described as a “birthday present for Glenn McGrath” by the curator and a “22-yard suicide note” by a visiting English journalist.

	Eddie Gilbert developed a unique style of fast bowling based on a whip-like wrist action © The Cricketer International

Few may have heard of Eddie Gilbert, an Aboriginal cricketer who once knocked the bat out of Don Bradman's hands. Thirty years after his death, Gilbert is finally getting recognition, with a life-size bronze statue at the Queensland Cricket Academy in Brisbane, to be unveiled next month. Kathy Marks writes in the Independent:

Gilbert developed a unique style of fast bowling, based on a whip-like wrist action, and stories about his prowess abounded. His blistering deliveries were said to raise smoke on a concrete pitch; one of his balls reportedly crashed through a picket fence and killed a small dog. Another struck a box of matches in the wicket-keeper's pocket and set them alight.

While such tales are probably apocryphal, Gilbert was a cricketer of remarkable ability - yet he was never selected to represent Australia. Few doubt that racism was to blame. This was an era when the movements of Aboriginal Queenslanders were controlled by white superintendents, whose permission had to be sought to move around, work, or even spend money. Gilbert, a quietly-spoken man, was not permitted to stay in the same hotels as his team-mates.

Ashish Magotra, writing in the Mumbai Mirror, feels the BCCI’s new selectors - the first set to be paid - have done nothing different compared to their predecessors as they head into their first meeting.

For selectors, who are going to get paid 25 lakhs a year, they need to much more than just a ‘basic’ idea of what they are getting into.

In no way does the mode of preparation of these new selectors differ from their predecessors. In fact, if anything, they have watched even lesser cricket, so how do we trust their selectorial instincts?

	Scott Styris and Chris Martin model New Zealand's newest kit © Getty Images

In his blog Sideline Slogger, Paul Holden marvels at the deal between New Zealand Cricket and Dheeraj and East Coast LLC (DEC), the new clothing sponsors of the national team. The company may have had a zero presence in New Zealand, but the new relationship is a sign of the times as Indian eyeballs all around the world are watching the team play and it is that viewership that gives rise to some less than obvious commercial possibilities. Read on in stuff.co.nz

Perhaps the deal was stitched up through the contacts of Brendon McCullum. How? HDIL, another company in the Wadhawan stable, is one of the six headline sponsors of the coolest team in the Indian Premier League, the Kolkata Knight Riders. Baz has put his 10 cents in on the coach so why not throw out some names and cellphone numbers for potential sponsors of the front of the shirt as well?

South Africa A's victory in the Test series against Sri Lanka A followed by a 4-1 defeat in the one-dayers mirrors the problems facing the senior side, writes Rob Houwing on Sport24.

The outcome adds weight to national coach Mickey Arthur’s contention that the A side not only requires more game-time but a full-time coach as well. Batting depth, in particular, appears not to be a problem in a broad national context at present – the young South Africans won the series of four-day matches primarily on the grounds of strong performances in this department ... But the one-dayers against Sri Lanka A also revealed that the country’s all-round bowling depth isn’t what it should be.

	Duncan Fletcher: "It's up to Vaughan how long he decides to rest now. You don't really need more than a month to six weeks' break as long as you're training during that time" © Getty Images

It's a big blow for England that Michael Vaughan doesn't feel in the right frame of mind to tour India. People will wonder what I mean when they look at the difficult season he's had but I believe they will be in for a nasty shock if they really think he'll be easy to replace out there, writes Duncan Fletcher in the Guardian.

Successful batting in India requires skill, character and patience - the three qualities Vaughan demonstrated so superbly when he made a match-saving hundred on a turning pitch against Muttiah Muralitharan at his peak in Kandy a few years ago. Who else of the current side can play an innings like that in the heat and humidity they're likely to encounter in Ahmedabad and Mumbai? It's a bit of a worry.

Reports of Michael Vaughan's cricketing death, however, may be exaggerated. If anybody can return from this humiliation it is Vaughan. He spent 18 months stubbornly overcoming a knee injury which came within the width of a cartilage of terminating his career, writes Stephen Brenkley in the Independent.

I don't have any problems with England's squad, but I do like to see consistency of selection, writes Nasser Hussain in his Sky Sports column.

Peter Moores has known Prior and Ambrose for a long time now since their Sussex days and it's just time to work out which one is the better one - and stick with him. For me I would have gone with Prior and I would have gone with James Foster - if they don't believe Ambrose is the right choice - and I am not one just to stick with Ambrose just because he played this summer. I think Foster and Prior are the best two but the selectors have seen it differently. All I would call for is some consistency.

Dullness and consistency of thought are good attributes for selectors since stability is a key foundation stone of any successful team, writes Michael Atherton in the Times. But with the omission of James Foster comes the troubling feeling that the selectors have failed to recognise performances that, over the past couple of years, have rarely fallen below outstanding.

	Dravid took the battle to himself first, as it were, and then to Delhi in the Irani Trophy © AFP

The most important performance in the Irani Trophy came from Rahul Dravid, feels Ayaz Memon in Daily News & Analysis. His uncompromising approach to spending as much time as possible in the middle would have told the Aussies that he may well be the man to watch out for in the Test series.

The more significant aspect of Dravid’s performance I believe, however, was his splendid catching at slip. The diving effort to get rid off the dangerous Viru Sehwag was breathtaking in its execution, and match-winning in its impact. Quick-silver reflexes, terrific anticipation coupled with great ball sense showed that Dravid’s cricketing instinct was hardly blunted

Many cricketers have protested against their omission from Test sides, but precious few have criticised their own inclusion. Darren Pattinson tells Alex Brown in the Age that he had disagreed with the England selectors' decision to play him in the second Test against South Africa at Headingley.

'If I never played another international, I'd be OK with that. As far as the England players were concerned, they were nice and very welcoming. I guess (Michael) Vaughan was coming to the end of his captaincy at the time, so there might have been a few issues there. I didn't get all the stuff he said, but I take it, it was mostly to do with the selection'

	Justin Langer: "There hasn't been a single game I have been involved in this summer that hasn't felt like a cup final" © Getty Images

Andy Bull, in his blog in the Guardian, laments another loss for Somerset in the County Championship. The anguish is greater this time as the ultimate victory eluded the team despite Justin Langer’s spirited leadership. Somerset have never won the Country Championship in the tournament's long history.

Durham, of course, just won the championship for the first time themselves, but they've only been trying for 16 years. Somerset have been imagining that each new season could be the season for 117.

There isn't another record quite like it in cricket. Northamptonshire are the only other team never to have won the league, but they didn't join until 1905. Gloucestershire have had a miserable time since the championship was founded in 1890, but at least they enjoyed the age of Grace in the 1870s when they won the unofficial version four times. I suppose Bolton Wanderers, who helped found the football league in 1888 but have never won the championship, have a kinship of a kind.

Justin Langer, in his column for the BBC, says "English cricket should be proud of the standards in Division One - and I can see absolutely no need to change anything about it."

There hasn't been a single game I have been involved in this summer that hasn't felt like a cup final and the pressure associated with this is sure to produce better cricket and therefore tougher cricketers.

S.Martin, in Dreamcricket.com, draws some comparisons between the Packer circus and the ICL, and discusses some of the preparations for the league’s upcoming season

Another leaf that Packer's World Series Cricket overturned after its second season was that it bridged the differences between 'banned' players and their boards. Each realized that they were interdependent on one another. Players returned to donning their national colours and ended up retiring as some of the most talented and famous cricketers of their day. They may have played their hearts out at the World Series but at the end of the day, it's their national contributions that make them what they are today.

Ditto with the ICL - Will Sri Lanka's stand set the ball rolling for other boards to follow? What will the talks between Subhash Chandra and David Morgan reveal? Above all, will the players get what they rightfully deserve? A chance to be treated as equals and rightfully vie for a spot in their coveted 'national teams'.

	Is Adil Rashid ready for an England call-up? Or is he too young? © Getty Images

Yorkshire allrounder Adil Rashid's bright future should not be jeopardised in order to give him unnecessary experience in India, writes Mike Selvey in the Guardian.

Any thoughts of including the young Yorkshire allrounder Adil Rashid to give him experience should have been shelved. A single warm-up match in Baroda, in which presumably the projected Test XI will play, is all the cricket outside the Tests in Ahmedabad and Mumbai so there would be scant opportunity aside from assimilating a little dressing-room atmosphere, for which there will be time aplenty in the future. He is barely out of his teens and with astute handling may provide the fulcrum of England's spin attack for a decade in the future. He must not be rushed. For now his progress has flattened off and his development will be served better on the Lions tour.

In the Independent, Angus Fraser, however, is of the opinion that Rashid deserves a place in the squad to India.

Rashid is certain to be named in England's winter performance squad but the selectors could do worse than pick him for the full squad. Sooner or later they need to find out whether or not he is good enough and history suggests that a legspinner is more likely to trouble India's star-studded batting line-up than an offspinner.

The manner of Michael Vaughan's exclusion is strange - after all, cricketers do not often sit down with selectors to discuss the merits or otherwise of their selection as Vaughan appears to have done - but the decision [to leave him out of the squad] is the right one, writes Michael Atherton in the Times.

	Hampshire's Imran Tahir was the best overseas signing of the season, according to Angus Fraser © Getty Images

The Guardian's writers pick their best moments, favourite incidents, and heroes from the English season.

David Hopps' highlight of the season: Sitting on the popular bank at Scarborough at Festival time watching Yorkshire v Kent with, I kid you not, the sun shining from a cloudless sky. And KP's first press conference as captain, which was so full of love it gave me an insight into what the 1960s must have been like.

Paul Weaver's lowlight of the season: The greed with which Twenty20 cricket was pursued could be one of sport's great morality tales. Also, giving Michael Vaughan a new central contact when he's not good enough for Yorkshire.

Angus Fraser has also reviewed the season in the Independent.

Best overseas signing Imran Tahir. Hampshire were looking at Second Division cricket when Tahir joined the county. They have not lost a Championship game since.

Worst overseas signing Shoaib Akhtar. The signing of the controversial and unreliable fast bowler highlighted the depth of Surrey's desperation. In two games he took 1 for 117.

Suresh Menon writes on ESPNStar that appointing a paid selection committee may well be an important step towards 'professionalising' the entire cricket set up in India.

So what's the next step? Paid office-bearers? That seems logical. That is one way of introducing transparency and accountability, two elements foreign to the Board at the moment. If the Board can take away one lesson from the success of its IPL tournament, it is the efficacy of professionalism. Not just among the players, but in the administration too.

Dilip Vengsarkar's two-year tenure as the BCCI's chairman of selectors included a first-round exit in the World Cup, wins in the Twenty20 World Cup, ODI series in Australia and Sri Lanka and more. Mid-Day's Clayton Murzello interviews Vengsarkar on the various decisions taken by his committee.

Rahul, Sourav and Sehwag are top-class players and have served the game splendidly over the years. However, as selectors we have to look at the larger interest of Indian cricket at all times. Besides, with so much international cricket being played these days, as well as injuries to key players, we have to look to the future and to the bench strength to take us ahead. The competition for slots too brings out the best in players. Whenever we picked somebody, we backed him to the hilt. At the same time, if somebody was dropped, we didn't ignore him but made sure that he was monitored; never neglected.

In the Jamaica Gleaner, Tony Becca says he agrees with thoughts expressed by Ian Chappell in a recent column.

As far as the West Indies leaders are concerned, the way to develop young talent, in the territories, is simply to employ someone, any one, to coach the young players whenever he has the time or the inclination to do so. And the way to develop a strong West Indies team is to employ a coach, from anywhere, a coach who works only when the team is preparing for a series.

Development, however, is more than that, much more than that, and until those in charge realise that, until they realise that as important as coaching is - good coaching that is, it is secondary to good facilities, to a good atmosphere, to good discipline, to motivation and inspiration and to good, strong competitions.

Five years after stunning the cricket world by making the cut for the 2003 World Cup semi-finals in South Africa, Kenyan cricket is crying out for help. With the lack of funds, paucity of matches in its international calendar and the insouciant attitude of the government, these are clearly troubled times. Steve Tikolo speaks to IANS about what needs to be done.

Cricket Kenya needs at least $1.2 million to run the sport professionally in the country but there is a shortfall of around $500,000. Kenya gets $450,000 from the ICC, $150,000 from TV rights and $100,000 from a newly-acquired sponsorship from a local company Tusker.

In Sri Lanka's Sunday Times, Ranil Abeynaike looks at the inaugural ICC World Twenty20 and IPL and surmises that both were tournaments for youth. He then compares this to Sri Lanka's latest Twenty20 squad, where four players are under the age of 25 and four are beyond 30. Sri Lanka has always been conservative with their selections, writes Abeynaike, preferring to stick with known and proven players for the longer and shorter versions of the game.

In the same Sunday publication, SR Pathiravithana compares "our lovely little game of cricket" to what happened when king Midas was granted his wish and everything that he touched turned to gold.

A few moons back when Twenty20 cricket hit the billboards many a cricket lover did not take it seriously as it was originally meant as a vehicle to spread the game among the non-cricketing countries. It was an attempt to give the non-cricketers a cricketing version akin to their loveable baseball and Kentucky Fried Chicken.

However down the line there was a bright little guy who felt that this virus also could be spread around the conventional cricketing world. He knew any surface sports lover would love something that could and would end no sooner than it begins and at the same time the business world that is full of TV cameras would grab it with both arms.

	Lou Vincent's experience with depression is now behind him © Getty Images

For me, it was a combination of events both on and off the field. I guess it's hereditary as well. It took time to realise something wasn't right and I finally realised it was time to quit cricket and move on. Every now and then we come across people in our lives who are suffering from some sort of stress. It's a horrible thing for anyone to go through. I'm on top of it at the moment ... It's important to write down some goals. The world we live in has so many things thrown at us and I think, if you've got goals, you can overcome that.

	Shoaib Akhtar swept the "Worst overseas signing" category © Getty Images

After Durham clinched their first county championship, the papers look back at the season’s cricket. The Sunday Telegraph’s Steve James picks his dream-team of the season, gives Mark Ramprakash the nod for “Best Excuse” and “Worst-Directed Tantrum”, and anoints Shoaib Akhtar the “Worst Overseas Player”.

Year's Biggest Illusion
The standard of the county championship. It was not that good … No spinners until Imran Tahir emerged. Great finish, but that's what happens when it rains a lot. And the intermittent presence of quickies like Steve Harmison and Andrew Flintoff altered the landscape too discernibly. Otherwise attacks were rather ordinary.

Durham's success has been based on a business model which the other first-class counties, the Test-playing countries and the International Cricket Council would do well to heed, then follow, says Scyld Berry in the Sunday Telegraph.

And in the Sunday Times Simon Wilde looks at Durham's spectacular rise to become county champions a mere 16 years after they first participated in it.

On the BBC Test Match Special blog, Oliver Brett reveals how England football legend Kevin Keegan helped Durham during it's early years in the top flight.

R Mohan, writing in the website Krishcricket, believes Harbhajan Singh should flight the ball more instead of firing it in quickly.

There are a few better sights for the connoisseur than when Harbhajan is giving the ball that bit more of air and allows his whiplash action to get the ball to spit at the upper portion of the bat and gloves of the bemused batsman.

In the era of eased restrictions on wrist flex, there can be no complaints over Bhajji's bowling action, which in any case he had remodeled pretty soon after suspicions had first been aired. But, as a bowler forced to mix styles because of the three types of cricket he plays, he may have picked up the ugly style in which he tries to bowl 100 kmph yorkers.

	Graeme Swann: In line for a Test debut? © Getty Images

With Michael Vaughan out of the India tour, Vic Marks writes in the Observer that the England selectors' task of picking the fifteen is more straightforward. He thinks Matt Prior will be the first-choice wicketkeeper and Graeme Swann the second spinner.

The trickiest decision will be which of the young(ish) batsmen to take. Owais Shah played his best Test innings in Mumbai three years ago. Ravi Bopara has the class for international cricket and, making a late run, is Samit Patel. Soon we may be able to celebrate five cricketers of Asian origin in the same England team.

And Scyld Berry writing in the Sunday Telegraph says that with only one warm-up match before the Tests, the selection will be weighted towards players who are in India for the one-dayers. He wants James Foster and Matt Prior to be the two wicketkeepers making the trip.

In the Hindustan Times, Pradeep Magazine compares the build-up to Australia's tour - especially the facilities provided to then by the Rajasthan Cricket Academy - to the green top they received in Nagpur in the 2004 series.

The important question that needs to be raised is, did Chappell get wickets prepared at the Academy on specifications from the Australians? As the head (or chief consultant) of the cricket academy in Rajasthan, he had an advantage of being in a position where he could get things done - which were otherwise not possible. Here, he was performing dual roles in conflict with each other. As a consultant of the Australian team, he has to serve their interests but as the RCA academy chief, he, in many ways, is answerable to Indian cricket interests as well. Or am I wrong here?

The MCC has too few female members, despite ending its men-only rule ten years ago, writes Emily Dugan in the Independent on Sunday.

In the past 10 years, Lords has received millions of pounds in funding from private investment, as well as £200,000 in direct Lottery grants.

But over that same decade the number of women allowed to join its 18,000 members has increased to just 62, 0.3 per cent of the club's membership.

As Indian cricket bids adieu to a powerful old panel, it would be interesting to see if the new one steers in a dawn or if it will take us back to days of infighting and power-struggles at every turn, writes Bobilli Vijay in the Times of India.

Will we see more innovations or have we already reached the dead end? Luckily, the first signs have been positive: the transfer of power has been smooth, swift and sweet; the acrimony of the last three years was also swept aside and Sharad Pawar and Jagmohan Dalmiya even smiled at each other, even as older foes cheered on. We, of course, don’t know if it is just the ominous lull before a storm; we can’t even say if Dalmiya will really be forgiven for his trespasses or if the all-out attacks against him will be forgotten quickly enough. Indeed, it is not yet clear if a new power-equation is already emerging... to clip Lalit Modi’s wings.

The last time New Zealand toured Australia was 2004. The build-up to the tour was a two-Test jaunt to Bangladesh where they whipped the home side in two horribly lop-sided tests. New Zealand were then thrashed in Australia," writes in the Herald on Sunday.

Fast forward four years and New Zealand are again preparing to play Tests at the Gabba - the toughest venue in Australia since the WACA lost its sting - and the Adelaide Oval on the back of a two-test series in Bangladesh. Not just any old series but, as a bonus, a watered-down one featuring a Bangladesh team decimated by the recent ICL raid. There's a term for this and it reads something like "being set up for a fall".

Writing in the Jamaica Gleaner, Anthony Foster looks at why Jamaica, even though they have produced more West Indies players than any other country in the region, still can't find a sponsor for its top-flight one-day tournament.

Foster speaks to Jamaica Cricket Association president Jackie Hendriks and profiles a few key players in the squad.

	Peter Roebuck: "Sehwag is a superb batsman. At first sight he brings to mind one of literature’s more jovial characters, Pickwick or Micawber or Falstaff" © AFP

Virender Sehwag and Matthew Hayden will be the most influential batsman in the forthcoming Test series. If one man falters his team will be forced into its shell, and if one dazzles the bowlers may fall back in disarray, writes Peter Roebuck in the Hindu.

No man succeeds by accident. Always it is by design. Until he started belting them around, the Australians criticised his footwork. Indians were more worried about his brain. But Sehwag is neither a fool nor a clown. Rather he is the most fearless of batsmen, a trait that makes him vulnerable but also dangerous. Captains fret about opponents capable of upsetting the best laid plans.

"No team comes to India as well prepared as Australia does; prepared for the conditions, for the opposition and, more than anything else, to embrace the land they are going to," writes Harsha Bhogle on ESPNStar.

Australia will be delighted too at how India are being portrayed in their own media. Open the newspapers or switch to the news on television and you will see obituaries being written for Dravid and Tendulkar and Ganguly and Kumble and even for Laxman who averages 50.94 in the last twelve months with 917 runs in 13 games! It means the pressure will be on India's batsmen, as much to take on the Australian bowling as to prove themselves once again to their own countrymen! It is something that a cricketer has to live with but it is the response of these senior cricketers that will be as interesting.

Greg Growden's Jack Fingleton: The Man Who Stood Up To Bradman is not merely a biography of Fingleton, gutsy Test batsman and peerless cricket writer. It is an inside story of Australian cricket in the 1930s, which draws on new sources to explain how things really were inside the Australian dressing room then and, in particular, why Don Bradman alienated many of his teammates, writes Philip Derriman in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Growden approaches the issue from Fingleton's Catholic perspective, although it is worth noting that Growden himself is not a Catholic. One story he tells shows how rancorous an issue it was. During a match at the SCG, Bradman learned that Fingleton, who opened the batting, had had his bat sprinkled with holy water by a Catholic bishop. Fingleton was soon dismissed. As Bradman, the new batsman, passed Fingleton on his way to the middle, he said to him: "We'll see what a dry bat will do out there." Bradman scored a century.

Ken Borland, in the Mail & Guardian, pins the blame on the BCCI for an unattractive draw for the upcoming South African cricketing summer: a depleted Bangladesh team after 13 of their players signed up for the ICL.

The barefaced truth is that India is, at the moment, blackmailing the rest of the cricketing world to protect its own commercial interests (the IPL) from competition, which is a signature of all democratic countries.

In 2004, the Mumbai-based Mid Day ran a story on the ramshackle offices the BCCI operated out of. The paper's sports editor Clayton Murzello revisits the BCCI's headquarters and finds that India's richest sporting body now has a plush, modern office. He now wants the BCCI to build a state-of-the-art rehabilitation centre to help players recuperate from injuries.

	Allen Stanford: Howard Hughes or colonialist © AFP

In an in-depth profile on Allen Stanford, the business magazine Forbes looks at how he became a billionaire, his attempts to revive cricket in the West Indies and foster its growth in the United States. It also lists the controversies that have inevitably followed his success, and the mixed opinion people have of him. A friend calls him "a modern-day Howard Hughes without the weird stuff" while Antigua's prime minister casts him as a modern-day colonialist.

He wants to introduce a TV-friendly version of cricket (called Stanford 20/20) to the U.S. Stanford loves cricket now, but pleasure is only half of the equation here. He stands to bring in around US$10 million selling the international broadcast rights for this year's game, which could draw a global audience of 700 million viewers. He's also hoping to exploit cricket as an international branding tool for his company, Stanford Financial Group.

	The Don is surely the greatest, four runs or not © Getty Images

Mark Smit, in the Business Day, says the recent quest by a group of statisticians to find four more Test runs for Donald Bradman - in order to push his career average to 100 - would have been ridiculed by the Don himself.

Why did they find four runs and not a different number? Surely, in their rudimentary Australian way, they would have felt that finding more runs would make it all look just a little more kosher.

...

He was unquestionably a believer in the old cricket philosophy of “You win some, you lose some”. He would have understood, and accepted, that some scorecards got it wrong on the minus side and others got it wrong on the plus side.

He was asked a couple of times before his death what he felt about the intrusion of technology into a game that has built years of folklore on its fundamental characteristic — human error.

From the responses he gave, I felt he had profound misgivings about the technological advance, and the clinical, inflexible dimension it adds to cricket.

Shane Warne has just completed his new book in which he ranks the top 100 players of his time. Alyson Rudd of the Times finds that though Warne has retired, he has his hands full: looking after his kids, playing poker, and his commitments with Cricket Australia.

Andrea Nagel in the Times is not too impressed by Hansie, the movie based on the life of former South African captain Cronje.

We never really get an insight into the deep motivations behind Hansie’s behaviour. His fall from grace is treated in a fairly straightforward way. The sporting moments’ slow-motion sentimental scenes are, quite frankly, irritating. The film makers should have known that such obvious emotional ploys would reek of filmic manipulation.

...

Hansie belongs on the Hallmark channel. It’s a made-for-TV movie that is dramatic, sentimental and of limited global interest.

Surrey have been relegated to the County Championship second division after a grim campaign in which they have so far failed to win a single game. A meeting of the Surrey Cricket Management Board on Monday is now expected to confirm the departure of manager Alan Butcher, assistant Nadeem Shahid and bowling coach Geoff Arnold. The Third Umpire blog has a review of Surrey's season, in which it is written:

It is axiomatic that Surrey are a club in need of big changes, with the appointment of Graham Thorpe as batting coach appearing a shrewd start. But years of muddled thinking and short-termism will not be easy to rectify, especially with so many serial under-performers still contracted.

Cricket365's Tim Ellis enlightens us on the meaning of some cricket phrases which have gone out of fashion.If you want to know what a "full moon" or a "lobster" is, head here.

"WATCH OUT"
A truly marvellous old term meaning "to field". What better way to imagine halcyon days of yore on the green fields than revisit this scene from an 18th century letter by one Reverend White:

"Little Tom Clement is visiting at Petersfield, where he plays much at cricket: Tom bats; his grandmother bowls; and his great-grandmother watches out!!"

As the County Championship draws to a nailbiting close, the PCA have named a four-man shortlist for the PCA Player of the Year award, encompassing Marcus Trescothick, Ravi Bopara, Steve Harmison and Martin van Jaarsveld. The panel at The Wisden Cricketer draws up its 'hit' list as well from this season and debates the PCA's picks for Player of the Year.

	Darren Gough had an open mind and a desire to change © PA Photos

With the career of one of cricket's colourful characters, Darren Gough, coming to an end, the tributes continue to pour in. In the Times, Michael Atherton hails him as England's most important and influential fast bowler since Ian Botham.

Gough does not stray too far from the classic caricature, the look-at-me-aren't-I-great school of Yorkshire cricket, but in the most important aspect of his game, his bowling, he soaked up information so that he became, within five years, an unrecognisable performer from the one who embarked on a first-class career just as Australia's 16-year domination of the Ashes began.

In the Guardian, Mike Selvey says: "In his going I can see Turner's wonderfully evocative painting of the Fighting Temeraire, battle deeds done, being towed to the breakers' yard in Rotherhithe."

Ian Chappell, writing in Mid Day, feels the Indian team should not worry too much about their former coach Greg Chappell assisting the Australians in the upcoming Test series.

If the Australian captain doesn't know how he wants his bowlers to attack Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Virender Sehwag and VVS Laxman after playing against them for a decade, then Greg isn't going to be of much help.

...

And despite Ricky Ponting's struggles with the bat in India he's still played eight more Tests in the country than Greg. That's right, Greg didn't play a Test in India and even though he's watched a lot of cricket under those conditions there's nothing like actually having been out in the middle.

An editorial in the Indian Express also banishes fears that India’s secrets are up for revelation to the enemy camp.

With the new panel of Indian selectors to be announced shortly, the Times of India's Vinay Nayudu, looks at some of the big decisions the current set of selectors, headed by Dilip Vengsarkar, have taken.

	India must show their strength in all formats, not just Twenty20 © Getty Images

Amid much celebration in the Indian media on the first anniversary of their team’s World Twenty20 triumph, Daily News and Analysis' Ayaz Memon feels it is time for a reality check, for India’s performances in Test and ODI cricket over the past year have been a mixed bag.

In that context, I find that Indian cricket has not really taken off to the extent the T20 triumph promised. In saying this, I am obviously not referring to the quantum of money made by the BCCI or the phenomenal clout it currently enjoys internationally, but about performance on the field.

Despite scoring loads of runs in the past few seasons, a breakthrough to the national side was not forthcoming for S Badrinath. He feels the IPL has helped shed his image as a one-dimensional player and that interacting with Michael Hussey, another man who made his international debut late, helped a great deal. Read more in G Unnikrishnan's interview in the Deccan Herald

Dhoni's presence at the other end was very helpful for me while I made my debut ... Dhoni is calm and composed underall match situations. His attitude rubs on to you on the field, and puts you at ease. It prompts you to play fearless cricket.

Australia's squad has arrived in India and, as Daniel Brettig from AAP reports, there was not the typical fanfare for a few of Australia's players.

The tourists' arrival at their Jaipur hotel was notable for the number of players able to sneak in past the Indian media pack without raising anything so much as a quizzical ‘who are you?’ glance.

...

All the options have a story to tell. There is Siddle, the fast medium bustler just back from a shoulder injury he carried bravely through the Sheffield Shield final for nine wickets and his spot in the tour party. Krejza is a combative off spinner who last spring was banned from pre-season training with Tasmanian state teammates for drink-driving. Watson, a blonde Adonis of an all-rounder when fit, is out to shake his history of getting injured at the worst possible times.

But best tale of the lot is probably that of McGain, a bespectacled, 36-year-old single father of two who is near certain to become the nation's oldest Test debutant since another ageing wrist spinner, Bob Holland, surprised the dominant West Indians for NSW and Australia in 1984-85.

Aftab Ahmed, Tapash Baisya and Habibul Bashar, members of ICL's newest team, the Dhaka Warriors, were part of Bangladesh's historic win over Australia in Cardiff. In his Guardian blog Dileep Premachandran looks back at that match three years ago and the situation now where the players have been handed a ten-year ban by the Bangladesh board.

If Bangladesh's cricket administrators have their way, these players — Aftab is 23 and Baisya 25 — will disappear into a Bermuda Triangle-like void. The administrators are enthusiastic followers of the Indian board's zero-tolerance policy towards the ICL, and there have been noises from Dhaka in recent days about how the 10-year ban handed down to 13 players is in the "best interests of Bangladeshi cricket"... Little has been heard on the subject since, and it's a matter of shame that the biggest names in the sport haven't moved a muscle to come to the aid of their fellow professionals. Like certain footballers who are "horrified" at being offered contracts worth only $110,000 a week, they appear more than content to don the commercial greasepaint and sit on their millions.

In his column in the Independent, Angus Fraser stresses the significance of the County Championship for the overall development of cricketers.

For all its many faults, with perhaps the biggest two probably being that there are a couple more counties than there ideally should be and that there are too many non-England qualified players, the Championship plays an absolutely crucial role in the development of cricketers. The education system in this country does not make money. It is an investment. And it is on overcast Thursdays in front of meagre crowds at Taunton or Chester-le-Street that the next Pietersen or Andrew Flintoff are to be found learning their trade.

	Mark Ramprakash doing what he does best ... scoring runs © Getty Images

We lost Mark Butcher early on and I was asked to stand in as captain. Right from the very beginning I said I was happy to carry out the orders on the field but I was conscious that I was a stand-in captain and that it was not my show. Policy and selection was still down to the coach and Mark Butcher.

He also touches on rumours that he might be heading to India this winter.

Times have changed and the winter now provides other opportunities in the form of Twenty20 cricket in India. I was contacted by the Indian Cricket League at one point and asked if I would be interested in joining an England team they were thinking of setting up.

I’ve heard nothing since and I have not received any offers from the Indian Premier League. There is a lot of competition for places because every overseas cricketer now wants to play in the IPL and would relish the challenge of being involved. But at the moment a trip to Disneyland is my only overseas posting this winter.

Pakistan cricket which has been going through a crisis requires an able administrator to bring cricket back on track after the resignation of Dr Nasim Ashraf. Shahid Hashmi in his column for Cricketnirvana.com feels appointing a cricket boss in the country will be no easy task as he takes a look at the long list of possible candidates.

Ironically, PCB's post also defies democratic system, just like governments in Pakistan. The country is ruled more by army than by politicians. The same is the case of the appointment of the PCB chairman. Unlike other countries where there is an elected president in the cricket boards, PCB chairman is appointed by President of Pakistan.

	ECB plans to have two Twenty20 tournaments from the 2010 season and onwards © Getty Images

Despite being poised for a thrilling finale, the County Championship is under greater threat than ever. But, Angus Fraser in the Independent believes it remains vital to the game.

The Championship may be enjoying one of its more captivating seasons, but life for domestic cricket's premier competition is not going to get any easier, and the number of people who question the worthiness of playing midweek four-day cricket in front of sparse crowds is only set to increase. The rise, rise and rise of Twenty20 cricket, a frantic, consumer friendly and ever more lucrative form of the game has ensured just that.

Darren Gough was left out of the Yorkshire lineup for the final championship game against Sussex. Oliver Brett in his blog in BBC Sport bids farewell to the model professional.

The subsequent, protracted failure of the team from that point up to the 2007 World Cup tended to prove Gough right. As he said: "You can't buy bowlers like me at a local superstore - it takes years and years."

A year on from India's victory in the final of the inaugural ICC World Twenty20 in Johannesburg, Mahendra Singh Dhoni tells the Times of India that it was the biggest moment of his career.

On the big stage of the World Cup final, the team rose to the occasion. Again it was the biggest India-Pakistan match ever simply because it was the World Cup final and we finished winners. Late in the night, I spoke to my parents and some friends and I was told that, at one of the famous squares in Ranchi, there were over 50,000 people celebrating. So, in a way, I had an idea of what it meant to the entire country.

Meanwhile, Joginder Sharma, one of India’s heroes in the Twenty20 World Cup, who bowled that nerve-wracking last over in the final against Pakistan, has “slid steadily back into the shadows”. His Haryana teammates, however, are confident he’ll make a comeback. Subhash Rajta from the Hindustan Times talks to them.

"He has already achieved what few would have dared to even dream, if put in his place," said Joginder's friend, alluding to Sharma's modest financial background. "To begin with, he didn't even have the support of his parents, leave alone anything else. But he kept going, believing in himself and his abilities," he said. "So someone who has been through a phase where he had little support and facilities to fall back on, being away from the limelight is something that would not bother him," he said.

	In terms of personnel, the board has stepped up © AFP

It appears that the game is better run now than it was when Jagmohan Dalmiya called the shots. There are certainly more people working in the cricket board than in 2004. The executive secretary role has made way for a Chief Administrative Officer. There's a Media Relations Officer, Games Development Officer and a person in charge of logistics at the Wankhede Stadium's Cricket Centre, a heavenly structure as compared to the office at Brabourne Stadium's North Stand. So, in terms of personnel, the Board has stepped it up. There's no Indian on the list of elite umpires and the fact that Australian Simon Taufel just grabbed his fifth Best Umpire award from the ICC in as many years proves that cricket umpiring is in trouble. The BCCI, meanwhile, have tied up with Cricket Australia who send their experts to train Indian umpires...

... The BCCI is blockading the spreading of the game through a medium which is fast increasing making other forms of journalism look redundant. By the way, the BCCI has yet to launch its website unbelievable. Even Bangladesh, the latest entrant to the Test fold has one. A politician in today's world surely understands the value of the internet and not having a website is absurd.

The Guardian's blog says that Harold Pinter's love of the game suggests that the names of his characters are more than mere coincidence.

One day at drama school Pinter skipped classes to go to Lord's, running through the gate at the Nursery End to see Cyril Washbrook late-cutting for four. His abiding memory of that truant day, expressed in six simple words towards the end of that 1969 essay, is of an Eden familiar to all cricket-lovers: "that beautiful evening Compton made 70".

Is there a more evocative sentence in cricket literature? Even those who never saw Compton in his prime may feel, reading those words, that "I have known this before". It is one of those moments frozen in time. So, as the light fails on an autumn afternoon, history is now and England. Here's to a great playwright, to all our summers, and to the players whose deeds coloured them.

In the Australian, Malcolm Conn looks at Shane Warne's legacy - or lack of - among young legspinners.

Impressionable 10-year-olds in 1993 who saw the bleached blond leg-spinner bamboozle and bowl Mike Gatting with his first ball in a Test on English soil would now be 25. But there has been no procession of 25-year-olds charging to fill the breach. The rookie leg-spinner who landed in India today as part of Australia's 15-man touring squad, Bryce McGain, is just three years younger than Warne at 36.

So bare is the cupboard that McGain and the man he is set to replace in the Test side, Stuart MacGill, 37, are the only leggies who claimed more than nine wickets in the Sheffield Shield last season and just five managed to take a wicket at all.

In the Sydney Morning Herald, Alex Brown chats to the retiring Jason Gillespie about likely Australian game-plans for the tour of India.

"I heard Ricky Ponting say that they'll probably use tactics similar to 2004, and I think that's the right way to go," Gillespie said. "I remember one of the big things we did was working on the fitness of the Indian batsmen. They're not regarded as the fittest blokes in the world, and generally score their runs either walking singles or hitting fours. So we would have three or four sweepers out at different times, and the tactic worked really well. To VVS Laxman and Virender Sehwag it was particularly effective.

The 13-month long presidential tenure of Norman Arendse that ended on Wednesday was perhaps the most acrimonious period endured by South African cricket since unity, writes Stuart Hess in iol.co.za.

Arendse was, and will probably remain, an abrasive character, one whose heart was in the right place, but someone not shy of using people and manipulating situations. That left many people - even those who supported him as he ascended to the presidency of Cricket South Africa (CSA) - angry ... Besides his calling into question the integrity of Majola, what really galled many administrative officials was Arendse's proclamation that those who were opposing him did so because they were against trans-formation.

Neither logic nor common sense have anything to do with BCCI’s campaign against ICL, writes Suveen K Sinha in the Business Standard. He says Sri Lanka Cricket's recent step to lift the bans on ICL players would have come as a jolt to the Indian board.

In the process, they [Sri Lanka Cricket] have also stood up for logic and common sense, neither of which has anything to do with BCCI’s campaign against ICL. The Indian board’s Indian Premier League and ICL are played on exactly the same format. ICL was the first to offer dozens of cricketers, who had reconciled to the humdrum and wilderness of domestic cricket, the opportunity to earn a decent livelihood and be part of a properly televised event. The fact that many of them took the opportunity is no reason to ban them. After all, BCCI had not offered them any better alternative.

BCCI’s lack of opposition to the Stanford 20/20 jamboree, which promises to make individual players richer by up to a million dollars, betrays the deep-seated lack of clarity in the Indian board. Stanford is an oil billionaire who has spotted opportunity in 20/20 cricket; Subhash Chandra, who is behind ICL, made his money in media and packaging. What are the criteria on the basis of which ICL is anathema and Stanford is not? Both ICL and Stanford’s tournament, just as BCCI’s own IPL, are about the game of cricket.

In the DNA, Ayaz Memon says Arjuna Ranatunga has fired a salvo that could gather momentum in the days to come, and more national boards could reconsider their stance on ICL players.

Luke Alfred of the Times catches up with Dave Nosworthy, the new coach of the Lions franchise in South Africa. Nosworthy talks about his experience in New Zealand, where he coached Canterbury for three seasons.

The cultural diversity — the Chinese, Japanese, Polynesians and Maoris — and the ease of doing business in a First World country. There’s no red tape there — things happen. That stood out. And then there’s the natural beauty of the country — it’s magnificent. But the African blood remains. I really wanted to come back. With all these people emigrating to New Zealand it amazes me how they become All Black supporters overnight — I got into a couple of animated conversations over that topic!

Anil Kumble’s love for photography is not too well documented. Starting with a Hot Shot and now with a digital SLR, he is enjoying his stint as an “amateur” cameraman even as his professional deeds are shot for posterity by an army of lensmen, says Vijay Lokapally in the Hindu.

	Fans gather in front of the big screen © AFP

Cricket’s sheer length and complexity makes it one of the most tele-friendly games on the planet, writes Boria Majumdar in the Financial Express. He says that cricket's rise in India is connected with the television boom in the country.

Television created conditions for cricket to become a central component of new notions of national identity and consumer spectacle. The advent of satellite television pushed this linkage further and the advent of ESPN in 1993 contributed much to making cricket into India’s secular national pastime. When television capitalists searched for ‘national’ public in their quest to create a ‘national’ market, they ended up with cricket as the lowest denominator of Indian-ness. Satellite television is a cultural arena where the idea of India is debated and fought for every day and its focus on cricket since the 1990s has reinforced the centrality of cricket as a pan-Indian marker of ‘Indian-ness’. This is a two-way process and world cricket itself has been transformed by the massive infusion of capital from Indian television. The enormous money that television has generated for cricket has also transformed India into the spiritual and financial heart of the global cricket industry a process that needs to be applauded by every Indian sports fan.

	The last year has seen Gautam Gambhir firm his place in the Indian team © AFP

In an interview to the Times of India, Gautam Gambhir says being left out of the India's squad for the 2007 World Cup in West Indies was the lowest point of his career. He tells Indranil Basu that he doesn't alter his approach too much while opening the batting batting in the different forms of the game.

My basic game is to attack than play for survival. I play according to the situation and the merit of the ball. I go with the same frame of mind - to give a good start to my team.

Pakistan’s status in the cricketing world has declined precipitously. The reasons for this, according to some of the leading figures of Pakistan cricket, range from security issues to the Pakistan Cricket Board’s internal problems, a change in players’ attitudes and the ICC’s “shoddy handling of various issues”. Daily News and Analysis’ Ankita Pandey talks to Asif Iqbal and Javed Miandad about the sorry state of the game in their country.

Asif Iqbal, former captain and now an ICC match referee, agrees that change in Pakistan cricketers’ attitude has affected the game.

“The 80s and the 90s were certainly the best years of Pakistan cricket… Even early 2000. Somewhere between early 2002 and 2003 we saw a tremendous change in the players’ attitude towards the game,” he says.

“By this I mean that cricket took backstage and senior players in particular led the decline in team ethics and discipline. The juniors lacked proper encouragement and opportunities as the old brigade clung to each other and kept a tight hold on the reigns.
Not necessarily for cricketing reasons. Sporting culture was no longer a part of the dressing room.”

Meanwhile, Pradeep Magazine, in his article in the Hindustan Times, attributes Pakistan’s lack of money-power as the main reason for cricket’s regression in the country.

Poor Pakistan! What does it have to offer to the cricketing world? Neither sponsors flush with money, or mouthwatering prospects to play in a league like IPL and no social life which can tempt the young, fit hulks.

The loss of 13 Bangladesh players to the ICL might seem a small crack in the cricket world given the country's struggles to field a competitive side, but Dylan Cleaver in New Zealand's Herald on Sunday feels its impact is closer to that of a fault-line suddenly opening up in the middle of Lord's.

The IPL, concocted by the BCCI to eliminate the ICL, has done a magnificent job of lining the pockets of the privileged few but has done even more to deepen the division between the contracted haves and the have nots.

In Sri Lanka's Sunday Times, S R Pathiravithana looks at Sri Lanka's build-up to the 2011 World Cup and, speaking to an unnamed former player, wonders if the sport in the country will suffer as a result of the latest developments home and away.

In the same newspaper, Ranil Abeynaike looks at the changing phases of cricket. The 1975 World Cup, he feels, changed the face of cricket and addressing a few other significant moments, he is amazed how matters have changed since 1828, when round-arm bowling was permitted.

In 1988, Vic Marks was part of a Somerset attack that Graeme Hick hammered around Taunton. With the help of team-mates and opponents Marks, now cricket correspondent for the Guardian, recalls that famous innings and examines why Hick, who retires this week, never achieved his expected dominance of the international game.

I was there. Twenty years on after a momentous sporting event there are usually enough first-hand witnesses around to fill the relevant stadium five times over. But I was bloody there all right - along with about 1500 others - when Graeme Hick scored 405 not out. I have the bowling figures to prove it (50-6-141-1, since you ask).

And I was grumpy. All that guff about being involved, however peripherally, in a little bit of history, was no consolation for another thrashing around Taunton. No one had scored 400 in the County Championship since 1895, when Archie MacLaren had hit 424 not out for Lancashire, also against Somerset at Taunton. All the other quadruple centurions had scored their runs on distant fields: Karachi, Sydney, Poona and Melbourne. Hick was sparking a new era of mammoth scores.

In the Sunday Times, David Gower pays tribute and offers a little sympathy.

It was not easy for Hick that the qualification period he had to serve to “become English” dealt him a tough hand in that his debut had to be against a rampant West Indies in 1991. Again a sympathetic comparison: I walked out for my first Test at Edgbaston against Pakistan in 1978 to face Sarfraz, Liaqat Ali, Mudassar, Iqbal Qasim, Sikander Bakht and Wasim Raja; Hick had Ambrose, Patterson, Walsh and Marshall. Maybe if Hick had been lucky enough to ease himself into Test cricket it would have given him a better chance of fulfilling all those expectations that the world had of him at the time.

	Gary Kirsten is one of the few coaches to have landed a two-year contract from the word go © Getty Images

These are the best of times for the coach of the India cricket team. Anand Vasu in this article in the Hindustan Times does a check on the salaries of Kirsten and other people in the comfort zone.

Kirsten is also the highest paid member of the coaching establishment, at $30,000 per month (net of taxes) and with medical insurance, accommodation and local transport in Bangalore thrown in.

When he's not with the Indian team the coach gets an allowance of Rs 1050 a day.

In his column in the Times of India, Bobili Vijay Kumar believes the seniors in the team should go out on a high, rather than as the ill-tempered old man in the neighbourhood.

The answers are not easy: nobody wants a good movie to end; everybody wants to enjoy the ride for as long as possible. Maybe, the thrill of stepping out on to the field and competing with the best, even as the mass of television viewers are glued in, is unmatchable.

The screening of Hansie: The Movie, a film made by Cronje's brother's Frans, has evoked reactions in South Africa. Janet Smith writes in the Independent:

Hansie was a liar, a greedy liar, and a damned cheat, and that is why he was banned from cricket and abandoned.

Unlike British Conservative Party politician John Profumo, who resigned and repented by working as a volunteer cleaning toilets at a charity after he was involved in a sex scandal, Hansie banished himself to a sweet life of continued privilege at Fancourt in George with a wife whose devotion beatified him.

Of course, the film shows - as he tosses and turns, sweats and cries - that Cronje went through serious emotional pain. Of course, it was tough to accept isolation.

But the simple question which those who are now being labelled detractors have asked is: Should we have felt sorry for him? What exactly did he do to deserve our forgiveness except make his way through the passage of time?

And that is the critical issue around the movie, which has all but bankrupted Frans. Are you an enemy if you cannot forgive?

Writing in the Hindu, Peter Roebuck compares 130-Test veteran Anil Kumble with 36-year-old Test hopeful Bryce McGain and surmises that the two legspinners belong to a small group of survivors.

Both took up an absurdly difficult style of bowling, a style demanding a contortion of body and wrist so tricky that hardly anyone survives exposure to it.

The game is strewn with the hopes of wrist-spinners forced into submission by their calling. They live for the beauty of the perfect leg break and are sustained by occasional instances only to be driven back towards dementia when the next ball lands yards from its intended destination.

British comedian and cricket fan, Miles Jupp, reflects on some of the radical changes the England team underwent this summer. Ranging from Michael Vaughan’s resignation to his beloved Matthew Hoggard’s exclusion from the Test series against South Africa, Flintoff’s return to form and Harmison’s comeback, Jupp regrets his absence from an eventful cricketing season in England as he was occupied with other commitments. Click here to read his blog in the Wisden Cricketer.

Some people compare English cricket to a soap opera. Wrong. If you miss a soap for a few weeks you can turn it on again and within minutes you’re up to speed. I have turned my back for the briefest of whiles and I’ve missed Armageddon. No soap scriptwriter would dare to make all these changes at once.

The unflappable Michael Vaughan suddenly flapping. Harmison returning before Hoggard after their Hamilton hiatus - now Hoggard may never return. KP being captain in both forms of the game - I wouldn’t have bet a penny. How could a man who for the last three years has looked as if he is acting in another movie be so capable of bringing people together? He has England playing at a totally different heart-rate.

In his first interview since he was ignored for the Irani Trophy, Sourav Ganguly tells the Indian Express that he's not even thinking about quitting.

“I know I’m not going to get picked or dropped because of how many runs I score or don’t score in this tournament. I’m not trying to make any statements, I just want to play. I tried to get into Buchi Babu and the Tamil Nadu league but there were no invitational teams allowed for those tournaments. You had to be a registered player with the state. So, I called Mr IS Bindra and asked about this tournament, and he arranged places for me and Ranadeb Bose in a team."

Ganguly doesn’t even remember the full-form of the LIC (Leaders in Cricket) Club he’ll be representing. But that’s not important.

In the Times of India, Vinay Nayudu finds out what members of the Indian team have been doing in a rare enforced break from international cricket.

	Figures alone do not convey an adequate picture of the capabilities of this well-built, good-looking, golden-haired batsman © Photosport

Brent Edwards, the former sports editor of the Otago Daily Times, is a little miffed that Wellington-based author Joseph Romanos has omitted Bert Sutcliffe from his top test team in his just-released book, Cricket Portraits, A Century of New Zealand's Best. In fact, he thinks it counts as heresy.

Romanos profiles 100 of New Zealand's best cricketers and, while he is effusive in his praise of Sutcliffe, he does not select him in his top test side. He chooses Glenn Turner and Stewie Dempster as his opening batsmen and Andrew Jones as his No 3. The other specialist batsmen are Martin Crowe, Martin Donnelly and John Reid.

The averages of Dempster, Turner and Jones are better than Sutcliffe's, marginally in the case of Turner and Jones, but it should be remembered Sutcliffe propped up a weak New Zealand batting order for much of his career. And what can't be measured in statistics is the charm and grace with which Sutcliffe thrilled crowds throughout the cricket world.

I would have opened with Turner and Dempster, batted Crowe at No 3 and Sutcliffe at No 4.

Looking back at the sudden and controversial resignation of CSA president Norman Arendse, on Wednesday, Ken Borland wonders just what the controversial Cape Town advocate achieved during his term.

Like a malicious seer in some fantasy movie, Arendse was gathering his forces for a climactic battle in Johannesburg on September 26 when Cricket South Africa was due to hold fresh elections after combining their professional and amateur arms to form a new body. If Arendse hoped to cast aspersions on Nyoka's transformation credentials by roping in his buddy, Butana Komphela, the chair of Parliament's sports portfolio committee but with little understanding of what is happening in sport at grassroots level in this country, then he failed dismally.

Read on in the Mail & Guardian.

In his column for the Indian Express, Harsha Bhogle writes that a very substantial part of the future of the game lies in franchise-driven cricket. Down to its bare essentials, he feels, the driving force of world markets is supply and demand.

Many fear that embracing change will cripple Cricket as we now know it. I fear not embracing change will take all options away from us. By changing today we can control the flow of the game, by letting it gush around, we will invite change upon us. Indeed, we are seeing change everywhere. Climate is getting out of control (last winter, Mumbai was cold and we didn’t even know what that meant!) and as the crash in the financial markets tells us, even pillars can crumble, history is forced to bow to the present if we are not careful. Why, people are getting obsolete along with technology and those hugely gifted with traditional skills are finding life difficult in the commercial world. There is a lesson there.

It's sometimes easy to forget that Marcus Trescothick is one of the leading run-scorers in the County Championship, despite him being in the news for his off-field troubles. He's enjoying his cricket, no doubt, but nothing can convince him to return to the England fold, not even friendly nudges from Kevin Pietersen to reconsider. Paul Newman of the Daily Mail caught up with him.

'I went to watch the one-dayer at Lord’s a few weeks ago. It was the first game of international cricket I’d ever watched and although it felt a bit strange, I didn’t say to myself “I’ve got to be back doing this”. I enjoyed England while it lasted but I’ve moved on now.’

"I'm sick of all the bad boy crap. I have no interest in hearing about how controversies follow me wherever I go. I'm going to concentrate on not getting involved in any kind of crap."

That is Harbhajan Singh's take on his career ahead of the series against Australia, which starts on October 9 in Bangalore. Speaking to the Hindustan Times' Kadambari Murali, Harbhajan opens up on a dramatic last 12 months, Anil Kumble, Ricky Ponting, criticism of his bowling, and how the past never plays a role for him.

Graeme Hick has played his last county match and views and comments on the Worcestershire legend will undoubtedly spill over for some time. In the Guardian Mike Selvey ponders whether there was something just a little too mechanical or formulaic in Hick's approach to an innings, one blurring into another. Selvey recalls a couple contrasting Hick innings, and believes that he was a giant cricketer who needed more ruthlessness.

Hick says he was not ruthless enough, which those many bowlers who have been on the receiving end may find an odd thing, but I think he means that the fire did not rage as it might. He is just too nice a fellow. Maybe there was something just a little too mechanical or formulaic in his approach to an innings, one blurring into another. Few hundreds were memorable in the sense that the mind can distinguish between them. I didn't see his 178 in India — his maiden Test hundred and one of his favourites — but another, 141 at Centurion, I did. Yet apart from a vague recollection of a thunderous pull shot, I can't recall a further thing about it.

	Chanderpaul has an iron will to succeed © Getty Images

In keeping with the changing face of cricket, a few exponents of the modern-day game have defied all the rules on their path to glory. A.K.S Satish waxes eloquent on ICC Cricketer of the Year, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, in this piece in Gulf News.

It is common knowledge that a batsman should stick to the basic principles of cricket coaching of a side-on stance, head still and straight back-lift to be most effective.

However, the West Indian has not adhered to any of this - he has an open stance, shuffles from leg to middle as the bowler runs in, and his back-lift emerges somewhere from thirdman.

Yet, he is a success. A huge success.

Irfan Pathan reflects upon his match-winning performances in the World Twenty20 final and the third Test against Australia at Perth. Despite being excluded from the Irani Trophy squad, he is happy about still being in the “scheme of things” representing India A, and feels he has some way to go before developing into a good all-rounder. Chandresh Narayanan from Cricketnirvana.com interviews him.

At the end of the day, here is a guy called Irfan Pathan who has taken nearly 250 international wickets at the age of 23. Once I finish my career I won't be answerable. Initially some said that I will go on to take 300 wickets but after few failures they said I will never make it to the big league. Slowly, I am reaching 150 wickets in ODIs and I have already 100 Test scalps in my kitty. I have scored over 1000 runs in both forms of the game. I have achieved pretty much

With Andrew Symonds stuck at home and a generation of world-beaters now retired, India can regain the ascendancy over their rivals, writes Dileep Premachandran in his Guardian blog.

The common factor in Australia's solo wins in the 1998 and 2001 tours was Adam Gilchrist's attacking methods, feels the writer, and that is where Symonds' role would have been crucial in India.

With Gilchrist now part of Australian cricket folklore, it was Symonds who inherited the mantle of middle-order enforcer. It is a task he has warmed to, averaging a stunning 72.07 from 12 Tests since coming back into the side during the last Ashes. India have been his favourite opponents. In the hullabaloo over what was said or not said at the SCG last season, it was forgotten that Symonds' 162, with a little help from snoozing umpires, changed the game and series. It was also forgotten that his 410 runs and nine wickets (at 27.44, far better than the mouthy Harbhajan) made him the standout performer over the four Tests. Only once did he fail to cross 30.

Meanwhile the Times of India looks at what lies in store at the four venues which will be hosting the Tests.

Comparing the English football scene with its cricket counterparts, Michael Atherton writes in the Times that the most wealthy clubs in the LV County Championship have failed to prosper.

Atherton looks at Leicestershire chairman Neil Davidson's paper of last year which suggested that county cricket was heading down the football route, where the only determining factor to success would be the health of a club's balance sheet, and picks out a glitch in the argument.

Look at the shambolic state of Lancashire, Yorkshire, Surrey and Warwickshire, all of whom are failing to exploit their power and the weakness of others. These are the counties with the most financial muscle, the greatest traditions and the biggest pools of talent to draw from, yet they are failing to deliver silverware and locally produced players in sufficient numbers, surely the twin aims of any self-respecting county.

In the Times, Patrick Kidd continues his year-long exploration of the men who made the Ashes what they are. The eighth installment features Andrew Flintoff, the only member from the Ashes-winning side of 2005 to make the cut in Kidd's list of 50 players.

Without the runs of Strauss and Trescothick or the bowling of Jones, Hoggard and Harmison, without key performances at crucial moments from various members of the squad (and not to mention without a healthy dose of luck), England would not have won, but the person they could have least afforded to lose was Flintoff.

	Darren Gough was always determined to enjoy his game © Getty Images

As Darren Gough calls time on a nearly two-decade career, Rob Bagchi pays tribute in the Guardian.

It is difficult to overstate how bad Yorkshire cricket was until Gough came along. In the 1970s and 80s, the club was mired in the Boycott wars and an obsession with past glories. Nostalgics talked about charismatic characters like Fred Trueman and Brian Close and pointed to the obvious shortcomings of the brittle and diffident Chris Old and the enigmatic Jim Love. Every few years there would be a promising discovery, such as Paul Jarvis, whose youthful vigour and talent would be crushed by the weight of expectation.

	Andrew Symonds wants to be a better team-mate © Getty Images

Andrew Symonds has apologised for his behaviour, which led to him being sent home from Darwin last month, and Alex Brown, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, says the early signs are promising, but the true challenge lies ahead.

The allrounder spoke of his love for the game, desire to again reach its pinnacle and need to become a better team-mate. All positive signs. All that cricket fans wanted to hear.

But his team-mates will need more. For those who have contended with the mood shifts, brooding and occasional flash of temper since the Harbhajan Singh affair in January, nothing short of an attitude overhaul and a penitent heart will suffice. Symonds yesterday gave every indication his time in exile had impressed upon him the need to improve as a team-mate, as much as a player.

In the Australian Malcolm Conn is concerned it took two weeks for Symonds to reappear.

It's a welcome step that Symonds has decided to say sorry but just how much he means it will become obvious in the weeks and months ahead.

To see Symonds’ apology head to Fox Sports.

An average of 12.28 in India doesn't do justice to Ricky Ponting's ability as a batsman. With the four-Test series coming up, Ian Chappell analyses the flaws in Ponting's technique and approach to facing quality spin bowling in India. Clayton Murzello of the Mid-Day spoke to Chappell and here's what he had to say:

Adjusting to playing good spin bowling in India is the toughest challenge facing an Australian batsman. The important things in this regard are finding a survival method watching the ball off the pitch really closely, working out what shots you can and can't play and learning that you have a fraction of a second longer to play the ball off the pitch when compared to Australia.

Former South Africa and Pakistan coach, late Bob Woolmer’s soon-to-be-released book Art and Science of Cricket, lives up to its name as it primarily serves as a “cricket manual for coaches and serious students of the game”, and does not touch upon controversial issues such as betting and match-fixing that involved members of the South African team while he was their coach. The Times of India’s Santosh Suri reviews Woolmer’s elaborate work.

The book is an out-and-out cricket manual for coaches and serious students of the game. It deals with the techniques of batting, bowling and fielding. It also has sub-sections on personalities like Don Bradman, Shane Warne and Gary Kirsten, the new India coach. It throws light on issues like ball-tampering, sledging, reverse swing, racial tensions, cricket relations between hostile India and Pakistan; almost every conceivable issue barring the ones in question.

Andrew Symonds and Shaun Tait may have different reasons to quit the game at the international level temporarily, but the one thing in common is that they have been unable to manage the pressure, writes Makarand Waingankar in the Hindu. While the Australian system is good at solving the problem by getting the player back, the mentoring is missing, the Indian system lacks solution to the mind problem and the mentoring.

In a system that churns out a huge number of participants, teenagers suffer from an expectation syndrome. The pressure of expectations pushes a player into a discomfort zone as the competition grows. Obviously performance tends to get affected. Now with IPL, huge sums have added to pressure, and players not used to such sums have lost focus. And when a player loses the focus, things go awry. This is where mentoring is very essential to guide the behaviour of a player.

	"I wouldn't change anything because I've always tried to stay true to myself" © Getty Images

Recalling his first season, when he alternated between playing for Worcestershire Seconds and for Kidderminster in the Birmingham League, Hick says that as a wide-eyed 17-year-old he didn't know a soul in England.

"I remember how daunted I was getting from Heathrow to Worcester on my own. I got the train and I was met at the railway station by the club secretary. He dropped me off at the hotel near the cathedral and I spent the whole weekend on my own. It was early April and bitterly cold and all I did that weekend was walk into town, get a burger, walk back to my room, watch TV, and then walk down into town to get another burger in the evening."

Hick cites missing out on a Test century against West Indies in 1994 by four runs, but being reassured by England coach Keith Fletcher that if he could score runs against that attack he could score runs anywhere. He credits that as one of the times he was managed well by England, but also acknowledges his own failings.

I was gutted because those four runs would have meant a lot. It's all speculation but maybe completing those two centuries might have taken away some pressure. I came from a country [Zimbabwe] where we had no professional sport and so I had a naive philosophy. I saw it as a game that should be enjoyed. I never had that cut-throat edge. Maybe that's why I sometimes fell short.

With most players on seven-month contracts, Steve James in the Telegraph believes the counties must ditch their efforts to control players all year round. He believes the introduction of year-long contracts might not be enough to hold back cricketers from the lure of tournaments like the unofficial ICL.

The simple reason the counties want their players on twelve-month contracts is control. They do not want them signing up for so-called 'rebel' tournaments like the Indian Cricket League. They're not really sure what they're going to do with them all winter, but they want them only doing things of which they approve. They want them on extended contracts, but they do not want to pay them much more.

	Will Yuvraj Singh win accolades for his Test performances in the future? © Getty Images

In a couple of months, Yuvraj Singh will be 27 years old. For a cricketer, that is a good age to be, writes Suresh Menon in his column on dreamcricket.com.

But at an age when Yuvraj should have been pushing for the India captaincy, it is all beginning to unravel for him. After five years and 23 Tests, he does not find a place in the Rest of India team for the Irani Trophy. With both the veterans and youngsters fighting for the middle order slots in the Indian team, Yuvraj seems to have been squeezed out. Neither senior enough to be protected, nor young enough to be given another chance.

Sadly, in our country, once a player makes it to the highest level going back to school is seen as demeaning, Menon says.

Like the girl in the nursery rhyme, when he is good, Yuvraj is very good, but when he is bad he is horrid. That he is talented, there is no doubt. But sometimes talent can be a curse. Talent alone cannot see a player through. Perhaps this is where the cricket board comes in. Player rehabilitation is not about looking after players following retirement. Those playing and struggling need guidance too. The Board has not known how to handle those who do not fall into a pattern. The Vinod Kamblis, for example, were lost to the game for being different.

Do read the Cricinfo piece on What's the matter with Yuvi?

Six cricketers from Bangladesh have joined the Indian Cricket League (ICL) and I think there is a message in it for the cricketing world, says Sandeep Patil in his column on cricketnext.com.

At the ICL we have always maintained that the intention has been to help needy cricketers, those cricketers who have not been given a proper stage for them to showcase their talent. We have never tried to prove any point to the International Cricket Council or the Board of Control for Cricket in India but have only extended a helping hand to cricketers in need.

Patil, who coaches the Mumbai Champs in the ICL, said it's high time the ICC and the BCCI took notice of it.

We lauded the Indian Premier League when it did well in its inaugural edition. After all, the IPL was also cricket but we have never sought any reactions from the IPL or the BCCI or the ICC. History, however, will document the fact that the IPL was born out of the immensely successful ICL. The initiative of launching this form of entertainment in cricket will always be credited to the ICL.

Also, do read our new ICL blog: Alternate Reality - Hemang Badani's diary.

	Since he made his debut as a 22-year-old against Bangladesh in November 2000, India have played 88 Tests. Zaheer has missed 32 of them, mostly due to injuries © AFP

When he leaps high in the air and lands on his left foot, Zaheer uncorks a potentially rebellious storm in his body. His left foot experiences pressure equalling six times his body weight; a force ten times his weight rages through his pelvic joints when he flings his shoulders to release the ball from his left hand. He's painfully aware of, and resigned to, the affinity between fast bowling and injuries. "When you bowl fast, you know you are going to get injured at some point of time," Zaheer told Outlook. "You know that you have to sometimes play through pain, sometimes stay away from the game and work hard to get back."

Zaheer has had to do that quite a bit, right from his early days in top-flight cricket. Since he made his debut as a 22-year-old against Bangladesh in November 2000, India have played 88 Tests. Zaheer has missed 32 of them, mostly due to injuries. Heartbreakingly, he's broken down at the edge of historic opportunities. On the 2003 tour of Australia, after taking five wickets in the first innings of the first Test, he pulled a hamstring while bowling in the second and had negligible influence in the only other Test he played, losing the chance to bowl on pitches deemed a fast bowler's paradise. A year later, on the Pakistan tour, he was out again after the first Test—this time with a pulled hamstring muscle.

Australia's decision to drop Andrew Symonds, something they did just before the defeat in the 2005 Ashes, is one of the coincidences ahead of next year's greatly-anticipated series between England and Australia, writes Derek Pringle in the Daily Telegraph. Australia's dominance in cricket has come at a price, their win-at-all-price ambition making them unpopular champions and Symonds is the common denominator behind their recent bad press.

An improving England will be the crucial factor when it comes to contesting next summer's Ashes, but the censure of Symonds should not be underestimated, and not just because he has averaged 77 in Test cricket over the last year. It suggests a return to the prissy correctness the Aussies tried before in 2005 but jettisoned once the opprobrium hit home.

Dinesh Karthik, the Indian wicketkeeper, who is part of the India A squad for the A Team Triangular series, is trying to make his way back in to the national side after a disappointing tour of Sri Lanka. He talks to Indian Express' Devendra Pandey on what went wrong and what he plans for the future.

Is it because of lack of runs that you can't concentrate on your keeping or is it the other way round?

I don’t think there is any relation between wicketkeeping and batting. When I keep wickets I only concentrate on my collection and when I bat, the focus is entirely on playing a long innings and scoring runs.

Your keeping came under the scanner in the Sri Lanka Test series.

I agree and I also know that people might have different opinions over that but you can’t stop them. I realise that I failed to keep well against Kumble on a couple of occasions but such things happen.

Steve James is appalled about the future of the game as the Stanford 20/20 for 20 draws closer. In the Sunday Telegraph he outlines his fears for the future.

Indeed to call it cricket at all will be difficult. For November 1 will be the night cricket is turned into reality TV, where some grisly voyeuristic fare is served up for those of a short attention span. Big Brother has finished: roll up instead to watch the nervous antics of the England cricket team … this match has immeasurable potential for division and discord. Win bonuses in cricket always do. Always pity the poor county cricketer in charge of the players' kitty. It is an impossible task, forever leaping into a viper's nest of egos and irrational claims.

Already the Stanford selection has raised hackles. Why on earth are 15 players required for a week's work, even if the same squad only touch down for 24 hours afterwards en route to India? How is Alastair Cook included? The omission of so-called domestic Twenty20 experts is correct – where is Chris Schofield now? But why no Dimitri Mascarenhas? He played in England's last Twenty20 match, a win over New Zealand at Old Trafford. "It's a kick in the teeth," he has said publicly. Privately his ire is much stronger.

It's a predicament for Sri Lanka with the team not playing Test cricket until May 2009 in England. Ranil Abeynaike in Sri Lanka's Sunday Times believes, while some other countries have their platters full all the time, the meagre Test match calendar is hindering Sri Lanka's climb up the ladder.

England and Australia have the best arrangements. They have over the years built summer and winter major sporting calendar that is there to stay. England play all their home test games and ODI’s during the period May to early September. They do not tour during this period. The Australians conduct their cricket between November and early March.

Former Australia coach John Buchanan, who oversaw his team’s historic Test series win in India in 2004, believes the current Australian squad picked for the tour of India, despite its inexperience, has the wherewithal to repeat the feat. Daily News & Analysis’s Vijay Tagore interviews him.

On Australia's bowling
None of the pacers has played Test cricket in India but Lee, Mitchell Johnson and Stuart Clark should be able to play to the expectations. I understand the series will be played in the days of a new season just as we had played India in 2004. The October-November weather in India should assist the Australians. As a consequence, I expect the pitches to be lively and outfield grassy. So Lee & Co. should have no worries. Spin department, as I’ve said, is a bit inexperienced.

Peter Fulton and James Marshall may feel a little hard done by with the announcement of the New Zealand squad for the tour of Bangladesh. Dylan Cleaver in New Zealand's Herald on Sunday believes Daniel Flynn and Jesse Ryder may get the chance to cement their positions in the middle order.

A middle order containing Fulton and Marshall is not going to frighten anybody, whereas one that contains Ryder, Ross Taylor, Flynn, Brendon McCullum and Jacob Oram might ... one day ... maybe?

Stephen Brenkley, in the Independent on Sunday, reveals how county cricket has offered solace to Marcus Trecothick and Steve Harmison after both endured tough times after the highs of the 2005 Ashes triumph.

It might have been that only playing for Somerset, and knowing that was all he [Trescothick] had, would lead to inexorable decline. But he responded with the unmistakable sledgehammer of his bat. His 1,238 runs, making him the leading scorer in the competition, have taken Somerset to the brink of their first title. He is at home again in every sense.

Harmison needed county cricket badly. He had to learn to bowl again and has taken 50 wickets for Durham. It has been the remaking of him. He recognised it by insisting he play in the last round of matches. He is a sensitive man and he knew he owed it to himself and to Durham to play. Both men realised what their counties had done for them.

Meanwhile, Simon Wilde, in the Sunday Times, looks at the decline of Surrey, who, despite being one of the richest clubs in England, are on the verge of being relegated to Division Two of the County Championship.

The contrast between the commercial and cricketing sides is stark. Not long ago, Surrey were the main provider of players to the England team. That river has long since run dry. Figures produced by Leicestershire’s chairman, Neil Davidson, reveal Surrey as among the worst offenders when it comes to giving opportunities to young home-grown players. It is five years since a Surrey player won a first Test cap for England. Even though they own one of the best county academies, there is no sign of that drought ending. Surrey have an unhappy knack of turning stars into black holes. Witness the fates of Rikki Clarke, Scott Newman and James Benning.

Referring to the blasts in New Delhi on Saturday, Anand Vasu in the Hindustan Times feels that India may well be following the status of neighbours Pakistan with regard to a global boycott.

With the Champions Trophy unable to get off the ground as teams refused to tour Pakistan on security gorunds, a precedent has been set, the implications of which are dire, from a cricketing point of view

	Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was part of the Allahakbarries © Getty Images

Winning is great, but losing can be an awfully big adventure, Richard Brook suggests in the Sunday Star Times. He takes the example of Sir James Barrie, the creator of Peter Pan, who was also an enthusiastic cricketer.

He was once asked to describe his bowling and replied that, after delivering the ball he would go and sit on the turf at mid-off and wait for it to reach the other end which, he said, "it sometimes did". Sir James loved the game so much he formed his own side and named it the Allahakbarries, in the mistaken belief the Arabic term "Allah akbar" meant "God Help Us".

...

He installed himself captain of the Allahakbarries, of course, and had specific instructions for team-mates, especially when Bernard Partridge, an illustrator from Punch magazine and the unfortunate sufferer of a lazy eye, was bowling. "Partridge, when bowling, keep your eye on square leg," advised Barrie. "Square-leg, when Partridge is bowling, keep your eye on him." Another of his tips was to never practice on the opponent's ground before the match, because, he said: "this can only give them confidence".

Others in Barrie's side included Arthur Conan Doyle, AA Milne, PG Wodehouse, EW Hornung and Rudyard Kipling. To think, in one team, the creators of Sherlock Holmes, Dr Watson, Peter Pan, Tinkerbell, Winnie the Pooh, Eyeore, Raffles, Jeeves, Wooster, Mowgli and Baloo. It must have made for some wonderful after-match repartee

Come summer 2009 and England will have their best chance of reclaiming the Ashes when a jaded bunch of Australians land in the country, writes Scyld Berry in the Sunday Telegraph. He writes that Australia are already showing signs of cracking at the seams, after they were reduced to 18 for 5 against West Indies at Sabina Park some months back.

Their first masters, the Australian board, have drawn up a schedule which is as crazy as anything that England's board have ever conceived – and this is saying something. Thanks partly to another accident, the postponement of the Champions Trophy, England are now enjoying a nice break before late October, and have another month off before going to the West Indies in late January: the right sort of place to tune up for an Ashes series which is sure to be dominated by pace.

	Village cricket at West End, Esher in Surrey © Martin Williamson

The Daily Telegraph selected the best ten among readers' entries for cricket grounds that are quintessentially British. David Robson writes:

If the England cricket team were as spoiled for talent as England is spoiled for picturesque cricket grounds, it would never lose another match.

Test cricket is played in some of the most beautiful places on earth, from Barbados to Cape Town, but no Test Match ground can hold a candle to the real thing - the English village green, unchanged in centuries.

Bridgetown Cricket Club in Somerset, located in the Exmoor National Park, was adjudged the winner.

It was the eccentric detail that made this little ground, accessible by a wooden footbridge over a river, sound so heart-warmingly English. "There is a swallows' nest in the dressing-room, a wrens' nest above the front door... showers non-existent, though it is possible to take a dip in the river Exe to cool off after the match...a boiler fired by gas bottles for that most essential cricketing ingredient - tea." You can almost hear the kettle whistling as the players plod off the field.

Click here to read about the other grounds.

	Will Norman Arendse be in charge of Cricket South Africa come October? © Getty Images

The knives are out for Cricket SA’s president Norman Arendse, writes Neil Manthorp in the Weekender.

There will be blood in the corridors of power at Cricket SA in the coming fortnight as the 11 provincial unions prepare to usher in a new president and vice-president after a huge restructuring of the administration of the game.

The CSA (Pty) Ltd company is to be dissolved to form a new governing body which will incorporate the amateur and professional arms of the game. The move is meant to streamline an unwieldy and expensive administration and to qualify for proposed tax concessions.

Such a move, according to the majority of stakeholders, will necessitate fresh elections for office bearers as their positions will have become redundant — one cannot be president of something that no longer exists. CSA president Norman Arendse disagrees, saying fresh elections can be held only in the event of resignation or death. As he said on Wednesday from an ICC meeting in Dubai, “I am not dead and I have no intention of resigning.”

The Barbados-based Nation praises Shivnarine Chanderpaul for being named the ICC Player of the Year.

At a time when he is surrounded by a crop of batsmen without class and consistency, it speaks volumes about his commitment, dedication, skill and determination. Considered a player of no more than average ability, Chanderpaul makes up for it with other qualities that are sadly lacking among his teammates.

His cramped front-on stance and unspectacular methods of accumulating runs are not exactly the most pleasing to the eye, but no one in the region knows the importance of valuing his wicket more than Chanderpaul.

Paul Burrowes looks at the remarkable Chanderpaul in the Jamaica Observer.

	Mark Boucher hasn't been taking the criticism quietly © Getty Images

Daryll Cullinan's comments in the media over South Africa's 4-0 loss in the ODI series to England haven't gone down too well with Mark Boucher. In his column in the Weekender on September 6, Cullinan had suggested phasing out a few of the seniors from the ODI squad, and a certain Boucher was the first to be mentioned.

I have said for some time now that it is a luxury to carry two wicket keepers in the side. Mark Boucher may have to go. AB de Villiers is just as capable with the gloves, and can do the Adam Gilchrist thing of keeping and opening the batting.

Boucher hit back at the criticism, telling Business Day: "Isn’t it strange how everyone gets so judgmental and calls for heads when we lose, without looking at the facts."

“I respected Darryl as a cricketer, but since he has become a commentator we have had words — and I will prove him wrong again, as I have done in the past."

...

“How young does he want the team to be when they play the world champions? Does he want us to play Australia without any senior players in the team at all?"

He also came out in defence of his team-mate Jacques Kallis.

“If Jacques (Kallis) was scoring 100 after 100 no one would be saying he’s fat. But now he has been struggling, people are saying he is fat."

Cullinan responds in his latest column in the Weekender.

True, you don’t become a bad player or team overnight; but to give two such contrasting performances in such a short time has left everyone asking questions.

Writing in his blog Stumped, V Ramnarayan offers more memories of playing in the Moin-ud-Dowla tournament.

The work pressure at the office was high and I had been smoking quite a bit. So it was that I trudged reluctantly to the Hyderabad nets on a wet afternoon long after the scheduled start of practice. I had a bad cough and cold, and told my captain Abbas Ali Baig I was unfit for the game on the morrow. It had been raining and the practice wickets were wet, so Abbas was having a knock outside the nets with a young marker throwing a few balls at him. “Come and bowl,” he ordered me, and I obliged, still in my working clothes. After some ten minutes, he said to me with finality, “Nothing wrong with you. Sleep well tonight and come back in the morning. You are playing.”

Andrew Symonds’ absence from the Australia touring party leaves it shorn of a forceful cricketer and character, writes Peter Roebuck in the Hindu.

India has felt his power at the crease and will be relieved to be spared any repetition. Never mind that he was patently caught behind the wicket before he had taken command, still Symonds’ innings in the ill-mannered Sydney Test match was one of coruscating power. Once he was underway, Anil Kumble and company might as well have been firing popguns at a tank. It was an exceptional assault.

Add the all-rounder’s athleticism and knack of breaking partnerships with seamers or off-breaks and his capacity is revealed. But Symonds’ influence on the Australian team goes beyond runs and wickets. Something in his nature causes colleagues to circle the wagons around him. Perhaps it is that he took so long to make his mark, or the knockabout way he talks, or his fondness for fishing, or his humour, or his shyness, or the vulnerability caused by his mixed background. Heck, even the New Zealand judge called upon to disentangle the SCG Test liked him.

Dale Steyn’s achievement when he was voted Test cricketer of the year was great news for the fast bowler and the South African team, writes Mark Smit in Business Day. But is Steyn the genuine article yet? Is he an Allan Donald, or a Glenn McGrath, or a Fanie de Villiers?

He has to learn how to keep batsmen constantly under pressure. He has to learn how to stop allowing his left shoulder fall away, which inevitably leads to a ball wide outside the off stump. He still has to learn how to think batsmen out and how to adapt his attack to the requirement of the conditions — be it on the subcontinent, in England or Australia. It has so often been shown that wickets in Test cricket come almost as much from pressure, as they do from outstanding deliveries and Steyn — and his new-ball partner Morne Morkel for that matter — needs to learn how to tighten the screws and keep them tightened.

As majestic as the Test performances [in England] were, the ensuing belting showed all too clearly how paper-thin South Africa's reserves are. Five changes were made from the Test squad to the one-day squad and, rather than strengthening it, they shredded it, writes Neil Manthorp in the Mail & Guardian.

Every one among the 15-man Test squad knew his place, knew his team-mates and knew his role. Those who were there as "cover" for certain places accepted and understood that those in the starting XI were happy to perform unglamorous tasks - like McKenzie's stoic batting that helped produce a world-record 50+ opening stand with Smith in eight successive Tests. And everyone knew they deserved to be there, too. They knew that for one very simple reason - because the transformation "target" of seven black players was not reached. That meant it really was a "target" and not a quota. It was reached in the one-day squad, however, and the insipidly creeping doubts about merit, which have haunted so many squads in the past, were quick to return.

But there are even more fundamental and practical reasons for the ODI squad's demise, and they primarily concern the plundering of what is, historically, the country's greatest cricketing resource -- its all-rounders.

Despite topping the Northamptonshire batting charts this season, Lance Klusener wasn't offered a new contract by the county - a decision that has surprised many. A post on the Tim Walton's bandana blog (self-styled unofficial home of Northants cricket) explains that given Klusener's wages, his poor bowling and lack of match-winning performances, Northamptonshire have made the right decision in letting him go.

In 2008 Northamptonshire have won three matches (to date). Klusener was absent for the first, scored 0 and 10* in the second and despite scoring 65 in the third was overshadowed by a stunning century from [David] Sales that thwarted Leicestershire’s bowlers in distinctly unfriendly conditions for batting.

Klusener may have scored consistently in the Championship but he has not proved to be a difference-maker in leading Northamptonshire to wins against the odds. He may have been the difference between defeat and a draw on occasion, but ultimately he has not been able to swing games in the County’s favours.

Enock Muchinjo of the Zimbabwe Independent catches up with Jackie Du Preez, who was one of the few Zimbabweans of his generation to play Test cricket, when he turned out for South Africa in 1967. Click here to read the interview.

What were your best moments representing South Africa?

Just to represent South Africa. They were the best Test side in the world. And earning Springbok colours alongside all those world-class players was a great achievement for me.

Who was the best Zimbabwean cricketer during your time?

As a bowler I would pick Joe Partridge, the great pace bowler. In the batting it’s Tony Pithey. It’s hard to pick any particular one player because there were a lot of fine players during our time.

With Mushtaq Ahmed calling time on his first-class career, his Sussex team-mate Robin Martin-Jenkins recalls their first encounter on a cricket pitch:

A fizzing legspinner ripped past my forward prod first ball. I can still clearly recall that extraordinary sound as the seam ripped through the air ... I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw it (the next ball) was short and wide outside the off stump. I thought they said this guy was a genius? As I shaped to cut and get off the mark with a glorious four past point, the ball dipped and ripped back past my back foot. I think my bat was still at the top of its back-lift, MCC coaching book style, when the googly cannoned into middle stump.

Read the full post in the Wisden Cricketer.

	Mahendra Singh Dhoni: The ICC's ODI Player of the Year © AFP

India has tasted success since Mahendra Singh Dhoni took over as captain of India's Twenty20 and one-day sides a year ago. Dhoni's batting too has matured and he has shown an abiltiy to change his game according to the match situation. His achievements fetched him the prestigious Khel Ratna award last month and now the ICC ODI Player of the Year. Anand Vasu writes in the Hindustan Times that it's only a matter of time before Dhoni gets the biggest prize - Test captaincy.

The role he is playing with the bat, floating up and down the order, and being the backbone of the batting, whether against pace and swing Down Under, or Ajantha Mendis in Sri Lanka, shows how well he is reading the flow of a one-day match. You would understand if a cerebral Dravid or a charismatic Ganguly won such an award for leadership. That it has gone to a street-smart wicketkeeper from Ranchi is a testament to the success Dhoni has brought to the Indian team

After flopping to Ajantha Mendis and Co in the series against Sri Lanka, the pressure is on several of India's old guard in the middle-order. With Sourav Ganguly potentially the first to get the sack, Harsha Bhogle writes in the Indian Express that the selectors should be upfront about what their objectives and reasons for any changes in the side are, and not hide behind undignified, anonymous leaks.

So, either the selectors must state that they are going to give youngsters a break but that they would like Ganguly to keep playing so that if he is in form and the youngsters aren’t they could go back to him. Alternately, they should make it clear to him that with Kaif, Rohit Sharma and Badrinath in the wings, and the enigmatic Yuvraj around, he is officially the first of the old guard to be asked to say goodbye.

In the Australian, Peter Lalor looks at a falling out between Michael Clarke and Andrew Symonds in the Caribbean this year, a couple of months before Clarke was part of the leadership group that sent Symonds home from Darwin.

Symonds and vice-captain Michael Clarke were once as close as a Brisbane summer, they were cricket's most effective offside fielding team and got on well socially, but things have had a tendency to turn arctic of late.

The pair allegedly had a blow-up in a hotel bar in the West Indies. Clarke, the team's vice-captain and one of the more dedicated cricketers on or off the field, chipped Symonds one night when he found him drinking in the bar with former West Indies great Brian Lara.

He is said to have suggested that Symonds had better be in good shape to take the field the next day, a suggestion not taken in good humour.

Symonds blew up and the pair had a very heated argument. They later patched things up, but relations have again become strained with Clarke leading the charge to have the belligerent all-rounder sent home from Darwin last month and placed on notice about his cricketing future.

	Is Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s career a template for how India’s best players will rise to the top of their games in the future? © AFP

The current mantra in Indian cricket seems to be "if you want to win, go for young legs, fresh blood and ‘aggro'", writes Sharda Ugra in her blog on the India Today website. However, she wonders if youngsters in the future will want to take up Test cricket, the longer form of the game, given the riches on offer in the shorter formats.

Call this the IPL effect or the fact that limited-overs cricket is just so much more instant: instant cricket, instant fame, instant wealth. With the advent of T20 and the IPL, there is now more than one route to the top of the heap in the game and that route is a short cut. No grinding out batting or bowling epics over four-day games in two-tonga towns in front of an audience of bored tonga-drivers and their horses.

Before Dhoni arrived, Virender Sehwag was the last cult figure thrown up by Indian cricket, impacting both forms of the game. Dhoni’s career with India is almost a template for how India’s best players will rise to the top of their games in the future. He has gone from India rookie to captain in four seasons, his influence rising in the last 12 months, all because of performances in ODIs and T20s. He was even given the country’s highest sporting award, only the second cricketer to receive it after Sachin Tendulkar. To every aspiring Indian cricketer, the benefits and rewards of limited-overs cricket must seem limitless.

Simon Katich says Test series between India and Australia are "definitely" bigger than the Ashes. Sai Mohan interviews Katich, currently in India leading the A team, and he talks about his experience of their last Test series in India in 2004 on cricketnirvana.com.

On Sourav Ganguly missing the Nagpur Test:

Oh we thought it worked towards our benefit. We smelled a rift in the enemy camp and it was good for us. We saw some grass on the pitch and loved it. We carried a lot of confidence after the comprehensive victory in Bangalore. We were going into Nagpur knowing that we could strike the rod when it was hot. However we were beware that the Indians have a fantastic batting line-up and we could not have made the mistake on underestimating them. So I would say the feeling in the camp was brilliant and we surely did party hard after clinching the Nagpur Test. It was one of the happiest moments in our cricketing lives, to know that we had done something that our predecessors had not achieved.

On Adam Gilchrist's captaincy:

Oh! Adam Gilchrist's captaincy on that tour was simply fabulous. The manner in which he tackled the spinners and handled the bowlers was amazing. John Buchanan made a lot of useful contributions too. We used to sit and chalk out plans on how to dismiss VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid and touchwood all of them worked to our advantage.

Gary Kirsten must beware lest he go down the Greg Chappell route. His predecessor as Team India’s foreign coach was guilty of taking the long-term view, maybe forgetting that, as the wise man said, in the long term we are all dead, writes R Mohan in the Asian Age. He says:

If he were to take on the national captaincy in all forms of the game, Dhoni would have to give up his habit of skipping Test series as he did in Sri Lanka most recently. The timing of the change would depend on when and whether he would feel comfortable with so many of the seniors around. Dhoni has done well with his young side but Tests are a different proposition.

The celebration match at Lord's for the 60th anniversary of English Schools Cricket Association (ESCA) leads Michael Atherton to believe that the ECB must support young talent. In his column in the Times, he revisits the summer of 1983, where he represented the North of England Under-15s at the ESCA festival, doing battle against Nasser Hussain, Mark Ramprakash.

Despite their reputations, I knew Nasser had the yips and could not bowl and I reckoned that I could score as many runs as Ramps. The possibilities seemed endless.

In an interview with Lawrence Booth in the Guardian, offspinner Graeme Swann insists he hasn't been thinking of how he'd spend his million dollars (if he is selected and England win the Stanford match) and that he is looking forward more to visiting the "far-out places" in India during the one-day series than the one-off game in Antigua.

"The whole reason to have a game like this is to get people talking about it, and in that respect it's worked. But some of the questions I've dealt with from the press have had a cynical edge. Whenever there are large sums of money involved it brings out the worst in people."

	The end of the road for Matthew Hoggard? © Getty Images

With Matthew Hoggard missing out on a central contract, his international career appears to be over. Hoggard, though, thinks there's a comeback left in him. "I am only 31, not quite ready to draw my pension or reach for the pipe and slippers just yet, thanks very much," he says as he looks on the bright side, rather unconvincingly, in his column in the Times.

I won't, for example, have to travel to Loughborough quite so often to undergo yet another fitness test or bowl another few hundred balls in the nets. Instead, I can just nip down to Headingley, do my stuff there and be back home for my tea in 20 minutes.

Mercifully, nor will I have to travel to London to sit through long, drawn-out meetings, such as the one that the England players had to attend this year when we were getting our new kit

In the Guardian, Mike Selvey isn't as optimistic about Hoggard returning to the national side.

The Times is counting down the top 50 Ashes heroes. Former Australian legspinner, Bill O'Reilly, is at No. 44.

Don Bradman said that O'Reilly was the best bowler he ever faced, which is all the testimony you need about his quality. They first played each other in 1925 when the 20-year-old O'Reilly, training to be a teacher in Sydney, was suddenly called up (yanked off a train, O'Reilly said) to play for Wingello against Bowral. As was the custom, the match was played for a day and resumed a week later. After Day 1, the 17-year-old Bradman was 234 not out but when the match continued seven days on, O'Reilly bowled him first ball with a leg break that turned from leg stump to hit off. "Suddenly cricket was the best game in the whole wide world," O'Reilly would write years later.

In a very candid interview with PakPassion.net, Mohammad Akram looks back on his career, talks frankly about the two Ws and speaks out on the demerits of the cricketing system in Pakistan.

So which one of them [Wasim Akram or Waqar Younis] was more helpful to you?

Mohammad Akram: Neither of them, they didnt do anything for youngsters. It was part of their policy to not let youngsters in.

This isn't the first time I've heard this, about Wasim and Waqar blocking the progress of youngsters...

Mohammad Akram: (interrupts) ...no I wouldn't call it blocking, they didn't block anyone. It was more a case of the fact that they didn't like to see anyone coming near them or reaching them. That was part of the reason they didnt like Shoaib, they were well against him.

...The final straw was in 2001 when Aaqib Javed (who was then a selector) came into my hotel room to tell me that with both Wasim and Waqar being fit I was not needed in the squad for the upcoming Asian Test Championship. I had a contract with a club here in England and so I took the next flight out of Pakistan and came to England to play some cricket. Then suddenly I got a phone call from another selector, Zakir Khan, telling me that not only was I in the Test match squad but I was also going to be playing in the final XI vs Bangladesh at Multan. He also stressed that the game was taking place the day after tomorrow and that I needed to come back, so against my better judgement I tried to get a flight back to Pakistan. Unfortunately it was too short notice and I was unable to get back in time, so they banned me for two years for not turning up to play

What's your opinion on Shoaib? Is he as arrogant and aggressive as we are led to believe?

Mohammad Akram: If you know Shoaib then he's a lovely chap to be around, you'll really enjoy his company and you'll certainly never be bored (laughs). However if you dont know him then it's a different story, he's that sort of character. To understand Shoaib you have to get to know him, once you get to know him, you can understand where he's coming from and what he's talking about. When it come to Shoaib as a cricketer, I always think 'what a waste'.
.

	A challenge for captain KP © Getty Images

Lawrence Booth writes in the Guardian that captain Kevin Pietersen will face an unprecedented set of problems when the Stanford match takes place. He points out that besides Pietersen's man-management skills being tested to the full due to the massive amount of money at stake, the Stanford series makes it tough for him in another way:

The selectors and Pietersen must now be utterly ruthless because the format leaves them no option. There can be no planning for the future, no experimenting with batting line-ups, no sentiment, no fun - all of which take place even in Test cricket. We will discover which players are considered the big-game cricketers and which the captain regards as flaky.

In the same paper, Andy Bull says the right squads were chosen and that the incremental contracts handed to Tim Ambrose, Ravi Bopara, Samit Patel, Matthew Prior, Owais Shah, Graeme Swann and Luke Wright could be a pointer to the nucleus of the future England side.

And Kevin Eason wonders in the Times whether England will be as much of a team when they fly home after the extravagant one-off contest as when they arrive.

Also read Rob Smyth's take on the England selection on his blog in the Wisden Cricketer.

Stanford stands for ostentatiousness, razzmatazz and affluence, but none of that was on show at Lord’s. There was just an everyday squad announcement, delivered by Geoff Miller with all the zest of a bingo club manager announcing who had made the team for next weekend’s fixture away to the Grimsby Septuagenarians. There was no showbiz: dancing girls, no boxing-style nicknames for the players. And no surprises among the names.

V Ramnarayan dips into nostalgia as he writes about playing in the Moin-ud-Dowla Gold Cup in the 1970s. Moin-ud-Dowla used to be the premier tournament in India outside of Test matches. Read it in his blog Stumped.

... Krishnamurti took one look at my footwear and burst out in a volley of abuse. “Have you taken leave of your senses?” he said to me. “Are you a G Division player, wearing these cheap Bata shoes only rickshawallahs wear? Do you look like someone about to play for an international XI in Moin-ud-Dowla?” ... And Pataudi soon asked me to bowl to him in the nets, where, in my eagerness to impress, I gave him a torrid time on an unplayable drying wicket, a very unprofessional thing to do to a batsman looking for some practice. 'Tiger' was sporting enough not to mind my immature exhibition; he in fact went so far as to tell Habib I was a match winner.

Don't expect Sourav Ganguly to throw in the towel now. The man has made nearly as many comebacks as Muhammad Ali did, emerging stronger each time. But whisper it softly that at 36, the entrance may no longer be ajar, writes Dileep Premachandran in the Guardian.

The shocking surrender in Sri Lanka, where only Laxman managed more than 200 runs in the middle order, might have hastened Ganguly's exit, but there's little doubt that previous performances have been considered while shortlisting those capable of tackling the Australian juggernaut. In that regard, Laxman and Tendulkar are fireproof.

Sourav should choose when he retires, and why should it be now? Kunal Pradhan in the Indian Express believes that if this is the end of Ganguly’s international career, it was too abrupt.

It seemed he would now, at least, get a chance to call it quits when he felt like it, with a proper dialogue with the board and the selectors, walking with his bat held high as he took off the helmet to reveal the maroon bandanna that protects his slowly receding hairline at the crease.

The exclusions of Yuvraj Singh and Rohit Sharma from the Rest of India squad for the Irani Trophy does not augur well for Indian cricket and seems to be a bigger issue than Ganguly's omission, writes Taus Rizvi in Daily News & Analysis.

The two most talented youngsters in the country seem to have lost way at a time when the Indian cricket is exploring ways to gradually phase out the seniors and bring in youngsters. The loss of form of Yuvraj Singh and Rohit Sharma, in that sense, is a setback to Indian cricket.

In his column on Dreamcricket, Suresh Menon makes the case for Anil Kumble to be given a long stint as Test captain. Menon argues that Kumble has brought a rare combination of toughness and dignity to the difficult task of leading the side and that he remains a key bowler for India.

While young cricketers need to be given a chance to succeed, veterans must be given a chance to fail. Kumble hasn't failed and you cannot bring in a new captain just because he is younger and has signed more endorsements. I doubt if Dhoni himself is hankering after the job, but with friends like Kirsten, he does not need too many enemies.

Sourav Ganguly's exclusion from the Rest of India squad for the Irani Trophy is being seen a sign of phasing out India's aging middle-order. Ayaz Memon wonders whether Ganguly still has the mental strength to stage yet another fightback and regain his place in the team. He writes in the Mumbai-based Daily News & Analysis:

... does he have the physical wherewithal to back up his mind, if indeed it remains as strong as earlier? Three years of constant battle, so to speak - of trying to convince selectors, warding off the threat of juniors, fighting off frustration - can take its toll.

When you are in your mid-20s, like say Yuvraj Singh and Rohit Sharma who have also been sidelined because of poor form in Sri Lanka, such crises can be tackled more easily because the ambition to achieve is alive and kicking and time is not such a big constraint; in the mid-30s, self-doubt and a sense of futility can begin to dominate because the end in any case seems so much nearer.

Amrit Mathur, the former India media manager in his column in the Hindustan Times talks about the vice-captaincy curse: players who are carefully groomed for the top job don't quite make it, somebody else jumps the queue.

Of late, vice captains have been tossed around, changed from series to series. Apparently, for the selectors, naming a vice-captain is a gift that can both be handed out and then reclaimed, according to their convenience.

So long as an Indian bowler’s action is not criticised internationally, faults can be continued to be swept under the carpet writes Makarand Waigankar in the Hindu. A case in point, Gujarat offspinner Mohnish Parmar, who is currently playing for the India A side against Australia A. Shades of Ian Meckiff?

Last year in one of the Ranji Trophy matches, one umpire who was in the ICC panel warned the Gujarat team that he would no-ball Parmar if he bowled. Parmar was dropped. With this history, the Board ought to have closed the chapter, but the selectors seem to be keen on getting him in the side to win matches.

Simon Barnes writes in the Times that the reason behind Kevin Pietersen's success is his ability to adapt, his ambition and his relentless pursuit of success.

Pointless to ask whether Pietersen has achieved these things (establish a college of senior players, instill a culture of shared responsibility, get Flintoff and Harmison back near their best) in spite of or because of his narcissism. Pietersen is aware that what matters in sport is success and he is prepared to do anything it takes to be successful. And if that involves thinking about other people, well, he's even prepared to go to these extreme lengths.

Adam Gilchrist remains committed to cricket being part of the Olympics and will be involved in lobbying the ICC chief executives in Dubai on Wednesday, Malcolm Conn writes in the Australian.

The Sri Lanka vice-captain Kumar Sangakkara and Gilchrist will make passionate appeals to the meeting through video presentations as part of a groundswell of support for the true globalisation of the sport. If Wednesday's meeting looks favourably on the concept the chief executives may recommend that the ICC executive board consider approaching the International Olympic Committee next year with a view to having cricket adopted in 2013 for the 2020 Olympics.

Sangakkara’s Cricinfo column on the Olympics is here.

Chris Cairns is still walking in his effort to raise rail safety awareness, registering more than 30km a day. Britton Broun, writing in the Dominion Post, catches up with Cairns, whose sister Louise died in a train accident in 1993.

Since then, safety has become a "personal crusade" for Cairns, who established a foundation to teach school pupils of the dangers at New Zealand's often-unmarked rail crossings. The charity walk began in Auckland three weeks ago and Cairns has been walking every day, clocking up 635km so far. He faces a further 366km walk to the site of his sister's death.

	How could I drop that? © Getty Images

A recent scientific study may explain why fielders might struggle with deliveries coming right at them. More in the New York Times:

“Binocular vision is quite good for working out where objects are in space,” said Andrew E. Welchman, the lead author of the study and a lecturer at the University of Birmingham in England. “Because you have two eyes, the brain can take signals from each and compare them over time, averaging them. But when you have an object coming toward you, the differences in the information you get from the left and right side are more subtle,” and this makes the decision on location and speed more difficult.

Trevor Chesterfield in the Island recalls a deeply rancorous incident on his first tour of Australia in 1963-64 - the Ian Meckiff no-balling episode in the first Test of the series.

Both teams went into that Gabba Test with some apprehension over Meckiff’s selection. However, judgment on his action was delayed until well into the second day after Australia, batting first, scored 435.

Umpire Egar was in little doubt after passing the first delivery without comment.

"No b-a-l-l!" came his call from square leg. The crowd went numb and a sick silence swept over them. Egar stood motionless. The Australian fielders, uncertain, looked at each other, unable to believe what was taking place.

Had America remained a British colony for as long as India, they would be playing Test cricket these days. After all, the fixture between the US and Canada predates those between England and Australia. Christopher Martin-Jenkins in the Times reflects on whether the Americans can learn to love cricket.

“The New York Cricket Club was a splendid idea,” one of the peripheral characters says in Joseph O'Neill's engaging, poignant, subtle novel Netherland, recently nominated for this year's Man Booker prize. “But would the project have worked? No. There's a limit to what Americans understand. The limit is cricket."

Andrew Anthony interviews the author in the Observer.

'I was stuck in Canada and my plane ticket didn't take me back for another couple of days, so I read for a day and I read a book that really helped me called Housekeeping, by Marilynne Robinson. She is the sort of person who spends 20 years writing a novel. It was so slow. Nothing really happened and it was so attentive just to sentences. And I suddenly thought, why don't I write exactly what I want to write and to hell with the plot points.'

He junked the second half of the book and started again from scratch. The result is a gorgeous, ruminative prose in which every sentence feels written, not typed. Comparisons have been made to F Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece The Great Gatsby, and the poignant echo of that book can be clearly heard in a number of passages. The elegy is not commonplace in the modern English novel. There are examples, like Alan Hollinghurst's exquisite The Line of Beauty, which is also reminiscent of Gatsby, but on the whole it's an American form, inextricably tied to what Mehta, in relation to Netherland, called 'the compromised beauty of the American dream'.

	Michael Clarke had an eventful time in Darwin © Getty Images

Michael Clarke has completed his first full series in charge of Australia’s one-day team. In the Sydney Morning Herald Jamie Pandaram looks at Clarke’s leadership following an assignment that began with sending Andrew Symonds home.

Judging by hundreds of blog postings since Symonds' dismissal from the team camp in Darwin, Clarke has accomplished little to boost his ego. Rather, punters wrote, he needs to explain his actions, describing the 27-year-old as a Cricket Australia clone and ruthlessly ambitious leader-in-the-wings, among other critiques ...

It's hard to imagine Mark Taylor, Steve Waugh or Ricky Ponting having divided the public so early in their tenures, yet the differences between Clarke and any previous captain are so pronounced. The ear-bling, tattoos, cheeky on-field banter, right-handed batting and left-handed bowling, famous model for a fiancee and multimillion-dollar endorsements make him an ideal candidate for jealousy and criticism. Clarke won't flinch at blogs or public disapproval; he is known for delivering verbal barbs at team-mates and would expect nothing less in return.

Mazhar Khan, the chief administrator of the Emirates Cricket Board, says UAE's aim is to qualify for the 2011 World Cup in an interview to Gulf News. Khan, also the manager of UAE's national team, suggests the game is no longer dominated by those from the subcontinent, with more home-grown players as well as Australians and South Africans showing interest.

Anand Philar recounts the stories of Sadanand Viswanath and Shavir Tarapore, who were the umpires in the Australia A v India A game in Bangalore. Read it on Sify.com.

... But on his return home from Australia, Vishy’s cricketing graph nosedived. He had problems with some of the seniors in the Karnataka team and his inability to focus more on cricket rather than a life of pleasure, also contributed to his premature exit from the National scene. I vividly remember the many hours I spent with Vishy trying to console him as he opened up to me with dressing room tales and also his off-the-field problems. He was reduced to a nervous wreck, shunned by friends. It took him over a decade to get his life back on track as he took to coaching and then umpiring.

Also, do read the Cricinfo piece on the fall and the rise of Sadanand Viswanath.

The angry young days of Vishy are over," he says as dusk descends on the Chinnaswamy Stadium. "It has been some rollercoaster ride but it's about finding peace now. I have made my share of mistakes (but) I managed to step out of the whirlpool. Fame does funny things. The adoration from the fans is indescribable. You have to be there to understand it. One should go out on a high and leave the public lingering with a happy memory.

	Ambati Rayudu made it to the India A side when he was 17 but he never got the national call-up © ICL

Over the years, many cricketers have passed through this stage and they speak about how maintaining a positive attitude is a tall ask during this ‘so-close-yet-so-far’ phase. Ambati Rayudu got the India A break when he was 17 and, considering his rapid rise from the ranks, he thought making the senior team was an eventuality waiting to happen. Soon, the harsh reality about the packed Indian middle-order dawned on him. “There were no vacancies in the senior team. Even someone like VVS Laxman had been left out of the World Cup squad. That is the time when it can get a little frustrating. I’ve been with the India A squad on six occasions and each time that frustration has only increased. With every tour I hope things might turn for the better, but it doesn’t happen,” he says. Such was his state of mind that Rayudu joined the rebel Indian Cricket League (ICL) and that meant saying a final goodbye to the dreams of wearing an India cap.

"Dave English managed the Bee Gees, handled publicity for Eric Clapton and the Rolling Stones, was involved in the launch of the film Grease and had a (very minor) role in A Bridge Too Far, alongside Robert Redford, right. English used the money and contacts he made in the music industry to set up the Bunbury cricket organisation," writes David Walsh in the Sunday Times.

Where do you begin to tell this man’s story? Perhaps as a boy, a year or so younger than Cowdrey is now, being awoken in the early hours by his father. “Look, Stinker,” his dad said, using the codename that spoke of their closeness. “I’ve got to go. Your mum is a good woman who loves you; look after her and your sister. You’re the boss now.” He understood why his dad left, even empathised with the zest for life that tempted him from their London home. He didn’t hear from him for two years. Though he coped remarkably well, there were times when he needed to work things out and he would head down to nearby Hendon Park with his cricket bat over his shoulder. Tomorrow could wait. Today he would improve his batting. He made it onto the ground staff at Lord’s, played two games for the Middlesex second team, but he didn’t have that touch of greatness. Instead he had a talent for enabling those who did. Eric Clapton and Barry Gibb would soon become two of his favourite people and two of his best mates.

Peter Roebuck believes the outcome of the upcoming series between India and Australia will depend on decisions taken beforehand. He writes in the Hindu:

Not long afterwards Brad Hogg had retired from Test cricket. Everyone assumed that he had been offered a deal but it was not so. He’d had enough. It’s been a long time since an accredited Australian cricketer walked so blithely away. Shaun Tait also stepped aside, temporarily in his case. Wounded by exposure and expectation, he lost confidence and yearned for the shadows ... Now Andrew Symonds has been dispatched ... Brett Lee’s personal problems and Ricky Ponting’s injury add to the impression that the Australians are vulnerable. Certainly it seems that the coach and captain have lost their grip.

But India is also on shaky ground. Already the limited-over side has shrugged off the past and sought vigour and vitality. Meanwhile the Test team remains unchanged. Everyone recognises that the great men are growing old together.

The defining moments of the international season came in a couple of text messages. Well, it has been a dreadfully wet summer and we are all slaves of the mobile phone now, western Vic Marks in the Observer.

On Sunday 3 August, the day after the Edgbaston Test, this appeared: 'Michael Vaughan will be giving a press conference at Loughborough today at 1pm.' The moment we received that we all knew he was going, but he had taken us by surprise. The text received at 10.15am on Friday 18 July at Headingley seemed even more prosaic. The ECB kindly deliver the final XI to our mobile phones on the morning of a Test match a few minutes before the toss. This particular message seemed routine enough until we alighted upon the name of Darren Pattinson. Both these texts suggested an England regime in disarray, with no idea which direction to take.

In the Independent on Sunday, Stephen Brenkley looks ahead to August 2009 and says that "Kevin Pietersen raising above his head a small urn on the boundary at The Oval" is a possible scenario.

The ICC is scheduled to meet on Thursday to discuss where and when the Champions Trophy will be held in 2009. Kadambari Murali writes in the Hindustan Times that the international body, inexplicably praised for 'supporting' Pakistan when it chose the convenience of postponing the issue in an nth minute meeting, has to realise there is no point in sweeping something under the carpet because it looks particularly icky.

A decision has to be made: Either a place is safe enough for everyone to travel to or no one. And that decision must be implemented in action and in spirit. There is no point in humiliating a country or embarrassing a game.

In the same paper, Shahid Hashmi feels it the duty of international cricketers to support Pakistan and play for a cause, under tried and tested security arrangements.

	Claire Taylor: Scoring hundreds when you are chasing mean more to me © Getty Images

After becoming only the fourth England woman cricketer to play 100 ODIs, Claire Taylor says she is still motivated as there are a few personal goals as well as some big team goals to achieve before she retires. On the England board's website, she talks about how she was unprepared for international cricket when she made her debut in 1998, her dazzling 156 not out two years ago (the highest individual score made in a one-dayer at Lord's), and the strong England side she's playing in.

We need 11 match-winners and it’s brilliant that so many people have put their hands up this summer – we have had seven different players of the match.

“It’s the first time in my time with England that we are selecting teams based on conditions. If we need another swing bowler, we have one. If we need another batsman, we’ve got another batsman. If we need a spinner, a quick bowler – they are all tapping on the door.

John Buchanan, the coach of the Kolkata Knight Riders, gave a presentation on leadership and success in Kolkata on Friday. He says creating a learning environment, identifying the right people, and having the courage to back your judgements are just some of the steps necessary to achieve success. Read more in the Kolkata-based Telegraph.

Partab Ramchand favours the Indian board's move to make the selector's post a paid one but says it still remains a thankless job. He writes in his column on dreamcricket.com:

Do selectors ever receive praise? Oh, I suppose so in a grudging sort of way. But they are more remembered for their foibles rather than any bold choices or hunches that come off. Does anyone remember the selector who pushed 19-year-old Dilip Vengsarkar into the national squad on the basis of one dashing century against Bedi and Prasanna in the Irani Trophy game in 1975? Does anyone remember the selector who had the foresight to pick the relatively unknown Bedi, then only 20, on the basis of one good performance for the Board President's XI against West Indies in 1966? It was under the chairmanship of this much-maligned selector that both Chandrasekhar and Venkatraghavan were first given their India caps when they were still teenagers. Does anyone recall the selector who boldly gave the reigns of captaincy to the young Nawab of Pataudi, then all of 20 years of age, to lead the Board President's XI side against the visiting MCC in 1961? Does anyone recall the chairmen of the selection committees who picked the two most successful one-day teams in Indian cricket history - the 1983 World Cup and the 1985 World Championship of Cricket?

Marcus Trescothick's ghosted autobiography, Coming Back to Me, belongs to an increasingly popular genre, one that admits to the notion that cricket and the cricketers themselves are not inherently interesting enough to sell, writes Mike Atherton in the Times.

To invest the pages with more bite and, no doubt, more marketability, the player admits to some previously unrevealed trauma, or, in Trescothick's case, a trauma that had been only half-revealed ... Other than moments of dark humour, such as when Peter Gregory, the England team doctor, tried his hand, unsuccessfully, at acupuncture, and when Trescothick was taken in by a fraudster of a hypnotist, this is a joyless book. There is little of the thrill of playing sport at the highest level, none of the humour, nor the fascinating details or character sketches of dressing-room figures that make a sporting life worthwhile.

In its Ashes Heroes countdown, the Times lists Craig McDermott as No. 45.

Meanwhile, the Independent's Brian Viner attends a black-tie dinner at Lord's Taverners to celebrate cricket's 10 surviving centurions – the men who made at least 100 first-class hundreds.

Geoffrey Boycott had other tactics for staying in all day. The scorer of 151 first-class hundreds recalled the advice of his Uncle Algy, that "when two people get involved in a run-out, one of t'buggers is going to be unhappy. Make sure it isn't you." Amid much knowing laughter, he added: "I followed that advice all my life until I met that bastard Amiss." I don't know how Dennis Amiss, another of the centurions, reacted to being called a bastard. And I couldn't quite see whether the mother and grandmother of a young lad at the table next to mine winced at such salty Boycottian language.

	Andrew Symonds remains under the microscope © AFP

It’s been a week dominated by Andrew Symonds’ fishing trip and in the Herald Sun Ron Reed examines the allrounder’s behaviour.

While he has freely offered his own evidence that he's also a bit of a dill - his autobiography contains a chapter devoted to team-mates relating stories about his various faux pas - there is a streak of something more unpleasant, too. Since his elevation to stardom, which was a long time happening, he seems to believe he's a law unto himself. Turning up drunk for a match in England three years ago suggested that, and ignoring last week's meeting underscores it.

The Daily Telegraph’s Rebecca Wilson says Symonds has become too big for his boots and too bigheaded for his baggy green.

The death of Col Egar means one of Australian cricket's greatest controversies will remain a mystery, Malcolm Conn writes in the Australian.

A strong and straightforward character and a highly respected umpire, he is best remembered for no-balling Ian Meckiff four times in his opening over on December 7 1963, during the first Test against South Africa in Brisbane, ending Meckiff's career. Conspiracy theories abounded that Meckiff, who had not played a Test for almost three years, was the victim of a set-up involving Donald Bradman, who was ACB chairman at the time.

They may be winning pretty handsomely in their top-end tour against Bangladesh, but Australia's cricketers aren't exactly quickening the pulse at the moment - which is a concern to Philip Derriman of the Sydney Morning Herald.

Star quality among cricketers - most easily defined as the ability to rise above the performance level of mere mortals - is fairly rare. Only a handful of Australian players has had it since cricket was first televised here.

People old enough to have seen him bat would say Norm O'Neill had it. Doug Walters certainly had it. You always felt when he arrived at the crease that he might do something out of the ordinary.

Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson, in his heyday, had star quality too, and to some extent so did Mark Waugh. More recently, Shane Warne and Adam Gilchrist both had it, but they're out of the picture.

Which leaves who? Nobody really.

South Africa's one-day side has surely been weakened by the retirement of Shaun Pollock, and Neil Manthorp highlights in the Mail and Guardian the all-round talent that's defected, either on Kolpak contracts to England or to the Indian Cricket League.

Almost 40 South Africans played county cricket during this English summer, and the vast majority of them renounced their country to do so. One happily accepted the money a couple of months ago and remained convinced that South African cricket's health was "okay".

Now, after 10 weeks in an English change room, his views have changed.

"The Kolpak ruling is killing our cricket. Unless we start getting guys to come back and contribute, we'll simply feed the English game. I learned so much -- we had four or five international guys in the team and we discussed techniques and tactics, how to win games and how to behave as professionals.

"At the franchise last season the conversation was pretty much based around who had the girlfriend with the biggest tits," said the player, understandably preferring not to be named.

Zaheer Khan, who returned to the Test side after seven months, picked up eight wickets in three Tests in Sri Lanka. He talks to Mid-Day's Sanjeev Samyal about the tour.

It's natural to be apprehensive when you are coming back from injury. Did any negative thoughts bother you? That is why I took my time to get back to international cricket. I was very clear that physically there was not going to be much of a problem. To get back into rhythm was the important thing. All I was concerned about was, that. It takes time as it only comes after bowling a number of overs. Playing the Test matches and bowling long spells helped me achieve that. I knew that Sri Lankan conditions would be tough in terms of heat and humidity but I think I coped well during the series.

What has been Gary Kirsten and Paddy Upton's influence on the team?
The important thing is there is good communication between players and coaching staff. There is good atmosphere. They are ready to give you space and at the same time, they are always there for you. They are always thinking of how we can go forward which is very important.

	With the backing of the captain, Flintoff is back to being the nightmare batsman for the opposition © Getty Images

By being open about the mediocrity in the English cricket system, often alluded to but rarely taken head-on, he has sent out a message about the kind of players he wants to work with. “I want players who perform day-in-day-out” he said. He is looking for match-winners, not cosy players who do enough to stay in the side. When you apply that condition, it is not difficult to see who he is after ... With the backing of the captain, Flintoff is back to being the nightmare batsman for the opposition ... Next he worked on Harmison, a man of fragile temperament but enormous ability. England, much to everyone’s glee, were ready to give up on him. But sometimes the biggest brutes have soft cores, feel the same need for reassurance as average strugglers.

In the Guardian Duncan Fletcher writes that while England flourished against South Africa, their handling of India's pitches will give us a better idea of their progression.

We will find out about certain individuals' variations after the plane lands in India, where I expect Paul Collingwood and Luke Wright to do more bowling. The key to batting over there is the ability to gauge the pace of the pitch, play the ball late, and manoeuvre it into gaps with flexible wrists. Owais Shah - preferably lower down the order - and Pietersen are key and others will have to learn quickly, because the English tendency is to go hard at the ball. A shot in England that will bring you runs might go straight to a fielder in India because the ball comes off the pitch more slowly. Go too early at the ball on the subcontinent and you don't give yourself time to pick up the variations in pace and bounce.

Despite the losses to New Zealand in one-day cricket and to South Africa in Test cricket and the departures of Michael Vaughan and Paul Collingwood as Test and one-day captain respectively, the England who completed the summer were more settled and confident than the one who began it, writes Mike Atherton in the Times.

Pietersen has been a revelation. Very few people would have expected him to have such a positive and immediate impact, writes Angus Fraser in the Independent.

	Len Hutton died on September 6, 1990 © Getty Images

The Guardian unearths from their vault a column dedicated to Len Hutton by the Labour politician and Yorkshire native Roy Hattersley following the death of the legendary batsman. He wrote:

Perhaps Hutton was never quite the happy warrior whom every boy in pads would wish him to be. But in 1946 having adjusted to the short left arm and learned how to play with a bat of a size usually only to be found in youth clubs the whole burden of English cricket was piled on his shoulders. He had to open the batting against Lindwall and Miller. He had to hang on whilst more glamorous batsmen got themselves out with flashy shots.

Then he had to take on the England captaincy and win back the Ashes. He did it all with professional dedication. But, since he was not a boisterous man or noted for the wit of his after dinner speeches, we are entitled to ask ourselves how funny he believed his most famous indeed his only publicised joke to be? Whilst resisting one particularly savage spell of pace and lift, he walked down the wicket for what commentators undoubtedly called 'consultations' with Dennis Compton. 'There must,' said Hutton, 'be a better way of earning your living than this.'

In his blog on the Guardian website, Dileep Premachandran looks at Australia A's tour to India and says it's unlike other similar contests, with many players in with a chance to make it the to the face-off between the senior sides later in the year.

A team games not involving Hannibal, BA Baracus, Murdock and Face tend to be pretty mundane affairs. Fans weaned on a steady diet of international cricket tend to treat them as a Premier League supporter does a League One game, and the players themselves are motivated by different things. For the young and ambitious teenager, it's a chance to press his claim to be the next Tendulkar, Ponting or Wasim. These days though, with U-19 games and tournaments so common, many of these tyros take the escalator straight to the top, ignoring the A team staircase altogether. For most on the wrong side of 25, unless you're an Australian with the initials MEKH, the A team call-up is usually a sop, a reward for steady domestic performances for those who lack the X-factor that separates the merely good from the exceptional.

The jazz musician and cricket lover Benny Green once wrote that he knew he was heading for middle age the day Denis Compton, one of the greatest players of the mid-20th century, retired. The same sense of mortality will tickle thirty-something cricket fans with the retirement of Graeme Hick, who announced this week that this season would be his last, says Huw Richards in the International Herald Tribune.

The international failure and overseas origins have clouded the underlying truth, which is that Hick was a throwback, one of a perhaps dying breed. He has given 25 years of unstinting, exemplary service to a single club, Worcestershire, playing on long after international ambitions had departed, for the sheer enjoyment of the game and because he is still an asset - averaging 46 runs per innings this season. It will not be only Worcestershire fans who wish him well in retirement.

	Mark Boucher must pass the ball ... err gloves ... to AB de Villiers © Getty Images

Barend Prins looks at the 4-0 loss in the ODIs to England as a blessing in disguise for South Africa. While highlighting the exodus of potential international players via the Kolpak route, Prins gives a suggestion on iafrica.com:

If I were part of SA's ODI selection committee, one head that would roll is that of long-time wicketkeeper Mark Boucher. Not that he has done any worse than many of the other senior players (or for that matter any of the other players), but now just seems the perfect opportunity to hand the gloves — in the ODI side at first — to AB de Villiers. In an ideal world, De Villiers would give the Proteas something similar to what the dominant Aussies had in Adam Gilchrist — a genuine batsman behind the stumps, effectively opening up the side to play an extra bowler or batsman, depending on the make-up of the rest of the team.

On News24.com, Rob Houwing predicts a bumpy ride ahead for South Africa's ODI side.

	Don Bradman: More English than the English? © Getty Images

In the August edition of the the Monthly, an Australian magazine, Gideon Haigh takes an in-depth look at the career of Don Bradman. Some of the issues the essay investigates are Bradman's early cricket in Bowral, how his attitudes "faithfully reflect the deeply English roots of Australia's sporting culture", his skirmishes with the Australian board, his views on Bodyline, and his anxiety about his financial security.

Still the most compelling aspect of the legend is The Average. One hundred is not the maximum possible arithmetic mean score in cricket, but 99.94, with its tincture of human fallibility, its hint of Oulipian constraint, could not have been more exquisitely contrived. To a generation addicted to measurement and saturated in numbers, The Average is monolithic, unassailable, totemic.

Yet by The Average, it would seem, are we largely to know him. There is a certain comfort in calling Bradman great and leaving it at that; there is a certain contrarian glee, too, in deeming him an old dead guy, especially given his unwitting implication in the Howard ascendancy, and the unevolving bien-pensant snobbery about sport. If only he'd been less popular, one is left to conclude, Bradman might have occasioned deeper interest.

Ian Bell is probably the England player who receives the most criticism but behind most of the criticism lies respect for, and frustration with, an abundant natural talent, writes Rob Smyth in his blog on the Wisden Cricketer website.

Not since David Gower has an Englishman so gifted proved so exasperating. Bell will never elicit quite the same level of trust as more mundane, blue-collar batsmen like Paul Collingwood, because the nature of his talent is so unusual to us and more difficult to comprehend, but that does not mean his underachievement is relished. Quite the opposite. It is simply that many feel he does not have the will to go with his grace.

Marcus Trescothick's Murray Mints revelations ensured that Australians can still indulge in the atavistic pleasure of sledging the Poms, writes Gideon Haigh in the Guardian.

Rupert Murdoch's Australian, which can always be relied on for sober and dispassionate coverage of cricket issues, laid it out with typical restraint: "The secret behind the devastating swing bowling that took England to its historic 2005 Ashes win has been revealed. They cheated." What a relief for the country to be confirmed in its most deeply embedded prejudices - that any English ascendancy, however brief, must be an outcome of trickery or luck.

You might imagine that a grown-up relationship between England and Australia would result in less puerile point-scoring; but it's precisely because the relationship is so mature that it permits such harmless silliness. In fact, in this era of instant umbrage, it seems an almost unseemly luxury to be able to diss any country, and an act of delicious fun to give it back.

In the same paper Mike Selvey writes that Pietersen and the new England ODI side's real test will come in India:

Here, on sluggish pitches, it is the spinners rather than wrecking balls such as Flintoff and Harmison who boss the middle overs, while the capacity of seamers to take the pace from the ball is also crucial ... Ultimately, success, particularly in one-day cricket, will come in the development of a squad capable of adapting to all conditions and circumstances. One size does not fit all.

	This photograph may have won an ICC Global Development award, but does it qualify as an achievement for Chinese cricket? © ICC

China bends its knee to no one where individual pursuits such as diving, weightlifting and shooting are concerned, but it has not yet got the team thing. The Asian Cricket Council's website indicates where the mission to inculcate “shen shi yun dong” (“the noble game”) into the hearts and minds of the Chinese stands: against a population of 1,321,851,888, it lists zero turf pitches, zero cricket clubs, four cricket grounds and a blank next to the name of the national captain.

There are 153 coaches who have a “Level 1” certificate, which allows them “to assist more qualified coaches developing aspects of coaching under direct supervision”, but there is no information on how many better-qualified coaches there are to supervise them. Still it is good to know, under “recent achievements”, that China won the Global Development awards photo of the year in 2005, a sweet, staged picture of three Chinese children playing soft-ball cricket on the Great Wall of China.

	Andrew Symonds' experience in an Adelaide courtroom was not a fulfilling one © Getty Images

Alex Brown, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, goes back to January to find the start of Andrew Symonds’ problems, which culminated in him being sent home from Australia’s one-day series in Darwin.

To this day, Symonds has not forgiven Cricket Australia for what transpired in an Adelaide federal courtroom eight months ago. It was there that Symonds and three team-mates were convinced by CA to downgrade a charge of racial abuse against Harbhajan Singh to one of mere verbal abuse - a ploy the Australian players were advised would help ensure a lengthy suspension after the Monkeygate scandal, but one which eventually resulted in Harbhajan escaping sanction altogether.

Harbahjan's reprieve infuriated Symonds, who felt abandoned by administrators he felt were more interested in kow-towing to the influential Indian board than protecting their own. Sources within the Australian team say Symonds has refused all of CA's subsequent attempts to appease him, and the lingering resentment has fuelled his deteriorating attitude to work.

What should Symonds do? The Courier-Mail asks six experts, starting with the former Australia coach John Buchanan.

The winner of a competition to go fishing with Symonds in Darwin will still get the prize, according to AAP’s Adam Cooper.

Ajantha Mendis, the latest spin phenomenon gripping the cricketing world, in an interview to Faisal Shariff of Cricketnirvana.com confesses the toughest Indian batsman he bowled to during the recently-concluded Sri Lanka v India series, was Virender Sehwag.

There was not much of a difference in bowling to most of the Indian batsmen. Their style was similar. But Virender Sehwag was the toughest to bowl to without doubt.

	Graeme Hick: the great enigma © Getty Images

For more than two decades now, Graeme Hick has tormented county attacks all across England. On his retirement, the tributes are led by the Independent's Angus Fraser and the Telegraph's Derek Pringle, two bowlers who have first-hand experience of Hick's batting expertise. And in the Guardian, David Foot recalls one of Hick's totemic innings - the unbeaten 405 in 1988 - and wonders how Hick turned out to be a relative failure on the international stage.

Those of us privileged to watch him in his best years have marvelled at the risible ease with which he has played the game. At country level, he has made so many contemporaries look ordinary. His bat was broader than anyone else's. Nothing seemed to get past it. There was always a respect for orthodoxy; with an hypnotic efficiency he took on the bowlers in rotation. The strokes were always clean. For a big man, he was imposing rather than handsome in execution.

George Dobell writes in the Birmingham Post:

His reputation is impeccable; his record immaculate. He has been a credit to his family, his club and his sport. No cricketer can achieve more.

The Indian Express' Devendra Pandey catches up with Amit Mishra, the legspinner who is trying to gain an entry into India's Test side.

These days, hope is once again visible in his eyes as he gets ready to face Australia A in a three-day match starting on Wednesday. That’s why he can afford to joke about his perennial presence outside the door of the Indian dressing room. “I’m a veteran in the India A side now,” says the 25-year-old with a grin. Mishra’s mood symbolises the atmosphere at the India A practice session. This is the time of wishful thinking for the anxious fringe players of Indian cricket. “I have a gut feeling that if I perform against Australia A, I’ll have a chance to be in the Test team,” Mishra says.

	Shaun Tait says there is nothing wrong with taking a break © Getty Images

Shaun Tait went fishing to recover from his mental and physical exhaustion and he tells Malcolm Conn in the Australian he expects Andrew Symonds to do the same. Symonds is deciding what to do with his future after being sent home from Australia’s series with Bangladesh for wetting a line instead of attending a team meeting.

While their circumstances are different, Tait can relate to the pressure and stresses of international cricket which forced him to walk away from the game in January physically and mentally exhausted. "Symo has played a hell of a lot of cricket over the last few years and he's often played with injuries," Tait said.

"He's got a massive profile in Australia, which obviously puts him under a fair bit of pressure and last summer he copped a fair bit of flak, so it's probably put him off a bit. I'm sure he'll be right. Maybe a couple of months off will be exactly what he needs.

"If you're in that bad a place mentally and with your cricket, there's nothing wrong with having a bit of a break if you're seriously not with it. I'm sure there are enough players around to fill spots.”

David Hussey says he’s “a very dull, private person”. But he tells the Sydney Morning Herald’s Jamie Pandaram of his exciting aim.

Three games into his international one-day career, Hussey is already thinking three steps ahead towards a baggy green cap and is motivated by the perception he lacks the temperament for the longer form of the game. "Nothing is going to stop me playing Test cricket, and it doesn't matter what anybody says.”

No sooner had Mushtaq Ahmed announced his retirement from English cricket last week than the tributes poured like vintage hock. "Mushtaq Ahmed, the finest Sussex player ever" it was said, followed by another toast to "the finest of all overseas players". Michael Henderson, in the Guardian, too lauds Mushie for his feats but disagrees that he was finest ever. After sifting through a list of county legends, he lists five of his best.

Procter is one of the five men I submit for consideration. He gets in because English spectators saw him at his best over a decade, and best in his case means being one of the most supremely gifted - and watchable - all-round cricketers the world has known.

In the same paper, Paul Collingwood talks of the circumstances which led him quitting the captaincy and how the decision has changed his life.

"You're always being judged as captain and as hard as you try not to read or listen to what people say, it eventually gets back to you. I tried to laugh everything off but it seeps through and hurts. But that is what being captain of the England cricket team is about. Along with being manager of the England football team it is the most scrutinised job a sportsman in this country can have."

In his column for cricketnirvana.com, South Africa's coach Mickey Arthur gushes at India's success in the one-dayers in Sri Lanka and believes the strategy of having separate Test and ODI squads has put them on the right track to the 2011 World Cup. Her also dwells on England's rise, the problems with his own one-day team, and dispels the myth that his players chickened out of touring Pakistan.

Like all sportsmen we don't believe it is worth endangering our lives in order to compete but we are not qualified to make judgements on security issues which is why we leave that to the experts. Personally I feel extremely sorry for Pakistan's fans and cricketers that they will now miss out on seeing the best cricketers in the world.

In his column for the Hindu, Makarand Waingankar questions the Maharashtra Cricket Association's move to draft in two foreign players, who are not even regulars for their respective countries, at the expense of local players who are bound to get demoralised by this. On the issue of player earnings, he says the IPL riches only count for an elite few in India and it's high time corporates in cities other than Chennai, start employing cricketers.

The least the BCCI could do is have an inter-corporate tournament at the state level so that not only will employment opportunities for cricketers be generated, but also state associations will be prevented from ruining the cricketers’ careers.

	Andrew Symonds is "angry and hurt" © Getty Images

In a wide-ranging article on player behaviour in sport, the Daily Telegraph's Tom Smithies looks at Andrew Symonds’ attitude following his fishing trip in Darwin.

You also have to laugh when someone such as Symonds, having broken his team's rules, then asks the world to "respect my privacy" as he contemplates walking away from the preposterous earnings and opportunities that elite sportsmen are granted. Teams require their members to respect each other, if no one else, and if you don't play by house rules then disharmony is sewn faster than onion weed.

In the Symonds case consider the words of Michael Clarke, vice-captain of the Australian team and for rather longer a close friend to the all-rounder. Their history counted for little when Clarke questioned Symonds' attitude and his commitment and spoke of things that Symonds wasn't fulfilling. A lack, in short, of respect.

The Australian’s Malcolm Conn says the decision to send Symonds home probably saved the allrounder from himself. Conn also talks about Symonds’ “moody side”.

Having travelled to all of cricket's most difficult and dangerous locations over the past two decades I have only felt physically threatened twice. One was when a guard outside the palatial residence of Zimbabwe dictator Robert Mugabe, which is across the road from the cricket ground in Harare, held me up at bayonet point while two army officers interrogated me for 20 minutes. The other was when Symonds saw me in a bar during the 2004 Sri Lanka tour and shaped up before team security grabbed him and moved him on.

Jamie Pandaram, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, reports Symonds is considering quitting and is "angry, hurt and embarrassed".

In the India-based Daily News and Analysis, Stephen Gray the co-author of Roy: Going For Broke, tells Vijay Tagore of Symonds' passion for fishing, a childhood hobby.

“I’ve no doubt how he would spend his superannuation. He will have a house near the sea and will buy a good fishing boat. He will also go swimming and farming but fishing will be his primary activity after he has done away with cricket.”

Michael Hussey, the man with the second best sustained average in Test history, underwent a critical assessment of his batting in the off-season so his time at the crease wasn’t such a “battle”. Adam Cooper, from AAP, talks to Hussey about the changes in technique.

"To be honest I feel like my batting's been a real battle for two years," he said. "I've just been sort of hanging in there and grinding away and it feels like every innings has been a real vigil and it didn't feel like I could play a lot of shots with a lot of power or conviction."

"Kevin Pietersen is a great England cricket captain." That bold statement comes courtesy of Simon Barnes in The Times, and doubtless others, but Pietersen's golden start to his tenure is owed to one man.

Freddie's back. And when you have Andrew Flintoff at the top of his game, you tend to look good if you are standing anywhere within shouting distance.

Time and again Flintoff has been the difference between England and the opposition. Others have played well, but they cluster around him, they draw inspiration from him, he is their rallying point, their mascot and their go-to guy. As a result of his resurgence, the most remarkable thing has happened - England are giving a fair impersonation of a crash-hot one-day team.

	Tom Graveney on the attack against the West Indies in 1966 © Getty Images

Members of the 100-hundreds club are to be honoured in London on Monday. In the Independent, Tom Graveney, the oldest member of that exclusive group, recalls his dangerous hooking instincts, a never-to-be-repeated stint as England wicketkeeper and how he was almost sent home from West Indies.

"South Africa at Old Trafford in 1955," he recalls. "I scored nought and one, and caught three and dropped four at first slip. So when Godfrey Evans broke his finger in two places, Peter May said, 'You might as well keep wicket'. And the first ball I caught, down the leg side off Frank Tyson, that's what happened." Chuckling, Graveney shows me the little finger on his left hand, which he can bend back almost to the horizontal. "Can you see? The middle knuckle doesn't operate any more."

Over in the Telegraph, Bill Frindall pays tribute to the 25 men who have reached the landmark, and dubs Don Bradman the Usain Bolt of the group.

Marcus Trescothick has given an in-depth interview to the BBC's Jonathan Agnew where he talks on everything from his struggles with the long-term illness, to the Indian Premier League and Kevin Pietersen's captaincy. And after the furore over the use of Murray Mints, he says it isn't proven that they help the ball swing more.

Derek Pringle deplores the decision to strip university matches of first-class status from the next season. He fears bright cricketers will henceforth almost surely choose college over county club. He argues in the Telegraph that the contribution of the universities to cricket is being under-estimated:

Nasser Hussain, John Crawley, Ed Smith, Jason Gallian, James Dalrymple, Andrew Strauss, James Foster, Jeremy Snape, Alex Loudon and Monty Panesar all played for their country after benefiting from a university education on and off the field. How many counties can claim as many England cricketers in the last 20 years? Not many.

In Part 2 of Ehsan Mani's observations on Pakistan cricket in Dawn, he talks about the security situation in Pakistan and feels the PCB should have anticipated a mass pull-out from the Champions Trophy and swapped the tournament for the 2010 or 2012 ICC tournaments. However, he strongly feels it's a misconception that Pakistan is largely unsafe to tour. On the functioning of the PCB, he says it's important all cricketing matters be handled by former players, and that it isn't always necessary to appoint a former national player as the chairman.

While I was President of the ICC, before an ICC Board meeting in Lahore in 2004, I took a number of directors including the then Chairmen of the Boards from Australia, West Indies, South Africa and Zimbabwe to Gilgit and Hunza. We drove up the KKH and flew back. It was an eye opener for them. It showed them a Pakistan very different from the perception they had. To this day they all consider it the highlight of their cricketing travels anywhere in the world. Each one of them would come back to Pakistan at the first opportunity.

For Part 1, click here.