V Ramnarayan writes in his blog Stumped a lovely story involving Vijay Manjrekar, Raj Singh Dungarpur and Pataudi's stage-managed dacoity.

... Palace servants disguised as dacoits came rushing to where the young Karnataka players Viswanath and Chandrasekhar were in the woods after a gunshot was heard and announced that Prasanna had been killed. The youngsters burst into tears, believing the yarn). According to Durrani, Vijay Manjrekar, retired from Test cricket, and an officer in Air India then, handed over his watch to one of the "dacoits" and told him that was all he possessed. “Please let me go, I'm ...

	Matthew Hayden sought command without trying to take command © Getty Images

The Australian batsmen were determined to undo their previous performance at Mohali and cast aside the excesses to get back the tempo they had been missing in the earlier matches on the third day in Delhi. Peter Roebuck in the Age doffs his hat to the way they applied their best games.

Batting itself is a constant examination, and Hayden has nothing to prove. He could retire tomorrow safe in the knowledge that he has given outstanding service. History is likely to regard him as among the most imposing opening batsmen to represent the wide brown land. But he is not ready to be put to pasture; he reckons that at 37, a late starter such as him has a few more campaigns left in him.

While Hayden has found some form, Australia's fast bowlers are still looking for reverse swing. On the Cricket Australia website, the bowling coach Troy Cooley explains the art.

Lured by a $20 million cash jackpot, the men who control English cricket may be inadvertently selling more than their sporting skills, writes Stephen Brenkley in the Independent.

It may be that the issue will settle down and there should, for once, be slight sympathy for the ECB. They played their hand ineptly but it was probably a hand they had to play. When Sir Allen came calling they worked out that if England did not take the money, someone else would. Sir Allen might have said jolly nice things about the ECB, but so long as he could lure an international side he was probably not worried who they were. The details were hammered out quickly – and much made of the need to help West Indies cricket.

But there have been no clinics for children this week, no coaching, no help, merely a circus. The players may or may not become rich, but cricket is much the poorer.

This week, cricket has again been reduced to its essence: money. The patron this time, though, is a Texan billionaire financier called Allen Stanford and his pawns are the teams of England, Trinidad and Tobago, Middlesex, and Stanford’s own invitational XI, the Stanford Superstars, writes Mike Atherton in the Times.

In itself, a money-match is not a problem. Once Kerry Packer had, in the late 1970s, persuaded the greatest players of the day to side with his breakaway league rather than the traditional system, world cricket has been a professional game. “We’re all whores,” sneered Packer at the administrators of the time. “What’s your price?” The price he found, and as Mr Stanford found when he started to negotiate with English cricket this year, is a relatively cheap one. Those approaching this week with honesty – an honesty that has been decidedly thin on the ground – realised that the only meaningful thing of the whole week was the destination of the cheque.

The trouble with this Stanford game is that some people are getting confused and thinking that because the England players are all involved, it is like any other England match, writes Geoffrey Boycott in the Telegraph.

I say that we should see it for what it is: an exercise in making a fast buck and appeasing players who have missed out on the Indian Premier League. Don't be too surprised by the vulgarity of the whole thing, or the inadequate facilities they are playing in. Just let them get on with it, and then we can all start tuning in again when the serious stuff starts in India.I don't blame the players at all for taking up the opportunity to make $1,000,000 a man. Good luck to them.

That ECB officials and England players did not expect the event to raise such reaction smacks of extreme naivety, writes Angus Fraser in the Independent. The ECB may have underestimated the size of Stanford's ego and his behaviour – cuddling up to a couple of England WAGs and walking into the England dressing room at will – may have been less than exemplary but he is not the main reason why so much criticism has been aired. No, the real reason why most people are unimpressed with the event is because Saturday's match flies in the face of what sport is all about. National teams should not be for hire either.

VVS Laxman and Gautam Gambhir scored double-centuries for India on day two of the third Test against Australia in Delhi. Harsha Bhogle writes on the two batsmen:

In the Indian Express Of Laxman he writes that there is something deeply satisfying about a man who doesn’t thump his own chest, doesn’t give the two fingers to the opposition, is in the news for the right reasons and doesn’t know what a brawl means.

In the Times of India Bhogle says Gambhir played according to the situation.

When the situation warranted solidity, Gambhir offered it, when Tendulkar was looking good, he provided security and after tea he burst forth with strokes of great pedigree, more than doubling his score. And as the first day drew to a close, he played for the morrow showing what a good team man he is; the opening batsman was ready to take the new ball for his team on Day 2.

On sport24.co.za, Rob Houwing says he hopes Bangladesh's two-Test tour of South Africa will be their last series.

In 55 Test matches since their introduction to the arena in 2000, Bangladesh have won precisely one of them, a 2005 match against a Zimbabwe team already well on the slippery slope to turmoil and virtual ruin, in line with the nation itself.

Unlike Sri Lanka who, by the ninth year of their Test existence in 1991, lost just one of their six matches against New Zealand, England and Pakistan – a compelling here-to-stay signal – Bangladesh have made no such strides. They may well have lurched backwards.

.......................

I think Bangladesh have got to go, at least from a five-day point of view, as the most feasible ICC “itinerary uncluttering” solution.

It’s regrettable, but necessary in the new world order.

Perhaps the way ahead for them is to spiritedly put all their eggs in 20- and 50-overs baskets, aiming to become a more credible force in these formats?

	© The Mirror

In the Times Michael Atherton cuts to the quick.

With developments this week suggesting that the contract is more about Stanford and his brand than any altruistic concerns about West Indies cricket, it is clear that the ECB has been, at best, naive and at worst outmanoeuvred again.

Briefings were given yesterday by officials from the governing body indicating how uneasy they have become at the sight of the England team being used as a prop for a rich man's ego.

Stephen Brenkley, writing in the Independent, was just as forthright.

The Stanford Twenty20 Super Series has been a public relations disaster. Whatever the complications of the deal and however apparently irresistible the money was, the tournament has become less and less desirable by the day.

From the moment that the ECB and Sir Allen unveiled a case filled with $20m in cash at Lord's last June to be paid for an exhibition match between England and the Stanford Superstars it has been plain that this event has been almost exclusively about the cash and the rich man supplying it.

Paul Newman in the Daily Mail quotes Michael Holding, a former Stanford ambassador: “Allen Stanford is just in it for himself, not West Indian cricket. Everyone will see.” Newman continues:

How could the English game's rulers be so naive in jumping into bed with an American billionaire and expect him to be the answer to their prayers as they find themselves increasingly isolated in a cricket world dominated by India?

This week was only ever going to be about Stanford and the huge amount of money he is throwing at the winners of Saturday's exhibition match between the England cricket team and a group of West Indian cricketers who go by the name of the Stanford Superstars, as everything here has to be prefixed with the name of the man who virtually rules this Caribbean island.

Dean Wilson in the Mirror ponders how the man himself will react to the opprobrium heading his way.

It is not the sort of response Stanford is used to and he will be either completely taken aback by the strength of feeling in the England camp or he will be fuming at the lack of kow-towing from his guests that his money usually affords him. But he should appreciate that a large part of the anger stems from his behaviour that has made a mockery of the game of cricket.

Andy Bull in his blog for the Guardian wonders if Stanford can recoup his investment.

Certainly the 20/20 for 20 has put him in a much better position to grow his business in the City. As for the money to be made directly from the match itself, the ceiling of the potential profits sits far lower than his expenditure on it all. As long as he is in partnership with the ECB rather than the BCCI, then it is going to stay that way. The huge money in cricket comes with a presence in India, not England.

As long as the project to convert Americans to cricket remains a pipedream and Stanford is in cahoots with the English, the tournament is never going to make the kinds of blockbuster sums associated with the future of Twenty20. He invited India, remember, to play this challenge match after they won the World Twenty20, but they turned him down.

Allen Stanford's millions are not a solution for English cricket - the solution lies in India and a deal which will make England's best players available to the IPL, writes Mihir Bose on BBC Sport. The ECB must come to terms with Indian cricket. If it does not, it will be in danger of getting bogged down in matches that may generate publicity and bring some money but will do nothing for its cricket in the long term.

Picture this. The biggest run machine of our age poised to take guard against one of the fastest bowlers the world's ever known. A contest between two teams that have gone toe-to-toe for the best part of a decade, in a rivalry that has seen everything from remarkable comebacks and hat-tricks to allegations of racism and boorishness. Pencil in, too, a partisan crowd packed to the rafters, baying for blood as the visitors' premier bowler sprints in off his Mercedes-smooth run-up.

The crowd roared and the Indian tricolour waved, but vast swathes of green, blue, red and orange seats were empty, shimmering brightly in the afternoon sun. If you needed a statement about Test cricket's health, you couldn't have got a more damning one. Only about 20,000 had braved the trek past the many security checks to get inside a stadium that now seats 45,000. Many might have been in bad shape after the Diwali revelries the night before, but in a city of millions you certainly expected better for a match-up that is now Test cricket's heavyweight clash.

	It was vintage Tendulkar at the Feroz Shah Kotla © Getty Images

Peter Roebuck in the Sydney Morning Herald says Sachin Tendulkar's hard work during practice showed on the first day of the third Test against Australia at the Feroz Shah Kotla in Delhi.

Before the Delhi Test, Sachin Tendulkar spent hours in the nets facing a shaved and taped tennis ball fired at him by the coach. Concerned about his technique against swinging and rising deliveries, and aware that the pitch was likely to be faster than forecast, he wanted to be prepared. To that end, he ironed out the kinks that had crept into his game. Twice he had lost his wicket to loose strokes and once to an outswinger. It was not good enough.

Tendulkar was majestic. Indeed, he has seldom batted better. Called to the crease after Rahul Dravid had indulged in an indiscretion that imperils his position, Tendulkar swiftly settled into his work. Immediately, it was obvious that his mind was alert and his feet were moving quickly into position. As usual, he broke his duck with a neat tuck to leg. Lots of players can improvise on the front foot but none are as creative as the Indian when stepping back. Several times he retreated, examined the ball and, finding nothing untoward, directed it into a gap. Often he was happy to take a single, a currency he has never undervalued. Now and then he pressed for more, once leaning back to guide the ball over the slips, a daring offering previously reserved for one-day matches. It was an astonishing stroke to play on the first morning of a vital Test, and a bad sign for the visitors.

At times you could have fooled yourself into thinking that it was the irrepressible teenager of Perth 1992 vintage batting, and not the 35-year-old veteran who was supposed to be on his last legs. Click here to read more on Tendulkar's innings.

As the media anger over the sight of Allen Stanford with Emily Prior perched on his knees dies down, there is also a growing tide of thinking that the whole 20/20 for 20 venture is looking increasingly tawdry.

There were more than a few raised eyebrows last June when Stanford’s helicopter landed at Lord’s and he was almost treated as a saviour by fawning ECB executives. The unveiling of US$20 million is hard currency inside the indoor school for many signalled that English cricket had sold out.

Now that the eight-day feast of Stanford’s cash-driven Twenty20 is underway, it has proved too rich for many of those watching it.

In today’s Daily Mail, Paul Newman wrote that “English cricket has clearly jumped into a very uncomfortable bed by so eagerly accepting Stanford's millions and now everyone involved with our game has to lie in it. The ECB may have made sure that their players become very wealthy this week but the price being paid is an expensive one. English cricket is selling its soul.”

According to Newman, those comments have registered with the players, one (unnamed) member of the England squad saying: “If that's what people back home are thinking then we can't get out of here quick enough.”

In the Times on Monday, Simon Barnes described the tournament as “pornography”. He added: “It is not, then, the pursuit of excellence. Nor is it the pursuit of money. Rather, it is the pursuit of squirming. It is a billionaire's malicious joke at the expense of people he never could be, even if he had a billion billion. He will make a group of richly gifted international athletes squirm and grovel before the altars of money.”

In the Sunday Times Simon Wilde also showed he is no fan. “What a vision it is: a toytown stadium, black bats, silver stumps, vulgar amounts of money and a contraction of the game’s skills into the time it takes to consume a jumbo burger, a tub of popcorn and a bucket of Pepsi. Bad taste, just another toxic asset the United States has given the world.”

Steve James in the Guardian would not disagree. “The match is a disgrace at almost every level, and not just because its Texas billionaire backer, Sir Allen Stanford, has spent the past week on a dollar-driven ego trip, parading around his private ground, hogging the limelight and cavorting with the England players' wives. 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. Who will drop a catch to cost his mates half a million quid?”

Perhaps more surprising, given the vast sums poured into the venture, are the facilities. The pitches have been slow and low, exactly what is not needed for high-scoring, big-hitting matches, and the low-level floodlights, necessary because of the proximity of the ground to the airport, has made catching a lottery, with some of the world’s best fielders left looking like club duffers.

“The cricketing reality is the pitch and outfield mean the games will be dull, dull, dull,” wrote John Ethridge in the Sun. “Certainly the loot available is inversely proportional to the quality of the product, although the ground is pretty.”

It is possible to find those still who are prepared to enthuse. Here’s Nasser Hussain on Emilygate. “It was pretty harmless, to be honest, and the wives must remember that their husbands are potentially earning a fortune by being here and they are in a lovely place having a lovely time in the sunshine. If the man who is putting up all the money wants to give them a quick cuddle for the cameras is that really a big problem?”

It should be remembered, however, that Hussain fronted the ECB/Stanford announcement at Lord’s last summer and is also covering the tournament for Sky … and the broadcasters have invested heavily in their coverage of the event.

Mike Procter's appointment as the South African chairman of selectors is a high-profile one, given his experience as a cricketer and a an ICC match referee. Zaahier Adams wonders if he will be able to understand the intricacies of the "transformation policy", one that caused controversy during Joubert Strydom's stint. Read on in Independent Online.

Procter was at the centre of a storm during the New Year Test in Sydney this year when he relied only on the evidence of three Australian players in finding Indian off-spinner Harbhajan Singh guilty of calling Andrew Symonds a "monkey". Why do I make reference to this? Because there is no doubt that similar pressures, especially related to transformation, are associated with the national convenor's post.

Asif Iqbal, in his column for the News has backed the PCB's decision to appoint Intikhab Alam as the coach of Pakistan but cautioned that his role needs to be specified clearly before he takes over. Given Alam's seniority, Iqbal feels Alam would be better off with a mentoring role with specialist coaches to assist him. He also wonders why the board didn't consider Mudassar Nazar.

It would also be pertinent to highlight the fact that Mudassar Nazar, a very experienced former Test player and still in the age zone for a traditional coaching assignment, has only recently been appointed as a coach by the ICC for its academy in Dubai. If he is good enough to be a coach for the ICC — as I am certain he is — should he not have been good enough as a coach for Pakistan? And going on from there, as a Pakistani, should not the PCB have made the first move to acquire his services?

English cricket has become Stanford's WAG, declares Mike Atherton in the Times.

WAG, of course, a term coined during the football World Cup finals in Germany in 2006, does not really stand for wife and girlfriend; it stands for someone who is noteworthy only for the movements and actions of someone else; someone who is unthinkingly and uncritically admiring. An appendage, in other words. And from the moment Stanford landed his helicopter at Lord's in June, trailing his cash, with the ECB's officials fawning all over him, English cricket has been reduced to WAG status.

	A sore toe puts Harbhajan in doubt for the third Test at the Feroz Shah Kotla in Delhi © AFP

Harbhajan Singh will be desperate to play in the third Test in Delhi. Nursing a sore toe, he may be hampered but will not want to miss the chance to lower the Australian colours, writes Peter Roebuck in the Age.

A dry pitch has been prepared, besides which the dreaded "Bhaji" is not scared of the Australians and never has been. After all he took 30 wickets against them in their first meeting in 2001. The sight of an Australian cricketer sparks something in him, a mixture of competitive fervour and national pride. He tells friends that he does not like the way the Australian team walks about like it's the best thing since buttered naan. Asked to name his favourite Australian players he mentions Steve Waugh and Glenn McGrath and then grinds to a halt. Adam Gilchrist is dismissed as a "sweet knife".

Writing in his blog Stumped, V Ramnarayan reflects on the unfulfilled talent of Saad Bin Jung, who as a 16-year old hit a fearless hundred against Malcolm Marshall and Vanburn Holder.

Part of the blame must lie with him, because he perhaps got carried away by all his early success and began to focus less on cricket than the trappings going with it. The administration too was perhaps unhelpful; and uncaring, and instead of nurturing an unusual talent, came down heavily on him when he did not toe the line. An extremely promising career got cut even before establishing itself.

Patrick Smith takes a dig at the Australians after their capitulation in Mohali. He believes Australia are in denial. Read his piece in the Australian.

Hayden, who has made 0, 13, 0, and 29, has said that he believes he has Zaheer Khan on the back foot. For the record the Australian opener has made 17 fewer runs than Zaheer...Hayden's diagnosis that Zaheer is on the point of a nervous breakdown is based on the bowler's abuse of him when the Australian was dismissed for 29 in the second innings of the second Test. Hayden apparently had brought Zaheer to this brink when he charged his first ball of the second innings. That the ball was mis-hit and looped dangerously close to mid-off was, it seems, a victory for Hayden and not the bowler.

Said Hayden: "Zaheer Khan has been put under pressure a lot by myself and Gilly (Adam Gilchrist) in all the tournaments we've played in one-dayers. I have also tried to emulate that when we've played Tests. I just feel he is vulnerable when he's like that."

Not only is it such graceless gibberish, it is also foolish.

At a time when Test cricket's fortunes are at a low ebb, with the threat from the various Twenty20 tournaments around the world, it is necessary for the two most attractive sides (Australia and India) in the world to play out close finishes and exciting sessions to help traditional fans retain their faith as well as to attract a new set which cannot look beyond a 20-over match, writes Suresh Menon on ESPNStar.

The current series, unfortunately, has been too much about failing individuals and not enough about the big picture. You don't need great players to play great cricket; perhaps the rival captains should have a chat before the third Test and work out how they can make their sport more attractive, where victory and defeat are merely by-products of five days of intense, hard-fought but appealing cricket. Test cricket is on trial, and if it fails to excite the public even in India, the spiritual home of the game, then the trial can go only one way.

The fortnight we are amid features an enormously important cricket match. At the risk of sounding oracular, we don't know which one, writes Gideon Haigh in the Guardian. It could be the Test that finished last week in Mohali, where not just the wheels but the axles, transmission and beverage holders fell off Australia. Or it could be the climax on Saturday of the Stanford Super Series, where every misfield will have an impact on the Antiguan balance of payments. It will not, however, be both.

So far, the response of administrators has been to recite cliches from long-ago commerce and business degrees. Cricket, they insist, is splendidly positioned, with all these interesting varieties, each appealing to a different demographic. Because, you see, transport companies that prospered a century ago spread their investment evenly between automobiles, landaus and velocipedes, while the airlines that did well 50 years ago maintained an interest in Montgolfier balloons and Bleriot monoplanes as well as jumbo jets. Well, now you put it that way ...

Other captains are used to making the most of limited resources. Now it is Ricky Ponting's turn. It is also his greatest test, writes Peter Roebuck in the Sydney Morning Herald.

The days of domination are over. That was the message out of the Mohali Test match. Not that Australia cannot win matches and even retain a high position in the rankings, but the era of crushing all and sundry has passed. Quite simply, the Australian bowling is not strong enough to run through proficient batting orders. Hereafter, it will be a struggle, with tight series, long Test matches and captains constantly under pressure. It is not an easy adjustment to make. The West Indies did not survive it. Inflated players continued strutting around long after the wins had dried up. Australia must not allow its cricket culture to weaken.

It says much about the state of Australian cricket that barely a year after the retirement of the greatest spinner in history, the nation is clamouring for an emergency call-up for a bowler who has spun out just a dozen batsmen at Test level, writes John Townsend in the Independent.

The refusal of Cricket Australia to consider selecting Symonds, referring to mysterious "medical and related issues", has polarised the country. Newspapers and talk radio have been filled to the hyperbolic brim with debate on the issue, with Tom Moody, the West Australian coach and recent Sri Lankan boss, speaking for many fans this week when he argued: "Australia must send an immediate SOS to Andrew Symonds if they want to pick their best team. India is the toughest place in world cricket to come from behind and when the Australian team is struggling for balance, form and cohesion, we simply can't afford to leave him out."

	James Anderson's length isn't suited to the pitch at the Stanford Cricket Ground © Getty Images

An odd pitch and the problem of team spirit may mean that England play the big match [for $20 million against Stanford Superstars] with an impractical side, writes Mike Selvey in the Guardian.

The pitch at the Stanford Cricket Ground (referred to by its proprietor as the SCG for goodness sake) is an odd one: from a good length it carried through to the keeper only sluggishly; for the spinners it offered sharp turn (enough for Pietersen himself to bowl his offbreaks commendably well to Middlesex's plethora of left- handers); and, most significantly, for the tall bowlers Stuart Broad and Flintoff it gave some quite heady bounce when the ball was banged into the middle ...

It gives a pointer for their next match, today against Trinidad and Tobago, which may well settle who will be included for the big-money showdown. These games, it seems, will demand the big pacemen to hit the middle of the pitch, which means Broad, Flintoff and Steve Harmison, but also spinners and those who can take the pace from the ball.

It is from this situation that emerges a potential conflict between the pragmatic selection of the best side to do the job on Saturday and loyalty to players, coupled with a fear of upsetting team unity. The most vulnerable player in this scenario is Anderson, pretty much an ever-present in England's one-day side.

The Stanford Cricket Ground is well manicured but the real soul of Antiguan cricket is hidden elsewhere, writes Stephen Brenkley in the Independent.

The dear old Antigua Recreation Ground was empty yesterday. Beneath the high ramshackle stands named after the country's legends, a football pitch was laid out with a makeshift dugout on the side.

Near the centre circle it was just possible to make out what was a batting crease, a place where Sir Vivian Richards, albeit briefly because he did not need much time, flayed the England attack and where Brian Lara resided for slightly longer, two days longer, to make the world record Test score, and where the West Indians chased down a monumental target to win.

Even with the world economy going bust 11 lucky cricketers have the chance to make a killing with just three hours work in Antigua on Saturday. Robert Craddock in the Australian daily, the Daily Telegraph, believes the match between the Stanford Superstars and Kevin Pietersen's English team will be a day where we glimpse what the game is about to become.

The pressure on the players will be huge ... would you like to be the man who dropped the catch that cost your buddies a house? The amount of money the players will earn has become such a focal point that the Times newspaper of London is cynically running The Pietersen index, a stock market-style reading which giving hourly updates of the size of the kitty depending on the fluctuations of the British pound.

That Indian pace should blast the Aussies off their pedestal seems to be sweet irony, writes Rohit Mahajan in Outlook. Assessing a few dismissals from the first two Tests and speaking to members of the Australian support staff as well as Peter Roebuck, the columnist, Mahajan notes that with hostile spells on unhelpful tracks, India's fast bowlers have initiated reverse swing when conventional movement was hard to come by in the first place.

A TV grab of the state of the balls after an equal number of overs bowled by both teams proved the Indians have the art of keeping the shine on one side of the ball, the Australians lack it. No wonder some Aussie batsmen looked like outdated spare parts on the crease. "We got the ball to swing, especially reverse-swing when it was nice and hard," Dhoni said. "We pitched it in the right areas, and the spinners also bowled well.

Matt Prior speaks to Brian Viner in the Independent on various topics - the move from South Africa to England, his mother's illness, the Stanford 20/20 for 20, the number of South-African born players in the England team, the jellybean incident ... and the infamous Porsche sledge.

"People who do know me know that if I muck up I hold my hand up and admit it," he [Prior] continues, "but I was being accused of stuff I hadn't even done. That Porsche comment ... why would I say that to Tendulkar? He's got aeroplanes.

"What happened was that we'd had a long day in the field the day before, and I said something about keeping our npower energy up, which was picked up by the stump mic, and because npower were the sponsors, there was a bottle of champagne in my kit bag the next day. Well, at the time Alastair Cook wanted a new TV, so next day he's at short leg going 'Bang & Olufsen, Bang & Olufsen, great televisions' and I think Porsche Carreras are great cars, so that's why I mentioned Porsche. It wasn't a sledge but that quote made me look such an average person. I don't mind if people think I'm an average cricketer, but I don't like to be thought an average person."

The three main cricket grounds in Antigua - Recreation Ground, the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium and the Stanford Cricket Ground - encapsulate the story of the sport on the island, writes Mike Atherton in the Times.

The Antigua Recreation Ground, the old Test ground in the middle of St John’s, a magnificent ramshackle affair that routinely staged the most atmospheric matches, has been bypassed. The ground that witnessed the emergence of Viv Richards and Curtly Ambrose, giants both, and played host to Brian Lara’s twin world-record Test scores, stands as a forlorn monument to an era of West Indies cricket that has passed. Its successor, the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium, is a utilitarian, concrete bowl, built for the ICC World Cup in 2007 in the middle of no man’s land and is inconvenient for the working masses. Between what West Indies cricket once was and what it has become, Stanford saw a chasm that represented an opportunity. As families watched the opening match on Saturday in comfort and in the knowledge that they were partaking in something vibrant, it was clear where the balance of power now lies.

Mike Selvey believes the rise and rise of Twenty20 is cricket's dot.com. He writes in the Guardian:

The world has gone mad for it, a lot of people are making a heap of money on its back in a short space of time and the traditional game as most people recognise it, if not necessarily adhere to, has been downgraded in the public mind. India are playing out a pivotal Test series against Australia but this week, like it or not, attention will be focused on a single game, lasting little more than three hours, of no consequence beyond the immense and unprecedented financial inducement it brings.

Read Selvey's thoughts on the England v Middlesex match here.

To Michael Vaughan, in the Telegraph, Twenty20 suits the West Indian or Caribbean type of player.

Their calypso way is the Twenty20 way: walk out with a bit of a strut, relax the shoulders, the odd kamikaze run between wickets, and hit the ball a long way, especially back-foot sixes over extra-cover. Obviously I remember Viv Richards and Richie Richardson, but also Carlisle Best and Gus Logie: no fear, no checked drives, and plenty of sixes over extra-cover.

In his new autobiography True Colours, Adam Gilchrist, publicly acknowledges the damage caused on the 2005 Ashes tour by a rift between the players' wives and girlfriends. Robert Craddock in the Courier-Mail thinks about how Australia might handle the return tour to England next year.

When the rift was detailed some time ago, Ricky Ponting described it as "absolute rubbish". It was a poor choice of words because it happened and he knew it. It is an issue Ponting must address before next year's Ashes tour or risk the tour becoming the same fractured fiasco it was in 2005.

Will Ponting prove a sensitive new-age captain who declares everyone is welcome all the time next year as was the case in England in 2005? Or will he adopt an Allan Border-style approach and declare an emerging team must have bonding time early in the tour and place wives and families off limits for a few weeks or more?

It is an issue that could make or break the tour. If Ponting goes the Border way he better put his flak jacket on. It is 19 years since Border banned wives from parts of the 1989 Ashes tour and at least one angry wife still chips him about the decision.

Malcolm Conn in the Australian looks at what Cricket Australia could do to encourage more participation from a wider group of cultural groups, including indigenous Australians. Conn speaks to Creagh O'Connor, the outgoing Cricket Australia chairman, who says he is disappointed with the progress being made in encouraging more indigenous players.

While some football codes, particularly the AFL, are heavily populated by indigenous players and those from post-war migrant families, cricket remains a defiantly Anglo game. Jason Gillespie, a descendant of the Kamilaroi people who once populated northern NSW, is the only Test player to publicly acknowledge his Aboriginal heritage, although Gillespie claims he is as much Greek as Aboriginal.

Neither the indigenous nor European migrant population has made any significant impact on Australian cricket. In an effort to spread its cultural base, Cricket Australia is taking indoor cricket under its ever burgeoning umbrella.

	© Getty Images

I won't be watching out of partisanship, loyalty or patriotism, or the pursuit of excellence. If I watch - and I feel no pressing need to - I will do so for reasons that are furtive and shaming. The spectacle may be briefly compelling, but it will soon lose its charm, leaving behind only a kind of embarrassment for the grotesque contortions of the participants. In short, pornography.

This is not, then, the pursuit of excellence. Nor is it the pursuit of money. Rather, it is the pursuit of squirming. It is a billionaire's malicious joke at the expense of people he never could be, even if he had a billion billion. He will make a group of richly gifted international athletes squirm and grovel before the altars of money.

England take on Middlesex in their first match of the Stanford Super Series on Sunday but the English dailies have mixed feelings about by the show in Antigua. In the Sunday Times, Simon Wilde calls it 'bad taste'.

.. a toytown stadium, black bats, silver stumps, vulgar amounts of money and a contraction of the game’s skills into the time it takes to consume a jumbo burger, a tub of popcorn and a bucket of Pepsi.

But in the Observer Andy Bull writes the Stanford match is much closer to the spirit of cricket than many people imagine.

English cricket was slow to accept that a player did not demean himself by making a living from sport. The great medium-pace bowler SF Barnes was left out by England between 1902 and 1907 because he preferred to earn money playing as a professional in the Lancashire League. Now it seems we are just as unhappy that a player's skills can earn him a quick million.

Nasser Hussain is fascinated by the tournament and wants to see how the England players react to the unique pressure that this winner-takes-all affair will create. He asks in the Daily Mail:

How will Ryan Sidebottom cope if he is bowling the last over with 15 needed? Will Pietersen be his usual confident self if he is at the crease with England needing 16 to win from the last six balls?

To Stephen Brenkley, writing in the Independent on Sunday, of all the short-form matches currently being organised, the Stanford Superstars v England is the most offensive.

It has no context as a propersporting competition, it is neither country versus country, club versus club or invitation XI versus invitation XI. It is a rococo hybrid.

The question, however, is this: why are they [world audiences] awaiting this one-match contest scheduled for a maximum of 40 overs with so much expectation, so much anxiety? writes Tony Becca in the Jamaica Gleaner. Is it because of the action, the brilliant play that is expected, or is it because of the huge prize money for a match lasting for three hours or so?

Cheteshwar Pujara made headlines by scoring back-to-back triple-centuries - 386 and 306 - in the CK Nayadu Under-22 tournament. Gautam Sheth interviewed him in DNA.

You have made big scores from a very young age… I started playing cricket at the age of 8. My father, an ex-Ranji player, has been my coach. So I got personal attention from the beginning. I have made the most of it, I guess.

Did the fact that your father also played cricket influence you?
Honestly, I was never sure if I wanted to be a cricketer. I was never forced to become one. But like most of the kids in our country, I was also in love with this game. Before I was 10, I made up my mind that I wanted to play cricket.

Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir are made for each other as openers and they complement each other well, writes Vijay Lokapally in the Hindu.

What makes them click? “Our trust,” says Sehwag. “Our understanding,” emphasises Gambhir. Gambhir adores Sehwag. “He is so helpful, so caring. He is a legend. Look at his achievements and look at his humility. He always gives more importance to what I do,” says Gambhir. “He is a tremendously talented cricketer. I have seen him grow and I know what he is capable of. I expect much, much more than what he has offered thus far,” Sehwag chips in.

Economies across the globe are not the only things going up in smoke; the stench of burning is coming from the world of cricket too, writes Bobilli Vijay Kumar in the Times of India.

The danger signs reverberated from Mohali a week ago even as India were thumping Australia. In a country that eats, drinks and burps cricket it was almost surreal to see empty stands through the Test match. Maybe it was just an aberration, a pre-Diwali quirk. But then Bangalore wasn’t bustling either; if Delhi and Nagpur don’t buoy the spirits, we can officially declare a crisis. If the crowds come back for the Champions League (there is no doubt they will for the Indian Premier League), we can all but kiss those whites goodbye.

Watching an international at most of our venues is a painful exercise. The average spectator must prepare himself for a day of torture, both mental and physical, and it is a wonder he keeps returning. Soon, fed up with the poor facilities and bad treatment, he might not. Perhaps that time is now - it was embarrassing to see the empty stands while Sachin Tendulkar went past what he considers the most significant world record of his career," writes Suresh Menon on Dreamcricket.

Shaun Tait is back playing for South Australia after a self-imposed seven-month absence from all forms of the game. In his most extensive interview since walking away from cricket in January, Tait speaks to the Advertiser's Richard Earle about his struggles with the grind of international cricket.

Six years ago the gangly youngster was "having fun" with his mates playing C grade for Sturt. Fast forward to January this year, and he was living every young boy's dream as an international cricketer. But it was fast becoming Tait's nightmare – he had started "hating it".

He was starting to dread approaching the familiar glass of Adelaide's new airport terminal. Opening the car door meant queuing for yet another ticket, another tour, another hotel room and another dose of loneliness. Tait never went looking for cricketing stardom. The game's marketing gurus and Cricket Australia – armed with a lucrative contract – pursued him.

Instead of excitement about the next cricketing adventure there was regret at leaving his mates. "I was going to the airport for another tour and saying that I just want to stay here, I don't want to go. I just wanted to stay with them," recalled Tait.

India is the real deal and Mohali was no fluke, says Darren Berry in the Sunday Age.

Sourav Ganguly has done well to claw his way back into the team after a bitter falling out under the Greg Chappell regime. Ganguly may not be popular in Australia, but he is treated like a prince in India, loved and respected by the masses. He has announced that this is his last series and I wouldn't be surprised if V. V. S Laxman is heading down the same path. Rahul Dravid and the master, Sachin Tendulkar, are rapidly approaching the end as well. India must stagger their departures to avoid a mass exodus.

The frightening thing for world cricket is that India has some super talent - with both bat and ball - waiting in the wings. Make no mistake, the Board of Control for Cricket in India is the most powerful body in world cricket and its introduction of the hugely successful Indian Premier League earlier this year was a masterstroke. Not only was it a monumental financial windfall but, even more importantly, it exposed and unearthed young talent, albeit in the Twenty20 version of the game.

	Ishant Sharma: Full speed ahead © Getty Images

Two more Tests will tell whether there is a new world order in cricket, but it is already beyond dispute that India possesses the most exciting young fast bowler in the world. He comes from a working class family in Delhi - and still lives in the modest neighbourhood where he grew up despite his sudden wealth - and a country that has broken the hearts of many a paceman with its flat, spin-friendly wickets.

To top it off, Ishant's got Jason Gillespie all jealous.

In the Indian Express, Sandeep Dwivedi traces trace the making of India’s new pace hope.

Several years ago, the cricketers of Ganga International School in Delhi couldn’t understand their coach Shravan Kumar’s obsession with a recently-drafted, tall, gawky pacer. As the whispering campaign against the erratic bowler with a no-ball problem and a stop-start run-up grew louder, Shravan would often get to hear, “Sir has picked him again!” But despite this small resistance, the coach would have an all-knowing smile as he threw the new ball to his pet without a hint of guilt.

Little did the Ganga International boys know that one day they would be flaunting their proximity to that unwanted member of their team. The beanpole-framed bowler has now made a mark in world cricket, and his early colleagues end up dropping his name to spice up stories about their modest initial cricketing days.

	The flock of spinners that were supposed to have been inspired by Shane Warne have found his example too tough to emulate © Getty Images

Ten years ago, when the Australian team was at its most dominant, it became fashionable for the rest of us to believe that the Australian way was the route to take for those who wanted a share of their hegemony, writes Ray White, the former UCB president, in the Witness.

The message the world received was that you had to be something special to make the Australian team, so rich was the country in its deep seam of talent. Yet this was not the story coming from the Aussies themselves. For some years, they have been warning that their cupboard, while not resembling Ma Hubbard’s, was running out of quality stock.

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The truth is that serious talent cannot be prescribed. It was Australia’s fortune that a huge crop of gifted cricketers came along at the same time, just as it did in the West Indies in the 1980s and in South Africa in the 1960s and ’70s. Such bounty is uncommon, but does seem to happen from time to time in countries where the flowering of talent is assisted, not hindered.

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It is always a mistake to assume that a great team is evidence of a structure that can perpetuate success. A good structure such as that in Australian cricket will, however, ensure that barren periods are relatively short. Those who have been waiting for years to beat them will have to make sure that they do not fluff the opportunity that is now so manifest. Unlike the West Indies, where structures are close to collapse, the Aussies will not hang around waiting for something to turn up.

	Gary Kirsten: now coaching in India © AFP

With former South African players taking up coaching roles overseas, Proteas fan Ryan Bubear finds it a bit tough to swallow. He writes on iafrica.com:

In the build-up to his first official series at the helm, ironically against the country of his birth, Kirsten revealed on his blog that he felt 'completely Indian'. After the Test series, which ended in a 1-1 draw, the man who still holds the record for the highest individual score for South Africa in one-day cricket, declared that he felt like his 'bloodline extended back for 100 years in India'. Ouch. For a South African fan, that's akin to swift kick in the groin.

A similar situation played itself out with Allan Donald during his spell as part-time bowling coach to England. To see the legendary Proteas fast bowler, a hero of my youth, grinning in an England tracksuit while trying to coax Steve Harmison back to something resembling form, was gut-wrenching.

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And while I understand Kirsten's decision and wish him well, the fan in me anxiously hopes that his success doesn't pierce the skin of South African cricket, leading to a violent haemorrhage of valuable coaching talent.

Duncan Fletcher, the former England coach, isn't a big fan of the winner-takes-all US$20 million Stanford shootout. Placing so much financial emphasis on what is essentially a one-off match could upset the balance between the three forms of the game, the high stakes involved could upset the morale in the dressing-room and stifle a player's flair and his ability to take risks. Read on in the Guardian.

For example, the Test team will contain some players who appear in Antigua and others who don't. How will a guy who's left out feel when the others start talking about the money they could make next November? The spirit of equality is one of the vital ingredients to a happy dressing room and this doesn't exactly feel equal to me. That crucial bond between players could come under threat.

There are other implications too. Even the four blokes who don't make the final XI stand to earn more for sitting around for three hours doing nothing than guys who are battling it out in the heat of a five-day Test.

In the same paper, Mikey Stafford gives a dummy's guide to the Stanford Super Series.

In the Daily Times, Nasser Hussain wonders if the likes of Andrew Strauss and Monty Panesar feel hard done by when the going gets tough in India if they are playing alongside players who have just boosted their bank accounts.

In the Independent, Stephen Brenkley says England have embarked on a "bizarre" venture and their players might be a trifle uncomfortable about the match and know that in cricketing terms it is meaningless. But the ECB, on the hand, have nothing to complain about.

So it would seem that this Twenny twenny for twenny match, despite its raison d'etre, is doing English and West Indies a world of good. Not so, actually. England, who like to think of themselves as both influential and powerful in cricket and indeed should be so, have been left behind since the announcement of the Stanford match.

Before his call-up to the Indian side, legspinner Amit Mishra, who took seven wickets on Test debut, faced a lot of disappointments and nearly gave up the game. He talks to the Hindustan Times' Varun Gupta about being rejected by the Delhi selectors and his move to Haryana.

Amit Mishra, who had taken wickets by the hatful in local and trial matches, not only did not make the shortlist, he was also told by Delhi selectors that he was surplus to requirements and did not have enough talent. Specific reasons weren’t given, except a point was made. It was suggested he “work on his weight if he wanted to play oonchi (top) cricket”... That Kotla day, he decided to pack his bags, leave the city of his birth and move to Haryana. And till that unexpected debut at the second India-Australia Test at Mohali, struggle was his glory, perseverance and indefatigability his allies, and shadows his home. Twice he came within a whisker of breaking down and quitting the game. And yet he couldn't, for as he said, he didn't know what he could do with those wrists and fingers other than tweak the ball. The last time he went into a depression was in 2005, when a shoulder injury curbed his potency.

In the Hindu WV Raman writes that though Mishra's emergence has provided relief, he must give way to Anil Kumble if the latter is fit for the next Test.

In the Age, Greg Baum offers a bleak assessment of cricket's future. In short, he says: "Test cricket is screwed".

Yesterday, it was Cricket Australia's turn to announce an IPL-style, "city-based, franchise-owned", involving New Zealand and South Africa. The players welcomed it. Two years ago, players' advocate Tim May condemned the ICC's expansion plan, warning of mass burn-out of players. But that was before the IPL and all its zeroes arrived. Now May thinks growth is good, even great.

Invariably, when asked how each new tournament will be fitted into the schedule, administrators reply that it is simply a matter of "finding a window", sophistry for "wherever". At the going rate, other than the scoreboard operators when India is batting in Delhi next week, the busiest man in cricket will be the ICC's glazier.

Where is it all going? At the ICC this week, to the usual place, committee. Future tours program? "Report back." Test championship? "Report back." Sri Lanka bails out of England? "A wink is as good as a nod …"

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The ICC has its head in the sand, which in Dubai is not so surprising. So does the players' body. Test cricket draws crowds only in Australia and England, and that is not enough. In television terms, one Test used to be worth four one-dayers. Now, two Tests are worth one one-dayer, hence England's skewed schedule in India. Test cricket is screwed.

	Can Ricky Ponting and his boys bounce back? © Getty Images

Apparently, Warren Buffett is buying equities. Whether the "Sage of Omaha" would be game enough to buy shares in this Australian side is anyone's guess, writes Peter Roebuck in the Sydney Morning Herald. However, the futures prospects of the Indian team don't seem as bleak, at least for the next Test in Delhi.

Everyone is going to fancy a piece of them. Trouncing the Aussies did not look that hard. Previously, it has taken towering performances to bring them down. England took three years to prepare for the 2005 Ashes and another three to recover. Even so, Glenn McGrath did not play in a losing side in that series India won in 2001 but Shane Warne was half-fit besides while Rahul Dravid and V.V.S. Laxman built a miraculous partnership, and some of the umpiring at Eden Gardens was dodgy.

Now the boot is on the other foot. Now the heavyweights are in the opposing camp. Virender Sehwag did not appear in any of the defeats in the recent series Down Under. Nor did his opening partner Gautam Gambhir. The conclusion is unavoidable. When both sides are a full strength, and all other things being equal, India have the edge. And, on the evidence seen in Mohali, not only India. Australia had nothing to grizzle about, not homemade pitches or dubious decisions or queasy stomachs or absentees. Ricky Ponting and his players were beaten fair and square, and by the length of the straight

How will the team's performance affect viewership figures in Australia? Philip Derriman finds out.

	Will Brett Lee be able the swing the SG ball like Zaheer Khan? © Getty Images

After Mohali, India is somewhat bewildered: is this the world’s No.1 team or some other bouncer-sized blokes wearing stolen headgear?, writes Sharda Ugra in India Today. Things have surely not gone according the type, she says.

Before a ball was bowled, it was Virender Sehwag, rather than any arriving Aussie, who forecast the result: “Either 3-1 or 3-0 to India.” Bangalore Man of the Match Zaheer Khan heckled the Aussies for not scoring quickly and being unable to take 20 wickets. In Mohali, Dhoni asked first slip Rahul Dravid to check out the scoreboard: Australia 22 off 13 overs.

At that moment, an on-field landing of Martians in a flying saucer would have caused less shock. In their four innings in India, Australia have scored their runs at 2.86, 3.12, 2.63 and 3.10 per over, this when their batting is the stronger and more experienced component of their team.

Usually meticulous planners, Australia appear surprised that the Indian SG Test ball acts differently from their familiar Kookaburra and does not do as they want it to, but turns into a stump-seeking missile in Indian hands.

In another article, the magazine says "Australia must do an India, must do what was done to them in 2001: return from the dead."

	Sunil Gavaskar, the first to 10,000, and Sachin Tendulkar, the first to 12,000 © AFP

Tendulkar: I am always happy and never satisfied; I would say my favorite innings would be in 1992 against Australia when I scored 100 in Perth and that is when I felt that, yes, now I am here to play cricket anywhere in the world, any bowling attack I am confident enough to tackle them.

Gavaskar: It was the innings of 57, the one at Old Trafford against England, I had never played on the green pitch, and it was a green pitch there was good seam bowling, there was a bit of a drizzle which was freshening the pitch and you couldn’t go off the field because of the drizzle, so I would imagine that was the best.

Harsha Bhogle, in the Indian Express, feels it's too premature to write Australia off on the basis of one heavy defeat. He writes that great teams like Australia tend to question their self belief, analyse themselves relentlessly, identify weaknesses and seek to plug them. The mindset of the new crop of players might just be different compared to those who made their debuts in 1999, at the start of Australia's dream run.

Should they lose the series there, a crop of inexperienced players, the future of Australian cricket, will be made aware of the fact that they o can lose. To an earlier generation, Brett Lee and Adam Gilchrist for example, the initiation years only saw victory. They grew quickly, learnt to win and kept the Aussie juggernaut going. Now if the Johnsons and Whites and Haddins begin their careers with defeat, their mindset will be different. It is there that Australia’s greatest challenge lies.

In the Hindu, Makarand Waingankar attributes India's victory to Mahendra Singh Dhoni's aggressive body language in the field, right from the time he spoke at the toss.

The strategy was clear; if you win the toss, bat for a minimum of five sessions and put the opposition under pressure. Verbal reassurance from the captain acts like a tonic to his players. Not sure what tactic Dhoni uses in the dressing room when he is the captain, one is inclined to believe that he certainly has definite roles for each player.

In the Australian, Ricky Ponting explains just what happened between him and Brett Lee in Mohali.

What Brett couldn't understand is that Mitchell Johnson and Peter Siddle had the chance to bowl before him. But by the time I wanted to bowl Brett, we were five overs behind on our over rate. If he were to come on and we went six or seven overs down then I could be suspended under the ICC playing conditions for slow over rates.

Once we had a chance to talk it through he was fine with it. He said to me at the lunch break, "I'm a bowler, I want to bowl, and you're a batsman, you want to bat". But there are other things I have to think about on the field as well. We talk about over rates at every team meeting. We get behind and I'm forced to bowl guys I sometimes don't want to bowl in the circumstances.

Malcolm Conn writes in the Australian that as much as Australia would like to have Shane Warne bowling for them in India, the team itself is more unified without him.

Ponting is gun-barrel straight, has a tremendous work ethic and desire for success he expects other to share, and has no political agendas. That's why he and Lee have no lingering issues in the way Warne used to take them into the dressing room and on to the field. When Taylor struggled during the 1996-97 summer Warne was the first to begin muttering "How's Tubby's form?"

There was almost a mutiny during the South African tour that followed when Ian Healy and Steve Waugh lined up for the one-day captaincy as Taylor's form slump continued. And Warne, miffed at missing out on the captaincy when Taylor retired, made no attempt to hide his disdain for Waugh during the difficult early stages of the 1999 World Cup.

Waugh had dropped Warne in the West Indies earlier that year because he had not fully recovered from a shoulder operation, and Warne never forgave him. "How's Tugga going," Warne would repeat on the field as Australia struggled at the start of the 1999 World Cup. "How's Tugga going." There is no mutiny in the current Australian side, just a lot of soul-searching after last Tuesday's thumping 320-run loss.

The India-Australia test series will be the last time fans will ever see the Fab Four on song together, and a farewell tour is best when so devastatingly beautiful, even in heartbreak. Raja Sen in his column on Rediff.com pays a Beatle-esque tribute.

Sourav Ganguly slots himself -- rather debatably, as always -- in as John Lennon. Clearly the narcissist of the bunch, he's responsible for tremendously offside lyrics and the uncanny ability to constantly surprise everyone involved.

	Zaheer Khan along with Ishant Sharma got the ball to reverse-swing as early as the eight over in Mohali © AFP

G.S.Vivek in the Indian Express believes it was the Indian fast bowlers’ ability to get the ball to reverse swing as early as the eighth over of the innings in Mohali that caught the Australians totally unawares.

On Wednesday, a day after the match ended, sources in the Indian team revealed that they had indeed managed to master a new brand of reverse swing in which, rather than waiting for the ball to scruff up naturally with passage of time and overs, the Indians managed to create that condition early. And all this, they stressed, was done perfectly within the rules of the game.

With Ishant Sharma and Zaheer Khan putting in stellar performances for India against Australia in the ongoing Test series, it seems India's reborn pace attack is benefitting from the legacy of the MRF Pace Foundation in Chennai. Dileep Premachandran in the Guardian talks about at how the Chennai rubber factory has given Indian pace its bounce as well as looking back at India's legendary fast men.

It just makes you wonder how much Srinath might have achieved if his career hadn't been such a stop-start one, if he'd played more than 67 Tests in 11 seasons. How might he have done with a John Wright or Gary Kirsten as coach, and in an environment where pace bowlers are cherished, rather than viewed as clods to take the shine off the new ball?

Jean-Paul Duminy is currently enjoying a rich vein of form, having struck two successive SuperSport Series centuries, and is a regular fixture in the South African one-day team. Life, however, has not always been this simple for the stylish left-hander finds out Zaahier Adams in an interview for the Independent Online.

There were always going to be doubts. It was one of the biggest challenges I faced, to see how I would come back after that disappointment. My confidence was shot. I didn't know if I was coming or going. I actually went back to the national academy the next year, where they asked me what I wanted to get out of my time at the academy. I said I just wanted to enjoy the game again.

India's crushing win against Australia in the second Test at Mohali has certainly spiced up issues related to both teams.

	The heat is on: Ricky Ponting © Getty Images

The last time Ponting was under sustained pressure as a captain was during the 2005 Ashes. A senior player on the tour confided that after the Edgbaston Test, the Australians had resigned to defeat -- hardly a ringing endorsement of Ponting’s ability to inspire, just as his tirade at Duncan Fletcher at Trent Bridge spoke volumes for his default position under stress. Lawrence Booth in his blog in the Wisden Cricketer says doubts have risen again over the Australian captain's man-management skills after the Australian media's treatment of Ponting’s run-in with Brett Lee at Mohali.

A captain is only as good as the bowlers at his disposal, which is a truth Ponting may only just be discovering. But a good captain will also make the most of his resources and by gifting India’s openers singles all round the ground on the third evening – a policy that allowed Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir to put on 100 in 23 overs before stumps – Ponting got it badly wrong.

On the other side, Prem Panicker in his blog believes that it is up to Anil Kumble to judge his match-fitness of his shoulder, confidence level, reading of the Kotla pitch and the selection strategies that need to be employed to keep India in front and, if possible, nail the series before heading into the final Test.

He will make that decision in the next few days, and in course of the Kotla Test, he will be proved right or wrong. But whatever the outcome of that trial—he could get you a ten for, or go wicketless, and either situation will provide grist for ‘I told you sos’—it is fair to suggest that his decision would have been taken in all honesty. He has never, in all these years, given you reason to think otherwise.

Every successful 'leggie' carries a sense of mystique around, and Amit Mishra, though still a novice is already showing the craft and charisma that could make him a star. Simon Briggs in the Telegraph is excited about Mishra's arrival on the international scene after his flying start in Mohali.

In a freewheeling interview with PakPassion, Sohail Tanvir talks about how he got selected to the Pakistan side, how tape-ball cricket helped hone his skills, the importance of a good captain, and also what makes him angry on the cricket field.

If I'm out there bowling my heart out and trying to force the batsman into a false stroke by drying up the runs, then why can't the fielder put as much effort into his job? When I'm bowling I count the runs I'm conceding after each delivery and in each over, I enjoy studying my analysis and I hate being hit around. Anytime that I end up conceding a lot of runs I'm furious with myself and I work even harder to make sure that it won't happen again.

	Leading from the front: Daniel Vettori © AFP

If the pressure of captaincy is telling on the 29-year-old it is not showing, says Adrian Seconi after Daniel Vettori's top-class all-round display in Chittagong. Seconi writes in the Otago Daily Times:

There is nothing quite like leading from the front and his decision to come in as nightwatchman when Jesse Ryder was dismissed shortly before the end of day four was inspired.

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It seems inevitable he will join Imran Khan, Ian Botham, Kapil Dev, Shaun Pollock, Shane Warne and Hadlee as the only players who have taken at least 300 wickets and scored at least 3000 runs.

Read more on Vettori's unique feat in the Chittagong Test.

	The role of Ricky Ponting and Michael Clarke as leaders will be tested © AFP

No need to sharpen the guillotine or write off any players just yet, writes Shane Warne after Australia's 320-run loss to India in Mohali. Experienced players will have to play a vital role during the break ahead of the third Test in Delhi, he says in the Daily Telegraph.

Mohali's gone, deal with it. Say well played and carry yourself well, hold your head high. But deep down use it as motivation and keep that hunger that's inside alive.

Be the man to drag the team along and in the right direction, be prepared for whatever the opposition throws at you, fight and never give up, don't be afraid and start thinking negatives and what ifs. No doubts, or you just start hoping that someone does something, you go into your shell and start looking after your own backside and forget the team.

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This is where experience and calm heads rise to the top, and Ponting and Clarke as leaders will become crucial, sitting around over a glass and chewing the fat with the team and coming up with some new plans. Talking tactics as a group is important.

	Graeme Smith and his men will fancy their chances against Australia later this year after Ponting and his men were crushed by India in Mohali © Getty Images

What happened to the Australians in Mohali wasn't quite a temporary blip. That once impregnable sense of invincibility had waned which has brought South Africa's tour of Australia later in the year into sharp focus. Alex Parker in the South-African daily, the Times, believes Graeme Smith and his men, if they can find the form and the fitness, will fancy their chances. And with a tougher Ashes assignment to follow, it may well be that the halo is slipping for the Australians.

But Australia, for the first time in as long as I can remember, actually looked weak. They looked like they didn’t know how to bowl on a nice flat batsman’s wicket. Suddenly you look at the Aussie bowling line-up and think that perhaps the aura has gone.

Rob Houwing in his column in Sport24.co.za echoes a similar sentiment and wonders whether South Africa should chortle?

With the South Africans gearing up for the challenges this summer, Siyabonga Ntshingila lines up 'The 2008 International Season Drinking Game' on his blog for Mail & Guardian Online.

Beer Sip

1. Andre Nel fails to subdue his alter-ego “Gunther” and hisses at a No11 batsman after being pasted to all corners of the field by the top order.
2. A commentator bemoans our lack of quality spinners.
...

Double Beer Sip

1. Graeme Smith fishes outside off-stump. Yes, this happens often enough to warrant demotion to the sip category above but surely the sight of the national captain displaying such poor juvenile flaws in his technique is enough to warrant more alcoholic relief?
2. Mode Zondeki makes an appearance in the team room NOT on crutches.

Sachin Tendulkar has been able to address us all, and yet engage individually with each of us and the most rewarding thing was watching his transformation from good to great. S. Ram Mahesh in the Sportstar narrates his own experience.

I had taken to Sachin Tendulkar rather early — immediately after his first Test innings in fact — and the appearance on the scene of a rival had filled my juvenile mind with insecurity, anger, and loathing. Strong emotions in one so young, but Kambli had proved an immense threat. Not only had he outscored Tendulkar, 346 to 329, at school, he had, in next to no time, lashed his way to two Test double-centuries while Tendulkar’s personal best stood at 165.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni may have done enough in his two Tests as captain to prove that he's the right man to take over the job full time, but the man he will have to thank for shaping the team is Anil Kumble, writes Anand Vasu in the Hindustan Times. If Dhoni's brand is synonymous with exuberance and youth, Kumble injected the team with steel, dignity and belief, the focal point being in Australia when allegations of racism flew almost as thick and fast as outside edges.

For once, the Indian captaincy is not a poisoned chalice, this time around, the question of succession has not raised controversy, conflict, challengers, even eyebrows. Other than the sheer joy of lording it over Australia, this Test should always be remembered for this: An Indian captain will not be staying longer than he was popular, and the successor will not have to wait any longer than necessary.

In the same paper, Kumble makes his observations on India's biggest victory in terms of runs. Forced to watch the game from the dressing room, he gushes at Amit Mishra's five-wicket haul on debut and earmarks him as one for the future.

He showed no nerves at all and was absolutely in control from ball one. He used his variations very nicely: The way he came around and bowled a wrong 'un at Clarke showed that he's a thinking cricketer. With an eye to the future, it also augurs well for India that we've found someone like Amit. An orthodox bowler, he spins the ball a lot, uses his flight very nicely and frankly, it was great watching him. I can tell you that this would have given him a lot of confidence. The first five-for I got told me that if I could get one, I could get more.

It'll be called many other things besides but New Zealand's hard-fought win in Chittagong will be remembered as Daniel Vettori's match, writes David Leggat in the New Zealand Herald.

He put himself in at No. 4 in the second innings shortly before stumps on the fourth day. Perhaps it was not so much to be the nightwatchman, more a case of wanting to show his batsmen how the job should be approached, and what he'd thought of their first innings effort. His was a conscientious, admirable five days' work. Forget that this was "only" Bangladesh. New Zealand came within a short distance of a hugely embarrassing first loss to them in seven matches.

Greg Baum writes in the Age that Australia have had a few false Waterloos over the years, but this one has a distinctly Napoleonic feel about it.

Now, the tour that resonates loudly is 1998. India won the first two Tests by massive margins, then lost the dead rubber. Sachin Tendulkar was in his pomp; he was virtually undismissable. Glenn McGrath did not tour, Steve Waugh injured himself, Warne took 10 wickets in three Tests, but at a high price; he was exhausted. Seamers Paul Wilson and Adam Dale, and off-spinner Gavin Robertson, all appeared for Australia, workaday cricketers who between them would play only two other Tests after this series. It was no contest.

Mike Selvey, writing in the Guardian, agrees with Baum, as does Andy Bull in the same paper, but Patrick Kidd, in his Line and Length blog in the Times, says the Mohali loss is more a blip than a terminal decline.

In the Age, Peter Hanlon makes some observations about the Mohali Test.

Australia was the best team in the world until all of those bloody Victorians got a game.

How come Zaheer Khan and Ishant Sharma get more movement off the pitch than our spinners - at 140 km/h?

Gee, that caught-behind the umpire turned down when India was 400 in front really hurt us.

On the BBC website, Nick Bryant says, "it's the manner of the defeat that has the Aussie cricket cognoscenti worried, because it laid bare the weaknesses and gaps in the once-feared team."

Robert Craddock in the Daily Telegraph suggests that Ricky Ponting desperately needs a meeting with Allan Border to work out a battle-plan for the cricketing recession Australia had to have.

Border is the man with the plan to handle it because he went through that and much more in the 1980s. Losing a Test is a big drama for Australia these days. Border had such a weak team in the 1980s they went three years without winning a series. He knows all about fast bowlers with confidence problems, players being rushed into sides before they are ready and players trying to live up to impossible expectations after the retirements of Greg Chappell, Dennis Lillee and Rod Marsh.

In the Courier-Mail, Craddock speaks to another former captain, Kim Hughes, about the challenges facing Ponting.

If there is one line of advice you would give Ponting what would it be?

They have an old saying in Madras ... to lose patience is to lose the battle. That's what he needs to remember. And that incidents like the one with Brett Lee might have been glossed over a few years ago when the team was going well. But they will be big headlines now that the tide has turned. And where once there was stability now there will be a steady flow of players in and out of the team. But I have a lot of confidence in Ponting. He will handle it.

It was not the defeat that was significant, but its manner. Australia have lost before but it's been a long time since they were so comprehensively taken apart. Throughout the fourth innings of a one-sided contest, Indian supporters waited for the feared fightback - but it never came," writes Peter Roebuck in the Sydney Morning Herald.

India might as well have been playing on a different pitch and with a different ball. It was not just the 342-run margin that told the tale. India lost 13 wickets, Australia lost 20. India's batsmen were mostly careless or caught in the deep. Their counterparts were bowled neck and crop, leg before or caught close at hand. Six visiting batsmen were bowled between bat and pad, a gap that is not supposed to exist. India played an aggressive game with cool heads. With Australia it was the reverse.

In his blog in the Australian, Jack the Insider provides a satirical review of India's resounding win over Australia in Mohali.

It’s hardly an even contest. The Australian XI is up against 1.3 billion Indians. Even counting Australia’s vast coaching staff, Ponting and the lads are heavily outnumbered. They have entered a world of doctored tracks, dodgy food and questionable tactics.
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Add to that the fact that the Indians have mastered the dark art of reverse swing. Ever see an Indian bowler with a decent manicure? It doesn’t happen. Most have fingernails like Ming the Merciless. Meanwhile, in the heavily manned slips cordon, the Indian catchers are chomping away on some local breath mint that turns their saliva into silicon.

How can this be said without being dismissed as mere wish fulfillment? How can some truths sound so implausible that they can seem like pieces of total fiction? But here it is all the same. The Australians are looking, how to say this… shabby, writes Sharda Ugra in India Today.

In Mohali, they began their pursuit of a target of 516 like bats out of hell, but their batting on this tour has been uncharacteristically circumspect. In the first three innings of this series they have scored at 2.86, 3.12 and 2.63 runs an over. Ten minutes after tea today in Mohali, they were 52 for 4. It took them half an hour to get to 58 and they lost another wicket on the way.

Ever since he announced his retirement, Sourav Ganguly has been elevated to greatness, but the fact is he gained by association, writes Suresh Menon in Tehelka magazine.

If Sachin Tendulkar had to be brought down a couple of notches to fit him into the so-called ‘Fab Four’ group, then Ganguly had to be pushed up a couple to settle alongside Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman. Ganguly was not a great player, but he was a significant one in the context of Indian cricket as its most successful Test captain. Great players are not necessarily significant, nor significant players necessarily great. Barry Richards is an example of the former while Arjuna Ranatunga is an obvious example of the latter.

	Ricky Ponting and Brett Lee weren't laughing on the fourth day in Mohali © AFP

Ricky Ponting gave all his other bowlers, even Michael Hussey, a spell before turning to Brett Lee on the fourth day in Mohali. Cameron White even got a second. Lee wasn't pleased and was seen exchanging words with his captain. Here's what the Australian papers had to say about it.

It was not until Hussey was introduced and White was summoned for a second spell that Lee cried enough. By chance his captain was fielding a few yards away and Lee took the chance to remind him that he was fit, eager and had in his time claimed a few scalps - more than the rest put together, as a matter of fact, writes Peter Roebuck in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Lee knew how much a raw attack depended on him. He had bowled badly in 2005 and Australia had lost the Ashes. But since Glenn McGrath's retirement he has given the team its cutting edge. Strong, fast and resourceful, he had taken numerous wickets and commanded universal respect. Alas, his bowling had deserted him in India. He had bowled without conviction, plan or accuracy. Everything was broken, it seemed, except his cricketing heart. And now that was under strain ...

... Ponting made one mistake, a fact he must have recognised the instant Lee's grizzles reached his ears. He had not put an arm around his struggling strike force to explain his thoughts. It was an understandable oversight. A captain arrives at a ground with 50 matters on his mind. Something is liable to get missed.

Showing a very public lack of faith in his struggling spearhead, Ponting refused to bowl Lee during the morning session on the fourth day, prompting a prolonged protest from the fast bowler and an animated response from his captain, writes Malcolm Conn in the Australian.

When White claimed the wicket of Gambhir caught at mid-off, Ponting tried to talk to Lee in the team huddle that gathered around catcher Hussey. But Lee kept walking away from Ponting in scenes reminiscent of the clash between then captain Allan Border and his fast bowler Craig McDermott during a county match on the 1993 Ashes tour. On that occasion Border yelled after his paceman: “Don’t walk away from me or you’ll be on the next plane home.”

Jon Pierik gives his take on the incident in the Herald Sun, where he writes that Ponting's emotions spill over a little too often.

For long the most startling thing about Sachin Tendulkar’s iridescent career was its inevitability, write the editors at the Hindu.

In England last year, Tendulkar seemed to have reconciled himself to the inevitable slowing down and dimming of his prodigious physical talent. He reinvented himself, subjugating his ego, taking blows on the body, and eking out runs. But just as the experts proclaimed that the newer version of Tendulkar, while less striking, was only marginally less effective, the master did what great champions do. He challenged popular perception by reprising in Australia the brilliant, spontaneous style of his early years. It is fitting that he achieved the honour of becoming Test cricket’s highest run-scorer — Tendulkar went past Brian Lara’s aggregate of 11,953 runs — while playing against Australia, a country where he is revered as the greatest batsman since Sir Donald Bradman.

	Will Amit Mishra have to make way for a fit Anil Kumble? © AFP

Amit Mishra has taken a five-for on his debut and will have another go at Australia in less than 24 hours. Should there be another bagful of wickets and a 1-0 lead to India, anticipate an almighty uproar, writes Sharda Ugra in India Today.

Do you bench the man who had given Ricky Ponting’s New Age XI the most trouble - and had wickets to show for it – to have the captain step in? Or do you drop a batsman, play five bowlers, including the three slow men?

Given the tenor of his newspaper column after Bangalore, it is evident Kumble and the senior Indians feel somewhat hounded and when this debate begins it will become all the rage to ask for his head and slap down his recent statistics. But do not forget that Firozshah Kotla and Kumble are kindred spirits: he has taken 55 wickets at the ground at 15.42 and won three of his ten Man-of-the-Match awards near the tombs of some medieval Delhi sultans. All admittedly on a far stronger shoulder, but Kumble is India’s biggest match-winner because of other sturdier allies than just a 38-year-old rotator cuff.

Cricket offers fewer keener delights than the sight of two beguiling spinners pitting their wits against a battle-hardened batting order. To watch them teasing and taunting, tossing and dropping, mixing up their deliveries, baffling, bamboozling and bowling batsmen through the gate is to see cricket at its best. On the evidence of this match, Australia are going to have a long wait before they perform such feats, writes Peter Roebuck in the Sydney Morning Herald.

The 25-year-old [Amit Mishra] took his first wicket with a classical leg-break that penetrated Simon Katich's stretched defence. His comrades embraced their roly-poly friend with unfeigned affection. In the last over before stumps, he struck with a perfectly pitched googly delivered from around the wicket. It was reward for decades of perseverance. Mishra struck a third time on the third day, castling Cameron White with a slower googly that eluded an optimistic drive. It was another beautifully conceived ball. Kumble might be hard pressed to reclaim his place. Thereafter Mishra toiled in vain. His diminutive stature is a mixed blessing, helping him beat batsmen in the air but denying him bounce.

When a callow teenager wields the willow like a mature batsman, people sit up and watch. This is exactly what happened when Sachin Tendulkar first put bat to ball in a Test match. Click here to read the editorial on Tendulkar in the Telegraph.

There are no solecisms in his [Tendulkar's] batting. The head is held still. The bat comes down straight. When playing forward, his left foot is always to the pitch of the ball, and there is no gap between bad and pad. When playing back, he goes right back, with the right foot across. The errors are rare and minimal.

When Arjuna Ranatunga took over as Sri Lanka's captain, the consensus was that finally the game had got the man it wanted. So expectations ran high when he was appointed as the chairman of Sri Lanka's interim committee earlier this year. But these expectations have exploded between then and now, writes Elmo Rodrigopulle in Sri Lanka's Sunday Observer.

... the game and the administrations has been travelling the wrong way. True as captain he could have dictated terms on the field and had his way. But somebody should have told him that playing is one thing and administration is another. Going down memory lane, it would not be wrong to think that no other IC chairman, became so unpopular and had so much adverse publicity tossed his way as has been done on the former captain.

The lacklustre performance of the Kenyan team since the 2003 World Cup, the chronic lack of funds, the absence of a first-class domestic league and the failing standards of development cricket have all led to the precipitous decline of the game in Kenya, writes Richard Mwangi in Kenya's Sunday Nation.

The game is on its knees. As the top associate member of the ICC, it is worrying that Kenya has not won this First Class competition, now in its fourth edition. The team’s failure in the multi-day game can be attributed to lack of a first class league in the country. Then there is the matter of an ‘A’ team, a crucial feature in any cricket-playing country because it is a major link between the main national team and the development sides. Kenya has none. The usual excuse of lack of funds is what CK offers for its inability to get its programmes moving. However, the officials were elected to find money to run the game and to improve on the huge image that Kenya cricket had built in 2003. If the chairman and his team cannot find the money, they have no business running the association.

England will be taking a close look at their next opponents, India, during the series against Australia and Vic Marks in the Observer believes India have plucked out another wrist spinner, Amit Mishra, who might have a big influence in the future. In his match report on the second day, the writer feels the legspinner has looked to be more suited than the other debutant, Peter Siddle.

He is shorter than Kumble, bowls slower but has an equally easy action. Yesterday his leg-break crept through Simon Katich's defences, while in the last over of the day his googly, bowled from around the wicket, deceived Michael Clarke, who often seems unusually vulnerable near the close of play

	Tendulkar has spent all of his adult life fighting for every precious moment of privacy he can find © AFP

They were like Aladdin’s slippers, curled up at the front and studded with jewels (at least they looked like jewels). Immediately it occurred to me that Tendulkar had placed them there because he didn’t want a stranger to see them. I felt like an intruder. Tendulkar has spent all of his adult life fighting for every precious moment of privacy he can find — the stories are legion of him going out in the dead of Mumbai’s night, sometimes in disguise, to escape the crowds — and here was I, prying into one of the few remaining spaces he could call his own, the space behind an armchair in a nondescript hotel room in Essex.

In the Hindustan Times Pradeep Magazine remembers first meeting Tendulkar, an Under-15 player then, on a wintry evening, in a town in Himachal Pradesh, where the two were sipping tea to keep the cold away.

Dylan Cleaver in the Herald on Sunday believes Tendulkar may not have been the best player of his generation - especially when you have Ponting, Lara, Dravid and Kallis - but he was certainly the greatest.

It is one thing to be facing Sir Richard Hadlee and Wasim Akram while puberty still has you in its embrace; it's even more remarkable to be comfortably fending off the next generation of fast bowlers, like Brett Lee, more than a decade-and-a-half later.

Of the 900 legal deliveries bowled to them in the three ODIs against Bangladesh, the New Zealand batsmen managed to score off just 339. Dylan Cleaver in the Herald on Sunday expresses concern about the failure of the pair of Brendon McCullum and Jesse Ryder at the top and none of the batsman seemed to recreate the urgency of putting away the bad balls.

New Zealand's problem scoring against Bangladesh was most stark at the top of the order where the first 10 overs passed by in a befuddled haze of dot balls, wickets and the occasional boundary. In the first international at Mirpur, just 19 deliveries were scored off in the opening 10 overs; in the second that number decreased to 16; and at the better paced Chittagong wicket it sunk to an embarrassing 12.

In an another article, he believes the 'Black Caps' brand may be actually under threat, considering the new uniform worn by the players may actually be a deep shade of blue.

In the Sunday Times, Ranil Abeynaike reviews Sri Lanka's campaign in the recent four-nation Twenty20 tournament in Canada. Sri Lanka beat Pakistan in the final of the tournament, which also included Zimbabwe and Canada.

In an interview to David Sygall in the Sun-Herald, James Sutherland, Cricket Australia's chief executive, says cricket is booming at the grassroots in the country. He feels the ICC has got the balance right between Tests, ODIs and Twenty20s.

The CA board certainly argues that Test cricket should always be treated as the premium, prestige format and Test cricket is more popular in Australia now than it was a decade ago. However, it is not as popular in all other countries as it is here. Our view, which is reflected in the ICC approach, is that the long-term development of cricket should have Test and ODI predominating in the international cricket calendar, with Twenty20 cricket complementing that as a mainly state or equivalent level format with an appropriate but not disproportionate amount of international Twenty20 cricket. IPL is, for example, a state level competition in India and we play three Twenty20 internationals in our Australian summer, which I think is about right

	Any more doubts? © Getty Images

Sourav Ganguly's 16th Test century produced a different reaction to Sachin Tendulkar's passing of Brian Lara's record, writes Sharda Ugra in her blog on the India Today website. Unlike the acknowledgement of the very superior use of a very superior gift, Ganguly's ton would have seen a grudging, amused regard for the man who would not be crushed. She says doubt is perhaps the theme that surrounds Ganguly's career, apart from the adulation of fans in Bengal.

Doubt around his ability to deserve a place in the team to start with, to really hack it in international cricket when he got there, to return as a Test batsman after being dropped, to face top quality fast bowling, to play the pull shot with any conviction, to lead India with any success, to recover from the most brutal public ridicule heaped on an Indian sportsperson in recent times, to return to the team with any confidence, to script his own farewell, to bring to his own career the finesse he brought to a cover drive.

Adam Parore, in the New Zealand Herald, writes of what he believes is a shift in public perception about the two leagues after the failure of talks between the ICL and BCCI. The "official" IPL are the bad boys of world cricket, whereas the ICL is no threat to anybody, he writes. Parore adds that international cricket is no longer an incentive for New Zealand players participating in the ICL, as they can live productive, enjoyable lives without playing for their country.

Lalit Modi, the IPL boss, seems to have a philosophy of walking quietly, but carrying a big stick. He'll tell you one thing, then turn round and bang you on the head. That said, once the egos have been put aside, there's no reason why the two competitions can't live together harmoniously.
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(Shane) Bond is making about $1.5 million a year for four months' work at a standard where, if he's at 80 per cent of his peak, he's doing a really good job for his team. It's reasonably low stress from a performance perspective, he's making heaps of money, and can play with his kids eight months a year. Why would you not want to do that?

	Tendulkar: the highest run-getter © AFP

... Milind would often call up to say how "Tendlya" had smashed this bowler and how he had toyed with the other. And if he was batting somewhere close by, he would ask me to join him and enjoy his batting. We would then chortle as retired cricketers do seeing "Tendlya" taking apart an attack like he was having a net. It wasn't long before he was picked for India, and we had to reluctantly share our "Tendlya" not just with India but with the rest of the cricketing world...

Writing in the Times of India, Harsha Bhogle says in the last two or three years Tendulkar worked on getting his body back into shape, says Bhogle, and each time it was a more uphill battle than before.

He is still only 35 but because he started so young, and couldn't sign a tour contract till he had scored three Test hundreds, it seems he has been around forever ... But the zest, the limitless energy, the obsession with cricket hasn't dimmed. That, in itself, is extraordinary.

Is he the greatest? The answer for Bobilli Vijay Kumar is yes in the same paper. In this age of hyper nationalistic sport, Tendulkar is perhaps the only player who receives a standing ovation every time he steps out to the middle, Boria Majumdar points out.

No sportsman in history, not Pele, not Babe Ruth, not Muhammad Ali, has had the effect on supporters of the man who became the Little Master, writes Stephen Brenkley in the Independent.

The turnstiles were the evidence: when he was in they flocked through them in their thousands and thousands and when he was out they flocked out again. It is 10 years since India Today reported: "When he goes out to bat people switch on their TV sets and switch off their lives."

The BBC's sports editor Mihir Bose says that what makes Tendulkar exceptional, is that his career has been central to the way cricket has changed in the last 20 years since he made his Test debut against Pakistan at the age of 16.

Tendulkar's former team-mate, Delhi captain Aakash Chopra, reflects in the BBC on the master's achievements. Like countless numbers in India, Chopra wanted to be the next Sunil Gavaskar when he started out, but then along came Tendulkar. And it all changed.

Tendulkar's journey, unlike Lara's has not be a lone one, surrounded as he has been by such as Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman and Virender Sehwag, writes Mike Selvey in the Guardian

In the Daily News & Analysis Ayaz Memon finds himself resorting to cliches to describe Tendulkar's achievement.

In the Hindustan Times, Anil Kumble writes that it was Tendulkar's calm that fascinated him.

Whenever there's been a bad decision ... he comes back into the dressing room, sits in his place, looks at the TV screen and that's it. There are no tantrums, no reproaches, nothing. I have never really seen showing how upset he is with an unfair decision.

Also check out Cricinfo's comprehensive coverage of Tendulkar's feat. Suresh Menon talks about how Tendulkar has changed his game with age, Dileep Premachandran hopes Sachin plays with some of the insouciance that characterised Lara towards the end of his career, S Rajesh tells the Tendulkar story in numbers while the gallery tells it in pictures.

Malcolm Conn, in the Australian, speaks to Brad Haddin, who had a fiery time behind the stumps in Bangalore.

In his debut Test series, on the West Indies tour last May and June, Australia's new wicketkeeper broke a finger on the morning of the first Test yet played all three Tests and the first one-day international before being forced home.

Now Adam Gilchrist's replacement is nursing a bruised chest and ego after the unpredictable Bangalore wicket continued to pitch balls in front of him which leapt up and hit his body or sailed passed unhindered.

In the Age, Chloe Saltau also catches up with Haddin.

Haddin had spoken at length to Ian Healy about the unique demands of wicketkeeping in India before the series, and stood a full five metres closer to the stumps than he would in Australia. The uneven bounce caused some balls to roll along the ground and others to sail over the top of his outstretched gloves.

"It's quite different. The catch you've got to be up close for is the slash that does take off and you've just got to react to."

David Leggat in the New Zealand Herald believes this could the season when New Zealand discover their new middle-order rock.

In April what chance that New Zealand fans will be reflecting on the summer which moved Ross Taylor from a hugely promising talent to a genuine international star?

Certainly New Zealand's batting order could do with someone stepping up to the plate as the main man. Martin Crowe was that player for years; Stephen Fleming became the batsman on whom New Zealand hopes primarily rested for the last 10 years.

The situation is, excuse the pun, tailormade for someone to step in and fill the vacancy.

	Sachin Tendulkar has uplifted lives © Getty Images

India rides a tide of emotion every time its chosen one enters the arena. A power has been put in Tendulkar's hands that could easily be misused, writes Peter Roebuck in the Age. He pay tribute to the Indian batsman as he closes in on becoming the leading Test run-scorer.

Tendulkar has uplifted lives. He has not railed against colonialism and has instead inspired his countrymen by deed alone. Supporters cherish his introductory masterpieces — daring and almost cheeky — his hundreds scored in adversity, notably in Birmingham and Melbourne, and his later more restrained efforts.

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Tendulkar stands above his contemporaries. For all his fortitude, Steve Waugh was in a lower league, and never imagined otherwise. Brian Lara was dazzling but also destructive. At his best, the Trinidadian was supreme but he toyed with his talent. Vanity and selfishness lingered too long in his character. Viv Richards was explosive but also erratic. Brilliant in his 20s, he did not age as well as the Indian.

The actor and comedian, Miles Jupp, is a frustrated man. The lack of cricket might be considered a blessing by some, but not for Jupp in his latest blog at The Wisden Cricketer magazine's site:

In the meantime, my appetite for cricket discussion has to be sated by any means possible. I’m currently trying to drop a cricket reference into nearly every conversation I have in the hope that someone will take the bait. Ideally you do it in such a way that if the person you’re talking to isn’t a cricket fan then they don’t notice what you’re doing, but it’s a hard thing to nail. Twice this week people that I’ve only just met have said, “you talk about cricket a lot, don’t you?”

I’m not deterred by such failures though, because when you can identify them, cricket lovers will stick together. We’re like the Freemasons. Recently I went to an audition for a small part in a film, and once I’d had a go at the script I thought I’d unleash the secret handshake and so dropped in a cricketing reference. While everyone else in Soho panicked about the credit crunch and sent out for sushi, the two of us stood and talked about cricket.

And it worked. I got the part. And so it was that on Sunday morning, I was sitting nervously on the steps of a London gentlemen’s Club waiting to film a scene with Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr. I’d like to think that the reason I was there was because another man and I have exactly the same concerns about Michael Vaughan.

The quality of cricket in the first Test at Bangalore may not have been great, but the quality of contest was quite gripping. The pedestrian Australian bowling up against a brittle Indian middle order was a perfect match and perhaps may set up an evenly balanced series, writes Suresh Menon in his column in Dreamcricket.com.

Chances are that India will play the same eleven at Mohali in the second Test (unless Kumble's injuries force him out), thus giving everyone another chance to fail. Sentiment may be a good guide for choosing books to read or persons to date, but it is not recommended for picking cricket teams. Here, balance ought to be the key.

	There is a steel in Ricky Ponting which is impossible not to notice © Getty Images

Questions were being asked of the Australia captain, Ricky Ponting, as he led his team into the series with India. His brilliant century in the first Test suggests he remains one of the great batsmen of this, or any other, era, writes Stephen Brenkley in the Independent.

At the age of 33 (34 in December) Ponting is 20 months younger than Tendulkar and so far his body, unlike that of the "Master Blaster from Mumbai", has shown few signs of rebelling against the constant demands put on it. Nobody ever can become the new Don Bradman – the man scored a century on every 2.75 visits to the Test crease, for goodness sake – but another Australian is building a sound case for being the Best Since Bradman. And as a captain Ponting is creating a record of similar magnitude. Under him, Australia have won 73.3 per cent of their matches, greater than anybody who has led in more than 10 matches: better than Bradman, and better than Ponting's immediate predecessor, Steve Waugh.

It is the ultimate stamp of a great batsman that he makes big runs on big occasions. Since Tendulkar is one of only five players to have made nine Test hundreds against Australia – one more would make him second behind the 12 scored by England's Jack Hobbs – it would be a stretch to accuse him of failing to make the most of himself. But there is a quality in Ponting, a mixture of talent, desire, will and doggedness, that sets him apart.

Sri Lanka's decision to accept Lalit Modi's $70m offer is comeuppance for the ECB's reluctance to grant the nation Test matches in England, writes Gideon Haigh in the Guardian.

So, too, is the England and Wales Cricket Board hemmed in that little bit tighter. For which country's cricketers will be content to accept second billing in an English summer when they can see their names up in the razzle-dazzling Indian Premier League lights? The ECB also gets its comeuppance for decades of neglect: Sri Lanka, in their quarter century as a Test nation, have been granted only 10 Tests in England ...

... The multi-million dollar endowment for Sri Lanka Cricket projects the BCCI into a new position: that of cricket's lender of last resort. And Sri Lanka, of course, is far from alone in having rising expenses to meet and restive cricketers to placate: more benefactions are perfectly possible.

Monty Panesar is a commendable bowler, yet his inability to learn from his own mistakes has been to his detriment, writes Mike Selvey in the Guardian.

There is a particular image to be carried from England's last tour of Sri Lanka and it is this: Monty Panesar is bowling to Mahela Jayawardene, off-stumpish and good length. Jayawardene plonks his left leg forward and waits until the ball is under his nose, at which point his left hand rotates the bat blade clockwise an eighth of a turn, his right deftly imparts a little energy and the ball slides away through point in the direction of a distant fielder. The batsmen stroll a single and the scoreboard clicks round. It happened time after time after time ...

He appeared to learn not one single thing from the trip, which rather sums up his international career: he began it as a very good bowler and he remains just that, stuck on the same level at which he started. Shane Warne, who is no Bertrand Russell when it comes to philosophy, nevertheless got it absolutely right with his observation that Panesar, rather than having played 33 Tests, had merely played his first one 33 times.

Ideally the Indians with three good medium pacers in the side should be going in for a pitch that will have true bounce and carry on the first two days, but the management is obsessed with the theory that two spinners should take a majority of wickets. The irony is that these two spinners of late are more effective in away series than at home, writes Makarand Waingankar in the Hindu.

In the Age, Greg Baum considers the proposed US$70 million deal between India and Sri Lanka - a key plank of the agreement would be Sri Lanka's unconditional support for the IPL - which he believes is indicative of the currents in world cricket.

Another is the schadenfreude some in the cricket world demonstrate towards England, which it sees as the once imperious power getting its comeuppance. This is unfair. Two wrongs do not make a right, let alone a system of governance. England is the only country to stand up to the rampant Indians on a point of principle that every other country purports to hold dear. Evidently, the rest are either dazzled or too afraid.

Australia, oddly, sits in a back seat. Once, this would have been the business of an Australian president of the ICC, an Australian chief executive and an all-powerful Australian board. Now, seemingly, Australia is one of the chorus. If it loses the current Test series in India, it will have lost even moral authority.

In any case, India appears to be regarding the ICC and, implicitly, the rest of the cricket world with contempt. Reportedly, the IPL is seeking to negotiate with Pakistan the same sort of deal it has made with Sri Lanka: lots of money, in return for obeisance to the Twenty20 god. For Pakistan, which has become a cricketing never-never, rarely visited and increasingly destitute, it will surely prove irresistible.

	Virat Kohli, India's Under-19 captain at the recent World, did a commendable job when called up to the national side. Will Wayne Parnell, his South African counterpart, get a chance soon? © Getty Images

Zaahier Adams says South Africa's one-day squad recently selected for the Kenya and Bangladesh series has no traits of the "brave cricket" philosophy that the team adopted three years ago. He writes on iol.co.za:

India showed the cricketing world what "brave cricket" really is. And it all started with their selection. They chose to rest their "fab four" (Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly, VVS Laxman) for the Twenty20 World Cup in South Africa last year, handed the reigns to a new skipper, and returned to the sub-continent with the trophy.

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Stalwarts such as Jacques Kallis also still hopefully have long international careers ahead of them. But what the retirement of Shaun Pollock has shown us is that a succession selection plan is crucial to long-term success. And here I'm not talking about a group of six players called up to train with the team.

When Virender Sehwag was ruled of the India-Sri Lanka ODI series mid-year, the Indian selectors called upon young Virat Kohli to open the innings. The 19-year-old responded by scoring the second most amount of runs by an Indian player in the series. And those who follow age-group cricket, will remember that Kohli was South African under-19 skipper Wayne Parnell's adversary in the ICC under-19 World Cup final last year.

Rob Smyth includes the Kent and South African cricket teams among his list of six great sporting losers in his blog on the Guardian website.

On the issue of Ryan McLaren's withdrawal from the South African squad, Neil Manthop, in Supercricket, feels Kent could have allowed him to fulfill his international dream and still had him for 90% of next season if they had been prepared to change his registration and make him their overseas player rather than a 'Kolpak' player.

Kent County Cricket Club is well aware that Ryan McLaren, for all his honour, respect and commitment, will barely bowl or strike a single ball next season without thinking that he could, or should have been doing so with a Protea on his chest rather than the prancing horse of the county.

Also read Manthorp's Cricinfo piece.

	Simon Taufel researches grounds, cities and airports before an overseas tour © Getty Images

In an interview to Nitin Naik in the Times of India, Simon Taufel saysit's not necessary to play at the highest level to become an umpire. In 2008, Taufel won his fifth-successive ICC Umpire of the Year award.

Being able to read the game and have a feel for it helps. Being able to anticipate play and having empathy for what the players are going through is very important to be a good match manager. You don't need to play at the highest level to be a good umpire, you just need to be a good student of the game and realise it's a players' game.

On his fitness routine:

Basically I do 8 to 12 cardio sessions a month depending upon travel and umpiring work. Then I add 6 to 8 strength sessions and report back to Jock every month with my maximum heart rate numbers from every session so he can track progress.

Match day is a low-key routine. The end of the day is more important when I do my warm down. This is normally a 30-minute walk or 15-min run or 15-min swim with a full body stretch. It helps circulation and allows me to be back fresh the next day.

Three slips, two gullies, a point - for generations, the arc behind the batsman on the off side was a clear pointer that Test match cricket was on. But the Bangalore Test was different, GS Vivek writes in the Indian Express.

With the slips vanishing quicker than the shine on the new ball, unorthodox placements became the new order over the five days. The Australians, in particular, regularly employed silly mid-off, silly-mid on, mid-on, short-mid-wicket, short square-leg, deep backward square-leg, even as their quicks steamed in. In fact, Ricky Ponting even had a sweeper out on the off side for most part, a ploy repeated by Anil Kumble as boundaries were at a premium and singles remained the source of survival.

“Actually, the new field setting takes a lot of toll on the batsman,” confesses a Team India player, on condition of anonymity. “Even though I didn’t score too many runs, I felt exhausted as I had to concentrate much more with this setting. First you had to pick the right delivery to hit, then you had to make sure the ball was placed in the right area as there weren’t many open spaces and finally, it was important to keep the ball down due to the number of catchers in front of the wicket. From a batsman’s perspective, we often tend to play shots with a set mindset of a Test field. Bangalore was different,” he says, adding that these kinds of fields were here to stay.

	Is Anil Kumble unfairly delaying the Test entry for Piyush Chawla and Amit Mishra? © Getty Images

Makarand Waingankar asks in the Mumbai Mirror:

[Anil] Kumble was a member of the Indian team when Javagal Srinath was made to delay his international debut as the selectors were keen to let Kapil Dev break Richard Hadlee’s record. For three years Srinath was in the reserves. Surely, Kumble must have witnessed that turmoil of a fellow player, up-close. Would he want in-form leggie Amit Mishra and Piyush Chawla to suffer the same fate?

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By agreeing to the request of Sourav Ganguly to let him play the entire series the selectors have set a bad precedent and have indirectly assured all the seniors that they too will be given a long rope to decide their fate. For this service to the nation, each selector is paid Rs. 25 lakh!

	"The pleasure derived from watching him (Tendulkar) comes from the way he combines immaculate conception and productivity." © AFP

Peter Roebuck, writing in the Age, provides a comprehensive assessment of Tendulkar’s innings of 49 on the final day in Bangalore which helped India draw the first Test.

Not that Tendulkar was thinking only about himself. The Australians were trying by all means to unsettle his perky partner, Gautam Gambhir. On several occasions Tendulkar walked down the pitch to support his beleaguered pal. Later he became engaged in lengthy discussions of unknown import with the visiting captain. He has always been an involved cricketer. That he was on edge was confirmed by his gesticulations as errant spectators wandered in front of sight screens at inconvenient moments. No distractions could be tolerated.

Imran Khan, in an extensive interview with PakPassion.net, talks of the turmoil within Pakistan cricket. He discusses issues such as political intervention in the PCB, the board’s inconsistent discipline policy, allegations of ball tampering, the Champions Trophy debacle, and his political career.

We need to separate politics and sport, it's unacceptable for the head of state to appoint the PCB Chairman. This ad hoc system needs to stop, we need a full time salaried head of the PCB who is selected solely on merit and not because of his connections. I mean it's not rocket science, it's the same system in place elsewhere.
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If you don't have discipline in the team then you would have the chaos that Pakistan cricket is going through right now. The reason Pakistan cricket has so many issues right now is because of their inconsistent discipline policy. If a player is performing well then he can get away with anything, he can break all of the rules without censure but if he's doing badly or on his way out then he gets punished.

Barney Ronay feels that although Australia had the better of things in the first Test against Australia in Bangalore, other teams will take encouragement from the game. He writes on the Guardian website:

They are still a formidable bunch but quite how they deal both with a lack of variety and the absence of that genuine, twin-pronged, match-winning penetration will be fascinating to watch – not just for the rest of this series, but during the gruelling whistle-stop itinerary on which Ponting is about to lead his team, with home and away series against South Africa in the pipeline, plus next summer's Ashes. Australia might yet win all of these. But the gap has visibly narrowed. This is a stodgier, more human bunch of world champions, one less assured of punching all the right pressure points at all the right times.

In the Daily Mail, Lee Clayton joins Ian Botham during one of his charity walks, and discusses how he [Clayton] fared.

I managed to last nine miles at his shoulder, walking at a pace of 4.5mph, which is around three times normal walking speed.

I'm not sure what hurt first - burning calves, sore shins, aching thighs or screaming feet.

'A man ran with us on Sunday with his two sons,' Beefy reports. 'Fourteen years ago, he was given no chance of survival; that's why I do this. The pain you feel is nothing compared to what these people endure. We're making a difference.'

And he won't be quitting - a 25th anniversary walk is being planned for 2010.

	Ricky Ponting's boys are far more comfortable in India than previous Australian touring parties © AFP

India, far from being a strange land, is cricket's true home, writes Garry Linnell in the Daily Telegraph. He says that unlike previous touring parties, the current Australian squad touring India would be much more at ease.

"It took me maybe three tours before I finally started feeling comfortable over there," Shane Warne said recently. "I don't know what it was, but I never used to look forward to going. But on my last trip I started to love it and now I think I've come to understand the place."

It's all changing now. India is now the cash cow of world cricket and a professional cricketer will always find a way to love something backed by the green stuff. But there is also a new maturity among the latest generation of Australian cricketers. We first saw it emerge with Steve Waugh and a handful of others, men who saw touring not just as a sporting mission but a self-educational journey.

	Ploy story: Greg Chappell © Getty Images

Greg Chappell's knowledge of India’s players, pitches and conditions would have been invaluable to Ricky Ponting's tactics in the first Test. Ayaz Menon in his column in for Daily News & Analysis feels the ex-India coach may have given the Australians a psychological edge going into the second Test at Mohali and expects more gameplans from him.

This is where Chappell’s knowledge, not only of playing conditions, but also the aggressive demands of the public and the defensive mindset of cricketers and administrators would have been invaluable. The debate over the senior pros has spilled over into mindlessness, and aggravated only by the premature hysteria over Tendulkar’s impending world record.

In the same paper, Dilip Vengsarkar feels that though spinning tracks have helped India overcome England and West Indies in previous home series, the going has been tough when the Australians have come visiting. And this time around it's no different as was evident in Bangalore.

Inderjit Singh Bindra, the ICC’s principal advisor and former chief of the BCCI, writes of how the Indian board has evolved from its pre-2005 phase, when it was governed by an “antiquated constitution penned by cronies from princely states to please their masters”, to the powerful body that it has become today. Read his article in the Hindustan Times.

At that point, three years ago, we were horrified to learn that the BCCI was an object of ridicule at the ICC. The then ICC chief embarrassed us by saying the Board needed total restructuring and professionalism. He pointed out how unresponsive the Board was to communications from the ICC despite the CEO's public admonitions. Though we defended the Board and its officials, we knew change was needed. I'm glad that's happened.

India's fightback on the fourth day has set the stage for a fascinating climax to the first Test, writes Peter Roebuck in the Age. An interesting feature of the final day, he writes, will be the contest between the "most vulnerable" cricketers, the struggling Indian middle order and Australia's inexperienced bowling attack.

By stumps, much more will be known about the ability of this Australian attack to take wickets on a pitch deteriorating slower than expected. Among the pacemen, Mitchell Johnson has been a handful without ever looking likely to run amok while Brett Lee deserved a better return. Handicapped by a wonky elbow, Stuart Clark was serviceable while Shane Watson's strength was an asset on a grudging surface.
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If anything, the Indian middle order will feel the squeeze even more than the visiting bowlers. India has a match to lose and the senior batsmen have positions to protect. Remembering the form some of them showed down under a few months ago, Australians may be surprised to hear that half of India is ablaze with the call for youth.

Shortly after the appointment of Ijaz Butt as the PCB chairman, Asif Iqbal, the former Pakistan captain, is puzzled at the number of calls from different quarters to have a prominent former cricketer head the board. Writing for the News, he justifies why a board chairman should ideally have administrative experience and be capable of handling the behind-the-scenes affairs. He clearly spells out the role of the PCB chairman and says that many in the past have misunderstood their brief.

Unfortunately, since so many of the appointments of late have been political appointments of people who are cricket buffs and long to be seen rubbing shoulders with the big names in the sport, their identification of what their job demands has been immature, sometimes to the point of being childish; one former chairman was so excited with his appointment that he asked a leading cricketer to accompany him as he did the rounds of men’s stores in central London buying clothes; he just could not resist the temptation of showing off the cricketer who, rather than the Chairman, was instantly recognised wherever he went.

In the same paper, Masood Hasan explains where the former chairman Nasim Ashraf went wrong, and welcomes Butt to the post.

The chief executives of other cricket boards are hardly heard and seen even less. Mr Butt should roll up his sleeves and get to work and give interviews when there is something tangible to report and where he can talk not in the future tense but in the present.

In his column for the Sri Lankan daily, the Sunday Times, Ranil Abeynaike looks ahead to the T20 Canada tournament as well as taking a look at the contrasting fortunes of the hosts and Sri Lanka ever since the first World Cup in 1975.

Sri Lanka had the men to take them on from strength to strength. Canada did not and they are in the same position they were thirty three years ago. So it is difficult for any nation to get close to the major playing nations. A few generations must absorb the sport before successful candidates emerge, to get on to the world stage

Dylan Cleaver has picked up a copy of Craig McMillan's explosive new book, Out of the Park, and shares his views on it in today's New Zealand Herald. This is McMillan's book, he says, and his chance to get a few things off his chest. Needless to say, the dreaded peer review system looms large. McMillan often failed to see eye to eye with John Bracewell, and McMillan feels the New Zealand coach was at his worst on the 2004 tour to England.

	The inevitable erosion for India's famed middle order, also comprising Sachin Tendulkar, has begun to gather pace © Getty Images

Stephen Brenkley, writing in the Independent on Sunday, feels "the final surrender of this greatest of all middle orders in imminent", after their unconvincing performance against Australia in the first innings in Bangalore.

If suggesting to Tendulkar that he might like to consider his options is tantamount to violating a Hindu god, there comes a time in the affairs of man, as W C Fields, that shrewd observer of the human condition, said, when one must take the bull by the tail and face the situation.
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Yet even then there was the faint suspicion that the real glory days were behind them, that reflexes and desire were fading together and that they failed to recognise the slow decline of either. There have been indications since only of deterioration, which did not quite square with the huge expectation before this series, partly fuelled by hype, partly because of Australia's own gentle but discernible downturn, partly because of that recent, eventually tight series between the pair.

Australia's dominance for most of the first Test is a consequence of an intelligent plan skilfully applied, writes Peter Roebuck in the Age. He lauds Mitchell Johnson, who varied his pace and utlised the width of the crease to his advantage while bowling round the wicket to pick up four wickets.

But Mitchell Johnson was the pick of the bunch. His rise through the ranks underscores the Australian methodology. Raw as sushi in his early years, he was gradually brought into the fold and taught to make the most of his blessings. In his days as a plumber's assistant he must have learnt how to turn off numerous taps. Now he stopped the flow of runs and took some critical wickets.

In the Sun-Herald, Will Swanton wonders why Shane Warne has not left a legacy of young Australian legspinners.

Ricky Ponting missed Warne at the end of day two at Bangalore. Australia had posted 430. India needed to face 18 overs at the end of the day. In fading light. With chat-happy Australians in their ear. Fieldsmen crowding the bat. Warne would have come on almost immediately, taunting and teasing and turning the screws. White was not given a bowl.

Jenner's vision of a thousand 20-something Shane Warne impersonators now being in their prime has failed to become a reality in Australia, but it's happening elsewhere. Warne's impact was on world cricket, not just Australian cricket, and a few of his more memorable performances came in the northern hemisphere. Where are all the kids Warne inspired? Sadly, they're in England.

In the Sunday Age, Chloe Saltau meets Matt Johnston, the Western Australia allrounder who has overcome a heart condition, while Darren Berry considers the vast numbers of Australian domestic players who these days switch states at the drop of a hat.

	As he did with his leadership, Ganguly has set the tone among his peers © AFP

As he did with his leadership, Ganguly has set the tone among his peers. The most incendiary of Indians has admitted that the fires have gone conclusively cold. Cricket at 30-something is a struggle in which a player's peak mental awareness must manage the slow erosion of physical skills. Every day is a tussle between the will and the inexorable passage of time and it is not ever a fair contest.

Craig McMillan's book Out of the Park was released last week and the New Zealand's Sunday News published an extract from the chapter on the bombings outside the team hotel in Karachi in 2002.

My build-up to the first day of the second test, on May 8, 2002, started no differently from any other. We were staying at the Pearl Intercontinental Hotel, one of two hotels in central Karachi which were frequented largely by westerners. We had two buses that would take us to the ground, an early bus and a later bus. The early bus was always for Mark Richardson, who liked to go to the ground and have 1000 throw-downs before anyone turned up at the match venue. The rest of us, who liked to have more sleep, waited around for the later bus. The early bus was originally scheduled to leave at 7.45am and the second bus was set to leave at 8.15am.

It was about 7.45am and I was lying in bed thinking I would have to get out of bed soon and that getting ready was going to be a bit of a rush. I was struggling to get up that morning for some reason.

Five minutes later I was blown out of bed. I had been lying in bed and all of a sudden I was on the floor, with glass all around me. My first thought was that someone had let off a grenade on one of the floors of the hotel. I was lucky that I had my curtains pulled across the window. The blast, which was outside my window, blew all the glass in, which was then stopped by the curtains. It gave me a shield. My door was blown off its hinges and there was a haze of smoke hanging around.

The blog Smoke Signals runs an open letter to Sourav Ganguly. It starts off by addressing Ganguly's denying comments attributed to him in a Bengali daily (which deal with his omission from the Indian team and the inclusion of several team-mates) and ends wondering if he is upset because Mahendra Singh Dhoni's record as captain is better than his was at this stage of their respective careers.

This adage, that ‘everything is possible in Indian cricket’ was a sad truism until you took over. I thought you would take pride in having changed that, in having forged a team, and brought some consistency to team selection and planning. To hear you use that truism is particularly disheartening.

A lot of players have come and disappeared in Indian cricket, often times when they shouldn’t have. The fact that you weren’t one of them doesn’t mean that the problem does not exist. All because the player who replaced you is now not in the national team and is in the ICL, doesn’t say anything about your situation.

Himanshu Mody, the ICL's operational head, in an interview with Kadambari Murali in the Hindustan Times, says the league has plans to expand even if negotiations with the ICC fail.

He says they aren't panicking over what will happen if things don't work out next week either. “We have no problem. We have plans to increase our cricketing days, a strategy that involves more teams from more countries, there have been players, state units and player associations that have shown interest — after all, the IPL only serves a limited number of foreign players.”

So is a parallel world cricket body on the cards? There's another serious pause and a final, interesting answer. "People are willing to join. If forced to, but only if forced to, we'll spread our wings."

In the Age, Brendan McArdle writes that Australia's selectors might have stumbled on the right spinner for the Test team - Cameron White - despite struggling to manage the nation's spin stocks over the past year.

MacGill was then taken to the West Indies after minimal cricket and again proved to be horribly underdone for the task. In an unprecedented move that was an embarrassment for the entire selection panel, the feisty New South Welshman decided enough was enough and pulled stumps on his career mid-series.

Surely the selectors should have known better. McGain should have been taken, not long-term project player Casson. They should also have done everything in their power earlier to convince Hogg to squeeze another 18 months out of his career. In the end the constant uncertainty about his future as a Test player must have been a factor in his retirement. He deserved better, and how valuable he would be now.

One of Australia's selectors, Jamie Cox, tells Andrew Faulkner in the Weekend Australian that there are no easy answers and spin-bowling in Australia has become "a bloody tough craft".

So what's keeping Stephen Fleming busy these days? He's busy trying to find his feet in an elaborate sport management and marketing role with the Australian firm Insite, and the first impressions are that the transition from international cricket to businessman has gone smoothly. Jonathan Millmow of the Dominion Post met him to find out more.

"Working from home isn't the long- term plan but at the moment it is fine, even if the odd Hi-5 stick gets poked under the door," Fleming said yesterday. Fleming's in good form. Work is exercising his brain, golf gets the competitive juices flowing (he plays off a 6.8 handicap at Heretaunga), family is close and the cricket he plays in India is short and handsomely paid.

So what does he actually do?

	Michael Hussey looked like he had belonged in Test cricket all his life © Getty Images

So there he was, the immovable object, holding the innings together, ensuring that the Australians did not squander their advantage. To that end he wore down the attack, thereby adding to the pressure on the home batsmen. Better than most, Hussey knows the value of secured runs. As usual he advanced unobtrusively and it took a glance at the board to realise that he had reached 24 and then 43 and the other posts along his route. He does not set out to collar the bowling, just to score as quickly and as safely as possible.

All that hard yakka in domestic cricket taught him a lot about making the right decisions at the crease. Discernment had been a weakness. Those seasons did not curb his ambition so much as inform his mind. Accordingly, he arrived in Test cricket armed with a lot of knowledge and plenty of experience. He was able to bat regularly and to study his craft without feeling that his career, his entire life, depended on the next ball.

Hussey showed that the art of Test batting comprises protracted defence and sporadic attack, of knowing the field and stealing the singles, and batting with the tail, writes Rohit Mahajan in Outlook.

Ravi Shastri, writing in the Hindustan Times, feels India's batsmen need to watch out for the variable bounce on the Bangalore pitch. He adds that Virender Sehwag's performance in the series may well prove decisive in the outcome.

Sehwag is the man of the moment. He doesn’t hold himself back, howsoever wretched a cricket pitch be. He knows the vagaries of this strip and was thus prepared to take his chances while the ball was still new. It wouldn't get any easier for him now but Viru knows only one way to bat.

New Zealand went into their opening match of what will be a lengthy summer under-prepared, over-confident and got done by Bangladesh, writes Adam Parore in the New Zealand Herald.

I still believe New Zealand deserve to be ranked second or third based on what we've seen in the past few seasons, but even if they win the series 2-1, which they should do with this rough start out of the way, it won't do the trick on the rankings list ... they'd be embarrassed at turning in a half-arsed performance when they'd have wanted to hit the ground running. They'll know there will be teams around the world chuckling at their slip-up, and that will sting.

Following his outburst on being unfairly scrutinised, Sourav Ganguly may have drawn a lot of pressure on to himself at the start of the Tests against Australia, but the pressure is unlikely to affect him much, writes Harsha Bhogle. He adds that the fiery denial of retirement from Anil Kumble has taken the attention away from Sachin Tendulkar. Read on in the Indian Express.

A lot of very fine players retire as bitter men; for the rest of their substantial life they carry the hurt of denial, believing they could have done more. It is one of the saddest things in the game and given the kind of career he has had, Ganguly must go out as a man at peace with himself.

	Warne: "I played with a certain passion. I showed passion. I was an exciting player, I was an entertainer" © Getty Images

Shane Warne, in an interview with Gary Linnel in the Courier-Mail, reflects on life off the field during his tenure for Australia, and discusses his plans for the future.

"At night I'd lie there and go 's - - -, when am I going to see my kids? There were times I'd sit there and drink my mini bar until three in the morning just to get to sleep. Set the alarm, wake up and say here we go again. I cried a fair bit when I was by myself."

Michael Atherton, writing in the Times, feels the unpredictable nature of Pakistan cricket and the Indian cricketing establishment's resistance to change have made coaching enormously difficult in the two countries.

Pybus could not cope with the irrationality and the uncertainty of Pakistan cricket. Using an unfortunate analogy, given the present situation, he said this of his time there: “They have an amazing capacity to ambush themselves ... you're always sitting there waiting for someone to lob a hand grenade and waiting for it to go off. You can never plan with such a team because you don't know what is happening tomorrow.” Dismissed twice, Pybus urged Pakistan to take a more scientific - meaning Western - approach to their cricket.

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India presents different problems, in so much as it is not the unpredictability that challenges a coach, but the lack of it. Chappell wanted to modernise Indian ways and challenge what he saw as a cosy club of ageing, unathletic stars. But anyone who wants to challenge the status quo must remember that it is the players in India who call the shots. Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and Sourav Ganguly are icons, wealthy and revered beyond measure, and used to playing on their terms or not at all.

While reading Bob Woolmer's Art and Science of Cricket Drew Forrest of the South African Mail & Guardian wonders how many of the 642 pages did Woolmer in fact contribute and to what extent is this really his account of the "art and science" of cricket.

The reader's unease is heightened by the repeated references to him in the third person and the fact that some of the anecdotes -- notably one by Moffet about Pakistani players pumping themselves up before play -- did not come from his pen. This is not hair-splitting. There is a legitimate suspicion that Woolmer essentially wrote a rather narrowly focused coaching manual and that, in a move to cash in on public rubbernecking in the wake of his sensational death, other people worked it up into a general-interest cricket book.

However Forrest goes on to say the book gives a scientific understanding of why and when the bowled cricket ball curves in the air.

It was intriguing to discover, for example, that the human eye cannot track bowling of higher than 130km/h and that batsmen facing pace move their eyes off the ball to where they expect it to land on the wicket. This, the book points out, effectively debunks the hoariest of coaching maxims: "Watch the ball right on to the bat."

	Ricky Ponting and Simon Katich set the tone for Australia with a 166-run stand © Getty Images

It's been a long time since an Australian second wicket pair batted as wilfully and attentively as did Ricky Ponting and Simon Katich on the first day of the first Test in Bangalore, writes Peter Roebuck in the Age.

Truth to tell it was not the most exhilarating batting performance seen in the past few years, but then we have been richly entertained, perhaps spoilt. Certainly it lacked élan, not to mention panache, but the dogged willow wielders had more serious matters in mind. Australia has too much respect for these opponents to give them an inch.

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Ponting batted with a control that told of a man on top of his game and in charge of himself. He relied not on instinct but judgment, studying the ball carefully and then directing it into a gap. Realising that square leg had been pushed back, he took the pace off the ball and took a single. Nothing wrong with singles, though they have fallen from fashion. Ask Sachin Tendulkar, who has fed upon them. Another time he tapped the ball towards short cover and collected another notch. He intended to cook his opponents slowly.

The Daily Mail's Paul Newman meets Andrew Flintoff in a frank and open chat about his comeback to international cricket.

'I was sat on the balcony at Lord's after we had gone four up in the one-day series against South Africa,' said relaxed and rejuvenated Flintoff.

'Everybody had gone, I had a beer in my hand and I just sat there and thought about everything I'd gone through over the last 10 months. I couldn't believe how pleased I was. How much I'd enjoyed being part of that, to be back in the England team winning games.

'There were so many low moments, so many times when I wondered if I would ever be sat there again like that.'

The return of a fully-fit and firing Flintoff was the story of the summer.

The launch of the official BCCI website - aiming, its backers claim, to be the most popular cricket site in the world - has attracted comment from the Guardian in their media blog.

So far it looks rather less like a website devoted to cricket than to the BCCI. Top story yesterday was "Lalit Modi bags TV award", the IPL commissioner having won a coveted CNBC Awaaz Consumer Award - well, someone must covet them. Top comment piece was "In Praise of Sharad Pawar", a 1,685-word paean about the outgoing BCCI boss, "a statesman who is clear of thought, dispassionate and above all a true team leader" by his BCCI colleague IS Bindra.

This venture bears close watching, for the BCCI is offering not just a web portal but to exercise a significant degree of control over the coverage of cricket in India, to the exclusion of its established rival Cricinfo. They are moving fast: a Google search for "BCCI" still directs you to the old BCCI site which looks like it was banged together in an hour by a teenage slacker between puffs on a bong.

So far, though, there is little to allay suspicions that India's hegemonic pretensions in international cricket are less about the game than about the aggrandisement of its political and media elite. And as we are finding elsewhere, no hubris fails to find its nemesis.

Steve Waugh, in the Hindustan Times, shares his confusion over the BCCI selection committee’s handling of Sourav Ganguly’s selection, and writes that no player has been groomed to replace him after his retirement

There is no clarity as to why Sourav was dropped from the Irani Cup side and how he was selected thereafter. However, this has been in keeping with the way the selectors have gone back and forth on the Ganguly issue. Hopefully they will not have to pay for their indecision, because even though the elegant left-hander has made his announcement, nobody has been groomed and readied to take his place.

Sharda Ugra, writing in India Today, feels the BCCI is responsible for the controversy over the ‘voluntary retirement scheme’ issue that has clouded India’s build-up to the Australian series.

Here is why this issue is being handled most unjustly and unevenly: The players front up to questions about their retirements in front of cameras and mikes with varying degrees of composure and then go about the business of playing for India. The masterminds of the ‘scheme’ neither have to respond to public questioning nor do they bat, bowl or, perish the thought, field. They remain hidden, comfortable in the anonymity of being friendly sources to the more gullible among media watchdogs.

Phillip Hughes, the 19-year-old New South Wales batsman, had an impressive debut season in 2007-08, and he is hoping to continue the good run this season. He talks to Martin Gibbes on foxsports.com.au about his first season for New South Wales, where he played alongside the likes of Simon Katich and Michael Clarke.

It was only a couple of years ago that you were watching these guys on television and, hopefully, one day you hope to get the opportunity to play with those guys, and it just happened to be. Now, I hope I can continue that for years to come.

We know what a great season Simon Katich had last season, breaking records left, right and centre, and I just happened to be in that side. It’s just the way he approaches the game, and his attitude to the game is nothing short of brilliant; no doubt I learnt a lot. Batting with those guys definitely lays off the pressure. It’s great to have a batsman at the other end like Simon Katich, Brad Haddin or Phil Jaques and, in the final, Michael Clarke; the list just keeps going on.

Angus Fraser, in the Independent, writes that the rest of the cricketing world, or even the vast majority of England supporters, could not care if the US $20 million match between Stanford All-Star XI and England gets cancelled. Fraser feels the match is nothing more than an exhibition game, as it is just a move by Allen Stanford to promote himself and his company, but provides the ECB an opportunity to have greater control over its players.

Teams play matches to be successful and win trophies for the country they represent and the fans who passionately follow them. For a player, fortune is amassed and fame is gained as a direct result of excelling in these events and winning trophies.

Stanford's match, however, is different. It has been arranged almost as a "Big Brother" experiment, so that a billionaire can promote himself and his company while watching how players react when playing under a huge and falsely created amount of pressure. The game is an irrelevance. No trophy of any value will be won and the performances of the players will not appear in their career records. It is nothing more than an exhibition game.

Quite often in his career, Sourav Ganguly has been seen as the scapegoat in India's failures and the latest instance was the forgettable Test series in Sri Lanka. Pradeep Magazine in the Hindustan Times writes that the last fortnight, Ganguly found it difficult to sleep, wondering again and again, why he was invariably the first player to be targeted.

The sound of bat whacking ball would have Chandidas Ganguly waking up with a start in the middle of the night, only to find son Sourav batting in the drawing room with the domestic help bowling to him. “My son has gone mad,” the father would say and tell his wife to get her son to realise that there is life beyond cricket as well. But his mother never had the heart to tell her son that it was all over and “he could never make it back to the Indian team”.

In the Telegraph, the former Indian batsman Arun Lal pays tribute to Ganguly and feels his decision to quit was very well timed and couldn’t have been delayed any further.

While I didn’t think much of the shirt waving spectacle, he did bring the much-needed aggression and a will to win into the side. His leadership inculcated that focus of how everything should revolve around achieving victory and in that endeavour he backed the right horses and for the right reasons.

In Daily News and Analysis, Ayaz Memon appreciates the timing of Ganguly's decision and looks back at his successful captaincy career. Though he may not be in the same league as Dravid, Laxman and Tendulkar as far as his Test batting record goes, his contribution as a captain and motivator would put him above the three.

Ganguly showed remarkable chutzpah and ambition to build a team that would win accolades everywhere for its skills and attitude. He succeeded in infusing a sense of pride and purpose that finished off the fatalism which had always dogged sport in this country.

Kunal Pradhan, in the Indian Express, writes that no Indian cricketer has gone through all the gamut of emotions as often and as publicly as Ganguly.

Peter Roebuck, in the Sydney Morning Herald, previews the India-Australia Test series and finds himself writing that Bryce McGain’s loss is the most significant – a difficult thing to imagine a year ago. He also believes there is no room for the kind of bitterness that affected the last series between the two teams.

Some thought the Australians behaved like boofheads. Others were convinced the visitors had stirred the possum. Regardless, it cannot be repeated. Nor can the rude catcalls heard last time around in India.

More than either side might care to admit, though, last summer's campaign was a battle between brothers. Australia's cricket history tells of an egalitarian nation determined to advance by its own lights. From Fred Spofforth to Ricky Ponting, the Aussies have played an uncompromising game.

In the Age, Peter Hanlon concocts a new recipe for Matthew Hayden’s next cookbook: Spinner Curry.

Ingredients: onions, olive oil, curry paste, tomatoes (tinned), stock, sweet potato, green beans (chopped), rice, a spinner. (NB: spinner does not need to be fresh).

Haydos says: "I used to love hopping into this when Warney was around — it had so much spice and fizz and bounce, and meaty chunks you could really get your teeth into! I'm not sure what's happened of late, but it's been as bland as an Adelaide Oval wicket. You wouldn't waste a good poppadum on it."

Sunil Gavaskar, writing in dreamcricket.com, feels it is unfortunate that the umpire referral system will not be used in the India-Australia Test series. He also writes about the timing of Laxman’s removal from captaincy of the Deccan Chargers team and Sourav Ganguly’s puzzling absence from the NCA camp in Bangalore.

On pitches that will help spin and with fielders surrounding the batsman, the system would have been a big help in defusing potential confrontation situations and that's why it is a pity that it wont be used in this series. Not many "walk" these days and that can lead to a feeling of frustration if the reprieved player goes on to play a match turning innings as happened last season.

In the Age, Chloe Saltau writes that the Australian under the most pressure in India is not Ricky Ponting or Jason Krejza or Mitchell Johnson. It’s Andrew Hilditch, the chairman of selectors.

For the first time in more than a decade, a period in which Australian cricket was so flush with talent that the biggest decisions were about who to leave out rather than who to pick, the focus settles squarely on Hilditch and his men, Merv Hughes, Jamie Cox and David Boon.

Whatever happens in the next three days, they will have to gamble on an uncapped and untried bowler to support the relatively established pace trio of Brett Lee, Stuart Clark and Mitchell Johnson, who nevertheless have not played a Test in India between them.

Nor do Cameron White, Jason Krejza and rising Victorian paceman Peter Siddle — the three candidates for the last bowling spot — have a baggy green between them, but that would not be of such concern if they, like so many of the ready-made replacements the selectors have been able to turn to during the changing of the guard in recent years, had extensive qualifications in first-class cricket.

Jon Pierik in the Daily Telegraph considers a few of the problems facing Australia in this series.

Tony Becca, writing on Sports Jamaica, lauds the ICC's decision to disallow the practice of players using "comfort breaks" during matches.

It is now left, not so much to the managers, the coaches and the match referees, but more so to the umpires. They are the ones who will decide what "extreme circumstances" are and the hope is that, in the interest of the game, they will be strong and firm.

"Extreme circumstances" should be emergencies, the call of nature and nothing else, and that should involve just a few minutes off the field.

"Extreme circumstances" should not include those who are unfit and who need a break after bowling a few overs or after chasing a few balls, those who, because of their fitness, should not have been selected, or those who, despite being professionals, are simply too big, too much of a star, to stay in the field for any length of time.

The changing of guard is a fascinating spectacle, whether at the Buckingham Palace or on the sports field, writes Suresh Menon in his blog on espnstar.com.

Australia arrive in India having completed the first half of the operation - the old guard is nearly gone - but with the more difficult half, the new guard replacing it satisfactorily, incomplete. For India, the old guard is looking at its watches, at calendars, at the record books as if to suggest that there is time yet.

Boria Majumdar, writing in espnstar.com, tracks the evolution of Indo-Australian cricketing relations since Indian-born KS Ranjitsinhji’s successful tour of Australia as a part of the England team in 1897-98

Despite being handicapped by frequent bouts of asthma, Ranji scored 189 in his first match of the tour, and 175 in his first Test in Australia. Ranji, thus, had achieved the unique distinction of scoring a century on debut against Australia both in England as well as in Australia. His performance down under had a multi layered impact. In Australia it was a triumphant tour for him. He became the darling of the people and created what has been called the "Ranji fever". There were Ranjithsinghji sandwiches, Ranjitsinghji hair-restorers, bats and chairs". In India, Ranji's batting was perceived as a triumph of nationalism on the sporting field.

Meanwhile, Neeru Bhatia, in the Week, pays tribute to Sachin Tendulkar, who Indians would be hoping will live up to his stellar record against Australia.

Giles Clarke reflects on his first year in office as chairman of the ECB. Read his interview with Ivo Tennant in the Times.

Clarke, 55, says that much of his job is about networking and socialising for the good of the game. “I am also very proud that we have secured a new broadcasting deal until 2013, particularly given the crisis in the economy, that there has been so much unprecedented investment in amateur and professional facilities, and that we have a much better relationship with Pakistan now,” he said. “In future years I want to see them play in the Midlands and the North in particular, where there are large Asian communities.”

If coaches are held accountable for a team's performance, then perhaps they should be the ones appointing the selectors who choose the team, writes Daryll Cullinan in the Weekender.

One of cricket’s peculiarities is its persistence with selection panels. In this age of professional sport and accountability, I don’t know of any country where the coach is solely entrusted with picking his team.

In most professional sports this is the norm. It must be one of the most frustrating things for an international cricket coach knowing the judgment and opinions of others can significantly influence the success and failure of his job.

Anil Kumble recently rubbished reports that seniors in the Indian side are being forced into retirement by the BCCI and the selectors. Today, in an interview with the Times of India, India's Test captain says he has not set a time-frame for calling it quits from the game. Kumble speaks about his own preparations for the high-profile series starting next week, India's chances against an inexperienced Australia, and captaincy.

	How far as Sri Lankan cricket administration come since 1996? © Getty Images

Sa'adi Thawfeeq, writing in Sri Lanka's Nation, says that the country's cricket administration over the past decade has been riddled with petty politics and a lack of professionalism. That, in turn, has left it a laughing stock in the eyes of the cricket world.

Becoming World Cup champions in 1996 brought about a new dimension to Sri Lanka cricket administration which has failed to change with the times and streamline itself in a professional way. As a result they have been making the same mistakes over and over again and to say the least, been rather amateurish in handling certain issues.

Take for instance the problem that cropped up with regard to the IPL and the tour of England next year where for some weeks there was a tussle between the IPL contracted players and the current administration headed by former captain Arjuna Ranatunga over who should play where as both series clashed with each other.

In the Sunday Times, SR Pathiravithana writes that ironically in Sri Lanka the spirit of the game starts and ends well within its cricket first XV.

They form the nucleus of our international cricket and play the game forgetting whatever their personal differences are with only one goal in mind. It is to ‘bring honour and glory’ to their mother land. However the rest of the bunch that is involved with the cricket machinery should follow the Emu and hide their heads in shame.

Since of late whatever happens in Sri Lankan where cricket is concerned ends up with controversy and some one should “Hey! Your Sunday is longer than your Monday”.

The Sunday Times also has an interesting write-up on Seekkuge Prasanna, a budding legspinner and useful batsman tipped for greater stuff. Prasanna's family lost all they had in the tragic tsunami of 2004, and the youngster has worked hard to support then in whatever way he can. He has worked with the Army coach who also oversaw Ajantha Mendis. Harry Jayachandra caught up with Prasanna.

We have been down this road before, thinking wishfully, ignoring history and hoping against all the evidence that Australia's domination of international cricket is nearly over. It's what a fool (such as I) thought before the last Ashes tour; there's wrong and there's 5-0, writes Kevin Mitchell in the Observer.

And yet... there is something clearly vulnerable about an Australia squad touring India, the toughest gig in the game, that, when it was selected, included four players - Doug Bollinger, Peter Siddle, Bryce McGain and Jason Krejza - who not only had not a single baggy green between them but were largely unknown outside the sports pages of the Sydney Morning Herald and other fine Australian newspapers ... But there are also three players who have broken into the Test team only in the past two years: Brad Haddin, Chris Rogers and Mitchell Johnson

	Justin Guillen will play for Trinidad and Tobago in the upcoming Stanford Super Series © Trinidad & Tobago Express

Roger Seepersad of the Trindad Express speaks to Justin Guillen, member of a distinguished cricketing family, who will play for Trinidad and Tobago in the Stanford Super Series next month. Justin is the great nephew of Simpson Clairmonte Guillen, also known as ‘Sammy’ Guillen, who was one of only 14 men to play Test cricket for two countries, having represented West Indies and New Zealand.

Justin only met his great uncle once, when he was ten, but was aware of his exploits as a Test player.

"At the time, I was not so serious about cricket as I am now," he noted, adding: "I played it for fun and I knew he had played for the West Indies and New Zealand and the most training I would have had with him, so to speak, was a bit of cricket in the back yard.

	'I'm dedicating the next year to getting back into the England team': Vaughan © Getty Images

Michael Vaughan, in the Sunday Telegraph, writes about the reasons that contributed to his resignation as England captain and his determination to get back into the England team.

I’ve given myself until November 10 to decide my best way back. To be the best player I can be, my decision-making has to be spot-on, and I felt recently I was making some wrong decisions as captain and a batsman. The hunger is still there all right – I’m mad to get back into the England team.

Four out of the five England captains in the past 20 years, when every Test match has been televised and media scrutiny has never been greater, have resigned in highly-stressed circumstances, writes Scyld Berry in the Sunday Telegraph.

Part of the reason for Vaughan’s resignation can be traced to the England tour of New Zealand. When he arrived there for the Test series, he found the England one-day players already 'jaded’. Partly this was the consequence of touring: the longer a tour, Vaughan believes, the less effective the players are. But the objective reader, wishing the England captaincy to be a more sustainable job, can also take this as a veiled criticism of the management style of Peter Moores, as it was then, when highly focused on training. After two Twenty20 internationals in New Zealand, and five one-day games, the players should have been livelier, instead of producing flat performances which were only just sufficient to win the Test series 2-1.

England selector Geoff Miller, in an interview with Stephen Brenkley in the Independent on Sunday, talks about Michael Vaughan’s resignation, the surprising selection of Darren Pattinson, and English cricket’s new phase under Kevin Pietersen’s leadership.

About Pattinson's selection

"I was surprised at the reaction because it was unwarranted from Darren's viewpoint," he said. "There was a logical reason behind it. We'd had a special meeting about it and gone through all the contenders, everybody in the frame. He had proved himself at that stage, had created a feeling and was the kind of bowler we wanted. On the morning, circumstances conspired and as the swing bowler he was the choice. Will it be a long time before we make a selection like that again? The natural answer would be yes but I can't really say because a situation can crop up. What I do know is that what Darren had to deal with was unfair and that the buck stops with me."

The second season of the Indian Premier League is to start in April 2009, a good seven months away, so it is hard to understand the need for the Deccan Chargers to announce that VVS Laxman was stripped of the captaincy and it was going to be Adam Gilchrist who will now lead the Chargers. India is due to play the world champions Australia in a Test series in a few days' time and this kind of demoralising news was certainly not what was wanted, writes Sunil Gavaskar in Mid-Day.

So would it be fair to say that India begin as strong favourites at home all over again? Can they intimidate Australia with turning tracks? The answer, if the initial indications from Hyderabad are anything to go by, is a fairly powerful yes, writes Bobilli Vijay Kumar in the Times of India.

The new selection committee under Kris Srikkanth has put an end to all the speculation churned out by the press with regard to the status of the senior players, writes WV Raman in the Hindu.

While comparing sporting icons to rock stars, Ayaz Memon says time runs out on sportspersons much quicker, a challenge facing India's veterans at the moment. He writes in the DNA:

For the professional sportsperson, however, life can be cruel. Success on the field of play is time-bound, and when the skills start fading, so does their perceived value. They have a sell-by date which is so ambiguous that they themselves are not sure when this has arrived. It is then that they are caught in the maelstrom of self-doubt and the whims and fancies of critics, selectors and even the public, as Ganguly will be experiencing every day now.

..........................................................

For instance, using forty as the benchmark, we find that there have been 102 players who have played a Test match at this age. Five of these were Indians — Vijay Merchant, C K Nayudu, C Ramaswami, RJ Jamshedji and Vinoo Mankad (who was 41 years, 305 days when he played against the West Indies at Delhi in 1959).

The oldest player ever was Wilfred Rhodes, who was 52 years and 165 days when he played against the West Indies in 1930. While the last over-40 to have played a Test was England’s Alec Stewart in September 2003 (against South Africa), it is significant to note that 78 of these 102 played before 1960, which many historians reckon is the year when the ‘modern’ game is reckoned to have begun.

Peter Siddle's inclusion to Australia's Test squad to play four matches in India has given Victoria reason to believe more cricketers can emerge from that state, reports Lyall Johnson in the Age. Since the retirement of Damien Fleming in 2001 only Shane two Victorians have played Test cricket - the legend Shane Warne, who himself called it quits in 2007, and Brad Hodge, who managed six games.

Yet this summer, Victoria could have as many as seven players wearing Australian colours: Siddle, McGain and White — the latter called up yesterday — at Test level, with Hodge and David Hussey also in contention in either one-day international or Twenty-20. Further down the list, but still very much in the sights of the selectors, are West Australian recruit Chris Rogers, who has already played a Test match and all-rounder Andrew McDonald.

Rohit Mahajan, in Outlook, writes that Lalit Modi, the "fiendishly efficient" IPL boss, has his influence pared down.

Modi, says Mahajan, does not gel with new BCCI president Shashank Manohar and, against expectations, was not made chairman of the marketing committee. Modi will also now have to share power with former BCCI secretary Niranjan Shah in the IPL's governing council.

Then Mahajan asks aloud: has Modi soared so high so quickly, Icarus-like, that his wings have been singed?

Simon Hughes speaks to Graeme Hick about his illustrious career, its highs and lows, and reasons for his limited international success. Read his article in the Telegraph.

“I grew up on a tobacco farm in Zimbabwe,” he said. “The first time I walked into the England dressing room was the first time I’d spent a day in the company of all those guys. I didn’t know anyone really. I did feel like a foreigner in the dressing room.

“There were one or two who resented me being there and we were competing for places. There was one guy with a good Test record – Allan Lamb – and he wanted to say something but he didn’t know what to say or how to say it because I already had more first-class runs than him.”

Peter Roebuck, writing in the Hindu, feels that phasing out the old guard is a difficult process, particularly in the case of the current Indian middle order. But there comes a time, he writes, when an “outfit impresses more on paper than on the field”, and tough decisions become imperative.

Sooner or later, though, no matter how finely it has been carried, the flame must be handed to another generation. If that time has not already past then it is fast approaching. Not that age is the only consideration, but it cannot entirely be ignored. Nor can the balance of the team. It is not sensible to allow a side to grow old together. A time is reached when such an outfit impresses more on paper than on the field.

When the five [India's seniors] finally exit, they should with dignity, informed in advance about their imminent sacking as a tribute to their long service, but not given extra opportunities because we want to be nice to them. They haven’t needed the Indian cricket establishment’s charity over the last decade, and they definitely don’t need its pity, writes Kunal Pradhan in the Indian Express.

Meanwhile, Makarand Waigankar, writing in the Hindu, thinks the BCCI selection committee’s decisions defy logic.

One would never know in Indian cricket why a cricketer of repute is dropped by one committee and then selected again by the new committee. It completely depends on the whims and fancies of the different selectors and not any governing principles. This has happened too frequently to make us believe that the selection committees do have any criteria or policies at all.

In the Guardian, Carrie Dunn says Shane Warne has songs such as Take the Pill (about his ban for taking a prohibition diuretic in 2003) and What an SMS I'm In.

Warne is a god to many Australians, who may not take kindly to their hero being mocked on home turf. The obvious next move for Perfect and his cast would be a UK transfer, but if he wants to cling on to the lead himself I'd guess they'll need some good stunt casting in the supporting roles to pull in the punters. I'd recommend casting Hugh Jackman (long overdue a West End return) as Warne's Hampshire team-mate and good chum Kevin Pietersen, Jennifer Ellison as Warne's ex-wife Simone, and perhaps John Barrowman as England's triumphant captain during the 2005 Ashes series, Michael Vaughan

Mtutuzeli Nyoka cannot be serious … an olive branch to Zimbabwe’s Peter Chingoka? writes Peter Roebuck in the Witness. Even by the lamentable standards associated with cricket administrators, Mtutuzeli Nyoka’s first pronouncement as Cricket South Africa’s next president was profoundly discouraging.

Some of us receive daily reports from black Zimbabweans describing their plight. In Mandela, Tutu and company, this continent houses the greatest leaders alive. Alas, men of a different ilk are loose in Zimbabwean cricket (ZC). Far from taking Chingoka, Bvute and their racist cronies at face value, Nyoka ought to insist upon the immediate release of the official audit of the ZC accounts. After all, the game’s governing body itself requested the report as a means of ending controversy.

	Mushtaq Ahmed believes Pakistan's ex-players have a big role to play in nurturing future talent © Getty Images

PakPassion.net’s extensive interview with legspinner Mushtaq Ahmed covers various aspects of his long career, starting with his initiation into international cricket to his current stint with the Lahore Badshahs in the ICL. Ahmed also speaks of the problems with the current Pakistan team, his differences with the PCB, and his future.

If you stop investment into anything, then it will die. The PCB needs to invest at the grass roots level, ex-players should play a big part in going to small towns to hold camps and scout for talent. Why am I getting offers to work with spinners in England despite not having any formal coaching qualifications? There are lots of qualified coaches in England that could do the job, why ask me? It's because experience counts for something. The PCB need to learn from that and start to tap into the wealth of experience that they have in Pakistan in the form of all our talented ex-players.

Chetan Narula, writing in Dreamcricket.com, feels the BCCI has many questions to answer. The timing of the selection committee’s changeover, the lack of transparency on the part of selectors, or Ganguly’s inclusion in the first two Tests for the Australian series, Narula writes, are all elements of yet another “comedy of errors” on the part of the Indian board.

The BCCI has played out to be the perfect stage, hosting such an emphatic display of yet another comedy of errors. The whole saga of moving on from the debacle in Sri Lanka has given birth to a host of questions, all reeking of confusion in the ranks of the Board ahead of the most important Test series in some time for Indian cricket. Of course, no answers are forthcoming, as always!

	Matthew Hayden will be keen to better his Test record in England © Getty Images

Line and Length, the Times’ cricket blog, lists Matthew Hayden at No.41 in its weekly countdown of Ashes heroes. Hayden was a part of Australia’s touring party to England in 1993, but had to wait for eight years for his first Ashes Test. Patrick Kidd writes of Hayden’s struggles to cement his place in the Australian team and his relatively modest record in England.

In 1993, the 21-year-old Hayden was picked for Australia's tour party to England on the back of a couple of excellent Sheffield Shield seasons. He was travelling for the experience but on that tour he played 13 first-class county matches (ah, those were the days...), scored 1,150 runs at an average of 57.55 and yet DID NOT PLAY AN ASHES TEST FOR ANOTHER EIGHT YEARS

The Third Umpire blog hosts a review of Durham’s triumphant county season. It also includes season reviews for Northamptonshire and Nottighamshire.

After the euphoria of 2007 and the club’s first piece of silverware, it was always going to be hard to live up to the expectations, some of it optimistic, of its supporters in 2008. Yet that is precisely what Durham did, by winning their maiden county championship title, just 16 years after gaining first-class status.

	Geoffrey Boycott wants England's bowlers to get the ball into Virender Sehwag's ribs © AFP

The pace of Andrew Flintoff and Steve Harmison will be England’s biggest weapon, because the senior batsmen should all be vulnerable early on to quality fast bowling, writes Geoffrey Boycott in the Telegraph.

Kevin Pietersen must tell his quick bowlers to go after Virender Sehwag, who so often gets India off to a flier. Sehwag scores fast and lifts the whole spirit of the team when he is firing. England have to get up his nose. Don’t try to bounce him out, because Indian pitches give batsmen more time to play the hook shot, but get the ball into his ribs. Get him tucked up and in a tangle. The key is to deny him the room to play shots.

Harsha Bhogle, writing in the Indian Express criticises the idea of a VRS scheme for India's senior cricketers. He's also worried that the Indian media are more obsessed with reporting what happens off the field rather than on it.

If, as in the current situation, you have players who have done very well for a long time and a call has to be taken on their future, the selectors first make up their mind and then have a dignified conversation with the player concerned. The non-negotiable here is the selector’s decision. You cannot sign a deal with a player for four games, for example, and keep him in the side if he doesn’t score a run in the first three and drop him if he makes a double hundred in the fourth ...

... Let’s return then to where we began, to the VRS story. If there is no such scheme should it be flashed in the media? Indian cricket, or indeed anything to do with public life, will always spawn conspiracy theories. But a news channel, by its very nomenclature, tells the ‘news’. It doesn’t gossip, it cannot clothe conspiracy theories in holier garbs because once it does so it no longer has the moral right to claim to be the “news”. It worries me as well that more and more young men and women are getting obsessed with reporting what happens off the field rather than on it.

Rob Houwing, writing on Sport24, says he will be following the SuperSport Series as closely as possible for any signs of a true new tearaway shock bowler or two.

Of course, things happen in cycles and you can’t always expect fearsome head-hunters of the calibre of Allan Donald, Brett Schultz, Mfuneko Ngam or Nantie Hayward to announce themselves every summer, just as fruit farmers can’t always guarantee a robust annual haul from the trees ... But toothcomb the squads thrown up for the earliest salvoes of the SuperSport Series and you don’t see too many other, intriguingly callow “express men” among them.

In the New Zealand Herald, David Leggat says that the latest tweak to the Powerplay rule, which allows the batting team to decide when either the second or the third Powerplay should be taken, will be a further advantage to the batsmen.

Consider two scenarios: 1: Your openers have made a flyer in the first five overs. The fielding captain might want to drop more players deep for the sixth over onwards to stem the runs. The batting side can exercise their option to keep the field in, and potentially pile on the runs.

2: Late in the innings, when the hitters are breaking loose, the batting skipper could add to their problems by calling his Powerplay, thus turning, say, 12 runs an over from overs 45 to 50 to perhaps 20, with the fielding captain helpless.

Arvind Iyengar crunches numbers and comes up with a list of the best ODI bowlers of all time on ESPNStar. His top five are: Glenn McGrath, Richard Hadlee, Shaun Pollock, Allan Donald, and Wasim Akram.

A day after Derek Underwood took over as MCC president and vowed to use his position to promote spin in England, Mike Atherton writes in Times that the influence of home-grown slow bowlers has been waning by the season. Atherton traces the decline of spin bowling in England and feels there has been no recovery. Yet, he says, there are grounds for hope.

A week spent watching the denouement of the LV County Championship at Trent Bridge last week highlighted the issue. There were four spinners on view, bowling on a pitch that, while slow, was bare and dry. There were two left-armers (Samit Patel and Liam Dawson), an off spinner (Graeme Swann) and a leg spinner (Imran Tahir): three home-produced players and one from overseas; three orthodox spinners and one with more “mystery”. Between them, the home-grown spinners took four wickets and Tahir took eight.

TE Srinivasan, the former Tamil Nadu batsman who played one Test for India on its tour to New Zealand in 1980-81, is fighting a malignant brain tumour with great courage. His wife Mala Srinivasan has been with him throughout this ordeal. Clayton Murzello from Mid Day meets them.

When MiD DAY visited Srinivasan at his sister's home in Churchgate last week, we expected to see a pitiful sight, but to our pleasant surprise, Srinivasan walked into the living room with a smile on his face, dressed in a t'shirt and a track pant all set for his evening walk down Marine Drive.

A few months ago, says his pillar-of-strength wife Mala, he couldn't move or talk normally. So what's been doing the trick? Chemotherapy yes, love and good care certainly, but more than anything else, the grit displayed not only by the cancer-afflicted former batsman, but also Mala.

SuperCricket looks at some of the players to watch out for in the SuperSport series which starts today. They include Warriors allrounder Wayne Parnell, “the most talked about cricketer to hit the first-class scene for some time”, and 22-year-old fast bowler Basheer Walters representing the Titans team.

The Nashua Titans have developed an ability over the years to identify unfulfilled talent from other regions and turned it into the finished article. Proteas’ spin bowler Paul Harris and young all-rounder Farhaan Behardien are examples that spring to mind and they may have unearthed another diamond in 22-year-old fast bowler Basheer Walters who hails from the Eastern Province. He has done well enough at amateur level to attract attention and will certainly benefit from playing alongside the likes of Morne Morkel and Dale Steyn.

	Ganguly was included in the squad for the first two Tests against Australia after being dropped for the Irani Cup © AFP

The new selection committee's decision to retain Sourav Ganguly for first two Tests against Australia, despite his omission from the Rest of India squad for the Irani Cup, has evoked varied responses.

An editorial comment in the Deccan Herald suggests the BCCI’s new selection committee, wary of ruffling feathers early into its term, may have toed the old line by retaining Ganguly. However, acknowledging the value experienced players like Ganguly add to the Indian squad, it favours a gradual 'phasing-out' of the old guard, as the team could not risk losing such a solid middle order in one go.

Over the next few months, the decision to blood younger batsmen must be implemented. It has to be a gradual process, for the less experienced ones will need the comforting presence of long-standing bulwarks to break themselves in at the Test match level. It will be in the best interests of Indian cricket if the seniors are taken into confidence and thanked for their contributions while politely being told of the need to start the rebuilding process so that Indian cricket doesn’t flounder when these men of substance call it quits of their own volition.

R.Mohan, in the Asian Age, agrees that Kris Srikkanth, the new chairman of selectors, must take players into confidence before making the tough calls.

S. Dinakar, writing in the Hindu, feels Ganguly’s inclusion is justified. Ganguly’s experience, his performance against Australia earlier this year and his impressive record since his comeback against South Africa at the Wanderers in 2006-07, he writes, merit him a place in the side.

Meanwhile, in the Times of India, Bobilli Vijay Kumar writes the new selection panel appears no different from its predecessors, and that its decisions are consistent with earlier trends.

As it turned out, the panel proved as adept and slick as all the earlier ones. Instead of picking XIV, it cleverly added a XVth member. Smooth. As the big list sunk in, however, the rumours were up and running again.

Daily News and Analysis’ Ayaz Memon rubbishes rumours of any ‘deal’ between the BCCI’s selection committee and Sourav Ganguly, but feels Ganguly’s inclusion is as explainable as it is confusing.

For an opinion that questions the selection committee’s “sudden about-turn” after Ganguly was excluded from matches in the run-up to this series, read Jayaditya Gupta’s article on Cricinfo.

Philip Oliver reviews Essex’s 2008 season in the blog Third Umpire. He lauds them for their one-day performances, and is optimistic about the county’s chances of promotion to Division One in the Championship next season. The blog also has season reviews for Worcestershire and Hampshire.

Essex enjoyed a successful 2008 season, confirming themselves as one of the premier limited overs teams in the country. Unfortunately a similar winning formula continues to evade them in the championship, where they will start 2009 in division two for the eighth time in 10 years of the two division structure.

On the Sky Sports website, Ian Ward, the former England batsman, provides a comprehensive review of the 2008 county season.

When I was at Surrey you'd see Alec Stewart, Mark Butcher, Graham Thorpe and the rest going off and playing for England and that made you realise you had to improve if you wanted to stay in the side. You start thinking like an international cricketer and trying to emulate what they were achieving. Durham have had Harmison, Collingwood and Plunkett going into international cricket and that will have motivated the other players. They've been the stars for the last few seasons and it's all culminated this year.

Rohit Mahajan, in Outlook, writes the ICL has defied predictions of an early demise and, has instead, expanded into a potent force that could seriously affect the dynamics of world cricket.

Conventional wisdom suggested its demise was imminent; the mighty BCCI, after all, had decreed that the rebel league must die, banning players who joined it and threatening and tempting the rest with its massive funds.

Yet the ICL showed it's very much alive and kicking when it named the ninth team in its league—the Dhaka Warriors, comprising 13 top Bangladesh players. The reduction of ban on Sri Lankan players was still more significant, showing active dissent outside India. These developments vindicated the Essel Group, owner of the ICL, which was mocked for spending lavishly in a battle it was bound to lose to the mighty BCCI.

	Warne:"There is no doubt in my mind that Kevin Pietersen can become the best batsman in the world" © Getty Images

Shane Warne includes Graeme Smith at number 44 in a list of his top hundred cricketers. Aside from his immense talent as a batsman, Warne believes Smith, as captain, is “on the verge of something special” as he heads a formidable South African outfit; a team that can potentially challenge Australia. Warne also feels Kevin Pietersen (no.33 in his list) has the all the makings of becoming the best batsman in the world. Read Warne’s Top 100 List in the Times.

At Test level, I reckon Smith could now be on the verge of something pretty special. South Africa have the makings of a side that can challenge Australia. I am still not convinced by their spin options, but in the seam department Dale Steyn has had a lot of success over the past 12 months, and Morne Morkel is genuinely brisk and is going to be a handful in Australia.

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There is no doubt in my mind that Kevin Pietersen can become the best batsman in the world. There will be no doubt in his mind, either. He's not far away now! He has bags of confidence, and, let's be honest, he has a lot to be confident about. Not many batsmen can average almost 50 in Test cricket but still look as though they are capable of better.

	VVS Laxman has been dealt an IPL blow ahead of the Australia series © AFP

Reactions to the sacking of VVS Laxman as captain of the IPL's Hyderabad franchise, the Deccan Chargers, has expectedly resulted in mixed views. Speculation of a massive reshuffle has been in the air for sometime, but G Unnikrishnan, of the Deccan Herald, believes Laxman deserved better treatment than the abrupt removal from the captaincy.

Laxman cannot be blamed if he felt hard done by the franchise owners, whose relation with him was not on the desired course from the beginning. First they utilised Laxman's popularity to the hilt by projecting him as the face of the team during its launch, and Laxman even turned down the chance to become an icon, so that his team could purchase big-ticket players like Andrew Symonds for US$ 1.35 million. An icon status would have entitled Laxman to a fee that was 15% higher than their costliest signing, and would have limited the team's purchasing power within the IPL's US$ 5 million cap, and still Laxman did not want to join the icon club of Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Anil Kumble, Yuvraj Singh and Virender Sehwag. The way Chargers forget that large-heartedness of Laxman was really painful.

Meanwhile, Nick Hoult, writing in the Telegraph, feels the IPL's phenomenal success has signalled India's ascent in cricket's global order.

The success of that tournament has not only heralded a flood of new money into the game, but it has also precipitated a shift in the political order of world cricket. Australia, New Zealand and South Africa have built closer ties with the Indian board, evidence of which can be provided by their founding of the Champions League, a tournament that will offer another avenue of exposure for IPL franchises and has already realised more than £500 million in television deals