There's been much debate over whether Andrew Flintoff can be called a great player. He may not have statistics or longevity on his side but Simon Barnes feels it is perfectly possible to achieve greatness without either and points to Bob Beamon, Roger Bannister, Jesse Owens and Mark Spitz who achieved greatness through a flash, an hour or a week of magic. He writes in the Times:

Flintoff was great for a couple of months. In those two months, in the summer of 2005, England beat an Australia side packed full of indisputably great players, regaining the Ashes after 16 years. Flintoff was the inspiration, the deal-breaker, the match-winner and the series-winner. In this brief, enchanted period he was genuinely great, and if the rest of his career has failed to measure up, then it was much the same with Beamon.

Sri Lanka have begun to excel in Tests very consistently, which has resulted in them rising to No. 2 in the rankings. While tracking the gradual ascent, SP Pathiravithana in his column in the Sunday Times, the Sri Lankan daily, believes this is the best achievement since winning the World Cup in 1996. Read Sidath Wettimuny's comment in the piece as well.

Irfan Husain, writing in the Dawn, examines some of the problems plaguing the game in Pakistan. The incompetence of the PCB, the concerns associated with coaching, be it local or foreign, the constant feuds between players and the board and the inconsistency of the team are some of the issues he explores.

To begin with, PCB, the cricket board charged with organising the sport, is largely composed of government nominees whose basic interest is to enjoy the perks as long as they can. Few of them have the expertise and the dedication required to lift standards and provide the infrastructure needed for the development of the sport at the grassroots.

Qamar Ahmed, writing in the same newspaper, says that the PCB's initial decision to take legal action against the ICC for moving the World Cup out of Pakistan was an exercise in futility. He adds that the board should consider itself lucky to have sorted out the dispute in an out-of-court settlement. The important thing now, he writes, is to see how the PCB manages the financial returns - which includes its host fees as well as compensation - it is expected to gain after its agreement with the ICC.

One hopes that all that big purse that the PCB is in possession is spent on sensible and cricketing projects from which at least we are able to save our face from people who now believe that we are only a bunch of nincompoops and nothing else.

Delhi & Districts Cricket Association president Arun Jaitley’s assurance of a clean-up has brought an uncertain end to the confrontation between the organisation and Virender Sehwag. But cricketers aren’t that sanguine, especially the bitter, silent ones who’ve stopped playing the game, writes Rohit Mahajan in Outlook.

Khurana, and a host of spinners over the last few years, were treated no better than spare parts because the son of a Sports Committee member is a spinner. To keep his career alive, all spinners in Delhi became targets. Other specialists aren’t spared either. For instance, the players who helped Delhi to its solitary national Under-17 and Under-19 titles in 2003 and 2004, respectively. Most prominent players of those teams have either stopped playing or joined other teams.

With Australia slipping from the top spot in the Test rankings, Anil Kumble believes it will be tough for one team to dominate from here on. Even if that happens, he doubts if it will be for periods of about a decade. The Twenty20 threat to Tests, day-night Test matches are some of the other topics he speaks about during an interview to Lokendra Pratap Sahi in the Telegraph, the Kolkata-based daily.

Is there a lesson to learn from Australia’s fall?

It hasn’t been a sharp fall... The Australians haven’t had great success over the past year-and-a-half or so, which is why it’s such a challenging time for them. You can’t be at the top forever... It’s a cycle... One shouldn’t forget that quite a few teams travel quite a lot nowadays and, so, are more used to playing in conditions overseas... Till a few years back, it was assumed that it would be difficult to beat Australia, that has changed and India took the lead in bringing about that change... We showed the way by beating them in India and winning Tests on Australian soil as well.

	Andrew Strauss's England have their sights clearly set on the job ahead © Getty Images

England's subdued celebrations after their Ashes success, their focus on the job ahead and the willingness to learn from their mistakes in the aftermath of the Ashes victory in 2005 bodes well for their preparation to take on the current No.1 Test side, South Africa, later in the year, writes Stephen Brenkley in the Independent on Sunday.

England have the makings of something here, having won from despair. The post-Flintoff era will bring challenges of balance and tone, it may also be the opportunity for restructuring elsewhere (Paul Collingwood and, despite his three late joyful wickets, Stephen Harmison). It is rapt with possibilities. Smashing.

In the Sunday Times, Martin Johnson says England were right in not going over the top in their post-Ashes celebrations because this victory was quite unlike the triumph of 2005.

So not only is it appropriate to celebrate the return of the Ashes in the context of one average team beating another average team, it is also incumbent on the powers that be to make sure that this time England’s defence of the urn is treated more like a serious sporting mission than a family outing to Mablethorpe.

Andrew Strauss led by example, and his leadership, calmness, reliability at the top of the order and the equation he shared with Andy Flower proved critical in the outcome of the Ashes, writes Michael Atherton in the Times.

He [Strauss] is essentially a cautious captain, prone to thinking primarily about saving runs, not taking wickets, and about getting into a position from which defeat is impossible before thinking of victory. Those quibbles aside, it is clear that he is enormously respected by his team, as leader, player and human being — even if they think him a trifle posh. His greatest attribute was his calmness, his ability not to get sidetracked by every crisis that came his way. His was a reassuring presence at the top of the order and at the head of the unit.

Vic Marks is already looking ahead to the next Ashes series Down Under. In the Observer, he writes that Australia have more problems to sort out. They need to deal with their aging guard, he says, and also draft in some extra batsmen along with a specialist spinner. England, he feels, could well be without Paul Collingwood.

England played their best against Australia but they need to get better (and luckier) as they face a tough international schedule with series lined up against stiff opposition, writes Simon Wilde, also in the Sunday Times.

Kevin Pietersen must bat at No 3; Jonathan Trott at 5; Adil Rashid must be given a chance as a bowler and No 8 batsman. The former England captain, Michael Vaughan, tells Scyld Berry how England can build on Ashes success in the Telegraph.

Piers Morgan can't tolerate what according to him is a "weird campaign" to deny Andrew Flintoff the mantle of 'greatness'. He sets the record straight in the Daily Mail.

Greatness is a strange thing to quantify. Churchill was not a particularly good Prime Minister if you study the 'stats'. The normal humdrum business of government didn't really get his juices flowing. But for courage, fortitude and an ability to inspire the nation when it really mattered, he was our greatest.

Matt Prior takes Simon Wilde through each Test of the Ashes leading to the inevitable "biggest day" when the urn returned to England. Read it out in the Sunday Times.

	Daniel Vettori is not even listed among the Northern Districts squad for the coming season. © Associated Press

With the national side being the only team Vettori plays for in New Zealand, the most intriguing aspect of his new role as a selector, as well as being the captain, will be how he gets a real take on the form and quality of those players next in line for selection. Peter Williams asks the questions in the Herald on Sunday.

So when it comes to making the bold new picks in the future, will the Black Caps captain actually be as educated as the full-time selectors Glenn Turner and Mark Greatbatch, and the adviser John Wright? There's no doubt Vettori is well placed to move the underperformers on from the national team but that's just half of the selectors' job.

On the flip side, Paul Lewis, in the same paper, gives his reasons why Vettori's appointment is appropriate, despite surprising objections.

If New Zealand was batting to save a draw or needing runs to win, who would you want at the crease? Many would say Brendon McCullum; fair enough. Increasingly some would say Ross Taylor.

But most would probably plump, for sheer guts and likely achievement, for Vettori. Give him his head now to populate the Black Caps with players like himself, as much as possible.

There is also a real fear of burnout just as New Zealand's best player is operating in his prime. Add to that, the worry for his team-mates, his very friends, who now have to think twice about the way Vettori views them. Duncan Johnstone has more in Stuff.co.nz.

An orthodox finger-spinner succeeding in a game where, until recently, only those with a spare ace up their sleeves, or a party trick with their elbow were receiving the fame and acclaim, reveals the sheer enormity of Vettori's bowling achievements. Richard Boock in the Sunday Star Times salutes the bowler on getting to 300 Test wickets and 3000 runs.

Jonathan Trott's a well-travelled man. The South African-born batsman, now with the England Test team, owes a part of his success to New Zealand. It's easy to forget the summers he spent as an overseas professional with Otago. Andrew Alderson, in the New Zealand Herald, writes on Trott's Kiwi connections.

So the South African-born allrounder can be slotted into the 'ours' category by virtue of coming out almost four years ago. Further entrenching his Kiwi credentials are the fact his dad Ian works as the coach at Auckland's Parnell club six months of the year. Trott also has a sister living in Auckland.

A collection of Harsha Bhogle's newspaper columns has just been published (Cricinfo's review here). After attending the book launch, the Hindustan Times' Anand Vasu writes about what is common to Shane Warne and Harsha Bhogle (besides using hair solutions to fight off the effects of middle age).

So what's Phillip Hughes doing in Nagpur all of a sudden? To sharpen his skills with coach Neil D'Costa at the newly built academy. Seems like Australia's new kid is determined to recover his lost touch after his sudden blip in England. Peter Lalor of the Australian catches up with the two, where Hughes talks about England, and what else he intends to do in India.

Justin Langer thought he had met somebody on the same impassioned-plain when he received probing queries from the teenager via email some years back. Now the little opener is turning to the Little Master. He intends to fly to Mumbai on Monday and hopes to have dinner with Tendulkar. Hughes promises to gorge himself on cricket."I'll chew his ear off," he says with a laugh. "I've got questions about a lot of things that I want to ask him. I like getting around and talking to the guys who have been around for a long time."

With more than a dozen names in contention for the Kolkata Knight Riders coaching spot, Sharda Ugra wonders in India Today whether the IPL franchise's head honchos have heard of the concept of a shortlist.

Walking distance from Mannat, Shahrukh Khan’s bungalow on Bandra Band Stand is a bus stop. These days, you can find KKR officials lurking there, hissing at folks waiting for the 211 bus: “Pssst, hey you, want to coach the Knight Riders?”

Well almost. At least that’s what it looks like. They haven’t left out anyone not so why not give Mrs Yvette Salgado from Chium or Jude D’Lima from Shirley Rajan Village a try?

There has been much debate over whether the pitch at The Oval was designed to help the home side win, a charge long levelled at Indian tracks. Dileep Premachandran writes in the Guardian that there was nothing wrong with The Oval surface, and also points out that Indian pitches aren't the dustbowls they once were.

It might help to work with facts, rather than Ashes-inspired emotion. England finished the opening day on 307 for eight from 85.3 overs. Both sides scored more than 347 in their second innings. The innings of the match was played on the third day by a man making his Test debut. The best spell of the game came from a young pace bowler, but there were wickets too for the spinners, one of them a part-timer. And, most importantly, there was a result, not five days of mind-numbing tedium as seen in the Caribbean earlier this year, with every man jack seemingly capable of scoring a century.

England will host Tests for Pakistan against Australia next summer because of the dangerous security situation. But will it work? Patrick Kidd has more on the Wisden Cricketer website.

If history is any guide, next summer will be one for sellers of umbrellas and mackintoshes. That is the lesson from the extremely brief record of Test matches played in England between teams who do not wear the three lions.

David Conn reopens the debate on whether cricket should be made free-to-air on TV, especially with respect to the recently concluded Ashes. In the Guardian, Conn feels that the England victory should have been watched by everyone in the country, as it would have served as a tool to bring the nation together.

A committee chaired by David Davies, formerly of the FA, is currently considering whether the "crown jewels" list of sporting events, which are required to be available on free-to-air TV, should be changed, with cricket always the prime candidate for restoration to the live list. And here it was on cue, a Test victory inescapably presenting itself as a national unity, "watercooler" moment, the stuff of newspaper front pages, TV news headlines and a letter to Andrew Strauss from a leader yet to overcome his own back foot struggles quite as happily, Gordon Brown.

After their Ashes victory in 2005, England celebrated in style with open-top bus parades, only to be soundly beaten by the Australians in the 2007 Ashes. This time, there are no wild parties or parades, as England focus purely on the cricket which lies ahead. Gideon Haigh writes on this refreshing change of attitude in the Wisden Cricketer.

At the time, it soon became clear that England had geared themselves to beating Australia and…errrr….that’s it. After going on their bus-riding bender, they learned there was a little more to cricket than a single series, and looked as confused as Kevin Pietersen on meeting Cherie Blair.

Gideon Haigh, once again in the Wisden Cricketer, writes on the Australian team, and the issue of Ricky Ponting's captaincy.

In summing up the loss of the Ashes, Ricky Ponting in his column in the Australian acknowledges the disappointment but tries to look on the bright side.

And after a frustrating few years battling injuries, Shane Watson has looked every bit an international player. He was completely at home opening the batting and performed consistently under pressure. I don't think Watto's cricket or his body have ever been in better shape.

He is the all-rounder we need to add balance to our side. His bowling is also coming along well after having to remodel his action a little following the back stress fractures he sustained on the tour of India late last year. I can eventually see Watto moving into our middle order to play a true all-rounder's role because I believe that Phil Hughes has a lot to offer at the top of the order.

Shane Warne in his Herald Sun column writes of the hurt that the Australians will be feeling, particularly after losing to an England outfit that he considered not much better then Australia.

There is no disgrace in losing if you are outplayed by a better team, as was the case in 2005. This time around, though, I don't think England was much better. That's why it hurt even more and why questions have to be asked.

Australia could not win the big moments.Contrary to reports I do not blame the selectors for losing the Ashes, but I do believe someone has to be accountable for not picking Nathan Hauritz at The Oval.

In the New Zealand Herald, David Leggat analyses the implications of elevating Andy Moles and Daniel Vettori to the selection panel, a move which has raised eyebrows. The idea of drafting Vettori may not be so bad, because he has a hard-headed attitude and knows his mind. But having Moles on the panel could affect the other players, who may not be able to confide in him as they once used to.

Will a player feel as happy about baring his soul to someone who has a direct hand on his test place? Moles will argue his relationship with the players is good, and this is a natural next step in his job. And to be fair he is not the first coach on a selection panel.

	Rashid: the new Flintoff? © Getty Images

Shane Warne may have retired, but he will never stop championing the spinner's cause. Forget Stuart Broad as Flintoff's replacement: Adil Rashid, Yorkshire's prodigiously talented young legspinning allrounder, is just as likely to fill his boots, he writes in his Times column.

My alternative, though, is Adil Rashid. Yes, he’s a spin bowler rather than a seamer, but there is no reason why England can’t go with three pacemen and two spinners. That’s a balanced attack, to me. Rashid has scored hundreds and taken five wickets in an innings in his past two matches for Yorkshire. He’s a real all-rounder.

A seven-eight-nine of Rashid, Broad and Graeme Swann would be pretty effective in Test cricket. Perhaps in time Broad and Rashid would switch positions. At present, though, I would have them in that order. Rashid just looks ready to come into the fold and should be picked for the South Africa tour.

I spent some time with him a couple of years ago when Hampshire played Yorkshire. Michael Vaughan asked me to have a few words. Rashid seemed confident and knew what he was talking about. At the time he was only 19 or 20, but he had a good understanding of bowling. Most important, he liked to spin the ball

Over at The Guardian, England's 2005 coach, Duncan Fletcher, hopes that the hype surrounding Broad doesn't overwhelm him.

I just hope to goodness he is given room to breathe and develop. Some sections of the media in the UK like to build them up, then knock them down, but England need to realise they have a real talent on their hands and encourage him to make the most of it.

Geoff Boycott (Daily Telegraph), though, reminds everyone that despite England now holding the Ashes, they are far from the finished article. Their real test will lie in South Africa this winter, and a number of their middle-order need to up their game.

The return of Kevin Pietersen will give the middle-order a more imposing look, but the people around him are not convincing. Bell isn't the only man struggling against the short ball. Speaking on the radio, Phil Tufnell compared Paul Collingwood's dismissal on Friday night to himself batting at No 11. Collingwood may be alright in the comfort zone at No 5, where England have plenty of options now that Jonathan Trott has emerged as a potential star of the future. But you always need solid people at the top of the order. Ravi Bopara is a talented young player, but he has been found wanting up front as well.

In the era of Tiger Woods, Roger Federer and Sachin Tendulkar, it is the Indian batsman who will come up on top as the best sportsman, writes Sunil Gavaskar in dreamcricket.com.

While both Woods and Federer have millions of fans all over the world, it in no way compares with the millions in India alone who worship the ground Tendulkar walks on and believe that their man can do no wrong. Unlike Woods and Federer whose houses and cars are safe even if they lose in the first round that is not the case for Indian cricketers who have found homes and properties destroyed by an angry crowd after they have not performed upto expectations.

Matthew Hayden had recently suggested that the Champions Trophy should be scrapped in order to make room in the packed international calendar. Suresh Menon agrees and writes in his dreamcricket.com column that while at one point it was significant, it longer serves a purpose.

When Jagmohan Dalmiya was President of the ICC, he mooted the idea of what was then known as the ‘mini-World Cup’ in 1998 for two very good reasons. The World Cup was not yet an ICC event, and the plan was to make some money for the governing body which would own the new tournament. There was too the noble idea of spreading the game beyond the Test-playing countries. Thus Dhaka and Nairobi played hosts, but by 2002, that ideal was abandoned when the tournament was held in Sri Lanka and then in England. By 1999, the World Cup became an ICC tournament, after it had previously been managed by the respective host countries. Television rights had made the pocket money the ICC earned from the Champions Trophy irrelevant. Twice in recent years, the Champions Trophy was held just five months before a World Cup. It was like going through the motions to satisfy the international calendar.

	Andrew Strauss may have a real chance of retaining the Ashes in 2010-11 © Getty Images

Four years ago we were living in the middle of a debt-fuelled orgy of consumerism, the kind of age in which an open-top bus parade and drink-fuelled party at Trafalgar Square were fitting conclusions to a wonderfully topsy-turvy series. Now we are a little wiser, a little more sober. Credit-crunched, a lap of honour will have to do.

In the same paper Christopher Martin-Jenkins wonders how England will move forward from this win for they have a real chance of retaining the Ashes in 2010-11 if the selectors take decisions now that temper the need to remain on an upward path while keeping that series as the next focal point.

In the Independent James Lawton thanks Ricky Ponting for his sporting behaviour in defeat and admires how the Australian captain kept a check on his emotions and maintained a sound head while all the time fighting with every legitimate device at his disposal.

In the Telegraph Mike Norrish writes that the television viewership for this Ashes was so low - because it was on a subscription channel - that despite all the excitement of the decider it failed to pass the mum test.

If I get an SMS from my mum, and it’s about sport, then you can be sure that something big has happened. I have received two this year - when Usain Bolt broke the 100m world record and when Andy Murray lost at Wimbledon - but, tellingly, not one about the Ashes. “Where were you when Freddie ran out Ricky Ponting” asked my colleague Kevin Garside this morning. And it would be lovely to think that future generations will remember the exact details of that wonderful moment. But unfortunately, I fear the most common reply will be less romantic. Because depressingly, when Flintoff threw down Ponting’s stumps, the nation that worships him was watching Poirot, waiting for the highlights.

In the Daily Mail Nasser Hussain assesses the defining Ashes 2009 performances.

Marcus North:

The find of the series. In the warm-up game at Worcester, he just looked like an organised pro, but he proved to be better than that. Played spin well, accumulated runs and formed an excellent partnership with Clarke which was crucial at Edgbaston. He said to England, 'You'll have to do something special to get me out,' which is just what a skipper wants.

Australia have slipped to No. 4 in the Test rankings and that may be good for the game which is struggling to sustain spectator interest in many parts of the world, writes Gideon Haigh in the Australian.

This summer in England has been a cricket crossroads. The Ashes of 2009 followed closely two of cricket's hottest versions of its new variant: the Indian Premier League in South Africa, and the Twenty20 World Championship in England. In fact, to so soon after be plunged into a five-Test series, cricket's most traditional and now almost obsolete format, felt a little like dressing in period costume for an activity of the society for creative anachronism. What ensued was not a vintage Ashes series. The teams were too weak, and the Tests generally too one-sided. The advantage did not fluctuate; it swung back and forth like a wrecking ball, indicative of two teams at war with their frailties as much as each other.

Yet they were genuine tests, of ability, adaptability, character, endurance. One saw cricketers in extremis: indulging in mass man-love one week, fit for trauma counselling the next, performing tasks requiring extraordinary patience and self-denial, such as Ricky Ponting's superfine 150 at Cardiff and Michael Clarke's sublime 136 at Lord's, then exhibiting blink-of-an-eye brilliance like the run-outs executed from close to the bat by Andrew Strauss and Simon Katich at the Oval. Some games have one or the other: no game apart from Test cricket has both to such extent.

In the same paper Peter Lalor talks to some former Australian players and coaches who believe Ponting should remain captain despite having twice lost the Ashes in England.

In the Age Greg Baum calls for some calm and perspective following the defeat.

For two decades, Australia's winning needed little explanation. Now, seemingly, its defeat has no alibi. The fact is that this was a contest between two pretty plain old cricket teams, neither of which was able to sustain its efforts.

Reporters at the Sydney Morning Herald try to find out why the Australian team, unlike English and South African ones, is still predominantly white.

	Andrew Strauss holds the Ashes aloft © Getty Images

England were deserved winners of the Ashes and will come in for plenty of praise, but instead of resting on their laurels they must target further improvement, writes Angus Fraser in the Independent.

As a result of England's triumph, there will be millions of people and hundreds of companies who will be prepared to pay a significant sum of money to hear how the pair and their players planned and executed a remarkable, unexpected yet thoroughly-deserved triumph. For the players who have taken part in the series there is the potential to cash in. For Strauss and Flower, the management of this situation potentially provides an even bigger challenge than defeating Ricky Ponting's side in the first place.

In the Daily Telegraph, Michael Henderson writes that Strauss should celebrate his own Waterloo because he had more to do with the outcome than anybody else.

Nasser Hussain says in the Daily Mail that Andrew Strauss's bond with coach Andy Flower was one of reasons for the success. In the same paper, Martin Samuel says England fans were a worried lot till Flintoff threw down the stumps to dismiss Ponting.

This Ashes will be remembered as Strauss's Ashes to sit alongside those of Botham and Flintoff, writes Mike Selvey in the Guardian.

If Michael Vaughan and his band of Ashes heroes were awarded MBEs after the 2005 series, then Andrew Strauss should be knighted after Sunday's monumental victory, writes Justin Langer in BBC.

Simon Barnes writes in the Times on a similar theme - how “in what way are we going to make a mess of this?” was the overwhelming feeling at the ground despite England starting the day in a dominant position.

Ricky Ponting may have lost the Ashes for the second time, but the captaincy is his for as long as he deigns it, says Gideon Haigh in the Times.

For Ponting the individual, the series will also have been formative. One suspects that, as it did Warne, McGrath and Gilchrist in 2005, defeat will probably prolong his career. It was surprising to hear Ponting speak so emphatically about his desire to play on, without obfuscating or pleading for time to reflect, into the Ashes of 2010-11, and perhaps even farther. To make such a statement so unequivocally in the shadow of defeat bespeaks considerable determination.

In the Sydney Morning Herald Peter Roebuck believes despite the Ashes loss, it is unlikely Ricky Ponting will be evicted or that he will step aside as captain.

While the first Ashes Ponting lost was purely because of England's talent, this time around Australia's mediocrity has a large role to play, says Paul Hayward in the Guardian.

An Ashes victory is a great way to exit Tests, and Flintoff capped his last day with the crucial run-out of Ponting. Vic Marks remarks in the same paper how Flintoff's contribution was typically crucial and flamboyant.

Virender Sehwag has threatened to quit Delhi and move to Haryana because of the interference in selection matters. After ruling out some candidates like Madan Lal and Vivek Razdan, Kadambari Murali-Wade wonders in the Hindustan Times whether there are any other former players in Delhi who can take over the selection panel and bring more credibility to the system.

Then there’s Bishan Singh Bedi, who has had vicious fights with the DDCA establishment over players’ rights and the DDCA will be scared to touch. Tiger Pataudi, who never gets involved, Manoj Prabhakar, who was banned for five years post the mach-fixing scandal, returned as bowling coach and is now coach of Rajasthan. Ajay Sharma, banned for life, Ajay Jadeja, busy with media and golf commitments and Maninder Singh, who has been battling various personal problems.

PJ Patterson, former Prime Minister of Jamaica, submitted a report on West Indies cricket to the WICB in 2007, but he feels the board has not utilized the suggestions given by him and his colleagues in the report. In CaribbeanCricket, Patterson writes on how the board missed a chance to help build a great future for cricket in the West Indies.

We were forewarned, in the light of previous reports which lay buried, that our efforts would bear no fruit. Little did we realize that decisions on the most vital aspects would be taken, kept secret for a considerable period and then eventually obscured under the guise that approximately 47 of our 65 recommendations had been approved.

None of us was so beset with the sin of arrogance to believe that recommendations in our Report were “edicts or directives”, but we dared to hope that the “strong suggestions” we made, grounded on a process of full consultation, would have merited careful and serious consideration in charting the path for the early recovery and future growth of West Indian cricket.

The Sehwag-Delhi controversy is not isolated to Delhi alone, says Partha Bhaduri in the Times of India. Almost all state associations in India face problems in the administration, as the article breaks down issues facing each cricket body in India.

A prominent domestic player, who has also played for India in the recent past, said: "It's a small example but did you know we also beg for the cheaper SG balls during Ranji training sessions? It's just another way for officials to make some extra money. If the BCCI is doling out Rs 30 crore annually to these bodies, why can't most Ranji teams have proper trainers or physios? Why can't age-group teams have trainers like in Australia?

Andrew Flintoff played his final Test innings on Saturday at the Oval. The allrounder scored a quickfire 22 in an effort to get the England score moving. Stephen Fay, in the Independent on Sunday, describes the farewell innings and comments that Flintoff means much more to the game than his career statistics suggest.

As he approached the dressing room steps, he swivelled to the left and raised his bat to the crowd and then turned and repeated the gesture to the members in the Pavilion. It was a modest gesture by a remarkable cricketer whose Test performances have only rarely reached the peaks of which he was capable, but who never lost the affection of his large and loyal audience. So great is the interest still that Fred's Knee has sometimes seemed to be the biggest sports story of the summer.

In the Observer, David Hopps describes Flintoff as a Saturday afternoon batsman, an uncomplicated man naturally committed to simple fun. Hopps goes on to wonder what a sociable man like Flintoff would do, now that he will have plenty of free time after retiring from Tests.

This had the makings of Flintoff's perfect Saturday afternoon: an England lead of 340, Australia under the cosh and an expectant Oval crowd humming with the belief that the Ashes were almost won. He had the licence to swing the blade, not that permission really mattered. A Flintoff batting farewell should not be legislated for. It had to be unlicensed, untaxed, uninsurable.

In the same paper, Will Buckley pays tribute to Flintoff, the 'most glorious of amateurs'.

	For Strauss leadership is an inspiration, not a burden © Getty Images

Ponting never runs out of ideas in the field, whereas Waugh, even with a more experienced and varied attack, was often devoid of inspiration on the few occasions when his captaincy was really tested.

If England take the Ashes, Andrew Strauss will be the overwhelming choice for Man of the Series for his sound captaincy and pivotal batting, writes Mike Brearley in the Observer.

Strauss's assurance at the crease has so often been what has held Australia up; once they have got rid of him, the door has looked open, the barriers thin. Over the past year his play has developed strikingly. Whereas before he could be restricted by full-length bowling, now he deals with it more positively by transferring his weight confidently on to the front foot and punching the ball back down the ground. The bowler cannot any longer afford to err by overpitching.

Opinions on the two captains in this Ashes series have oscillated with the results. The pluses for Ponting in that match were that he looked to have made better plans for his bowlers and battled beautifully in Cardiff but Strauss is one of those for whom the leadership is an inspiration, not a burden, writes David Gower in the Sunday Times.

Victory will presumably result in the traditional award of MBEs to everybody who’s done his bit for England this summer, in which case nothing less than a knighthood will suffice for The Oval groundsman, writes Martin Johnson in the same paper.

With Australia requiring only a draw on a ground that usually offers bowlers a similar working environment to a Skegness donkey, whatever items came out of the groundsman’s shed to prepare the playing surface, we can safely say a watering can was not among them. In which case, arise Sir Bill Gordon.

In the Sunday Telegraph Michael Vaughan hopes England can go on to build a team that can beat Australia in two years and become the best side in the world.

In the same paper Scyld Berry says England have made the worst possible start to their quest for excellence.

England's commanding position at The Oval is the work of the supporting cast, not the marquee name. Australia's collapse was inspired by Broad and Graeme Swann, with a little help from umpire Asad Rauf, writes Martin Samuel in the Daily Mail.

An unknown Indian fast bowler with no first-class experience was blanketed in hype when he picked up a Rajasthan Royals contract earlier this year. He didn't play a game in the Indian Premier League, but the buzz surrounding Atul Sharma was that he was seriously quick. An Indian men's lifestyle magazine Man's World looks at how biomechanics, a javelin coach and training stints in England, South Africa and the US are helping Sharma get closer to his dream of becoming the world's fastest bowler.

Sharma hasn’t played a single club match for seven years and has never played first-class cricket. Heck, he couldn’t even always find a place in his school side.
So how has this Mumbaikar got to where he is right now, within sight, assuming he doesn’t fall prey to injuries or is found lacking in big match temperament, of a place in the national side? The answer to that is simple: ever since he first took a cricket ball in his hand, Sharma has wanted to bowl fast, faster than anybody else in the world. And as he grew up, this desire became an all-consuming one, an ambition that disregarded the lack of innate ability

Delhi cricket is a world where even those who play well have had to resort to backdoor methods of appeasing those whose approval is a must, writes Pradeep Magazine in the Hindustan Times.

You need not always be a powerful businessman, a politician, a bureaucrat or a cop to push your child into the team, or resort to bribery to have your son play for the state team; you can also get your way by hiring goons to threaten those in power. In this world, nothing is a secret. Every newspaper has, from time to time, published reports of how corrupt the DDCA edifice is.
But this has not stopped the next selection having a large quota for players who have nothing but their parents' CVs to recommend them.

	Broad bowled like an Australian © Getty Images

Broad took over the match just after lunch and a shower of rain. He bowled with accuracy and purpose and complete dominance. He moved the ball both ways, late and subtle. He ran in like a sprinter, hurled the ball like a javelin thrower and finessed his opponents like a chess grandmaster.

In the same paper, Gideon Haigh writes that the key weakness of the Australians is their deep and abiding dependence on their captain.

Ponting is the most distinguished Australian batsman of his era, and an improving captain — it was pleasing to hear a suitable tribute from the crowd as he came to bat today, in what might be his last Test in England. But his physique has absorbed a lot of punishment in the accumulation of his splendid record. A disc in his spine occasionally catches on a spur on one of his vertebrae, part of the trouble being that he spends so much of his time crouched, in the field and at the crease. Last June in a one-day international in Grenada, he tore ligaments and damaged the sheath that keeps the main tendon in place in his right wrist, a tennis injury less common in cricketers that impairs him in playing the pull shot. They are not, strictly speaking, injuries: more infirmities that he lives with. But they are signs of an impinging sporting mortality that Australia will have to deal with.

In the Courier Mail, Malcolm Conn takes a gloomy view of Australia chances of taking the series.

Broad picked up the wickets on day two, when Flintoff, Anderson and Harmison failed, because he bowled like an Australian, according to Richard Williams in the Guardian.

The Oval was meant to mark the departure of a much-cherished all-rounder. Instead, it has celebrated the coming of age of the golden child, writes David Hopps in the same paper.

In the Independent Angus Fraser writes that Broad bowled beautifully but the the Australian batting was insipid.

... because no deliveries reared sharply off a good length and flew at a batsman's throat. Yes, the odd ball stopped slightly but the change in pace was no greater than a well disguised slower ball.

Broad has the mental strength, and subtlety, as well as the other attributes to be Flintoff's successor, and maybe more, writes Scyld Berry in the Telegraph.

Over this summer Broad has been struggling with an identity crisis over his role in the team. Should he use the steep bounce he gains from his height, vary his grip trajectory to take wickets on flat surfaces, or settle for a steady line and length and let his lofty physique and the pitch do the rest? With his height and pace and natural accuracy his best tactic is to emulate his idol Glenn McGrath and settle for the repetitive approach, writes Simon Hughes in the Telegraph.

While rubbishing former Pakistan batsman Qasim Omar's claims that Viv Richards used to take performance enhancing drugs in his time, his brother Mervyn Richards has said the only thing that kept him going was an undying passion for the game. He speaks to Clayton Murzello in Mid Day.

"Viv's cricketing passion was his drug. Viv used to sleep with his bat and the only thing he used was something for his eyes.

"Firstly, I don't think cricket is a sport where performance can be enhanced by consuming something. It is played between the ears. Viv never needed to do something like that (take performance-enhancing drugs)."

Virender Sehwag’s charges against the Delhi & Districts Cricket Association (DDCA) are well-known and have been endured by its cricketers. Sharda Ugra, in her blog on the India Today website, says that among the frontline cricket associations in India, Delhi is the undisputed and undefeated champion of maladministration, nepotism and corruption.

Down the line, as the players get younger, the stories get worse. Every possible rival to the progeny or distant kin of the sports committee is simply not picked for fear of him outshining Rinku Rishtedaar or Bunty Bhaichaara in the under-16 and under-19s.

	Time for Swann to become the KP of 2009 © Getty Images

Everybody has been trying to pinpoint what has been amiss with the England middle order in this series. The Times' Simon Barnes believes it is too apologetic like the crowd in Wimbledon.

The problem with Nos 3, 4 and 5 is diffidence. In fact, the trouble with the England cricket team has almost always been diffidence, at least when they play Australia. Every now and then, diffidence is set aside, but in the three centuries in which the two nations have played each other at cricket, more often than not, when Australia have bumped into England, England have said sorry.

In the same paper, Richard Hobson believes that Australia's decision to go into the final Test without a frontline spinner was a mistake that England must capitalise on.

Swann needs to produce. Every piece written about him, every interview conducted, dwells on his apparent confidence. He is a showman. Well, this is his showtime. We are about to find out whether his cheeky front masks insecurity, or whether he really does have the temperament to deliver.

If Australia are "dudded" on a disintegrating pitch, like their predecessors in Jim Laker's great match of 1956, there will be no end of repercussions, writes Simon Briggs in the Telegraph.

Ian Bell showed the gumption to camouflage his internal doubts and bat through almost two complete sessions, hardly a negligible achievement on a day when every other member of England's top order could be said to have sold his wicket cheaply, writes Richard Williams in the Guardian.

In the same paper Mikey Stafford watches the Test live but not quite from The Oval.

Umpire Billy Bowden is something of a fan of the Good Lord. Another day or two like the first day at The Oval and followers of the England cricket team may be driven to move Bowden closer to Him. England are in trouble after day one of the fifth Ashes Test and while it is not all Bowden’s fault, some of it just might be, says Martin Samuel in the Daily Mail.

Once on a bad trot there cannot be too may tougher ways of earning a living in professional sport than facing a ball that is hard, red and determined to make a mug of you. David Lloyd, writing in the Independent believes Alastair Cook is in danger of becoming the subject of a stewards', or at least a selectors', inquiry.

As Andrew Flintoff plays his final Test, the Wisden Cricketer digs up its archives on the allrounder.

It's also a thumbs up from Vic Marks in the Guardian for Jonathan Trott, whose patient approach on his Test debut shows he has the right stuff to cement an England place.

Cricketers of Rahul Dravid's stature continue playing only because they believe they are good enough; pride is a big part of it all, and the fact that he had not retired from one-day cricket meant he believed he could force his way back in. Writing in the Indian Express, Harsha Bhogle reasons why Dravid was chosen ahead of Rohit Sharma, who represents the future and is 14 years younger.

There is an interesting parallel in international cricket. In 2005 after a poor Ashes series, and without setting the one-day series that followed on fire, Matthew Hayden was dropped from Australia’s one-day squad while still averaging 40. A year later he had forced his way back and as if to prove a point, he scored at 54.1 till his retirement. Again, like with Dravid, the selectors didn’t have numbers in their mind, not even age, merely an assurance that he was hitting the ball well again.

Paul Holden in his blog Sideline Slogger talks about the banner competition in Sri Lanka, explaining the variously good, bad, ugly and downright odd.

Each cricketing nation displays idiosyncratic conventions in terms of its crowd banners: the Poms focus on Union Jacks with obscure hamlets and football clubs emblazoned across them, the Australians are massive on the spray paint vs sheet combination, and in India there is artistic flair for the vivid marker on to A3 paper approach.

	A short and unconvincing stay at the wicket for Andrew Flintoff on the first day at The Oval © Getty Images

The problem with trying to manufacture fairytales is that they can become scary stories. With Andrew Flintoff disappointing on the first day at The Oval, Malcolm Conn in the Courier Mail believes with plenty of bowling and probably some second-innings batting left for the allrounder in the match, he has ample opportunity to put his farewell back on track.

Whatever happens, Andrew Strauss will no doubt try to give himself time to take the wickets on the final day. The Oval has the reputation of providing a solid pitch, but things can happen quickly towards the end. Both Sri Lanka and South Africa have lost after passing 450 in their opening effort. Peter Roebuck, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, believes England can dictate the course of the contest.

Apart from anything else, the scoring is usually quick because the match is played at the end of summer, and by then the field is a little parched. Moreover, the regular and steepish bounce of the ball encourages shots off both feet and on both sides of the wicket. In short, England or Australia could score heavily and still find themselves under the pump. Draws are not inevitable until the bails have been collected for the final time.

If ever a team was going to play a spinner, it was on the surface prepared for the fifth and final Test. And Australia's decision to ignore spinner Nathan Hauritz despite a dry and dusty pitch at The Oval again highlights Australia's spinning conundrum. Malcolm Conn has more in the Australian.

If England win the Ashes after scoring just one century in five Tests they will have got one of sport’s most cherished prizes at a bargain basement price. Which is why Robert Craddock in his blog on the Herald Sun website is hoping the Australians win.

The Indian players can be forgiven for thinking that an online system for sharing schedules with WADA just isn’t secure enough given their profile. Running the risk of identity theft or stolen credit card information is one thing but having your life endangered by someone hacking into WADA computers is quite another. Mukul Kesavan in the Telegraph, the Kolkata daily, believes there is a case to be made against those holding out against WADA but calls for some tempered criticism.

In the red corner, we have nationalist grunts on a hair-trigger, for whom every criticism of the Indian cricket team is an alien conspiracy; in the blue corner, we have discriminating, non-chauvinist Indian commentators who are convinced that India’s perverse stars and their vulgar patron, the BCCI, have done this deliberately to embarrass people like them...

New Zealand's legendary allrounder has released his third book, Changing Pace, which focuses more on his post-retirement days, his dad, knighthood, health problems and life as a selector for eight years. Jonathan Millmow caught up with him in Wellington. Read on in the Dominion Post.

"Writing about those emotional experiences can be a healing thing and perhaps others can take some inspiration as well," he says.

The Times' Mike Atherton continues on one of his favourite topics, Andrew Flintoff, saying the allrounder comes up short in the debate of great England players. It cannot be be doubted that Flintoff is capable of great moments, great series and a great period even, says Atherton, but there are a few buts.

The biggest - and our chief sports writer will stop reading now if he hasn't already - is his record. Those damn statistics. Without exception in the modern game, greatness has been conferred on those with outstanding records in international cricket. The conferring of greatness must adhere to these strict guidelines out of respect for past heroes. Flintoff has a very good record, but not a great one. His bowling average is marginally higher than his batting average, and three five-wicket hauls and five Test hundreds speak of a cricketer whose performances have fallen short of the very highest standards that great all-rounders should aim for.

Steve Harmison must be swapped for Flintoff at The Oval, writes former England coach Duncan Fletcher in his Guardian blog. Yes, Harmison bounced a couple of players out in the fourth Test, but that doesn't win you games. Five-wicket hauls are the key to success. Look at Flintoff: when he finally managed to take a five-for at Lord's, England won the match, reminds Fletcher.

As for the batting, I would have made one change only: swap Ravi Bopara and Ian Bell. It was clear Bopara needed moving away from the frontline, and Bell bats at No3 for Warwickshire. I don't care that his Test record there is not what it might be: he should be comfortable at first drop. Instead the selectors have taken a huge gamble by handing a Test debut to Jonathan Trott in the most high-pressure situation imaginable. I just hope they weren't swayed by all the crazy talk leading up to this Test.

In the same paper Mike Selvey notes how the build-up to the final Test has been blighted by a depressing feeling of inevitability following the rout at Headingley. Fear rather than fervour marks England's final push for glory, he says.

Shane Warne in the Times writes that with Ravi Bopara struggling all series, Paul Collingwood should have been putting his hand up to bat at Nos 3 and 4 especially with Kevin Pietersen injured.

Twenty wickets on an Oval pitch? It could happen, says David Lloyd in the Independent.

In his column in the same paper Matthew Hayden writes that this is a time to be bold – so England should drop Stuart Broad for Ryan Sidebottom.

He's trimmed down, he's hungry to do more, and he's not not taking lightly the old “who ate all the pies?” jibe about South Africa. Thats Graeme Smith in focus, who spoke to the website Sport24's Rob Houwing about his renewed desire to play for South Africa for “five or six more years”. Smith has enjoyed the relative rarity of a meaningful off-season and hit the gym hard, emerging noticeably lean and mean.

“I’ve been working hard here with Rob Walter, the new SA fitness trainer, and with the people at Province. “So it feels like I’m back as an 18- or 19-year-old again, grafting hard. But I really want to give myself the best opportunity to play for five or six years more for South Africa. I want to be fit enough to achieve that.”

The Oval is anybody's game. Can England recreate the scenes of 2005, lining up at Buckingham Palace or stopping the traffic at Trafalgar Square in a few days' time? Unlikely, writes Peter Roebuck, in the Sydney Morning Herald. For five days, Australian determination will be pitted against English desperation, with the winner to take all.

Ricky Ponting's team has improved as the series has gone along and now needs to hold its nerve for five more days. As much can be told from the form of the pacemen. Four years ago the speedsters were comprehensively out-bowled by a hostile quartet that moved the ball all day, every day, and hardly gave the batsmen a moment's peace - they took 75 wickets at an average cost of 27 runs (their Australian counterparts claimed 51 at 40 apiece).

Andrew Flintoff may have finally ended the search for the 'new Botham' but his imminent retirement has already prompted the search for the 'new Flintoff'. In the Times, Simon Wilde singles out two candidates to fill Flintoff's shoes in the Test side - Luke Wright and Adil Rashid.

Some people would rather watch paint dry than five days of a Test match. But even if you don't know your silly mid-off from deep extra cover there is much to admire about this sometimes baffling game, writes Suzy Freeman-Greene in the Age.

Ricky Ponting looked worried. It was early in the Ashes series; it had rained overnight and the ball appeared to be damp. Ponting and his team-mates stood in a huddle examining the suspect item, then someone gave it a good, long rub on his pants. More scrutiny followed. After another rub, and further inspection, play finally resumed. Test cricket is full of such arrested moments.

Vinod Kambli, who announced his retirement recently, made a great start to his Test career, including back-to-back double centuries in 1993. However, he was unable to handle the fame and adulation that comes the way of the stars of Indian cricket, and faded away rapidly, playing his final Test at the age of 23. He will always be a cautionary tale for upcoming Indian youngsters, say Dileep Premachandran in the Guardian, where he also contrasts Kambli's career graph with that of his contemporary Rahul Dravid.

Chaminda Vaas may well be seen as one of the great under-rewarded players in cricket history, because he was so innocuous, writes Richard Dickinson in Cricket Web. He tended to do his job quietly and only rarely crept out of the shadow of the ubiquitous Muttiah Muralitharan. His ability to outsmart batsmen was wonderful to watch.

It is difficult to describe Vaas as "maddening", a description which has been applied to many bowlers far less inconsistent than he. But when he is possibly your favourite bowler ever, it was sometimes difficult to not get a little frustrated with the extremes. A bowler who was capable of destroying most of the ideals typically associated with seam bowling - that the most effective perpetrators of all have to propel from considerable height and\or at substantial pace - was easy to love, however. Vaas' bag of tricks were a joy to watch when they were working.

	For the love of Fred © Getty Images

As Andrew Flintoff, England's talisman, gets ready for his valedictory Test, it is time for a bit more Botham and a little less Beckham in his approach, writes Richard Williams in the Guardian.

Flintoff's proclamation was premature and self-centred, doing nothing for team spirit at a crucial time and, like his disastrous captaincy in the 2006-07 Ashes, marginally depleting the vast stock of public goodwill built up since his England debut in 1998. And it was mirrored in the way he celebrated his wickets during the victory at Lord's, with a Beckhamesque awareness of the gaze of a hundred lenses.

In the same paper, Donald McRae interviews Australian coach Tim Nielsen on his first Ashes tour.

Nielsen speaks with parental concern about a team who seemed uncertain just a few weeks ago. After defeat at Lord's and being outplayed initially at Edgbaston, Australia were reeling. As a warm and compassionate coach, who is far smarter than his "ordinary bloke" persona implies, Nielsen needed all his intelligence and generosity of spirit to inspire a sustained fightback.

The Independent's Stephen Brenkley believes Flintoff is at The Oval this week purely for the business of beating Australia and recapturing the Ashes. Not for Flintoff a hobble down memory lane with a sepia-tinted DVD, a lump in the throat and a dodgy knee.

Former captain Michael Vaughan hadn't realised just how much Flintoff's presence in the side could lift the supporters till he sat in the crowd this summer. He writes in the Telegraph:

Fred likes to be loved and he is quite soft at heart. He needs an arm around his shoulder because he does not respond to be ranted and raved at ... Fred was sometimes difficult to deal with behind the scenes and I wouldn't agree with the theory that he was the heartbeat of the dressing room. He can be jovial and light hearted. He liked the dressing room to be a fun environment and maybe that is why his results under me were pretty good.

In the same paper Derek Pringle writes that Flintoff will leave the Test arena much as he entered it - a man with an identity crisis.

In a thoughtful blog in the Wisden Cricketer, Gideon Haigh wonders who the national team represents: s it representative of the nation, of the nation’s government, of all the nation’s cricketers, of the nation’s duly elected cricket board, of the first-class teams that participate in its domestic competition?

	'Administration says no, ICC say noes.' © AFP

Kapil Dev, without any struggle, has got complete independence from the rules of the English language. He speaks a unique language that has its own rules - sometimes, half his sentence is in English and the other half is in 'Kaplish'. Madhavankutty Pillai elaborates in Open magazine.

In recent times, we have heard a lot of Kaplish, thanks to the BCCI–ICL spat and television. He abolished prepositions (We are not expecting any recognise us), he was liberal with the indefinite article (The idea is to have a cricket in India), and sometimes, well, sometimes he said something like this: I never want to say that but today I am saying that. Today or ever cricket will go divide somewhere only one person to be blamed.

Rahul Dravid's return to the one-day side is a message not just to Rohit Sharma, the most exciting amongst Gen Next batsmen, but to the entire generation themselves. That if they are to be worthy of their place in an Indian XI, they need to show more proof of intent, to put that place beyond argument. Sharda Ugra in her blog on the India Today website feels the move is imperative if some distant, shining 'future' is to be secured.

After Ian Bell was restored to the No. 3 spot, Stephen Brenkley writes in the Independent that Bell's progress hasn't been as smooth as it was expected to be. Is an abundance of talent not enough to succeed at the top level?

He has become maddening to supporters of his obvious talent and makes it too easy for those who question his character to succeed. Sometimes he has tried too hard to be hard when he should just be himself.

As a batsman, Bell was not meant to be one of life's nightclub bouncers but one of its computer nerds and he has never seemed quite able to come to terms with it. Hence the confused approach.

In the Times, Michael Atherton looks at Ravi Bopara's decline, starting the Ashes looking to be the first batsman to make four consecutive Test centuries and ending it out of the squad. He wonders whether the selection of the untested Jonathan Trott for a high-pressure Ashes decider hints at bad planning.

Shane Warne has spent the past couple of days pondering ways that cricket could be improved, and has come up with a six-point plan that he outlines in the Times. It includes one particularly bold move.

End one-day internationals This is a big call, but cricket evolves and the 50-over game has passed its sell-by date. It’s amazing to think that after the Ashes series England and Australia play seven one-day games, which take about a month. Sorry, but that’s just greed on the part of administrators. From now on, we should be playing Tests and Twenty20 internationals, with a Twenty20 World Cup every two years.

Perhaps right now the New Zealand players cannot expect to be the best in the world but there is no reason they can't lead the world in the way they prepare. The evidence suggests they are aiming to do just so. Funds are being utilised to tap into the knowledge of past performers and that is not just in the usual form of previous New Zealand players. Mark Richardson in the Herald on Sunday gives the thumbs-up to the step forward.

I was honoured to be asked to help with formulating game plans to combat the Sri Lankan threat and spent a good chunk of time with the team's video analyst. I've basically told them to "block the proverbial out of it".

In the same paper, Peter Walsh finds it weird that Maurice Holmes, a 19-year-old from the Kent 2nd XI has been flown by the New Zealand team halfway round the world to be a net bowler. Given the fact that Holmes hasn't even played first class cricket, and that New Zealand already have the services of Saqlain Mushtaq available, Walsh feels the infusion of money into the game nowadays has meant a burgeoning industry in support staff.

	Can he bow out as an Ashes hero? © Getty Images

The old country is in disarray in pursuit of those coveted Ashes. Their hero is injured but he is going to play anyway. The team are falling apart and our man has just one last game against the dastardly Australians, who have finally found their form. Limping from the physio's couch comes our beloved gentle giant from Preston, the one who likes nothing more than to "share a few pints with me mates". You know the rest: a century, five wickets, Ashes won, hobbling hero carried from Oval outfield by his team-mates. Tears all round. Beers all round. Knighthood.

This Ashes duel has lacked the melodrama and individual star quality of 2005. Its motif has been a kind of grim intensity, writes Paul Weaver in the same paper.

It has been a trial of who might dissolve first. And in that respect it has cast a light on one of the funniest myths in team sports, which is that intimidation is achieved by flexing one's pecs, squeezing the enemy's airspace and boring into his eyes with a gaze that says: "You are entering a world of pain." "Not tonight, my man," says a character in Richard Price's Lush Life as a New York mugger instructs him to hand it over. Bam goes the gun, down goes our hero. This is what Stuart Broad was saying to Johnson, and others, as Australia's superiority with ball and bat at Leeds began to hurt. Not tonight, my man. But England, and Broad, will have to do a lot better than that, because this is not a staring competition. It is one in which five Australia batsmen have struck seven hundreds compared with England's one.

In the Sunday Telegraph Stephen Brenkley writes that there will doubtless be a guard of honour for Flintoff’s departure, deserved ovations, appreciative waves and even some tears. It will be emotional. But, on the flip side, the truth is that Flintoff and his concomitant cacophony are often a distraction, and have been for some time.

In the Sunday Times Martin Johnson interviews Merv Hughes, who led the earborne assault troops during his playing career but now supports Cricket Australia's 'tone down the verbals' instructions to its current players.

There was a time when Matt Prior could not stay out of the headlines. But now he is the England sleeper. The player nobody notices. And he loves it. The Telegraph's Nick Hoult interviews him.

"It is quite funny, because when you first break into international cricket you think it is all quite sexy and nice being in the papers," Prior said. "But you very quickly realise you are playing your best cricket when no-one mentions you. My goal is to be not spoken about. That shows I am playing my best. Hopefully that will continue for a while."

John Wright, the former India coach who is now in the running to succeed John Buchanan as Kolkata Knight Riders' coach, is in India with the New Zealand A side. If he signs up with Kolkata, he will be reuniting with Sourav Ganguly, who was the national captain during his five-year stint with India. In an interview with the Hindu, Wright talks about working with Ganguly, impact of Twenty20, the future of Test and more.

Q. Another intrepid batsman, Virender Sehwag, blossomed under you. You believed in his special ability.

A. His success tells you that sometimes trusting your instinct could produce swifter and more accurate results. People talk about his lack of footwork but at the point where the bat makes contact with the ball, he is technically good. He has a still head, shows the full face of the bat, had a solid base. Yes, he got opportunities to open during my time and took off.

	Johnathon Trott looks set to replace Ravi Bopara in the England middle-order © Getty Images

Johnathon Trott, the Warwickshire batsman who has scored at an average of 89 in the County Championships this season, looks set to replace Ravi Bopara in the England middle-order, feels Derek Pringle in the Daily Telegraph. Pringle thinks Trott has a touch of Kevin Pietersen in him, a quality badly missed by the hosts.

A squat right-hander, he is aggressive with a penchant for big shots. For that reason, he is likely to bat at four or five depending on Paul Collingwood, the senior batsman in the middle order.

He also has a temper, though this is said to have ameliorated in the past year. His resolve will be tested and not just by the ball as the Aussies ramp up the bluster in the belief that the Ashes could be settled should England have another calamitous session like the one that befell them at Headingley, where they lurched to 72 for six on the first morning.

In the Independent, Stephen Brenkley thinks that though the call for Mark Ramprakash's return has gripped the nation, his runs scored for Surrey in the second division is no preparation for an Ashes Test. Brenkley, while stating that Trott is the likely choice for the selectors, feels that Robert Key might be best available choice.

Mike Atherton, in the Times, writes that there might be some merit in giving Ravi Bopara another shot. He even discusses the positives of Robert Key as an experienced batsman, but finally falls in line with most British newspapers in agreeing that Trott is the likely choice.

Either way, his (Ramprakash) return would present a problem for them: if he plays, and does well, then legitimate questions would be asked of a selection panel that has ignored England’s best-oiled run machine for years; if he does badly, they will be accused of caving in to media pressure. Picking the best XI to win a match is the requirement, of course, but a bit of back-covering is likely. It may be that Ramprakash has matured mentally — who doesn’t? — while retaining a remarkable fitness and appetite for runs. Just don’t expect the selectors to want to find out.

New Zealand begin their three-Test series in Sri Lanka next week and the Sideline Slogger has listed out 10 reasons why the visitors must be be wary of Sri Lanka.

Captain Kumar Sangakkara is one of the best batsmen going around on the world scene at the moment, and Craig McMillan picked him as the bloke he would have out there on the day to bat for his life. (It was Chanderpaul for me.) Having plundered 570 runs in his last five Tests (all against Pakistan), the lippy left-handed Lankan is not going to see too much to scare him in the New Zealand bowling attack sans Shane Bond. Plus he has scored unbeaten centuries against the Kiwis in his last two Test match outings..

Justin Langer's dossier about the shortcomings of the England team is accurate, says Jim White in the Telegraph. But Andrew Strauss could use a Langer style dossier of his own and has plenty of people to get advice from - right from Ian Botham and Mike Atherton to Nasser Hussain. But, the question is, will Strauss seek the help of his predecessors?

When captain Andrew Strauss is looking for input from someone whose experience has been honed in the white heat of Ashes competition, there is no one he can turn to. Not even head coach Andy Flower has participated in an England-Australia series. How could he have done? He is from Zimbabwe.

Tune in to the Sky Sports Ashes coverage, however, and Strauss will quickly be overwhelmed with advice from those who have done the job before him. Jostling for space in the commentary box, Ian Botham, David Gower, Michael Atherton and Nasser Hussain span the last 20 years of leading the country against Australia.

The Indian board has rejected ICC's anti-doping policy on the behest of its players who felt the 'whereabouts' clause - which mandates that athletes to make themselves available for testing every day of the year - was a violation of their privacy and threat to their security. The Outlook magazine's Rohit Mahajan believes an ‘intrusive’ doping rule concerns all and the Indian cricketers have raised the lone banner of revolt.

But does cricket, a highly skill-based sport, need such drastic testing? Yes, says Ashok Ahuja, former head of the department of sports medicine, National Institute of Sports, Patiala. “The role of steroids has increased in cricket, especially among pace bowlers, to build up the muscles and recover from injuries,” he told Outlook. Ahuja also talks about the use of recreational drugs by sportspersons. “Some superstar athletes, moving in seven-star society, use recreational drugs,” he says, adding that the BCCI’s suggestion that it could produce a player for testing on a 24-hour notice won’t be acceptable because these drugs can be washed out of the system in that time.

The ex-ICL players now have to chance to shine in the mainstream, having been included in the IPL scheme. The players, who have been ignored for almost two years, will be eager to show the world what they are capable of. Harsha Bhogle, in the Indian Express, writes on the positive effects of the return of the ICL cricketers and also comments on the BCCI giving away grant money to organisations like the AIFF.

For those players this represents the opportunity of a lifetime—not just the IPL but all of Indian cricket. A lot of those players will be hungry, eager to cast off the tag of little league players and they would have grown substantially in two years. When doors are shutting on you and when darkness beckons even a sliver of light brings hope. These players have known what it is to contemplate life without cricket and with their lifeline within reach they will swim harder to get there. At any rate they should because you squander life’s lessons at your own peril.

The ayes and no's for Mark Ramprakash's selection to the squad for the final Test continue to increase. The Times' John Woodcock hopes the Surrey batsman will be recalled for not only would it add a romantic element to an already tantalising prospect, but history also points to it being a gamble worth taking.

I do not believe that Ramprakash’s age should count against him, nor his reputation as a victim of Test-match vertigo. There has been much talk recently about aura, and Ramprakash has acquired one. He is 39, very fit and has a hundred for England against Australia at the Oval to his name. When Denis Compton was brought back for the last Test against Australia in 1956 he was still recovering from the removal of a kneecap (now preserved in the archive at Lord’s) and was no fitness fanatic or avowed teetotaller. England, it is true, had already retained the Ashes, but, even then, Compton confessed to being as nervous as at any time in his career.

In the Guardian Mike Selvey kills the romance by saying Ramprakash's comeback is media-driven and it won't happen.

Yesterday, even the Guardian leader page had a go. That is more than it would do for Ian Bell. Geoff Miller, the national selector, refused to rule out Ramprakash on the grounds that he has never retired from Test cricket. He probably did so to stop being pestered, but it was not an endorsement. Ramprakash's own PR machine has cranked into action – he would "cherish" the opportunity.

In the Wisden Cricketer Gideon Haigh, who supported Ramprakash's selection for the third Test at Edgbaston, is not so sure any more.

Shane Warne the commentator is proving just as captivating as Shane Warne the legspinner, writes AAP's John Coomber.

It's the first Ashes battle in 18 years without Warne as a player, but much that we've lost in on-field spectacle is being made up for in commentary. His delivery from behind the microphone is proving to be almost as compelling as with the six-stitcher.

And just like his bowling, he does it with apparent ease. His fellow commentators marvel at how Warne can be lounging in the back of the box eating pizza and playing computer card games, then when it's his turn to go on air he strolls over, picks up the microphone and immediately knows exactly what's been going on, and what's likely to happen next. No wonder he's such a good poker player.

What happened when Ian Bell found out someone was impersonating him on social networking site Twitter? The Wisden Cricketer's Alan Tyers has the batsman's thoughts:

“What the bloody hell are you on Twitter for, making an arse of yourself?” asks this Gibson. I says I don’t bother with the Twitter because frankly Ian Bell has more important things to do than spend his whole life telling people every last little thing he’s doing no matter how fascinating that would be to some fans and instead would rather concentrate on being the man to fill the problematic number three berth in England’s fragile middle-order, getting Nuneaton Borough promoted to the Premiership on Championship Manager, learning Esperanto, designing his range of volumising hair mousses for the recently deceased and generally being a decent bloke to have around the place.

Wanderers' international status has been restored after Cricket South Africa and the Gauteng board came to an agreement but by stripping a major venue of its matches, rescheduling them to other venues, and then miraculously restoring them again to the original one shows little respect for the people who pay to attend matches, writes Rodney Hartman on Independent Online.

... the Members Forum is Cricket South Africa's 20-person committee that largely comprises the presidents of all its affiliates. They are a bunch of, shall we say, members, and apparently should not have been involved in the first place in CSA's fight with the Gauteng Cricket Board. In fact, there is a strong suspicion that some of these members couldn't organise a push-up in a gym, but there they were a month ago casting what Dr Nyoka calls the mecca of South African cricket into the wildnerness. On Wednesday, by all accounts, the Members Forum was nowhere to be seen when CSA announced that the issues with the GCB had been amicably resolved. It raises the question of the actual role of the Members Forum and, more precisely, of who pulls their strings.

	Mark Ramprakash: unmatched at county level, under-performer in Tests © Getty Images

Historically aware advocates of Ramprakash point out that, 53 years ago, and with the Ashes also at stake, the selectors brought back the 38-year-old Compton at the Oval for "a wonderful return to Test cricket". Why not gamble again, romantics argue, and give the vital job of stiffening England's batting to a player who has scored 29 centuries in the past four seasons, many of them at the Oval, and who is averaging over 100 again this season?

Also read Mike Holmans' post on Different Strokes on why picking Ramprakash would be a disaster.

While the complete exclusion of the 'whereabouts' clause from cricket looks unlikely, the ICC could go the FIFA way and put injured players and those serving suspensions on the International Registered Testing Pool, writes KP Mohan in the Hindu.

Obviously FIFA is of the opinion that injuries and doping are closely related. Steroids generally speed up recovery after injuries. The list is not based on rankings of teams or countries. It is a dynamic list and could evolve, but basically FIFA has stuck to its argument that team sport has to be treated differently, giving a ray of hope for other team sports in their fight against the ‘whereabouts’ rules.

The gulf between Australia and England is nothing to do with talent or aura, says Mike Atherton in the Times. Both teams are equally matched in the former, especially when Andrew Flintoff and Kevin Pietersen are available to England, and, no, this Australia team do not carry the same aura as previous visitors to these shores. But one thing this Australia team have in common with their predecessors is toughness, a soul-deep toughness that, at the critical moment, befriended them again while deserting their opponents.

Toughness has nothing to do with staring, sledging or ganging up on the opposition. It has everything to do with an ability to execute hard-won skills under maximum pressure. The Ashes were won in 2005 because England held their nerve and because a group of wonderfully skilled bowlers showcased their talents at crucial times. Australia were not outfought, they rarely are, but they were outplayed.

When India's own anti-doping agency sent out a circular asking all sporting bodies to fall in line, the BCCI didn't even bother to reply and its silence was taken as consent. The feeling throughout the present anti-doping impasse has been that not one board official has even bothered to check out the WADA statutes or its website and the players' stand is merely an extension of the fact that they have the board's support, writes Dileep Premachandran in his blog on the Guardian website.

After what happened in Lahore in March, and previous terrorist threats to the likes of Sachin Tendulkar and MS Dhoni, the players are petrified that revealing their future whereabouts to Wada will compromise their safety. Fair enough, you'd think, except for the fact that Wada's online process is as secure as most banking transactions. You, I or AN Ordinary won't be able to gatecrash Yuvraj Singh's next party.

Mike O'Connor, from Couriermail, talks to the former Australia coach about varied topics like his stint with the Kolkata Knight Riders, the failures he endured in his role as coach of Middlesex and his early days as an aspiring cricketer.

"There's always people out there who are wanting to make some comment. Once you're out there, then there are people who are supportive and people who have the knives poised all the time and they'll find a reason to plunge the knife."

Shane Warne is one who has wielded the knife on Buchanan and I ask if his stab wounds have healed.

"I think so," he says easily. "The thing about Warnie is that his agendas are pretty open. He just likes to be the centre of attention and be centre stage. He has a good way of managing that and finding his way there."

Shahid Afridi will lead Pakistan in the Twenty20 international against Sri Lanka, and it will mark a remarkable turnaround in the life of the allrounder. Huw Richards, in the New York Times, looks at his career which has seen him transform from the reckless to the responsible.

Afridi, 29, has had a career whose colorfulness is eclipsed among current players only by his turbulent erstwhile Pakistan teammate Shoaib Akhtar. Afridi’s extensive rap sheet includes a four-match ban for insulting opponents and a match umpire; a dressing room dispute with his captain and vice captain over his place in Pakistan’s batting order; sanctions after a girl was found in his room — his explanation that she was seeking his autograph was not accepted — and being fingered as the provocateur two years ago when Akhtar finally lost it and struck a teammate with a bat.

There was a brief, mysterious and never fully explained retirement from test cricket three years ago, and as recently as last year the Indian star Vangipurappu Laxman, his captain in the first Indian Premier League tournament, complained that “Afridi has no team ethics.”

Jonathan Freedland is not much of a cricket fan. But the thrill of the Ashes has him furiously browsing his Blackberry to check on the latest score while on holiday in France. In the Guardian, Freedland writes about what got him hooked on to the game.

It is a thoroughly absorbing, long-haul clash. While a Manchester United encounter with Chelsea might be all over in 90 minutes, England's business with Australia takes all summer, in what should be 25 full days of combat (fewer if it rains or if the home side collapses).

That leaves enough time for frequent and compelling reverses of fortune. Australia might dominate in one session, racking up the runs before lunch, only to give way to England in the next, conceding a clutch of wickets before tea. The rhythms of the game are like life itself, only more so: the gods smile on you one moment, only to frown the next.

Marcus Trescothick may be in excellent domestic form and even played a vital part in the 2005 Ashes victory. But Michael Henderson, in the Daily Telegraph, thinks that Trescothick's health is more important than an Ashes victory.

Flintoff is reportedly 'devastated' that England chose to rest him for the fourth Test despite him claiming full fitness. But James Lawton, in the Independent, asks questions about the reasoning behind Flintoff's possible selection for the fifth and final test. Is it right to rest all hopes on a half-fit Flintoff just because this is his final stint in Tests?

Yes, fine, but did this assume that England, so grateful to have his at times Herculean services, would suspend all the normal rules of selection, not to mention the obligation of care that normally attends the training and preparation of both human and equine sports stars? One racing insider was aghast yesterday at some of the comments from the Flintoff camp. "In any decent yard," he said, "what was being proposed for Freddie Flintoff just wouldn't, couldn't happen to a horse."

In the short break between Edgbaston and Headingley it was reasonable to take for granted Flintoff and his people's understanding of the basic point that no one, not even Andrew Flintoff or his injured team-mate and fellow superstar Kevin Pietersen, could ride indefinitely over the laws of nature. Indeed, many of Maradona's post-game agonies are attributed to years of being filled with painkillers, and then taking the hits to a body stripped of its ability to make proper reports to the brain.

Martin Samuel echoes those sentiments in the Daily Mail, saying that Flintoff doesn't seem to realise that the Ashes is about the team, and not only about him.

The Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board (TTCB) has boycotted an important meeting of the WICB. This is a clear indication that the TTCB has not fallen in line with the WICB's hardline position against the first choice players. CaribbeanCricket asks if this boycott could lead to many more boycotts from other islands, and if West Indies cricket is breaking into fragments.

Further it is no secret that the TTCB president, Deryck Murray – the former Windies wicketkeeper and vice captain – harbours ambitions to take over the WICB presidency. The Murray led boycott may have been engineered to demonstrate in no uncertain terms its unhappiness and disenchantment with Hunte’s leadership. However the boycott brings into focus a growing disinterest in West Indies cricket as a result of the WICB’s hard lined position against the players, particularly the established players.

David Hinds, also in CaribbeanCricket, writes on three major issues - Trinidad and Tobago's secession calls, the captaincy of West Indies and the importance of cricket outside the boundary.

While there has been plenty of speculation about a shock recall for Mark Ramprakash, Duncan Fletcher writes in the Guardian that Kent batsman Rob Key could solve England's middle-order troubles in case they decide to leave out the struggling Ravi Bopara.

Nasser Hussain disagrees in the Daily Mail saying that Key should come into contention only if there is more than one change. He doesn't think Ramprakash should be recalled either.

And in the Independent, Stephen Brenkley says the expectations on Ramprakash, if picked, would be so great as to be unsustainable.

Peter Roebuck in the Sydney Morning Herald notes the humour and discretion that Ricky Ponting has displayed during the Ashes and argues that 2009 has been Ponting's best year.

Ponting has come a long way in a few months. He has emerged as a fine leader, though not yet an astute tactician. Clearly he has the respect of his players and is relishing the opportunity to captain a bright young side. If 2008 was his worst year, 2009 has been the best. Now he stands on the edge of a substantial achievement. Holding the Ashes might not seem much of a feat. Not so long ago Australia beat this mob 5-0. Moreover the opposing side has lost its two best players. But Australia have endured numerous setbacks and still heads have not dropped. Nor has conduct deteriorated.

In the Age, Greg Baum notes a not-so-subtle gap between the attitudes of the two Ashes teams this year.

Indian cricketers have been criticised for their refusal to sign the ICC anti-doping policy which includes a clause by which they must inform of their location for an hour each day for a period of three months. However Rajyavardhan Rathore, an Olympic silver medallist in shooting, believes by standing its ground the cricket establishment has a unique opportunity to help improve a system that has worldwide compliance and protects athletes who commit years of training to compete at the highest level, from being cheated by dope-criminals. He writes in his blog:

WADA spends millions of dollars on research. So why isn’t it possible to come up with an alternative way for out-of-competition testing? The practical issues around administering out-of-competition testing are also amusing, considering many of India's sportspersons have their roots in villages and often visit them, the addresses given out could be as unidentifiable as taal no 3, or quila no 6, near jhulli walan gali, Gandhi Nagar. Indian villages are not completely mapped or on GPS like the western world and finding such locations is quite impossible without the entire village knowing about outsiders looking very lost.

Australian supporters - the Fanatics - have confessed to having set off the fire alarm in England's team hotel on the opening day of the Headingley Test. The players got out of the hotel at 4am and had to wait 20 minutes before firemen would let them back in. In the morning England were bowled out for 102. Though one does not necessarily lead to the other, the Fanatics claimed they had done their bit for Australia. Is that the new role that fans have appropriated for themselves, Suresh Menon asks on dreamcricket.com.

Is everything fair game – from fraudulent messages that cause players mental agony to blackmail to threat of physical violence? All in the name of “doing their bit” for the team? Just ahead of a Ranji Trophy match years ago, some “fans” attempted to beat up Tamil Nadu’s star all rounder Robin Singh to prevent him from playing. But he escaped, and although shaken played the match. Is that the direction in which fandom is heading?

Can you write a book on India-Pakistan cricket without ever having watched a match in Pakistan? India's Minister of State for External Affairs and former diplomat Shashi Tharoor can, and that too without seeming out of depth, writes Clayton Murzello in the Mid-Day.

Tharoor proudly claimed that he wrote about Sachin Tendulkar in the late 1980s in the Club Cricketer magazine in England, after Sunil Gavaskar had talked to him about this young gun who could become a great. Tharoor told a few of us how he wrote that Gavaskar had led very poorly during the home series against David Gower's Englishmen in 1984-85.

The editor of the magazine he was writing decided to amplify things after Tharoor filed in his "tough but fair" piece. The next issue rolled out with the headline: "OUT! Is Gavaskar the worst captain India's ever had?" Naturally, it created a sense of apprehension when he came face to face with Gavaskar. After all, he did not write what the headline said. The name of the author just didn't ring a bell, "it sprang", but Tharoor stressed Gavaskar took it sportingly.

Australia have a willingness to subsume individual identity for the greater good, and the point is made by fixing a light on Marcus North or Ben Hilfenhaus, two comparative no-name graduates to a team deprived of its celebrity sheen. Writes Paul Hayward on his Guardian blog:

The yard-dog ethic and the need to stick to the masterplan were both known to North and Hilfenhaus as they seized another chance to gild their Test careers. Modesty and intensity were their offerings as well as previously underrated skill. Badge-kissing is not to everyone's taste, but when North removed his helmet and planted lips on crest after swiping a six to bring up his second hundred of the series, there was no hint of contrivance.

Justin Langer's dossier detailing England's Ashes weaknesses is not the first attempt by cricketers to pigeon-hole their opponents, writes Vic Marks in the Guardian.

Writing in the Times, Shane Warne says all the fuss over leaks, dossiers, Ashes files sounds very dramatic, but before MI5 gets on the case, let’s look at it from another angle. Warne would have been amazed if Langer hadn’t been asked to pass on a few tips to the boys. He’s been in England for long enough now to be a pretty good source of information.

	Andrew Flintoff remains the focus © Getty Images

Despite such an emphatic defeat, England should not panic. All they need is a result pitch, a returning hero, and a miracle, says Mike Atherton in the Times. In Atherton's view the must-pick players for an Oval shoot-out are faith, hope and Andrew Flintoff.

In his post-match press conference yesterday, Strauss said that Flintoff had to be able to fulfil his duties as a bowler to be considered. In other words, he has to be able to bowl three spells in the day, which Strauss, presumably under medical advice, felt he would not be able to do at Headingley. Even so, Flintoff’s presence at No 7 would have stiffened a flimsy-looking line-up and the player himself is surely the best judge of whether he can get through a match or not. If he says he is fit at the Oval, he must play.

The Independent's James Lawton says that in the absence of their crippled talisman Flintoff and their most talented batsman Kevin Pietersen, England haplessly shed all semblance of being a team.

They were a rabble, an ill-tempered bunch of no-hopers and the decline was so steep, so unbroken in every phase of the match that mattered, it was impossible not to conclude that it will take a lot more than a miraculous flight to Lourdes by Flintoff and Pietersen to restore the damage – and any competitive balance to an Ashes series which some of the more romantically inclined believed was within England's grasp on Friday morning.

In his column for the Daily Mail, Nasser Hussain feels this is no time to judge Flintoff.

In the Australian, Malcomn Conn says Flintoff is on course to find out what Steve Waugh often preached; there are no fairly tales in sport.

Pakistan’s famously volatile cricket team repeatedly tests the resolve of even the most committed fans. The euphoria of a world Twenty20 title sandwiched between terrorism in Lahore and embarrassment in Sri Lanka has left supporters spent and exhausted, writes Saad Shafqat in the Dawn. The writer breaks down the various types of Pakistan fan, from fair-weather to die-hard to sceptics and malcontents.

A category closely related to the theorist is the obsessive, whose signature trait is an insatiable appetite for anything to do with the game. Like the theorist, the obsessive too has mastery over the details of cricket. But unlike the theorist, who maintains a healthy interest in the game, the obsessive overdoes it, becoming consumed with cricket to the exclusion of everything else. You know you’re an obsessive when your preoccupation with cricket starts interfering with the course of daily life. A moment eventually comes when you run into trouble, and the excuses you can come up with are all somehow cricket-related.

As a child, during cricket matches, Gary Peart could not be separated from his radio. He grew up during the now-called Golden Age of West Indies cricket when the West Indies won matches all the time. That is not the case now, and it saddens Peart. In the Jamaica Observer, he presents an appropriate sports business model on which he believes West Indies cricket should be governed in order to develop strong player development, discipline and education.

What is the West Indies cricket brand and what is its value? Consistent power batting and power bowling are two qualities that differentiated the West Indies cricket brand. A now-retired English player reflecting on the current state of disarray of the West Indies team reminisced, "The batsmen would come out and make 500 runs and the bowlers would come out and do the rest. You just remained glued to their performance to try to see how you could improve your own game. Those were exciting times." For the West Indies fan, the excitement was in the vanquishing of the opposing team, particularly when that team was the English.

Michael Clarke was at his most sparkling and creative on the second day's play at Headingley, writes Peter Roebuck in the Sydney Morning Herald. Australia's position required consolidation and the vice-captain served with distinction with an important innings.

In the Sunday Times Simon Wilde writes that Clarke's chances of becoming captain have been enhanced by his gritty displays, especially at Headingley.

An obviously class act as a batsman, intelligent and without the skeletons in the cupboard that put paid to Shane Warne’s captaincy ambitions, he has merely had to sit at the right hand of the man at the helm and listen and learn. When the time comes, though, Clarke’s elevation to the captaincy may be seen as a departure as he lacks the spit-and-sawdust style of Ponting, Waugh and Border.

There is no mystery about Clarke, writes Stephen Fay in the Independent, but who is this Marcus North who has partnered Clarke in fifth-wicket stands of 149 in Cardiff, 185 at Edgbaston and 152 yesterday? In the space of a week this odd couple have been the principals in saving one Test and propelled Australia into a comfort zone from which they have become favourites to retain the Ashes.

	Mark Ramprakash? At 39? At The Oval? © Getty Images

In the Daily Telegraph Scyld Berry argues that it is time for Mark Ramprakash to be recalled for the Oval Test. It might be a desperate one-off measure but England should select the veteran batsman for the final fixture of the Ashes, he says. The nearest that England will come to any ashes at the end of this Test is the charred remains of their ambitions, hopes and vanities which the Australians have put to the torch.

All other England batsmen have underperformed against Australia in that their averages in the Ashes have been lower than for the rest of their Test careers — with another exception in a couple of players from Middlesex who have done pretty well: Denis Compton and Andrew Strauss. And Ramprakash, as a Middlesex player, averaged 42 against Australia — before moving to Surrey. A desperate one-off measure, as Ramprakash is 39, but who else?

England must axe Ian Bell and Ravi Bopara, says David Gower in the Sunday Times. With England's confidence shattered in Leeds, fresh faces are needed to restore momentum at The Oval, believes the former England captain.

Normally I would not be one for desperate changes for the last match of a series such as this but I cannot see any other solution to the paucity of runs in the upper order. Without them England are hamstrung so I would have to make two adjustments. Given that Warwickshire’s Jonathan Trott is the next cab on the rank, he has to make his debut and bat at four (he proved his form by scoring 79 against Somerset yesterday), while I would love to see Robert Key back in the number three slot. I like the way he plays and believe he would respond well to the chance to play a part, even if there might be a feeling that it could be a one-off situation.

The Sunday Times' Martin Johnson believes Andrew Flintoff's fitness fears have turned into a national crisis.Flintoff didn’t take a single wicket at Edgbaston, but he visibly lifted the others with his energy and presence. At Headingley on the other hand, England’s combined electricity would barely have illuminated a 40-watt bulb.

Which is why, if Flintoff is fit for the final Test, the minimum requirement for the announcement would be the ringing of church bells, a public holiday and a papal puff of white smoke. We can’t be 100% certain just how badly Flintoff’s late withdrawal affected England mentally, but rarely can Headingley have witnessed any team playing with their heads so far up their backsides since the arrest of a pantomime horse here several years ago.

David Hopps fears it could take England as long to replace their current talismanic allrounder Andrew Flintoff as it did to find a successor to Ian Botham. How do you solve a problem like Flintoff? Not very quickly, says Hopps in the Observer.

Paul Hayward in his blog for the same paper simply says Australia have made a mockery of Andrew Strauss's men, who now need a miracle if they are to win back the Ashes.

David Lloyd, in the Independent, looks at poor Andrew Strauss and isn't envious of his task at hand.

Daniel Vettori has emerged from a systems shake-up a more powerful figure in New Zealand cricket since, and possibly including, Stephen Fleming, writes Dylan Cleaver in the New Zealand Herald. As he has given himself until 2011 before handing over captaincy, most likely to Brendon McCullum, Vettori will be working quickly to establish a blueprint for success at Test level.

The one area where Vettori would no doubt like more influence is in selection. This has previously been seen as a big no-no because of fears it can lead to factionalism within the side and perceptions of favouritism can create problems in the dressing room.

The Daily Telegraph has printed a dossier from Justin Langer giving the Australians advice on England players and conditions.

English cricketers are witheringly described as “lazy”, “shallow” and “flat”, and as players who “love being comfortable”. Fast bowler James Anderson can be “a bit of a pussy” if things do not go his way and skipper Andrew Strauss can be too “conservative”. And there are barbs at the egos of Matt Prior and Graeme Swann, as well as the annoying strut of Ravi Bopara.

In an era when people are fascinated by plans that are devised for bowlers on the cricket field, Ian Chappell is not surprised at the interest in Langer's dossier. Any Australian captain who needs an outsider to point out England's repeated failings - Alastair Cook’s weakness outside off stump, Ian Bell getting his pad in the way of in-swingers and batting Ravi Bopara at No. 3 - is actually the master impostor Karl Power in a baggy green cap, writes Chappell in the Daily Telegraph.

Anyone with a decent knowledge of the game can draw up a few foolscap pages of plans to dismiss batsmen and unsettle opponents but unless the author is accountable for the end result, they’re mostly window dressing. A captain has to make the decision who to bowl and where to place the field, and if all goes astray, as it did for Andrew Strauss at Headingley, he better be able to change tack quickly and inspire confidence in his team.

The former England captain Michael Vaughan says the first point to make about Langer's dossier is that it is very easy for him to criticise and to question the attitude of English cricketers. Vaughan would like to have seen how he would have coped growing up in the English system and playing for a team that did not include Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne.

The most worrying aspect flicking through the three pages is that I found myself agreeing with much of it. There are one or two mistakes. I think describing James Anderson as a "pussy" is very harsh but it goes to show that there are no secrets in international cricket.

Ricky Ponting showed no sings of being affected by all the hoopla surrounding the heckling of the Australian captain at Edgbaston, single-handedly making nearly as much as the entire England team on Friday. In the Daily Telegraph, Ed Smith writes that the boo-boys failed to achieve whatever they were hoping to.

First, by increasing the pressure on Ponting, they hoped to help England win. Secondly, after listening to raucous Australian crowds dishing out stick to losing England teams over the last 20 years, they wanted to balance the ledger – to out-vulgarise Australia.

The first is self-evidently idiotic, the second more subtly so. Ponting's batting showed no sign of wilting under the strain. Nor was it ever going to. He is a scrapper to the core. Booing him is about as likely to help the English cause as sledging Steve Waugh.

James Lawton is not a fan of the Barmy Army, and he lets us know in no uncertain terms in the Independent, calling them a "bunch of mind-numbing exhibitionists" who take over "some old cricket ground and filling it with a banality so extreme, so seamless that most victims down the years have at least briefly questioned their will to live".

And Giles Smith is unhappy about talk of of a blanket ban of booze at Test matches. He writes in the Times:

Large numbers of people, at present rendered docile and pliable by alcohol, would be obliged to endure a day’s cricket, with its inevitable longeurs and periods where next to nothing is happening, while stony-faced sober. And then they might really get up to some mischief.

Australia or the weather will have to do an awful lot wrong for them not to win and level the series, putting the pressure back on England to win the last Test at the Oval to reclaim the Ashes, writes Malcolm Conn in Australia's Daily Telegraph.

Without their larger than life superstars Andrew Flintoff and Kevin Pietersen, England has looked less than mortal in the fourth Test at Headingley. Very similar in fact to the performance of the side that was flogged 5-0 in Australia a few years ago, when Flintoff was there as captain and Pietersen the best performed England batsman.

Australia's demolition job on the opening day at Headingley was due to the ability of their bowlers to attack in pairs, refusing to dish up easy boundaries. Australia's attack looked more dangerous than previously and the home side's top-order batting seemed more threadbare, writes Peter Roebuck in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Happily Australia had been able to choose a strong side. Seldom have team announce-ments been as eagerly awaited. From the Australian viewpoint, attention focused on Clarke's stint in the nets, Haddin's work with the gloves and the sight of Clark limbering up.

Lawrence Booth writes in the Guardian that Ricky Ponting, world-class batsman and captain of the No. 1 side, can't be suppressed for long, as he showed at Headingley on Friday.

In the same paper, Vic Marks analyses Steve Harmison's performance on comeback, and says the fast bowler needs to show more control than anger. Michael Henderson in the Daily Telegraph is harsher on Harmison, calling his bowling "unspeakable filth".

And in the Independent, Angus Fraser praises the intelligent bowling of Australia's fast bowlers.

Yuvraj Singh's plea to treat cricketers differently in the WADA whereabouts clause has evoked mixed reactions. Pradeep Magazine of the Hindustan Times sides with the cricketers, saying that they actually have a valid point. In a team sport in which they’re on the field for almost 11 months a year, and are available for testing, why not let them live in peace for a month?

Let us not take away the right of the players to protect their privacy. In the eyes of the law, one is innocent until proven guilty. This clause, however, makes an athlete guilty until proven innocent. I’m sure it not only goes against the tenets of a civilized society, but is also bad in law.

In the same paper, Anand Vasu comments on the BCCI's reaction to the issue, and questions why they have to roadblock pretty much anything the ICC comes up with. Read on in his blog Bat on Regardless.

Usually when the board gets its hands dirty there’s either money or power involved. In this case there are no millions to be made, but certainly there’s power to be lost.

Though indisputably one of the legends of our time, is Sachin Tendulkar a real match-winner? The question indicates there are others far more consistent in winning matches for their countries. Admittedly, not many can beat Tendulkar where consistency is concerned but his contribution to winning matches takes a beating compared to Inzamam-ul- Haq and Ricky Ponting. Makarand Waingankar analyses in the Hindu.

Simon Wilde proposes a new means of making Test cricket more competitive, calling for a world Test championship with knockout stages at the end of the tournament, and with each innings limited to 110 overs to eliminate the possibility of a draw and determine a definite winner. Read his article in the Times.

Some games under this system might finish in what some would deem an unsatisfactory way but there are plenty of Test matches at present that are totally unsatisfactory - witness the recent Barbados Test in which bat dominated ball and a draw was clearly the only possible result from a very early stage. As a spectacle it was a travesty but under this plan batsmen-friendly pitches might still produce exciting games.

Why do cricket balls really swing? Is it because of the overcast conditions, the humidity or the cloud cover? Science has something else to say. Mark Henderson, The Times Science Editor, with the assistance of Nasa, offers a study in contrast to the established belief of swinging certainties. Read the piece in the Times.

“What the commentators, cricketers I much admire, have been saying about swing is plain wrong,” he [Rabindra Mehta, a NASA scientist] told The Times yesterday. “They’ve been talking about the clouds, how the new ball won’t swing until the lacquer has come off, and it’s just rubbish.”

Contrary to common belief, there are three types of swing bowling, not two, he said. Seam position and bowling speed are critical to achieving all of them, but overcast weather conditions are not.

Writing in the Indian Express, Harsha Bhogle feels cricket probably doesn’t need the extreme physical effort that track and field athletes and cyclists do (in the rogues gallery those are the prime portraits) but as the game moves increasingly to a shorter form, requiring concentrated but small bursts of performance, the need to be more vigilant is greater.

There is little doubt that drug testing has to be mandatory in cricket. Every good system must create an atmosphere for the clean to thrive and the weeds to be uprooted. And there are both in our sport as there will be even among priests and kindergarten teachers. Sometimes you don’t just have to be clean, you have to be demonstrably clean and that is a small price to pay in the effort to cleanse a sport.

To say that cricketers are 'different' and therefore deserve their privacy reeks of supercilious nonsense and betrays a lack of understanding of the big picture. Ayaz Memon in his column in Daily News & Analysis draws up an analogy with 'nakabandis' (checkpoints).

Nobody likes to be stopped in the middle of the road and for no apparent reason, but given the widespread instances of terror-related crime, everybody has learnt to adapt to this inconvenience.

The honourable intentions of Wada have now brought it to the door of Indian cricket, but the agency is a proud guest. It is not impressed by wealth nor is it star-struck. Be it the BCCI, FIFA or Rafael Nadal, Wada would not genuflect. It would not even be accommodating. Akshay Sawai in Open magazine believes the agency would not wait meekly at the door but will stride in, aware of its clout. It would deliver the message and walk out.

In the Sydney Morning Herald, Peter Roebuck believes English cricket might as well close down its numerous academies and replace its large collection of coaches and assorted cream-lickers and start over again. He bases his article on the latest soft option for England, Jonathan Trott.

Jonathon Trott is the fourth South African to appear this summer - an extraordinary statistic calculated to give coaches, educators and even pseudo-intellectuals pause for thought. Success has many fathers but the facts suggest that Trott's emergence was due in no small part to his background.

Meanwhile, Ryan Sidebottom's return shows that cricketing families can survive even the weakest systems.

A year ago Graham Onions could not get a start for Durham. Today he stands on the verge of swinging England towards Ashes glory, with a nation willing him on and the flattering attention from a global pop starlet to deal with. In a wildly oscillating career, this English paceman is having the time of his life, writes Jamie Pandaram in the same paper.

Allan Border doubts there is a cricket ground in the world that has more bitter-sweet memories for him than Headingley, the venue for the 2009 fourth Ashes Test. Writing in the Courier Mail, he confesses he still wakes up in cold sweats about what happened there in 1981, when Australia were so far in front and forced England to follow on, then lost. He believes the way to go for the visitors in the current series is by finding a way of getting 20 wickets.

	Will England risk Andrew Flintoff? © PA Photos

The decision to play the fourth Test at Headingley is ultimately Andrew Flintoff's but it's among the toughest he's had to face in his career and is central to the fate of the game, writes James Lawton in the Independent.

If Flintoff pushes back the odds, as he did at Lord's, and makes a match-winning contribution it will be an achievement of a dazzling order, something to put alongside the feats of the man with whom he has been compared for so much of his career, Sir Ian Botham. That is the tantalising prospect as the time of today's action draws near. But of course there is the other one, not tantalising but nightmarish – the possibility of Flintoff the hero becoming the passenger, the man whose dreams eventually, and perhaps inevitably, went beyond any reasonable prospect of further support from an overstretched body.

Flintoff, in an interview with John Westerby in the Times, says an Ashes win this year would mean far more for England than the one in 2005 and adds he is unlikely to take any risks with regards to playing the fourth Test if it threatens to prove detrimental in the long term.

“It crept up on us in 2005. We were on a roll, but looking back I think we were quite naive and didn’t really know what to expect. This time we’ve been preparing for it and it’s something I’ve been working towards. With all the injuries and having been hammered in Australia in the meantime, it would mean far more this time.”

Matthew Hayden, writing in the Independent, says Australia hold the momentum after their effort in Edgbaston and that the Ashes, if Flintoff doesn't play the fourth Test, are as good as gone from England's grasp.

This series is so close in terms of sessions, as I have written here before, but the indications are that Australia, because of their efforts towards the end at Edgbaston, still have the edge. Do not forget that in the shortened game the margins for error were heightened for both sides.

The truth is that the Aussies got out pretty easily with a draw. And the Anderson-Panesar effect may now come into play. Look what happened to England after they managed to deny Australia in Cardiff and now it is Australia who will gather momentum and confidence.

........

It is perfectly simple for me: no Flintoff, no Ashes.

Michael Atherton, in the Times, writes that Flintoff's inclusion for the fourth Test, given the nature of his injury, would prove a gamble too far and the best option would be for him to make a farewell appearance at The Oval and be replaced by Steve Harmison at Headingley.

In the Daily Telegraph, Geoffrey Boycott is of the view that Flintoff's decision to play or opt out will affect the fortunes of Stuart Broad, who, he believes, is not up to the job.

Mike Selvey, in the Guardian, makes a case for the selection of all three newcomers to the squad - Ryan Sidebottom, Steve Harmison and Jonathan Trott - into the final XI for the fourth Test.

Also in the Guardian, Duncan Fletcher, while agreeing that Flintoff's best replacement remains Harmison, adds that the reputation Headingley as has acquired as a swing bowler's paradise can be misleading.

	Vaas has to be admired as one good follower of his untiring and unnoticed predecessors © AFP

There were many before Chaminda Vaas who excelled for Sri Lanka with the new ball. At what point does Vaas, who literally helped criss-cross two eras of Sri Lankan cricket – from underrated minnows to uncompromising world beaters — stand among the best fast bowlers Sri Lanka has produced? Revata S Silva finds out in the Island.

An unassuming and silent servant of the game, even after all his hard-earned achievements — over 350 Test and 400 ODI wickets, an impressive tally of 26 wickets in a 3-Test series against Brian Lara’s Windies in dusty local pitches that were made to suit Murali’s spin, his eight-for in an ODI and the much-hyped ‘first-3-ball hat-trick’ against Bangladesh in the 2003 World Cup —both fantastic world records — never made Vaas a toffee-nosed chap.

Cricket may be relatively drug free, compared to baseball, but the fact that the ICC has been conscious of snuffing out the illegal elements in the game is laudatory. The 'whereabouts' rule may seem draconian, but it's something the players will have to accept and live with in professional sport today, writes Michael Atherton in the Times.

And for cricketers who want their achievements to be recognised rather than mired in suspicion, they should think about someone such as Mark McGwire, the former Major League home run record-holder who has yet to be inducted into the Hall of Fame because of doubts about his drug taking. By refusing to answer questions about steroid abuse in front of a congressional hearing, McGwire cast doubt on his record and that of everyone else of that era.

Phillip Hughes and Chris Gayle may have set a precedent for international cricketers to stay directly in touch with fans through Twitter. Don't be surprised if news breaks start appearing on such social networking platforms in future, writes Anand Vasu in his new blog Bat On Regardless for the Hindustan Times.

Experienced journalists tell me they’ve almost never heard the editor storm the floor of the office yelling “stop press!”, which seems to be a permanent fixture in all movies about newspapers. Wire services do have obituaries of prominent (and ageing) personalities ready to be published in case of any eventuality, but the number of times someone is wrongfully declared dead and has to say, “look at me, I’m clearly alive” are few and far between.

In the Australian, Ben Dorries and Malcolm Conn chart the course of Australia's newest Test player, Graham Manou, who was so unknown that during the tour match in Northampton the ground announcer called him "Garry Manou".

Manou, who has probably been more anonymous in England than the team bus driver, didn't have time to be presented with a baggy green cap. Which was just as well because both of the spare baggy greens on tour were back at the team hotel.

Also in the Australian, Ricky Ponting writes that he is pleased the fourth Test is at Headingley, where there hasn't been a draw since 1996. Ponting was also happy with the performance of the team's new opener Shane Watson at Edgbaston.

I don't think anyone has ever doubted his batting ability, but because he has been that all-rounder type he has probably been looked on as a five, six or seven batter. His technique will stand up against anyone's and when fast bowlers deliver some ordinary balls he jumps on them pretty quickly and puts them away.

Crowd trouble is almost as old as the game itself. Yet even in this long historical context there is something deeply unpleasant, unsettling and sadly inevitable about the abuse being directed at Ricky Ponting and his Australia team through the Ashes series, writes Richard Hobson in the Times.

Ponting expects more abuse over the coming week. Wouldn't it be nice if he left Headingley disappointed?

However, Ponting's not complaining. Not in the least. In his column for the Telegraph, he calls the Barmy Army "the best sporting crowd in the world."

Towards the end on Monday, it was nice to see the Barmy Army and the Fanatics from Australia coming together and building beer snakes. Earlier on those two groups had been going back and forward at each other, but once they could see that there wasn't going to be a result, they started to enjoy themselves together.

For the past three years, the former Dunedin art gallery building at Logan Park has stood in the way of the Dunedin City Council and Otago Cricket Association's shared vision to expand the University Oval cricket ground. A resolution now appears imminent. Adrian Seconi has more in the Otago Daily Times.

The grimmest and bleakest aspect of the revelations and implications of the dispute between the West Indies Cricket Board and the West Indies Players' Association, and the resulting loss to Bangladesh, is that West Indies Test cricket is dead, writes Vaneisa Baksh on the CarribbeanCricket.com website.

Details of this particular scenario are even more annoying because the WICB shamelessly instructs the hapless young players to invoke the name of Sir Frank Worrell to support their stance, when they know full well that Sir Frank would more likely have supported the idea that the WICB needs to honour agreements, negotiate in good faith and plan its business with acumen and not cunning. Sir Frank as educator would not have wanted to teach young players to disrespect the spirit of the game, nor would he have encouraged them to break solidarity with players like themselves. What happens now to those players after their horrible initiation

.......

This generation is not interested in playing Test matches. They don’t aspire to careers as Test players. They’re smitten by the excitement of Twenty/20; they’ve sniffed its lucre and have been fondled by its promise of glamour. Their world is one of instant gratification and giddiness. I

Kookaburra apparently spend $600,000 to work with Melbourne professor Roger La Brooy and his team at RMIT University to develop a "superbat" whose carbon handles allowed hitting further with less effort. Even Gray-Nicolls jumped on board. But there was to be no major sporting revolution and the battered bat with a barren handle now sits in a Melbourne office cluttered with robotics, NASA printouts and bulky tomes on aerospace engineering. Nick Walshaw finds out more in the Daily Telegraph.

So what's the fuss all about? Is complying with the WADA code on a daily basis as difficult as it's made out to be by the Indian cricketers? India's gold medal hero in the Beijing Olympics, Abhinav Bindra, religiously follows the code, which he says easily blends into your daily routine. Bindra describes his routine to the Indian Express. Athletes and other sportspersons who still have apprehensions about the code may want to read this.

“I’m home most days from 7am to 8 am, so that time suits me perfectly,” Bindra said. "Anyway, you’re ready to pee when you get up in the morning and that’s all they would ask for.” Entries made by the athlete are expected to stand for a quarter of the year, unless he/she changes plans, like Bindra did for today. “So I logged on, clicked on the box for August 4, 2009 on the calendar, disabled my usual testing slot, and entered the new evening one,” Bindra said.

An editorial in the Hindu slams the Indian cricketers and the BCCI for sending out a misleading message to the international sports community, especially since recent examples have proven that cricket is not 'wholly clean.' Indian cricket would be stupid not to fall in line with the code.

The ICC should be applauded for endorsing the regulations because WADA will vastly improve the its ability to identify those players who are struggling with addiction or who are using banned substances, writes Neil Johnson in the Witness. Early detection will provide affected players with the opportunity to come clean and to get their lives back on track.

In more recent times drug addictions have destroyed the careers of many fine cricketers. Chris Lewis and Ed Giddins, both English Test bowlers’ have struggled with addiction, as has Dermot Reeve whose cocaine habit saw him lose a lucrative commentary contract with Channel 4 television.

Gordon Farquhar, writing on the BBC Cricket website, says that the BCCI's refusal to adopt the WADA code is a battle of wills which could determine who holds the power in world cricket.

James Anderson's stubborn displays with the bat are not just helping England's cause but also helping him grow in confidence as a bowler, and it has also taken him one step beyond understanding a batter's mind, writes Duncan Fletcher in the Guardian.

Now that he's learned how to hang around at the crease and even play a few shots, he's showing a greater awareness of how to out-think the batters when he has the ball in his hand. That process can take time but the signs are he's getting right. And the exciting thing is, he can get even better.

In the Times, Michael Atherton feels England will be loath to tinker and will play the same team, despite Andrew Flintoff's fitness worries.

If he is not fit, a suspect pitch would improve Trott’s chances, cloud cover would improve Sidebottom’s and neither of the above would represent Harmison’s best chance of one last crack at Australia before he, too, heads into the sunset.

Nasser Hussain believes Flintoff must be included for the fourth Test, as much for his presence and the effect he has on the crowd, particularly in the absence of England’s other box-office player in Kevin Pietersen, as his performances. In his column for the Daily Mail, Hussain believes it is a difficult situation and one that will have to be handled with care by England.

So who is Jonathan Trott? For the uninitiated, Patrick Kidd has the lowdown on England's newest Ashes recruit. Read on in the Times.

Trott may be a South African by birth, but don't start calling him the new Kevin Pietersen, warns David Lloyd in the Independent.

For the fourth Test at Headingley, where the West Stand has a long-standing reputation for rowdiness, organisers are putting in place a range of measures to strike a happy medium between the two camps. Owen Gibson finds out more in the Guardian.

"Spotters" will be employed to roam the public bars, taking over-refreshed fans to one side and offering them a glass of water or something to eat. It will be quietly suggested that they leave the bar and come back later.

Is the Barmy Army an entertainment or a nuisance? More the latter, writes Dominic Lawson in the Independent. When they're in full lager-lubricated flow, it is impossible to pick up an edge to the wicketkeeper, and it is even difficult to hear the defining sound – between a thunk and a crack – of willow striking leather when the batsman drives the ball to the boundary.

The Barmy Army's mission statement – every organisation has one, it seems – is: "To make watching cricket more fun and more popular". What it seems not to understand is the "fun" in watching cricket, is ... watching cricket. For the great majority of real cricket-lovers, there is no fun in being within several counties of the Barmy Army and I know of a number of people who no longer attend Test matches because of their incessant din.

Future West Indian administrators might just be competent enough to assemble a decent team for World Cups and Twenty20 tournaments. But in Test cricket their incompetence is now a sorry fact; and it might prove better for all concerned, in the long run, and after a painful separation, if the West Indian territories were to do what Trinidad proposes.

Scyld Berry, writing in the Telegraph, brings the point into context and believes though a Test Championship is great, the only trouble is that it is an idea whose time has not yet come.

Trinidad and Tobago are already talking of going their own way. Yes, it would be a great shame if they did. But only a common culture has held the Anglophone West Indian territories together, and this no longer appears to be strong enough. All other Test teams have been, and are, nation states.

	Australia have to go for broke © Getty Images

Australia must consider an all-pace attack for the fourth Test at Headingley in what could be their best shot at a series-levelling win, for the track at The Oval - the venue for the final Test - can be expected to be placid, writes Peter Roebuck in the Sydney Morning Herald.

The Oval can be the flattest pitch in the country. It’s long been the case. In 1938, Bill O’Reilly considered seeking out the curator with a rifle as England collected 7-903. On the other hand, if the teams go to London all square a local outbreak of fusarium can be expected.

In short Australia have to go for broke. Moreover, Headingley tends to favour seam bowling and frown upon spin. And it presents various challenges that can undo the unwary visitor. When it is cloudy, which is most of the time, the ball whoops around like seven-year-olds at a birthday party but when the sun emerges, the track becomes as lifeless as a government backbencher. It’s an odd shape, too, with a slope straight down the ground so that bowlers find themselves running up or down hill. The boundaries are fast and short in some directions.

Just as a low-scoring contest in any sport can be as absorbing as a shoot-out, so the 2009 Ashes series, in its own muddle-headed way, is proving just as fascinating as the 2005 epic. Greg Baum, writing in the Age, calls it the virtue of mediocrity.

It means they’re as bad as each other, which means they’re as good as each other, which means it is impossible to know yet how it all might end.

Yet now, as then, crowds are agog, ratings high, tickets at a premium and all eyes glued. The series has in common sport’s most fundamental appeal, that — for diametrically different reasons — no one knew or knows what to expect next. Except rain.

Mohammad Zahid, the former Pakistan bowler who was among the fastest in his time, speaks to PakPassion.net about his initiation into cricket, his experience bowling with Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis, the current state of fast bowling in Pakistan and his plans for the future.

It saddens me to think that just 10 years ago each domestic team had at least one bowler who was consistently clocking over 90mph. In those days it wasnt a big deal for a Pakistani bowler to clock 90mph nobody would get excited by it. But these days if we see a player clock 140k then 'poore Pakistan mai shor mach jaata hai' (the whole of Pakistan starts shouting his name).

	'Rise up' © Getty Images

As the third Test wound down like an old clock, it became worryingly clear that England are too easily defanged when conditions do not give their bowlers an edge. The quandary for the selectors, who announce the team for Headingley is whether or not to take final-day form into account, writes Kevin Mitchell in the Guardian.

It was dispiriting to witness a potentially dramatic day peter out like this. The well-watered gathering expected more and they stirred from their late-afternoon slumber to acknowledge the obvious: England are still not killers. They are opportunistic muggers, maybe. They need things going their way.

In the Independent, James Lawton worries if Andrew Flintoff has enough steam to pound through the next two Tests.

Yesterday, though, on the ground where he riveted the crowd four years ago in one of the most unforgettable of all Ashes Tests, and on Sunday wielded his bat as though it was a broadsword, there was disturbing evidence that with the fourth Test at Headingley just three days away Flintoff might not be far from the point of physical breakdown.

Shane Warne feels that Graham Onions would be better off moving from Durham to a place where pitches are flatter so that his game develops. Warne also analyses the bowling attacks of both teams in his column for the Times.

Of all the grounds in England, Headingley is the place where conditions can most help the bowlers. I sometimes found it a horrible place to bat, with the ball swinging and jagging and bouncing. The new ball is crucial and I still believe that if Australia can get to the England middle order early they have a great chance.

In the same paper, Christopher Martin-Jenkins feels it may be sensible to rest Flintoff for Headingley, but it's obviously a big gamble.

Tim Bresnan or Adil Rashid would love a chance of playing an Ashes Test on their home ground but Ryan Sidebottom, a bowler in ripe form and Stephen Harmison, even with blisters, are the only serious candidates if strengthening the attack is the main criterion. Lose Freddie, however, and you lose that precious balance.

Stuart Broad's figures in the last three Tests may not be flattering enough for him to be retained for Headingley, but the selectors should persist with him because he finds ways to get into games and never shirks when he is down on luck, writes Patrick Kidd in the Times.

In the Telegraph, Simon Hughes writes that Strauss missed a trick by under-bowling James Anderson.

With a 40-minute break for lunch, Anderson would have been the canny choice to begin the afternoon session. Instead, Onions and Broad were called up – presumably a committee decision, as there was scope in the interval to discuss it.

Australia may still be trailing 0-1 in this Ashes series but it can take an intangible advantage into the next Test - momentum. Just like England did when it hung on grimly to save the first Test at Cardiff and then bounded away to win at Lord's, Australia hung on easily at Edgbaston and should be buoyed by its improvement, writes Malcolm Conn in the Australian.

It’s often been Shane Warne producing a ripper that turns a series but Graeme Swann’s scorching off break that shattered Ricky Ponting’s stumps on day four at Edgbaston has taken pole position for ‘that ball’ of the 2009 Ashes campaign. Jamie Pandaram has more in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Writing in the same paper, Peter Roebuck says England have been stronger and better balanced and he believes the hosts will win the Ashes. He admits though, it is never wise to underestimate any Australian team, but the gap between the sides is widening, not shrinking.

The Australian top order looks settled, now the focus should be on their bowling attack for Headingley. Australia must be tempted to tinker with their attack even if their options for change are limited, writes Vic Marks in the Guardian.

"It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing." What a perceptive analysis of Australia's batting by Duke Ellington (albeit in 1931). Unless the ball is changing direction in mid-air the tourists look all too comfortable against England's attack on the benign pitches prepared for this series. They are vulnerable, it seems, only when the ball is swinging.

The refusal by India's cricketers to sign up to WADA rules and the endorsement by the country's cricket authorities mirror the realities of Indian sport. Boria Majumdar writing for the BBC website, believes the lack of an Olympic sporting culture in India - the country boasts a paltry 17 medals in 88 years of competing at the Games - is the reason for its colossal national ignorance about international sporting rules, especially anti-doping ones.

With cricket having a virtual monopoly over the Indian sportscape, the urge to protect the country's cricketers is paramount - even if it means ignoring global sporting realities.

And this is where the Indian cricket board could have played a more proactive role - it is the board's responsibility to explain to the players that they are part of a global sporting fraternity and need to act as such.

In his column on Dreamcricket.com, Suresh Menon says the BCCI-WADA dispute is a heart versus head issue. The heart says that players are entitled to their privacy, and security might be a valid point considering the threats some Indian players have received. However, the head says that this cannot be reduced to a question of individual convenience when larger issues are at stake.

If India are banned from future ICC tournaments (that means all international cricket), that would be too high a price to pay for what is at worst an inconvenience. Privacy and security are good arguments, but it is inconvenience that is at the bottom of the refusal to sign.

Indian cricket is becoming reflexively disposed towards standoffs. And the more weighty the powers gathered against it, the more inspired tend to be the BCCI’s statements of principle. This editorial piece from the Indian Express questions whether the BCCI is picking a fight where none need exist?

The sight of Mitchell Johnson clutching his hamstring near the end of England’s innings yesterday and apparently taking some painkillers was met with concern by a portion of the Edgbaston crowd, although not the portion wearing yellow shirts. While Australian fans remain perplexed at the toothlessness of a fast bowler who was meant to be the new Terry Alderman, Patrick Kidd in the Times believes the visitors must consider changing their attack for the fourth Test at Headingley

It is like one of the Road Runner cartoons when Wile E. Coyote unpacks an elaborate bird-catching contraption only for it to backfire. This Acme device is a dud; “beep beep” say the England fans, blowing a raspberry.

The batting of Andrew Flintoff and Matt Prior on Sunday showed how important England's middle order has been in the Ashes, says Christopher Martin-Jenkins in the same paper.

England may not yet have an aura, but they have started to develop the knack of pulling something dramatic out of the bag. Patrick Kidd says it is the pace at which the likes of Andrew Flintoff, Matt Prior, Stuart Broad and Graeme Swann have scored that has tilted games this summer.

Richard Hobson thinks that umpire Rudi Koertzen's struggles in the third Ashes Test beg the question why is the world's best, Simon Taufel, not one of the umpires.

BCCI president Shashank Manohar refused to speculate on the inevitable fallout of the Indian board's non-compliance with the ICC's anti-doping code. It is unlikely that he and his colleagues have not made the calculations on the likely implications, especially with the resolution against the BCCI requiring the consent of the seven ICC members. Vijay Tagore has more in Daily News & Analysis.

	Juggling Act: Ricky Ponting © PA Sport

The Australians need to put away frowns and attack. Fear is corrosive and it’s not too late for the Australians to fight back. According to Peter Roebuck, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, a captain cannot be held responsible for everything. He is not a puppeteer, though by Leeds, Ricky Ponting might finally have a full deck of cards to play.

In any case, Australia need to stop contemplating their navels. Touring reporters have become frustrated at the way the team has gone to ground. Repeated requests for interviews with bowling coaches and players have been turned down. It is a bad sign. Apart from anything else, the game needs all the publicity it can get. This circling of wagons indicates a fragile state of mind. That needs to change.

Darren Lockyer and Ricky Ponting play different sports - rugby and cricket respectively - but are golden children from golden eras. At a time when the game is getting really tough for both men, can they maintain their zest for the game in teams which are a ghost of what they were? Robert Craddock draws up an analogy in the Courier Mail.

One of the most painful sights in sport is that of a champion struggling, which is why no one wants to really talk about Lockyer's form problems this year.

Like Ponting, he is such a gifted talent and a modest, unpretentious fellow that you feel like you are shooting Bambi when you mention the words "Lockyer" and "form slide" in the one sentence.

In his blog on the Herald Sun website, Craddock believes Australia should find room for Stuart Clark. If the Ashes are lost and given the pressure and penetration he can cause, he didn’t get a game, it would be a crying shame.

There are few more magical sights in cricket than high-class seam and swing bowling of the sort that James Anderson and Graham Onions produced at Edgbaston. When such mayhem unfolds, the game appears to be played under different physical laws. Modern Test cricket is all too often a batsman's game but when the ball starts to swing, it does not matter how flat the pitch, how big the bat or how great the reputation, the bowlers are turned into conjurers and batsmen clowns, writes Simon Wilde in the Australian.

Malcolm Conn in the Australian is scathing of the ICC's lack of interest in umpiring standards. He writes that while Rudi Koertzen's mistakes are not the reason for Australia being 1-0 down in the Ashes, it is an indictment on the game that umpiring is treated as such a low priority.

Cricket has many problems which are made worse by the political maze which is the International Cricket Council. Nothing matters more than a good backroom chat to stitch up a vote. Just ask all those who continue to support Zimbabwe. So when fundamental aspects of the game, like umpiring, come to the fore they get shunted off to a committee to deal with. And why would anyone listen to a committee when there are tournaments to be hosted and millions to be made.

...

The more money that is poured into the encouragement and development of umpires around the world the better. Perhaps the millions Zimbabwe was paid to stay away from the World Twenty20 in England earlier this year could have been spent on umpires. And perhaps just a fraction of the billions India makes from television rights and the player-destroying Indian Premier League could be spent on developing a few decent umpires of its own.

Let’s not heap too many plaudits on Andrew Strauss for granting his permission for Graham Manou to replace Brad Haddin when the Australian wicketkeeper broke a finger shortly before the start of the game at Edgbaston, writes Martin Johnson in the Sunday Times.

Lord Brocket, as he is known on the circuit, is a chivalrous man (apart perhaps from when he’s instructing overweight physios to waddle onto the field in the hope that someone would take the hint and fall down injured) but to have said: “Sorry Ricky, I’d like to help you out, but a few of our chaps haven’t got an MBE yet” would not have been within the spirit of even the modern game.

In the same paper, David Gower writes that England No. 3 Ravi Bopara must be given time to develop his understanding of the job, encouragement to believe in himself that he is good enough to make it work and a reminder that, while those strokes that make him an attractive player to watch should not be inhibited, every time he defends it must be with as much purpose as he can muster.

In the Observer, Kevin Mitchell asks whether Australia coming to the end of an awesome era.

The cracks in the mask of confidence that is an essential accoutrement in elite sport have appeared on this tour, and widened alarmingly in this match. Without dismissing their individual talents, or their potential, Marcus North, Shane Watson, Peter Siddle, Ben Hilfenhaus, Nathan Hauritz and Graham Manou no longer provide the consistently high pressure with which Australia have crushed opponents in the past.

To Michael Henderson in the Sunday Telegraph England remains the home of cricket because it is the only place (other than Australia on a good day) where Test cricket is valued by the public.

Even before the overrated controversy around a reality show, Vinod Kambli and Sachin Tendulkar were drifting apart. Akshay Sawai narrates the moving story of what was once a pure and improbable friendship between a boy from the shanties and a professor’s son, in the latest issue of Open magazine.

True, a bad childhood does not end with childhood. It stays. But there was enough fortune in Vinod Kambli’s adult life for him to break free from the attitudes that an unfortunate child has. Time and again, Vinod began to use his past as an excuse to cross the line.

In this week's Outlook Rohit Mahajan looks at dwindling ticket sales in India and says that in order to save Test cricket in these very commercial times, audiences must be made an interested party.

There’s also politics to countenance—matches are allotted by turn and often, critics say, with prejudice. An official of the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) complains there are few matches in Calcutta, which has always drawn huge crowds for Tests, because the CAB is headed by Jagmohan Dalmiya, who’s daggers drawn with the current BCCI czars. Empty new stadiums, destitute of ambience, can hardly be expected to generate interest in the classic format of the game for those in their early teens.

Graham Onions, who took four wickets on the second day in Edgbaston, wastes no time in turning the Test on its head. He underlines the virtue of getting the looseners out of the way before play and rewards the gamble to open with him, writes Vic Marks in the Guardian.

For his first delivery his strides to the crease were long and purposeful. He was at full pace and that first ball had that wonderful, mysterious property: it was straight. Shane Watson had looked the part, to the bewilderment of many on Thursday night, but not today. His feet did not move; nor did his bat and before he could look up Aleem Dar's finger was raised. Onions was at his peak at 11am; Watson had not quite got there.

In the Daily Mail, Nasser Hussain writes that Onions is the sort of bowler he would have loved to captain.

Also in the Guardian, Paul Weaver describes Ian Bell's 47th debut.

He always looks strangely new, fresh-faced and nervous, even though he should be a gnarled old sweat by now. Even his flannels – if we can describe England's awful, whiter-than-white decorators' uniforms as such – looked slightly whiter than the others as he strode, perkily, boyishly to the crease on his home ground today, trying to calm the nerves that jangled within him.

Peter Roebuck, in the Independent, backs Ravi Bopara as England's No. 3 and writes that despite his latest failure, England should persist with him.