Brendon McCullum has recently been stripped of his New Zealand vice-captaincy. In the Herald on Sunday, Mark Richardson wonders what the reasoning behind the move is.

Is this simply a case of a good young player getting too big too soon and an ego that needs reeling in?Is it a message to say either put up or shut up? Does it hint that those who may not see things quite like Vettori and/or Glenn Turner are headed for the high jump?
Or has he simply been offering nothing and just caring for himself?

Tough and talented, South Africa have taken their inspiration from their captain to become the world's best Test team. Duncan Fletcher, who has ties with both England and South Africa, writes in his Guardian column that Graeme Smith's work ethic guarantees England will be tested to the limit.

What impressed me most when I was with the team before the Champions Trophy was their work ethic. You had to see it to believe it. Coming out of a chill winter, Potchefstroom was a hot place to be training and they ran themselves off their feet. They set themselves some seriously high standards, and a lot of that comes from Smith and his excellent relationship with the coach, Mickey Arthur. They do not treat nets as just another bit of practice – everything they do is designed to take their game forward. It shows in the side's fielding, which is excellent. That's one area where I expect them to have an advantage over England.

On the 25th anniversary of India Gandhi's death, Sandeep Dwivedi in the Indian Express speaks to former India players who were in Pakistan when news of the assassination broke.

As Dilip Vengsarkar entered the 90s while approaching his first ODI hundred at Sialkot during the 1984 tour, he saw Pakistan's motor-mouth Javed Miandad coming towards him from third man. There were a couple of thoughts that crossed Vengsarkar's mind. He wasn't sure if the movement on field was skipper Zaheer Abbas's ploy to put pressure on him by posting a close-in fielder. On second thoughts, he feared it was just Miandad indulging in his old trick of initiating a provocative dialogue with a well-set batsman between overs.

Adam Gilchrist is not just worried about how the amount of cricket is affecting the players but also the fans, Peter Lalor reports in the Australian.

"The burn-out issue is there, but then the player has to be smart about management," Gilchrist said. "The lucrative dollars are there, but you have to be successful for the national team to reap the rewards in tournaments like the IPL and the Champions League.”

Brett Lee is off home and will have a break from signing autographs for a while. Jesse Hogan, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, says the invention of the camera phone has made Lee's life a lot tougher.

It hasn’t been a great year for the relationship between the Australian team and the media, and Greg Baum analyses the situation in the Age. He takes issue with Tim Nielsen’s Cricket Australia blog and the players' answers to Indian journalists this week, a paragraph which has since been removed.

After three months of rest and recuperation, Kevin Pietersen will pick up a bat and try to prove his fitness for the tour of South Africa. More valuable than the physical rest for his Achilles is the mental rest he's had, watching a bit of cricket and catching up with his favourite channel, National Geographic. Alyson Rudd of the Times finds out what KP's been upto in the recent months.

Pietersen breaks with tradition. Enforced rest usually prompts sportsmen to become depressed and allow problems to fester but he turned this on its head. “Preparation is what I bank on and preparation has definitely been hampered because of external thoughts,” he said. “These last three months have cleared my brain and my thoughts.”

Grand slam champion Andre Agassi's admission to using drugs during his career is not only damaging for his reputation but for the sport itself, writes Harsha Bhogle in the Indian Express.

I have long been a huge admirer of Agassi on court but I do hope people do not rally to his support; like with the pathetic attempt to protect Roman Polanski. The more we pardon offenders, either through the law or through public affection, the easier we make it for someone else to cross the line. And here in India we need to take a tough stance too. Our weightlifters are now a joke around the world as indeed are the officials who looked the other way in spite of fairly obvious proof. If the game isn’t strong those that play it need not be strong and you can see that association at work in the build up to the Commonwealth Games.

In the 24 months leading into the World Twenty20 in September 2007, and the 25 months or so thereafter, India played almost the same number of Tests and ODIs, but the latter period includes 17 T20s. In case we all forgot, there were two IPLs and a Champions League in-between. Insane numbers indeed. No wonder some of India's leading players and those from across the world are plagued by injuries, writes Kadambari Murali Wade in the Hindustan Times.

On a final note, here’s another interesting stat that might give the BCCI some pause to think before scheduling more and more T20s — the Indian public has been notoriously fickle when it comes to supporting their team and India, despite popular perception, is not a very good T20 unit.

In the same paper, Atreyo Mukhopadhyay, touches on a crucial point in India's big win at Nagpur, the running between the wickets. Mohammad Kaif talks about the importance of taking singles and how it's enough to deflate the opposition.

	Are you Australia in disguise? © Global Cricket Ventures-BCCI

It’s been said that New South Wales players are given a baggy green as well when they are handed a state cap. Will Swanton, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, takes it further: just pick a NSW-only Test team and be done with it.

Pipe down, Victorians and assorted other non-Blues. NSW have proved themselves as the dominant provincial side in the world, let alone Australia, so the selectors might as well just flood the Test XI with Blues - 10 of them plus captain Ricky Ponting, who lives in Sydney anyway.

And before all those Victorians and assorted other non-Blues start moaning about NSW's struggles in the Sheffield Shield, come for a meeting in the fair dinkum department - the only reason they don't win the Shield every year is the unavailability of their premier players who are representing their country.

Cast ahead to the first Ashes Test against England next year. Australia lost the urn, NSW can win it back. A Blues-Only-Plus-Ricky-Ponting Test team isn't remotely far-fetched.

Bryce McGain, the legspinner, plays his first game for Victoria since returning 0 for 149 on Test debut in South Africa. Chloe Saltau spoke to him for the Age.

Alan Tyers' latest entry on his hilarious blog in the Wisden Cricketer analyses why Steve Harmison signed a new four-year contract with Durham.

I see my role as being to pass on what I’ve learned: how to adapt to different conditions – maybe an away dressing room that doesn’t have a DVD player for your Lovejoy boxset; how to smuggle a crate of Newcastle Brown Ale through customs at Faisalabad; how to chuck your phone away and hide in the attic when you reckon the England selectors might be calling to give you the nod.

The Indian business newspaper, Mint, has an interesting write-up looking at the decline of the restaurants opened by Indian cricket's biggest names.

The Mumbai restaurant named after the man many Indians consider to be the best cricketer to have ever set foot on a cricket pitch, Sachin Tendulkar, has closed for business and may well make way for a night club.

Tendulkar’s, as the restaurant was named, isn’t alone in its fate. In New Delhi, Sehwag Favourites, promoted by a man who still sometimes opens the batting with Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag, has also shut down and the cricketer is locked in litigation with his business partner. And former India captain Sourav Ganguly’s restaurant in Kolkata has seen its popularity waning.

The recent departures of coaches - Andy Moles (New Zealand), Peter Moores (England), Robin Singh and Venkatesh Prasad (India) - suggests that players are wielding greater clout in decision making. Makarand Waingankar finds out in the Hindu.

It’s part of the coach’s job to understand the mental make-up of players so that they accept the methods and give their best, but the coaches complain that players refuse to accept the advice of coaches even when their own methods are not successful.

Gone are the days when Ray Illingworth, who was the one-man selection committee and also the coach of the England team, would act like a dictator. Modern players want more of a say in strategy planning.

"While the hopping and skipping of a large man attracted a fair bit of attention, it was Shepherd's skill as an umpire – both in terms of decision-making and man management – that earned praise around the cricket world. He made his international debut at the 1983 World Cup, in England, and stood in 92 Tests as well as 172 one-day internationals before retiring in 2005. He was in the middle for three consecutive World Cup finals – in 1996, 1999 and 2003 – and at the end of his final Test, between the West Indies and Pakistan in Jamaica, he was presented with a cricket bat by the home captain, Brian Lara. On the bat was a message which earned approval throughout the game: 'Thank you for the service, the memories and the professionalism'," writes David Lloyd in the Independent.

"David Shepherd and I shared a marvellous friendship over more than four decades. It began when he joined Gloucestershire in the mid-1960s, and it continued all the way up to this terribly sad news. I truly believe that David and I saw the best days of umpiring," writes former umpire Dickie Bird in the Telegraph.

"Shepherd loved cricket. It was his life, and as a player, umpire and ambassador he epitomised everything that is good in the game. The ruddy face, rotund figure and cuddly, jovial Father Christmas-like appearance may have given many the feeling he was something of a soft touch. He was not. When standing, Shepherd insisted that games under his control were played in the correct spirit," writes Angus Fraser in the Independent.

"I played against him once, in 1979 at Fenner's, for Cambridge against the mighty 'Glos', as you could call them back then. As he strolled to the crease, all pot belly and mutton-chop sideburns, he looked like the picture on a Toby jug. But while the entrance was comic, his shots packed power and any sideways sniggers on our part soon turned to bruise-handed admiration," writes Derek Pringle in the Telegraph.

"He was an absolute beauty and the world will miss him. I remember sitting up for four hours drinking with him in the bar after the World Cup final in 1996. He was a gentleman and great company," Shane Warne told the Times.

"When I was coming up in the game, we would always share a pint of bitter with him after the day’s play. I’m afraid those days might be past now: players and umpires don’t mix together as much as they used to," says Michael Vaughan in the Telegraph.

A fast bowler who has suffered with injury several times, Rob Cassell found the jump from the Melbourne club competition to the state level a tough one. Failing to break into Victoria's side after an initial run, he lost his Bushrangers contract in 2007 and went to Europe in the winter of 2008 to get a few things out of his system. He travelled for five months with two old schoolmates, hiring a car in France and driving into Spain. Cassell was done with cricket, or so it seemed. On a cathartic trip, his significant moment came in an Aussie bar in Barcelona, he tells the Age.

A little more than a year on and the journey is far from done. But Cassell, 26, might well be on track for the best comeback cricket has seen in years. Seven years after he last pulled on a Bushrangers shirt, he is playing Premier Cricket for Melbourne with conspicuous success, meaning he is only a step away from state colours. Bowling with an action remodelled over four months at the Centre of Excellence in Brisbane during the winter, he took four top-order wickets for the Demons in the first round, and backed up with a career-first hat-trick against Camberwell in round two, employing reverse swing with an old ball.

The Champions League, it seems, has caused quite a stir. The success of sides such as Trinidad & Tobago, New South Wales and the Cape Cobras outdid what the two English counties, Somerset and Sussex, achieved in the tournament. One likely reason, as is being muttered in hushed tones across England, is the amount of cricket those two counties played. As Lawrence Booth writes on the Wisden Cricketer website, the men who run English cricket need to address the problem soon.

The thoughts of the engaging Wright, whose career is still at the make-or-break stage, should be cut and pasted into an email to the England and Wales Cricket Board. “From the county cricket point of view, it is hard and you don’t get the time to prepare as, say, people in Australia do, to work up to a game,” he said. “You go from a four-day game and travel at night to a one-day game, and you try to differentiate between the formats. You find yourself practising the skills in the games themselves rather than having it nailed down ready to play. You almost use some of the games as practice.”

David Shepherd, the former umpire, died on Wednesday aged 68 after a long struggle with cancer. Read his obituary of one of cricket's most popular figures in the Guardian, written by David Foot.

Humour was never far away. He was mischievously ever ready to relate tales of those celebratory evenings when, inexplicably, he lost both his car and his shoes. The umpires on the county circuit and those of higher international rankings liked him, too. They approved of the way he dealt with blustering troublemakers at the crease. They were aware how much he detested batsmen, some famous, who affected an air of innocence when they knew well enough that they had got a touch.

But even the finest of umpires make mistakes. He always owned up and later in the match might have a confidential chat with the batsman he had ruled out leg before.

The Daily Telegraph calls Shepherd "one of the best and fairest officials in the game". The obituary also has an account of how he decided to take up umpiring when a friend suggested it would offer him "the best seat in the house."

Shepherd had the hearty frame and smiling, ruddy face of a West Country landlord. But once he donned the umpire's white coat, he became a formidable adjudicator, as a generation of batsman will testify. He had a sharp eye and an exceptional rapport with the players – virtues that the International Cricket Council recognised when they appointed him for three successive World Cup finals.

In his blog in the Times, Patrick Kidd wonders why umpires aren't loved these days as they used to be in Shepherd's prime.

An obituary in the Times praises Shepherd for his calm deliberations and un-obtrusive control of the game, traits which made him one of the best and most respected umpires of his time.

After moving to the Daily Mail from the Guardian, Lawrence Booth has started off a new weekly mail called 'Top Spin'. The first installment is out, in which Booth profiles England's players making the tour of South Africa.

Stuart Broad

The beginning of the rest of his career? Possibly, although his Ashes-winning five-for at The Brit Oval has raised the bar to an unfair degree. The talent is there, but he needs direction too. Those close to him say Broad is not the enforcer England crave: his bouncers go for too many runs. He himself nominates Glenn McGrath – the human-form-made-metronome – as his role model. But will the management listen? As for his batting, No 8 seems perfect, especially in the land of Shaun Pollock, who averaged nearly 31 in that slot.

Maybe I am missing something – a shrewd tactical contribution from the gully, a tendency for stirring dressing-room speeches, or a deep and meaningful appreciation of the game and its place in English history, but the thought of Alastair Cook as England captain so far leaves me cold, writes David Hopps in the Guardian.

England have been blessed by three excellent captains in the past decade. Nasser Hussain was feisty, impatient, demanding. Michael Vaughan, shrewd and self-possessed, inherited a more capable side and taught England to relax and back their ability. Then came Andrew Strauss, appointed later than he should have been, and a diplomat for troubled times. Cook's qualities, outside the dressing room at least, remain a mystery. He might be vice-captain in name but it is Paul Collingwood, as senior pro and Twenty20 captain, who the media, subconsciously perhaps, assumes fulfils that role.

In Independent Online, Kevin McCallum tries to get his head around the innovations in South Africa's new and improved domestic one-day competition, the MTN40, which has two Powerplays (with strings attached), a strategic break and a rolling substitute.

There will be three Power Plays, which have capital letters in the official press release, thus making them more powerful than playful. The first PP must be taken during the first 10 overs and the final two by the batting side at any time except from the 35th over onwards ... Teams will be able to use all 12 players at, if I have got this entirely right, any time during the match. So, if, say, Albie Morkel is chucking down juicy beef pies, the coach or captain can call him off the field and replace him with the 12th man, who will be wearing an armband to let every one know that he is indeed the 12th man.

As New Zealand Cricket begin the search for a replacement for the departed Andy Moles, the first thing they must do is settle on the type of person they want, writes David Leggat in the New Zealand Herald.

Tom Moody, if they are starting at the top, and not just because the former Australian allrounder stands an imposing 1.98m. He took over Sri Lanka in 2005 and led them to the World Cup final two years later before heading back to West Australia. He's signed a three-year deal until 2010, and would want serious money. Well worth a hard look.

John Wright, the only New Zealander in the hunt. Would be a popular public choice, a laconic front masking a hard-minded competitor, who made the most of his abilities as a test batsman. Has worked with the batsmen before, and heads the NZC high performance unit. Suggestions he would not be senior players' first choice, but anyone who can keep India on track, as he did for several years, can't be a bad man manager.

	Eye on the ball?: Merv Hughes © Getty Images

When he's at home the selector Merv Hughes can’t watch Australia’s overseas matches or the country’s domestic fixtures because he doesn’t have pay television. The Age’s Chloe Saltau speaks to Hughes about his not-all-seeing role.

''I think I follow the game closely enough anyway,'' Hughes said. ''If it is from overseas, all the Australian games are covered by another selector. While I saw the highlights on Sunday [against India], and while I followed it on the internet because I don't have pay TV, I have full confidence in the selector on duty, which in this case is David Boon. 'When you've got a selector actually covering the games I don't think it's a problem because we get feedback from him.''

My belief is that the counties should play only ten or 12 four-day games, as 16 is just too many. The basic aim has to be to allow players more time to work on their skills, writes Michael Vaughan in the Times.

Speaking of which, I would like us to have a look at allowing every county to play two four-day games per year in India around March and April. It would expose every player, not just the elite 15 who get into a national performance squad, a chance to experience those conditions and learn some of the methods required to take wickets there. It would encourage spin and real pace and the kind of skills needed at the highest level. It would be a test of the guys’ characters and I am sure there must be commercial opportunities in it as well.

Andy Bull has a similar point, but about the international schedule in his weekly Spin column on the Guardian. He also writes that while cricket administrators are wary of kowtowing to the press or yielding to player power, it's the fans who will ultimately decide how much cricket is enough.

Contrary to all appearances, the ICC is not entirely incapable of learning from its mistakes. The 2011 world cup, for example, will be shorter than the moribund 2007 edition. By all of two games. Where it once had 51 fixtures it will now have 49, a reduction akin to taking your socks off when you stand on the bathroom scales. You don't cure obesity by trimming toenails.

What hope have we then that they will be able to effectively tackle the single largest problem facing the game, the complete redesign and rationalisation of the international, and domestic, calendars?

To understand the mind of the Indian cricketer, it is necessary to borrow from the 19th century French writer Villiers de l’Isle Adams, writes Suresh Menon in Mumbai Mirror. In his dramatic poem Axel, the lovers decide to kill themselves because the alternative is so trivial. “As for living,” says Axel, “our servants can do that for us.” And that’s the connection between French Symbolist literature and Indian cricket. Our players seem to be saying, “As for fielding, our servants can do that for us.”

Why do young, fit athletes struggle to bend so much? Or appear off balance when throwing? Is it time the Indian team laid down some qualifying rules – speed of foot, ability to hit the stumps and so on – before a player is considered for selection? Fielding is crucial in all forms of the game, especially the shorter versions, and India’s approach is embarrassing.

The reluctance to run shows itself while batting too. Well as Harbhajan Singh and Praveen Kumar batted towards the end, they certainly sacrificed more than four runs while admiring their shots or assuming that the ball would go to the boundary or running only a single when with better planning they could have run two.

Huma had a calming influence on Wasim Akram and his career and for 16 glorious years she redefined his life giving it the much-needed stability. Ajay Naidu remembers her, in his obituary in the Times of India.

Amir Mir offers his condolences as well in Daily News & Analysis.

Gordon Farquhar was present when the head coaches of England's cricket, football and rugby union teams- Andy Flower, Fabio Capello and Martin Johnson - joined forces to talk tactics. Read his blog on the BBC Sport.

"Keeping things in perspective is the only way to do it. Training and playing as if it's life and death, but in the real knowledge that it's not, and that there are actually more important things about," said Flower.

"You can be obsessed with your sport, and obsessed with your skill, obsessed with the art of what you do, but also realise that it's not life and death and that the love of your family, or whatever your values are, are actually more important."

The Champions League may not have matched the buzz of the IPL, especially when the Indian teams exited early, but the glitz and glamour that has sieged Indian cricket o flate was very much evident in the tournament. Amrit Mathur in his column in the Hindustan Times believes it’s time embrace the new trends and flow with the tide.

The specialist batsmen failing to get going and the bowlers inability to change pace, are two key areas that cost India the match, according to Sourav Ganguly. Read his column in the Times of India.

Prem Panicker shares that view, and writes on his blog Smoke Signals that Ishant Sharma must take the new ball ahead of Praveen. Panicker also writes that perhaps it is time for Sachin Tendulkar to bat at No. 3, and let Gautam Gambhir take over the opening slot.

if the brief for SRT — or more likely, the brief he has prescribed for himself — is to bat long, he needs to come in at number three, ceding the opening slot to Gautam Gambhir, who works well with Sehwag, is tuned to turning the strike over rapidly, and is temperamentally tuned to using the power play overs to optimum. One of the odd faults of SRT, among many good qualities, is his insistence on picking his slot in the batting order; IMHO, that will need to change if the team is to fire as a batting unit.

Given their performance in the series opener, India will have to field better if they are to have any chances against Australia, writes Ravi Shastri in the Hindustan Times.

With an international calendar so packed that players are literally going from one tournament or series into another without time to catch their breath, the needle is slowly being eroded. Anand Vasu in his blog on the Hindustan Times website feels there is no bite to the ODI series between India and Australia this time around.

In the summer of 2002, when Mohammad Kaif chased down a record 325 against England in the NatWest final at Lord's, it seemed there was no turning back. But overlooked in recent years, he wonders why he never got the chance to make a comeback. Kunal Pradhan of the Sunday Express catches up with the batsman.

In one such chase against Pakistan in 2004, Kaif and Rahul Dravid had a long partnership to take India from 162 for five, to 294 and victory. In the middle of that knock, Kaif played a shot that split his bat in two. After the game, Dravid had the pieces of Kaif's broken bat collected, scribbled a `thank you' note and gifted them to him. The pieces still lie in Kaif's trophy cabinet, along with the five man-of-the-match awards in 125 ODIs.

The British, while adept at inventing sports, are notoriously backward at becoming involved in other people's adaptations of their inventions. Will Buckley in his blog on the Observer website believes a great sporting moment passed by with Sussex and Somerset missing out during the Champions League Twenty20.

Given Andy Moles' resignation as New Zealand coach, Mark Richardson in the Herald on Sunday believes the team is not mature enough for a back-seat co-ordinator. In fact, he says the players need someone with not just CEO-style skills but a highly tuned cricket brain as well.

If NZC wants to take the approach of selecting up-and-coming coaches then they must look very carefully or risk taking a punt.

Perhaps they would do better not to advertise the role but just target the ones they want - to avoid the scenario that may have occurred had they said no to Moles even though he was the final applicant in the race.

Writing in the same paper, Dylan Cleaver claims New Zealand Cricket did not have a lot of luck in their search for John Bracewell's successor, as the IPL brought about a number of highly-paid roles that did not require the fulltime attention that helming New Zealand would.

It is all very well being wise after the event but there was disquiet almost from the get-go. Why didn't they appoint an interim coach - John Wright was under their noses (on the appointments panel, no less) - and wait until they had a compelling candidate?

Instead, they took the path of least resistance, only to find a year into the journey they ran into a rather large obstacle in the form of an emboldened Daniel Vettori, as influential a figure in New Zealand cricket as any before him.

Rather than a mutiny, Moles' ouster has been more like an SOS; and one that New Zealand Cricket couldn't help but answer, writes Richard Boock in the Sunday Star Times.

Moles supporters might have considered some non-committal NZC press releases over the past few days as a reason for hope, but such optimism was always misplaced. To publicly offer any comment apart from support during an employment process would be to effectively premeditate an outcome. That's why so many English football managers are sacked only days after being endorsed by their chairmen. It is the kiss of death.

The tempered approach of the Australians to the seven-match ODI series against India might just be tactical. Illustrating the point, Ayaz Memon in his column in Daily News & Analysis also highlights the fresh focus and outstanding young talent that the visitors bring with them.

Given the BCCI’s focuses of attention these days: its sponsorship deals, its Twenty20 opportunities, its IPL money and its plans for elections, it should concentrate some strategy to helping those parts of the country where cricketers have to tackle hardship and hurdles while playing the sport. The explosives-in-the-kit-bag controversy surrounding Jammu & Kashmir cricketer Parvez Rassol is only a case in point, writes Sharda Ugra in her blog on the India Today website.

	Tired, hurt? © Getty Images

Cricket has reached a stage where even committed watchers don’t know which teams are playing, when they are playing, who’s playing for whom, and, because they’re playing all the time, why they are playing at all. Rahul Bhattacharya in his column in Mint believes the game has become an embarrassment of riches.

From an average of 12 Tests a year over the last eight years, India was down to three in 2009. There is nothing still confirmed for 2010, which is normal practice with the Indian board, but particularly worrisome in the new age. In March comes IPL 3, thereafter the World Twenty20. Perhaps it is a cunning strategy to prepare audiences for IPL 4, where 94 games are to be stuffed senseless into six weeks. Nausea.

It was unthinkable that a day would come when the urban Indian male would admit he is bored of cricket. But the truth is that the sport is fast losing its charm among its most commercially influential devouts. Akshay Sawai has the lowdown in Open magazine.

What must worry cricket handlers the most, however, is that the age group most coveted by marketers, the urban youth with upper middleclass backgrounds, is more interested in football. The sport was always popular in India. But in the old days, the telecast of international matches was sporadic. Football fever peaked every four years with the World Cup and dissipated once Dino Zoff or Diego Maradona or Lothar Matthaus had hoisted the trophy.

From the mid-90s, however, Indians could enjoy comprehensive coverage of European leagues, all thanks to cable television. The impact has been significant. Today, there are many teenagers who respect Dhoni, but want to be Fernando Torres. Dhoni himself wanted to be a footballer.

In the same magazine, Boria Mazumdar explains how the glory of wearing the India cap is rapidly being eclipsed by the greed for big bucks in slambang leagues.

Since the advent of the IPL and more recently the CLT20, the fundamental difference between Australian and Indian cricket is this growing absence of pride in doing things for the nation. While the baggy green has reverential status in Australia, it represents the best Australia can offer, Indian youngsters find this concept totally alien, wasteful traditional romanticism associated with the cricket of a bygone era. New-age Indian cricket is the fertile playground to earn a fast buck, and more the logos of MNCs on the caps of the new-age Indian youngster, the merrier it is.

Did the Indian selectors value Rahul Dravid on his own merit or was he a stop-gap arrangement? Pradeep Magazine in his column in the Hindustan Times, believes the batsman's non-inclusion for the series against Australia has been grossly unfair.

New Zealand coach Andy Moles may fly out with the squad to the UAE on Tuesday - depending on the state of negotiations - but he won't be around for much longer, writes David Leggat in the New Zealand Herald. It is understood the process is at a point where the two parties are settling on a number to pay out Moles for the remainder of his contract. Leggat believes there are three foreseeable options ...

Moles walks away with a satisfactory payout, perhaps in the region of $300,000, and a short-term stand-in installed for the five limited-overs internationals against Pakistan. If a settlement is not reached, Moles goes to the UAE, on a "business as usual" basis. Or New Zealand could go to UAE with a manager, support staff and the players, with captain Dan Vettori carrying on in an enhanced leadership role.

The disappointing performances by Somerset and Sussex in the Champions League was only confirmation of the inferior standards of county cricket. This could reopen the idea of introducing the franchise system, writes Vic Marks in the Guardian. Next year, counties will hopefully prepare better.

The only English batsman to play with freedom and freshness was Wes Durston, who produced two cameos when he replaced Marcus Trescothick in the Somerset side. Durston had barely played a first-team game for Somerset throughout the 2009 season, yet he scored runs more effortlessly than anyone. Durston was fresh. The rest of the batsmen of Somerset and Sussex were jaded. And it showed. They doggedly searched for the magic elixir but there was nothing left to give on pitches that often negated easy strokeplay.

By picking Rahul Dravid and then dropping him after two tours for no real justifiable reason, the Indian selectors are sending wrong and confused signals to the youngsters, that it is okay to play only in favourable conditions and that you don’t really need to learn how to play elsewhere, writes Harsha Bhogle in the Indian Express.

That is why Suresh Raina had to be number three in South Africa. But if indeed he was assessed and found inadequate, then he must bide his time. The future belongs to him, to Rohit Sharma, to Virat Kohli but for that these young men have to prove that they can play anywhere; like Dravid did, like Laxman and Ganguly did.

Jonathan Millmow writes in the Dominion Post that Andy Moles needs to understand that his position has become untenable and must therefore resign as New Zealand's coach.

Mediation begins today and Moles needs to read the signals. He has the lost the dressing room and, no matter how great his love for the game, he must walk away, albeit with some sort of financial settlement.He was contracted through to the 2011 World Cup so, in the short term, should not be fumbling for a bus fare on a wet day.

What a disaster it will be if Moles digs his toes in and takes the team away next week for the one-day series against Pakistan in Abu Dhabi. What good can come of a setup where the coach can no longer speak with conviction? Why prolong the agony? A caretaker coach will not be hard to find among a cast of thousands at NZC.

NZC backed Moles yesterday but, with mediation 24 hours away, what else was it to do? Moles remains a competent coach but the floodlights and the big crowds have caught him out, much the way they do with an average first-class player.

Caribbean cricket could splinter into individual nations if it does not learn from Trinidad & Tobago's spirited run in the inaugural Champions League Twenty20, writes David Hopps in the Guardian. Twenty20 cricket can be the salvation of West Indies cricket, satisfying its need for a quick sporting fix, just as it dominated one-day cricket in the early years, winning the first two World Cups in the late 1970s.

T&T's impressive captain, Daren Ganga, has spoken intelligently about the "great legacy" of West Indies cricket and how proper investment is long overdue to respect and continue that legacy. It cannot be guaranteed that the G&T-sipping crowd are listening to T&T. But the warning could not have been starker, with Ganga visualising a break-up of West Indies cricket into individual nations if the various stakeholders do not get their act together.

	Nathan Hauritz went from club cricket to top grade © Getty Images

With Australian slow-bowling a growing concern, the Age’s Chloe Saltau runs through the official numbers that show the percentage of deliveries sent down by spinners in the Sheffield Shield competition has almost halved in the past four decades.

The figures were prepared for Cricket Australia and presented to the board's annual general meeting last week, at which chairman of selectors Andrew Hilditch was reappointed for two years, despite the recent Ashes defeat. Hilditch and his panel have been criticised for sending five spinners through a revolving door to the Test team since Stuart MacGill retired in June last year. But in his report to the AGM, Hilditch said the selectors were placed in the impossible position of having to pluck a spinner, Nathan Hauritz, out of grade ranks for last summer's Adelaide Test because of the dearth of slow bowlers in first-class cricket.

Australia has had a lack of depth in spin bowling since Shane Warne left the international stage almost three years ago, but the figures expose an alarming decline since the 1960s, when nearly 45 per cent of deliveries were sent down by spinners, compared with 35 per cent in the 1980s, 31 per cent in the '90s and about 25 per cent this decade.

The Champions League is entering its final stages but the majority of the Indian public seem blissfully ignorant of the tournament itself. The reasons are fairly obvious. The fact that not a single IPL team is in the semi-finals is bad enough. Cricket in India has reached a saturation point and as one journalist put it, the public are suffering from "cricket fatigue." Dileep Premachandran sums it up in the Guardian.

One cabbie in Delhi even asked if I was going to watch India play Australia [there is a one-day game on 31 October]. When I told him I was about to watch the Daredevils, he just shook his head. At the next traffic light, he turned to me and said: "How can you watch these games? The [Indian] players are all split up. I wouldn't even know who to cheer for."

Is life really a doddling cinch if you're born in the right place at the right time? Perhaps, but not in British sport, argues Frank Keating. After half a day's work poring over parchmenty old reference books in proving it, Keating in the Guardian says it's all down to whether your birthday falls in the football or cricket season that dictates sporting prowess.

Take Wisden's list of England's all-time top-scoring Test batsmen – from Gooch's 8,900 runs to Thorpe's 6,744 via Stewart, Gower, Boycott, Atherton, Cowdrey, Hammond, Hutton and Barrington. All but three were born during British summer time (this year from 29 March to 25 October) – Atherton (born 23 March, by less than a week), Cowdrey in December, Barrington in November. Still, seven out of 10 makes for a fairly conclusive argument. On second thoughts, make that eight out of 10, because Cowdrey was born at Ootacamund on Christmas Eve 1932 in the very middle of a literal Indian summer. In fact, make it nine out of 10 because dear Kenny B, Berkshire-born soldier's son, always told you he'd actually been conceived under the southern stars of Africa when ma and pa were garrisoning the Empire.

Malcolm Conn calls the failure of India’s teams to reach the Champions League semi-finals an “embarrassment” for the Indian Premier League. In the Australian Conn writes about the first staging of the tournament and talks to Stuart Clark about New South Wales’ huge game with Victoria.

Ben Rohrer, the New South Wales batsman, stole Australia’s domestic prize from Victoria earlier in the year, and he speaks to the Age’s Jesse Hogan about not being a Twenty20 specialist.

Legspinners at the international level have been a rarity for South Africa. But a special talent has been unearthed in the women's circuit in the form of Dane van Niekerk, who, only 16, starred against West Indies women in Paarl, taking 3 for 25 in ten overs, and helped South Africa win by seven wickets. Rodney Hartman, on the Independent Online website, has more.

Dane is South Africa's legspin prodigy. She is a shade over 16 years old and she can bowl the leg break, the wrong 'un and the flipper. That's probably more than Shane Warne could do at a similar age.

In a runaway seven-wicket victory over the West Indies yesterday, she took three wickets for 25 runs in 10 overs. That's as economical as you can get, particularly since legspinners are often quite expensive.

In the Wisden Cricketer, Kevin Mitchell calls for a reduction in the number of matches in the relentless international cricket calender. He also defends the injury-prone Andrew Flintoff's decision to retire form Tests to prolong his career.

Even those money-mad TV executives and pushers of products who see cricket as nothing more than a commercial vehicle must be a little concerned that we are all getting too much of a good thing. We’re in danger of growing fat and bored on a diet of relentless, non-stop, around-the-clock, around-the-world cricket.

Nearly four months after his retirement, Michael Vaughan talks to the Guardian's Andy Bull about his love of skiing, how it was an easy decision to quit once he wasn't part of the Ashes squad, dealing with the press, and realising how special the Ashes '05 win was. He also has clear ideas on how the game should be run in England.

The Ashes victory this summer, he suggests, was crucial in deflecting attention away from the problems in the game, and helped brush the Stanford farrago in particular "under the carpet". "If we hadn't have won the Ashes this year we'd have seen a bit inquest into the game of cricket in this country," he says with assurance. "Now we've won the Ashes it gets smoothed over. But I'd like to see a more dynamic group of people in charge. I've always said that the game should be run by a board of eight people. They should run everything: fixtures, structures, finances. At the moment there are too many stakeholders. You're not sure who to criticise if it goes badly, you're not to sure who to praise if it goes well. Have a board of eight, ex-players, business representation, admin, media. Get them in a room and let them run the game."

	Let the fun begin and may the best team win © AFP

Given Lalit Modi's Twenty20 experience, Ajith Pillai in Outlook believes that the IPL chairman can take it to the next level - livening up Indian parliamentary debates, making them more entertaining and ending up generating advertising revenue from them.

Better dress sense: Right now our parliamentarians (in their crumpled khadi whites) look like boring Test players. The new outfits will be bright, colourful, trendy and will look good on TV. Clothes, they say, maketh a man. It also maketh politicians. Incidentally, my dress code has the approval of ex-Rajasthan CM Vasundhararaje although she felt that I have to come up with something more imaginative than saffron bermudas for BJP MPs.

Given the disappointing performances of Sussex and Somerset in the Champions League, the county coaches have problems of a different sort to solve before embarking upon another campaign against the world's best Twenty20 outfits. Nick Hoult investigates in the Daily Telegraph.

But the usual English one-day weakness of a lack of power in the batting line-up cost Sussex and Somerset a chance of making any real impact in India.

Only five county batters featured in the top 50 strike rates. Luke Wright was the only Englishman to hit more than one six in the entire tournament and Wes Durston recorded the solitary county half-century.

On Monday the Pakistan board is expected to take a decision on the future Younis Khan's captaincy after he offered to resign following speculations over the team's exit from the Champions Trophy. In the Pakistan daily News, Khalid Hussain writes that board president Ijaz Butt is in a catch-22 situation since he was the one who had lobbied for Younis to be made captain in the first place.

... it's not easy even for the most powerful man in Pakistan cricket. Even with his sweeping powers, Butt cannot just take this decision and solidify Younis's hold on team captaincy. There are too many other factors involved. Sources told 'The News' that following the Champions Trophy, around nine or ten members of the Pakistan team have met Butt and told him that they are unhappy playing under Younis. A couple of players confided in this correspondent that the atmosphere in the dressing room that was already far from perfect under Inzamam-ul-Haq and then Shoaib Malik, failed to improve much under Younis either. They say that even the title-winning triumph in the World Twenty20 championship in England failed to really unite the players. Some senior players were unhappy with the Board's choice to have Younis as captain and never really supported their new leader right from the outset.

	James Franklin has batted like a lion in first-class cricket, but looks as timid as a mouse at the highest level © Getty Images

OPTION 1 Select James Franklin as a like-for-like straight swap.

Pros: He wants the job, telling his local paper: "I'm hoping [the selectors] think I'm the guy for that. I think I can do a job there for New Zealand. I've done it for years for Wellington, batting at No6 and bowling, so it's nothing different for me." At his best, Franklin would offer the sort of balance a fit Jacob Oram provided, with his cultured left-handed batting and left-arm swing variety with the ball. If you watched him in the nets and knew nothing of his test record, who would think that he was a world-class player rather than a fringe selection.

Cons: "At his best" is the operative statement. Hands up - outside those who regularly attend Wellington's first-class fixtures - anybody who has actually seen Franklin at his best? Over the past three seasons he has batted like a lion in first-class cricket, but looks as timid as a mouse at the highest level. In the field, he carries the appearance of somebody who does not really like bowling. The fact he took a significant drop in his central contract ranking this year indicates the selectors have lost patience in the wait for Franklin to realise his potential.

Marcus Trescothick is not the role model for sportsmen or sportswomen who suffer from depression because sport itself has nothing to do with depression, writes James Corrigan in the Independent On Sunday.

Trescothick flew home from India last week with a "stress-related disease" and the ensuing knee-jerkery led to media outlets asking sports stars – ideally, his former team-mates – for their views. After all, they have experienced the "unique pressures" placed on our sporting heroes and are thus qualified to comment. But are they? Aren't they, in fact, the worst qualified to comment, having lived the life and, in their eyes anyway, having survived the strife? On Friday, one former footballer, speaking on one sports channel, opined: "It's especially tougher on cricketers as they are away for months at a time. No one likes being away from their loved ones. Obviously Trescothick suffers very badly in this regard." The inference was that the Somerset batsman was plagued by some intense form of homesickness. The same overture accompanied each and every report. Of course, the descriptions of Trescothick's condition had to be pithy because of space constraints. But in all the shallowness, the insult of him somehow being "weaker" was inevitably cast.

In the Observer Vic Marks writes that Trescothick has broken convention by being a top sportsman who admits to frailties.

One of the most impressive things about Marcus Trescothick over the past couple of years has been his candour. When he was being badgered by the press just before the Oval Test this August he told us about the nightmare that helped confirm his decision not to pursue any sort of fairytale return to the Test team: how he dreamed that he was unable to get his cricket kit out of his bag while the rest of the side were ready and waiting for the team photograph. He did not have to share that with us. He could have just said: "I'm not available."

Writing in the Hindu, Peter Roebuck says the Champions League is the freshest tournament staged for years.

Indeed the tournament has surpassed expectations, providing a richness absent in technically superior endeavours. The Champions League (CL) has had several particular attractions that have made this first edition all the more enjoyable. First and foremost CL has none of the tiresome flag waving that emerges when countries lock horns. Oscar Wilde was wrong. Patriotism is admirable and Nationalism is the scourge. No good comes of it.

In the Witness, Roebuck writes Trinidad & Tobago "have helped to improve the battered reputation of West Indian cricket" with their performances in the Champions League.

At the same time they strengthened the case for breaking up West Indies as a cricketing entity and leaving each nation to its own devices. After all, West Indies exists largely for cricketing purposes. Otherwise it is a region with its own complexities and complexes loosely bound together by geography, history and common practices, but as prone to self-interest as any other collection of countries. Moreover, one of the West Indies’ most prominent contributors, Guyana, is actually a South American nation struggling to recover from the toppling decades ago by the British secret service of a duly elected leader.

	Peter Siddle has been around the world in the past 12 months © Getty Images

Peter Siddle is at the end of his first year as an international cricketer and he looks back with the Age’s Jesse Hogan.

Siddle's progression from injury replacement to mainstay has taken him from India to Australia to South Africa, back to Australia, then a marathon stint between England, Scotland, South Africa again and now India. This newly imposed transient lifestyle is why Siddle has not been home in Melbourne since May 27 and will not get home until mid-November.

"It's just non-stop cricket, a lot of hotels, a lot of travelling by planes and buses and a lot of time spent away from home,'' Siddle said. ''It's been tough. I do miss family and friends and just being able to do the normal things, just to be able to relax at home, drive around in your own car, stuff like that. Bed's the biggest one I miss, being able to go home to your own bed. Different hotels in every city you go to it's always a different bed.''

Ayaz Memon is puzzled why Rahul Dravid when a) he has done a decent job in the few opportunities he had, b) none of the other batmsen have done anything particularly spectacular in the previous few months, c) there is a need for a technically strong batsman against a potent Australian pace attack. Read his piece in DNA.

Brought in a few weeks back to shore up the suspect Indian batting against short-pitched bowling, he finds himself bowled neck and crop by a grubber, as it were, and this one bowled by the selectors themselves.

The Cricket Watchers' Journal blog has a list of 'emergencies' Indian cricket has been bailed out of by Dravid.

In a hilarious piece in the Wisden Cricketer KingCricket elaborates why he isn't a big fan of IPL teams. Chiefly, because they are businesses first and sporting clubs next. Sample what KingCricket thinks could be the thought process behind Deccan Chargers signing on Andrew Symonds:

“How does Andrew Symonds represent the Deccan Chargers ideals and values?” they’d have asked. “Do his qualities fit with our image? What’s our official stance on the shoulder-charging of streakers? Do we have one? Why don’t we have one? Let’s say that we’re pro shoulder-charging streakers so that we can sign Roy.”

Robin Singh and Venkatesh Prasad came to know through the media that their stint as fielding and bowling coach of the Indian team was over. "Is it too much to ask that the BCCI follow basic principles of human decency while carrying out that function [sacking their employees]?" asks Prem Panicker writes in his blog Smoke Signals. He also talks about a conversation with Robin Singh in 2003, when Robin was looking for a coaching job with the US cricket association.

He had, Robin said, been coaching [India] U-19 on someone’s say-so. A board official called him up and told him he had the job; he did it. Through that period, he had no formal meeting with anyone in the board, no contract spelling out his duties, no idea who if anyone he was supposed to report to, and certainly no idea what he was going to be paid and when.

And when it was all over, Robin waited. “I thought someone would call, tell me if they were satisfied or not, tell me what I was supposed to do next. No one called — how long am I supposed to wait?” And so he was in the US, shopping for jobs.

Marcus Trescothick's departure from India is a setback in his recuperation from the stress-related illness that prompted his premature retirement from international cricket. But it is not the end of the world for Somerset or for Trescothick, writes Vic Marks in the Guardian. The team still remains as positive as ever and are focussed on the road ahead.

Since his illness Trescothick has established some ground rules about how to react when he senses his torment, which is triggered by separation anxiety, is returning. No longer will he try to battle with the demons, which is what he attempted both in Pakistan in 2005 when he felt obliged to stay on since he had suddenly been landed with the England captaincy, and in India in 2006. Instead, when he sees the signs, he is minded to withdraw immediately.

It isn't just nation versus nation contests which stir the public's imagination. The ongoing Champions League seems to have brought the best out of certain players, especially the unknowns, and it's thanks to these tournaments that the game is still alive, writes Harsha Bhogle in the Indian Express.

It could never, for example, allow you to experience the combination of disbelief and joy that we saw with Alfonso Thomas of Somerset. Not many people knew much about him, we knew that he was a cricketer, no more, but against the Deccan Chargers he kept his cool, took his side home and then produced one of the most wonderfully innocent and unrestrained exhibitions of happiness I have seen. “I can’t believe what I’ve done” he gushed and for that moment alone I thought the Champions League was worth it.

Jacob Oram's decision to quit Tests to prolong his limited-overs career is a smart one, because he knows his time at the top is running out, writes David Leggat in the New Zealand Herald. It also gives Daniel Vettori the chance to claim the top allrounder's role.

Oram didn't fancy giving away bowling to take his chances as a specialist batsman. He had been a two-for-one player for the last 10 years. Putting away the bowling boots was not on.

	Phil Jaques is back on track © AFP

Phil Jaques, who opened for his country last year, continues to score heavily in New South Wales after his recovery from a back injury. The Australian’s Malcolm Conn writes about Jaques’ career-saving operation.

The opening batsman is several centimetres taller thanks to a prosthetic disc in the base of his spine. Jaques laughs about his sudden elongation, but has not bothered to measure himself. He's just delighted to stand up straight again and be able to move freely enough to play a proper cover drive without stabbing pain.

Off the field he can sit comfortably at dinner without the constant need to get up and walk around and his social life has also improved. Jaques can linger over a cup of coffee without fear that his back will seize up.

Kapil Dev, India captain in 1983 and from 1985-87, recalls his best and worst moments while speaking to Sportstar. From travelling on on a rickety scooter with Ashok Malhotra and Sushil Kapoor to reach far flung grounds, to that unforgettable 1983 World Cup victory to the six that gave a great impetus to the game in Pakistan, Kapil shares his memories on a legendary career.

That glorious day — June 25, 1983 — remains close to my heart the most. There have been some other great deeds too, but nothing to match the feeling of holding the World Cup in my hands. Sometimes I feel it is yet to sink in even today. That day will always be the most important day of my cricket life.

Bob Simpson, the former Australian captain and coach, has never been one to hold back his thoughts. In an interview with Sportstar, Simpson talks about the Australia's current status, Ricky Ponting's captaincy, the future of the Test game, the current rage, Twenty20 cricket, and much more.

Commentators and players are talking about yorkers all the time. What is a yorker? It’s a full toss and a batsman’s mistake really if he gets out. It’s not a ball you can bowl at will. In the end it becomes an overpitched one. We should get back to the big boundary lines. If a batsman wants to hit a six, let him hit it on a proper field. I find the sixes in Twenty20 just as boring as the dot ball. The footwork for all forms of cricket should be similar, just judge the length of the ball properly and you have a shot for every ball.

Mike Atherton doesn't think cricket occupies a higher moral plane to other games. Nothing in its history suggests that it does. In his column in the Times, Atherton attempts to articulate what the game means to him, and begins by describing two images that first come to mind.

When Patrick Eagar was on a “booze cruise” during the tour to the West Indies in 1974, he passed Accra beach, Barbados, as the sun was setting and saw a game being played with, as it turned out, a young Gordon Greenidge.

The other image is of three urchins playing a game of street cricket in Mumps, Oldham, with a dustbin for the wicket and the narrow, cobbled street for a pitch. It suggests that cricket was once, more so than it is now, an essential part of the fabric of the British way of life.

Monty Panesar has watched his place as England's No. 1 spinner slip to Graeme Swann. Panesar was dropped from the England Test team after the first Ashes Test at Cardiff, despite his match-saving effort with the bat on a tense final evening, and has now lost his central contract. In the Guardian, Mike Selvey writes that a spell in South Africa should make Panesar a more assertive – and therefore better – cricketer.

Too many people, most with little idea of the technicalities of what he does, offer opinions and miss the essence of what he is as a bowler. His head bursts with information overload, when what is required is his game being stripped back to the bare essentials. And they are these: he has a strong action, and big hands which allow him to spin the ball prodigiously at times; he has a natural pace which is faster than many; he is capable of sustained spells of accuracy. That is a solid base of skills from which to work and expand, but first he should be encouraged to understand that essentially he is an attritional bowler, who gets wickets by persistence rather than magic deliveries. He suffers from an imperative to "make things happen" when his strength lies in the build-up of pressure.

Looking at the England Test squad for the tour of South Africa, it seems the selectors are expecting Stuart Broad to take on the allrounder's role, which according to Shane Warne, in the Times, will be detrimental to his career.

The only time a team should go with five bowlers is when one of them is a genuine all-rounder. By that I mean a “Freddie” Flintoff, although he was more of a No 7 than a 6 in the order. If England don’t want to play Adil Rashid in South Africa, they have to go with Paul Collingwood at 6, Matt Prior at 7 and Broad at 8. That line-up, with Graeme Swann at 9, has depth. Moving Broad and Swann up a place alters things dramatically. For Broad, there is a massive difference between having to score runs because that is what is expected from a No 7 and supporting the others or having a hit without too much responsibility a place lower. England should look at Shaun Pollock and Wasim Akram from the recent past. They had the potential to bat at No 7, but spent a lot of their careers at 8 because they recognised bowling as their more important skill. I would put Mitchell Johnson in that category — he can really hit a clean ball — and Broad as well.

Yorkshire have dispensed with the services of Matthew Hoggard, their swing and seam bowler who won 67 Test caps for England. Hoggard said he was "shocked and disappointed" with the decision but he'd have to be more blinkered than the average Yorkshireman not to have thought it a possibility after failing to accept the two-year contract the club offered him a few months ago, writes Derek Pringle in the Daily Telegraph.

Neither had he scotched the rumours of a move elsewhere, the classic signs of someone wanting to keep their options open. Though they may want to do exactly that, players cannot bleat about loyalty and then play the field. Player power, especially those with international reputations, has been on the rise in recent years, but you become vulnerable once your options are reduced.

Andrew Flintoff is in in rehab, coaching the UAE side and promoting his new autobiography. He speaks to the Guardian's Donald McRae about the pain of injuries, being left out of the side after the Pedalo incident, and losing the Ashes 5-0.

"You Google the operation and get all these examples. A lot of basketball players have had it and they're much bigger and heavier and they jump higher than me. And they've made full recoveries. So I'm confident."Did he find any nightmare hits on Google – where the operation clearly failed? Flintoff chuckles: "I didn't look at them ones." The parlous state of his knee provides a constant reminder of all the injuries Flintoff has endured. He tells a quietly affecting story of how he has sometimes been reduced to sitting on the edge of his bed and calling his wife, Rachael, so that she can help him pull on his socks and shoes. For a big man, so often described in heroic terms, he has been terribly debilitated.

	Azhar’s performance undercut the appeal of Muslims-support-Pakistan rhetoric © Getty Images

After him, there was a deluge—Zaheer Khan, Mohammed Kaif, the Pathan brothers, Munaf Patel. Indeed, the Azhar phenomenon helped instil confidence among Muslims, enabling them to brush aside taunts from Hindu chauvinists. It worked equally on non-Muslims—Azhar’s performance undercut the appeal of, say, Bal Thackeray to Hindus susceptible to the Muslims-support-Pakistan rhetoric.

Rob Smyth can't understand how Owais Shah has the dropped from the one-day squad to South Africa. Smyth writes in the Wisden Cricketer that Shah has scored more runs, made more fifty-plus scores and hit more sixes than anyone else in England since Shah's recall to the one-day side in 2007.

The simple fact is that, with the bat, Shah does everything England don’t do in one-day cricket. He hits sixes, huge ones too. He has a force that, at its strongest, cannot be contained, which was demonstrated only three innings ago with his match winning 98 against South Africa, when he creamed 45 from his final 20 deliveries. He milks spinners effortlessly, a traditional failing of England (If you compare the 55 matches since Shah’s recall in 2007 with the 55 matches before, opposition spinners have conceded 0.44 runs per over and 6.30 runs per wicket more), and has the confidence to confront them, as he famously did on his Test debut in Mumbai. He looks the opponent in the eye and ask them what they’ve got.

It's easy to forget that England won the Ashes without Kevin Pietersen for the final three Tests. But England's premier batsman is getting closer to his return after a tough recovery from Achilles surgery and is on track to face South Africa, the country of his birth, in the Test series. When he announced himself with three centuries during the 2004-05 ODI series he faced a harsh reaction from the home crowd and he admits it wasn't the most pleasant experience in a wide-ranging interview with Brian Viner in the Independent.

Does he anticipate a hostile reception when, wherever it might be, he strides out for the first time? After all, in 2005 he was abused loudly and mercilessly. He smiles. "Well, Strauss is South African, [Matt] Prior is South African, so is Jonathan Trott, so it won't just be me." But he is the man those Afrikaaners in particular love to hate, isn't he? "Yeah, but I take that as a compliment, the same as Ricky Ponting does when he comes here. I enjoy it, actually. But you're right, in 2005 it was extremely abusive, and my mum and dad were very upset. Especially my mum. That doesn't bring fond memories, even though I scored three hundreds and was man of the series. But I don't expect it to be as bad this time. I think people in South Africa respect me now for what I've done."

It's close to three years to the day when Mark Vermeulen, struggling to cope with anger, depression and frustration, torched the Zimbabwe academy and later faced the prospect of 25 years' imprisonment. A chance of a recall seemed unthinkable at the time, but the Zimbabwe opener says with confidence that he's a changed man. He talks Ian Chadband of the Telegraph through his extraordinary journey and recalls that fateful day.

"I'd been watching the TV and thought 'I've had enough of this'," Vermmeulen recalls. "I went off in my brother's Chevrolet, which had a South African number plate, and set fire to the building's thatched roof with a lighter. I watched it catch hold and then I drove away."

The ICC Champions Trophy had its fair share of incidents which re-opened the debate on fairplay and the Spirit of the Game. Mike Atherton suggested that the preamble to the Laws of Cricket is superfluous. John Woodcock feels that it may need rewriting and Simon Barnes that cricketers are in need of clarification about the game’s moral code. Christopher Martin-Jenkins, writing in the Times, says it is the law in question that needs tweaking, not the preamble, or the spirit behind it.

Once an umpire feels that a few pointed comments have become an attempt to undermine a batsman’s concentration, he is provided with a clear course of action. The preamble, no less clear and concise, also leaves little room for doubt about what is and is not acceptable. It is true that it is pretentious in referring to the game’s “unique” appeal because its beauty is in the eye of the beholder and not everyone reveres it. Nor is cricket different to any other sport in needing honourable conduct as well as a set of regulations.

The Champions League is less than a week old. Do many in India really care? Kadambari Murali Wade in the Hindustan Times lists ten reasons why the tournament hasn't yet matched the hype of the two IPLs.

4. Howzatt! You mean, ‘Who's that’? We Indians also like our designer foreign brands. And they're not around. No Smith, Ponting, Hayden, Flintoff, Pietersen, Warne, Vettori, AB… and no melodramatic Pakistanis! Okay, so we have Gilchrist holding the Deccan flag aloft and Gibbs disappearing before he can say hello for the Cobras. Then there's Brendon McCullum (traitor!) on for Otago, that quiet Kallis, and a subdued, shorn Symonds. Not enough, mate.

But it's a different story in the Somerset camp, where the club's chairman Andy Nash, chuffed after upstaging Deccan Chargers in Hyderabad, stood up and said that he felt it was the greatest night in the club's history. Somerset allrounder Peter Trego gives a behind-the-scenes account of that victory and what it's like being a part of the Champions League, in his blog for the Guardian.

On the the morning of the game we managed a successful swim session at our pool – now restored to the correct shade of blue – which was a good chance for the lads to get together and have a laugh. The usual jokers were on top form – Craig Kieswetter wrestling Marcus – but the, er, undoubted highlight, was seeing the "Prince of Malaysia", Arul Suppiah, strutting poolside in the tightest hotpant Speedos I've ever seen. No matter how in shape you are, that's never going to be a good look.

Pakistan's domestic cricket calender for 2009-10 is flawed because it doesn't pay much attention to youth cricket and the sport in the country will only take a backward step. One such example is the scrapping of the inter-region under-19 three-day tournament which has benefited so many youngsters in the past, writes Gulbaz Aafaqi in the Daily Times.

Yet another great miss is PCB Hunt for Heroes Programme. This programme benefited young boys of under-16 age during the last couple of years throughout Pakistan. The selected boys were trained at district level by PCB qualified coaches for a week and the best of them would play inter-region one-day tournament. Our current under-19 three players, Babar Azam, Usman Qadir and Faraz Ali are product of this programme and they are good prospects. This programme has been scrapped although the agreement was valid for the current year.

	Kyle Mills takes over top spot from Nuwan Kulasekara © AFP

To the surprise of many, New Zealand fast bowler Kyle Mills was rated the best bowler in ODIs by the latest ICC rankings. In the Herald on Sunday, Mark Richardson analyses the ingredients in Mills' bowling that make it so effective.

It is Mills' normal length that gives him this success. He is tall and can bowl into the wicket on a shortish but not a pull-able length. That length is quite effective in the subcontinent.

When Mills has been hit, it has been when he has got a little full or batsmen have attacked him on the up. This is dangerous for them as he does get some movement in the air and can get it off the wicket too.

Combine that with his accuracy and he gets good players out, just as he got Ricky Ponting out in the Champions Trophy final.

Three of the players left out of England's squad for the tour of South Africa - Ravi Bopara, Owais Shah and Monty Panesar - have an Asian background. Is that a coincidence, asks Scyld Berry in the Sunday Telegraph.

... there may well be a lack of cultural awareness. If Asians are brought up to be deferential towards authority, a player like Panesar will be far more reluctant to question his captain's decisions about field-placing.

Another factor is the soft culture that county cricket is only gradually rectifying. Panesar and Shah were not pushed hard enough to improve their fielding at an early, formative age – and the same could be said for Bopara, who could have been an outstanding fielder by now, the successor to Paul Collingwood.

Paul Hayward talks to England captain Andrew Strauss about the victorious Ashes campaign, the disastrous ODIs that followed and the tough tour of South Africa coming up. Head to the Observer for more.

Consider this, from the England captain: "I remember seeing a comment from Ricky Ponting where he said: 'I'd much rather be in my shoes than Strauss's at this stage,' and I could understand why he said that, but I was also thinking in the back of my mind: 'Well, they're in a slightly dangerous place at the moment, Australia. If we can start the game well we might surprise them.' That was the crucial part: to start the game well and exorcise those demons.

"I've always felt it's a bit dangerous when everyone's telling you you're going to win the series and you're in control of events – the stuff they were telling Ponting. Subconsciously at least, there is that temptation for players to take their foot off the gas a bit or think it's already won. So I didn't mind that we were in a bit of a dogfight and had to prove ourselves because we've always played quite well in those circumstances.

As Sachin Tendulkar completes his 20th year as an international cricketer, India Today's Sharda Ugra sat down with him and discussed his international career, his opinions on the modern game and his hunger and competitiveness for cricket.

Q. How did you succeed against bowling duels where your batting was completely tested? Which would you say were the best of the duels that you handled?
A. I thought in England in 2007 I played that played spell of Ryan Sidebottom. I was not playing any shot. I just played almost close to six-seven maiden overs, I just kept blocking and leaving and kept getting beaten also. He was bowling well and I knew that that was the most important phase of that Test match. I thought that if we see through the spell then the doors are going to open for us and when we can play some shots.

Exactly that is what happened and that set us in a dominating position and after that we had the upperhand and we ended up winning that Test match, the second of the series. That particular patch I can say where I was mentally strong. I got beaten on various occasion. The guy was bowling well, I was smiling at him and I was saying, 'Fine, you still have to get me out.' It was a good challenge. And today I look back and feel yes, I did that job.

Q. It's a surprising incident you've mentioned because people normally think of your attacking batsmanship. Any incident of that kind?
A. You do remember different kind of incidents. Well, probably in Nairobi when we were playing 2000 Champions Trophy. We had won the toss and were batted in overcast conditions against Australia. The wicket was also damp and the way Glen McGrath bowled the first over, I told Sourav, 'Just give me freedom for a couple of overs because I want to do something.' I felt otherwise he's going to come and bowl six-seven overs, four maidens, seven runs and take two-three wickets and, we'll go down slowly but surely. I said to Sourav, 'I'll do something, you just give me freedom' and he said, 'Okay, just go ahead.' I started stepping out and hit McGrath a couple of sixes. He bounced and I hit him, exchanged a few words, disturbed him. I did something different and sort of it worked. I remember that particular match - we won it.

Rajan Bala, the veteran cricket writer, died in Bangalore after suffering a cardiac arrest. Bala, 63, covered cricket for more than four decades, working in several of India's leading newspapers.

Anil Nair offers his tribute in Bangalore Mirror

Mourning for Rajan is like mourning for red tiles, or trunk calls, or The Illustrated Weekly in its heyday. He was almost an institution, and represented a belief in objectivity that our culture seems to have abandoned long ago ... On the whole, Rajan’s was a life well-lived. Even in the last few months, when he was not fully well, he would discard do-gooder advice to nurture a Bacardi or a vermouth cassis before lunch. It was as much for old time’s sake as for daring fate. As James McMurtry sang, “I don’t want another drink. I only want that last one again.” Rajan would have agreed.

In Mid-day, Clayton Murzello remembers the days well spent with Bala.

Often, he would break into song and Harry Belafonte's Jamaica Farewell was a favourite. He has gone to his very own Island in the Sun ... His wisecracks could distract the most focussed of journalists. His laugh was a hiss you couldn't help taking notice of. He indulged in leg-pulling too. In 1994 at Nagpur, he fooled a perennially nervous writer by organising for a fake fax to be sent to him signed by his editor, who insisted on a Brian Lara interview by the end of the day. Not that Rajan didn't have jokes played on him. On the 1982-83 tour of Pakistan, Sandeep Patil "stole" his typewriter and kept it in his care for a few days.

In the Times of India, Satish Viswanathan remembers how cricketers used to turn to Bala for advice on the game. He recounts a story that involves Sachin Tendulkar.

he is not a man who would have liked his death to be mourned. Life was one big celebration for him, more so the life around cricket. He wasn't just a cricket journalist, not a mere cricket writer either. Rather he was one many a cricketer turned to for advice on technique ... Such was his popularity that in the 80s, the paper he was working for then — he’s worked for many a publication, regional and national and been the sports editor in most — used to put up hoardings proclaiming that Rajan Bala was on tour and could be read only in their paper.

Also, read Suresh Menon's tribute in Cricinfo.

On my first day at work, fresh out of university, I asked hesitantly, "Is it all right to smoke in here?" and was welcomed with the memorable words: "So long as you don't f**k on my table, you can do what you want." Rajan was friend, guide, philosopher and mentor to a bunch of talented youngsters who went on to make a name for themselves.

How to buy an IPL cricketer? In a paper to be soon published in the Journal of Sports Economics, Ajit Karnik, a professor of economics at the Middlesex University campus in Dubai, placed the IPL player auction of 2008 under the scrutiny of an econometric instrument known as hedonic regression. The result was an equation to help determine a cricketer’s value; the more remarkable by-product, however, was its accurate picks of IPL 2008’s four semi-finalists and its eventual winner. Karnik explains the theory to Samanth Subramanian in Mint.

Here’s where it helped to be a cricket nut as well as an economist. The basic price equation would have to include runs and wickets, and Karnik knew enough about the non-stop nature of Twenty20 to fold age into that mix as well. For data, he used the players’ previous one-day international records, since many of the cricketers in the auction hadn’t played even a single Twenty20 game.

Freelance is the new buzzword in cricket and in the Age, Greg Baum writes that it is a mercenary approach that will inevitably turn fans away from the game.

Player agents say many more cricketers will take the money and run, or hobble (Flintoff), stumble (Symonds) or swagger (Bravo). They say authorities have only themselves to blame for scheduling too much meaningless cricket between countries. They want the program streamlined so that their clients play more - and more meaningless - cricket for their franchises. You can draw your own conclusions, adding 10 per cent plus expenses, about why agents would think this way.

...

Sportsmen hate to be called mercenary, but so be it. Players and authorities will bristle at that, but I make no apology, and nor will the increasing number of fans who have become disillusioned with the direction of the game. After retiring, Adam Gilchrist admitted that it was difficult for sportspeople to see the professionals' cloistered world as it looks from the outside. Well, here's a glimpse. Go, freelance away, but don't be surprised if in a while, no one cares, and if in another while, because no one cares, there is no one to watch.

The chairman of the National Assembly’s standing committee on sports feels that Pakistan deliberately lost to Australia in the Champions Trophy, and the sports minister of Sindh has suggested there was a deal between Indian bookies and the umpires' who stood in Pakistan's semi-final. An editorial in the Dawn rebukes them for levelling charges of match-fixing in the Champions Trophy without any evidence.

Maybe the parliamentarian ignored the last 10 overs of the Australia match, which we were poised to lose by a significant margin. Pakistan bowled an immaculate line and length and, fielding with vigour, came excruciatingly close to an improbable victory. That game produced one of the most thrilling finishes in recent ODI history and gave the beleaguered limited-overs format a much-needed shot in the arm. As for the Sindh sports minister, he needs to be reminded that a team that plays badly is unlikely to win the match.

Also in the paper, SM Ibrahim Farooqi writes that blind optimism undid Pakistan in the Champions Trophy.

Former Wisden editor John Woodcock defends the notion of the Spirit of Cricket, which has come in for much derision in recent times. He insists that Paul Collingwood shouldn't have been given out when he caught short by Brendon McCullum in the Champions Trophy league game as the batsman had never intended to take a run (Collingwood was subsequently recalled by New Zealand captain Daniel Vettori). Read on in the Times.

I had a small part in framing the preamble to the present Laws of Cricket, described by Atherton as a lot of well-meaning guff. There was more of it in its original form, but it was still intended to send the same message. Mike may well be right, and perhaps it does need rewriting. On reading it again I think he is right and that he might like to have a shot at it himself.

But I am sure it is as well to have something of the sort, even if we all know really what is meant by the spirit of the game. Even now, is chivalry not the word that says it all?

Steve Harmison's international career may seem to have ended after his omission from the squad to tour South Africa, but Mike Selvey writes in the Guardian that England will miss his firepower.

Too often the promise outweighed the performance. Yet when he got it right, when there was bounce and he found that surge to the crease, got his wrist behind the ball and bowled the natural length that comes with release at the moment of maximum acceleration of his arms, there has been no bowler of the modern era that batsmen have least liked facing.

Heroes one day, villains the next. That's the plight of a Pakistan cricketer. Their showing in the ICC Champions Trophy ought to have pleased the cricket-starved nation, but the latest allegations of match-fixing have clouded their efforts. The way certain sections of the Indian media reacted to that story was just as sorry as the episode itself, writes Dileep Premachandran in the Guardian.

On Tuesday morning, just a few hours after Australia had clinched the trophy, Osman Samiuddin, Cricinfo's Pakistan editor, was repeatedly woken up by calls from various reporters asking for a "reaction to the sacking of Younis Khan and Intikhab Alam [the coach]". We had shared an apartment during the fortnight, and in my early-morning stupor, I could hear Osman asking what their sources were. Frantic calls were made to journalists in Pakistan, and others in South Africa. No one had a clue. By then, the Times of India and others that should know better had already run the "sack" story. No credible source, no confirmation. But why let that come in the way of a good yarn?

The traditionalists will see the next 16 days as an opportunity to switch off from the game and ignore the hooplah but for Twenty20 enthusiasts the potential for the Champions League is obvious, writes Tristan Holme in cricket365.

As far as the cricket itself goes, it's anyone's game. It's not a meeting of 'only the champions' as Rahul Dravid and friends suggest in the television ads - just like the Uefa Champions League is not a genuine Champions League - but all 12 teams have real pedigree. For many players uncapped at international level this is an excellent opportunity to showcase their skills and it should be thoroughly enjoyable to see which of them can handle the added pressure of playing in front of massive partisan crowds.

Mike Selvey argues in the Guardian that Steve Harmison must be included in England's touring party to South Africa because of the extra bounce on offer in Johannesburg and Centurion. He also wants Joe Denly to be part of the squad, and Ian Bell as well.

With Monty Panesar consigned, for now, to the county backwaters after the celebrity he enjoyed, the second spinner's role will probably go to Adil Rashid. But there should be caution: he is a promising bowler – allrounder indeed – but by no means ready to fulfil a frontline role. If Graeme Swann was injured, would they turn to him as the only spinner? Could he play a holding role? No one should write off Panesar just yet.

The Champions League Twenty20 will be the first time club cricket will rival international cricket. And even though the winners' kitty of $2.5 million may be small, compared to football, it may well be a fortune for the champion club. Andy Bull works out the financial implications, with regard to the tournament, in The Spin blog on the Guardian website.

If Sussex can play well over the next three weeks, this may turn out to be the most profitable year in their history, despite the fact that they have just been relegated from the first division of the county championship for the first time. All they need to do is win five games of Twenty20 - fewer than 200 overs of cricket. With that kind of financial incentive qualifying for the Champions League is going to become the top priority for every eligible team.

Given their early exit in the ICC Champions Trophy, Rohit Mahajan writing in Outlook, believes India’s celebrated, all-star team of young cricketers has slipped and the sparkle has certainly dulled.

Men like Sreesanth or Munaf Patel have limped away to the sidelines, out of the reckoning; R.P. Singh and Praveen Kumar have lost the edge. Then there are the batsmen—Rohit Sharma, Suresh Raina, Robin Uthappa, Manoj Tewary, to name just a quartet of the best prospects. This was the bunch expected to form the nucleus of the Indian squad, meant to wage war for the 2011 World Cup.

Suresh Menon in his column in Dreamcricket.com pinpoints the two weak aspects of the performance in South Africa - disastrous fielding and over-friendly bowling.

It might be unfair to write off the Indian team after one tournament. Skipper Dhoni himself appeared a bit confused – after all, India lost one match, another was washed out, and they won one, so mathematically it wasn’t so bad. But top teams don’t look for excuses, they go out and rectify their problems.

On the same website, Partab Ramchand hopes MS Dhoni's luck does not turn on him with a vengeance like it turned on Ajit Wadekar during the disastrous tour of England in 1974.

An inspiration for England just a year ago, left-arm spinner Monty Panesar has resorted to a season in South Africa with the Highveld Lions to resurrect his career, but will he ever turn the corner? David Lloyd has the answers in Independent.

The Monty story was never blemish-free, of course. Butter-fingered fielding may have endeared him to fans around the world but being a liability in the field, and a rabbit with the bat, put even more pressure on Panesar's left-arm bowling. And when he struggled in India last December it was time to halt production of those Monty Masks, so popular on English grounds over the previous two or three summers.

There was always too much unexplained about the way Albert Trott, the forgotten Australian slow left-arm bowler lived and loved. David Foot digs up the past and a few scandals in his blog on the Guardian website.

Why did he find himself left out of the Australian party to this country by the captain, his brother no less, in 1896? What caused him to pack his well‑worn suitcase and sail permanently for England? He deserved greater acclaim and recognition in the superficial obituaries than those suppressed guffaws and whispered compliments, however good natured, that carried a meaningful wink. "Poor old Alberto. Couldn't keep that up for ever, could he. It were the women, you know."

	The cricketing ethos of Australia and New Zealand are a study in contrast © Getty Images

While Australian captain Ricky Ponting had a short stay at the crease, Daniel Vettori was unavailable for New Zealand in the final of the Champions Trophy. However, Ayaz Memon in his column in Daily News & Analysis takes nothing away from the fact that both have instrumental in ensuring their respective teams' success in the tournament.

It could be argued that since neither Ricky Ponting nor Daniel Vettori had a tangible role to play in the final, the importance of a captain has been exaggerated. But that is mistaking a one-off performance for leadership, which is what captaincy in cricket is all about.

Simon Briggs presents his four best - and worst - moments from the recently concluded Champions Trophy in the Daily Telegraph.

Peter Hanlon in the Age wonders who could possibly have thought those white jackets for the Champions Trophy winners were a good idea.

Cricket, bless it, has largely stayed a fashion-free zone, as anyone aware of the evolution of one-day uniforms since the West Indies first donned pink pyjamas would attest. This blissfully daggy state of affairs took a disturbing turn yesterday morning and someone must be held accountable.

On Richie Benaud, a white jacket (or any off-white, cream or beige derivative) is perfectly acceptable. Mandatory, even. Likewise umpire Billy Bowden. Or Lionel Richie. On a team of cricketers already clad in louche gold shirts and caps with a sprinkling of little green stars, it is simply unacceptable, even if it matches their shoes. What next? Nathan Hauritz halts the presentation of the Champions Trophy to have shoulder pads fitted?

Apart from their ability to effortlessly host a global sporting event, the Champions Trophy also highlighted South Africa's inability to rise to the occasion at home. A disappointed Rob Houwing sums up the tournament in Sport24.com.

Though the ICC Champions Trophy was followed with more than average interest by fans, former Indian great Sunil Gavaskar feels the tournament will need to change its format, if it is to sustain in the long run. He lists the alternatives in his column for the Hindustan Times.

In the New Zealand Herald, David Leggat writes that New Zealand's effort at the Champions Trophy bodes well for the future, but not every aspect of team composition is settled.

Out of the tournament New Zealand saw Guptill reinforce his value in the top three; Elliott show he should stay in the middle order for the cool head he brings to the crease; Franklin suggest he is not a frontline first or second-change ODI bowler; and Taylor show he is a top class slip catcher. The key performers? Vettori, Elliott, Guptill, Mills and Bond. Those they needed more from? Taylor, McCullum, Broom, Franklin and Butler.

The biggest question remains what to do with McCullum. It boils down to this: do Vettori and coach Andy Moles - remember, that's now half the national selection panel - want two dashers at the top in a high risk, high reward approach, or move one of McCullum or Ryder down the order in favour of a more measured policy.

Tennis legend Chris Evert is single again, and taking a note of how the sporting performance of each man in her life has improved significantly since partnering with her, Patrick Kidd urges England board chairman Giles Clarke hook up with her in order to work wonders with English cricket. He writes in the Times:

Most noticeably, the Evert Effect worked on Jimmy Connors. Within months of them getting engaged in 1973, Connors went from being a quarter-finals-at-best competitor to winning three grand slams in a row. They broke up before getting married, but the first Mr Evert was John Lloyd, a Brit on the downslope of his career before he married Chrissie in 1979. Three months later, he reached the final of a tournament for the first time in two years and he went on to win three grand-slam doubles titles as well as getting to two singles grand-slam quarter-finals in his thirties. Then came Andy Mill, the second Mr Evert after she and Lloyd divorced in 1987. Mill had retired from Olympic skiing by the time he married Evert in 1988, but he took up fishing and went on to be regarded as one of the best fly fishermen in the world.

Cricket in Australia faces an unprecedented challenge to make itself heard this season, writes Peter Hanlon in the Age.

A scan of the sporting landscape in the months ahead does little to quell the suspicion there will be louder noises heard than willow striking leather ...

Interest in football's round-ball code is building, both towards next year's World Cup in South Africa and a domestic competition whose roots are deepening. And even the indigenous footy code won't back off its dominance of the back - and front - pages before taking a parting slap at the flannelled game; the AFL national draft will take place on November 26, day one of the first Test against West Indies. No prizes for guessing which will dominate the November 27 headlines.

Which brings us to cricket's other problem: after a hat-trick of home summers that offered up England, India and South Africa - the most marketable opponents in the modern game - the 2009-10 fixture groans with the prospect of three Tests each against the West Indies and Pakistan.

Brad Hodge hasn't had the best of relationships with the national selectors. But he insists he holds no grudge against them these days. In India with the Victorian side for the Champions League, Hodge talks to Arghya Ganguly of the Times of India on his sarcastic comment on lawn bowls, his sports management interests and more.

I obviously wish that I play for my country again but there will be no love lost if I didn't. You think I can get in? That's nice. Pick the squad, put me in and give me a call again. And we shall sit and chat for a long time. But you are not going to pick the side? Are you?

In a piece in the Dawn written before Pakistan were ousted from the ICC Champions Trophy, Saad Shafqat says they have reaffirmed their resilient fibre, notching a group-match victory against India that will be remembered through the ages. It was the kind of match that you remember not for actions but for reactions and now that times are tough, a quietly confident and competent leader like Younis Khan has risen from the debris.

After the Lahore terror attacks of March 2009, many observers – both within Pakistan and overseas – had virtually written Pakistan cricket’s obituary. We had misunderstood the vigour and determination of our cricket ethos. Now Pakistan is the numero uno team in Twenty20 cricket, and has also excelled on the world stage in ODIs. A full schedule of Test cricket – in Australia later this year and all of next summer in England, including two Tests against Australia that the English are eager to host for us – lies immediately ahead.

Following their Champions Trophy exit, Sri Lanka have a year ahead of one-day cricket before the World Cup in 2011. While their middle order looks settled, there are concerns about Nos. 1 to 3. Is Kumar Sangakkara taking on too much as wicketkeeper, captain and No. 3 batsman, asks SR Pathiravithana in Sri Lanka's Sunday Times.

Sangakkara on his own is one of the most organized and erudite cricketers in the entire cricketing world. More than once he also has been rated the best batsman in the accepted norm of Test cricket. Even in the ODI version of the game, his exploits though not the same, has been more good than bad. But, in his last eleven outings his contributions have been 36, 2, 37 not out, 39 and 16 against Pakistan, 18 vs New Zealand, 5 vs India, 33 vs India 54 vs South Africa, 1 vs England and 11 vs New Zealand. As captain this performance with the bat is not at all impressive. At the same time did his on-field tantrums cost Sri Lanka the ICC spirit of the game award this time?

In the Age, Darren Berry, director of coaching with the Rajasthan Royals, looks at the situation facing fast bowler Dirk Nannes. In the upcoming Champions League Twenty20, Nannes will turn out for the Delhi Daredevils and open the bowling against his Victorian team-mates next week. How could this happen? Why is it allowed? All these questions have been posed by Nannes' Victorian team-mates over recent weeks and many of them are seething about it. Victoria's best chance of winning is with Nannes on board as opposed to hurling thunderbolts at them, says Berry.

Not every England supporter takes the view that following their team should involve mindless chanting and making sure that the beer consumption never dips far below an asking rate of six an over, but they at least share the belief that being barmy is a minimum requirement. In the Sunday Times, Martin Johnson says England's Champions Trophy exit was the kind of gung-ho death so redolent of the Light Brigade that the England captain’s nickname can now be officially altered from Lord Brocket to Lord Cardigan.

You could also say that reaching the semi-final was an achievement in itself, although if you believe the cliché about a good team not becoming a bad one overnight, the opposite is also true. In recent times selection, in personnel and batting order, appears to have involved heavy reliance on a pin and a blindfold, while historically, they haven’t played enough of this type of cricket to make consistently clear decisions in different situations.

In the Sunday Telegraph, Scyld Berry looks at England's probable squads for the upcoming South Africa tour and says that Owais Shah's erratic form leaves his spot under threat from Jonathan Trott. If England's selectors hold their meeting on Tuesday at Lord's, Shah might decide to use his position as a Middlesex player to rummage through the rubbish bins afterward.

The Observer's David Hopps writes that the England hierarchy believe that the side must be rigorous and decisive in what they want. Whether England have the ability to play with attacking intent remains questionable, but what is clear is that for it to have maximum chance of success the selectors must embrace the concept by choosing those most suited to it.

Australia's emphatic nine-wicket win over England in the Champions Trophy semi-final completely overshadowed a milestone by Paul Collingwood, who equalled Alec Stewart’s record of 170 one-day appearances for England. He didn't get the chance to rejoice in the occasions and will have to make do with being an inspiration to younger allrounders like Luke Wright and Tim Bresnan, writes John Westerby in the Times.

Like Collingwood, they have both begun their international careers as bits-and-pieces one-day all-rounders, players for whom neither batting nor bowling on their own would win them a place in the side, but whose overall portfolio of skills makes them so useful in a one-day team. In Collingwood’s case, his brilliant fielding has always added considerably to the package. With time and experience, Collingwood became so much more than a bits-and-pieces player, graduating to become a fully fledged Test batsman. After making his one-day debut in June 2001, his first Test cap did not come until 2½ years later – by which time he had played 25 one-day internationals - but he had learned much from his early schooling in international cricket.

In the Age Brendan McArdle writes that despite the win in the semi-final, Australia are still to recover from the Ashes loss to England. And to make matters worse, one of their key failures of the series won the ICC Cricketer of the Year award.

What made his series all the more disappointing is that he is obviously one of the stars of world cricket. It's easy to like big Mitch, and there is a distinct reluctance in cricket circles to criticise him. But the truth is, he went from being Australia's trump card to its biggest liability in the space of two months. Twenty wickets at 32 apiece looks fine on paper, but it fails to tell the tale of the lack of control he gave his captain. By the time he got to the series-decider at the Oval, Johnson was a broken man. His bouncers in the second innings were pitching just metres in front of his own foot, and his inept shot in getting out to Steve Harmison near game's end encapsulated his hangdog mindset.

And once again New Zealand meet ther old friends Pakistan a big tournament semi-final. Take your mind back to Eden Park 1992 and Old Trafford 1999. David Leggat of the New Zealand Herald does a walkthrough of past defeats.

Pakistan were behind the play until a large, and largely unknown, young man put down his cream doughnut, ambled out and belted 60 in 37 balls to rip the game from a shattered home side. The legend of Inzamam-ul-Haq, wonderful batsman, hopeless runner between the wickets and champion eater, was born.

South Africa's exit from the ICC Champions Trophy was not a problem of choking but one of technical preparation, writes Neil Manthorp in the Mail & Guardian.

The bowling was poor, but a large part of South Africa's problem was their predictability. England's pre-game team meeting focused on four things: don't get out to Steyn, wait for the bad ball from Parnell, attack the third seamer (Morkel) and don't allow the spinners to settle into a rhythm. England believed strongly that Morkel's confidence was brittle, and that Botha and (especially) Van der Merwe, werehttp://blogs.cricinfo.com/MT/images/formatting-icons/quote.gif spikey individuals who would respond poorly to early pressure. And they were right. But as much as the competitive spirit of the spinners will see them through, Morkel's role as third seamer -- even when shared with Kallis -- may be doomed. As gloriously as his Kluseneresque hitting entertains the crowds, and even wins matches, as it did in Australia at the beginning of the year, Mike Procter and his fellow selectors will now have to address the value of Morkel's batting against the liability of his bowling.

	"I'm very proud of the fact that I managed to hang in there for so long" © AFP

... when he does eventually retire, will he look back on a career unfulfilled? "I have to be very strong on that," he says. "The answer is that, given the cards I was dealt, I tried my best. I played my first Test at 21 against the West Indies, and I don't know what the selectors were hoping to get from me in a series in which even experienced players struggled, like Allan Lamb. These days, a lot of debutants come in and and do very well, because of that Team England thing. They feel like part of a team rather than a county player playing for England. Ravi Bopara played four Tests and seven one-dayers this summer without scoring a half-century. So it's a different era, but you know what, I'm very proud of the fact that I managed to hang in there for so long, and there was a period in Test cricket when it did go well for me. I topped the averages in Australia [in 1998-99] supposedly against one of the best teams in history. I don't know whether people remember those things, but they're important for me to remember."

In the same paper, Simon Barnes discusses the county umpires' request for longer tea breaks.

I understand that 40 overs each way makes for a long day, especially with a mere 20-minute break. But it means spectators get a lot of action, which is good. In televised matches, there will be a third umpire to make line decisions: if standing for all that time is such a fag, the team of three umps can take turns and turn about. Now, umps tend on the whole to be good eggs and their relationships with players tell us that perpetual warfare between teams and officials is not a necessary state of affairs. But they are way off the pace on the question of tea.

India's campaign for the ICC Champions Trophy was affected by injuries to their key players, a situation that cannot always be controlled. However what can be controlled is the workload. In his column in the Hindustan Times Anil Kumble writes that Ishant Sharma needs to figure out what sort of training best suits his body and find a balance between bowling and other ways of strengthening his body.

Most of the training time is taken up by gym work, which adds strength but you have to include a lot of sprinting as well to ensure that the rhythm is right. The challenge is to get the balance of cricketing skills, strength and cardiovascular training. The skills part is, naturally, most important and it is also necessary to realize that each person is made differently. Which is why it is paramount that one understands the body quickly. Ishant is a young man but he would do well to understand what works best for him and apply that to his bowling and training. He's also a thinking bowler and with the right guidance, he should soon be firing again.

In the Indian Express, Harsha Bhogle writes that Ishant and RP Singh's decline is the most worrying trend for India. Good bowlers bowl well for ten years with the occasional bad period in between, not for two years or a season here and a season there. Could it be too much cricket? Could it too much in the mind? Could it be too little in it?

And in DNA Ayaz Memon writes that among India's one-day problems are the absence of a bowling allrounder, the listless fielding, and the lack of bench strength.

The Champions Trophy was a tournament that the ICC was touting as the saviour for 50-over cricket but it has been pretty dull cricket so far, writes Mike Haysman in supercricket.co.za.

How two pitches that are a mere 40 kilometres apart can be so different in nature escapes me. When batting at the Wanderers, first and foremost on the striker’s mind is survival and that is far from ideal. Cricketers want to play one day cricket on true, consistent tracks so that natural skill levels can be expressed to the maximum. What they have had during this event has stifled flair and in some cases elevated ability. So far, with the semi final stage looming, we have only had one close encounter and that was on the last day of the minor round and that is not a recipe for success.

Mike Atherton writes in the Times that the spirit of cricket is worthless since it can be interpreted in wildly different ways.

In Christchurch in 2006, Muralitharan was run out according to the Laws of the game and was given out. In Johannesburg 2009, Collingwood was run out according to the Laws of the game and was given not out. To end the confusion, isn’t it time the Spirit of Cricket itself, as encapsulated in the preamble to the Laws of the game, was given out?