After only half a day in the field on Friday it was already obvious that England are lining up Steven Finn to be a fixture in the first XI before the Ashes series this winter. It will be an interesting summer as we watch the continued development of this England bowling attack and start to see what the genuine options will be in the winter in conditions that will, as ever, reward the taller, quicker bowlers, writes David Gower in the Sunday Times.

The current management of Broad gives us a clue as to the treatment Finn, as a 21-year-old, can expect over the next few years. Sports science tells us that young bodies are highly susceptible to strain injuries, especially when involved in something as basically unnatural as fast bowling, and it is an almost impossible balance for a captain to strike in trying both to get the required work out of his young fast bowlers and not to break them.

When someone like Finn sets pulses racing over here, it is safe to assume that alarm bells will ring 10,000 miles away. He is new, he is extremely tall, he threatens to bowl at 90mph and he could be a crucial member of England's attack this winter. Cue a bit of consternation Down Under, writes David Lloyd in the Sunday Telegraph.

Variety betting is extremely big business and no sport offers a greater range of options in that particular field than cricket, whether it be the number of runs scored in a session or how many chocolate cakes will be delivered to the BBC commentary box before lunch on the first day of the Lord’s Test match, writes Martin Johnson in the Sunday Times.

More disturbing for the sport, with a county cricketer recently reporting an approach from an Indian businessman worth a moral-compass tempting £5m, is that all the evidence points to large sums of money now being offered to players in the lower echelons of the game, players who are therefore more likely to be enticed. Limited-over games between English county sides are televised live in India, where vast sums of money are involved in betting on cricket. Hard though it is to conjure up the picture, a humdrum Pro40 match in front of a handful of cloth caps in Derby might have millions of dollars resting on the outcome in Delhi.

In the Sunday Telegraph, Steve James urges the authorities to be vigilant and says "itis vital now that these players remain anonymous, as must those who came forward last week. Whistle-blowing can be a dangerous and stressful business, especially where the murky Indian underworld is concerned."

In the Daily Mail, Nasser Hussain stands up for the policy of rotating players, even if it deprives English fans from watching their favourite players at home.

People might point out it's wrong for Collingwood to make a quick buck in the IPL and then sit out a Test series in front of his own fans. But, again, that is the reality of the world we live in. You can't stop the players chasing the money. The only question that matters is: how do you best manage the situation for the good of English cricket?

What England are trying to do now is cover every base. When I captained England in Australia in 2002-03, we lost Darren Gough and Andrew Flintoff to injury, as well as Graham Thorpe, who was having personal problems. But we ended up having to replace them with guys who had hardly any experience of international cricket. The result? We got stuffed.

In the next two years, Ellyse Perry could tick off a list of accomplishments that includes playing in the soccer World Cup, the Olympic Games, an Ashes series and winning the Twenty20 World Cup. But for Perry, a star player in both the national cricket and soccer teams, the prospect is amazingly real, writes Nicole Jeffery in the Australian.

Conventional wisdom says that Perry will eventually have to choose between her two sports, but she will not countenance that idea and, remarkably, neither sport is prepared to give her an ultimatum. In a day when the major sports are getting down and dirty to fight for the best male talent in the land, cricket and soccer have been remarkably co-operative when it comes to the talented Perry.

In the Sydney Morning Herald, Greg Baum looks at the governing bodies of cricket and football and says the ICC and learn a few things from FIFA.

Though it has made concerted efforts in recent years to expand its horizons, essentially cricket remains a game of the old Commonwealth. As such, the ICC's members, though undoubtedly diverse, are linked by history, by culture, by language. It is a game for which people care deeply, but other than on the Indian sub-continent does not stir up fervour as soccer does. You would think that, as such, it is a relatively easy sport to run.

Yet, somehow, the ICC regularly seems to be in turmoil. Perhaps because it is smaller than soccer, cricketing power - read: money - easily becomes concentrated in one place, and the rest of the world finds itself paying obeisance there. At present, it is India. Soccer has several power bases. Far from tearing the game apart, they appear to hold it in tension.

In the Mail Online, Nasser Hussain implores English cricket watchers to ignore the idiosyncracies and admit that Jonathan Trott is a fine batsman.

This is a man who took a hundred off the Aussies at The Brit Oval in as highly pressurised a game as he will ever play and then did much to save the first Test against South Africa at Centurion with a rearguard effort when the country of his birth were pushing for victory.

Simon Hughes, writing in the Telegraph, is disappointed by the way Bangladesh quickly resorted to a defeatist mindset on day one at Lord's, after putting England in to bat.

It can't be easy being Test match whipping boys, fronting up expecting another hiding. But they could help themselves by adopting a more positive approach. They seem fatalist in their bowling changes and field settings, almost as if they are apologising for being there. They are like awestruck footballers reluctant to put in serious challenges on more celebrated opponents for fear it would be insulting. They are over-respectful of the batsmen they come up against.

In the Guardian, Vic Marks is impressed by Eoin Morgan's ability to curb his natural instincts and adapt to the red cherry.

Morgan cut a curious figure in white as he emerged from the pavilion, so accustomed are we to seeing him in the vibrant blue and red of the one-day strip. Somehow he looked smaller and frailer. He entered sedately, taking his time, as if reminding himself that this was a different game.

Still, he did not look too nonplussed by the sight of a red ball heading in his direction or the fact that the opposition captain had stationed two or three fielders in the slip cordon. How very strange. The last time Morgan had faced a red ball was in rather more mundane circumstances. It was at Swansea on 22 August; he was lbw to Robert Croft in a match Middlesex lost.

Although Peter Roebuck originally wanted Sir John Anderson to be nominated as the next ICC deputy president, he writes in the Age that not for a second should Australia and New Zealand succumb to "the reprehensible campaign" to block John Howard's nomination.

Under the customs of the ICC the other directors were duty bound to accept him. Instead they have worked themselves into a fluster of fake indignation. In reality they are scared of Howard. After all, he might call them to account. There are plenty of reasons to object to the former prime minister, none to block his path.

Make no mistake, the case against Howard is as dishonest as it is inconsistent. A board that welcomed Percy Sonn, who declared the 2003 Zimbabwe election free and fair though he knew it was a lie, thereby condemning Zimbabweans to years of torment; a board that accepted Ray Mali, whose co-operation with the apartheid government was exposed by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission; a board that listens to Peter Chingoka and Ozias Bute, apologists for evil in Zimbabwe, is poorly placed to turn its back on Jack the Ripper, let alone a former PM and cricket fanatic.

In the Wall Street Journal Richard Lord looks at the age-old question of whether cricket can take off in America. He says an opportunity was missed for the sport to showcase itself during the recent Twenty20 series in Florida, where the poor track resulted in tiny totals.

Unfortunately, the series itself, which was drawn 1-1, was far from ideal. Despite the groundsman's best efforts, the all-important pitch was low and slow, making it hard for batsmen to time their shots and resulting in exceptionally low scores and the more or less total absence of the sort of baseball-style slugging that was supposed to sell Twenty20 to the wider American public.

Then there were the two teams themselves. Neither is the most eye-catching in international cricket and, worse, neither country has a sizable diaspora in the U.S., let alone in Florida. An India-Pakistan match-up fought in New York or Los Angeles, or a West Indies contest held in Florida, would have drawn bigger crowds.

In the Times Online, Michael Atherton spares a thought for the paying public, who will not get to witness England's best players when their team takes on Bangladesh at Lord's.

If you were hoping to cast your eyes over the best England XI for the opening match of the summer, you will be disappointed. As “managing his workload” goes, Stuart Broad’s withdrawal is not quite in the Chris Tremlett class (he was withdrawn from Surrey’s opening match of the season — opening match! — because he was “managing his workload”), nevertheless it is a disappointment. It is, after all, the first Test of the summer. The daughter of the Deputy Editor of this newspaper will regret that his cherubic features will be absent from our screens over the next five days.

If you were hoping to show your gratitude to Paul Collingwood, for his leadership of England’s Twenty20 team in the Caribbean recently, you will be disappointed, too. Collingwood could have played, but he has been withdrawn to treat a niggling shoulder injury — one that has been troubling him since and, note, during England’s tour to Bangladesh the previous time they played Test cricket.

Duncan Fletcher writes in the Guardian that Eoin Morgan has displayed the right temperament to suggest he has the nous to succeed in whites. However, he insists that Morgan must prove also prove that he has the technique - more specifically, that he can handle the bouncer.

I have never believed that good batsmen should be pigeonholed as specialists in one form of the game unable to make it in another. The best players can succeed in any format if they are given a chance to settle. Just look at how Jacques Kallis and Rahul Dravid have taken to Twenty20, which was supposed to be a young man's game. This is not to say that Morgan will necessarily succeed. The one clear early hurdle he must clear is showing he can play the short ball. That is always a key indication of whether a good one-day batsman can also perform in Test cricket. A player who struggles against bouncers will never do well in Tests.

Michael Bevan was a classic case. In Test cricket a batsman needs to be able to play the short ball effectively. That does not mean he has to attack it but he does need to survive it, typically by ducking underneath. Bevan used to get locked into position, and that always left him vulnerable. If Morgan has any failings against short-pitch bowling they will soon be exposed, maybe not now, but later in the summer.

Jonty Rhodes, in his blog for standardbankcricket.com, is impressed by the early signs from David Miller, and full of praise for the way Hashim Amla has evolved in the South Africa set-up. He is however sceptical of Roelof van der Merwe's credentials as the second spinner.

Young David Miller certainly looks the part of an international cricketer just two games into his career and South Africa still have one of the most potent bowling attacks in the world. Kallis and De Villiers would be the envy of most major nations in the middle order and Graeme Smith remains a formidable leader despite the nagging and often unmerited criticism from his detractors.

But the most remarkable success story in recent months, as far as I’m concerned, is Hashim Amla. Despite his undoubted talent, most fans still had their hearts in their mouths when he came to the crease for fear that his unusual technique would lead to an early demise.

Now, he brings to the crease a sense of certainty and reliability that makes all of us feel confident of a good start. I can’t easily recall an opening partnership before Smith and Amla that inspired as much confidence as those to when they walk out together.

David Lloyd previews the first Test between England and Bangladesh in his skysports.com blog. He reposes a lot of faith in Steven Finn, who is a shoo-in for his Ashes starting eleven.

Steven Finn should be exciting to watch and I'd have him in my team for the first Test match in Brisbane. He's a perfect player for that environment and a lot of people are saying he's reminiscent of Glenn McGrath. It would be ideal for England if he could get anywhere near as good as that.

He has worked under Angus Fraser at Middlesex, who has obviously drilled the disciplines of bowling into him. Fraser is a terrific man and worked incredibly hard on his fast bowling.

Now when you hear Finn speak you hear plenty of "Fraser-isms" such as hard work, discipline and not giving anything away. The rewarding thing is you get rewards for hard work.

Lawrence Booth watches a talk by Hawk-Eye founder, Paul Hawkins, and a debate between Geoffrey Boycott and umpire Billy Bowden over the use of technology in cricket, after which he finds it 'teeth-grindingly stupid' that the ICC and Sky Sports can't agree on how to split the cost of the UDRS system, due to which it can't be used in the England-Bangladesh series. Read his report in the Wisden Cricketer:

I’ve argued before in this blog about the benefits of the UDRS system and the misunderstandings that allow its critics to use the cliché about it not being cricket. But one sequence during Hawkins’ lecture was especially persuasive in its attempts to dismantle cherished truths.

Hawkins showed footage of India legspinner Amit Mishra drifting one towards leg before striking South Africa’s Jacques Kallis on the pads. He then asked the audience to adjudicate, with the ball frozen at the point of impact. About 15-20% of the room said “out”. Hawkins went on to show the ball would have hit leg-stump easily, despite wicket-keeper Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s misleading presence outside leg-stump: irrelevant, said Hawkins, who has studied enough of these incidents to speak with authority on the matter.

He then replayed the same Mishra delivery, this time replacing Kallis with an imaginary left-hander, the result being that the ball pitched on off-stump before straightening. A small gasp: stone-dead!

Suresh Menon writes in dreamcricket.com that the fame, pressures and expectations of playing at the highest level take some getting used to, and it is up to senior players to mentor youngsters as they find their feet in the game.

Traditionally in cricket, the senior players in a team act as mentors for the newcomers. When a 16-year-old Sachin Tendulkar made his debut in Pakistan two decades ago, Sanjay Manjrekar, older by seven years, and seen those days as a potential India captain, mentored his Mumbai colleague. In his autobiography M.C.C., Colin Cowdrey has written about how on his first tour, the England skipper Len Hutton sought out Cowdrey Sr. and assured him, “I’ll look after him.”

When Mohammad Azharuddin made his debut, Sunil Gavaskar quickly realizing the pressure the youngster might be under after making three centuries in a row, advised him on matters ranging from carriage to finance.

It is never fun seeing a really good player suffering. But I believe the time has come for JP Duminy to be put out of his misery and allowed to retreat to some intensive, out-of-competition technical assistance to cobble his game back together, writes Rob Houwing on Sport24.

Admittedly in the limited-overs arena, in particular, a string of low scores can be deceptive: Duminy bats in the middle order and has been commendably unselfish in sacrificing his wicket when there’s a late-innings slog on. That has been apparent a couple of times on the current, extended South African sojourn in the Caribbean, and especially in the Proteas’ dismal ICC World Twenty20 campaign, where he was one of several players who suffered from unacceptably torpid tempos at the top of the order and the haywire that can cause for the soldiers stationed lower down it. But we also can’t use that indefinitely as a mitigating shield to protect Duminy.

With Monty Panesar struggling for form and wickets, Bill Day introduces us to Moeen Ali in the Daily Mail, saying Ali could take Panesar’s place as Britain’s multi-cultural cricketing icon.

The product of a cricket-mad Muslim family, the 22-year-old could become a new iconic figure for multi-cultural Britain, attracting the same cult following as Monty Panesar, as England go from the 'Sikh of Tweak' to the new 'Bearded Wonder'.

Moeen was taught the game by his father Munir who, frustrated by the lack of opportunity for Asian and other inner-city kids to break into top-level cricket, teamed up with his brother Shabir to build a net in his back garden, and created the Streets2Arena, a coaching academy in the Midlands that still flourishes.

Their success is such that the family have already produced one England Test player, Shabir's son Kabir Ali, who is now at Hampshire, while Moeen's elder brother, Kadeer, plays for Gloucestershire and his younger brother, Omar, has an MCC Young Cricketers' contract

The BCCI has succeeded in making its millions but has ignored the welfare of its players. With just eight months to go for the World Cup, Indian cricket seems to be in disarray. And it's a result of the negative effects of the IPL, and its parties, which is affecting the fitness of its key players. By ignoring the human aspect of the game, the BCCI isn't helping the cause of Indian cricket, writes Rohit Mahajan in Outlook.

From his own experience, Bishan Singh Bedi says it’s easy to put on weight during a tour—which is what the IPL is, albeit an internal one. “There are so many opportunities—dinner invitations, parties. While playing also, you’re always eating. If you aren’t careful, you’ll become fat,” says Bedi. Dr Chandran agrees, saying that contrary to perception, the danger is greater in T20 cricket. “There are only 20 overs to play; the batsmen run less because there are more fours and sixes; for the same reason, the fielders also don’t burn so much energy.”

Bouncers, selection blunders, parties etc - all have been blamed for the current state of the Indian team. A rigorous shake-up is needed, writes Sharda Ugra in India Today.

The team's results oscillate between extremes and the media swings between worshipful and deprecating. What should really worry Dhoni is the nature of his decision-making. Insiders believe he must also find out whether he still retains a hold on the team. What used to be the man's strengths-calmness, a relaxed leadership which licenced every man to be himself-have now turned into his weaknesses after three years in the job. During crises, the whip-crackers aren't meant to relax. Optional practice works but not all the time, not in all situations.

With Jonathan Trott having been dismantled mentally in South Africa during the winter and Ravi Bopara having suffered similarly against the Australians last summer, England are seeking a middle-order batsman of pedigree to sit alongside Kevin Pietersen, Paul Collingwood and Ian Bell, writes Mike Selvey in the Guardian.

The choice of Morgan is a tricky one. Here is a player whose experience over almost 50 first-class games for Middlesex, in which he has scored just six hundreds, at what these days is a modest average of around 36, hardly offers obvious credentials for Test cricket. Little of his cricket upbringing has been directed at anything other than one-day cricket, in which he has become one of the world's rising stars ... Flower can be certain of one thing – Morgan's ability to rise to the occasion.

Test match and Twenty20 cricket are as different as chalk and cheddar, but in Eoin Morgan the selectors believe they have seen depths of talent and levels of composure that will enable him to transfer easily success from one form of the game to another, says Mike Atherton in the Times.

"In a lifetime of cricket he [David Lloyd] has been nothing but himself. What a self it has been, too: warm, engaging, daft, outspoken, emotional. His career, famously, has embraced being player, umpire, coach and commentator-pundit, all done at the highest level. If he won only nine Test caps as a player, he would have won 109 as a commentator," Stephen Brenkley on David Lloyd in the Independent on Sunday.

Bumble likes pubs, probably as much as he likes cricket, and he still adores that after all these years. He has two locals, one round the corner from home in Cheshire, one a train ride away in the heart of Manchester. He likes to arrive at around 5.30pm, have a chat and a pint and then push off home. Early doors, he calls it. "I am a massive protector of the British pub," he said. "Too many of them are going to the wall, but it's a place of conversation and a good sup. I don't do music and bandits, just conversation, a good sup, see you tomorrow."

In the Guardian, Mike Selvey writes that Paul Collingwood and Andy Flower will test their rotation policy in the home summer against Bangladesh, and the player likely to get a break is Stuart Broad.

As a young fast bowler of slender build, Broad needs more careful management than some. But what of Collingwood? The argument will go that if he requires rest now, then some of that has to be down to his participation in the physical flog that was the Indian Premier League. He chose to go, and was allowed to do so by his employers. Would it be right then, not least to the public who would feel entitled to watch the best England side available, to omit him from the Bangladesh matches on this basis?

Keeping with England's most recent T20 success, Malcolm Knox writes in Back Page Lead that the ugly truth about world cricket is that England have better players than Australia.

New dad Kevin Pietersen has been busy changing nappies ever since he got back from the Caribbean. He tells Jim White of the Telegraph of his sleep management during the World T20, the camaraderie in the England dressing room and much more.

"Thank goodness for sleeping pills," he says. "I took a couple, was spark out for the whole flight, arrived in Barbados, had a quick spin on a jet ski with Colly [Paul Collingwood], something to eat, went to the team meeting, had another sleeping pill, slept for 11 hours and was totally refreshed and ready to play the next day. It's probably the last decent night's sleep I'll have in a while."

Writing in the Hindu, Peter Roebuck says India's youngsters need a mentor to keep them on track, someone to play the role Alex Ferguson performed in grooming Manchester United's young talents.

It's a heady world and without wise mentoring and a strong club culture it's likely to lead to headstrong ways. India needs a Ferguson. Might not Anil Kumble fit the bill? India's rising players might also reflect on the words of a 15-year-old boy attending a soccer academy in Ivory Coast.Talking to the BBC, Charles Silue spoke about his love of the game and his hopes of playing at the highest level.

And then he added something telling. “Many young African players think about money,” he observed, “But here we're taught to think differently, to be respectful and concentrate on our objective. Football is my passion. The money will follow.”

In the Indian Express, Shekhar Gupta says the root cause of the current issues in Indian cricket is the BCCI, which is hurting the next generation of players for the sake of its selfish gain.

It is Tendulkar, Ganguly, Dravid, Laxman and Kumble who kept Indian cricket together, and nurtured the new talent around them, with firmness, and generosity. They could not have gone on for ever, definitely not in the shorter forms of the game. The expectation that the next crop of seniors, Dhoni, Sehwag, Harbhajan, Zaheer and Yuvraj will fill that gap has been belied; and the cricket administration has not only failed to bridge the gap, it has only further indulged the weaknesses of many for short-term, selfish gain.

Gaurav Kalra, writing for the IBN Live website, proposes a radical alternative to the 94-game rigmarole that IPL 2011 is currently proposed to be. With franchises unlikely to keep the national cause in mind and guard against burn-out, he suggests that the way forward is in regionally segregating the teams into two leagues.

Divide the league into 2 groups of 2 regions each. North and South. North features Delhi, Punjab, Jaipur, Kolkata and Mumbai. South features Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore, Kochi and Pune. Teams play the others in their group home and away. The top two make it to the semis from each group.

While the number of games are reduced to 48 or so, it provides the opportunity to schedule more games to be fit into prime-time TV schedules. It reduces the number of games each player has to play to 11 each. And it considerably reduces travel between venues. Otherwise imagine Kings XI Punjab playing Kochi in Chandigarh. A day to travel to the venue and another day to travel back. All this to play a 3-hour match. Doesn't add up.

As New Zealand prepare to play Sri Lanka in Florida, Huw Richards examines cricket’s latest attempt to conquer the United States in the New York Times,

This weekend will be an early test. New Zealand plans regular visits under a strategic partnership reached in November. Two New Zealand coaches, including former test player Dipak Patel, were at a national training camp before Christmas. The U.S.A.C.A. has also held talks with Pakistan’s cricket authorities.

Obama admitted to not knowing much about cricket, but Lockerbie is fond of an anecdote suggesting that the job title has cricketing roots. “When the founding fathers discussed what to call the chief executive of the United States, John Adams said that the most respected man in a New England village was the president of the cricket club, and we owe having a president to that.”

Writing for Cricket365, Shahida Jacobs takes a tongue-in-cheek look at how an American commentator might translate cricket terminology into something Americans can understand.

While many cricket lovers consider the Twenty20 format "pyjama baseball", I for one would love it if they employ an American commentator to add even further to the entertainment with their different terminology. Of course, some words like Powerplay and Timeout are already part and parcel of the Twenty20 game, but there are heaps of others that you should get used to.

I've had the pleasure (or is that displeasure?) of watching quite a few Major Soccer League games on ESPN (don't get me started on Tommy Smith with a 'y') and some of the words the commentators use are quite confusing.

Goalkeepers are goaltenders, a red card is an ejection, a penalty is a PK (always good, those abbreviations), a half is called a period and clean sheets are known as shutouts.

Best we look ahead, then, at the terminology we can expect to hear over the weekend

In Mail Online, Alan Fraser provides a definitive account that traces Eoin Morgan's development from batting on a concrete pathway in a Dublin courtyard to donning England colours and mowing bowlers to all corners.

Running down one side is a pebble-dash wall - sporting a couple of feeble examples of graffiti - which would prevent a left-handed batsman from attempting anything approaching an off drive. He would have little alternative but to cart every ball to leg and towards a play park.

This was where and how the fledgling Eoin Morgan, England's latest batting sensation, spent his winter nights when the grass was sodden - which was most of the time. From those tiny blows could be traced the origins of that six over midwicket which Morgan, 23, smote during the latter stages of last weekend's World Twenty20 final victory over Australia, prompting the notoriously difficult-to-please commentator, Ian Chappell, to remark: 'There's some good English willow around - maybe it's Irish willow.'

In his column for Yahoo India, Amit Varma tees off on the tendency of sports journalists in India to ignore the facts while spinning stories out of whole cloth.

The most crass illustration of this came a few years ago, during an India-Pakistan series, when a news channel started finding the Match ka Mujrim ('Villain of the Match') in a post-match analysis show. Cricketers aren't Mujrims, and on most days, even when matches are lost heavily, there may not be any blame to be assigned. In sport, shit happens. But no, it's more fun, allegedly more engaging, and what's more, far easier for a lazy thinker, to affix blame, paint the events of the day in black and white, and move on.

Last year, when India crashed out of the second T20 Cricket World Cup, there were the usual calls for our captain MS Dhoni's head. When there was no story to be had, the media made it up, such as when, as Anand Vasu reported, "Dhoni's effigy was burnt in his hometown Ranchi, ... apparently it was 'arranged' by two channels." The footage was good -- so what if the burning was staged?

Dileep Premachandran writes in the Guardian that the Asian sides in general and India in particular can learn a lot from the selection calls England made for their successful World Twenty20 campaign.

England's last World Cup campaign in the Caribbean is best remembered for pre-dawn pedalos and Battle of the Bottle headlines. This time, the Red Stripes and the El Dorados went hand-in-hand with terrific team spirit. With 2011 looming, the first thing to do is follow Andy Flower's example and be ruthless in squad selection. Yesterday's six-hitters are of no use tomorrow.

Picking players on reputation is always tempting, but it seldom works. Misbah-ul-Haq, for example, got Pakistan to within a big hit of winning the 2007 World Twenty20 final. But what has been his output over the past 12 months? Is it worth persisting with him when an exciting talent such as Hammad Azam waits backstage?

For India, the decisions to be made are harder still. Yuvraj Singh is hardly in the same age bracket as Misbah or Jayasuriya, yet the feeling persists that we may already have seen the best of him. His waistline and lethargic movement in the field tell you exactly why Gary Kirsten felt compelled to have a rant and now is perhaps the best time for him to address the injuries that have plagued him in recent seasons.

In the Wisden Cricketer, Lawrence Booth writes that Andy Flower's track record of making the right decisions for English cricket needs to be trusted in dealing with the Andrew Strauss ODI conundrum.

England under Flower have barely put a foot wrong – and when they have, redemption has been swift: Ravi Bopara was dropped for the Ashes decider, Owais Shah booted out of the one-day team, and Paul Collingwood rested from the NatWest Series. There is a decisiveness about Flower that makes the old days of wrongly aligned planets and Calcutta smog look like low farce.

Selection for the World Twenty20 was neck-on-the-line stuff too. What previous regime would have dared drop their shop-window fast bowler? Or drafted in a pair of relatively untested openers? Or encouraged the slow bouncer? Mike Yardy as a second spinner? Luke Wright at No 6? These were all products of a coaching mind that knows itself and isn’t swayed by others.

England arrived to a distinct Twenty20 welcome at Gatwick with the surreal tag of world champions in the shortest format. Barney Ronay, of the Guardian, was there among a troop of reporters to record each moment.

Before long it became clear a small misjudgment had taken place. We had a steward-shortfall, combined with a surge into the main hall by the bored or the merely cricket-curious. Mild logjam-chaos ensued. James Tredwell was very slightly jostled. Tim Bresnan got bogged down shaking hands. Ryan Sidebottom paused, presidential-style, to kiss a baby (this turned out to be his own daughter, Indiana Sidebottom). Touchingly the spin coach Mushtaq Ahmed, who seems to have a mummy bear role opposite Andy Flower's paterfamilias, could be seen hugging each player in turn as they left the hall.

The Indian team has no official spokesperson, yet, the BCCI either gags them or instructs them to lie low. So how can they possibly speak for themselves? Many of its young players have little formal education or social skills. Even after defeat, were they all expected to hide in their rooms and mope? Kadambari Murali Wade asks these questions in the Hindustan Times.

They messed up in the Caribbean and that needs to be seriously examined in cricket- ing terms, but more often than not, especially in the last two years, the Indian team has given us much joy and lots to be proud of. We need to remember that. Here's what one India bats- man said after the team got back from the Windies. “The World Cup's seven months down the line and this has all (the over- the-top reaction) been quite scary. I'm going to send my family away during the Cup, because, God forbid we lose, someone might try and burn my house down.“ And if that happens, Indian cricket will never be the same again.

England's fearless approach after the 14th over of their chase in the World T20 final encapsulated much of what the team created by Andy Flower and led by Collingwood, is about. They play without fear, either of consequence or recrimination. They take responsibility for their actions in the knowledge that their judgment will be respected and that if things do not go according to plan, then another will make sure a situation is rectified, writes Mike Selvey in the Guardian.

Everything to the last detail is monitored and logged: opposition, and individual performances down to wind direction (at Bridgetown they knew that the six‑hitting side was to the Greenidge-Haynes stand), boundary sizes, hitting distances, anything that will help. Flower, a disciple of Moneyball, Michael Lewis's book about the statistics-driven baseball team, the Oakland Athletics, believes that "we are only scratching the surface with cricket stats. They will play an increasing role in how you formulate strategies or pick players."

In the same paper, former England coach Duncan Fletcher is all praise for Collingwood, who he says is successful because of his hard work and tremendous character, despite all that was thrown at him in the past.

Every time I coach young cricketers I use Paul Collingwood as an example of the perfect role model. I have been working in Zimbabwe these past five days, giving batting master-classes to some of their elite squad. After one session I held a Q&A with Kevin Curran, the Under-19 coach, and some of his players. Kevin asked: "When I was in England I just couldn't see Paul Collingwood as much of a player. Why has he become so good?"

In the Times, Richard Hobson wonders if Andrew Strauss' captaincy and position in the one-day team is under threat with the emergence of players like Michael Lumb.

But the selectors may wish to build the side for next year’s World Cup around the successful XI out here. And the substitution of Strauss for Michael Lumb will give a different feel to the top of the order. It is not as simple as swapping one left-hander for another.

In the Daily Mail, Nasser Hussain ponders over the same question about Strauss. He feels No.3 would be the best position, as long as it relieves the pressure off Pietersen in the middle order.

Can he still open following the success of Craig Kieswetter and Michael Lumb? If England have found a pair who can be productive in Twenty20 power-play overs then surely the same principles apply in 50-over cricket and they should carry on where they left off in Barbados.

The ICC's organising and handling of the World Twenty20 2010 was a marked improvement from the 2007 World Cup, but it was still not the best it could be. A trip to the Caribbean is meant to be a once in a lifetime experience, but in terms of crowd turn-out and player satisfaction, the event was found wanting, writes Anand Vasu in the Hindustan Times.

Travelling between islands in the West Indies has never been a smooth ride, but some of the horror stories from this tour- nament need repeating. The major airline, Liat (variously expanded to Luggage In Another Town or Leaves Island Any Time) once put Sunil Gavaskar in a jump seat along side the pilots. At other times, people with confirmed reser- vations were offloaded, flights left either half an hour before scheduled time or after and scores were left stranded without their baggage. Proper infra- structure is the first check before awarding a region or country a major event. Either the ICC could not fix problems, or just overlooked them.

England finally broke their world tournament jinx, making the transition from being remotely competitive to ultra competitive. No longer do we look on an England one-day team and despair at a relative lack of power, fitness and athleticism, writes Michael Atherton in the Times.

Despite that, yesterday was not one of those “Where were you when” occasions for a number of reasons. Principally, because there is widespread recognition that it is not the pinnacle of the game — not at international level, at any rate. Take a straw poll of English professional cricketers and ask them which domestic one-day tournament they would like to win and the unanimous choice would be Twenty20. But at international level, cricketers still regard the fifty-over World Cup as the pinnacle of the one-day game.

In the same paper, John Westerby writes on the discovery of the Lumb-Kieswetter alliance, and a stroke of luck, courtesy Stuart Broad.

Broad steadied himself under the catch, cupped his hands in readiness, but the ball mysteriously landed a couple of yards behind him. In the dusky, desert sky, he had completely lost track of the grey-white ball. Sidebottom’s reaction was typically apoplectic. But little did he know that Broad had just inadvertently set in motion a chain of events that would dramatically change England’s Twenty20 fortunes.

A catch on the rebound, a direct hit, reverse sweeps, the six-hitting, the yorkers and the devious, slow long-hops - this is the new England. Suddenly they feel like a force in international one-day cricket and it's all because they made things happen, rather than sit back and wait, writes Vic Marks in the Guardian. But how will this performance affect future selections?

Strauss has to play because he is the captain. So someone has to give way and that will probably be the sacrificial Lumb. It would be surprising if Michael Yardy retained his place in the 50-over game. Yardy's method is predicated specifically for the Twenty20 game. He bowls in a manner that is designed to yield six runs per over, which is not so helpful in the longer format. They must also decide whether they prefer Kieswetter to Matt Prior in the 50‑over game (they probably will).

In the Independent, Stephen Brenkley wonders if Test cricket will be able to survive the assault of T20. He says the ICC must act quickly to make Tests more of a spectator sport.

Test cricket should not be doomed because it remains at its (rare) best a riveting, brave spectacle – the Ashes last summer, the matches against South Africa last winter. But it has lost spectator appeal not only because T20 is more obviously exciting and tends to narrow the gap between competing sides (how refreshing that the two best sides reached the final yesterday) but because too many series are far from being between equally matched teams. Test cricket may be the best form of sport devised by man but it needs people to watch it and that means contests in which both teams have a chance of winning. It was never meant to be a private affair.

In the Telegraph, Simon Briggs says the factor behind England's success was that they had comprehensively ditched what was once an angst-ridden, safety-first gameplan and displayed a swagger from the start of the game. Their gambles paid off too.

Or take Collingwood’s move to call Luke Wright into the attack when Michael Yardy started to leak boundaries for the first time in the tournament. Here was a man who hadn’t bowled a ball all tour, coming on to bowl at the brawny Cameron White. The result? Five singles and a wicket, as White heaved at a slower ball and was brilliantly caught in the outfield.

In the same paper, Andy Bull writes on the reception Kevin Pietersen received from the Bajan crowd.

"KP! You the boss today man! The boss! Stick it to those Aussies, boy! Over the top, everythin' over the top, boy! Who got 500 dollars who don't like England? Who got 500? All my money KP! I got all my money on you today, boy!"

Anil Kumble, in his syndicated column, says the non-cricketing issues affecting young players today have to be addressed, such as management skills, communication and media skills. It's important the BCCI pays equal attention to life infrastructure. Read on in Hindustan Times.

Like the art of player management and making sure whatever available talent India has is harnessed properly and maximised. Far too many times for comfort, I've been where the current lot of Indian players today are vilified by all and sundry, having every single thing they do torn apart and then some. Someone's got to look at handling both them and the things that come with playing for India, responsibly. There's the pressure of performance, the pressure of expectations, pressure from a very intrusive media including former players.

The English counties will be pinning their hopes on a World Twenty20 win because a big booty there could help bail themselves out of their financial woes, writes Vic Marks in the Observer. Several Test grounds have been lured into making expensive developments, only to realise there is a limited amount of international cricket. A win bonus should change things.

Around the counties they will be hoping for a surge of interest as a consequence of England's advance to the final. When India won the first World Twenty20 in South Africa in 2007 the ramifications were enormous. A format that was despised in India was suddenly embraced. The dollar signs started to flash and the entrepreneurs swooped. An English victory in Barbados today would not have such a dramatic impact, but it could invigorate the Twenty20 tournament here in June and July.

In the Sunday Times, Simon Wilde writes that Paul Collingwood should warn his team against giving Australia an escape route, like Pakistan did in the semis.

Australia also look vulnerable with who follows them. Neither Brad Haddin nor Clarke, who have lately come in at three and four, have had good tournaments; there is a growing view in Australia that Clarke is not worth a place in this format as a player. Australia have been relying on a deadly lower middle order for salvation, Cameron White and the Hussey brothers having hit 28 sixes between them.

In the same paper, Martin Johnson looks back at England's forgettable history in major tournament finals.

In the Telegraph, former captain Michael Vaughan feels that a World T20 win for England will rank higher than the Ashes.

And if we win we will have beaten a fine Australian side in the final, and it will send out a signal to the world that we are playing good cricket. It would be a remarkable achievement for Paul Collingwood and Andy Flower, who deserves great credit for what he has done with this team, but regardless of today's result England can look forward to a bright future in one-day cricket.

In the same paper, Steve James credits the man behind the scenes, Andy Flower, for England's rise.

But, somehow, this is how the wheel has turned. Flower has become an astute and authoritative leader. Persuasive, too, in coaxing a most reluctant Collingwood to retake the reins. And Collingwood has improved. He is clearly still no tactical genius and in this tournament he has had a stinker with the bat (an average of precisely 8.16). Win today and history will not record such technicalities.

In the Hindustan Times, Anand Vasu praises Australia's semi-final hero Michael Hussey. Listening to the man popularly known as Mr Cricket, is like hearing the heartbeat of Australian cricket.

To look into Hussey’s eyes as he spoke was to understand the Australian passion for the game. There’s little doubt that India’s cricketers, and fans, are among the most passionate in the world, but the Australian affair is a wholly different one. It’s not the kind that results in houses being tarred after a loss or angry fans smashing windshields of the cars of players who have failed. The Australian way is to take the game so seriously as to demand the best of each player every time. It is an impatience with those who are mentally soft or can’t execute basic skills properly. There’s no time for someone who isn’t as fit as he possibly could be or fields even one percent worse than is humanly possible through sheer preparation and practice.

It's something the BCCI is unwilling to admit. If it's not obvious already, India have been eliminated from a World Twenty20, immediately after an IPL, for the second time in a row. The inability to tackle the short ball in the T20 format is projected as the main reason for the debacle, but the real reason is the awful, awful timing of the IPL, writes Shekhar Gupta in the Indian Express.

It isn’t just that the IPL is leaving players injured or fatigued. Players, as Sangakkara had the good sense to state, have the right to decide whether or not to play IPL. But is that a decision you can leave to individual players? Maybe a Tendulkar or a Dhoni can afford to sit out of a future IPL to preserve himself. But a Rohit Sharma, a Piyush Chawla, a Zaheer Khan? I mention those three names in particular because, if you go back to your T20 world cup footage, theirs are the chubbiest cheeks and they are some of the people Kirsten is complaining about.

Merely questioning the Indian players' commitment towards the World Twenty20 isn't going to solve any problems. The BCCI should also be held accountable and reassess itself in the way it treats its players and prepares them for a big tournament. The blame should be spread out, writes Partha Bhaduri in the Times of India.

If you share the spoils, then it’s only fair that you share the blame. For the BCCI, which has stoked systemic greed, there are two ways forward: it can either let things be and hope India’s batsmen blast everything out of sight on flat home pitches in next year’s 50-over World Cup. Luckily, the event precedes the IPL, offering a perfect opportunity to brush things under the carpet. Or Shashank Manohar & Co can start identifying areas which need overhauling. It’s all right asking players to be professional, to be committed to a level of excellence that goes above commercial considerations, but the Board should remember professionalism is environmental. A look in the mirror wouldn’t hurt.

In Cricketnext, Gaurav Kalra writes that Indian supporters should stop wasting their time mercilessly crucifying the players and instead focus more about how to make them better players.

Fleeting as it may have been, even in the West Indies we witnessed sparks of special skill. Raina's ton against South Africa and Rohit Sharma's back to the wall belligerence against the Windies gave us little saplings of hope. We must urge and pressure the our administrators to find ways to help that talent flower. Must they be sent away for a couple of months to overcome the kinks in their technique? Could we pick up the phone to Jimmy Amarnath or ask Sunny Gavaskar to take them away for a couple of weeks and train them in the art of facing up to the short ball?

In the Hindu, Peter Roebuck feels half the team is over-rated and a few big names ought to be ditched.

The fielding was dreadful, the bowling was wayward and the batting was inept. Only a few players survived the examination. The rest looked like pampered millionaires more interested in sweets than sweat. And let's not listen to any idle excuses about pitches or parties. Players are not forced to stay up all night whilst the tracks in the Caribbean were superbly suited to rewarding the genuine. Better to acknowledge the scale of the defeat, examine its causes and seek immediate remedies.

An editorial in the same paper says that every facet of India's game bore signs of the malaise.

Also in need of attention is scheduling — the off-season has disappeared as has the break between assignments; with no time for reflection and skill development, is it reasonable to expect improvement?

The reason for England's rise from no-hopers to title contenders is that they have found the right personnel to master the three distinct phases of the T20 game, writes Mike Selvey in the Guardian. The discovery of Craig Kieswetter and Michael Lumb is an example.

Against Sri Lanka, even after the bowlers had done such a professional job, there was still a danger that a side adept in strangling the opposition on slow and grabby pitches might make the chase a cumbersome affair. Inside eight overs, Kieswetter and Lumb had consigned that idea to the bin, their opening partnership proving so confident and incendiary that it left a relative stroll for Kevin Pietersen. He, nonetheless, batted with such massive authority that he has now scored 95 from 59 balls either side of the birth of young Dylan.

Brendon McCullum's decision to give up wicketkeeping in T20 internationals is a big loss to New Zealand as he's been the country's best wicketkeeper. But is he good enough to retain his place as a batsman alone? David Leggat wonders in the New Zealand Herald.

If injury is his paramount concern, it doesn't explain why he would choose the shortest form in which to draw the line, rather than the more draining versions. Maybe he just doesn't fancy it any more. Perhaps he sees his career re-energised with a change of focus.

Where McCullum is at fault is in not speaking out to clear the air. In this regard he has been badly advised. He is a forthright personality. Silence, like stodginess at the crease, is not his natural game.

'Choking' is very much a part of sport. Ask Greg Norman or Jana Navotna, the former's meltdown in the final round of the 1996 Masters and the latter's collapse in the 1993 Wimbledon final. Talk of choking in cricket and you think South Africa. Neil Manthorp analyses cricket's repeat-offenders in the Mail and Guardian Online.

Later they both described how they felt, as though they were moving in slow-motion, unable to change the tempo or affect the flow of the contest. Crowd noises seemed muffled, words of advice only half penetrated their heads as though trapped outside by a mucous membrane. Defeat was still such a long way off as they entered their state of choke that nobody believed it was inevitable, or even likely. Except, that is, for Norman and Novotna.

A fall-out of India's early exit from the World Twenty20 is the negative publicity of the IPL parties. MS Dhoni's comments about the parties taking a toll on the players' body is true, particularly for high-profile players like him who were top draws in every gathering, and perhaps had no option but to attend. One player, on the condition of anonymity, spoke to Heena Zuni Pandit of the Hindustan Times for a first-person account of a typical party night, and the demands that come along with it.

So you tell yourself, 'I'll go down for an hour', only, it's never an hour. Before you know it, it's 4am and you're heading back to your room, hurrying to pack up and head to another city, another game, another sponsor's commitment (which are endless), another shoot possibly and yes, another party. The problem is that you can never switch off mentally. Not on the field, not during the hours spent in airports when fans and the airport staff want an autograph, photograph or just a chat and not in the parties, where you'll be introduced to important people who will listen to you and perhaps, be important contacts who will make money for you.

The IPL gave the foreign players a chance to exploit the weaknesses in the Indian batsmen. Over six weeks, notes were being swapped and the results were out in the open in the West Indies. Sharda Ugra has more in Back Page Lead.

Like Rohit Sharma, the right-hander Ian Chappell once said could take over after Tendulkar. His rivals think of him as “talented but compulsive.” So give him the short stuff and he can be lulled into a flashy stroke. Sharma then, the verdict is, can face the short ball, but can’t resist it. The most common idea put out by the foreign players, regardless of the Indian tyro being discussed was, “Push them back, make them play”. This one’s a story of two halves.

Paul Collingwood may sound like a broken record, but his team is anything but one. They have exceeded all expectations to reach the finals of the World Twenty20, and their supporters were treated to a 'steamroller' in St Lucia against Sri Lanka, writes Andy Bull in the Guardian.

Long time followers of England are used to experiencing to a range of emotions. Angst. Despair. Irritation. Occasionally even elation. But not many have felt anything quite like this before. Not only have England played their way to a first global tournament final since 2004, but they have done it with a conviction and efficiency that feels entirely alien. So this is what consistency feels like. "I'm going to sound like a broken record," said Paul Collingwood as he sang his side's praises yet again post-match.

Dileep Premachandran writes in the National that the World Twenty20 has exposed the weaknesses in the Asian bloc, despite Pakistan and Sri Lanka featuring in the semi-finals.

Both previous World T20 finals were all-Asian affairs, with Pakistan the common factor. Since last June though, Australia have cottoned on to what makes a T20 side tick, while England have also been strengthened by the emergence of a couple of impact players who have transformed a middle-of-the-road outfit into one with a genuine chance of ending their title drought in the international arena.

It is not hard to identify where the Asians have stumbled. Sri Lanka have been decent in the field, but both India and Pakistan were woeful. Ravindra Jadeja, of India, and Pakistan’s Saeed Ajmal took turns to show off their butter-fingered prowess, while the ground-fielding was a mish-mash of awkward dives, poor stops and weak throws back to the wicketkeeper.

Steven Smith's match-winning turn in the Caribbean reinforced Greg Chappell's view that the young allrounder has the special talent needed to help Australia regain the Ashes. Chloe Saltau elaborates in the Age.

The thought of another audacious blond bowling leg-spin for Australia next summer is enough to send generations of English batsmen into therapy, but Chappell predicted Smith's entrance to Test cricket could more closely emulate Richie Benaud than Shane Warne.

''He is [part of the Ashes plans] in my view,'' Chappell said. ''In Australia, through the history of cricket, good wrist-spin bowling has been very successful and I think he has the capabilities to do that, and it gives you the opportunity to play two spinners. Remember that Richie Benaud played for three or four years as a batsman predominantly, and bowled the odd over here or there. I can see Steve Smith doing that in the early days of his career.''

Andy Bull analyses the four semi-finalists of the World Twenty20 in his weekly email, the Spin, an excerpt of which is published in the Guardian.

Using Roger Moore's toupee-era Bond films as a point of reference is a habit I normally try to keep to my inner monologue, so excuse me when I say that Australia remind the Spin of Max Zorin screaming "More! More power! More!" in the closing scenes of a View To A Kill. More power. The Australians have three 90mph fast bowlers, with the added advantage that two of them are left-armers. Dirk Nannes is the best Twenty20 quick left in the competition. He is complemented by the wayward but dangerous Shaun Tait and, as an absurdly good first change, Mitchell Johnson.

Dileep Premachandran lays into the Indian team in the Guardian, in the aftermath of their World Twenty20 debacle.

The fielding, so eye-catchingly good in South Africa in 2007, has regressed back to the mediocrity of old. How would it not? There are at least a couple of men in the squad who could auction for Weight Watchers' before-and-after ads given the amount of inches they've put on around the waist. Lard might not have inhibited Colin Milburn or Inzamam-ul-Haq unduly in their pomp, but in a form of the game where fitness and agility are paramount – witness the way David Warner prowls the outfield – double-pillow paunches and punch-drunk reactions are inexcusable. Ravindra Jadeja, so poor with the ball against Australia and West Indies, can thank his lucky stars for the comically inept Saeed Ajmal, or else he'd have had the Worst Fielder award to take home as well.

The soul-searching continues in the wake of another South African failure in a World Cup. Rob Houwing, writing in Sport24.co.za, thinks it’s time to ease some of the seniors out of the Twenty20 squad and bring in some fresh blood.

I feel a very significant Proteas freshening is advisable at T20 level, something that could pay dividends for the other two formats at the same time in the way it would curb the threat of some of South Africa’s more seasoned “treadmillers” from becoming blasé about donning a national shirt.

Just how genuinely motivated can someone like Kallis get, for instance, for another low-gravitas T20 international when he has represented his country on no fewer than 450 occasions? (For the record, 137 Tests, 298 ODIs and 15 T20Is.)

Nasser Hussain writes in Mail Online his appreciation of the manner in which England have adapted to different situations during the World Twenty20, and credits Andy Flower for the turnaround.

At the Kensington Oval, England went at Pakistan with pace but in St Lucia against a good New Zealand side on a slower wicket they took pace off the ball, bowled lots of cutters and slower bouncers and generally looked like a highly effective side.

England's bowlers are thinking on their feet in the middle and a lot of planning and knowledge has gone into the team's performances. England have been pro-active while many of their opponents, like South Africa, have been reactive and much of the credit for what is happening out here must go to Andy Flower.

In the Independent, Stephen Brenkley uses Tim Bresnan's example to explain the confidence and self-belief running through the England ranks.

Bresnan exemplifies their progress. In 2006, when he was first called up by England to play against a rampant Sri Lanka he looked out of his depth. But gradually, and most assuredly this winter, he has become an outstanding international player, an authentic allrounder. He has been entrusted with bowling the first and last overs in most innings and holds down the No 7 position. If you have to go into bat in that position in a Twenty20 match the likelihood is that your team is in the cart.

Jim Yardley in the New York Times gives an outsider's perspective of the IPL mess and tries to piece together opinions from reputed observers to understand what it means for cricket and India.

Dhiraj Nayyar, a senior editor at The Financial Express, said the cricket scandal was best understood in the context of India’s economic evolution. When India’s stock exchange took off in the late 1980s and early 1990s, scandals erupted over market manipulation until regulatory structures were strengthened. Today, the same absence of transparency and regulation exists in cricket.

“The IPL is a curious creature that combines the best and worst of Indian capitalism - fabulous enterprise and outcomes on the one side, riddled with cronyism, patronage and power politics on the other,” Mr. Nayyar wrote recently. “In many ways the IPL is a confirmation of what India really is: an emerging economy.”

The reduced ticket prices and relaxation of rules pertaining to muscial instruments have brought the joy back to the cricket-watching public in the West Indies. DNA reports in detail.

Underneath the Greenidge and Haynes stand, named after former Barbados and West Indies opening batsmen Gordon and Desmond, cooks spice up the chicken and the beef stew, while fans from all over the cricketing world share a beer.

"The noise is fantastic. It's totally different from Australia, you can walk into this ground carrying anything you like, when you go in the MCG you can't take anything in. They'd strip you naked if they could at the MCG," said Australian supporter Peter Mulgrove.

There is more to Irfan Pathan's continued exclusion from the Indian team, than meets the eye according to a report in rediff.com.

If the reasons for his omission are based purely on cricketing logic, then Irfan could have waited in hope. But, it seems, there is more than what meets the eye.

If sources are to be believed, he earned the wrath of the selectors after failing to report for the Irani Cup match between Mumbai and Rest of India last October. He was named in the 15-member squad, but the all-rounder failed to report for duty, citing 'lack of confidence', following which he was replaced by UP pacer Bhuvanesh Kumar.

It was then that the selectors unanimously decided that Irfan would have to pay for the no-show. It seems he is paying for it now!

Malcolm Conn, writing in The Australian, says Michael Clarke is fast becoming the Mike Brearley of Twenty20 cricket.

A fine player and innovative captain who has an outstanding leadership record, Clarke is Australia's least successful T20 batsman in the same way that during the 1970s and early '80s, Brearley became one of England's finest Test captains but averaged just 22 and never made a century. Clarke has reinvigorated Australia's T20 cricket since being appointed at the beginning of last summer, but that has had almost nothing to do with his batting.

Lalit Modi is a real visionary for being able to imagine a future so far removed from the reality that existed then. The flip side of the ability to see a future that nobody else could and one which most other people challenged, is that one begins to have inexhaustible belief in one's ability to bend it infinitely according to one's desire, writes Santosh Desai in the Times of India blog.

What is most noteworthy about the Shashi Tharoor saga is that a personal spat like that triggered the unraveling of the IPL empire. The fact that Lalit Modi was unable to foresee the consequences of his almost-petulant chirp on Twitter points to the clouding of reality that accompanied the IPL-induced euphoria. Looking back, it would seem like a colossal over-reaction to what could have been sorted out behind closed doors by making a few accommodations. But like all good morality sagas, in the end there must come a downfall. Only then does it make a really good story.

The travails of Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cook in the current county season proves that the championship is still a stern test of abilities, writes Christopher Martin-Jenkins in the Times Online.

So far this season it has produced some interesting, vibrant and, on the smaller grounds at least, well-supported cricket. The England Test players who have missed the party in the Caribbean, notably Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cook, have been reminded what a stern school the county circuit still is.

Neither of the established opening pair has found batting easy on pitches inclined to give bowlers just a little bit more help in early season than the Test surfaces of high summer: Strauss has scored 249 runs from his ten innings at an average of 24.9, Cook 155 from six innings at 25.

In the Independent, Robin Scott-Elliott takes a tongue-in-cheek view at the various coalitions in the World Twenty20, including the England side and the commentary team.

Coalition may be a whole new ball game here, but over in the Caribbean it could not be working better as three South Africans, an Irishman and some Englishmen have joined together under the guidance of a Zimbabwean to see off a whole lot more South Africans and some Irishmen with South Africans and Australians stirred in. It's complicated.

Writing in the Guardian, Mike Marqusee joins the chorus of writers who have pointed out the ramifications of the IPL mess.

Despite the recent revelations, there's little indication things will change. All those vying for power in Indian cricket share the same assumptions and the same methods and not a few of the same cronies. Modi's successor Chirayu Amin – chairman of pharmaceutical giant Alembic and former president of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry – promises a more disciplined and cautious approach but his model for cricket's future is no different from Modi's.

In selling the franchises, the BCCI was licensing exclusive groups of investors to exploit the common cricket market for private profit. That was problematic from the outset. Under private ownership, management is less hedged in by non-commercial concerns, such as ensuring wider access to facilities; they have neither a mandate for, nor an interest in, promoting the welfare of the game as a whole.

Steve James has no hesitation in naming Eoin Morgan in the England Test side that will defend the Ashes this winter. Read his justification in the Telegraph.

Is Morgan's basic technique that unconventional anyway? He does have a low, tight grip on the bat handle. But Sanath Jayasuriya didn't have too shabby a career with something similar. And Morgan dips slightly as the bowler approaches – dangerous because if it happens too late the eyes are moving and a moving camera always takes unreliable pictures of line and length – but so does Trescothick, and he has managed just fine.

Sanath Jayasuriya speaks to Colin Croft in the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian, and reveals the link between his lives as a politician and a cricketer, as well as his ambition to feature in the 2011 World Cup.

"Ironically, as a boy, I saw the West Indies. When I started to play at school, I thought of them. I have worked very hard, training hard. You have to do that or you would not last any time at all, much less 20 years. When you have the natural love of a game, and have done so much hard work over the years, realising that you have had so much difficulty to get into the team in the first place, you know that you will have to keep up that work ethic to still be playing. I eat well, train hard and focus on my efforts and work; major keys to fitness and success."

England have displayed a swagger not seen very often from them in limited-overs cricket. They're talking about hitting sixes, a testosterone-choked type of cricket that might have evolved out of some unsmilingly moustachioed New York basement of the late-1970s. England are at last doing something extreme. But will it work? Barney Ronay wonders. Read on in the Guardian.

The six can still shed new light on cricketers you felt you already knew well. Against Ireland Luke Wright could be seen making an unexpected American-style whooping noise mid-pitch after crunching a straight hit into the sightscreen, the sort of noise you might hear in a 1980s movie set in a rowdy hard-living country and western-ish bar just before a violent brawl breaks out, perhaps involving Patrick Swayze doing stiff-backed kung fu.

Cricket offers several examples of top officials who hold more than one powerful post, even if it poses as a conflict of interest, as AC Muthiah is alleging against N Srinivasan, the BCCI secretary. Of course the conflict is not without its benefits. Taylor, Gavaskar, Shastri, Bhogle and the rest count amongst the best thinkers in the game. They have a wide range of skills and play their parts in advancing the interests of the game. That is the reason so many people want to employ them, writes Peter Roebuck in the Hindu.

Accordingly it may seem churlish to suggest they cannot have it both ways. Sincerity, though, is not the issue. Every estate has its part to play. As has amply been proved in India over the last few weeks, the media is the watchdog. All the more reason to insist that it is free to bark whenever it sees fit.

Sharda Ugra, writing in backpagelead.com.au, struggles to keep track of Sachin Tendulkar's rapidly expanding following in Twitter.

And of course the Following. In the zone where privacy and public space overlap, Twitter is mostly the Facebook of the Famous. It is where the average fan, linked to his favourite, can stalk without being charged. He can read the ‘star’s’ thoughts, check his spelling, hear him speak, see his personal photos without managers or mikes, bodyguards or boundaries.

When Tendulkar decided to come that close through Twitter, the tally of his ‘followers’ turned over as if a digital Greenwich had decided that time could only be measured in seconds. Tendulkar had signed on at midnight and at 11am the next morning, the number of people following was a mere 4000. But the news had just begun to spread and when he hit 24 hours, the number had risen to 68,000. Every time a screen is refreshed the numbers go up, 100 at a time.

In an interview to Mid-Day, Sachin Tendulkar says he decided to get on Twitter because an impostor was misleading people on the social networking website.

To be honest, it is not my nature to share a lot (of views). I am a bit of a reserved, private person, but yes, I wouldn't mind sharing a few things. But also, making sure that my personal life is not affected or out in the public completely. It's just striking that fine balance between both and letting people know what I have been up to. The balance is going to be important.

Those were the only words uttered by Umesh Yadav's father, a coalmine worker in Nagpur, when he found that his son had been asked to join the Indian World Twenty20 team in the West Indies. The Indian Express traces the rise of India's latest fast-bowling sensation.

Four years ago, when Yadav hitched a truck ride to Nagpur from his village to play a game of tennis ball cricket, he wouldn’t have dreamt where the 25-km journey might take him. Packing his bags in a mad rush on Thursday, Yadav was in a daze. But those who know him were saying they always felt his raw, natural pace would fast-track him to international cricket.

“I have just collected my tickets from the Vidarbha cricket office, it still hasn’t sunk in. My parents are very excited but nervous as well. They are village people and have very little idea of the world outside. All my father asked was ‘When will you return home?’,” Yadav told The Indian Express after getting the most important call of his short cricketing career.

Suresh Menon writes in dreamcricket.com that the IPL mess has proven that while the players and the game are bound by laws, there are no checks and balances in place for officialdom, until things begin to go wrong. At which point everyone looks for a scapegoat.

Rules apply to the players (‘Thou shalt not try to better your lot’ as in the case of Ravindra Jadeja), laws to the game (leg before, size of the bat etc), but neither rules nor laws nor regulations seem to apply to officialdom. Till things go wrong, that is, and then everybody looks for a scapegoat who can absorb everybody’s sins. This is not merely the story of the IPL or indeed of the cricket board; it is the story of Indian sport.

Ultimately, in India, all questions of import are settled politically. Business quarrels, even those involving siblings find political parties line up behind an individual. Like in the case of the Ambanis. Likewise with the media houses which often invite politicians to settle disputes. This is reminiscent of the Cold War days when any international dispute segued into a US versus Soviet Union clash.

Mike Atherton, writing in the Times, reviews the film Out of the Ashes, a remarkable story of the Afghanistan cricket team that put up a brave show at the World Twenty20 this year. It begins with a group of cricketers playing, not in whites, but in shalwar kameez and tracks their progress to the international scene.

Filming in Afghanistan, in the middle of a war, does not sound the easiest of tasks, but Albone told me this week that only once, returning from Jalalabad, when they were held up by a roadside bombing, did they feel threatened. Otherwise, he says, the war was a footnote to the story. “We wanted to give the Afghans a voice,” he says, and, of course, they wanted to talk cricket rather than war.

The film is not sentimental and the story speaks for itself, and it is the details of discovery that are often the most telling: the look of wariness as one of the players steps into a lift for the first time, in Dubai airport; the joy they feel in Tanzania when they get to swim in the ocean for the first time; and the bemusement when they come across traffic lights for the first time, in Jersey. “Something to do with rules and regulations,” one says, thinking, no doubt, of the chaos on the roads in Kabul.

Andy Bull, writing in his blog The Spin in the Guardian, says Afghanistan’s continuing development as a cricketing nation hinges on two factors: developing the game at the grass-root level and a steady diet of top-level cricket, including three- and four-day games.

The Asian Cricket Council, which has done much to help the team along the way, is already working to arrange fixtures. In the short-term their most likely opponents are Zimbabwe and Bangladesh. Afghanistan would not be out of their depth against either side. In fact if any of the players are reading this, and judging by the stick they gave me for one of the recent pieces I wrote about them they may well be, they will probably be irritated that I haven't come out and made them firm favourites to beat both nations.

Lawrence Booth, writing in the Wisden Cricketer, says that while the Duckworth-Lewis method may have its flaws, England's performance against West Indies and Ireland had shortcomings. Paul Collingwood's criticism of the D-L system following the defeat to the hosts, Booth says, reflects a "siege mentality" which is best avoided when not in a position of strength.

Take the West Indies game. England batted superbly, it’s true: an explosive starter, a consolidatory main course and a dreamy dessert. But it wasn’t Frank Duckworth or Tony Lewis who allowed West Indies to batter 30 off 2.2 overs before the rain came and apparently skewed the maths thereafter. Neither did D/L contribute to the eight wides England conceded in 5.5 overs. The truth was England were sloppy and Ryan Sidebottom bowled the wrong length to Chris Gayle. And, don’t forget, West Indies scraped home with only one ball to spare: this was no stroll.

Sukanta Chaudhuri, writing in the Telegraph, criticises the IPL for the apparent purposelessness of the wealth generated by the league and adds that the latest controversy has obscured much of what should be dominating the national consciousness.

The real good that wealth does is to create more wealth and extend it (however unevenly) to more and more people. The ‘percolation model’ of enrichment is morally repugnant, but it is the model that seems to work most consistently among imperfect human beings. The most depressing feature of the IPL affair is not the money involved, nor the alleged wrongdoing, but the utterly sterile use of that money. It has generated no employment, created no national assets, had no triggering effect on the economy.

The distance, and the resulting lack of urgency in the World Twenty20, turns out to be rather welcome after the eyebrow-singeing, trouser-igniting hysteria of the IPL, writes Giles Smith in the Times.

True, the final over that Pakistan bowled at Australia the other day yielded a five-wicket maiden, and you don’t often see one of those, outside of a beach game featuring children under 8 and an ultra-competitive dad. In the main, though, the rhythm and the tone feel rather becoming. In fact (whisper it), they feel quite a lot like cricket.

S Dinakar, writing in the Hindu, says India's bowling line-up should receive a boost in friendlier conditions in Barbados. He adds that Piyush Chawla should be retained, for he has the attributes of a match-winner, while Ravindra Jadeja should make way for Zaheer Khan.

Jadeja is a handy bat, a wonderful fielder and a useful left-arm spinner but Chawla has the attributes of a match-winner. There were indications during India's match against South Africa that Chawla might be a success in the tournament.

The chances are that Harbhajan and Chawla could, as the tournament progresses, develop into a threatening spin combination. India needs to back match-winners.

The IPL and its lucrative returns have had a negative impact on kids, says Makarand Waingankar in the Hindu. While Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid chose the hard road to success, working on the basics of the game to survive for a long run in international cricket, the success formula for many kids remains the Twenty20 route.

There are two ways of looking at the problem. Either shut all the coaching courses at the NCA or ban T20 for teenagers. A teenager participating in T20 shouldn't be considered for the State if at all the BCCI is serious about the problem.

It took years of systematic hard work for the Tendulkars, Dravids, Gangulys, Kumbles and others to reach the top and maintain the level of consistency at the international level for more than a decade. It's because they worked on the basics of the game they could sustain the pressure and perform. That is their success formula. But sadly, neither the coaches nor the teenagers are able to understand this.

Kevin McCallum, on the IOL website, Lalit Modi's marketing skills which worked wonders for the IPL were used almost as much for self promotion.

It took three years for the cracks to begin appearing, for people to begin seeing through the spectacle and to the foundations. Say what you like about Modi, he certainly did a hell of a job marketing the hell out of the IPL. He also did an even better job marketing the hell out of himself.

When the IPL came to South Africa television production people smiled sheepishly when I asked them about the camera that had to be on Modi all the time. It was non-negotiable. Modi insisted. And so we have been treated to shots of Modi on his cellphone, Modi signing autographs, Modi next to (insert rich/famous person here).

After two comfortable victories in the first stage of the World Twenty20, India's batsmen, including Suresh Raina, face a stiffer challenge on bouncier tracks in Barbados, writes S Dinakar in the Hindu.

Raina has had his share of problems against short-pitched deliveries. Under the circumstances, it was surprising why the mercurial Dale Steyn, despite the nature of the surface, did not quite go for the jugular against the left-hander on Sunday. An Australian team, in contrast, would have been ruthless.

It must also be mentioned that Raina — he has striven to get into a more side-on position against the bouncing ball — is an improving batsman against short-pitched bowling.

But the extent of his improvement can only be determined against red-hot quicks on livelier surfaces.

Anand Vasu writes in the Hindustan Times that though the ICC has righted several mistakes of the 2007 World Cup by keeping ticket prices low and allowing fans to bring in musical instruments in St Lucia, the timing of several matches are designed for TV audiences, keeping the number of spectators at the stadium low.

Jamie Pandaram writes in the Sydney Morning Herald that while the rest of the cricket world is enjoying watching the World Twenty20, the same can't be said for most TV viewers in the Caribbean.

Many locals cannot watch their own team compete in a global tournament they are hosting, because the local broadcaster chosen to show live matches is barely available to residents.

Darren Sammy is the only St Lucian in the Windies side. He produced one of the all-time great individual performances - 30 runs off 17 balls, 3-8 off three overs, and four catches - to lead the hosts to victory over Ireland in their first match on Friday night but the island was oblivious. Many flocked to see a famed preacher giving a sermon, while others let loose at the infamous Gros Islet street party.

IPL is a fantasy free-for-all. But the villains must be run out this time, writes Rahul Bhattacharya in the Outlook.

For the sport to remain uncorrupted in these circumstances, it is imperative that the top is clean. Which is why this time around, I hope there is a way to actually bring criminal prosecutions. A national sport is a precious thing. It is one of the ways a community sees itself and understands itself. The reflection at the moment is not very pretty, and India’s genius is to change nothing but the mirror.

Also in the Outlook, Rohit Mahajan describes what an IPL Night party is like.

At one end of the hall lies a private zone, ringed by low tables and protected by 12 bouncers; you can go in only by invitation. There’s also a temporary ramp. Suddenly, there’s an announcement, and a fashion show is under way. People rush towards the ramp, raise their mobiles to make recordings. It lasts some 15 minutes—but the clothes aren’t the cynosure of eyes, the lounging cricketers are. Then there’s some jiving. David Warner of Delhi, just knocked out of the IPL, is escorting three white women. Gradually, the forbidden zone fills up with pretty girls: good looks seem to have opened the doors for them.

In the Hindustan Times, Pradeep Magazine urges the former cricketers on the IPL's governing council - MAK Pataudi, Sunil Gavaskar and Ravi Shastri - to help put cricket first in the next season of the league.

IPL is a brand which is here to stay and is still threatening the two other formats of cricket, especially Tests. The corporate takeover of cricket as a property may have got delayed by this scandal but the threat still remains. It is here that messrs Gavaskar/Shastri/Pataudi can act as visionaries in trying to find a middle ground which would safeguard the interests of the sport, its various stake-holders and even the new fan base created by this glitzy new event.