Ricky Ponting writes in his column in the Australian that the experienced and formidable Indian batting line-up will prove a challenge for his bowling line-up. Ponting, though, was satisfied with the form of most of his bowlers during the warm-up match against Board President's XI.

Ben Hilfenhaus took five wickets in the first innings and looks to be in great form. Mitchell Johnson bowled very well too ... Spin is important in India as everybody knows and Nathan Hauritz didn't get a great return, but it was important for him to get out there and find his rhythm after being out of the game with injury.

In the Herald Sun, Daniel Brettig reports on Johnson's new-found maturity and confidence with the press, not least his cunning targetting of Virender Sehwag:

Speaking to the Indian media, he waited patiently for a question about which local batsman he would target, before lobbing a grenade the way of Virender Sehwag. Cue global headlines about Sehwag's vulnerability to the short ball, and a happy Johnson after making his own point at the outset of a series in which he will lead the Australian attack.

It was a season that will be remembered for all the wrong reasons, but Lawrence Booth, in the Wisden Cricketer, has come up with a list of ten positives from England's home summer.

It all felt a bit pumped up, but there was no escaping the visceral pleasure England derived from their win that night. Six series wins out of six for the summer and a team united. That, more than victory over a side they had grown to despise, should be the season’s defining moment.

Mike Selvey reasons in the Guardian why he believes Graeme Swann is England's best offspinner since Jim Laker and Fred Titmus, and possibly their best ever.

What elevates him is his cricketing intelligence. He understands his game and the art of spin bowling and blends it with spark, unquenchable spirit and optimism. I don't know if Fred has seen him. He is not a well man now, Alzheimer's taken hold a while since. I hope to see Parfitt next week and find out how he is. I think, though, Fred would take a look, puff on his pipe and pronounce approvingly and understated: "Good, ain't he JT." That, Swanny, would be the highest praise.

Andy Bull, in his Spin blog for the Guardian, terms it a sin to look at the India-Australia series as a pre-cursor to the Ashes. He also notes that Australia's young seam attack is an indication of changing selectorial norms, from the days when the players broke into the national team closer to the age of 30.

If only the series lasted longer than two Tests, then we may have had a chance to unravel some of these threads. As it is we will still get to enjoy some of the other captivating clashes that the series will throw up. Fitness allowing, Harbhajan Singh will resume his old duel with Ponting. Nobody has dismissed Ponting more times in Test cricket than Harbhajan. Will Ponting be able to keep pace with Sachin Tendulkar? Or will the series confirm the impression formed over the last two years that Sachin has pulled head-and-shoulders clear of the Australian captain as the outstanding batsman of this generation? Will Johnson and Bollinger be able to follow up on their public promises to tame Virender Sehwag by bombarding him with short deliveries? Will either Steve Smith or Nathan Hauritz be able to break through and nail down a place as Australia's first-choice spinner?

Steve James, writing in the Daily Telegraph, says pre-series excursions like boot camps to get the players to gel better may not achieve the desired results. Cricket, he says, is an individual sport played in a team environment and the togetherness that such exercises try to achieve is seen more in rugby.

Team spirit, eh? Generally I’m with former Tottenham striker Steve Archibald on this one, even if his description – “an illusion glimpsed in the aftermath of victory”– has become a hackneyed cliché. But then cricket is essentially an individual sport played in a team environment. Selfishness often sits comfortably within its dressing rooms. The Australians spout their propaganda about mateship, that machismo forged by miners and bushmen in the harsh conditions of the late 19th century, whereby a man had to do everything within his powers to stand by his mate. But I have only really seen that tightness in rugby dressing rooms.

At a time when India's premier domestic competition, the Ranji Trophy, fields as many as 26 regional sides in two leagues, Venkat Ananth makes a strong case for a franchise-based system with fewer teams to foster excellence. In his Yahoo blog, he draws parallels with the South African model where 11 provincial teams were shortened to six franchises in a bid to narrow the gap between international and domestic standards.

From a cricketing point of view, firstly, there is likelier to be a heavy competition for places, a larger responsibility towards your side, a professional dressing-room and franchise atmosphere and since corporate ideology is largely result-oriented, it could assist incentivize performances, which is in stark contrast to the existing system, which almost presents itself as a formula a captain needs to rehearse, rinse and repeat to win the Ranji Trophy.

Onward then and upward. To the stars as far as England are concerned after the most demanding of all seasons. Their mission in the next seven months is straightforward: win the Ashes in Australia for the first time in 24 years, and win the World Cup for the first time full stop, writes Stephen Brenkley in the Independent on Sunday.

For reasons best known to themselves, England have gone on a bonding session for four days. Apparently they are not fed up with the sight of each other after a season which began in April, or February if you count the Bangladesh tour. If it helps to devise plans to ensnare terracotta urns, all well and good. England have their best chance for decades of retaining the Ashes in Australia. They last did so in 1986-87 when Mike Gatting's side were not tipped to keep the prize won in 1985 by David Gower's side.

This will not be easy because Australia being Australia, they are developing a new team of their own. They may spring on England some new fast bowlers like Josh Hazlewood, only 19, and Peter George. Hazlewood's cause for a dramatic debut has been diminished by having to withdraw from the squad to tour India because of a stress fracture to his back.

In the Observer, Vic Marks says: "Sport's most captivating contest cannot be renewed soon enough after the havoc wreaked during a summer spent hosting Pakistan."

Masud Alam visits Changa Bangal, Mohammad Amir's village in Pakistan, and speaks to family and friends about one of their very own at the centre of the spot-fixing controversy. Read his piece in the Hindu.

We take the dirt track and stop in a square that is the entrance to the enclave. Two narrow, winding streets lead off at a right angle. All the houses have low boundary walls and identical name plates stuck to them. The streets are paved and clean. No open sewers and no stench of cow dung. Many of houses are single-storied and all are small but neat and well presented. Amir's house is at the far edge of the enclave with open fields on two sides. A Pakistani flag embellished with golden border is flying on a pole fixed on the rooftop — a symbol of pride for Amir's father, Mohammed Fayyaz, for having served in the Pakistan army. He retired as a sepoy.

England are taking Eoin Morgan to Australia and Duncan Fletcher, writing in the Guardian, says its critical that they fit him into the team at No. 6 for the first Test.

If England are going to fit Morgan in, obviously someone else will have to make way. The men to look at here are the No2 and No3 in the order, Alastair Cook and Jonathan Trott. I think Cook should be the man who is dropped. I have written before about the qualities Cook brings to the team apart from his ability as a batsman. The management clearly like him as a character and see him as a good influence on the team. But the runs Trott has scored in international cricket since he came into the team outweigh those criteria. On top of that the one major concern I would have about the English batting is their propensity for sudden collapses. They have not managed to shake off this habit, as we saw again and again in both the recent Test and one-day series. Trott, like Morgan, seems to be a cool player in a crisis, with a steady temperament and an ability to handle pressure.

In his analysis of England's Ashes squad for the Telegraph, Shane Warne says the visitors' success could hinge on how Graeme Swann performs. He also throws light on why Chris Tremlett could prove crucial for England if he bowls with the right attitude.

Graeme Swann is the No 1 spinner. He is the most improved cricketer in the world and has had another good summer. For me he is the key to the Ashes. If Swann is successful, England will do well in Australia. I believe that because when it is hot and sunny in Australia and England are bowling on flat wickets, he is going to bowl a lot of overs. Australians sometimes struggle against good off-spinners, so he will play a massive part ...

... I captained Tremlett for a long time and I tried everything to get him to be more aggressive. In the nets he is the best bowler in the world, bar none. He is unplayable. But trying to get that form and aggression out in the middle was hard.

I tried everything. I was nice to him and supported him. I tried to be nasty by batting him at No 11 to make him angry. But he was just a bit soft. There was nothing nasty about him and he was a great fella but he needed to toughen up and get a bit more aggressive. His body language was awful. To play international cricket his body language had to improve and he had to learn the difference between a niggle and when there is actually something wrong with your body.

I hear and read cricketers who have never played in Australia say that the crowds, media and Aussie players will not get to them. Well, we will see, writes Angus Fraser in the Independent.

England will take an official party of 16, but in effect this will be doubled by the performance squad that will be in Australia not just to provide players who are match-fit and can be called up in case of injury, but to give alternatives should circumstances dictate that a different type of player is needed, writes Mike Selvey in the Guardian.

However, unless there is a catastrophic absence of form during the three warm-up matches in Perth, Adelaide and Hobart we can name the XI for the first Test in Brisbane as those who played the last Test of the summer at Lord's, with the inclusion of Ian Bell in place of Eoin Morgan, who will nonetheless be in the party.

That strategy for the first Test has been clear all summer and is spot on (it is the balance England should have fielded in Brisbane last time). However, for the rest of the series it will vary according to venue, pitch, weather and circumstance, as of course it should. Previous stereotyping of Australian pitches should not be taken as the norm now: Perth is no longer the fastest pitch in the world and Sydney is not the sand pit it once was. There is talk, too, of attempting to tickle pitches to suit Australia's attack and negate Graeme Swann, though this would only help England's seamers, while Swann gets wickets in all conditions.

In the Independent, Stephen Brenkley says: "Gone are the days when a batsman could make a late run on the rails by having a fertile August, or a fast bowler could emerge suddenly and force the selectors' hands. Continuity is the modern mantra and England have constantly demonstrated its value in the past 18 months."

As Pakistan depart England after a tour besieged by grave controversy, James Lawton, writing in the Independent, says cricket must not cast them into the wilderness.

What cricket cannot afford to do is write off Pakistan as a lost cause before properly recognising that it is not in a position to hand down such arbitrary moral judgement; not, at least, without acknowledging that the richest part of its empire, India, is also beset by terrible doubts about its freedom from spot- and match-fixing and that even such a sturdy sports nation as South Africa was unable to escape one of the worst examples of corruption in the history of any sport.

None of this is likely to sweep away the great mountain of doubt and dismay that has accumulated in England this summer – or diminish the challenge of attempting to reform a Pakistani game that operates in a society where corruption is not so much a threat as the norm and the legitimate rewards of the most successful Pakistani cricketers are dwarfed by those of their chief rivals.

While Nasser Hussain isn't condoning the controversies that marred the English summer, writing in the Daily Mail, he says "you've got to admit that watching Pakistan is never dull."

Like them or loathe them, they know how to electrify a crowd. Deliberate no-balls or not, Mohammad Aamer and Mohammad Asif were great to watch during the Tests.

There's Saeed Ajmal with his doosras, the theatrics of Shoaib Akhtar, the reverse-swing of Umar Gul and the late hitting of Abdul Razzaq. And we haven't even mentioned Shahid Afridi.

James Anderson's appearance in the new issue of the gay magazine Attitude has confirmed his status as one of our most admirable sportsmen: clever, charming and – above all – courageous, writes Simon Briggs in the Telegraph.

While same-sex marriages have become routine events across the civilised world, homosexuality in professional sport remains a forbidden frontier ...

"If there are any gay cricketers," Anderson told Attitude, "they should feel confident enough to come out, because I don't think there is homophobia in cricket. Football fans can be quite abusive and quite harsh, [but] cricket fans are generally quite placid."

This is probably right, even if one can imagine the beery hordes at the Melbourne Cricket Ground coming out with a few ugly chants. Yet most people are less worried about the fans than they are about their own peers.

The Champions League Twenty20 is a tournament searching for an identity. It is an international tournament played by domestic teams, a concept foreign to cricket and its fan. Certain players have also wound up playing for their IPL teams rather than their home sides, adding to the confusion. The end result is an event that doesn’t make you want to watch it, writes Venkat Ananth on Yahoo.

My problem with the Champions League begins with the concept. Memory being notoriously short, here's a quick history lesson: In 2000-'01, you had a tournament in Perth called the "Champions Cup" played towards the end of the Australian domestic season, which was loosely modeled on the FIFA World Club Championship, and was meant to discover the best domestic one-day side in the world. Mumbai, Kwazulu-Natal, Central Districts and hosts Western Australia featured in the tournament, but soon after its debut it was sadly disbanded. My guess is it didn't work as well as the organizers hoped it would, and the whole 'international domestic cricket' schtick wasn't as commercially viable or capable of generating as much spectator interest as the organizers believed.

There may come a point sometime soon when temporarily removing Pakistan from world cricket may be the only way to preserve the game's dignity. It hasn't come quite yet, because everyone is innocent until proven guilty, writes Nasser Hussain in the Daily Mail.

I've generally agreed with Imran Khan on this: You can't kick out a team just because of two or three bad apples. But we're seeing now what happens when accusations are bandied around with no thought for their consequences. Would Jonathan Trott and Wahab Riaz have had their dust-up before the start of play yesterday if Butt hadn't accused England of throwing the Oval one-dayer? Possibly.

But it's no surprise that tempers are fraying at the end of a summer in which England have had to put up with so much.

In the Daily Telegraph, Derek Pringle says, "Charity and sympathy are deserved by the millions ruined and damaged by the monsoon floodwaters, but Pakistan cricket is rapidly becoming a monster only a mother could love."

Claiming the world is against them is how the ruling class there operate. I have visited Pakistan four times and always found it a beguiling place. The resilience of the people (England's 2005 tour came just a few days after the Kashmir earthquake) and their friendly hospitality have always been memorable features of the place, but they do not deserve the leaders they get, including in this instance Mr Butt.

Australia's Test battle against India is the premier contest in the modern game and their upcoming two-Test series is likely to be a closely-fought affair. Dileep Premachandran looks back at Australia's most recent tours to India, in his column in the National.

By the next time he played there, in 2001, Steve Waugh was such a hero that the applause he received for his century made the Indian players stare at each other quizzically. By the third evening, Waugh’s all-conquering side, chasing a 17th successive Test win, were well on course, still 20 runs ahead with just six Indian wickets to take.

By the next afternoon, we were all going through the record-books and contemplating the unthinkable. VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid didn’t just bat through the day; they broke Australia’s spirit.

The mood of the crowd too had changed. Subdued in the face of imminent defeat in the morning, there were as loud as could be by afternoon. By the time Laxman went past Sunil Gavaskar’s 236 – then the highest score by an Indian in Tests – the crescendo was such that you could not hear the person next to you speak.

Sriram Dayanand writes in Yahoo about the impact the latest scandal is having on cricket's youngest generation - players and followers alike.

Watching him walk back to the pavilion after being put out of his misery by Swann on the last day, amidst eerie silence at Lord's, was agonizing. The grim face behind that visor was matched by that of the glum eleven year old sitting beside me watching. In that juxtaposition of the two sad faces lay the tragedy of cricket's loss. Our game's newest generations just got tainted for life.

"When I was the England captain, there were periods I felt Andrew Flintoff was draining me, as I was spending so much time managing him," writes Michael Vaughan in the Telegraph. "But when you retire, you look back on your career and I've realised I would not be doing what I am doing now, or have the reputation I have, without Freddie Flintoff."

I made things very simple. I used to tell him to watch the ball and hit it so he would be entertaining the crowd and entertaining me on the balcony. I told him that was his job. With the ball, he just wanted to do the basics, such as hit the top of off stump. He did not like to bowl slower balls because he didn't think he had to. He didn't want any fancy field setting.

He was not a believer in the modern ways. He couldn't understand the fitness work and the little gimmicks that, say, a Duncan Fletcher would bring to the team or a Paul Collingwood would suggest in a team meeting. Over a period he would frustrate the majority of the team because he didn't need to do a lot of the things the others had to go through. Fred was just too good. His abilities were natural.

Ricky Ponting won a Test series in India back when most of his current team-mates were watching him on TV. Will Swanton, writing in the Daily Telegraph, says they hang on his every word and instruction.

He's a coach as well as captain. "The coaching staff have talked to me about not spending too much time trying to help the young blokes out during the summer at the expense of my own preparation - but that's what I love," Ponting said. "If I don't know enough about them, about how they're going to handle situations and what they can and can't do, then it's pretty hard for us to win games together.”

When Kevin Pietersen last played for KwaZulu Natal, in 1999/2000, his main trade was offspin and he normally batted at No. 10. Now, as he returns to the country he once left for greener pastures, a lot has changed - both personally for Pietersen, and for South African cricket. Rob Houwing, writing in sport24.co.za, notes the irony.

The Dolphins team Pietersen “guests” for pretty shortly will be light years more representative, when you consider that a 20-man squad announced for the campaign recently contains at least a dozen black players and Imraan Khan as captain.

Just as tellingly, though, the South African national landscape, certainly as far as Tests are concerned, was arguably less promising then than it is now: Australia remained very imperiously atop the pile a decade back, whereas the situation is altogether more fluid these days, with the Proteas potentially poised to seize top spot if they beat current leaders India at home this season and also prosper in the lead-up to that series.

Sachin Tendulkar is the complete batsman. Neither fast bowlers nor mystery spinners nor hard pitches nor damp decks nor dust bowls nor heat nor cold nor dusk nor dawn nor razzmatazz have found him wanting. Ten thousand questions have been asked and all have been answered, most of them in the affirmative, writes Peter Roebuck, in one of several articles on Tendulkar in the India Today.

Srinath offers a team-mate's viewpoint of Tendulkar the batsman and the captain.

After a run of very successful seasons in international cricket, he was put in charge of the team. It was obvious to us that the crown of captaincy did not fit him perfectly. Under Sachin's leadership for the first time in 1996, many of us found it difficult to match his expectations. His demands and anticipation of his teammates' performances originated from his own talent. Lesser mortals found the going tough even to understand their roles, never mind the whole business of taking on the pressure of international cricket.

Everytime he was in charge, a curious pattern of a slump in form followed. To others it may not have been a slump, but by his standards it was. Sachin took some time to realise that it's not practical to expect others to emulate his feats. Basically, his talent was inborn and those skills cannot be acquired or transferred to anyone. The loss of any game under him his captaincy worked him up so much that it preyed on his batting abilities.

John Wright: "If around 1990, I'd been asked how long this 16-year-old Indian touring New Zealand would survive in international cricket, I wouldn't have come close. No matter how good the kid looked, you didn't think in terms of a 20 years."

The timing of his departure was crass but the all-rounder's part in Ashes folklore is undeniable, writes Mike Selvey in the Guardian.

The manner in which Andrew Flintoff chose today to acknowledge a fitness battle lost even as the tightest County Championship for years was coming to its conclusion did him little credit. What abject, thoughtless timing, a slap in the face for the game that nurtured him and set him on the road to fame and considerable fortune.

He and his advisers are sufficiently familiar with the machinations of many media desks which know little of county cricket and care even less, seeing only celebrity and names, to understand what would be placed top of the agenda. It is an uncharacteristic faux pas at odds with someone known for the generosity of his spirit.

In the Independent, James Lawton says, "He wasn't always brilliantly served by the workings of his head but then anyone with a heart and a talent as big as Freddie Flintoff's was always going to blast his way through the most critical judgement."

Adios Freddie © PA photos

John Stern, writing in the Wisden Cricketer, says the retirement of Andrew Flintoff is hardly surprising news following his absence since the end of the Ashes in 2009. Also not surprising, he adds, is the indifference with which his decision might be received.

In my limited dealings with Flintoff he was charming, polite and great company. But endearing though his ‘I’m just a thick lad from Preston’ schtick is, it is highly cultivated. The oft-made claim that he doesn’t really like the spotlight are contradicted by the endless endorsements, some of them embarrassing in their overtness, and the Christ-like affectations of last summer.

In the Daily Mail, Paul Newman calls Flintoff "a lion-hearted, inspirational player who enjoyed great moments while never becoming one of the greats". He also says Flintoff was never as popular with the team as he was with the public.

The timing of yesterday's announcement summed up why Flintoff was never as popular within the game as he was among the supporters. It should have been the day when a great finale to the Championship race could be celebrated, when the grand old competition of the domestic season had a rare day in the sun. Instead it was a day hijacked by Flintoff, who could have waited but who orchestrated his retirement at the behest of a sponsor and overshadowed the drama of Nottinghamshire's unlikely triumph at Old Trafford.

When we look back at Flintoff's injury-hit career, in which the second half was spent more in rehab than on the cricket field, we realise it was comprised of islands of ecstasy amid a sea of inconsistency, writes Derek Pringle in the Daily Telegraph.

On the Cricket365 website, Mike Atherton writes that the sadness Flintoff feels on his retirement from cricket is likely to be diluted by a sense of relief.

The calls for Andrew Strauss to be dropped from England’s one-day side ahead of the 2011 World Cup appear to be unending, despite his recent match-winning hundred against Pakistan. Strauss doesn’t have the attacking shots necessary to succeed in the subcontinent, his critics say. Not everyone agrees, however. Writing in the Independent, Stephen Brenkley thinks this line of thinking misses the big picture.

Since his career restarted early last year, he has batted 32 times at an average of 42.03, scoring those runs at 5.19 an over, hitting 145 fours, 4.5 an innings, and 13 sixes. The increased aggression and its results are plain.

But there is much more to Strauss's place in the team than that. He is the captain and his importance in that role cannot be underestimated. There can be no room for sentiment in selecting sporting teams (although, on the other hand if there is no room for it in sport, where is there?) but Strauss's position embraces a great deal more.

In the Guardian's weekly mail, the Spin, David Hopps hands out the gongs for the 2010 county season. Besides the usual 'Cricketer of the Year' and 'Team of the Year', Hopps also names the 'Dullest cricketer of the Year' and 'Most fondly missed cricketer of the Year'.

"The whistle blower in sport has to be a brave man. He puts his finger on colleagues he has played with for years, so becomes the team pariah, an outcast who cannot be trusted," writes Suresh Menon on ESPNStar. "Yet, if the evil of match-fixing and all its cousins, including spot-fixing, is to be eliminated from cricket, then players who notice things out of the ordinary must be encouraged to report them."

Players are not dumb; they usually have a shrewd idea who is pulling his weight in the team and who is not. Years after Mohammad Azharuddin was implicated in the scandal, a player told me: "I knew there was something funny going on, but I had no idea what." His response was to withdraw deeper into himself and not ask embarrassing questions.

That is why when a player does speak up, it must be seen not as ratting on teammates but serving the higher cause of the sport. This means that he should be guaranteed the support of his captain, his officials and the media. The captain and the officials follow protocol, the former passing on the matter to the latter, but the media are out of anybody's control.

Six days before Andrew Strauss scored his fifth ODI hundred against Pakistan, Derek Pringle, Alec Stewart and Darren Gough had picked their 15-man squad for the 2011 World Cup and had left out the England captain. And despite Strauss's match-winning century, Pringle writes in the Telegraph that Strauss's omission has merit.

Having experience of England in the subcontinent for more than two decades, including their abysmal showing in the 1996 World Cup, their biggest failing has been their under-utilisation of the Powerplays. With that premise, the focus inevitably shifted to picking a top three best-set to remedy that. After a lengthy discussion, we settled on Steven Davies, Ian Bell and Kevin Pietersen, with Matt Prior as back-up opener.

The argument against Strauss was centered on the likely sluggish nature of the pitches and the difficulty they would present to someone most comfortable scoring his runs square of the wicket.You also need to be able to put pace on the shot with a wristy flick or an artful bottom hand, something Strauss only really possesses when cutting.

In a freewheeling interview with Shekhar Gupta on Indian Express, Harbhajan Singh talks about his growth as an offspinner, his 'special' relationship with the Australian cricketers, the time under Greg Chappell as coach and more.

I have not done many new things in terms of my bowling, I have just done what any normal guy may do. I just bowled a lot of balls in the nets, and I practised very hard. And I made sure I did my work right.

Whatever happened in Sydney was an instance of making a mountain out of a molehill. They do not like it when people say things about their players, but they are probably the worst when it comes to saying things or doing things to other players. But I am not like those who can listen to abuses and keep quiet. I have come to play, not get abused. If they abuse me, I will give it back to them.

The West Indies board has done the right thing by not offering Ramnaresh Sarwan a retainer contract, writes Tony Becca in the Jamaica Gleaner. He says that the board has to get strict on the issue of players' fitness if the West Indies are to get back to their glory days.

West Indies cricket has always talked about testing players for their fitness before a series or before a tour, and it has always had doctors available to whom the players should go for medical examinations.

The history of West Indies cricket, however, is filled with players who have not attended those fitness tests, players who failed those fitness tests and players who blatantly refused to do their medicals.

No one, not that I can remember, has ever been penalised for refusing to do the tests or the medicals, for failing the test and the medicals and that is the gospel.

Before the sting that allegedly exposed three Pakistan players for spot-fixing, the News of the World carried out a sting on then world snooker champion John Higgins that appeared to catch him accepting money to fix the results of specific frames. Snooker’s governing body, however, found Higgins innocent. The case makes clear the dangers of trial-by-media. Innocent until proven guilty is a fundamental principle of justice. Passing judgement on the three Pakistan players in the eye of the spot-fixing scandal is therefore best left until all investigations are complete, writes Jonathan Howcroft in the Back Page Lead

It is clear that both snooker and cricket (and presumably all other sports at some level) have problems with spot-fixing and match-fixing. If there was no problem, neither of the News of the World’s stings could have been executed to such an extent. However, if the purpose of these investigations is to uphold sporting integrity, judgement should be left until the allegations have been conclusively proven. The line between an investigation in the public interest and circulation-boosting entrapment is fine and the Higgins case shows how damaging it can be if the public is cast as judge and jury before time.

Let us hope ongoing and future allegations of sporting misdemeanours can be judged soberly by those professionally charged with doing so. If these are brought to light by investigative journalism, praise should be lavished on the investigation at the conclusion of a fair trial. Until then, however shameful the circumstantial evidence and sensational headlines appear, the presumption of innocence deserves to rule.

Chris Read, the Nottinghamshire keeper was badly treated by England – and Duncan Fletcher in particular. He talks to Mark Sellek in the Independent on Sunday.

The Fifth Test at the SCG in 2007 was the last time England picked him. But that wasn't the last of it. Read was singled out for criticism by Fletcher in a score-settling memoir. Contrary to Marsh's assessment, Fletcher thought Read's keeping was flawed, and his batting lacked defensive technique. Much worse was the implication that Read was too timid mentally to be a Test cricketer.

Read's own form has been outstanding since 2007 (he has averaged 45, 55, 75, and 50 in the past four Championship campaigns). "It sounds sort of arrogant to say it, but there have been times when I just know I'm going to score runs. I know my own game inside out. My keeping, which in most people's eyes is my stronger suit, hasn't dropped off either."

Tim Nielsen, Australia’s coach, wandered around London following the Ashes loss last year and contemplated his past and future. The Sun-Herald’s David Sygall spoke to him about the result and the signing of a new contract.

“I kept thinking, 'What's happened here?''' The Ashes had been close. A session lost at The Oval, another at Lord's, and the urn was gone. ''I read the media, and saw there were people questioning my decisions and accusing me of not knowing what I was doing,'' Nielsen said. ''I can get a bit emotional, and it was hard to focus on the big picture. I was trying to work out why, how, what had I done wrong? I questioned the decisions I'd made, and wondered if I could have done better.”

Sygall also has some questions for Australia ahead of the Ashes.

Peter Roebuck writes in the Hindu that he is glad the Champions League is getting underway and hopes the attention shifts from the spot-fixing scandal.

Of all the tournaments played in recent times, it has been the freshest and cleanest. Last year's edition attracted scant attention but provided considerable pleasure.

Plain as day it mattered to those taking part, many of whom had never previously appeared in such a prestigious event. Suddenly humble provincial performers were given the chance to mix it with the mighty. Suddenly they were representing their country overseas. To them it was a huge honour and responsibility. Throughout they played with the sincerity that sometimes eludes supposed superiors. Unsurprisingly they trounced makeshift outfits.

Kevin Pietersen and Dimitri Mascarenhas' tweets may have drawn official ire but a ban on Twitter is not the answer, writes Emma John in the Guardian.

But, leaving the ECB's legendary moral rectitude aside, a ban would be a terrible mistake on its part. Twitter is one of the best marketing tools an under-rated England team has going for them right now. Graeme Swann and James Anderson's on-off "bromance" has been a cracking storyline and frankly deserves some sort of Bafta recognition, if not a full-blown film adaptation starring Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller. They have 60,000 supporters each, which is 57,000 more than any of the counties have at their average gate. Tim Bresnan, the pair's oft-maligned stooge – the Karl Pilkington to their Gervais and Merchant – has 20,000 followers, and he's not even in the Test team.

If you aren't au fait with Steve Davies, England's newest wicketkeeper, Stephen Brenkley has some information on him in the Independent.

Davies was one of Surrey's legion of signings this season. There were those who feared that such a quiet and unassuming chap would find the move too much. Worcestershire, quiet, sleepy, rural Worcestershire seemed to fit his personality rather more than the city slickers at Surrey.

But he fitted in immediately and when nobody else could make a run at the start of the summer he carried the batting. Pressed into service briefly as Championship opener, he has averaged almost 50 in that competition and is the county's leading one-day run scorer.

The importance of Champions League qualification for franchises in the countries involved has been clear since the prize money was announced, with a pot of $6 million available each year and the financial effects of the competition are making themselves known and for some countries they are significant writes Tristan Holme on cricket365. But if we were to judge a tournament by on-field vs off-field impact, the Champions League might well be the most distorted that cricket has known.

Organisers expect it to take time to truly get off the ground so perhaps we shouldn't be too swift to judge, but if people don't tune in this year then it would appear that ESPN Star Sports, in putting up $1 billion for 10 years of TV rights, have paid over the odds.

Nevertheless it's money that cricket needs, so the three founding members need the tournament to work. There were some memorable moments last year, but aside from Trinidad and Tobago warming the hearts and a few youngsters such as Rilee Rossouw showing their potential there was a distinct lack of overall value. It's difficult to see that changing over the next few weeks, and if it doesn't then a rethink is in order. Twenty20 for the sake of it can only go on for so long before the bubble bursts.

Every cricket-related betting or fixing scandal over the past decade has been different; it is not the same story being repeated over and over again, writes Ashok Malik on Yahoo. Given this changing template, there is no guarantee that the problem will vanish and fixing and player bribery will be sorted out forever, should India legalise sports betting.

Between 2000 and now a new animal has taken over the betting business: online betting. Betting websites are fascinating in their operations and in many ways approximate trading in the stock market. The odds for a match are set not by an individual bookie or a consortium of wise men but by the market.

Odds keep changing as a match proceeds. You can bet at various stages of the match and fine-tune your bet given your understanding of the game's trajectory. If your understanding is determined by insider information - as opposed to merely a cricket fan's assessment - there's a fortune waiting.

In the Guardian, Roy Greenslade explains why he thinks the News of the World sting which led to the breaking of the spot-fixing controversy was justified.

Was there a genuine public interest in exposing (alleged) sporting corruption?

I like sport and I like cricket. I support Essex and England. I understand the desire to win and the passion it arouses in both players and spectators. Sport is meaningless if it is fixed because it is, at its heart, all about competition. Otherwise, there is no point to it.

People who do not like sport may well take a different view. They may see it as nothing more than a branch of the entertainment industry and, as such, fixing what happens is no big deal. So where, they might ask, is the public interest in exposing it? Though I have also grown increasingly cynical in recent years about corruption in sport (such as the use of performance-enhancing drugs), I cannot agree.

I do believe that there is a genuine public interest in exposing sporting corruption (though I readily concede it's less important than, say, political and financial corruption).

What happens next could finally rid the game of the spectre of corruption and prove that the International Cricket Council really are capable of running the world game strongly and efficiently, writes Nasser Hussain in the Daily Mail.

If Salman Butt, captain of the Pakistan team, and Mohammad Asif, who is an experienced bowler and no stranger to brushes with authority, are found guilty they must be banned for life, no question. But the jury must remain out on Mohammad Aamer because we don’t know what pressure he was under, if he is indeed guilty, and we don’t know if an alleged deliberate no ball was his first and only offence.

If it was a first offence maybe we need to be lenient, but if there have been other alleged misdemeanours then the game needs to be very tough with him, too. He is old enough to know right from wrong.

What they did looks like a crime against cricket. And if there is no firm response from the Anti-Corruption and Security Unit, we might as well disband it, writes Geoff Boycott in the Telegraph.

The evidence looks so bad that, whatever the police make of this case, the ACSU will be under pressure to take strong action. Within the disciplinary hearings, the burden of proof might as well be reversed: it is up to the players to prove themselves innocent.

In cricistan.com, Abdul Habib separates the facts from the fiction surrounding Yasir Hameed's video released by the NOTW. As any Urdu speaker would testify, Hameed's words have been distorted in an attempt to sell newspapers, he writes.

Cricket has drawn Pakistani society together but now shows apparently disparate elements are more similar than people think, writes Osman Samiuddin for the Observer.

Cricketers have come from places much smaller than Asif and Amir, from poorer backgrounds, and gone through entire lives – let alone a career – without a scandal to stain them.

Pakistan's players do not get paid as much as counterparts around the world, it is being said. This is true. They have also missed out on the life-changing riches of the Indian Premier League. But at 250,000 rupees (£1,900), 175,000 rupees and 100,000 rupees per month in the three grades of the PCB's central contracts, they are not paid peanuts. They live in Pakistan, not India, Australia or England, and in this country that kind of salary is seen by very, very few.

Add on match fees – roughly the same again as the monthly retainer – and on‑tour fees, board and personal endorsements, salaries from their first-class sides (which are run by organisations such as banks, airlines and power companies, offering the option of a stable, secure job after retirement), deals with counties and league clubs and now Twenty20 domestic sides, and most elite players really are kings of this land.

This is why the alleged leadership of Salman Butt is the most difficult aspect to grasp. Amir's errors can too easily be explained by his youth and his background, and Asif has previous, having failed a drug test. But Butt? Whenever there is talk of him it is inevitably of his English-speaking and educated ways. He is a truly urban product, to a degree polished. "He's been brought up well," Bob Woolmer once said of him. Had he not been a cricketer, he could have been nine-to-fiving somewhere and who knows, his floppy locks might have got him into the music gig.

Has any game waged such war on its reputation as cricket? Has such a war occurred on so many fronts? asks Gideon Haigh in the Age.

Cricket is both prone to abuses, and not bad at naturally correcting them. Which is just as well, given that authorities are usually so hopeless at imposing order, arriving on the scene like a fat, panting, 60-year-old outfielder chasing a ball to fine leg and turning to throw just as the batsmen complete their fifth run.

The manufacturing of outcomes and the fixing of results, however, belongs to a unique category of reputational risks. Cricket's on-field blow-ups have always been about the craving of an unfair advantage, the quest for victory.

Doing the bidding of a third party for money, even on a limited scale, is no such thing. It's corrosive of trust, of credibility, of pleasure in the contest. It poisons all that surrounds it.

The News of the World sting has turned the cricketing world upside down and made match fixing topic du jour once again. In Open magazine, Aniruddha Bahal, goes inside the tabloid’s undercover operation and breaks it down, meeting by meeting.

The setting was a classic undercover strategy, specially where an impression needed to be conveyed of opulence and power. In this case, the NOTW team pretended to be members of a betting syndicate (two males accompanied by a female secretary). It was also a classic ruse to flood the scene with pinhole cameras. The presence of three undercover reporters at the table meant that there was a reassuring number of hidden cameras. In any such undercover scenario, the more camera circuitry you have swamping the scene, the more insurance you have. You never know which camera could go kaput on you, and it is always good to bank on the reliability of numbers.

Ironically, at this meeting Majeed abused “Pakistanis” quite a lot, saying something to the effect that he “liked to deal with Indians” instead. He also sat on the table with two phones—one a BlackBerry mobile and the other a downmarket phone wrapped in polythene. He admitted to changing his Sim cards every other week, and he had a ready schedule of the Pakistan cricket team on one of his mobiles which he referred to every now and then.

Osman Samiuddin, writing in the Crest, traces the history of some of the present problems afflicting Pakistan cricket to a pay dispute between the players and the board in 1976.

The relationship between board and player was reversed so that players, for long servants, became masters. Television, particularly after the broadcast of that '78- '79 series, helped spread the game beyond any administration's dreams. Talent began to spill in from around the country, away from just Lahore and Karachi that had dominated Pakistan sides till then.

This new player was unrecognisable from earlier generations who were city boys without fail and products of a thriving college scene. This breed came from smaller towns, villages in some cases. Education was no longer the only access to cricket. And in any case, as Imran Khan points out, the public education system had aged particularly badly in Pakistan. Television, money and some success has made the player today more powerful than ever, but probably least-equipped than ever before to handle it.

Also in the Crest, Ayaz Memon says, "Sharad Pawar could hardly have anticipated that his first assignment as ICC chief would be to tackle the ogre of match-fixing. Nevertheless, now that this has erupted in his face even before he has measured out his office, so to speak, he must move with alacrity to counter a menace that threatens the very existence of the sport."

"It shakes my faith in sport that Mohammad Amir — a boy touched by genius but betrayed by dreadful role models — could be corrupted," writes Ed Smith for the Deccan Chronicle. "But I am convinced that the game is better with Pakistan than without it. And I would rather be disappointed again than close the door on that country."

India’s top players should play more domestic cricket so that the juniors can learn from them, says Makarand Waingankar in the Hindu. He recalls the era when national team stars used to regularly turn out for their state and club sides and feels the Australian approach of making domestic cricket mandatory is worth emulating.

Teenager Dilip Vengsarkar learned more about batting watching Gavaskar from the other end for Dadar Union than listening to a dozen coaches. Former India opener Madhav Apte, who toured the West Indies in 1953, played ‘A' division tournaments for 55 years until the age of 71, facing Mumbai Ranji Trophy bowlers without a helmet.

The solution is simple. Like Australian cricket, make playing domestic cricket mandatory irrespective of the stature of a player. Sadly the stalwarts seem to have forgotten that when they were teenagers they benefited immensely by playing with cricketing icons.

With criminal convictions looking increasingly unlikely, the game's corruption unit will pick up the investigation into the Pakistan betting scandal, writes Mike Selvey in the Guardian.

What happens to the three Pakistan cricketers under investigation is another matter. On the face of it, the News of the World appeared to have managed a perfect sting, where the subject Mazhar Majeed seemed able to satisfy that paper of his ability to manipulate events within matches. The no-balls at Lord's, apparently to order, appeared to verify this. However, anyone who has had a cursory look at the 2005 Gambling Act will understand the difficulty in converting allegations into convictions, given the demand for hard evidence that, say, the bowling of such no-balls is directly associated with the sort of criminal gambling activities that are also alleged. There has to be a paper trail.

After a bizarre day that featured half-baked briefings, backstage maneouvrings and a clumsy Pakistani counter-attack, the International Cricket Council finally made its presence felt in this sad and unedifying story, writes Derek Pringle in the Telegraph.

The tipping point for England seems to have been the comments Ijaz Butt, the chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board, made at 9pm on Wednesday. In an interview with the BBC, Butt was adamant that the three would remain part of the tour, unless they were charged with an offence. Outraged that Pakistan could be such ungrateful guests, after the summer’s mercy mission that brought them Tests against Australia, the ECB’s top brass swung into action.

Forthright talks ensued through the night, between Butt, Giles Clarke and David Collier, the ECB’s chairman and chief executive, as well as Haroon Lorgat, the chief executive of the International Cricket Council. Nobody would officially confirm the precise content of the discussions but it would have been surprising if they had not pointed out what Pakistan cricket stood to lose by playing hardball over the players given the damning nature of the News of the World’s dossier.

In the Back Page Lead, Malcolm Knox questions the intelligence of the kind of bookmaker who takes bets on something so specific and meaningless as a no-ball at a particular instant, that in most cases should betray prior knowledge. He also manages to find a silver lining around the dark cloud that has emerged because of this scandal.

If bookmakers are stupid enough to take spot bets that are fixed, and players are corruptible, then the result will be that the bookmakers will be stung often enough to refuse taking such bets. If the Pakistan players are corrupt all or most of the time, the market would have become a sham and would have ceased to exist. The fact that the market does exist tells us one thing: most of the time, the players are trying their hardest. When they are not, they are choosing their moments selectively. Otherwise there would be no bookies left to fool.

Mike Selvey writes in the Guardian that while Kevin Pietersen's rapid descent "from Kensington Oval to Kennington Oval in the blink of an eye" is quite shocking, the county break will give him a chance to regain his swagger before the Ashes.

In Pietersen we have someone whose cricket is almost driven by the internal engine of his ego. No one can match his strut. Underlying it, though, say those who know him best, is an insecurity that ultimately (and uncharacteristically) manifested itself in his soul-bearing interview on Sky last week where he made it plain that his confidence was shot. When the cock of the walk is reduced to that, it really is time to sit up and take notice.
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As with, say, David Gower, we need to recognise and accept him for what he is while not trying to make him what he is not. The break now will do him nothing but good: an opportunity to take stock. He will be stronger for it. If anyone outscores him this coming Ashes series, then my bet is they will have played exceedingly well to do so.

Pietersen may have lost a lot of ground recently, but one thing he hasn't is his air of popular magnetism, writes Guardian's Barney Ronay who mentions the "pleasing circularity" of Pietersen seeking rehabilitation at the Oval, where five years ago he scripted an Ashes epic.

Emerging at first wicket down in Surrey's chase – greeted by wild cheers and whistles – Pietersen got the chance to exact revenge on Worcestershire's bowlers, which he set about with an array of leg-side flicks in a perky 38 before being caught and bowled by his personal bowling nemesis, the left-arm spinner – on this occasion Shaaiq Choudhry, playing in just only his sixth match. England's selectors, having taken a huge gamble in dropping their star batsman, will be hoping for a similar, albeit more concerted response in the coming weeks.

While there is an understandable desire for swift resolution, the complexity of the spot-fixing case and the need to get any punishments absolutely spot on means that the ICC must take its time here, writes Rob Smyth in the Guardian.

Perhaps the desire for smallish bans simply stems from a need to see Amir again. The thought that his career is over is far too heartbreaking to even consider. It is his involvement that has made this case so sickening and sad. We tend to reach for hyperbole at times like these, but Amir really is comparable with any 18-year-old bowler in the history of the game. And those who would easily dismiss him as a greedy deviant should recall his overwhelming joy at taking a Lord's five-for on Friday, when he bent down to kiss the turf. The News of the World described it as "a kiss of betrayal", but it wasn't: it was the kiss of a kid who adores the game. He may have done something gravely wrong; if so, we must hope the ICC does not compound it with a hasty and excessive punishment.

Omar Waraich of the Independent joins the former Pakistan captain Imran Khan as he tours his flood-stricken country on a relief mission – and tries to make sense of the betting scandal gripping cricket.

The controversy recalls a moment in 1989, when he [Imran Khan] was warned of a plot to corrupt his team. "I was called in the middle of the night," he says. "It was the final of the Australasia Cup against Australia in Sharjah. I was told that four of our main players had either been bought or would throw the match.

The next morning, Mr Khan summoned his team. "I told them, 'Look, I know all of you and I know cricket. If I see any of you underperforming, I will not just have you banned, I will ensure that you go to jail." He told the coach to bet the team's entire prize money on winning. It worked. "We won the match," he says, and later it was "confirmed that bookmakers had tried to influence the players".

Amid Pakistan's general lawlessness, is it any wonder that cricketers have lost their way? asks Mustafa Qadri in the Guardian.

Pakistan is a different country now, overpopulated and underdeveloped with a government that doesn't even pretend to care unless you have money, influence, or the media puts you under the lens. The overwhelming mindset for success is to achieve it at all costs, by any means, and as quickly as possible.

The shambolic Pakistan Cricket Board has no system for preparing our cricketers for the demands of international sport, from the most basic to the more complex. So it is no surprise that athletes with astounding natural abilities exhibit self-destructive tendencies.

"It would be tempting to present Kevin Pietersen’s omission from England’s one-day squad as a morality tale about how the mighty have fallen, as that is plainly how the man himself sees it," writes Derek Pringle in the Telegraph. "But top-notch sportsman that he is, Pietersen is as fallible as the rest of us when his mind, hardwired to the pursuit of constant success, starts to question itself."

The truth is that KP has not been at the top of his game for a while now, especially in one-day cricket, the format he used to confirm his international pedigree with England in spectacular style, when he scored three hundreds in six games against South Africa.

He last passed fifty in 50-over internationals just under two years ago at Cuttack, when he was still captain. That same evening, the terror attacks on Mumbai commenced, though for Pietersen it has been his demotion back to the ranks that has had the greater affect on his cricket.

Pietersen is hurt by his omission but he should eventually come to thank the selectors. England need him in Australia this winter, but not as much as they once would have done. If he realises that he may be restored, writes Stephen Brenkley in the Independent.

This is Andy Flower and the England selectors sending out a message - it doesn't matter who you are or how good you are, if you take your eye off the ball you will be left out of the England cricket team, writes Nasser Hussain in the Daily Mail.

How he reacts now is crucial. He must not huff and puff and sulk. He must score big runs for Surrey. That is the point of what England have done and that is how Pietersen will regain that rhythm and form, even if he does it by scoring Second Division runs.

I have no doubts at all that Kevin Pietersen will be in the England team in Australia and I can see why the selectors feel this is the best way of helping him recover his form in time for the biggest series of them all. We all want to see the KP of old firing again, not least the selectors, who have made another strong call.

In the Guardian, Rob Bagchi says that if there is one consolation from this benighted series it is that England's fielders are among the very best we have ever had.

The era of hiding duffers such as Phil Tufnell, Devon Malcolm and Alan Mulally at fine leg and long-off is over. Every one of this side chucks himself about with abandon for the cause and executes the basics with finesse. There is no better exemplar than James Anderson who takes every chance that comes his way and never concedes two runs when the ball is within 20 yards of his position like so many lumbering carthorse bowlers in the past did.