Allowing Ricky Ponting to play the Boxing Day Test despite a broken little finger was a mistake, writes Peter Roebuck in the Sydney Morning Herald. It was a big risk to take with his future, and the injury is taking longer than usual to heal.

Not only was the Ashes campaign undermined by this decision but the World Cup campaign might start on the wrong foot. For that matter the career of a fine batsman has been put in peril. From start to finish it was wrong. Of course, this is hindsight. At the time, emotions were running the show.

But there is a lesson to learn. Sometimes the brave and the stubborn need to be protected from themselves. That is the role of elders.

It is often said that one-dayers are all about containment. Ian Chappell, writing in Mid Day as part of its World Cup pull-out, says that the best way to do that is by sending the batsman back to the pavilion. Attacking captaincy, he feels, is the way to go in the one-day format.

There's no doubt employing aggressive tactics is more difficult with the improvements to the modern bat. However, this is often used as an excuse by nervous captains and the good ones retain fielders to grab the mis-hits that stay in the field of play.

Good captaincy in any form of the game requires cricket commonsense, a high priority on taking wickets and a slice of luck. The brave captains are always the lucky ones.

Wasim Akram in the Hindustan Times talks about how he mastered the kind of variation that saw him bowl six different balls an over and what pacemen have to do to prevail in a game that's now loaded in favour of batsmen.

The other rather simple but significant lesson I learnt was that a batsman is at his most vulnerable when he faces his first ball. The bowler has just had success while the batsman is still not sure about his footwork, his approach or his game plan. This is why I used to delight in bowling to a new batsman.

Jonathan Trott has shown he can bat till the cows come home, but can he force the pace, especially in the knockout stage of the World Cup against the spinners on a turning track? Scyld Berry in the Telegraph says that England would like to see what Trott can do when there is no pace on offer.

He doesn’t do sixes: six-hour vigils, yes, but not sixes over the rope. He has yet to hit his first in Test or one-day internationals, although the slog-sweep that he unleashed during his Adelaide century could be the portent of one.

But it was when David Hussey came on with his part-time offbreaks that we had an earnest of what might await in the World Cup ... Even though he had posted his hundred, Trott at Adelaide failed to get a single one of Hussey’s four offbreaks off the square and chopped on the last of them.

Ross Taylor and Brendon McCullum will be vying for the New Zealand captaincy once Daniel Vettori steps down after the World Cup. Both have strong claims, and enjoy the respect of their team-mates. Andrew Alderson, in the New Zealand Herald, looks at the relative strengths and weaknesses of the two men and feels that Taylor is ahead in the race for the top job.

Taylor exhibits Andrew Strauss tendencies - cerebral, considered and a safe pair of hands (including at first slip); an appointment capable of doing the job justice and setting an example.

If Taylor is Straussian, McCullum probably comes more from the Ian Chappell ilk. His captaincy is likely to be aggressive and positive with a "follow me" flavour. There would be few grey areas and it's doubtful any test tenure would have too many marks in the 'draw' column.

In the same newspaper, Mark Richardson says that the current rotation policy being followed by New Zealand is hardly the ideal way to prepare for the World Cup.

Management may sell rotation to the players - after all they have no option - but you must be very careful not to sell them confusion, frustration, doubt and a sense of being underdone. What player doesn't like stability?

Virat Kohli has been the most prolific batsman for India last year in one-dayers. On form alone, he deserves to edge out one of his senior colleagues, Yuvraj Singh and Suresh Raina, even in a full-strength Indian team for the World Cup, writes Akshay Iyer on Yahoo Cricket.

The need for an in-form and consistent batsman at No. 4 becomes all the more necessary as Dhoni himself has been searching for his best batting form of late. And, while Yusuf has come of age batting at No. 7 over the last couple of months, he can't be expected to salvage India's innings in every other match.

It won't be easy to drop either Raina or Yuvraj from the playing XI in the World Cup as they are proven match-winners, but for the sake of ensuring balance in the team and rewarding consistency, one of the two would ideally have to make way for Kohli.

The ICC decided that Kolkata's Eden Gardens would not be ready in time to host the marquee World Cup clash between India and England on February 27 and Ayaz Memon in Mid-Day asks: how could the Cricket Association of Bengal allow things to come to such pass? This is not merely dereliction of duty, but a slur on Indian cricket.

It is dismaying to say the least that CAB has missed a deadline which was staring them in the face ever since the World Cup schedule was allotted to the sub-continent a few years ago. It riles me further that the Bengal cricket administration did not learn anything from the mess-ups that were brought to light when the countdown for the Commonwealth Games began early last year.

Writing in the Age, Peter Roebuck says that Cricket Australia needs to implement substantial improvements in the domestic game in an attempt to restore standards and that Australian cricket is in trouble primarily because it has taken its strength for granted.

Australia's deterioration did not happen overnight. It has been a creeping decline covered for years by the brilliance of the national side. Although Australians long ago stopped measuring themselves against England, a heavy Ashes defeat ought to give the entire community pause for thought. The time has come to stop protecting patches, and to start rebuilding the pyramid.

Adam Parore in the New Zealand Herald writes that former South Africa fast bowler Allan Donald, who has been recently appointed New Zealand's fast bowling coach, will play a key role in helping the bowlers master the art of reverse swing - something that will play a key role in the World Cup, in the subcontinent.

He will be able to help with issues such as knowing when to conserve your energy or to bowl flat out, and strategies of course. The South Africans were seen as the best reverse swing bowlers outside of Pakistan and Donald - who was frighteningly quick - knew what he was up to there.

Sourav Ganguly, the former India captain, tells Pradeep Magazine in the Hindustan Times that the Indian team should embrace the pressure in the upcoming World Cup and not get overwhelmed by it. He also says that MS Dhoni is the right choice as leader because he "takes risks" and "backs his players".

I believe pressure is what you bring on to yourself. I didn't bring any pressure on myself. I always thought of a playing as an opportunity... rather than something that brought on pressure. I have always looked at life and sports that way.

As a skipper you cannot just do things in the typical stereotyped manner. And MS Dhoni also has got a very good team. There is no doubt about that, and that is the reason why India are favourites for this World Cup.

In the same newspaper, Khurram Habib charts Gautam Gambhir's evolution from a shy boy from a sheltered background into a batting powerhouse.

Cricket became such a fixation for the shy, introverted boy that he even gave up his beloved paranthas to meet the demands of his nutrition plan.

While Eden Gardens has been stripped of the India-England World Cup match, which was scheduled for February 27, the Wankhede Stadium was cleared by the ICC. in.com decided to do their own inspection of Wankhede and took some revealing photographs.

Aside from a guest appearance at the National Television Awards, Alastair Cook's heroic return to England following his Ashes-conquering exploits has been typically low-key. He's spent much of his time on his girlfriend's farm in Leighton Buzzard, driving tractors, shooting deer and being recognised by bewildered passers-by on quiet country lanes. He talks about his post-Australia days in an interview with Martin Samuel in the Daily Mail

'What happened this winter has proved to me I can do something special, playing at the highest level,' he says. 'I do not know how it will affect me from here, but, if this doesn't give me confidence, nothing will. I've never been man of the series before, I've only been man of the match twice, but now I know if I get it right I can be there with the best in the...,' he trails off, '...thing.'

In a tirade against the powers that run cricket, John Stern says in the Wisden Cricketer that ridiculous scheduling and the administrators' hunger for quick cash rather than developing the game has rendered the World Cup redundant. "A 50-over match between, say, England and Australia loses some of its lustre when the same two teams have been slugging it out over a seven-match series only a month or so beforehand," Stern says.

The game needs a decent, well-supported World Cup to reaffirm faith in the 50-over game. Whether another six-week marathon will do that remains to be seen. I’m sceptical. Dispensing with the associate nations for next time seems a wrong-headed choice and detrimental to developing cricket in those countries. Scheduling two games a day, rather than one, would help to get things moving more quickly but presumably the TV companies don’t dig that. Just for once, it would be nice to see the ICC do something for the overall health and image of the game rather than just the short-termist, greedy requirements of broadcasters and marketeers.

It's no secret that England, despite their recent win, look a touch jaded in their ODI series against Australia. While key players have been given time off or headed home with injury, one pivotal man has been present throughout. Mike Selvey, writing in the Guardian, thinks the ECB should take matters into their own hands and give Andy Flower a break.

This schedule is tough on the players, but for the man in charge, there is little respite.There have been not only two full English summers, including an Ashes series, each home Test effectively seven or even eight days from the team gathering to the end of the match, and full tours of up to three months to the West Indies, South Africa, Bangladesh, the West Indies again for the World T20, and now Australia. In a week's time he and the team return to England for three nights, before they fly to Bangladesh for their preamble to the World Cup. If they progress to the final, they would be home towards the end of the first week in April.

Meanwhile Lawrence Booth, in the Wisden Cricketer blog, says Jonathan Trott's all-round showing at Adelaide has presented England's management with plenty to consider.

England have a problem, and I’m not talking about the fact they still need to win three in a row in Australia to avoid a first series defeat in any form of the game since September 2009. No, the problem is the oldest one in cricket – the one which says it would be a much simpler game if you could squeeze 12 into 11.

Two men are currently complicating England’s World Cup selection – and a solution isn’t immediately obvious. While Jonathan Trott has played himself into contention with successive knocks of 84 not out and 102, Paul Collingwood is living off scraps. This morning in Adelaide he batted at No.7, from where his run-a-ball 27 felt like an unexpected bonus. He is clinging on for dear life.

Andrew Strauss may have secured the Ashes home and away but there is another England captain who can add to that the World Cup and the World Twenty20. While England may have lost the Ashes in a one-Test series at Sydney on Tuesday, Charlotte Edwards remains one of the leading lights in the game. Andy Bull, in his weekly Spin newsletter in the Guardian, profiles England's best captain and takes a wider look at women's cricket.

"Lottie," says Connor, "is a once-in-a-generation player." That much was clear when she made her Test debut aged just 16. At the time that made her the youngest woman to play for England, a record since broken by Holly Colvin. In her first Test Edwards opened the batting against New Zealand and made 34 and 39. "She always had terrific talent," remembers Connor. "The game came very naturally to her because she grew up watching her dad playing at Ramsey cricket club, like a little boy almost, living and breathing club cricket."

Edwards was such a gifted young player that she captained Huntingdonshire's county Under-16 boys team. Which is a hell of a thing to do when, as Edwards says, you have 16-year-old fast bowlers whanging down beamers at your head to try and prove a point. "Because she had been tested in boys county cricket, she broke into the senior women's game with quite a fanfare," remembers Taylor. That's no word of a lie. Among her first six ODI innings, all played before she turned 18, Edwards scored 102 against South Africa and 173 not out against Ireland.

Rob Houwing, writing on Sport 24, says JP Duminy is over the 'difficult second album syndrome' he suffered after making a major name for himself on South Africa’s momentous tour of Australia two years ago.

Just as pleasing has been the way Duminy responded to his rush of blood in the Bullring: by knuckling down for three meaningful scores on the trot at the key business end of the series when the Proteas came from behind to win 3-2. It is interesting to note that he faced all of 175 balls over the course of those three knocks at Newlands, St George’s Park and SuperSport Park and only recorded six boundaries. Yet his strike rates remained excellent, especially on the first two occasions – 88 in the innings of 52 and 98 in the score of 71 not out. Duminy is probably as good as anyone in the ODI game at present at “working the ball around from the off”, as they say, and running purposefully between the wickets.

Peter Roebuck in the Sydney Morning Herald writes that 50-over cricket is not dying, if the Australia-England series is anything to go by.

Next comes the 50-over World Cup. Alas, the past few tournaments have lacked lustre. Nor can any high optimism be felt about the forthcoming shindig. After all, it's due to last seven weeks, and the bulk of the time will be filled with redundant qualifying matches. But those insisting that the 50-over game is old hat might be mistaken. Whereas T20 provides the promise of a boisterous night out, the longer version gives spectators a day at the cricket and offers them a chance to watch great players pushing themselves hard.

But in the Age, Martin Blake notes that Australia-England contests are not necessarily reflective of the wider cricket scene.

While the figures would have astonished those who believe ''traditional'' one-day cricket is in trouble, they need to be taken in context. More specifically, it's necessary to consider that the opponents are England. When Australia hosted Pakistan and the West Indies last summer, crowds were small, ratings poor and people jumped in to dismiss 50-overs cricket as an anachronism. The opposite has occurred this season.

In the nick of time a group of players is emerging capable of rejuvenating Australian fortunes. The Big Bash and other domestic affairs have thrown up a few prospects to savour even as the old guard remind observers of the folly of judging a sportsman by his birth certificate, writes Peter Roebuck in the Sydney Morning Herald.

In a trice Finch has become a vital member of his State side. That his promotion into the team was somewhat delayed has not harmed him. In the interim he added to his skills and has emerged ready to rumble. Of late, Victorian batsmen have felt neglected. Finch is destined to break the mould.

At the start of the campaign Patrick Cummins expected to spend the summer concentrating on his books and opening the bowling for Penrith. He seemed to have more chance of becoming Tasmania's Premier than playing for his State. A spate of injuries and promotions left NSW searching high and low for a fellow capable of hurling them down. And then word spread about this express train from the Blue Mountains.

GS Vivek in the Indian Express writes that Delhi Daredevils curiously refrained from aggressively bidding for home players in the auction. The only two things seem to suggest that the Daredevils are indeed a national capital-based IPL team: the prefix ‘Delhi’ and Virender Sehwag.

The local flavour is set to reduce further with Sehwag, who was retained, unlikely take the captaincy back after stepping down last season. In such a scenario, their most expensive buy, Irfan Pathan, may be asked to lead the side. While the Daredevils management remains tight-lipped over captaincy, it brushes aside the issue of fewer local players in the team.

It wasn't long ago England were all-powering Ashes winners. Now they have lost four games in a row and their premier spinner is heading home with injury. So what's gone wrong? Paul Newman, writing in the Daily Mail investigates.

The first sign that England's muddled thinking - a feature of their one-day cricket since they came so close to winning the 1992 World Cup - may have struck again came when they announced their 15-man squad. In a major surprise, opener and keeper Steven Davies was dropped, despite a strike-rate of 108 from seven one-dayers, in favour of Test keeper Matt Prior, admittedly in the form of his life.

From introducing a system through which the budding stars can start bowling 140kmh within six months, to ensuring that they have the proper hair-do, Fanie de Villiers has a wide range of plans if he gets a chance to be a bowling coach or consultant. That and more in his interview with D Dutta of gulfnews.com.

"First of all, I do not know what purpose do Ishant Sharma's long hairs serve. If I become the bowling coach of India, the first thing I would ask him is to cut his hair short. He does not look like a cricketer to me. You know, that's the basic thing, you need to look like a cricketer first. Batting or bowling comes after that."

Remember Rudi Bryson? The express quick, who once tormented Shane Warne with ball and bat, now owns a suite at SuperSport Park, where he serves drinks with a flourish. Aditya Iyer of the Indian Express catches up with him.

Flipping a vintage whiskey bottle around his head, he grabs it near his shoulder in one motion, before the concoction is neatly poured into four shot glasses without a spill. The impressed customers leave a happy lot to their seats, before his bartending skills are put on display yet again with bottles of ale, cider, beer and other hard liquors. As his clients soon growl with hungry stomachs, he switches his apron for a chef’s toque. A few minutes later, he joins the satisfied bunch at their majestic view to watch a game of cricket at Centurion.

With the World Cup squads now finalised, Scyld Berry, writing in the Telegraph, believes the host nations have stolen a march on the rest by packing their squads with spinners.

The 10th World Cup, when it finishes its initial month of meandering and approaches a climax, will do so in late March — the end of the cricket season in the Asian subcontinent, when the days are becoming intolerably hot. By then the pitches will be wearing and tearing in the midday sun, and spin will be the best way to counter big-hitting batsmen for whom limited-overs cricket is designed.

Versatility will therefore be the key ingredient. If you bowl first you will need loads of spinners to take advantage of the dry pitches that will prevail at the end of the season; if you bowl second you will need loads of seamers to take advantage of damp pitches, or at least medium-pacers who control a dewy ball, not fast and furious siege-engines like Shaun Tait who could spray it anywhere.

As England slid to their third successive defeat in the one-day series against Australia, Steve James, writing in his Telegraph blog turned a stern eye on a missing spinning allrounder who England dearly needed.

One man simply could not be stirred sufficiently by the lure of a global competition to put in even a smidgen of hard work. Samit Patel has let England down badly. Had Patel shown decent signs of improvement when tested recently, he would have been in England’s squad. England desperately wanted Patel in Asia. Doubtless they will be playing two spinners, so they have to take three such practitioners (sickness has been known to be a problem in that part of the world). James Tredwell is the third, a capable cricketer indeed, but even his closest family members might struggle to mount a convincing case that he is a better one-day spinning all-rounder at No 7 than Patel. The admirable Michael Yardy will fill that spot, but, for all his frugality in Twenty20 cricket, doubts remain over his non-turning, slow left-armers surviving the full 10-over quota on subcontinental pitches.

He may have led his country, in a previously barren summer, to four wins on the trot but Michael Clarke just can’t seem to gain the love of his nation. A few runs might help but Ben Dorries, writing in Australia’s Daily Telegraph thinks there is another problem.

NOTE to Michael Clarke and his management. If you want to know why the Australian Test captain-in-waiting has an image problem - and is mostly unloved by cricket fans and the sporting public - look at his Twitter page. At 9.07am on Saturday, with Australia's World Cup plans in chaos after serious injuries to Nathan Hauritz and Shaun Tait in the previous night's one-day international, Clarke was playing romantic matchmaker.

"Trying to find a date for Steve Smith to take to the AB medal??'' Clarke tweeted. And a minute later: "You can tweet me with your expressions of interest . . .''

Besides the obvious point of who really cares whether Smith takes Dolly Parton or Daffy Duck to the Allan Border Medal (except perhaps the man himself), surely Clarke has more pressing matters to worry about.

Mark Richardson in the Herald on Sunday: Vettori's captaincy has been during a large conundrum. To win Test matches with the resources available cried out for adventure and speculation - but the resources (in the bowling department especially) also pointed at containment as the best and only way. Really, how adventurous can you be when eight times out of 10 you don't have enough runs to play with anyway?

Geoff Howarth, Jeremy Coney and Jeff Crowe had Richard Hadlee and Martin Crowe; Stephen Fleming had Chris Cairns, Dion Nash, Shane Bond, a settled top six and importantly Vettori at a time when his body allowed him to spin the ball. Vettori, however, has never had Bond enough, a top six often in disarray, a lack of penetration and all too often only himself to put the skids on both when batting and bowling.

The rationale behind Jamie How's selection as back-up wicketkeeper to Brendon McCullum in the New Zealand World Cup squad was so surreal last week, and aroused criticism, writes Andrew Alderson in the Herald on Sunday.

To How's credit, he didn't bluff. He admitted he hadn't done any keeping since his days at the New Zealand academy at Lincoln. He also did the honourable thing, saying he'd give it his best shot - as you do when the selectors could be listening. Yet he still sounded bemused at the prospect of standing behind the stumps in a tournament-defining encounter with a backyard level of experience.

The eccentric Australian selectors have made a number of blunders this season. For some, especially in Victoria, the continued overlooking of Brad Hodge is nothing short of scandalous. Jon Pierik in the Sydney Morning Herald asks former selector Trevor Hohns what’s going on.

As debate continues over why Hodge, 36, is overlooked for international honours, this time after missing out on a berth in next month's World Cup, former selection chairman Trevor Hohns has shed light on one of the great cricketing mysteries of the past decade. In an exclusive interview with Hohns says a selection backflip in early 2006 as Australia regrouped with a view to reclaiming the Ashes months later meant Hodge was dumped after five Tests in favour of the recalled Damien Martyn. "Obviously in our mind Marto was a class act,'' Hohns said. ''He was a class player. At that stage we were trying to build the side leading up to the Ashes.'' While Hodge had dominated South Africa's fast bowlers with an unbeaten double-century on a lifeless WACA deck in just his third Test, his first-innings dismissal two matches later at the SCG - caught at bat-pad fending at a short ball from around the wicket by the fiery Andre Nel - sparked concerns.

Meanwhile Mike Coward in the Australian looks at the 1987 World Cup winning squad, a side which sparked Australia’s revival and compares it with the squad now.

Border is precariously balanced on the shoulders of flamboyant batsman Dean Jones and paceman Craig McDermott. For good measure, Jones is holding on to Steve Waugh's left hand in order to provide his skipper with greater support on top of the world. While their smiles are broad enough to light the way back to the dressing-room and much, much further, it is their youthfulness which is so striking. Jones is 26 and McDermott and Waugh 22. And savouring the moment somewhere in the background were squad members Tom Moody, 22 and Andrew Zesers, 20. Judging by the decisions reached by the beleaguered chairman of national selectors Andrew Hilditch and his colleagues Greg Chappell, David Boon and Jamie Cox, such youthful resources are no longer available in Australian cricket. Indeed, exciting wicketkeeper-batsman Tim Paine, 26, John Hastings, 25, whose selection is as surprising as was Zesers' 24 years ago, and Steve Smith, 21, are the only players under 27. Border's triumphant team had 10 in this category.

Losing the Ashes was a disappointment for Shane Watson but, as Daniel Lane finds in the Sydney Morning Herald, it was put into stark perspective when he visited his flood-devastated hometown of Ipswich in Queensland.

SHANE WATSON strengthened his body a few summers ago and went from being perceived as possibly brilliant but brittle, to acclaimed as a colossus. His marketability and clout in Australian cricket has spiked after a seemingly endless run-spree and bumper wicket harvest. Yet, after years of trying to prove his toughness, Watson revealed his softer side last week on a return to Ipswich.

It is no longer a question of whether Virat Kohli finds a place in the starting eleven at the World Cup. It is merely a question of where he will bat, writes Harsha Bhogle in the Indian Express.

Over the last twelve months, India have never played their first choice all-star batting line-up and as the next cab off the rank, Kohli has got a lot of games. He has not wasted any. He is willing to bat anywhere which is an indicator of how he sees change as an opportunity to prove things. Like Rohit Sharma, he too was asked to open the batting and bat at No. 3 and elsewhere. Each time a solid temperament, not always considered his strongest asset then, marched onto the ground and each time he looked a better player.

Adam Parore, writing in the New Zealand Herald, favours Brendon McCullum as New Zealand's next Test captain instead of Ross Taylor, who appears to be the preferred choice.

I don't have the evidence to predict whether Taylor will or won't extract the best out of the players, or whether the captaincy affects his own game either way.

McCullum - who I understand really wants the captaincy - would be very positive and aggressive in his attitude and demeanour, and definitely worth the punt.

David Leggat, writing in the same newspaper, says New Zealand should experiment with McCullum batting down the order in ODIs to try out their options ahead of the World Cup.

Dirk Nannes introduces his Victoria team-mate, and recent Australia debutant Aaron Finch on his blog. Nannes' description of Finch is best summed up by this line: Yes, he drinks. Yes, he smokes ... Yes he picks a fight with his quick mouth ... But he’s a damn fine cricketer and will always be one of the first picked in my team.

Australian sport in general has become a bit of a nanny state – no one can have their own point of view, no one can have their own colour, no one can sledge or make comment in the media unless it’s promoting the next ‘big game’ or goodwill cause. My personal highlights of games are when things get nasty on the field, when feelings come into a game. Finch brings that feeling into every game he plays. He puts the fun back into cricket. After all, isn’t that what we play the game for?

Stephen Brenkley, writing in the Independent, says Shaun Marsh's match-winning century against England in the second ODI made a mockery of his omission from Australia's World Cup squad.

Ignored for the Ashes, he seemed a natural choice for the World Cup in the subcontinent not least for his prodigious efforts there in the IPL.

What was particularly extraordinary about his innings last night was the unfamiliarity of his position. Almost all his previous one-day cricket for Australia has been played as an opening batsman where the rhythms are much different.

Afghanistan’s first-ever women’s cricket team are practising for their first international tournament on a concrete pitch in a park where men are banned, surrounded by walls topped with barbed wire, AFP reports from Kabul. Although many women in Afghanistan still rarely leave their homes, around 600 women play cricket in Kabul, according to officials, AFP say

While the team’s players stress that their families and friends support them, they say they often encounter opposition from men who think they should not be taking part. “The men of Afghanistan think sport is bad for the girls. They say they can’t play football, volleyball. We hope to bring hope to other people,” says 16-year-old bowler Tabasom. “When we exercise, cricket or any sport, we’re complete humans, regardless of gender.”

In a free-wheeling interview with Aditya Iyer of the Indian Express, Herschelle Gibbs reveals the reason why he decided to pen his controversial autobiography, his darkest moment, his finest hour and his take on "dropping the World Cup".

“It never happened. It’s actually a rumour. I don’t remember him saying, ‘Hersch, you just dropped the World Cup mate.’ I asked Gilly about it many years later, during my stint with the Deccan Chargers, and he told me that Waugh was just the kind of guy to go ahead with the rumour. If Australia wouldn’t have won the World Cup, you would have never heard of it, because it isn’t true."

Once India's World Cup squad was picked, the experts were out in force on the country's news channels, dissecting the selection in great detail. Shailaja Bajpai of the Indian Express comes up with a 'Commentators XI' which has almost as much balance as the actual team itself, and braces for their views that will deluge India's cricket-watching public once the event begins.

It is not going to be a cakewalk for these commentators — in each match, their hearts will beat for India but not so that we can hear them. They have to be impartial yet always highlight India’s chances — otherwise who will want to watch or listen to them? That’s a spot of tightrope-walking the likes of which you see in the World Cup commercial now playing on your TV screens. 14 teams. 1 Cup. February 19. Be there.

An editorial in the same newspaper wonders why host teams have generally struggled to win World Cups, and says this edition, lopsided format and all, could be very crucial for the one-day format.

With 32 days until the World Cup begins, Scyld Berry writing in the Telegraph argues that the format for the upcoming tournament promises the lengthy first round will be packed with pointless matches.

If you thought the 2007 World Cup in the West Indies was grim, it was a roller-coaster of thrills by comparison with the forthcoming one. The World Cup, in effect, does not start on Feb 19 with the inaugural match between Bangladesh and India. It starts on March 23 when the quarter-finals commence: and the winners will be the team that conserves its energy for the first month and caters for the eventualities when the World Cup springs into life with the knockout stages which are crammed into the last 11 days. It is incredible such a tedious schedule has been devised. Nothing can happen in Group A of any interest whatsoever in more than a month of qualifying matches. Which four countries are going to qualify from Group A, folks: Australia, Pakistan, New Zealand and Sri Lanka? Surely not. There was I thinking Canada, Kenya and Zimbabwe were shoo-ins.

Harsha Bhogle analyses India's World Cup squad in the Indian Express and says Rohit Sharma should use the disappointment at being left out as a "weapon of ambition".

I don’t know how long this selection committee meeting lasted but in truth, anything more than 15 minutes meant that either the coffee was late or the telephone link to South Africa was poor. Indeed they could have done this on sms; asked Dhoni to text one of four names to make up the 15th player since the other 14 could have been picked by my aunt, the security guard and the mithaiwala. Dhoni had to choose between a fifth seamer in Sreesanth, a third spinner in Chawla, a second wicketkeeper in Parthiv Patel and a ninth batsman in Rohit Sharma. It had to be his call; certainly I hope it was

The IPL has changed the rules of sport, writes Santosh Desai in the Times of India. It is time to acknowledge that something extremely significant is happening in India. Perhaps it is time to look at the IPL not merely as the future of cricket but to ask if it points to the future of sport itself.

The battle between these two competing visions of the future of sport is being played out right here in India. If the IPL succeeds in its present form, it will challenge not just other formats of cricket, but the very idea of sport. Consider it, for what it is worth, as India's gift to the world.

In the same newspaper, Samidha Sharma looks at the marketing battle that is set to unfold during what is being touted as the biggest cricketing season of all time.

Rohit Mahajan in the Outlook magazine writes that in the IPL auction, rules faded before the Greenback.

Obviously, those who have become millionaires overnight are not complaining. Take Tiwary, for instance. He’s relaxed, says his goal is to play well—and play for India. Does he need protection from the deleterious effects of big money? His manager, Nishant Dayal, says, “It’s not about money—it’s about how much he was wanted by teams. My role is to make sure that he keeps his eye on his goal, of playing for India for a long time.” For one Tiwary, there are dozen others, unknown and unsung, who are complaining of having got a raw deal, of having been reduced to becoming the bonded labour of the IPL bazaar

Bharat Sundaresan in the Indian Express looks at Rajasthan's journey from the bottom of the bottom of the Ranji table to becoming the champions this season.

It’s an amazing journey that kicked off with the Kanitkar-led team first dominating the lower division to earn the right to join the Elite teams at the quarter-final stage. Their win over Baroda in the final on Saturday—courtesy their narrow 33-run first innings lead—was their third big scalp of the season.

Wynne Gray in the New Zealand Herald asks - Graceful or gutsy: how do you like your cricketers?

Vettori's technique would not be front and centre in any MCC coaching manual, but his explanations would be in the leading chapters. Like Jim Furyk in golf, Vettori has honed his unconventional style and buttoned on one of the strongest minds in the game to make his methods work.

"IPL likes to present itself as cricket's version of the EPL. It is a dangerous delusion," writes Peter Roebuck in the Hindu. "All soccer matches last 90 minutes. The EPL is the real thing. IPL is an entertainment posing as a game. It does not create life. It feeds and will ultimately devour."

India's hopes of winning the forthcoming World Cup have been badly damaged by the latest IPL auction. Of course the two are connected. Morale is critical in any team. Moreover a community with a compromised culture cannot expect to conquer. The sight of respected men huddled alongside fripperies and jewels whilst bidding for players did little to advance Indian cricket's reputation. Perhaps they were unaware of the grotesque picture they painted to those watching. These were not cricketing folk. These were bees in a honey-pot.

The IPL 4 auction saw corporate egos, passion and a little bit of lunacy. Siddharth Mallya and Ness Wadia almost got into a fight. But you could also sense an inarguable logic at play: team owners just can’t afford to be sentimental about ex-greats, writes Ayaz Memon in the Indian Express.

In the Hindustan Times, Sharda Ugra compares the NFL draft to the IPL auction.

The most commonsensical and yet charming rule behind the NFL’s draft structure is this: the weakest team gets the first choice of player. Never once during the draft, which now lasts seven rounds and two days, is players’ salary discussed. The numbers that are beaten around the experts table concern a player’s records in college football, height, weight, game yardage. They play some TV footage from his collegiate games. The draft is where the NFL picks the most promising rookies and turns them into professional football players. (Its Indian Premier League variant would be teams picking from a mass of the ‘uncapped’ first-class and junior players, who in reality are now left trying to strike ‘perks’-laden deals with the franchises.)

Mukul Kesavan gave Twenty20 cricket a second chance by going to watch the South Africa-India match at the Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban. He describes his experience in the Telegraph.

The cricket was forgettable. It didn’t help the cause of the format that Suresh Raina got 41, the second-highest score after Rohit Sharma’s 53. Raina had just been dropped from the Test team after the first Test of the South African tour because his embarrassing inability to play fast, short-pitched bowling had been cruelly exposed. Watching him star in India’s innings was a textbook demonstration of how the T20 format defangs fast bowlers and rewards second-rate batsmen. But, I reminded myself, perhaps it was wrong to use Test cricket as a yardstick; perhaps T20 needed a different skill-set.

And briefly, the match did come alive as a cricketing contest when South Africa’s Van Wyk and de Villiers put on more than 50 runs in quick time, and seemed to put their team in a position to overhaul India’s 168 run total. In the end, India won comfortably, but as the evening wore on, it became increasingly clear that the match and its result were of no consequence because the point of the evening was the Bollywood show that followed the cricket.

Peter Badel, writing in the Sunday Mail, analyses Brad Hodge’s slim chances of winning a spot in Australia’s 15-man World Cup squad this week.

Despite topping the run-scorer's list in the domestic one-day series this summer with 494 runs at 82.33, Hodge was omitted from the 14-man squad for today's opening one-day international against England in Melbourne. Just as mysterious have been Hodge's repeated setbacks at the national selection table over an 18-year domestic career that has netted 17,084 first-class runs at an average of 48.81.

In the Sunday Age, Dean Jones writes about a coaching trip to an Aboriginal community and how the locals quickly fell for Courtney Walsh, the fearsome West Indies fast bowler.

I said to Courtney that the only way to get their attention was for him to bowl to me at top pace and show them how good and quick he was! Well, it didn't take long to get their attention. Courtney's second ball ricocheted off my neck, which led to a lot of laughter - much to my displeasure! Once they saw how quick Courtney was, they all just wanted to bowl bouncers and let 'em go. They had a ball.

It was my greatest time in coaching cricket. We drove out of the community at sunset, watching tennis balls flying everywhere, spotting kids off massive long runs hurling bouncers at kids who wanted to take them on. As I quickly glanced at Courtney to say what a great job he'd done, I noticed a tear appear on the great man's face. Enough said.

"What happens off the field has become relevant to what happens on it now that the tournament has evolved into a two-month behemoth," writes Neil Manthorp in The Mail & Guardian. He muses over how teams can deal with the "cabin fever" of a lengthy competition, and what combinations might arise in South Africa's playing XI as they search for a first World Cup win.

Existing tensions within teams escalate and cliques develop because of a lack of communication. Every squad has one or two natural room dwellers, but the more players who are allowed to bury their heads and emotions in a blur of meaningless image and sound the less likely a team is to function together as a unit on the field, especially under pressure.

South India, with its Dravidian roots, has its own culture that seperates it from North India. In Open, Suresh Menon argues that the South’s emphasis on education has typically resulted in a more modest, better educated cricketer, but worries that the IPL’s riches might spell the end of this trend.

The two strains worth exploring in the southern players’ distinctive character are Brahminical inevitability, and a conservatism that comes mixed with insecurity. Even before the days of Prasanna, whose father told him he had to focus on his studies no matter what, the southern parent’s mantra has been: academics before sport. It might have mutated into ‘academics alongside sport’ over a period, but we are still some way before ‘sports above everything else’ takes over. Cricket as a career is beginning to be seen as an option, however, but this might be at the cost of education.

Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore have traditionally been cities of academic excellence. There is a certain inevitability to a child going from school to university to a ‘safe government job’. The government might have been replaced by an MNC as the aspiration, but, in essence, the story has not changed. Add to that the uncertainty of a sporting future, and the insecurity that comes with it, and the cry is for ‘something to fall back on.’ That ‘something’ in the south has always been education, even among the wealthy businessmen and technocrats who keep the chair warm for their offspring.

An editorial in the New Zealand Herald questions the absence of the UDRS in the ongoing New Zealand-Pakistan Test series and states that India's reluctance to use the UDRS will affect it at some stage.

Unfortunately, India, the power-broker of the modern game, was far less canny in its one attempt at using the system, in a series in Sri Lanka in 2008. All but one of its referral attempts in three tests failed. The Sri Lankans won 11 of their referrals. But rather than learn from this, the Indians have chosen to oppose the system, thereby placing it in limbo

Adam Parore in the New Zealand Herald writes that New Zealand's Test struggles continue to centre around the top-order batting, because they don't have players who can consistently score big centuries.

All sides have their idiosyncrasies, but this goes way beyond that. Since I can't see a reason for the problem (batting conditions in the third innings are often close to as good as they get in a match), it's hard to suggest a solution.

Jug Suraiya blogs in the Times of India that the country is utterly hooked on the IPL, and has a light-hearted take on the advantages of not being obsessed by the tournament.

If IPL has enslaved us - and there's no if about it, it has - there have never been slaves happier in their bondage. Onion prices? Inflation? Total logjam in Parliament? Pakistani terror? Saffron terror? Chinese incursions into Ladakh? We swat them away like the pesky machchars (mosquitos) that they are. Don't worry, be happy, IPL's here.

Shailaja Bajpai writes in the Indian Express that the most striking part of the IPL auction telecast was how bad it was. As it was, at no stage did we get the big picture. It was like watching a cricket match between teams you had never heard of and that too without a scorecard.

A good telecast would have done the following: clearly identified team owners at each table instead of making us squint to read the ID cards on the table; given us the names of the bidders with the amount being bid, the winning bid, the team composition after a successful bid, and told us how much money a team was left with to spend and who was left in the kitty

Pat Symcox, who was once the face of South Africa’s spinning unit in the 90s, is now the poster-boy of Remax — the country’s largest real-estate franchise. Aditya Iyer of the Indian Express catches up with him.

Andy Wilson in the Guardian examines the credentials of six of the batsmen in contention to replace Paul Collingwood in England's batting line-up, alongside Eoin Morgan: Jimmy Adams, Ravi Bopara, Andrew Gale, James Hildreth, Adam Lythe and James Taylor.

Suresh Menon writes on Dreamcricket.com that not much has changed about the IPL despite the ouster of Lalit Modi. The much-promised transparency was not evident, salaries of retained players remain a mystery and the feeling that rules are being made on the run persists, he says.

The message from the franchisees was clear: sport is not about sentiment. It is business. It is about the bottom line. It is about results. Corporate India dealt with cricketers in a matter-of-fact manner, reducing the great names in the game to their bowling averages or strike rates. Getting a young team together or a bargain or a cheap buy was more important than anything else.

It was a lesson for the cricket board which often lets emotion cloud its judgement, and is happy to rely on past glory when the current form is not so good.

Andy Wilson in the Observer looks at how England captain Andrew Strauss transformed himself into the on-field brains and driving force of the successful Ashes series.

He is a very English hero, though one of South African stock who has been shaped in many ways by Australia. The series win Down Under is an achievement of which the England captain will be justifiably, if discreetly, proud

No, it's not the Ashes. Instead Randy Boswell in the Montreal Gazette looks at the history of cricket between Canada and the United States.

"It was the world’s first documented nation-versus-nation sporting event, a September 1844 contest in New York City between Canada and the United States.

No, not baseball. Not hockey. Cricket. That’s right — flat bat, wickets and whites.

Now, 167 years after the landmark match that blazed a trail for soccer’s World Cup and the Olympics — including Sidney Crosby’s gold-medal moment against the U.S. at last year’s Winter Games in Vancouver — the two countries that made sports history at Manhattan’s long-disappeared Bloomingdale Park are poised to revive their cricketing rivalry in a head-to-head series this spring."

When Anil Kumble announced he would not play in the fourth edition of the IPL, it seemed like he had made a bold statement to shun any conflict of interest that may arise from him being a Board official and still being involved with an IPL team, Kunal Pradhan says in theMumbai Mirror. That’s why it was so disappointing that he turned up at the Royal Challengers Bangalore’s table at the auction.

Granted that Kumble, who is also chairman of the National Cricket Academy, doesn’t have a direct conflict to the extent some of the others mentioned above do. He doesn’t pick players for the Indian team like Srikkanth; he doesn’t directly control funds for the IPL like Srinivasan; and he’s not in a position to do blatant favours for his friends like Modi was. But by aligning himself to the Bangalore IPL team, Kumble, the official, lost an opportunity to do something expected from him the right thing.

Niranjan Rajadhyaksha and Ravi Krishnan analyse the IPL auction from an economic and strategic standpoint in Mint. They observe franchises have shifted from looking for marquee players, like they did in the first IPL auction three years ago, to building a balanced portfolio of players.

There was a clear preference for a more balanced portfolio this year. A strong second rung is always needed in case of injuries or bad form from the stars. So while the bidding for the stars always attracts the most media attention, the strategic actions taken to build the entire team is not always adequately appreciated. IPL team owners have clearly shifted their preference from highly skewed to more balanced player portfolios. These strategic dilemmas are a bit similar to what a mutual fund manager grapples with when designing his equity portfolio.

Twenty20 cricket has affected the availability of fast bowlers for Tests in Australia, and has had a negative influence on the techniques of Australian batsmen, writes Simon Hughes in the Daily Telegraph.

In fact T20 is the source of Australia’s problems. For a start the two most potent bowlers in Australia, Shaun Tait and Dirk Nannes, only play T20 cricket having declared themselves unavailable for Test cricket. In Tait’s case he has cited injury problems as his reason.

Either would have given England’s batsmen something completely different to think about in the Ashes, but they are content to earn their corn from a couple of two-over spells on a balmy evening in front of packed stand of revellers eating fast food.

G Sampath, in his blog in Daily News and Analysis, says the player retention option gave Mumbai Indians and Chennai Super Kings an unfair advantage over other IPL teams, particularly the two new ones.

Just look at the facts and figures: MI retained Tendulkar, Harbhajan, Pollard and Malinga for $4.5 mn, while Kolkata Knight Riders had to shell out exactly the same amount, $4.5 mn, for just two players: Gambhir and Yusuf Pathan. If all the players had been thrown into the auction pool, as ideally should have been done, how much do you think MI would have had to shell out for Sachin, Pollard, Bhajji and Malinga? Or CSK for Dhoni, Raina, Vijay and Albie Morkel?

N Srinivasan, who is a member of the IPL governing council and also a co-owner of the Chennai Super Kings’, presence at the 2011 IPL auction had several other team owners aggravated because they saw a conflict of interest between Srinivasan’s role in planning the auction and his presence at it as a team owner, Prem Panicker says in his blog.

The buzz is that franchise owners were seriously miffed over Srinivasan sitting in on the auction while it was in progress. Friends in some of the franchises pointed out, through SMS and calls, that this was just one hat too many, one conflict of interest too much to stomach. First, they point out, he almost single-handedly rammed in the player retention clause when, besides CSK and Mumbai, all other franchises were against it. ‘If the IPL is democratically run, how come decisions are taken just because it suits one or two franchises?’ one person closely connected with an under-rated franchise asked on phone. Further, Srinivasan set the norms for the auction, decided which player would go in which category, and when each name would come up for auction — which is just dandy since, as a team-owner, he could in advance plan the CSK strategy, then tailor the auction process to suit his team.

Hamish Bidwell of the Dominion Post rips into New Zealand's capitulation against Pakistan in the first Test, saying that the enormity of the batting collapse is almost unparalleled in the side's history.

There's almost no need to belittle them, because the second innings batting figures do that all on their own. New Zealand test history is littered with collapses of a similar magnitude, but rarely against an opposition team of such dubious quality.

The fact that the Black Caps are the eighth ranked, of nine, test nations indicates that they do lose more matches than they win. But this one will be harder to recover from than most.

The dust may be settling on the IPL auction, but debate surrounding Sourav Ganguly's exclusion from the gravy train continues. Avijit Ghosh, of the Times of India, writes that, while Ganguly's case is different from the other older players, the Kolkata franchise probably believes that "what Sourav brings on the table is less compared to what the team gains by his absence". He also warns us against writing Ganguly off.

To go back to Sourav, I still believe he would have had a productive IPL 4. There’s no way to prove this but if you have followed his career closely, you would understand why I say so. You see the scene is again set for him. Sourav thrives on a challenge. He is a fighter who loves to prove people wrong. That’s the man, his essence. One doesn’t know if at 38, he still has the energy to prove himself once again. But, perhaps the unkind outcome of the bidding would have rekindled that fire. The rejection and the humiliation was just the spark he needed. With Sourav Ganguly, you never know.

Sachin Tendulkar’s greatest contribution to the self-image of the diasporic Indian is to enable the construction of a new narrative of self-description, writes Samir Chopra in Outlook.

A sportsman described as the Michael Jordan of his sport sticks an arrow into the Indian quiver that has been missing thus far. True world-dominating sporting power in the new liberalised era is foreign to Indians; to trade in the currency of its attainment, to speak of an Indian at the top of the heap in a game, to speak of the physical skill of an Indian, is a heady experience. Sachin brings instant admission to a world long denied to Indians; he does it by enabling a conception of us that is still exhilaratingly new. The nationalistic pride that he enables is of a qualitatively different nature.

Always understated, always a man of action rather than of words, Anil Kumble has announced his pullout from the IPL in typical fashion, without a trace of fanfare, writes Siddhartha Vaidyanathan on his blog.

In 1990 Kumble had to miss a considerable portion of his semester because of his debut tour to England. On his return, he was asked by the head of the department why he had missed so many days of college.

This was a baffling question in itself – since almost the whole college knew about Kumble’s entry into the Indian team – but nobody was prepared for the answer that was to follow. Kumble’s succinct reply: “I was away for sports.”

The time has come for Michael Clarke to take charge of the Australian cricket team and exude the kind of quiet authority that Andrew Strauss does over his England team, Peter Roebuck says in the Independent.

Overall, Clarke has met the challenge. Certainly, he has displayed the ability to think on his feet that eludes his predecessor. He set astute fields and tried to attack. He demonstrated his faith in Mitchell Johnson by giving him the new ball and made Michael Beer feel at home. Both responded. At last, too, Clarke instructed a paceman to go around the wicket to Strauss, a tactic that has often worked.

Shane Warne was full of praise for Michael Clarke’s captaincy during the third day at the SCG, and James Lawton, in the Independent interprets some of his comments as a suggestion that Ricky Ponting’s time was up.

But if it was praise for Clarke it was also indeed a thrusting of the knife into Ponting. The virtues of Clarke, Warne made himself clear, were the vices of the man who now seems likely to be supplanted by a batsman of talent, who is currently at sea when he walks to the wicket and whose disapproval ratings would scarcely be higher if he was the leading suspect in a serial murder hunt.

In the Telegraph, Sarah Crompton muses on how cricket is a surprisingly unforgiving game for aging men, as they are expected to give their all for every second they are on the field.

And then there is Ricky Ponting, forced to stand down from the Australian captaincy because of his finger injury, now doubtful of ever returning to the role. It wasn’t the story that fascinated me, it was the fact that Ponting is 36. Thirty-six? The man looks 50. Careworn and crumpled, he is hardly a good advertisement for the benefits of the active life. Yet it is also extraordinary that people are seriously contemplating that this unforeseen event may mark the end not only of his captaincy but of his entire Test career.

Grant Flower, Zimbabwe's most capped Test player, announced his retirement from all forms of cricket, saying he wants to concentrate on coaching. zimcricket.org interviews him about everything from his best phase in cricket to how the game can be improved in Zimbabwe, and discovers the one bowler he could never read was Muttiah Muralitharan.

Predictably, Grant feels that the greatest individual performance of his long career – he made his first-class debut in March 1990 – was his double-century against Pakistan in 1995, which included a partnership of 269 with his brother Andy. On the first morning at Harare Sports Club the Pakistan bowlers, spearheaded by Wasim Akram, were almost making the ball talk and reduced Zimbabwe’s top order to 42 for three. But Grant hung in there until he was joined by his brother Andy, who started to counter-attack as the ball lost its shine. Andy made 156, while Grant was still there when the declaration came at 544 for four, having scored 201 in almost eleven hours. This paved the way for Zimbabwe’s magnificent innings victory.

In the Business Day, Telford Vice says legspinner Imran Tahir will be faced with a South African cricket setup that has been too conservative to accept the creativity of wrist spinners.

The last time South Africans took wrist- spin bowling seriously, Guglielmo Marconi was months away from sending radio waves across the Atlantic. The year was 1907, and the wrist-spinners concerned were Bert Vogler, Reggie Schwarz, Aubrey Faulkner and Gordon White, who went to England with Percy Sherwell’s SA team. That’s right: a Test team from this country that included four leg-spinners. Better than that, they were the stars of the attack, taking 40 of the 51 wickets that SA claimed in the three Tests. Vogler and Faulkner alone accounted for 29 wickets.

On a rain-truncated first day at the SCG, it was a stop-start innings from Test debutant Usman Khawaja that made the headines in Australia. Khawaja has what it takes to be his team's next No. 3, writes Peter Roebuck in the Sydney Morning Herald, and displayed every necessary quality - barring longevity - in his debut innings.

No sooner had he taken guard than his innings was under way. Spell-bound, many batsmen record ducks in their first Test innings. Khawaja's worries lasted a single ball. All morning he had watched the openers battling to survive as the ball moved about. Now he found his opening salvo ball arriving on his pads and politely tucked it away for two runs.

In The Australian Malcolm Conn asks what Khawaja's timely knock might mean for Ricky Ponting's batting position, and the line-up in general.

What to do with the rest of the batting order? Clarke stays at number four even though he's been a failure in that position, averaging just 20, and 19 this series. There is no one else. Given Mike Hussey's revival this summer he stays and Ponting could slot in at number six, pushing Steve Smith down the order or out of the side. Much will depend on whether Australia is prepared to play Smith as its front-line spinner. The other debutant, left-arm tweaker Michael Beer, could have a fair say in that later in the match if the weather dries out and Australia can give him a reasonable last innings total to bowl at.

Derek Pringle focusses on Michael Clarke's decision to bat first in The Telegraph, and suggested that England's bowling attack has progressed to the point where it gets results even when under par.

You certainly tend to get castigated more if things go awry after putting teams in, something Ponting knows only too well after Edgbaston 2005, the last time he inserted a team. But Pakistan dismissed Australia here last year for 127, after the home side batted first, so the dangers of taking first hit under heavy cloud at the SCG were well known.

As England look to seal the Ashes and move on to challenge the top sides in Test cricket, Bob Willis writes in the Independent that their strength in the wicket-taking department is their biggest asset.

Steve Finn, Chris Tremlett and Bresnan have all shone at different times during the first four Tests. And although he had little opportunity to stake a case, Ajmal Shahzad impressed in a couple of warm-up games. On top of those already named, you can add Graham Onions, who played a big part in the 2009 Ashes victory and hopefully will re-emerge as a real force once he has recovered from injury, giving England seven front-line seamers deserving of regular Test cricket.

In the Observer, Kevin Mitchell writes that Australia's on-field woes have coincided with a sharp drop in the fan-following in the country. Usman Khawaja's selection, he notes, is a major landmark considering the time at which it has come.

The timing of Khawaja's selection could not be more poignant. He joins his country's team, so Anglo-white for so long, at a time when cricket is struggling to retain its prominence in a cultural landscape that shifts by the year. Rooted in a colonial past that is foreign to many post-war Australians, cricket desperately wants to embrace those ethnic and religious communities that traditionally have had little or no voice in the game.

Steve James in the Sunday Telegraph says that in his long-range forecast for his Ashes XI last June, he did not include Jonathan Trott. He still winces at the thought.

In truth it was an easy mistake to make, and I was not alone in doing so. Trott is quite simply the most underestimated and understated batsman in international cricket. His Test record is now astoundingly good; an average of 64 after 17 Tests, with five centuries and five fifties. He’s as good a converter as Dan Carter. But he’ll never grab the same sort of headlines

In the Sunday Telegraph William Langley asks whether the 'Sprinkler Dance' is really cricket. He writes that the England cricketers’ barmy dance is part of a trend that has affected every sport from skating to sumo.

Given what captain Andrew Strauss’s team had just achieved – a thumping of the old enemy by an innings and 157 runs – the celebrations were understandable. Yet even as the dance became an internet sensation, it raised the question of whether our appreciation of sport is helped by the growing vogue for schmaltz and showiness

Shane Warne in the Sunday Telegraph says that though England have retained the Ashes, they should not rest on their laurels. Now is the time for them to make big changes to ensure they get to the top and stay there.

When you are winning, it is the ideal time to take tough decisions and build on what has gone before. For England, that means having a fresh look at county cricket. It is time to cut county cricket from its traditional base of 18 teams back to 10. It is hard but, if they want to be No 1, they have to do it now

Michael Clarke's well-documented story is one of contradictions and mystery, writes David Sygall in the Sunday Herald. Sygall charts Clarke's journey from Western Suburbs innocent to Australia's 43rd Test captain.

Not only did he become the second Australian to score a century on debut overseas, but he did it in the hardest place possible. He saluted his family in the stands and kissed the Australian flag sticker on his bat.

Mike Brearley in the Observer says that despite failings in leadership and temperament, Ricky Ponting deserves both sympathy and recognition in the batting pantheon.

Jarrod Kimber writes on his blog that though Ponting might be back in Test cricket and could even play again at the 'G a few more times, the best of him is gone.

Omar Henry, the first non-white cricketer to play for South Africa, was at Kingsmead for the second Test against India. The Indian Express' Aditya Iyer caught up with him and learned of how he defied the odds by making his debut at 40 years old, and that he opposes quota because he believes a black person should play for the country only if he deserves it.

"In 1990, we heard that maybe South Africa will be allowed to return to the arena. The hope brought me back from Scotland, who I was representing at that time, and I started playing in Free State under a 19-year old boy called Hansie Cronje, who inspired me to do well. Two years later, in our very first Test match, I was in the playing XI,” Henry says, before adding, “After baking a cake for 18 years, I finally got the cherry on top.”

In the Hindustan Times, Pradeep Magazine muses on the paradox between VVS Laxman's bull-like frame and silky-smooth batting.

Like Joseph Conrad's enigmatic yet heroic fictional character, Lord Jim, VVS Laxman too is "an inch, perhaps two under six feet, powerfully built and he advances straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward and a fixed from-under stare", except that he does not remind you of a "charging bull" but of a man who is a little apologetic about his intimidating physique.

On Sunday, Usman Khawaja will become the first Muslim to represent Australia at cricket. His selection is a sign that barriers are being broken down in Australian cricket, which has been largely mono-cultured, says Peter Roebuck in the Sydney Morning Herald. Roebuck shares some excerpts from an interview the Herald did with Khawaja when he was playing for New South Wales Second XI.

Inescapably, Khawaja's background is relevant. Indeed it is a cause for celebration. It is not so long ago that a youngster of his colour and conviction might have found his path to the top blocked. Even now tensions endure as caricatures persist. Simply by attending to his own affairs, Khawaja will help to break them down.

England may have regained the Ashes, going into the Sydney Test, but Andy Flower and Andrew Strauss have to reassemble their troops after the new year celebrations down by the Harbour bridge, and refocus on what this match really means writes Mike Selvey in the Guardian.

Since the Bodyline series only Len Hutton's 1954-55 tourists and those of Mike Brearley in 1978-79, who took on a side devastated by World Series cricket, have won three or more Tests in a series in Australia. Unless the weather interferes, the coach and captain will accept nothing less. This is the match in which they can demonstrate a ruthlessness that despite their considerable achievements, they have yet to demonstrate to the full.

Nasser Hussain in the Daily Mail says that England have one more task before the Ashes is over: they must crush Australia while they are down and leave them in a state of turmoil.

Back to the Guardian and Duncan Fletcher says that right through the series, England have played on the Australians' aggressiveness by testing their ability to play patiently through the tough sessions and it is England captain Andrew Strauss who deserves a lot of credit for that.

If his decision‑making is still improving, his man-management is superb. Given the furore that accompanied his appointment, it is likely that some of the players would have had doubts about whether he was the right man to lead the team. They do not any more.

James Anderson's contribution to England's success in this series has been immense, says Simon Briggs in the Daily Telegraph. Since the retirement of Darren Gough, no single bowler has won more matches for England than James Anderson.

Now he is England’s main man, and a successful summer will see him overtake all the heroes of 2005 in the Test wickets table. What’s more, he has joined John Snow, Frank Tyson and a couple of others on a short and exclusive list – English bowlers who have led their side to success Down Under.

Perhaps he will never be mythologised in the way given to nasty fasties like Freddie Flintoff and Typhoon Tyson. But, over the last six weeks, the Admirable Anderson has performed his job to perfection.

The Ashes provokes soul-searching as no other cricket event does, writes Gideon Haigh in the Australian, and after the loss to England in Melbourne, Australian cricket has failed its prime directive.

This raises disturbing questions about the effectiveness of the Centre of Excellence, the Australian cricket incubator in operation since January 2004 at Allan Border Field in Brisbane, and of Tim Nielsen, who ran it in its first three years before succeeding John Buchanan as national coach, not to mention the judgment of those at Cricket Australia who before the Ashes extended Nielsen's contract for three years.

When Australia's captain was ushered towards the exit on Thursday, he was not just an unsuccessful Australian captain but an anachronism: a tough, brave, single-minded, self-motivated, record-breaking Test batsman with no time for T20 and its artificialities.

Scyld Berry echoes a similar view in the Telegraph on Sunday writing that Australia are paying the price for a domestic game focussed on Twenty20

Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, Malcolm Knox says that despite Ricky Ponting's many successes, history shows the Ashes losses will loom large in the Australian captain's legacy.

Ponting is the undisputed boss of this Australian team, as evidenced by Michael Clarke's statement that he cannot imagine leading a team in which Ponting is one of the subordinate players. As the undisputed leader, Ponting has accepted both credit and blame for what happens under him. In how he has defined his role, Ponting is a ''strong'' captain. But captaincy is analogous to batting and bowling, and a strong grip is not always the most effective.

Despite what critics might be saying, the loss of Ricky Ponting for the final Ashes Test match is a massive blow for Australia, says Justin Langer in BBC Sport.

This series has shown that he is not a run-machine, but rather a man who has the same frailties as the rest of us and I am certain that he will be stronger and wiser for the tough experience he has just lived through.