Looking ahead to the World Cup final between India and Sri Lanka on Saturday, Geoffrey Boycott in The Telegraph writes that while India are not a team that play well under pressure he believes they are capable of handling the hype to become the first team to win the World Cup in their own country. While India enjoy a stronger batting line-up they need to guard against the wiles of Muttiah Muralitharan and Lasith Malinga.

That is the key match-up in the game. Murali has pulled a hamstring but he will bowl OK on one leg because it is his last match for Sri Lanka. It is amazing what that can do for handling pain. His off-spinner and doosra both turn a lot and unless the Indian batsmen pick him well they are not going to score off him. If he is allowed to tie them down they have got a problem.

‘Slinger’ Malinger is bowling fantastically well. Although his arm is low he delivers the ball from over the top of the stumps so that he is bowling wicket to wicket and that doesn’t give the batsmen any angles to play with. Even when he bowls length he is a good bowler and his yorkers are fantastic. With the old ball he can reverse swing it in at pace. Batsmen know what they are going to get but they can’t always play it

Peter Roebuck in the Sydney Morning Herald writes that Sri Lanka's achievement of reaching the World Cup final is welcome because they field the most original and entertaining team to emerge since Charles Dickens put down his pen.

Several of the players could not have survived the scrutiny of orthodox-minded coaches. Luckily they grew up in a land without fixed ideas about bowling and batting, a country that has not read the rule book, and a nation that plays by its own lights.

Writing in the Telegraph, Michael Vaughan predicts that Ricky Ponting's decision to step down from captaincy could herald a second wind in his career, much like Sachin Tendulkar's resurgence in the last few years.

It is not the Aussie way for a captain to continue playing but he has a role to play by simply helping his team win cricket matches. He should drop down to No4 and maybe even eventually move to five in the order but I expect him to emulate what Sachin Tendulkar has achieved in the past two years. I have little doubt we will see Ponting play in the Ashes in England in 2013 and following winter in Australia. He has not had many serious injuries and once freed from the burden of captaincy, he should feel refreshed.

Looking back at New Zealand's performance in the World Cup Logan Savory Logan in the Southland Times writes that though New Zealand lost in the semi-final, they got the tactics and attitude right during the majority of their World Cup games, including the semifinal.

Following the World Cup I'm a lot happier with what I see from the Black Caps. Whether it's the John Wright influence or that they have finally taken ownership and pride in the fact they are playing for their country, I'm not sure.

Jonathan Millmow in the Dominion Post writes that New Zealand showed intent in this World Cup and one gets the impression that John Wright is slowly knocking this team into shape.

Home they all come, heads above water, just. This wasn't a flash NZ side but good coaching and, one suspects, some tough love got them further than we thought possible.

After their recent travails in the subcontinent, New Zealand punched way above their weight to make the World Cup semi-finals. David Leggat, writing for the NZ Herald gives them a pass mark, but senses changes in the near future.

After their stumblings along the ODI road they pulled things together, achieved three wins from five against the major nations, enhanced South Africa's wretched cup record along the way and gave themselves a chance of making the big show at the weekend. They were the only non-Asian team in the last four, did better than Australia, South Africa, England and the wobbly West Indies.

Nathan Astle in the same newspaper writes that New Zealand's inability to adapt their game plan is what cost them a place in the World Cup final.

They probably weren't as confident and attacking as they should have been. The side needed to push on from their quarterfinal performance as you have to lift your game at each stage of a World Cup and they failed to do so.

Sachin Tendulkar may have led a charmed life in the key innings he played for India that helped them beat Pakistan in the World Cup semi-final in Mohali writes Andy Bull in the Guardian. He has scored two of the sweetest centuries this World Cup has seen - against England and South Africa - and though the 85 against Pakistan lacked style, it had substance.

Each and every one of those 85 runs was a rebuttal to those who say he cannot do it when it really counts. Now he will have to do it again, in a World Cup final, in front of his home crowd in Mumbai. He needs one more century to become the first man to have scored 100 hundreds in international cricket. Do not even dare to dream it.

Suresh Menon in the Daily News and Analysis looks at Tendulkar's chancy innings and writes that even those praying for his 100th century, his greatest fans, might be forgiven for wishing the landmark wouldn’t come here.

And yet, he nearly made a century and that was remarkable. A professional, we are told, is someone who does a job even when he doesn’t feel like it, and Tendulkar’s ability to carry on regardless said something about the kind of person he is.

Suresh Raina made an unbeaten 36 against Pakistan and Simon Hughes in The Telegraph writes that while on a scoreboard an innings of 36 not out looks unremarkable, down the order such an innings which converts a chaseable score to one that is genuinely challenging, is invaluable.

He has a full range of shots, including an extraordinary ability to carve straight balls over cover for six. Belatedly India have recognised his value. When the final against Sri Lanka foes to the wire, as it surely will, it might just be Raina who has the class, the culture and the karma to see India home.

Security was on an all-time high in Mohali for the semi-final clash and according to Stephen Brenkley in the Independent, despite all the three-fold checking by the security personnel and the huge crowds - ticket and non-ticket holders - who had gathered as early as four hours before the start of the match, the atmosphere was electrifying.

The show, when it got underway at last, was Sachin's. For a man in whom millions have unfettered faith, he invited disbelief. He played as a man with feet of clay. It was as if the event had overwhelmed him. But the gods obviously look after their own and he was dropped four times. It really was unbelievable. The only surprise – the gods teasing us perhaps – was that Tendulkar was out 15 short of what would have been his 100th international hundred.

Brian Moore in the The Telegraph writes that India-Pakistan semi-final demonstrated the unique pressures that come with a high-voltage semi-final.

An editorial in the Indian Express states that amid all the hype and hysteria surrounding the India-Pakistan semi-final, this World Cup has also highlighted how stacked the odds are against anyone wanting to go to any exertions to get in as a buying spectator.

For instance, when World Cup tickets first went on sale, just about 4,000 were available for the final at Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium. The Maharashtra Cricket Association pleaded helplessness, saying the majority of seats had to be allocated to the ICC and affiliated clubs. The story is true at other stadia. And this is why getting a ticket so often becomes a factor of one’s capacity to pay (to buy it off a ticket-holder) or, more likely, one’s connections to wrangle a pass.

An editorial in the News praises the Pakistan team for having fought hard to reach the semis of the World Cup and states that while there could be many reasons and many scapegoats for Pakistan's loss, it must be said that the Pakistani boys did a much better job in the World Cup than was being expected before the matches began.

Expectations from Michael Clarke's captaincy should be tempered because he has ordinary bowlers and will not be able to play the way he wants, writes Robert Craddock in the Courier Mail. Clarke's greatest challenge, he feels, will be to find a spin bowler.

As is almost always the case with Test captains, Clarke's success will be dictated by the strength of his bowlers and Australia have their weakest Test attack for 25 years.

Captains of bad bowling attacks must learn to be psychologists with patience by the bucket load ... Mary Poppins could have captained teams with Warne and McGrath.

The Telegraph's Nick Hoult identifies the five key challenges Clarke will face when he takes over the reins.

4. The bling

It was staggering to witness the hostility towards Clarke from certain sections of the Australian public and media when he took over from Ponting for the fifth Ashes Test. Clarke’s publicised split from girlfriend Lara Bingle, the million dollar apartment in Bondi and the flashy cars do not play well in a buttoned up society that expects a certain level humility from its sports stars.

Sri Lanka opening batsman Tillakaratne Dilshan tells BBC Sport that going into the World Cup final, the confidence in the Sri Lankan team is high and they have one agenda: to give Muttiah Muralitharan a great farewell by winning the World Cup.

The team is determined to give Murali - a great team player, a great friend and a really special man in every sense - a great farewell by winning the World Cup once again for him. We simply need to continue the very good cricket we are playing at the moment.

Ricky Ponting, in his column in the Australian writes that while his journey as captain has changed his life, he is looking forward to the next chapter of his playing career where he expects to adapt quickly to not being captain.

I still don't have a finish line in mind and all I am focused on is being the best player I can be, a great teammate, an experienced leader around the group and a guy that my new captain can rely upon to give him something special.

While Ponting led his side on the field, he was confident in the knowledge that he alone had the power to shape the course of the match writes Andrew Stevenson in the Sydney Morning Herald. But Michael Clarke is not cut from the same cloth. As a batsman he's been a helper rather than a leader, a player able to add to the cause rather than change the course of a match.

When all hope appears lost would you get down on your knees and pray for Clarke to bat for your life or the country's honour? While his career figures are sound he has rarely been able to impose himself on an opposition or a series; the pressure on him will become only more relentless with the captain's responsibilities added to his kitbag.

In the same newspaper, Richard Hinds writes that though Ricky Ponting's decison to stay on as batsman is contentious, rather than being embittered, Ponting will be refreshed at an age when most are burnt out. And it is very likely that when Clarke taps Ponting on the shoulder, he will lower his form guide, greet his skipper with a smile and share his vast experience freely.

In The Telegraph Sarah Crompton writes that while Ponting in his pomp was one of the best captains, there is no denying that his recent failures and frustration communicated themselves to all around him. It will be interesting to see whether his successor can bring a sense of pleasure back to the way they play.

In this sense, the character of the captain is crucial. A captain has to lead to victory, to want to win, but also to be gracious both in triumph and disaster, because sport needs its heroes to be models for the way we want to live.

Stephen Brenkley in the Independent writes that while it became the height of fashion to deride Ricky Ponting as a captaincy numbskull, there is no denying that he was the sort of captain that every cricketer wanted to play for.

The great Australian cricket machine is cracking and creaking at the edges, writes Kevin Mitchell in the Guardian and if Michael Clarke is to survive those torments, he will need a dressing room of uncommon unity in a time of flux and will have to find his inner mongrel.

Back to the Sydney Morning Herald, where Peter Roebuck writes that of all the Australian captains of the past 25 years, Ricky Ponting is the hardest to assess. At once he was an unselfish and unswerving leader whose devotion to the team and to the pursuit of victory cannot be questioned.

Ponting's achievements as captain are substantial. If anything he has been given too little credit. A certain coldness kept the world at arm's length, prevented watchers warming to him as they did to Allan Border and Steve Waugh. He never heard their cheers, never touched people as they did. He has found that success and affection don't hold hands. Maybe it's not too late.

Ponting's attributes are probably better appreciated by close-up peers than distant observers, writes Gideon Haigh in the Australian. He has always been, and remains, very much a cricketer's cricketer

It could not be said of every holder of his office, but Ponting has always seemed like the kind of bloke with whom it would be good to play cricket, no matter the level.

In the same newspaper Malcolm Conn writes that with tours of Sri Lanka and South Africa before all-powerful India arrives in Australia, Clarke will need all the hard-headed support he can muster. There is no harder head than Ponting.

An editorial in the Indian Express states that while it easy to look at sporting encounters between India and Pakistan through the lens of political and social confrontation, succumbing to that temptation can create for us the febrile cricket-is-war environment we’re having to endure today. More importantly, it does a disservice to the two teams, to the sport they are playing.

Games are games, and games need good manners, cricket in particular. They need sportsmanship on the pitch and cordiality off it. It is that cordiality — and perhaps something more — that lies behind the welcome that Pakistani fans will receive in hospitable, outward-looking Punjab. It is that cordiality that underlines Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s invitation to his Pakistani opposite number to watch the match, and Yousaf Raza Gilani’s acceptance. Take the cordiality as what it is: the necessary accompaniment to a great sporting moment.

And in the same newspaper, Sandeep Dwivedi writes that it is no doubt a challenge to cut out clichés and stereotypical sentiments from an Indo-Pak cricketing contest. But if one is able to do that, watching two sides with unique and outstanding skill sets becomes a serene experience, and not necessarily a nerve-jangling ordeal.

After appreciating a classic Tendulkar cover drive, in case an Umar Gul in-cutter makes way between the Indian opener’s bat and pad, he too deserves at least a few claps. And if Zaheer Khan loses the race to be the leading wicket-taker to Afridi, it would not be the end of the world. Zaheer and Afridi have done enough to be judged by their showing in one tournament.

It has been fascinating to watch the way Sachin Tendulkar has manipulated the bowlers in this World Cup writes Simon Hughes in The Telegraph. And who would bet against him achieving his century of centuries in the biggest game of cricket on earth, Wednesday's unique semi-final against Pakistan in Mohali.

Quite apart from his talent, the other thing that sets him apart is the way he plans an innings. Every innings. He is meticulous in his assessment of bowlers and conditions. He is not intent on intimidating a bowler, but on calculating his best shot options. You can practically see him computing bowler type, pitch state and field settings, processing the information and unveiling the appropriate shot.

In the Independent Dominic Cork writes that it is time to forget about the spot-fixing issue. A win for Pakistan today would be great for world cricket.

As a neutral all I want to see in Mohali is a cracking match – something along the lines of India's 338-runs-apiece tie with England would do nicely – and provided both teams bring their A game then we should be in for a real cliffhanger. But if Pakistan end up going through to Saturday's final then I will have no problem at all in applauding them.

Nirmal Shekhar in the Hindu writes that sport can at once divide and unite. It is up to us — the lay fans, and not the politicians alone — to decide what we want it to do.

Armed with a copy of Cricket for Dummies Wright Thompson from ESPN.com goes on the road with the Indian team to understand the hype, hysteria and passion surrounding the game.

In the Dawn Bina Shah looks at the trends that have emerged ahead of the India-Pakistan clash, a match that is being seen by political commentators as more significant than India-Pak peace talks, Partition, and a South Asian nuclear war combined.

In the same newspaper, Rafia Zakaria looks at how Pakistan’s relationship with cricket represents an opportunity, an orientation toward the world that goes far beyond the sport and presents answers to historical conundrums.

In the Guardian Andy Bull writes that while sports and politics are inextricable, Indian and Pakistani cricketers seem to have done a better job of promoting the spirit of friendship than some of the politicians who have imposed themselves on their sport.

On the eve of the semi-final between India and Pakistan, Siddhartha Vaidyanathan analyses the question that fans and critics of Sachin Tendulkar spend endless hours debating: Has Tendulkar failed to seize the moments that matter most?

He also concurred that this line of reasoning would not have cropped up at all had India won the Chennai Test against Pakistan in ’99 or the World Cup final in ’03; that the discussion would have had a different hue if India had won the Barbados Test in ’97, the Champions Trophy final in Nairobi in 2000 and the Test series in Australia in ’08.

Now here’s my theory on this line on criticism: Had Tendulkar played in an earlier era, these discussions would have simply not come up. Not many dwell on Sunil Gavaskar’s clutch moments, simply because India weren’t expected to win in that era.

Tendulkar has been part of Indian teams that have approached the threshold, slipped miserably on it before eventually shedding the monkey off their back. So unfortunately every India slip-up has been a Tendulkar-could-have-taken-us-home moment.

Cricket encounters between India and Pakistan come with the inevitable mix of passion, paranoia, politics and propaganda, writes Ashok Malik in the Asian Age. It becomes much more than sport and often we take away from such a match only what we want to take away. But gradually, there was simply so much cricket between the two countries, that the crowds began to pick and choose.

Today, the ability to shrug shoulders and move on — and the opportunity cost to not doing so — is greater than at any time earlier. May this essential equanimity (easy to miss while watching over-the-top news television shows) come through this Wednesday night. Admittedly it would be nice if it were preceded by an Indian victory.

What do they know of cricket diplomacy who only pay lip-service to it, asks Dileep Premachandran in the Dawn. Wednesday’s semifinal in Mohali is the most eagerly anticipated in the history of the game. But already, politicians on both sides have piggybacked on to the cricket bandwagon, ensuring that the stadium experience for thousands of fans will be a hellish one.

Hopefully, the atmosphere inside the stadium will be intense without a nasty edge. The better team will win, and the other should be left to reflect on a campaign that’s been far from a failure. Let’s not get caught in the usual pathetic spiral of accusing players of fixing and stoning their houses.

Apart from his regular duties as New Zealand team manager, Dave Currie has another very important task on the eve of every New Zealand game: help provide a feel of home for the players by creating a sort of mini-New Zealand within the dressing room. Bharat Sundaresan in the Indian Express finds out more.

Just like he has done in dressing-rooms across venues in both India and Sri Lanka, Currie spent a major part of Monday putting up six large-size postcards, depicting the major sights of New Zealand on one of the walls. In addition to one with kids playing beach cricket, the postcards mainly carry some of the more famous and scenic sights from back home

Indian cricket may be witnessing the birth of a new Yuvraj Singh in this World Cup, writes Nihal Koshi in the Indian Express but signs of a turnaround from his form-slump were evident to those close to him, as early as last November. Those who watched him from the outside believed that Yuvraj had lost his passion and hunger to play at the highest level, but the coach of his Ranji Trophy team, Bhupinder Singh snr, saw otherwise.

“There wasn’t much going his way around that time. He could have just packed his bags after the game and headed off. But Yuvraj took the initiative and spoke to the boys. When things are not going your way it is very difficult to think beyond one’s personal form. In such a scenario it was very heartening to see that Yuvraj had the maturity to think about the team. He didn’t make a big hundred in Ranji Trophy this season but he was patient and determined when he was batting and that was a big change. I guess he has been speaking to the right people,” Bhupinder said.

Ever since he made his debut in 1996, cricket pundits have found it near impossible to bracket Shahid Afridi’s contributions, writes Aditya Iyer in the Indian Express. However, during the course of this World Cup, though, Afridi has proven that his real gift lies in being a leader, a ringmaster. Having revealed his truest identity, captain Afridi has knitted the team together, inspiring every member to collectively walk down the paths of glory.

Pulling his team into a huddle, Afridi culminated practice on Monday with a word of advice to each of his players. It wasn’t the advice that was important, but the very nature of the huddle itself. Unlike the shoulder-link-shoulder huddle, this one was a disjointed version — with Afridi at the centre of the circle, and everyone’s undivided attention. Just as his ego demands. The batting may fail and the bowling may not click, but Afridi has forever replaced his flawed allrounder’s tag with the label of a flawless, inspirational leader.

Stephen Brenkley captures the buzz and he build-up ahead of India's semi-final clash against Pakistan in Mohali in the Independent.

Relations between the neighbours remain at an all-time low, which is saying something considering that in the best part of 64 years they have never tilted towards the high scale. Between 1961 and 1978 they did not meet on the cricket field at all. Now, the political frisson and the proximity of Chandigarh to the Pakistan border, 150 miles away, has provoked rampant speculation about an influx of away fans, all desperately seeking last-minute visas and determined to reach Mohali at all costs.

Andy Bull gets a taste of Mohali and the frenzied lead-up to Wednesday's game. Here's what he has to say in the Guardian.

For "serious sporting rivalry", a phrase that is misplaced on many an occasion, fans ought to tune into the India-Pakistan semi-final on Wednesday, writes Jamie Corringan in the same newspaper.

In the New Zealand Hearald, David Leggat says Kyle Mills' altercation with Faf du Plessis was a blemish on an excellent match for New Zealand. The test against Sri Lanka will be even sterner, he writes.

Aggression is important as long as it's controlled. New Zealand's players earn some slack on the incident as emotions were clearly running high. After all, written off and suddenly, having squeezed the South African lemon hard and long enough, they could see the pips starting to fly out. But it was ugly. Pointing out to du Plessis that he'd effectively tossed away the game is fine, but Kyle Mills, who was not even in the XI, had no place getting involved when the verbal sparks were flying. Hefty fines were handed out to Mills, Vettori and du Plessis, and justified, too.

Nathan Astle, though, has no problems with New Zealand's players getting in du Plessis' face, especially since he had made pre-match comments about not being afraid of New Zealand. The challenge for the team now, Astle writes in the same paper, will be overcoming the inconsistency that has plagued them since his time as a player.

It was a great move to get in the South African faces because they don't like it. They are big on being the aggressors. They pride themselves on stamping their authority on games. The Black Caps made sure the shoe was on the other foot and since Faf du Plessis made prematch comments about not being afraid of the Black Caps, I'm sure they were reminding him of that at a crucial part of the game when he ran out AB de Villiers.

What's the secret to New Zealand, the game's eternal underdogs, lifting themselves in World Cups? David Lloyd tries to find out in the Independent.

England need to start planning for the next World Cup right now says Geoffrey Boycott, writing in the Daily Telegraph. Playing nine limited-overs internationals in Australia after the Ashes tried England physically and mentally, he says, and took away their best chance of winning the World Cup.

This winter was always going to be heavy enough on players with an Ashes series and a long World Cup, but money was put before the best interests of our team. If we had to play nine one-day matches in Australia we should have sent our A-team lads. Our major Ashes players should have gone home to rest and freshen up.

The selectors need to start planning for the next World Cup in Australia in four years’ time. They need to think of the conditions and the type of cricketer needed to do well out there and the age of the players when that tournament starts … identify some youngsters. Give them experience, time to play and make mistakes and learn from those errors so that by the next World Cup they are battle-hardened.

Kishore Bhimani, writing in the Telegraph, remembers India’s tour to Pakistan in the autumn of 1978 – the first time India and Pakistan played each other since the 1965 and 1971 wars between the neighbours – and all the diplomacy surrounding it. Subsequent tours, he recounts, had their negatives.

We were invited to the homes of such celebrities as Pakistan’s top TV anchor Anwar Maqsood, Punjab chief justice Shaukat Ghoraya and singer Noor Jehan. When we asked about Mehdi Hasan, the legendary ghazal singer, a concert for the Indian team was promptly organised at the palatial home of Mehmood Ali, described as the Dilip Kumar of Pakistan.

Mehdi Hasan was thrilled to learn how much the Indian visitors knew of Ahmed Faraz, Mir Taki Mir and Mirza Ghalib and played all our requests. If ever there was cultural diplomacy between recently warring nations, it was here.

Technically, India’s batsmen form a superb unit, says Duncan Fletcher, writing in the Guardian. But, he asks, will they be able to stand up to the enormous mental pressure of the Pakistan semi-final. And just how effective are India’s part-time spinners going to be against a fellow Subcontinent side?

Judging by the manner of their victory against Australia, India have to be the favourites now, followed by Sri Lanka. The semi-final against Pakistan in Mohali, up near the border between the two countries, is going to be an incredible occasion, worthy of being the final … The most intriguing aspect is going to be seeing whether the Indian batsmen can stand up to the enormous mental strain the circumstances of the match will put them under…

Most of the Pakistani batsmen would struggle to get a place in that Indian top seven. That does not mean you can count them out … Unlike the Australians and English, they are going to be used to batting in these conditions against the Indian style of bowling. Mahendra Singh Dhoni may not be able to get away quite so easily with using all those part time spinners to fill in the overs.

It’s time for Andrew Strauss to relinquish the post of England’s ODI captain says Steve James, writing in the Daily Telegraph. And how, he asks, could England expect to win a 50-over World Cup when they do not play that length of game domestically.

To call for Strauss’s resignation should in no way be seen as a slight upon the job he has done. Considering the mess he inherited after the Kevin Pietersen/Peter Moores imbroglio in early 2009, Strauss has performed admirably … [but] it is time to move on.

Strauss must, and of course will, continue as Test captain. And he will find the extra rest periods invaluable, just as he did when missing a tour of Bangladesh last March. Alastair Cook deputised then, in both ODIs and Tests, and he should take over now as ODI opener and captain, starting with the match against Sri Lanka at the Oval on June 28. Although the T20 at Bristol three days before could be interesting. Surely Paul Collingwood cannot continue as T20 captain, and Cook would seem a little miscast there. Kevin Pietersen anyone?

On the Guardian website, Mike Selvey writes that England's schedule took a heavy toll and suggests a number of players won't be seen in one-day colours again.

After the most intensive five months any England cricket team can have undertaken, the touring party – players and management alike – return home shattered men. There has been no escape. The cruellest of itineraries, agreed unthinkingly four years ago, saw them on a four-hour coach ride to Canberra the morning after their Sydney Ashes triumph and practising the next day. All Andy Flower wanted was a week's down time for his players – the Great Barrier Reef, anywhere – to escape cricket, before picking up the second half of the winter. By the end they could not select Jimmy Anderson, not because he was injured or out of form, but because he had nothing left to give. If Flower and the players are willing to take responsibility for the performance since the Ashes – as indeed they are – then so too should the administrators who put them through the mill.

Jonathan Agnew is another to be heavily critical of the workload placed on the England players in his BBC column, but also says that they just weren't good enough at the World Cup.

Bharat Sundaresan, writing in the Indian Express, catches up with Sri Lanka’s video analyst Sanath Jayasundara and gives us a peek into what Jayasundara’s job is all about.

On the face of it, Jayasundara’s is a highly enviable job. Not only does he have the vantage point in the entire stadium—the dressing-room—he also gets to mingle with the cricketers. But Jayasundara will tell you it’s no cushy vocation. It requires immense concentration, along with considerable knowledge of intricacies of the game. More often than not, he is the first to start his day and the last to wind up. And he is easily the busiest man in the camp, setting up cameras at the practice grounds or sitting in meetings with batsmen and bowlers.

“During a match, I am with peering into my laptop from the first ball to the last. I am often oblivious to the atmosphere around me as I have to capture every delivery in detail. My work continues even after the match is over and I get to celebrate a win only much later in the night,” Jayasundara says.

Australia simply don't have the depth they used, with either bat or ball, and it showed in this World Cup, writes Sanjay Manjrekar in Outlook India.

For somebody like me who’s grown up watching Australia as such a dominant force in world cricket, it took a while to come to terms with the fact that this was not the same Australia. For until now, in every world tournament, Australia would be my firm favourites, even when going through a slump, because I thought they had mastered most aspects of the game. But the kind of ability with which they wanted to replace certain players who have retired hasn’t quite come in. That is why I thought this Australian team was going to be a very weak defender of their title, and it turned out just like that.

Jesse Ryder has justified the faith New Zealand team-mates and officials had in him by going from bad boy to World Cup hero, says Neil Reid writing in the Dominion Post.

Cricket Players' Association boss Heath Mills, who has worked closely with the former wild child to save his cricket career, was delighted to see him shine at the World Cup. "He has had his trials and tribulations. But he has kept working hard … he has matured a lot," Mills said … Ryder's manager Aaron Klee said: "It is well-pleasing to see the changes on the field, as well as the changes off the field." Those changes off the field including ditching wild nights out on the town to stay at home and play his favourite computer game – Guitar Hero.

As a nation attempts to come to terms with yet another World Cup disappointment, in The Times Live Luke Alfred searches for the reasons behind South Africa's nervous capitulations. The problems, he believes, are psychological.

Not for the first time, the Proteas were unable to scale an awkward peak when they had sometimes managed to scale peaks far higher. In a creepy repeat of the England game in Chennai, a challenging, but by no means impossible, target initially seemed within their scope. Then wickets crashed, the ball softened, and panic set in. Psychologists call it the return of the repressed.

Suddenly all of the team's demons stood alongside them out in the middle. With little horns and red tails, they mocked their every move and watched perversely as they bottled it.

Those who grew up with a love of the game before the era of television coverage, when the words of radio commentators and great cricket books were all one had to go by, were forced to fill the gaps with their own imaginations. The changing times have shaped a new generation's attitude to cricket and cricketers, writes Suresh Menon in Tehelka.

Radio gave the necessary distance—there was not the easy familiarity that television fosters. I once introduced Krishnamachari Srikkanth to a professor who was shocked for a moment that the player didn’t recognise him. “I thought you would be familiar with me the same way I am familiar with you,” he explained. There is something to be said for the romance of the radio, but that is nothing compared to the thrill of television. Increasingly, the camera work takes you closer and closer to the action, statistics are generated regularly, and even if the commentary is sometimes irritating, that is a small price to pay for getting the Tendulkars and Dravids and Sehwags playing in your drawing rooms.

A whole generation has moved from being doers to watchers; from being askers of questions to providers of expertise based on television’s punditry. First class matches, often sold out a quarter century ago, don’t draw crowds.

"Some from the England squad and management have been away since the end of October, with only three nights at home. Surely this ought to be illegal under employment law?", asks Paul Hayward in The Observer

If a working man marched off to other continents for six months and came home for three days in all that time he would probably be demonised as an absentee or deadbeat dad. When wealthier people do it we call them England cricketers. Please let's not mention the armed services. Signing up for wars is not the same as being forced on to a pitiless fixtures treadmill to satisfy the needs of sponsors, governing bodies and television.

In the same newspaper, Barbara Ellen launches a strong criticism of Geoffrey Boycott's comments over Yardy's departure from the squad, labelling his words as narcissistic.

The crippling effects of depression generally, and depression in sports-people in particular, were widely documented last week and, in fairness to Boycott, he never set himself up as an expert. Nor did anyone expect (or want) Boycott to start weeping, or lighting incense sticks for Yardy. Still, this is a grown man entering his 70s, a pundit for decades – one would have thought he'd understand the basic mechanics of empathy.

Meanwhile, James Corrigan writing in the Independent, says Boycotts's comments exposed sport's great misunderstanding of depression.

Boycott was ignorant. Yet so too were the majority of the commentators ... Depression doesn't come on due to playing too much cricket ... Alastair Campbell explained it best. "How would Boycott have felt if I had suggested to him that his cancer had resulted from poor performance as a sportsman or sports commentator?" Campbell wrote on his blog. "I'm afraid that's not how it works. For depressives, depression just is, the same as for cancer sufferers, cancer just is, and if you catch a cold, you just do."

In the Herald on Sunday, Mark Richardson says that while New Zealand's fielding and bowling was spot-on, it was the long partnership between Jesse Ryder and Ross Taylor that did the trick in the quarter-final against South Africa.

I doff my cap to Jesse Ryder and Ross Taylor, who put on 114 for the third wicket. Surely, after the two openers went in soft fashion, the wheels would have felt awfully wobbly once more. In one-day cricket that feeling of 'here we go again' is one of the most destructive in the game.

But Ryder and Taylor did a sterling job. Yes, I know it was heavily on the cautious side but what other option did they have? If the middle order from five down had been exposed, doubt would have once more festered throughout the batting effort.

Over the years, India v Pakistan has stopped evoking extreme emotions from people on either side of the border. Come Wednesday, however, when the two sides meet in the World Cup quarter-finals, emotions could run high, writes Soutik Biswas in the BBC website.

Will Wednesday mark a return to the old days of crude nationalism and jingoism? I hope not. I hope fans from India and the few thousand from across the border will be generous in their cheer for both the teams. Who can forget the time when Pakistan lost to India during the 1996 World Cup? Fans in Pakistan smashed TV sets, a college student fired a hail of bullets from a Kalashnikov into his TV set and then on himself, another fan died of a heart attack, captain Wasim Akram received death threats, a fan filed a petition in the court against the "disappointing performance" and a cleric said Pakistan would never win at cricket so long as a woman - Benazir Bhutto was the prime minister - ruled the country. Even the plane carrying the players had to be diverted to Karachi as irate fans waited in Lahore carrying expletive-laced banners and rotten eggs. Surely such passions have abated with the passage of time.

Despite the presence of some of the world's best cricketers in their ranks, South Africa, once again,succumbed to the pressure and choked against New Zealand in Mirpur, writes Andy Bull in the Guardian. You can use any euphemism you like, he writes, psychological frailty, mental weakness, but the cliche is there for a reason – it is apt and true.

Back before that West Indies game Graeme Smith had snapped at a journalist who had the temerity to bring it up. "So you have been out in the middle? You understand all that? Every time we walk into a press conference it's the question we expect to get." It has become a running gag since then. It was the first question Smith faced when his team lost to England. "That's not at all predictable," Smith sighed. I guess a lot of cricket fans will be saying the same thing tonight.

In the Guardian Duncan Fletcher writes that Muttiah Muralitharan, Sri Lanka's sorcerer, can drive England to distraction in their quarter-final game, but England have to work how how to handle him. Sweeping could just be be the key.

You have to sweep Murali to negate the variation in spin. With the sweep it does not matter which way the ball is going to turn. Then you force Murali to adjust his length by pulling it back a little shorter to stop you playing the shot. Do that and it means you can play him off the back foot. Then you have a little bit more time to read the spin of the ball off the pitch. This is crucial. It is very difficult to read Murali's bowling in the air because, unlike most off-spinners, the ball always has a scrambled seam, whether it is a doosra or an off-break.

Should England beat Sri Lanka, Saturday will be Muttiah Muralitharan’s last day of international cricket writes Scyld Berry in The Telegraph. But such is the potency of the man, who has probably journeyed further than any cricketer, of any country, should England lose, no one should begrudge Muralitharan.

From this springboard of St Anthony’s in Kandy, Murali has leapt on to the high wire and stayed there for two decades, never falling into the political mire, beside which the controversies about his action have been trivial. He did not let slip a comment favouring one side or the other in the civil war. Yet he has helped all sides with the finest humanitarian work that any cricketer has done, driving his lorry to tsunami-hit areas and still funding the Foundation of Goodness which does truly worthwhile work in more than 20 villages.

The Independent's Stephen Brenkley predicts more success for Murali in the quarter-final game against England.

He will do the same today in Sri Lanka's World Cup quarter-final tie against England. Some poor sap will try to hit him over the top or plunge forward desperately and next thing you know Murali will have his arms aloft, his mischievously beaming face that of a kid allowed the run of a chocolate factory.

The writing was on the wall for Australia even before the team's defeat in a determined performance against India in the quarter-final in Ahmedabad, writes Peter Roebuck in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Ponting's admirable innings concealed as much as it revealed. Along the way, his team beat only one capable opponent, New Zealand, and spluttered even against the weakest sides. Nor can Australians complain about meeting India in the quarter-finals. It was the product not of chance but ordinary cricket.

Australia's cricketing woes begin with domestic cricket and they ought to be solved there, says Stuart Clark in the same newspaper.

Shane Warne in The Telegraph writes that while Australia's formidable run in World Cups has ended, it is premature to call for Ricky Ponting's head.

There are only three options: for him to remain as captain, to resign and continue only as a player, or no more Ricky Ponting. One thing is certain, Ricky deserves to go out in the manner of his own choosing and I would wait a while for the dust to settle before anyone makes a big decision.

Dileep Premachandran in the Guardian writes that while Ponting's captaincy could yet survive this loss, the glory days are now well and truly over. Despite repeated setbacks in the Test arena, starting with defeat in India in 2008, the one-day stage was still an Australian preserve, as they proved by winning the Champions Trophy after the Ashes loss of 2009.

Richard Hinds, in the Sydney Morning Herald, presents an imaginary picture of Ricky Ponting's retirement announcement. Something many journalists were expecting for real in the build-up to and the immediate aftermath of the quarter-final in Ahmedabad.

Who are some of the players Australia can look towards for reviving their fortunes? George Bailey, the Tasmania captain who led his state to victory in the Sheffield Shield, is one of them, writes Martin Flanagan in the same newspaper.

In the New Zealand Herald David Leggat writes that it is rebuilding time for the Australians, almost certainly under Michael Clarke. But, he asks, should Ponting, if he vacates the officer's quarters, remain as one of the troops?

South Africa's willingness to experiment and change their focus from pace to spin isn't the only difference between their current World Cup campaign and past sorties. The other major change - and it may be one that's vital to their success - is that they've travelled to India without the weight of expectation on their shoulders, writes Neil Manthorp in the Mail & Guardian.

The Proteas have been strong favourites in each of the last three campaigns and burdened with an outrageous and immodest sense of entitlement which was personified by the late Percy Sonn who, as president of the United Cricket Board in 2003, told anybody who would listen that South Africa's "time had come".

And from the moment it was announced, six years ago, that Asia would host the 2011 event it was made perfectly clear to the mid-2000s generation that they'd better win in the Caribbean in 2007 because they had "no chance of winning on the subcontinent". All of this helped enormously to remove both the baggage and burden on the class of 2011.

In the Guardian, Mike Selvey says Michael Yardy "will not be the last England player to leave a tour early for the sake of his mental health."

One morning in Canberra in the winter of 2006-07, Trescothick and I were standing together by the hotel breakfast room toaster having a natter. He was in a fine mood and looking forward to the series. This was no front. Two days later, he had been spirited from the country and was on his way home. No support in the world was able to ensure that once he left the security of his family environment the curtain would not descend once more. It was a great loss to England cricket but quite literally saved Trescothick's sanity.

The back story with Yardy is not dissimilar. By all accounts he has been battling the illness for some considerable while, but this has been a long winter. He was not part of the England Ashes squad, but, in the knowledge he would be involved in the one-day matches that followed he played cricket in New Zealand before joining the squad after the fifth Test in Sydney. So he too has been on the road effectively for five or six months.

If nothing else, Michael Yardy’s illness reminds us that sportsmen are not immune from a condition that is estimated to affect one fifth of the population at some stage of their lives. Depression strikes down people from all creeds and classes, even those who enjoy fame, money and glamorous perks, writes Simon Briggs in the Telegraph.

In the Independent, Stephen Brenkley says: "This article is being written in the confines of a well-appointed hotel room, the 21st that this reporter has stayed in this winter (two, maybe three, to go). Some have not been so well-appointed. Hotel rooms drive players crazy eventually, they drive reporters crazy and anybody who says that you both have the best jobs in the world – and we all know it, we can never forget it – should remember Mike Yardy and the players to come, for whom they are not all days of wine and roses."

Meanwhile, writing for BBC Sport, Michael Vaughan remembers being captain when Marcus Trescothick suffered from depression. Trescothick's instance came as a surprise because no cricketer had really gone public with such a problem earlier, says Vaughan, and this highlights the fact that the international cricket schedule is ridiculous.

Siddhartha Vaidyanathan revisits 2000 and recounts a quarter-final in which a much younger Yuvraj Singh and Zaheer Khan knocked out Australia in Nairobi. And after last night's victory, he says "Tendulkar is no doubt Indian cricket’s Alpha but he needs the Omegas – Y and Z – by his side for the last two legs of this glorious 11-year journey."

In walks Yuvraj. 18-year-old Yuvraj. Boyish yet not without a swagger. A lamb to the slaughter. Or so we thought. Until he unleashes a straight-drive so powerful that Lee simply stops in his tracks. And smiles. That angelic smile. A commentator captures the mood: “The boy is pumped. Pumped big time.”

In ran 22-year-old Zaheer, in just his second ODI, and splintered the stumps. Steve Waugh castled with a ball that swung. Kaboom. Almost a yorker. More than a corker.

Writing in DNA, Suresh Menon hails Ricky Ponting, the great Australian hero who made a point.

Gone was the uncertainty of the earlier matches; the hesitant footwork, the unsure strokeplay. The feet moved, the bat became an extension of the hand, and with every stroke the confidence grew. When he danced down the track to hit Yuvraj Singh inside out over extra cover, the years fell away, and the 36-year-old looked like he was at the peak of his powers. With that one shot he reduced all speculation about his ability to a huge joke.

James Lawton, writing in the Independent, says it was good that at the end of arguably the greatest of cricket dynasties, Ricky Ponting provided an irrefutable statement of his status.

"Punter" has been a harshly abrasive character at times, he has rarely dazzled us with his charm, but always there has been a rough humour and a relish for the battle which has set him apart from so many of his rivals.

New Zealand's quarter-final against South Africa will come to define not only their World Cup campaign, but also Daniel Vettori's reign as his country's leader in ODIs as he is step down from the limited-overs captaincy after the tournament, writes Logan Savory in New Zealand's Dominion Post
.

He is no Stephen Fleming and never will be. Fleming operated with limited resources but out- thought opposition with his field placement and tactics. It would be extremely tough to compare the two. I would regard Fleming as not just New Zealand cricket's greatest leader but one of the world's best as well. However, that aside, we should have seen more from this New Zealand team under Vettori's guidance than has been delivered. If New Zealand are beaten by South Africa and exit the World Cup in the early hours of Saturday morning then Vettori's one-day captaincy career will probably go down as a bit of a flop.

One of either Sachin Tendulkar or Ricky Ponting will play his last World Cup game in Ahmedabad. There's plenty at stake for both: Tendulkar has his sights on a 100th international hundred, an achievement that would be 'Bradmanesque' in its scale, writes Michael Atherton in The Australian.

It has become a cliche to compare Tendulkar to Bradman ever since the Don did so. Is one better than the other? Well who, other than the sage, John Woodcock, knows and, frankly, who cares? But should Tendulkar score a hundred tonight in the World Cup quarter-final with Australia, it can be said without question that his achievement would be Bradmanesque. Bradman averaged a third more than his best contemporaries, a differential that, regardless of the changing nature of the game and the improvement in standards, marks him out as one of the greatest sportsmen to have lived.

Ponting's situation is a world away from Tendulkar's, for he is fighting to keep his international playing career alive, writes Peter Roebuck in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Blow away the smoke and the situation becomes clear. Ponting is 36 years old, has been struggling for runs all season and his team has been losing. It is not and has never been a reassuring combination. Meanwhile, his proposed successor looks more like the next leader with every passing week. Meanwhile, the next generation of batsmen have been scoring heavily, not least in the recent shield final.

Stephen Brenkley, writing in the Independent, says Paul Collingwood, with his place in the one-day side uncertain, and a knee problem, should call it a day.

At some point England have to start planning for the World Cup after this when Collingwood will be 38. He is carrying a knee injury and it was confirmed yesterday that he will have an arthroscopy to repair minor cartilage damage after the World Cup. Collingwood is still a centrally contracted player, he is still fit and fuller of beans than just about any other player in the squad – the knee surgery notwithstanding – but there is more to top-level professional sport than that.

In the Independent, Angus Fraser pays tribute to Fred Titmus, the former Middlesex and England allrounder, who died on Wednesday at the age of 78.

As a person Titmus was old school. He had a dry sense of humour and was very witty but he could also be caustic and blunt. He showed his tenacity by recovering from a horrific boating accident in Barbados on England's 1967-68 West Indies tour, when the propeller of a boat removed four of his toes. It would have ended the careers of many cricketers but in the summer of 1968 he returned to take 111 wickets in a season for Middlesex.

Scyld Berry, in the Daily Telegraph, says Titmus was a master of his craft and that did not include offspin alone.

Mike Selvey, in the Guardian, says Titmus was an astonishing player who excelled for five decades, knew all the game's intricacies but liked to keep it simple, and was his mentor.

The new county season is just weeks away, but the mood up at Yorkshire is fractious to say the least. At their recent AGM, the county's executive chairman Colin Graves attempted to defend the controversial £21 million pavilion at Headingley, which was officially opened during the Pakistan-Australia Test match last summer.

Chris Waters of The Yorkshire Evening Post was there to hear Graves claim that the club had received numerous positive comments for “one of the best facilities in English cricket”.

At the risk of sounding like a wet blanket, one wondered to whom Graves was actually referring.

Was he referring to Yorkshire’s electronic scoreboard operator, who resigned in protest over the fact his seat in the pavilion does not afford him a view of the electronic scoreboard?

Was he referring to Yorkshire’s players, some of whom were said to be so unhappy with their facilities they wanted to move back to their old position on the other side of the ground?

Was he referring to Australia captain Ricky Ponting, who was heard to remark during last summer’s Australia versus Pakistan Test: “If we ever have to come back to this place again, it will be too soon."

And Yorkshire is also the focus of a piece by Tanya Aldred in The Daily Telegraph, as she reflects on the potential impact of the BBC's planned cull of regional radio.

Dave Callaghan, who does 31 reports a day during the season for the five interested local BBC stations, is a cricket obsessive, a Yorkshire geek, and a broadcasting pro. But he, and hundreds of others like him, with a byzantine sporting knowledge built up over thousands of balls, and hundreds of polystyrene cups of strong tea, could disappear if the BBC go ahead with their plan to swing the axe at local radio.

Muttiah Muralitharan is not the mystery bowler he was when England took on Sri Lanka in the World Cup quarter-final in 1996, says Dominic Cork – who was a part of that World Cup squad – writing in the Independent. And this England believe in themselves a lot more than that England did, he says, so they have as good a chance to make the last four as any of the quarter-finalists.

Like this year's England, we went into the World Cup almost immediately after a long winter tour of Tests and one-day internationals (South Africa, in our case). And, similarly again, we had some good individual players with the likes of Neil Fairbrother and Robin Smith on board. But, unlike this lot, I don't think we believed in ourselves as a team – and that is perhaps the greatest strength of Andrew Strauss's squad.

Sri Lanka will be tough opponents: a good side, playing in their own conditions and with a full house behind them. But, unlike 15 years ago when their attacking style of play stunned many people, there will not be any surprises for Strauss's men … In 1996 Muttiah Muralitharan was still very much a mystery bowler … We did not have all the video technology, or the analysts, to help batsmen work out how bowlers bowled different deliveries.

From writing an essay in the sixth grade inspired by Pakistan's semi-final loss in the 1987 World Cup, to covering Pakistan cricket, Osman Samiuddin, writing in the magazine Tehelka, tracks how cricket became more than just a sport to him.

Cricket became a commitment but also a guided tour of the country, a way of getting on the inside. I wasn’t a foreigner entirely, or particularly rootless. I was very familiar with Pakistan, but not fully a part of it, like a friend perhaps, at a family function. What folk are like, how the country runs, how things get done; the interaction between those who run and who do the running; power structures; how the young and old deal with each other, the wheels on which bureaucracy moves; ethnic, sectarian faultlines; urban and rural ones too; broader ones between conservatism and liberalism; class divides, corruption, patronage, nepotism and the personal connection.

Andrew Strauss's team have shown an indomitable spirit forged by their ruthless and resourceful coach, writes Mike Selvey in the Guardian.

This capacity for survival did not just happen by accident, though. It begins first of all with the selection of players who are recognised to have a bit of mongrel in them. A good few years ago, I suggested to Hugh Morris, the ECB's managing director of England cricket, that it was imperative that England found out all about character and temperament before rather than after selection and wondered whether psychometric testing might help in this. Subsequently, the team psychologist, Steve Bull, produced a 100,000-word thesis on the subject. Whether this has been used I know not, but I do not recall a questionable temperament being chosen in recent years.

For too long Bangladesh had rewarded mediocrity, says Shakil Kasem, writing in the Daily Star. Every other team in the World Cup seemed to have sussed out Bangladesh, he says, while it did not appear much was done by way of homework by the co-hosts, and for this, the team management must take responsibility.

Scores of 58 and 78 do not happen by oversight. The opposition employed methods that were thought of and implemented clinically … Time now to put an end to this nonsense of wishy-washy, muddled thinking and slapdash coaching methods that now have been proved to be wholly inadequate for the purposes of international cricket ... We have travelled far too long down the road to be considered as Clown Princes of the game anymore. There is a World Cup in four years’ time. Today is the time we start thinking about it, yesterday was the time we should have started working towards it. Tomorrow will be just too late.

Writing in the Guardian, Mike Selvey assesses the action in the World Cup so far and takes a look at the quarter-finalists.

Australia have advanced almost stealthily but without convincing that they are the force of previous tournaments. There is destruction lurking in the pace attack but a generosity as well, and the spin option is threadbare. The continuing decline of Ricky Ponting as a batsman must be impacting, too. The Australians are great scrappers but this is a game that India ought to win to bring to an end a decade of all-round dominance.

And so to England. In losing to Ireland and Bangladesh they inadvertently conspired to put themselves through the wringer. They have not played well, and struggled with injury and fatigue, but sheer tenacity has seen them survive. Other teams may well wish that they had been tested as fully, something that will stand Andrew Strauss's men in good stead now. But they have to recognise that surviving as they have does not provide them with a blueprint for further progress: quite simply, they have to elevate their game from beyond merely adequate and competitive ... They will do well to get past the first obstacle.

There is more to life than a century of centuries, writes Suresh Menon in DNA.

What if Tendulkar, having broken every record there is (well, almost), has decided to play a trick on all of the above? Perhaps he fancies the number 99. After all, that is Don Bradman’s Test average. What if he decides to pull down the shutters and remain on 99 international centuries? He already has 31 more centuries than anyone else, and these things can become tiresome. After all there are so many other gaps to fill as statisticians will tell you. The most 50s on a Wednesday without a national holiday, the most runs by a batsman with a runner, the most number of singles to square leg to get off the mark ...

Meanwhile, writing in the Daily Telegraph, Steve James reminds us that Sachin Tendulkar is not a “confirmed walker” and the waters of cricket ethics are murky at best.

Tendulkar walked, Ponting didn’t. Tendulkar is the paragon of virtue, Ponting isn’t. Well, that seems the simplest inference anyway … But cricket’s ethics are complicated … By standing [their ground], batsmen think they are merely asking umpires to do the job they are paid to do. But what confuses me is the distinction between that, which is not considered cheating by many, and, say, claiming a catch on the half-volley, which is definitely considered cheating by all.

Andy Bull, writing in the Guardian, agrees that the issue of a batsman walking is a grey area in cricket.

I suspect that the decision to walk is going to be seen as further evidence of his [Sachin Tendulkar's] saintliness, though this should be resisted. In a way that innings of just two is going to be as fondly remembered a part of his lore as any of the other 438 ODI innings he has played ... No one is ever going to call Ponting a sporting saint. His view is still a legitimate one, and the majority of cricketers would be on his side. Ponting plays to win, and a lot of people would argue that has more to do with the spirit of the cricket than walking does.

If the selectors omit Cameron White for the quarter-final against India on Thursday, this may bring his international career to an abrupt halt. He has had a poor World Cup and I feel he needs to get home and reassess what he wants to do with his cricket, writes Dean Jones in the Sydney Morning Herald.

His whole career needs to be looked at by his coaches and some honest thinking will be required if he wants to go to another level. Since White has stopped bowling, extra pressure has been put on his batting, which has suffered of late. White can learn from Michael Bevan's mistakes. Bevan won two Man-of-the-Match awards in Test cricket for his bowling. Bevan always wanted to be remembered as a batsman and gave away his ''chinaman'' deliveries, thus letting his ego get in the way of his selection. White needs to bowl and get his confidence back.

Writing in the Australian after the defeat to Pakistan, Ricky Ponting says, "You never want to lose, but in a bizarre way I don't think a loss at this stage will hurt us at all."

It feels like the World Cup proper has finally started and it's not before time. The lead-up to this point has been long and trying, too much waiting around and not enough cricket. You like to build up to your best form in a tournament like this, but the way this one has gone it has been almost impossible for us to get up any momentum.

Australia finished third in Group B as a result of their defeat against Pakistan in their final group clash in Colombo on Saturday. Peter Roebuck in the Sydney Morning Herald writes that Australia didn't deserve to be placed higher. Far from improving, they have been falling back and look seemingly powerless to prevent it.

Before the final league match in Colombo, voices in the Australian camp said: ''Now we will see the true Australian team.'' It might sound boastful but, in fact, the tone was troubled. Concerns about the bowling and lack of balance in the squad had taken a toll. Moreover, the lack of ruthlessness and precision shown against the weaker sides had been alarming.

Maybe the real Australia side did appear at R. Premadasa Stadium. If so, their prospects are bleak.

According to a report in the Courier Mail, a research produced at a Cricket Australia conference shows that cricket is under siege at junior level: seven out of 10 Australian children have no interest in the sport. Robert Craddock writes that cricket is not dying but it is like a mighty lion who once ruled the jungle suddenly developing a limp and a stagger, but Queensland cricket is looking to buck the trend.

"The biggest hint I had that the format is wrong is that over the last few years the happiest I have heard parents is when I ring them on Saturday morning and tell them it is too wet to play," Queensland Cricket chairman Jim Holding said.

"These are people in the game who have already made the decision to commit to play. I hear them doing the celebration dance on the phone. That has to be the most massive tip that the format is not what people want."

There are eight players of Indian origin in Canada's World Cup squad, and though they acknowledge their roots and close connection to the country, they are Canadians first and embrace the multicultural identity of the team, that also includes Pakistani, Sri Lankan, Canadian, West Indian, Australian and Ugandan players, writes Shivani Naik in the Indian Express.

When he arrived in India for the World Cup, Hansra’s extended family of 20-odd cousins trooped in to cheer for their relative. The bigger surprise though was how some of his old school friends from Ludhiana had tracked him down on Facebook after seeing the team list, and reached Bangalore to watch their schoolmate play. “I’ve been to north India before, but it’s good to visit with my team,” he says, never once forgetting what he owes to his adopted country, even if his Indian acquaintances shower all the affection on him owing to his status as a Cupper.

Andrew Alderson from the New Zealand Herald visits the MRF Pace Foundation in Chennai and looks at how the school has groomed generations of pace bowlers to represent India and others in international cricket, helped in no small measure by the presence of former Australia fast bowler Dennis Lillee.

The humble surrounds and spartan accommodation embody the school's ethos that excellence in fast bowling is generated from thorough preparation, hunger and toil. The school is based on a site no bigger than a large playground or about a quarter of the size of a large test match ground like Eden Gardens in Kolkata.

Now 61, Lillee visits the school around three times a year for a fortnight at a time, generally in February, June and September. His reputation as a classical fast bowler can cloud the fact he is also an astute coach fascinated by the minutiae of the art of swinging and seaming five-and-a-half ounces of leather.

John Hastings has yet to play a game for Australia in the World Cup, but Jesse Hogan, writing in the Herald on Sunday says that this has not dampened the enthusiasm of the youngest member of Australia's World Cup squad. Instead, he could not have been more enthusiastic.

''By the end of it you should become a better player. With all this at your disposal - you've got the cameras [recording your performances], coaches, players to feed off. If you can't become a better player having all these resources available to you, then you're not fair dinkum.''

Zimbabwe have not played a Test match since September 2005, but are poised to return to the five-day game in August this year. In the Daily Telegraph, Scyld Berry excoriates this development, saying Zimbabwe simply do not have the players to succeed at the highest level.

Common sense suggests that Zimbabwe should be given a prolonged course of four-day first-class cricket: of ‘A’ tours by concerned countries, and playing abroad, for example in the West Indian domestic first-class competition, as the England Lions are.

Only when Zimbabwe’s batsmen have learned to play long innings against real pace and spin, and only when they have unearthed some speed of their own, should they return to Test cricket.

But that, of course, is not how cricket politics work. Officially, Zimbabwe withdrew from Test cricket in 2006 of their own volition — the ICC did not suspend them — and to Test cricket they will voluntarily return after this World Cup.

The World Cup’s last league game, between India and West Indies, will have an unusual spectator in the stands. Japanese scholar Mari Sekiguchi, who specialises in the modern history of India, has made the trip all the way from Tokyo to catch the action at Chepauk. She managed to get a ticket through the Hindu, and can’t wait to watch her first live game.

She started out with an academic interest in the social history of South Asian nations, and gradually realised that a complete understanding of India would be elusive if she did not delve into a pastime that keeps most of its citizens enraptured.

“I stayed with Indian friends the first time I visited New Delhi as a student in the mid-1980s. I saw her entire family sitting in front of a TV for almost the whole day watching cricket. I was amazed. Even in Japan people watch baseball and soccer, but that's mostly in the evenings, and not for so long.”

“Then, when I went out, I saw children playing cricket in the street, in the downtown, on dried fields and in deserted lanes. That's when I realised that cricket was important to understand the concept of India, its colonial history,” she says.

Crowds may love the thrill of a six, but it takes more than biffing to build an innings. In the long run, Duncan Fletcher, writes in the Guardian, it is more effective to assess the pitch and the situation and take those pesky ones and twos.

A batsman who hits a six may impress the fans, but if that is all he scores in an over then a lot of bowlers will be happy to let him have it, reckoning that if he tries to clear the ropes again they will have a good chance of getting him out. By taking ones and twos when he can, Trott is keeping the bowler under pressure, chipping away at the run rate. It is conspicuous that England's two most successful batsmen in this tournament have been Trott and Strauss, neither of them prolific six-hitters, but both of them intelligent cricketers.

In the same newspaper Vic Marks writes that now that England have expended all that effort in qualifying for the quarter-finals, they may as well try to win the World Cup.

Whoever are England's opponents they will rationalise that they have a good draw. England, denuded of two genuine match-winners, Kevin Pietersen and Broad, do not have many players in form. The bowlers terrify no one, nor do their batsmen. And yet there will be a nagging feeling as well. For all their frailties this England side does not appear to know when it is beaten.

As Sachin Tendulkar stands on the threshold of a century of international centuries, Rohit Mahajan, writing in Outlook India, presents people’s arguments for and against bestowing the batting maestro with India’s highest civilian award – which, as a sportsman, Tendulkar is not eligible for.

it’s an irony that the man who stands for every desirable value—perseverance, commitment to one’s job, grace under pressure, humility despite being lionised—isn’t eligible for the highest civilian award of the land, the Bharat Ratna … the guidelines state that the Bharat Ratna can be given only “for exceptional service towards advancement of Art, Literature and Science, and in recognition of Public Service of the highest order”. Sport is excluded. And therefore, Tendulkar too.

Social theorist Ashis Nandy cites three reasons why the award should not be bestowed on Tendulkar or his ilk: “First, it will only endorse the capacity of the Indian state, the politicians and the bureaucrats, to judge sportspersons when they have already shown that they cannot judge even public service, arts, humanities and science. Second, it will further politicise Indian sports and turn the sportspersons towards greater sycophancy and kowtowing. And third, it will legitimise state awards in a society that has already used the awards to hierarchise scholars, writers, journalists, artists and performers.”

Sanjay Manjrekar, writing in Outlook India, finds it amazing that umpiring errors get talked about and debated over in the Indian media quite so much. Are umpires the favourite whipping boys of cricket, because such debates make for good TRPs, and unlike the players, they have no way of getting back at the media he asks.

Excessive criticism of any Indian cricketer can be quite hazardous for a media outlet … no more will it get exclusive quotes and interviews from the star cricketer that media outlets thrive upon. The cricketer, therefore, has great powers to fight back when in trouble. By comparison, the poor umpire is powerless! No one wants a Billy Doctrove exclusive, right?

For me, nothing is more ridiculous than the suggestion that an umpiring decision cost a team the match. We go on for days about how that one umpiring decision—for or against one batsman—cost us the game. You’d think that only one batsman bats in this game and not eleven.

Writing in the Guardian, Huma Qureshi introduces us to player and coach Salma Bi. Pakistan-born Bi, who has been recruiting teenage girls and young women from Birmingham's Asian community into her weekly coaching sessions and has played on a men’s team, is determined to see more British-Asian girls play the game.

Twelve young women turn up to Bi's weekly sessions. It is just about enough to put a team together, but she is constantly looking for more girls to join. “The youngest in my coaching session is 14, the oldest is 33. Some are married, some have kids, but most have never played cricket before, though they know the game from watching it at home, in the way Pakistani families do…”

Bi understands how difficult it is to convince [Asian] parents to let their daughters play – last year, she convinced a men's team to take her on as their only female player, but did not tell her family. “I knew my dad wouldn't approve … I asked to join the team because I wanted to set myself a challenge. At the beginning, I could tell the other guys on the team didn't take me seriously, but once I started to play, the men started to respect me and they treated me no differently. I ended up playing for them all season.”

From The Ashes, a new film on the 1981 Ashes series that’s scheduled to release this summer, showcases how Ian Botham’s deeds remain imperishable despite all the changes England have witnessed says Barney Ronay, writing in the Guardian.

There are so many elements to the story … My first thought had been: maybe this isn't just a story about Botham. Perhaps Botham could be cast more broadly as an icon of changing times, a triangulation of early 1980s power fringes alongside Di and Thatch. And there are many other fascinating actors in the piece, notably the Australians Rod Marsh and Kim Hughes. Really, though, what comes through still is the self-contained brilliance of Botham's deeds … uncobwebbed by three decades of subsequent superlatives.

Suresh Menon writes in DNA that MS Dhoni should put aside personal feelings and choose teams that will serve the country best.

The captain who built up a reputation for clear thinking under pressure and a positive approach now plays safety-first. This, added to the lack of fire while fielding, gives the team a slightly rudderless look when things are going against them.

This, more than anything else is the attitude they will have to overcome, and quickly. And hence Dhoni’s crucial role.

Decisions that originate in cricketing logic can go wrong too, but at least the skipper will have the satisfaction of knowing he did the right thing.

Had Harbhajan bowled the last over against South Africa to the left-hander Peterson, India might still have lost. But at least that would have been the right thing to do.

In the weekly magazine Open, Akshay Sawai provides snapshots of the mannerisms of MS Dhoni at his World Cup press conferences so far.

Win or lose, his tone is even. He almost always wears the India cap, dolphin grey or swimming pool blue, bearing the No. 157 (He is the 157th player to represent India in ODIs). Pressed at the back of the cap is likely to be an inverted pair of sunglasses. He sits leaning forward, with hands in his lap. He uses his left hand to explain things and sometimes rocks in the chair. While listening to the question, he looks at the journalist and gently nods his head. The captain of India is also prone to using car analogies when talking about players. It is said Dhoni prefers minimal interaction with journalists. But when he makes himself available, he does justice to the date. He is articulate, reasonably frank about the team’s weaknesses (fielding, for example) and gives technical insights that inform.

In DNA, Avirook Sen bemoans the state of commentary in India, and in particular criticises the work of Sunil Gavaskar and Navjot Sidhu.

... there is something in Gavsakar’s commentary that is below banal. This is his preoccupation with personal achievement — and survival.

At times, this is merely petty: you will always find Gavaskar thinking on the batsman’s behalf when he is approaching a landmark. His assumption is almost unfailingly this: the guy will slow down to achieve the milestone, no matter what the state of the game.

At times, it gets plain ridiculous. Like his theory of “conserving energy” which is his advocacy of being less active on a cricket field. (Ian Chappell had a really good laugh about this one time.)

In the Indian Express, Devendra Pandey looks at the small-town revolution sweeping through the Bangladesh national team. He finds that the Bangladesh board's talent hunt programme and the Bangladesh Institute of Sports, with its five regional centres, have been instrumental in attracting talent from the hinterland.

Rubel Hossain says that had he not played cricket for Bangladesh, he would be working in some Dubai construction company, most likely repairing toilets. The 21-year-old pacer is the son of a fisherman from the coastal district of Bagerhat, which is anything but a cricketing hotspot.But the notion of cricketing hotspots in Bangladesh might be a thing of the past.

England pulled off a thrilling victory over West Indies in what was a must-win game for them in Chennai on Thursday. Andy Bull in the Guardian writes that it was England's unlikeliest victory in the Cricket World Cup yet and their two main heroes - James Tredwell and Luke Wright - were improbable too.

England cannot take too much comfort from this win. They are still nowhere near producing 100 overs of consistent cricket. This was a victory that was cobbled together from bits and pieces contributed by Wright, Tredwell, Swann, Ravi Bopara and Trott. It is conspicuous that only the last of them would have been considered a likely member of the XI when England first flew out to India.

In The Telegraph Simon Hughes writes that while West Indies' bowlers bowlers were explosive, England chipped away at the West Indian batsmen with inside edges and lbws from nagging medium-pacers and off-spinners. The contrasting methods of wicket-taking in Thursday's match encapsulated the difference between the two teams.

England live to fight another day. They lack adventure with the bat and explosion with the ball and cling on to situations through fitness, unity and a deep reservoir of resolve.

In the same newspaper, Geoffrey Boycott writes that while England may be entertaining everyone with great matches but other teams will fancy their chances against them.

We are skating on thin ice. Compared with the Ashes win the England campaign is shambolic. We have had injuries and loss of form. We are a shadow of the side we were in Australia but the main thing is World Cup are still fighting. Just.

Ahead of the all-important Group A clash between New Zealand and Sri Lanka, Nathan Astle in the New Zealand Herald writes that if the New Zealand batsmen are able to negotiate the threat posed by Muttiah Muralitharan, it will go a long way in helping them beat Sri Lanka.

Facing Murali never gets easy, especially on his home track. He's a handful on most grounds around the world but on a subcontinent pitch he's just that much harder to face.The guys will obviously see him as a major threat tonight and treat him with that respect going into the game. As a batsman you've just to make sure you have got a well sorted out game plan when you face him and bat with confidence.

Australia have been heavily reliant on their pace attack in this World Cup with mixed results and post Australia's victory over Canada in Bangalore on Wednesday, Peter Roebuck, in the Sydney Morning Herald writes that Australia cannot keep losing the battles of the new ball and expect to remain intact. Sooner rather than later, an opponent will turn up with the resources required to take advantage of erratic bowling and shaky batting.

The sight of an unknown and diminutive teenager going by the name of Hiral Patel smacking the cream of Australian fast bowling around Chinnaswamy Stadium was bad enough.Yet Australia's speedsters kept dropping short. Patel cut a six over cover and still they banged the ball down. He clouted another six over backward square and still they pitched short.

In the same newspaper, following Ricky Ponting's on-field spat with Steven Smith during the Canada game, Richard Hinds writes that even though Ponting retains a decent chance of ending his captaincy with the World Cup in his hands, he is running the risk of harming his reputation.

Of course, rather than stewing in his juices, Ponting should be counting his blessings that he has been given a final chance to end his reign in style. Yet, rather than putting his heart into ensuring a glorious end to his long incumbency, Ponting is wearing it on his sleeve. Railing against the seeming inevitability of his fate.

And once again in the Sydney Morning Herald, Greg Baum writes that Ponting is Australia's favourite whipping boy, and so all that matters is his punishment; the crime always must be made to fit it.

Manu Joseph introduces Sachin Tendulkar to the USA, writing in the New York Times that the he is an icon who, in his ways and in the country's way of adoring him, defines India in a profound way that economic indicators and the laments of activists cannot.

The 1990s were difficult, but Mr. Tendulkar bloomed in that decade. The beauty of sport is that even though it is in the realm of entertainment, it is also an indisputable reality. And Mr. Tendulkar became a rare Indian reality that did not depress Indians. In an impoverished, chaotic nation, he swiftly became the most reliable agent of mass euphoria.

In its intensity, its passion and its sheer scale, cricket in India is unsurpassed by any sport I've covered, writes Andy Bull in the Guardian.

In the departures lounge at Nagpur airport last Sunday I stumbled into a thick, swirling crowd of men with their mobile phones out, filming and snapping pictures, as well as brandishing pens and pieces of scrap paper. In the middle of this throng, I found once I had fought my way through it, were Simon Doull and Pommie Mbangwa.

England have not been good enough, discipilined enough and clinical enough in their World Cup campaign, writes Dominic Cork in the Independent.

I don't think you can blame tiredness after a long winter away for England's shortcomings. We are talking about professional cricketers, playing at the highest level, but the end product has been very disappointing because they are a much better side than has been apparent up to now.

The million dollar question is why England, who were on such a high after their Ashes triumph, have been unable to rise to the occasion on the sub-continent.

"Even cows and pigs have laws governing their transportation, so why can’t England cricketers?" is Daniel Brigham's way of summing up England's crazy schedule in the lead-up to and during the World Cup, in the Wisden Cricketer.

It’s hard enough to do battle on the field, but the boards have introduced a great foe: boredom. Between them, the England players may well have downloaded the entire iTunes music library, exhausted their Dongles, thumbed Lance Armstrong’s autobiography to a dirty, messy pulp and clocked up 743,000 hours of PlayStation time.

Ten years after VVS Laxman scored his 281 against Australia at Eden Gardens, he spoke to Mid Day's Clayton Murzello about what the knock meant to Indian cricket

Any particular shot during the 281 you will never forget?
The inside-out shot I hit off Shane Warne through the covers in the post lunch session of Day Four was very special because he was bowling round the wicket into the rough. We all know Warne's quality, so to play that kind of a shot gave me heaps of satisfaction.

In the Sydney Morning Herald, Peter Roebuck rants about the "numbskulls" who resent the inclusion of weaker teams in the World Cup. He points out the huge advancement of cricket in other nations - including Afghanistan's attainment of ODI status and Sierra Leone almost reaching the Under-19 World Cup - and says too many cricket journalists don't know the position of the game globally.

By no means is it impossible that the semi-finals of this enjoyable, albeit absurdly slow-moving, CWC will bring together teams from predominantly Hindu, Muslim, Christian and Buddhist nations. Or it may feature white, brown and black, sometimes these days in a single team. Cricket is not a post-colonial indulgence. It is a glorious melting pot held back by dimwits. Do they know that the game is under way in schools in Morocco? Or that Rwanda is rising?

With Sachin Tendulkar on the verge of a century of international centuries, Steve James, writing in the Daily Telegraph remembers the first and only time he played against ‘tiny, impossibly young-looking fellow with a curly mop of hair poking out of his helmet.’ Tendulkar, he says, is proof that the game has not changed all that much despite the introduction of 20-over cricket – a batsman with robust technique still enters the battle best prepared.

Bowling for us was a chap called Hamish Anthony, an Antiguan of dubious ability to be a high-class overseas player, but of no little pace. He bowled a decent good-length ball on about middle and off stumps. It should have been defended back down the pitch. Instead the little fellow was up on his toes on the back foot and punching the ball, with an impossibly high elbow and no follow through, back past Anthony for four. Standing in the gully, I gasped audibly.

Ten years ago in Kolkata, India completed perhaps the greatest comeback in Test cricket to beat Australia, after they had been struggling during the follow-on. LP Sahi spoke to the key players for the Telegraph.

Sourav Ganguly: That Test and series remains the highpoint of my innings as captain. Even if I hadn’t been the captain, I’d look back with so much pride ... We’d lost the first Test (in Mumbai) by ten wickets and everybody had written us off. That we’d been behind by 274 at the Eden only made our stock fall even more. But...

Harbhajan Singh on his most memorable wicket: That of Shane Warne, my hat-trick victim. After that, I got calls from the high and mighty. The then Prime Minister (Atal Bihari Vajpayee) sent me a very kind letter of appreciation, which has been framed and given pride of place at my house in Jalandhar. The phone never stopped ringing in the hotel room and my room-mate, (Ashish) Nehra, must have gone crazy.

VVS Laxman: I'd batted well in the first innings and so was promoted to No .3 in the second. I was able to continue the good work, without thinking either of what had happened or what could happen. I was wholly in the present then, looking to play each ball on merit. I’ve always enjoyed batting with Rahul and, as it so happened, we batted through day four. Not many, perhaps, know that he’d been down with a viral attack in the lead-up to the Test.

Rahul Dravid: It gave us players a lot of confidence and gave the public confidence in us. The team got the time and space to become stronger and the public, too, gave us space and time to grow. The foundation (of a formidable team) was laid, but it’s not that we became brilliant overnight. The process, however, started at the Eden.

In the Telegraph, Raju Mukherji traces the history of Calcutta's Eden Gardens, and its evolution from an idyllic emerald green during the days of the British Raj to one of the most passionate, imposing and memorable venues in cricket.

Eden Gardens does not belong to India alone, but to the world of cricket. It was here that the West Indies vice-captain, Conrad Hunte, risked his life to bring down the West Indies Federation flag in the midst of the flames on that fateful day of January 1967. Steve Waugh sportingly waved six and did not appeal for a catch when his right foot had barely touched the boundary rope at this very ground. The same spirit still remains, the spirit that overcomes barriers. Eden Gardens will continue to weave its spell on generations of cricket lovers and cricket players in the days to come.

On his website, Adam Hollioake says modern sport is too policed by its officials, modern players too often tow the party line, and that this state of affairs is also because of the modern media.

Example 1998 Dhaka ICC trophy match vs South Africa, I suffered a massive loss of fluid and almost wound up dead. Due to this I experienced massive dizziness and outer body experiences. When asked to describe it by the media, I could have said the party line, “Yes it was tough but that’s what playing for your country is all about” instead I chose a little more risqué approach and came out with a throw away very tongue in cheek comment about feeling like I was as high as a kite. Everyone in the room knew what I meant (they weren’t idiots) but one particular moron went away and I ended up on the front page ‘Adam Hollioake in Drug Scandal”. I mean please! Yes you got your headline well done. But now you have ruined it for everyone. Now I will give you cliché nonsense. Why, well because professional sport brings its own pressures and we don’t need to be bringing more upon ourselves.

In the Telegraph, Scyld Berry criticises the way England's batsmen have been reluctant to use their feet against spin in the World Cup, and blames the counties for the lack of a second specialist spinner in the squad to complement the impressive Graeme Swann.

Teams who are incapable of batting against spin on a slow pitch, or of bowling it properly with the exception of Graeme Swann, do not deserve to qualify for the knockout stage of this World Cup — or any other.

Critics of limited-overs cricket who say it is degenerating into a slogathon should savour England’s batting against spin on a slow pitch, especially in a powerplay, as there is precious little chance of the ball going off the square.

In the Indian Express, Neil Manthorp speaks to Gary Kirsten on how he willed himself to take up coaching and how he went about shaping a talented Indian side into becoming the No. 1 Test team.

He empowered the players in a way they had not been empowered before and in the way he wished he had been empowered as a player. There’s no point in asking a bowler or a batsman what “works for him” as a pre-match practice routine, if he’s only ever done what his coach has told him to do. So they had to find out what worked for them.

Most of all, however, and this is probably what Kirsten would choose to be remembered for, he presided over a period of Indian cricket in which the national team played more as a Team than ever before.

A new addition to Mumbai's changing skyline - the "stunning edifice" that is the renovated Wankhede Stadium. Shivani Naik has more in the Indian Express.

The approaching World Cup had started buzzing on television, but Wankhede seemed to be worryingly and non-valiantly incomplete as 2011 neared. Till one day, mighty suddenly — like realising a younger sibling having shot up a foot and many inches above you overnight — the paneled many tiers of the stadium rose on the commuter’s horizon.

Suresh Raina may not have been a part of the official playing XI in each of India's five games thus far, but MS Dhoni's ensured he's made an impact as a substitute fielder, writes GS Vivek in the Indian Express.

The substitution rules may be strict on comfort breaks, but there’s always a loophole to exploit — an injury, cramps, or mere rotation of bad fielders has given the captain a chance to allow his worst fielders to take a break for the agile ones.

"I was wrong to swear and lose my temper during England's defeat against Bangladesh and I apologised straightaway to umpire Daryl Harper. But I think it was ludicrous to play a da-/night match in the World Cup that was so heavily influenced by the dew," writes Graeme Swann in The Sun.

It felt like playing football with both hands tied behind my back. The ball was changed three times in total but it should have been changed every two or three overs. Of course, the dew wasn't the umpires' fault but every time the replacement rolled across the outfield, it became drenched. I try to spin the ball hard, so I need to be able to grip it. I was getting more and more frustrated because the wicket was such a good one to bowl spin on.

Tim Peach on the BBC website witnesses some serious hero worship in Nagpur in the countdown to Sachin Tendulkar's century of centuries.

There was a banner at the VCA Stadium in Nagpur on Saturday night saying 'countdown to God's 100 hundreds'. The 'God' in question is India's Sachin Tendulkar, a man whose cricket genius has elevated him to a stratospheric level of fame on home soil.

On a similar theme Dileep Premachandran in the Sunday Guardian questions the impact Asia's cricket-crazed fans have on their beloved teams.

Some would have found it insensitive, but Michael Atherton certainly struck a nerve with the first question he asked Shakib al Hasan after Bangladesh's epic last-gasp victory against England. "Last week, they were stoning your house," he said. "This week, do you think they'll build you a new one?" Shakib answered with a smile, but the question shed light on both Bangladesh's topsy-turvy performances and the schizophrenic nature of the support.

Sri Lanka is a country with a troubled recent history, and still bears the scars of the decades-long civil war from which it emerged about two years ago. But playing host to the World Cup has brought the people together and given them something to cheer about, writes Shehan Karunatilaka in the Observer,

A car slides down this dusty lane and waits until the over is finished. Over here, cars give way to cricket matches. In fact, these days, with Sri Lanka co-hosting the World Cup, everything gives way to cricket matches. TVs are switched on in offices, brothels, banks and tea shops. Work halts, roads empty and all the squabbling that has marked our last 50 years is put on hold.

We forget that we have coastlines to clear, refugees to settle, assassins to catch and most recently, floods to mop up. When a cricket match is on, even the civil war is given the month off.

Duncan Fletcher, writing in the Guardian, says that needless adjustments to the Decision Review System have only confused players and fans, and could lead to system's downfall.

The ICC [previously] came up with a system where the third umpire could only answer the question put to him by the on-field umpire. I remember one lbw decision where Steve Bucknor decided to ask the third umpire, David Orchard, whether the ball would have gone on to hit the stumps. Orchard agreed that it would have, but pointed out that the batsman had also got an inside edge on the ball. But because that was not what Bucknor had asked him about, the lbw decision was upheld. That was a good example of how stupid some of the thinking has been, and continues to be.

If the ball is going to hit the stumps and it falls within the laws, you are out. It is as simple as that … This 2.5m guideline is designed to allow for the inaccuracies in the Hawk-Eye system. By trying to allow for that smaller margin of error it [the ICC] is jeopardising the entire UDRS system by fuelling the BCCI's argument that the technology cannot be trusted.

Akshay Sawai, writing in Open magazine, tells us what it is like to be Sudhir Gautam, the most visible supporter of Team India and Sachin Tendulkar. While Gautam does not have a plan – other than to follow India till there is life left in that body of his – or earn a living, there’s no doubting his passion says Sawai. After all, it’s not often you would come across a fan who has cycled from Bihar to Bangladesh to watch India play the World Cup opener.

He [Sudhir Gautam] says he has told off Sharad Pawar. He has cycled from Bihar to Bangladesh to watch India’s World Cup opener and claimed to have parked the bike at Sourav Ganguly’s house in Kolkata. He has also cycled to Pakistan. He has attended almost every match India have played at home since November 2003, which is when his remarkable story began.

Marriage does not interest him. “How will I travel?” he says. “I have made cricket my life partner.”

Ramachandra Guha, writing in the Telegraph, says that early matches in the World Cup – especially the tied India-England match – have demonstrated the ability of ODIs to provide attractive and meaningful cricket, and on the evidence of the tournament’s first fortnight, it may redeem the promise of the 50-over game.

Test cricket is real cricket, not because it is played over five days, but because it places bat and ball on par. Twenty20 is a vulgar and debased form of the game, because the bowler gets a mere four overs. Although 50-50 cricket is still biased in favour of the batsman, at least he can go beyond mere slogging to construct and shape an innings, the way Tendulkar and Strauss did in Bangalore that day. Meanwhile, given 60 rather than 24 deliveries, the bowler can still somewhat display his variety and subtlety, as both Bresnan and Zaheer showed us at the Chinnaswamy Stadium.

Suresh Menon, writing in DNA, says that while on-field innovations abound in modern cricket, the minds of the commentators have remained static. Indian commentators, he says, are probably inclined to clichés in an attempt to not rock the boat.

New strokes have been added to the game, new strategies abound, but the minds of those who provide the words to the pictures brought to millions of homes have, sadly, remained static.

Sunil Gavaskar tries to be funny, but doesn’t always carry it off, mainly because I suspect his employers do not believe in it … he is stymied by the first law of Indian broadcasting: keep serious and repeat the scores, that’s your job.

The World Cup schedule gives all the teams plenty of time between games to rest and recover but the hoards of journalists covering the tournament have no such luck. They must jet not only from match to match, but from country to country, often with little or no sleep in between. In his BBC blog, Adam Mountford, the BBC Radio Cricket producer, recaps a week involving faulty broadcast lines, insect bites, missing luggage and an award for Test Match Special.

Back at the hotel, I get a text from Tim Peach, who has made the long trek from Dhaka to Sri Lanka. "Arrived in Colombo. Luggage missing. Voice missing and it is raining. Going to spend the evening counting the insect bites on my legs." A couple of hours later, my phone beeps again. It's another text from Tim: "74 bites on my left leg... 39 on the right."

Zimbabwe are a side slowing regaining their footing on the world stage. In the Sydney Morning Herald, Peter Roebuck delves into the cricketing journeys of two of their brightest prospects - Christopher Mpofu and Graeme Cremer - and discovers that though have taken very different paths, the moral of their stories is the same.

It has been a long journey for contrasting characters, black and white, struggling and farming, Rasta and reserved. It is a tale of Harare and Bulawayo, backyards and gardens, cricket balls and lemons, a tale of peoples jostling for position.

Let's not talk of politics - the suffering has been bad enough. Was not Christopher Mpofu ordered to cut off his dreadlocks or lose his place? Even now he can scarcely bring himself to look at his pictures on Facebook. Did not Graeme Cremer's sister secure selection for the primary-school team before him. Are not these sufficient traumas?

Ahead of the Ireland-West Indies game in Mohali, Vijay Lokapally speaks to veteran administrator IS Bindra about his plans for the PCA Stadium and more. Read the article in the Hindu.

Associated with the Board since 1975, the 70-year-old is now planning an infrastructure for the “next century.” The first step has been taken by procuring 42 acres of land just outside Chandigarh. “It will be a stadium that will last 100 years,” he promises. Just like Lord's. “Our focus would be on spectator comfort. We would create self-contained parking.”

When the new stadium comes up, every spectator, asserts Mr. Bindra, would be able to park his car within 50 yards from his seat. “He should park and walk to his seat. It will be an open stadium, not at all claustrophobic, and have three grounds in the complex.” As per international standards, the spectators' ingress and digress process would be seven minutes.

Much was expected out of Bangladesh in their World Cup campaign at home, but defeat to England could further dent their hopes, says Stephen Brenkley in the Independent.

The public and the press (and probably Siddons, a passionate ambassador for his charges) are seething. Players and team management have been forbidden from speaking to the press except in official, obligatory ICC press conferences.

Elimination would be a bitter setback for the country and its mission among a public who took some years to be persuaded about cricket. Of course, cricket was always played here, but in the days when it was part of eastern India and then later East Pakistan, it was never fertile territory for cricket or cricketers. The game seemed to stop at Kolkata and barely travel further east.

How far the mighty fall. The sight of Kevin Pietersen once warmed the hearts of his team-mates and sent tremors through the opposition. Sadly, that is no longer the case, says Stephen Brenkley, who asserts in the Independent that Pietersen’s departure from the World Cup is actually a relief for England.

For a while back then, there was a chance that Kevin Pietersen would become a great cricketer. The time has gone. As he prepared to leave England's World Cup campaign yesterday, 48 hours after it was announced that he would struggle through the tournament, the overwhelming feeling was of relief.

The Barmy Army, that band of merry men and women that follow the England team around the world, officially came into existence during the Ashes tour of 1994-95. Today, it boasts 30,000 members on its website, of which 10% are paying members. Naturally, a healthy contingent is in the subcontinent to follow the twisting fortunes of their beloved side. Rudraneil Sengupta hung out with them in Nagpur and tells the tale in Mint.

They were the first people at the stadium, milling around the periphery almost an hour before the gates were opened. They stood in line and applauded when the England team bus came in.

The English flag or St George’s Cross, a broad red cross on a white background that has been England’s emblem since the Middle Ages, fluttered from stands across the stadium. There were fans with their bodies painted in that stark colour scheme, and you could see a hint of why it was also the symbol of the Crusades—there is a primal and savage beauty to it that spells war.

But there’s nothing war-like about the fans themselves—they are gentle and friendly, and their cricket-watching ethos is based firmly on humour and encouragement. They take great pains to distinguish themselves from the English football fans, who have a long history of hooliganism.

The ICC’s Decision Review System has come in for some stick in the 2011 World Cup, particularly for one of the more complicated rules governing its use – the 2.5m rule. In an opinion column in the Hindu, Mukul Mudgal a former Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, says that there are other ambiguities in the system that could do with some clarity as well.

Rule 3.2 (b) lays down that the demand for a review has to be made by the captain of the fielding team or the batsman involved in the incident within a few seconds. What has not been laid down with clarity is what these few seconds could mean; this could be interpreted as mere 5 seconds or 50 seconds.

"Australia is emerging as the most aggressive of the sides taking part in the 2011 World Cup," writes Peter Roebuck in the Sydney Morning Herald. "As a rule, cricket salutes the team prepared to take risks in an attempt to grab the initiative. Recognising the predilection, and determined to play the game they know, the Aussies have decided to charge and may the devil take the hindmost."

Including Shaun Tait was a gamble. No bowler in the tournament can be as wayward. On his bad days the Croweater sends the ball spearing down the leg-side with a frequency inappropriate in this company. But he can change the course of an innings and the Australians are willing to invest in that. So far, too, the express merchants have been unexpectedly effective, taking hat-tricks and generally having the impact of a bugle on a dozing dormitory.

South Africa have always flattered to deceive at the World Cup, often succumbing because of a school-boy error made under pressure. Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, Peter Roebuck thinks this South Africa team might be poised to exorcise the ghosts of teams past and finally lift the World Cup.

Now, Graeme Smith's side seems strong and sincere. Certainly it is a melting pot, with a formidable opener of Indian extraction, a coloured spinner and middle-order batsman, a black fast bowler and a leggie born in Karachi. And all of them deserve their places. And it was all achieved without the expected blood bath. With every passing year the game learns to focus a little less on faith, race, gender and sexuality and more on character.

Bangladesh’s abject surrender in their much-win clash against West Indies has, obviously, come in for some scathing criticism. In the Daily Star, Quazi Zulquarnain Islam says at times like these, swearing is the only option, even if it isn’t very gentlemanly.

There was nothing to foreshadow the amazing collapse; no clear sign that such a devastating wreck was impending, none whatsoever of a crash that shamed even the yo-yo stock market in Dhaka. In short, events seemed inexplicable. And when things are such, swearing, it seems, is the only way to ease the discontent souls.

Also in the Daily Star, Mohammad Isam writes that for all the gains Bangladesh have made recently, the game exposed a “poorly equipped and overly tinkered Bangladesh middle-order that performs only when it suits them”.

For the second game in a row, the Tigers skipper Shakib Al Hasan's dismissal mirrored the team's mental make-up. To the naked eye, it seemed Shakib's heart was telling him to sweep while the mind tried to play straight. He got stuck in between, missing Sulieman Benn's tossed-up delivery. It was the similarly bewildering return catch he popped against Ireland that spelled doom for the Tigers, only to be retrieved but when you are bowled out for 58, there is no room for a comeback.

Irish eyes may be smiling after the defeat of England, but writing in the Guardian, Barry Glendenning says the euphoria has been tempered by England’s good-natured acceptance of the result.

Yes, it was a magnificent victory for Ireland, but it hasn't gone unnoticed that the air of national euphoria in a country that's had very little to crow about of late has been somewhat tempered by the unconditional magnanimity with which our win has been greeted by a generous English media. We Irish are a big people, but in so many ways we are a small people. After hurling, our second national sport is begrudgery, so it was with no small disappointment we realised, in the wake of our victory at the Battle of Bengaluru, that rather than rail against the injustice of it all, our vanquished opponents seemed genuinely pleased for us.

In the same paper, Duncan Fletcher says England’s bowlers, who have not had the best of times so far at the World Cup, should find the pitch in Chennai more to their liking.

That aside, England's batsmen have done relatively well. It is the bowlers who are misfiring. The team will rightly tell themselves that they ran into a freakishly good innings from Kevin O'Brien on Wednesday, a classic example of a guy from one of the smaller teams coming out and playing as though he had nothing to lose. And once he was out, there was enough experience in the tail to see Ireland home.

But even allowing for O'Brien, once again England were unable to contain a batting unit. They must wish they were able to call up Chris Tremlett from the sidelines, he is exactly the kind of tall, over-the-top bowler who could do well on these wickets. Tim Bresnan has been doing a good job, and so has Graeme Swann, even though he has not been playing on pitches that have turned all that much. Michael Yardy is under huge pressure, but England do not seem to think they can replace him with another spinner without weakening their batting.

In the National, Paul Radley finds out how cricket overtook rugby for popularity in Sri Lanka after their cricket team won the 1996 World Cup, and says it is as much from a lack of other options as obsession with the game itself that cricket is the subcontinent's premier sport.

"Prior to winning the World Cup, rugby was more popular than cricket in Sri Lanka," Rohan Gunaratne, the executive director of the Sri Lankan RFU, said. "Now cricket is on the TV, which wasn't the case earlier, not on a regular basis, anyway. Because of that, cricket has reached the rural areas and everyone knows about it. In cricket, they are always playing within the top five sides. In rugby, we can't reach that level."

Cricket Ireland has set up its own online TV channel, including interviews and behind-the-scenes footage with a group of players who have suddenly become the hottest property in the World Cup. ESPNcricinfo has been granted a sneak preview of some of the best clips, including this performance from a certain Kevin O'Brien...

Aaron Lawton points out that New Zealand haven't fielded in the same XI in consecutive matches, and questions the team's selection policy in the Dominion Post.

Why have New Zealand yet to field an unchanged one-day team in the John Wright era? Was Kyle Mills a better bet than Hamish Bennett for the match against Australia? Shouldn't Jacob Oram have batted at No7 instead of Jamie How in the same match?

Ireland's stunning defeat of England is unlikely to have any effect on the ten-team plan for the next World Cup, writes Stephen Brenkley in the Independent.

So 10 teams it is, and as it happens there are 10 full members of the ICC. It is not too difficult to see how that might work out considering the self-interest, not to mention self-aggrandisement with which cricket has traditionally been governed. They will presumably produce as evidence the form of the other lesser nations so far in this tournament, as if they can improve without better competition.

No more jokes on the Irish from Englishmen, not after what we saw in Bangalore, writes Ted Corbett in the Hindu.

Brenkley, again in the Independent, says is it is perhaps unrealistic to expect England to hit their peak so soon after their tour to Australia.

Geoffrey Boycott, in the Daily Telegraph, says England's loss shouldn't come as much of a surprise as they've been going downhill since the start of the limited-overs series against Australia after their Ashes success.

Forget the feckless fielding, England's attack during this World Cup has not been aggressive enough, says Vic Marks in the Guardian.

Nathan Astle, writing for the New Zealand Herald, asks whether New Zealand have a plan – after their big loss to Australia – and questions the thought process behind the selection of the playing eleven.

The worrying part about this current team is that the same thing keeps happening. No one has shown they want to bat through the 50 overs and get a hundred.

There is no plan that they're trying to stick to. At the moment there is that much inconsistency that I think people are going to have to start answering questions.

In an interview in the Hindu, S Dinakar speaks to the former video analyst of the Indian team, S Ramakrishnan, on the various features of UDRS, how the technology works and its pros and cons.

Now we come to the heart of the matter. Why do inaccuracies creep in beyond the 2.5 metre mark? This was the reason that allowed Bell to stay at the wicket even when Hawk-eye showed the ball clearly hitting the stumps.

Over to Ramakrishnan: “There is more data to extrapolate and evidence from past data has shown that the chances of an error increase if the point of impact is more that 2.5 metres. In most systems, there may be a point from where the information may not be completely accurate.”

The story about the ICC looking at Australia's scoring patterns against Zimbabwe might have been a whole lot of nothing but, in the Sydney Morning Herald, Martin Blake says that Brad Haddin "went too far" in lambasting the notion to the media.

Players these days are well-trained in handling media, and Haddin has been around a while. He ought to have said that the ICC had a job to do and if there was an investigation, it was no issue to him. That he'd done nothing wrong and his biggest problem was trying to hit the Zimbabwean spinners off the square at the start of that game; that Ray Price, Zimbabwe's dart-thrower, cannot even spell the word loop, and is actually one of the better bowlers going around in one-day cricket. That would have done.

Angus Fraser recounts watching Ireland's defeat of England from Lord's, the mood in the home camp and the experience of witnessing history being made from the home of cricket. Read more in the Independent.

As O'Brien connected with the initial few balls he faced, everybody thought his efforts would amount to nothing more than a defiant gesture. Strauss would have thought it only a matter of time before the Dubliner slogged one up in the air. As his innings progressed, however, and the text messages of "Are you watching this?" began to flash around, concentration on work began to diminish. For a while you relent but then, suddenly, you make a decision – "I've got to watch this".

James Lawton, in the same newspaper, puts Kevin O'Brien's innings in perspective - the influence of his family, taking to cricket when the youth in Ireland was drawn to other sports and the approach he adopted when all seemed lost.

Also, time for another Test series in the calendar for England? The Independent's editorial has more.

In the Daily Telegraph, Derek Pringle says England's shock defeat was an accident waiting to happen.

More in the Daily Telegraph - the newspaper rates England's defeat as one of sport's greatest upsets.

Simon Briggs catches up with those who've seen Kevin O'Brien play and develop his cricket, and not many are surprised with what he achieved. More in the Daily Telegraph.

All isn't lost for England, says Nasser Hussain in the Daily Mail, but the defeat was a huge wake-up call that should spur them to work on their weaknesses.

Kevin Mitchell, in the Guardian, calls Ireland's victory a "seismic event that shredded English complacency bordering on arrogance."

In the same newspaper, Andy Bull pays tribute to the man who spent last season playing club cricket for Railway Union but inflicted on England one of their most shocking defeats.

England and India played the match of the tournament in Bangalore but Mike Selvey, writing for the Guardian, identifies severe shortcomings on both sides. "My view is rather different," he says, "for however thrilling the match was taken in isolation, all I saw were two teams, neither of which possesses the range of requisite skills to challenge the best in subcontinental conditions."

In India, I saw a side whose undeniably stellar batting, particularly on familiar pitches, ought to be able to bat other teams into oblivion but whose generally mediocre bowling and pedestrian fielding was unable to defend 338 against a batting side as lacking in depth as England's.

In England, I saw a thin bowling attack, shallow batting, and fielding that has yet to come up to scratch. Thus far at any rate, neither look a patch on South Africa, for whom Imran Tahir is a huge bonus, or even Sri Lanka, or Pakistan or Australia.

Simon Hughes, writing for the Telegraph, looks at how Andrew Strauss has bettered his one-day cricket skills with the help of a golf swing.

Until he [Strauss] took over as England captain two years ago he wasn’t even considered a one-day batsman … All Strauss has really done is added a bit of purpose to an otherwise sound method.

The one extra dimension he has added to his one day game is six-hitting. He rarely hit balls over the ropes until two years ago when he adapted his prowess at golf – he plays off five – into his batting.

Steve James, writing for the Telegraph, says while the England squad has admirably accepted Steven Davies’ bold coming out, it remains to be seen how his admission will be received by opponents and the wider cricketing public. While cricketers supposedly have an unwritten rule against getting personal while sledging, he points out sexual connotations are hardly unknown.

If there are bigots and homophobes out there, they are hardly likely to announce themselves now. They will bide their time. I worry in particular about Twenty20 crowds. They are not exactly your typical cricket gatherings.

There are a number of smart alecs, cowards who can make their comments often without punishment. I just hope they don’t target Davies. And if they do, colleagues, opponents and officials must act. It must not be tolerated.

Samanth Subramanian, writing for the Caravan, looks at Lalit Modi – the man in the Armani suit with golden toilet fittings in his private plane, who could go four days without sleep when need be. He discusses his quirks, business acumen, irrepressible energy levels, steep fall from grace and conceivable disentanglement from the legal issues currently stacked against him.

Modi would sit, either in his own box or in the box of the home team, and mug for the Modicam, the camera deputed to follow him around in each game. He would chant team slogans and sing team songs, the metal rims of his spectacles glinting in the spotlights … But through all these lusty exhibitions of fandom, Modi would be acutely alert to the demands of his positions as IPL commissioner … his eyes always cocked for something going wrong — for an unwanted guest in an exclusive box, or for a brand not getting quite as much play as it had paid for.

If the IPL’s story is unusual, the story of its architect is positively bizarre. With a string of business failures, a personality with all the tenderness of a battering ram, and a host of foes, Modi shouldn’t have been able to build anything nearly as successful as the IPL. Somehow, and very rapidly, he did — and then, just as rapidly, just when he was perched atop the world, he lost it all.