Salim Durani will be given the BCCI's Col C K Nayudu Lifetime Achievement Award on Tuesday. In Mid Day, Ayaz Memon writes of Durani's enigmatic, incorrigible character that made him such a loved Indian cricketer.

He could be brilliant or ordinary, not so much because of his skills or prevailing conditions, but because of his mercurial temperament. At his best, he was no less than a genius; on several other occasions, he could be maddeningly mediocre, leaving fans, critics ” and one dare say even opponents - wondering at what might have been.

In the Indian Express, Devendra Pandey interviews Durani and finds out that he is planning to write a book.

He roars with laughter when asked to imagine what it would have been like had he been born in this generation of cricketers. "There were no one-dayers then, only Test matches. One-dayers were looked at as entertainment and we batted like today’s batsmen slog in T20. Borde, me, Pataudi and others never knew then that we were such powerful hitters," he recalls. Durrani batted lefthanded, and he sees a bit of himself in Yuvraj Singh and Suresh Raina now, and jokes that some of his shots were the same, though there were no cheerleaders outside the boundary rope.

Chris Tremlett picked up four wickets in Sri Lanka's second innings in Cardiff and his role in England's extraordinary victory showed that he has has lost his John Cleese-esque gawkiness and has got the balance right, writes Vic Marks in the Guardian.

The shoulders are so much broader. His biceps stretch the short sleeves of his shirt. Too much gym work can damage a pace bowler; it can take away the suppleness and the whip of the action. But Tremlett, we must conclude, has the balance right. He does not have to say anything out in the middle to impose himself on the batsmen. His physical presence does that for him.

Looking back on England's win against Sri Lanka in the first Test, Johnathan Agnew in his column on BBC Sport writes that there were very few people in the stadium in Cardiff to see one of the most extraordinary England wins in recent years and I suspect that they, like the rest of us, could not believe what they saw. Sri Lanka switched off and it cost them.

Sri Lanka must be honest, put their hands up and admit that this was a disaster.

They clearly did not have their mind on the job, which is unforgivable. They may not have known when they would bat, but they knew they were going to have to at some stage.

Two years ago we had the Great Escape [when England drew against Australia in Cardiff] writes Tom Fordyce on the same website. The second Miracle of Cardiff was every bit as impossible to believe.

For all the opprobrium that will be thrown at Sri Lanka after their knock-kneed collapse, equal amounts of praise should be heaped on England.

Here, in under a session, was the encapsulation of why they are now a team to be feared and admired - in a seemingly impossible situation, shorn of their leading bowler, in a match that everyone had written off, somehow finding a way to win against any odds or expectations.

Declining standards, expensive tickets and plummeting crowds but Chris Gayle still offers full value with bat in hand - Dileep Premachandran looks at five things we have learnt from the fourth season of the IPL. More from the Guardian.

Given that it started just days after India's World Cup win, the IPL was always in danger of falling victim to the morning-after feeling. Even players like Virat Kohli spoke of how weird it was to play against India team-mates in the opening week of the competition. Crowds struggled not only with feelings of satiation, but also with identity.

David Lloyd, writing in the Daily Mail, on Ajantha Mendis' variations, Jonathan Trott's unending innings, the incentive for left-arm spinners to make a comeback this summer and more.

They reckon the Sri Lanka spinner Ajantha Mendis has got four different variations. But as far as I can tell, they all go straight on. It reminds me of lettuce. You've got cos lettuce, iceberg, Swiss chard and arugula - but at the end of the day, there's no getting away from it: they're all just lettuce.

Sachin Tendulkar's decision to rest from India's tour of the West Indies is reflective of the state of cricket in the Caribbean, Fazeer Mohammed writes in the Trinidad Express. The West Indies cannot provide the atmosphere that countries like England can, and so cricketers are not excited at the prospect of touring the islands.

But there was obviously something missing that made India's batting maestro determine that a month in the Caribbean and the prospect of a couple really big innings was worth passing up. Maybe it was the challenge. Maybe it was the sense of occasion. Maybe it was both. To put it bluntly: milking our bowlers on the way to a 100th senior international hundred in a near-empty stadium would have been the equivalent of Barcelona defeating Manchester United on a Sunday morning at the Aranjuez Savannah with ten men and two dogs in attendance and two vagrants sleeping at the back of the pavilion.

After Kevin Pietersen was again dismissed by a left-arm spinner on the fourth day in Cardiff, Vic Marks' verdict, in the Guardian, is that he has developed a mental block. Pietersen tries too hard to dominate the left-arm spinners because he is aware people consider them his Achilles' heel, Marks writes.

My impression is that Pietersen is not really technically deficient against left-arm spinners but he has become unnerved by them, something he would vehemently deny. On the very brief evidence of Sunday there is one shot that he declines to play against them now, and that is the forward defensive.

On bbc.co.uk, Jonathan Agnew says Jonathan Trott is the best No. 3 England have had in many years, flexible enough to come in second ball or at 120 for 1. Though some may be frustrated by his slow scoring-rate, he's exactly the kind of player England have been crying out for, Agnew writes.

That means you have to be a quite flexible player and you have to be someone who can cope with a crisis. It's difficult to compare him to other England number threes, not least because they really haven't had a successful number three for a while. That's why they're very grateful to have him and I'm sure he will score a mountain of runs. England have been crying out for someone to bat like that and now they've got one I certainly wouldn't be criticising him.

Misbah-ul-Haq's comeback in Test cricket has been remarkable, but such is the nature of Pakistan cricket, there is no guarantee how long his run will last, Amir Hussain writes in the National. If the example of Shoaib Akhtar is anything to go by, Misbah should not take anything for granted, he says.

Not surprisingly, Misbah-ul-Haq's career seems to be following the same pattern. The only difference? Shoaib's decline was slow and steady as his pace slowed. Misbah's dips in fortune have been followed by inexplicable flashes of brilliance which have resurrected his career on many occasions.

Rohit Mahajan and Satarupa Bhattacharjya find out that there's a a growing rumble against the BCCI’s power and the way the body rules the world of cricket. More in the Outlook magazine.

The BCCI uses the bait of money to lure the best players away from their domestic tournaments to the IPL. But it doesn’t allow its own cricketers to forego domestic tournaments and play T20 abroad. There’s resentment that it’s undermining world cricket, just what Packer’s World Series did some 30 years ago.

Gautam Gambhir’s injury and late exclusion from the ODI team to the Caribbean, a team he was going to captain, has led to much hand wringing over players choosing to play in the IPL at the expense of international cricket. An editorial in the Indian Express defends Gambhir’s decision, and says more players will be forced to make these kinds of choices as the cricket calendar fills up.

As the cricket calendar gets ever more packed — and the BCCI is responsible for scheduling both the IPL and international series — players will be forced to take calls with more stark choices than the injured Gambhir has. And it’s not just about the money. Top sportspersons seek the best stages, those that are the most competitive, to establish their dominance. When in pursuit of longevity as competitors they pass some tournaments, the decision should be seen for its rationale — for an athlete’s choices define her greatness — and not as a pretext to pass judgment.

In the same paper, Nihal Koshie warns that Suresh Raina could be the next casualty of all the non-stop cricketing action

Since the start of the last edition of the IPL, Raina has been on the road constantly. He's boarded an estimated 72 flights in between featuring in 109 match days, including Tests, ODIs, T20 Internationals, IPL and the Champions League.

He is one of the fittest players in international cricket, but it is a miracle that he hasn't broken down over the past 12 months. It remains a wonder how Raina has escaped being a causality of the non-stop cricket circus, quite like the man he is replacing as skipper for the T20 and ODIs in the West Indies -Gautam Gambhir.

In the Age, Adrian Proszenko, who watched Shane Warne play his first Test in Sydney in 1991-92, says he'll miss Warne the man just as much as Warne the cricketer following his retirement from all competitive cricket.

In Warne, we saw one of us. A knockabout bloke who got himself into trouble only when he wasn't true to himself. We can forgive the weather reports to subcontinental bookies, the banned diuretic and the even the way he pursued ordinary sorts with the same zest as good ones. What we couldn't stand for was the Nicorette deal (how can he have such white teeth while smoking so many durries?) or putting his name to a wine range. Shane Keith Warne is a joker, a smoker, a midnight toker - and he definitely gets his lovin' on the run.

Friend and former team-mate Ashley Mallett pays tribute to Terry Jenner in the Sunday Herald Sun.

Fourteen-year-old Terry Jenner was leaning on the wall of our ancient wooden pavilion at Shearn Park in Mt Lawley, an inner suburb of Perth.

"I'm a wicketkeeper," he said with a grin, "But I plan to become a leg-spinner."

Ah, I thought, every keeper thinks they can bowl leg-breaks. Terry spoke as though the world was his oyster. He exuded confidence.

Sri Lanka without Muttiah Muralitharan are like Queen without Freddie Mercury, Mike Selvey writes in the Guardian. Ajantha Mendis was supposed to take up the mantle but in three years he has gone from mystery bowler to steady but unthreatening.

Mendis will have been scrutinised microscopically. From it will have come the realisation that in a form of the game where there is no imperative to force the pace, there is nothing so mysterious about Mendis at all. " Get forward," is the mantra, "and play him as an off-spin bowler." Simple and, if the statistics are to be believed, effective, for since that debut series, 13 matches have thus far brought him 36 more wickets at 41 runs apiece. The batsmen have got his measure now.

Uday Gharat became an official scorer at the Mumbai Cricket Association during the 1990-91 season and since then has recorded over two hundred Indian domestic games, as well as 30 ODIs and 9 Tests. Gharat became a scorer by accident. As a cashier at the Bank of Baroda, he was unable to establish a regular place in bank’s cricket team and turned to scoring to stay involved. In the Indian Express, Bharat Sundaresan explores how technology has changed Gharat's trade.

Having devoted a major part of his last 22 years to cricket scoring, Gharat now also conducts annual courses for those aiming to follow his path at the Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA). And while insisting that he has never once committed an error during his illustrious scoring career even during the pre-laptop era, he can’t help but reiterate the comfort that technology has brought about in his area of expertise. “These days, even a mistake can be revoked by a single click,” he says.

James Anderson's injury could pave the way for Graham Onions to play his first Test in over a year, David Lloyd says in the Independent. The other candidates for the position are Steven Finn, Ajmal Shehzad and Jade Dernbach, he writes.

The problem for Finn this week could be that Strauss's two remaining fast bowlers, Broad and Tremlett, are both tall, bang it in merchants, and a third of the same type would leave England with little in the way of variety. So what price a heart-warming return for Onions, whose style is much more "kiss the turf" and search for seam movement?

Watching Alastair Cook and Jonathan Trott bat on a wet day, in a Test headed for a draw, may not be the most exciting in the world, but while they may not always put bums on seats, you can't neglect how effective the pair have been for England, Tom Fordyce writes on bbc.co.uk.

Cook and Trott have formed a bond as successful as it is unlikely. The latter is an anxious starter and twitchy stayer - scratching that trench on the popping crease, fiddling his way through an extended routine before every ball that he faces. Cook, by contrast, increasingly resembles a run-making robot, as unflustered on 99 as he is on nine.

Cardiff has failed to produce substantial crowds for the Test so far, but in the Daily Telegraph Steve James says criticism of the venue is harsh.

The crowds have not been exceptional – although there were 10, 479 present on Saturday, by far the best of the three days – and in an instant the judgement has been that there is little or no appetite for Test cricket in Wales. Before the accusations of bias fly, I must stress that I too remain sceptical on that front, but it is far too soon to say categorically. And there is no going back now. Glamorgan simply cannot survive without Test cricket. As a venue this has to be granted time.

While England might not miss Paul Collingwood's runs this summer, they need to find someone to take those flying catches in the slips, and to bowl occasionally rewarding medium-pace, says David Lloyd in the Independent. The policy of playing only four bowlers also needs to be debated in the light of evidence from the Cardiff Test, he writes.

Collingwood probably dropped too many chances throughout the course of a long Test career to be mentioned in the same breath as South Africa's Jonty Rhodes when it comes to truly great fielders of the modern area. But he did hold any number of stupendous catches that left his team-mates open-mouthed in admiration.

Now, whether Collingwood would have held the two edges that flashed close to Alastair Cook – new filler of the third slip slot – is impossible to tell. Experience tells us, though, that he probably would have snaffled one of them, and quite possibly have reacted more quickly than Eoin Morgan did at point when a miscue landed fractionally short of him.

In the Daily Mail, Nasser Hussain writes that England have succeeded with a four-man attack largely due to the brilliance of Graeme Swann, but taking 20 wickets could get tougher during the winter. He hopes that England find a way to get Samit Patel into the side to improve the balance.

Stuart Broad has had a rough last few months. Injured during the Ashes, then injured during the World Cup, it is something of a triumph for him just to be back in an England shirt. After running the rule over his first day performance in the opening Test against Sri Lanka, David Lloyd writes in the Independent that England should perhaps have delayed Broad’s return until he had shaken the rust from his boots.

Andrew Strauss gave Broad the new ball, in partnership with Anderson, but saw England's newly appointed Twenty20 captain struggle to find the sort of consistency that was a hallmark of the team's success in Australia. There were some good deliveries, as one would expect on a pitch offering just a hint of assistance if no pace whatsoever during the first few overs. But there was too much loose stuff as well – meat and drink to Sri Lanka's in-form openers Tillakaratne Dilshan and Tharanga Paranavitana.

Gautam Gambhir's shoulder injury, aggravated by playing in the IPL, is evidence of a problem that goes beyond the country versus franchise debate, according to Firstpost.com's Ashish Magotra. His grouse is the amount of cricket being played, which is bound to increase the number of player injuries.

At first sight, it seems like there are gaps in the schedule. A week here, a little more there but then think again. Between tours, there’s the whole thing about keeping sponsors happy, preparing for the next tour and getting some rest if possible. And once on tour, there is simply no downtime. You think about the game 24 x 7.

Partha Bhaduri says in the Times of India that it is the BCCI's conflict of interest in being in charge of managing the national side as well being involved in the IPL that confuses players.

While it is easy to blame big players for opting to play in the IPL in spite of a jam-packed schedule and chastise them for being 'in it' for the big bucks, it should be remembered the IPL is a BCCI enterprise in the first place, with some office-bearers even owning big stakes. This unprofessional attitude of the board does rub off on players, so they too must own up to moral responsibility if an injury problem is a well-kept secret.

Kiran More's solution is for the BCCI to develop a comprehensive policy dealing with all situations related to injuries and when players should report them. Also, he writes in DNA, the national team needs to develop bench strength to deal with the strenuous schedule.

A professional sportsperson is no different in his materialistic aspirations as compared to any other young hardworking professional in other strata of society. Even the great Sachin Tendulkar had to play last year’s IPL final with broken fingers; exemplifying the demands and rigors of professional cricket and its accountability.

West Indian cricket is not helped by the fact that Caribbean pitches recently tend to be skewed in favour of the visitors' skills, says Alan Harris, writing in the Barbados Advocate.

Though not equipped with the elegance, style and maybe talent as many of the other international cricket teams of this era, the Darren Sammy-led Caribbean outfit is trying their best. But try as they may, it’s the 12th man, their own man, who continues to conspire against them. His name is ‘Caribbean pitches’ and he rears his ugly head when the West Indies can least afford it – during Home Series.

Makarand Waingankar, in the Hindu, laments the decline of Hyderabad cricket. There was a time, he writes, back in the 1960s and '70s when the team enjoyed an abundance of talent, including players who were unfortunate not to play for India, and introduces readers to some of them.

In 1979 I saw a teenager Saad Bin Jung, nephew of Pataudi, score a brilliant hundred against the deadly West Indian attack at Hyderabad playing for South Zone. Batting without helmet, he was hooking the bowlers past square-leg. His unbeaten knock of 136 against Tamil Nadu on a rank bad turner of Chepauk in 1979 is considered one of the finest by those who witnessed it. Serious illness cut short his career.

Paul Newman speaks to Surrey's Richard Thompson, who, at 43, is the youngest chairman in county history. Read the interview in the Daily Mail.

Thompson certainly has a challenge on his hands. He runs a media rights and talent management company called Merlin Elite but he has no magic wand as he attempts to awaken the sleeping giant that is Surrey. They are the biggest and wealthiest of all counties but are without a trophy in eight years and are languishing in the second division of the Championship. Crucially, they have not produced an England Test player since Mark Butcher.

The first Test against Sri Lanka in Cardiff is England's first step towards achieving the No.1 ranking in Tests. Read more from Stephen Brenkley in the Independent.

But what happened in Sydney and at other points around Australia should persuade England that they have what it takes to be the best Test side in the world. Stuart Law, the coach of Sri Lanka, has missed no opportunity to say that he thinks they are the top side already. The rankings put them at two, behind India, with Sri Lanka at four.

For England to assume the peak for the first time since official rankings began, they must defeat Sri Lanka and, later in the season, India. The first part of that should be well within their grasp and there was a new-beginning type of spring in England's step yesterday.

Brenkley, again in the Independent, previews Sri Lanka's chances, singling out their bowling as a major worry, particularly in foreign conditions.

In the Daily Telegraph, Michael Vaughan says Kevin Pietersen, under scrutiny for quite some time now, has an excellent opportunity to have a vintage summer as he is at his most dangerous when he has a point to prove.

Nasser Hussain, in his dossier for the first Test in the Daily Mail, chalks out the talking points for the teams, singling out Graeme Swann as the bowler to watch out for on what is expected to be a flat Cardiff track.

How effective Eoin Morgan is as a replacement for Paul Collingwood will be a factor in England's progress this summer, writes Mike Selvey in the Guardian.

Vic Marks, also in the Guardian, turns focus to Stuart Broad, back in the England team after missing much of the Ashes. He says while it's good news that Broad has returned, he faces plenty of competition for his place in the side.

Chloe Saltau in the Age remembers Terry Jenner, who has died at 66, as a fierce defender of spin bowlers.

Jenner did a nice line in exasperation, not with the spinners themselves but with those who failed to understand why they couldn't all be like his most famous pupil. He expressed his exasperation regularly, with the selectors who sent spinners through a revolving door to the Test team, with the states that wouldn't pick them, with the captains and coaches who wanted to turn them into robots.

In Adelaide's Advertiser, Jesper Fjeldstad describes visiting Jenner in his final months.

I remember vividly dropping in to have a quick chat and drop off some photos to Terry after our last interview and he looked spent. He didn't make it to the door, asking me to help myself in, and struggled to get up to shake hands.One of my daughters was with me, and that lit his eyes up. She was asked to show her bowling action, and soon enough Terry was on his feet, wanting to help her along and fan her interest. She won't forget it, even though she only just knew about Shane Warne, Jenner's most famous pupil.

Malcolm Conn, writing in the Daily Telegraph, writes that in many ways Jenner was Warne's creator as the greatest leg-spinner ever to play the game, but equally Warne was Jenner's saviour.

Has the IPL taken cricketainment too far? Writing on Firstpost.com, Abhilasha Khaitan thinks so, saying the mix of sport and entertainment has reached the point of ridiculousness.

Mr Modi may tut-tut-tweet about dipping IPL ratings, but the fall has little to do with the absence of his brilliance. One is, obviously, the overdose of cricket. I mean, we all have jobs to do, wages to earn. Two is, though I have no scientific research to back my theory, the increasingly ridiculous packaging of the tournament has much to do with viewer apathy. Who would waste time to hear Sidhu say this: “They have dug their own grave with their teeth and god gives the toothless nuts to chew on,” a comment he made after Kochi Tuskers lost against Delhi Daredevils. Funny, you think? I have seen housewives and children (the supposed target audience of such tomfoolery) switch to other channels when the tamasha brigade takes centre stage.

Dumbing down is so passé a content strategy that even Bollywood has taken note. When will the cricket broadcasters wake up to this change?

Iqbal Abdulla has been one of the finds of the 2011 IPL. Not only is he Kolkata Knight Riders’ leading wicket-taker, with 16 scalps, but he has also opened the bowling on a regular basis with startling success. In the Indian Express, Devendra Pandey traces Abdulla’s rise from IPL benchwarmer to star.

It isn’t just the ample figure in his wickets column that makes him Gambhir’s go-to man, just take a look at his season’s economy rate — 6.00. And despite his lack of variations, Abdulla has learnt the art of survival in the pro-batsman world by taking advice from the best in the business — his Kolkata team mates.

“Gambhir is the best player of spin, Yusuf Pathan is the best hitter in the world and Wasim Akram (bowling coach) is the original trickster. By just talking to them, you get to learn so much about the game,” he says.

Cricket can be a dangerous sport, but no one prospered through reckless courage and obduracy against intimidatory bowling quite like Mohinder Amarnath, writes Robert Bagchi in the Guardian.

Being hit while batting, though, remains the most conventional way to suffer injury in the game and those who withstood West Indies' attack, and Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson during the 70s and 80s, deserve most praise. Chief among them was India's happy hooker Mohinder Amarnath, recalled after a long exile in the Lancashire leagues with Lowerhouse and Crompton, who took them on with, initially, only a solar topee to protect himself. Richard Hadlee fractured his skull, Imran Khan knocked him unconscious, Malcolm Marshall dislodged his teeth, Thomson cracked his jaw and Michael Holding sent him to hospital to have stitches put in his head.

Yet he still managed to score three centuries against Pakistan during the 1982-83 series and warmed up for his starring role in India's 1983 World Cup victory by hitting two more and four fifties in a brutal five-Test tour of the Caribbean.

Evidence to prove Kevin Pietersen is in good form is sketchy. Can he offer some proof in Cardiff, asks Stephen Brenkley in the Independent.

Something happened and it has not yet unhappened. He has been afflicted by injuries in the past two years and his batting has mislaid the carefree fluency of yore. Maybe bowlers know a bit more about him, but sometimes he has been in several minds at the crease and what was outrageously successful has looked daft. The risks that once paid dividends in a bull market have cost him dearly in a bear market.

In the Daily Telegraph, Simon Hughes says Andrew Strauss has perfected the art of captaincy and backs him to propel England to the No.1 ranking in Tests.

James Anderson aims high and says England will target beating Sri Lanka and India convincingly to achieve the No.1 Test ranking in the Daily Mail.

In the Guardian, Mike Selvey says the retirement of Paul Collingwood from Tests has meant that Graeme Swann has lost an important ally in that format, in the slips.

In the Daily Mail Martin Samuel has an interesting and wide-ranging interview with England captain Andrew Strauss on everything from split-captaincy, Ashes preparation, to his concerns of being 'exposed' at the highest level.

‘You’re worried that this might be the series when you’re finally outed as a fraud and not up to playing at this level,’ he writes. It is a startling admission from one who is widely respected for his unflappable air. ‘With cricket, you have so much time to think about what is going to happen,’ Strauss explains. ‘You end up stewing over stuff that in other sports is over very quickly. It can be lonely in the middle but we are conditioned to deal with that.

Meanwhile in the Telegraph, there is an extract from Strauss's book Winning the Ashes Down Under.

I often worry with England sides that when we’re feeling a bit comfortable and happy with ourselves, it can be a bit of a danger time. But on this occasion I didn’t see it. I saw a lot of guys who were confident in the way they’d been playing, and determined to finish the series in style. I was very reassured by the way they were approaching things in the nets, with a quiet confidence, allied to a sort of inner drive. That’s a great recipe for success.

With the World Cup out of the way, India's selectors are likely to shift from a result-oriented approach to longer-term planning for their team's future, says Karthik Krishnaswamy, writing in the Indian Express. And R Ashwin must be featuring prominently in their thoughts, he says, threatening Harbhajan Singh's place in the national XI.

The two [Harbhajan and Ashwin] have similar figures this [IPL] season. Harbhajan has 13 wickets from 13 matches with an economy rate of 6.75, while Ashwin's 14 games have brought him 16 wickets while conceding 6.16 runs an over. Their strike rates are separated by a single decimal point. Dig a little deeper, however, and the differences become apparent. Five of Harbhajan's 13 wickets came in Mumbai's eight-run win over Chennai at Wankhede, and has gone wicketless seven times. Ashwin, on the other hand, hasn't picked up more than two wickets in any of his spells, and has failed to strike only three times.

Bharat Sundaresan, writing in the Indian Express, says that with the batting form Virat Kohli has been in over the last 12 months, he must be in a good frame of mind. He, says Sundaresan, has managed to channelise his earlier belligerence in the right direction, and has found a lot of success by doing just that.

Another pleasing factor in Kohli’s emergence has been his ability to take charge and hold his nerves in every situation he is faced with. On three occasions [in the IPL] already he has walked out to bat in the very first over of Bangalore’s innings. And on two of those, Kohli has started off with boundaries. Rather than let the pressure of the situation bog him down, he has managed to shift it onto the bowler.

Mahela Jayawardene talks to the Guardian's Donald McRae about the terrorist attacks on the Sri Lanka team in Lahore in 2009, the tragedy of his brother's brain tumour and, among other things, Muttiah Muralitharan.

"I still get flashbacks," he says of that day in Lahore when a dozen masked gunmen attacked them. "At first, the guys were saying, 'Why would anyone let off crackers at eight in the morning?' But then someone shouted: 'No, they're shooting at us – get down' ... Two or three times, lying on the floor, I thought, 'There is no way we're going to get through this.' There was no talking – just screaming and shouting. Whenever anyone got hit by shrapnel they would scream..."

The scars remain. During the World Cup, "we were on a bus in India and crackers went off. A couple of guys almost went down because it was the exact noise we'd heard in Pakistan."

Steve James, writing in the Daily Telegraph, reviews Not in My Day, Sir, a compilation of cricket letters the newspaper has received over the years. Edited by Martin Smith, the book includes letters which are “by turns acerbic, witty, opinionated and hilarious, and they are always to the point, silly or otherwise”.

It is a wonderful collection, beginning in 1928 when the Telegraph first introduced a daily letters section ... All the major controversies down the years are covered, from Bodyline to the D’Oliveira and Packer affairs to match-fixing.

Kasprowicz would have enjoyed the letter from Douglas J Wathen in 2009: “Sir, I don’t see why batsmen today accept being confronted by bowlers wearing gold necklaces and particularly sunglasses. When I played cricket no jewellery was worn. As batsmen, we liked to see the colour of the bowlers’ eyes. Would an umpire uphold my complaint today if I refused to face a bowler so adorned?”

Sachin Tendulkar's strike-rate of 109.40 is not good enough in the IPL, Ashish Magotra says on Firstpost.com, especially since he bats in the first four overs, when the field restrictions apply. The question is, he writes, is anyone bold enough to tell him to step up the pace?

We all know that if Tendulkar decides to go after the bowling, he still can be very devastating. But right now he seems to be thinking like a captain – he worries about the rest of the batting not firing. When instead, he needs to go back to the basics, think like a batsman and perhaps take a leaf out of Sehwag’s book with the ‘see ball, hit ball’ approach.

The West Indies have been in decline for 20 years now, belying hopes countless times. But is this decline terminal, asks Rohit Mahajan in Outlook magazine.

Rahul Bhattacharya, the cricket writer who’s produced his first work of fiction after travelling in the region, isn’t hopeful. He suggests that cricket is not the choice of the times in the Caribbean. Cricket served its purpose in the 1960s through to the 1980s, when the sport acquired a larger, nationalistic meaning and purpose. “Cricket had a sort of purpose then in the pan-Caribbean nationalist project,” he says. “In the 1960s and ’70s, the colonies gained independence one by one. Black nationalism was gathering momentum worldwide. Their team was able to perform at a high level of excellence, and beat the white man.”

Former IMF chief and potential French president Dominique Staruss-Kahn, was charged with sexual assault in a New York hotel. C Uday Bhaskar in the Economic Times draws a parallel with the recent controversy surrounding the disclosures of an IPL cheerleader who commented on a blog about the post-match behaviour in the IPL saying that some players treat young women like 'a piece of meat'.

Cyber space is inundated with conspiracy theories and Kahn is being portrayed as having been set-up for sharing the humanist and ethical concerns of Jo Stiglitz and that the real target is control of the top job of the IMF.

Be that as it may, the labor of this comment is to draw attention to a less noticed but similar development that is doing the rounds on the IPL cricket social circuit which has deplorable connotations. I must hasten to add that this is not a comment on cricket, but about the insecure status of women in general in India and how certain societal attitudes and behavioral patterns are being tacitly endorsed in one part of glitzy India.

England's selectors chose to go with Eoin Morgan over Ravi Bopara for the first Test against Sri Lanka, and Jonathan Agnew writing on BBC Sport says that while Bopara's bowling might have offered Andrew Strauss an option for a few overs here and there, most will agree that if Morgan can now cement his place with some big scores, his innovative and busy style of batting would be invaluable to England's middle order.

Bopara is a lovely natural player and turned down the IPL to focus on pressing his Test claims. The England camp does not actively encourage its players to take part in the IPL circus, but having granted Morgan permission to play by issuing him a 'no objection certificate', they could hardly penalise him for doing so - particularly after scoring a big hundred against the tourists.

It was consistency of selection that won the day for Eoin Morgan and Steve Finn, who have been selected in England's squad for the first Test against Sri Lanka, writes Mike Selvey in the Guardian.

But there is no question that in terms of finding a potential long-term Test-match batsman, for which temperament is an important factor, the selectors have chosen the right man. As a result of his grounding in one-day cricket Morgan still has technical deficiencies that are unsuited to the longer forms of the game, particularly outside off stump, and these are areas that are sure to be exploited by Sri Lanka. But he has well-earned the soubriquet "Iceman" and the prospect of his coming in at No6 and batting as he did in Derby is a mouthwatering one – he may prove as much a game-maker as Collingwood was a game-saver.

England chose expediency ahead of loyalty yesterday writes Stephen Brenkley in the Independent and it demonstrated that their prime motivation must always be to pick the team to win the match and that all other considerations are excluded.

Morgan not only decided that the IPL was better for him (and certainly more lucrative) than the County Championship but had also casually confirmed that were he not picked for the first Test against Sri Lanka he would return to play for the Knight Riders.

The selectors insist they are happy enough with Morgan's commitment to England's Test cause but Miller will have a word with him to establish his priorities. Bopara was bitterly disappointed when the news of his omission was broken on Saturday evening. He will feel that his commitment has been discarded, though his decision was probably eased by the fact that staying in England meant he was around for the birth of his first child a month ago.

The IPL revolution has been driven by thrill-thirsty fans and not by what the game itself requires, Akshaya Mishra writes on Firstpost.com. The problem with that, he says, is it will reduce cricketers to products of an assembly line that caters only to the basic minimum of the fan need.

In the reductionist approach of the average fan, cricket is all about hitting the ball hard and high the sound of woodwork being dismantled. Greatness here is a quantity that comes in the denominations of fours and sixes. Everything else – the joys of unique skills, the cases individual courage, the test of character in great fightbacks, in all, the combination of abstracts that make sport so beautiful — turned irrelevant.

Apart from Shaun Marsh, and to a lesser extent Doug Bollinger, there haven't been any outstanding Australian performers in the IPL, Jesse Hogan points out in the Sydney Morning Herald.

David Hussey, Cameron White and Daniel Christian were bought for a combined total of $US3.4 million ($A3.19 million) per season - $US1.4 million for Hussey, $US1.1 million for White, $900,000 for Christian - and were among the 20 most expensive players at January's IPL auction. But all three performed well below expectations.

Michael Holding has never been shy about his opinions. In an interview with Vijay Tagore in DNA, Holding says that both the West Indies Cricket Board and the players are to blame for the current malaise in West Indies cricket, that the IPL has caused disquiet around the world, and that the ICC has become a powerless body.

How do you justify the presence of Chris Gayle in the IPL?
You have to ask the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) and the coach for that one. They were the ones who forced him to go to the IPL. He was not selected for the first two games here in the Caribbean against Pakistan. He does not have a contract with the board, so he has to go and seek employment somewhere else. As simple as that.

Writing in the Sunday Telegraph England wicketkeeper Matt Prior says that while the Ashes win was the highlight of the winter, it was a stepping stone to achieve England's long-term goal. This summer gives us a great chance to advance further down that road, he says, because we are playing the team we want to knock off the top of the ladder, India, in the second half of July.

Home advantage is very important in cricket, and there is no point going abroad and learning to play on the subcontinent if you cannot make good use of your own conditions as well. Fortunately we have a strong seam attack and James Anderson, in particular, is a menace when the ball is moving around.

England's long-term goal is not an "airy-fairy target" says fast bowler James Anderson. But if you want to move up the rankings you need to win convincingly. So, we'll set out to win 3-0 and 4-0 is what he writes in the Daily Mail.

We want to be the world No 1 and if we do achieve that we will have to be the best England team there has ever been.

We want to create our own legacy and set an example for the next generation and show them what can be achieved.

With the England selectors set to pick the Test squad for the series against Sri Lanka, one of the biggest debates is over who will be picked for the No. 6 slot - Ravi Bopara or Eoin Morgan? Vic Marks in the Observer writes that if England were certain Bopara would play in the first Test against Sri Lanka, they should not have picked him for the Lions.

By picking Bopara for the Lions the selectors were inviting the intervention of Sod's Law. Bopara fails in the first innings and Eoin Morgan, scuttling back from India, cracks 193. How can they ignore such evidence without looking silly and without demeaning the status of these Lions fixtures? They can't.

Peter Haytor in the Daily Mail writes that unless the England selectors intended all along to pull off the dummy of the decade by dropping Kevin Pietersen, they should ignore calls to punish Morgan for his IPL involvement and pick him ahead of Bopara.

But those who would have had him punished for lack of loyalty to the badge are ignoring the fact that, if England thought his IPL involvement was against their interests, they had the option of stopping him. But they gave him the no-objection certificate all international players must obtain from their boards to take part in the IPL.

Apart from the Morgan-Bopara tussle, the other batting place which is under most scrutiny is that of Kevin Pietersen says Stephen Brenkley in the Independent. He goes on to write that at present it is by no means certain that Pietersen will still be No 4 in England's Test side at the end of this summer.

The fact is that Pietersen is not the batsman he used to be and, apart from his sublime 227 in the second Test against Australia last winter, there was precious little else from the days of yore.

Since he lost the captaincy, Pietersen has regularly been prone to injury. He is not exactly on borrowed time but while England still consider that he is capable of returning to his full glory, he is not the cock of the walk.

Without Muttiah Muralitharan and Lasith Malinga, Angelo Mathews and Chaminda Vaas, the tourists are going to offer some occasionally brilliant batting, but little more than steady bowling in the three-Test series that starts at Cardiff on Thursday, writes Scyld Berry in the Sunday Telegraph. For England, this series will be a stepping stone ahead of sterner Tests ahead in quest to be 'the best.

So, whereas past England teams could be expected to coast through an early-season Test series against an Asian country to win 1-0, this England side will be intent on winning every one of their seven Tests this season — both to knock India off the top of the Test rankings and to become England’s all-time best side.

Oliver Brown gets Andrew Strauss to dissect his own character as well as that of several England team-mates with bracing candour, and analyse the art of leadership that he is so deeply steeped in. Here's more in the Daily Telegraph.

Kevin Pietersen, he concedes, “likes the attention”. The brilliant batting automaton that is Alastair Cook “epitomises what this team is about”. One so serenely composed should need little prompting to locate the words that best capture his style. He is simply the consummate captain.

England’s first Ashes triumph in Australia for 24 years represented the vindication of many virtues: faultless planning, destructive seam bowling, preternatural powers of concentration.

But the spirit was nowhere better embodied than by Strauss. Unruffled at the top of the order, immaculate in the slip cordon, and masterful in imparting motivation to his men as they toiled in 100-degree heat, he was the talisman from which that 3-1 scoreline sprang. No wonder he has just written a book about it.

Commenting on the PCB's decision to remove Shahid Afridi as Pakistan's ODI captain, an editorial in the Dawn states that while Afridi may have had his faults, he was an inspirational captain. He did not deserve to be sacked, for the simple reason that he was putting Pakistan back on the winning track after several years in the cricketing wilderness.

To his credit, Afridi has opted to continue playing even though he is no longer captain. What is needed now is a shake-up in the governing body, not the team which is doing itself credit despite the myriad problems it faces. Ijaz Butt should fully realise the importance of the job he is expected to do, or leave it.

Glittering after-parties. Bollywood megastars. Warney. And a frank discussion about organic farming with Liz Hurley: New Zealand allrounder Jacob Oram who played for the Rajasthan Royal's in the IPL, discusses life the off-the-field life in the tournament with Mark Geenty in the Dominion Post.

"It's everywhere. You flick through the different TV channels and half of them will have some panel talking about the IPL. There's half a dozen pages in every paper, it's all about the IPL. They have an hour's buildup and an hour's review of every match," Oram said.

In the Daily Telegraph, the retiring Shane Warne looks back at his career; he names Daryl Cullinan his favourite batsman to bowl to, Navjot Sidhu among his least favourites to face, Ian Chappell the biggest influence on him as a cricketer, and jokes about why he hasn't been knighted yet.

It has to be Sachin, because of the seemingly effortless way he deals with the pressure of a billion people hanging on his every move. He never puts a toe out of line off the field, and never queries an umpire’s decision on it. We have been good friends for a while — even if it’s not so friendly when we are out in the middle — and one of the pleasures of playing in the IPL has been the chance to spend a little time with him. My final match, in Mumbai this evening, will in fact be against Sachin’s team, the Mumbai Indians.

In BBC Sport, Tom Fordyce talks about how anticlimactic Warne's farewell is and ponders on how he will be remembered.

In two decades of devilish tweak, extravagant celebrations and tabloid-filling good times, Warne had a hold over English batsmen and fans like few others before and none since.

Some have described him as a magician, conjuring the impossible from those twirling arms and wrists, foxing onlookers with sleight of hand and tricks of the finger but to a generation of player and fans in Blighty he was always more of a torturer - breaking hearts, plucking prize scalps and forever tightening the thumbscrews, his mere appearance at the end of that skip of a run-up enough to trigger waves of foreboding and fear.

James Lawton in the Independent writes it is time to orget the foibles and mistakes: Warne demands place alongside the game's other immortals.

Yet if any man has ever proved himself capable of meeting the demands, of not only surviving but never yielding the ability to intrigue and delight and amaze, it is surely the 41-year-old Victorian who as recently as last December was still inspiring the desperate Australian hope that he might walk back into the Test arena he left in 2007 and turn around a deepening Ashes debacle. All across Australia there were plaintive cries that he should come back, and this was so even when he flew away to London for the problematic wooing of Liz Hurley.

With just days left for the start of the first Test between England and Sri Lanka, the Daily Telegraph looks at how the England cricketers, who are likely to line up against Sri Lanka, are faring on the county circuit.

Andrew Strauss: Has played just one two innings for county side Middlesex so far but, importantly, it was for a weakened team against the touring Sri Lankans and Strauss made big runs. His 151 in the first innings against a potent attack bodes well, although his copy-book was blotted somewhat by a rash shot in the second innings, caught for 25.

Kevin Pietersen: Much has been made about Pietersen's poor run of form and there was plenty of interest when he turned out for new side Surrey against Cambridge MCCU at Fenner's. He top scored with 48 from 68 balls in Surrey's second innings but it was not enought to prevent an embarrassing defeat to the students.

With the retirement of Paul Collingwood, the No.6 spot in England's Test batting line-up is up for grabs. While there are a few contenders, key among them are Ravi Bopara and Eoin Morgan. Derek Pringle in the Daily Telegraph writes that Bopara's decision to give the IPL a miss has put him ahead of Morgan in race for England No 6 slot.

Bopara and Morgan, 26 and 24 respectively, both play against Sri Lanka for the Lions at Derby over the next four days, but only Morgan played in this year’s IPL. Indeed, it will be his first game of the English season, now into its seventh week, time which Bopara, who turned down a belated offer from the Rajasthan Royals, has used productively to make two first-class hundreds and take important wickets for Essex.

Bopara’s bowling, which is improving by the month, makes him the favourite for Collingwood’s role, though it was Morgan who was in the Test side at the end of last season when Ian Bell was injured. Morgan was also picked in the Ashes squad but played only in the one-day series and World Cup that followed, where his performances suffered after breaking a finger.

Andy Bull in the Guardian echoes Pringle's views writing that Bopara has put himself at the top of the queue to fill the England No. 6 spot. While Morgan, who was first reserve for England in the winter has just come back from India, where he scored 137 runs in nine innings for the Kolkata Knight Riders, Bopara has been racking up runs for Essex in the County Championship. He has 408 at an average of 45 so far.

"He has made getting back into the Test side as his No1 priority," says Graham Gooch, England's batting coach and Bopara's mentor at Essex. "That's a big statement in itself. If you go and play in the IPL, well, I'm not decrying anyone who does that, but you don't put yourself in the best position to prepare for Test cricket."

Stephen Brenkley in the Independent writes that it unthinkable that the England selectors can pick Morgan on the strength of one first-class match since last summer, a tour outing in Melbourne against Victoria last December, and 137 IPL runs.

As shoot-outs go it is hardly from High Noon. Morgan will not play in the match in Cardiff and, given its compressed nature, has virtually no chance of appearing at all in the series of three matches against Sri Lanka. It was originally presumed that if Morgan scored runs for the Lions he might stake an irresistible claim to the place that he first won last summer and which he lost before last winter's Ashes.

But the selectors met yesterday to discuss their Cardiff squad, heavily implying that what happens in Derby is for the distant, not the immediate, future.

Sam Sheringham on BBC Sport, gets the coaches, who have worked with the three likely contenders for No. 6 slot - Paul Grayson (Ravi Bopara), Richard Scott (Eoin Morgan), Mick Newell (James Hildreth) - to evaluate their chances of making the cut.

An editorial in kaieteurnewsonline.com states that the euphoria surrounding West Indies' victory over Pakistan in the first Test should not mask the the cracks that had been exposed in the relations between the WICB and coach Ottis Gibson on one side, and the senior players Chris Gayle and Shivnarine Chanderpaul on the other, in the lead-up to the series.

After the two players were not picked initially for the ODIs, it became very evident that communications from the coach and the Board to the players left very much to be desired. There appeared to be a complete unwillingness to deal with the players as equals and the Board seemed determined to continue with its historical paternalistic and condescending behaviour.

The BCCI's chief administrative officer Ratnakar Shetty, in an interview with Firstpost.com, speaks of the rise of the BCCI, its decision to remain an independent entity not reliant on government grants, its current professional set-up and it's standing on the world stage.

“Only after the Hero Cup did BCCI start marketing the telecast rights and that’s when we started making money. Sometimes, when I read the minutes of the board meetings in the early 90s, it is quite interesting. Now, we hold our meetings in five-star hotels but in the early days, powerful industrialists who were then in charge of the board, would often hold meetings in their houses because we couldn’t afford hotels.”

After it started with a bang, the IPL, in its fourth season now, is having difficulty sustaining its early momentum when it burst forth with a TV-friendly format, cheerleaders and big salaries writes Shilpa Jamkhandikar on reuters.co.uk.

A series of scandals has tarnished the league's image, teams are losing money as player costs escalate, TV ratings are down, and franchise owners are still figuring out how to make the most of their investments from a season lasting less than two months.

The MCC has announced former Sri Lanka captain Kumar Sangakkara as the speaker for its annual Spirit of Cricket Cowdrey Lecture. David Hopps in the Guardian observes that it must be a delight for Sangakkara to be awarded the chance to revisit the scene of Gamini Dissanayake's triumph on this 30th anniversary of one of the greatest Sri Lankan speeches - when he made a charismatic case for Sri Lanka cricket in June 1981, winning over the fustiest of cricket administrators with an eloquent plea for them to be granted Test status.

As Ireland, and other associate nations, prepare to press their case at the International Cricket Council's annual meeting in Hong Kong next month for the right for a qualifying tournament in the 2015 World Cup, they could do worse than challenge the closed, commercially obsessed minds of the ICC by reminding them that without Dissanayake's impassioned speech the likes of De Silva, Ranatunga, Murali, and those two fine upstanding captains of old, Jayawardene and Sangakkara, might never have had the opportunity to bring so much joy to the cricketing world.

In the Bangladesh newspaper Daily Star, Mohammad Isam reviews how Barisal fared in the National Cricket League. They only finished fourth, and had no wins, but it was still a watershed season for them.

For years, the region has been regarded as the genuine backwaters of the game in the country but through the Bangladesh Cricket Board's decision to hand over selection decisions to the division and restrict the number of players from other regions, a new frontier for Barisal players has been opened.

It's important to look at what sort of coach South Africa need, rather than simply who the best coach on offer is, says Tristan Holme, writing in Cricket 365. And, Holme says, Kirsten is that man.

As Dale Steyn said recently, the Proteas weren't "out-skilled or outplayed" by New Zealand in that [World Cup] quarter-final. Instead they were 'psyched out', to use terminology from the daft yet discerning movie Baseketball ... Given the above, it's fair to say that South Africa need a good shrink more than they need someone with masses of insight into individuals' techniques.

... They do need someone who won't simply be a buddy in the way that Mickey Arthur was in some respects guilty of. Taking all of this into account it's perfectly clear who the obvious choice is, provided he wants the job. Gary Kirsten has shown with India that he can be as much a mentor as a coach, which is often what is required at international level.

In the Telegraph, Nick Hoult explains how a recession in England and the financial clout of the IPL may actually be helping county cricket.

It would be nice to congratulate counties solely on their foresight and benevolence towards the national team. But youth is cheap and they are the upside of an economic downturn which has made life so hard for many clubs. Even the Indian Premier League, blamed for diluting overseas talent in county cricket, has unwittingly helped by forcing many teams to pick from their own stocks rather than import talent.

The paper also lists ten young players to watch out for during the English summer. Among them is Alexei Kervezee, who played for Netherlands during the World Cup but will qualify to play for England by the end of the year.

The ills of today's crass capitalism are far better than the gloomy days of cricket's past, says Ahmed Rizvi, writing in the National.

There may be some genuine concerns, but ... the IPL and any event like it should be welcomed. It is possibly the largest gathering of cricketers - the players, coaches and commentators - in a stress-free environment, an opportunity to socialise with former teammates and opponents, and earn a few dollars doing that.

Ask a Paul Valthaty or a Kamran Khan about the blessings of the IPL. Khan's father was a taxi driver in a small north Indian city and his mother rolled bidis (a form of cigarette) to supplement the income. Both of them died due to a lack of money for proper medical treatment, before Khan was spotted by the Rajasthan Royals director of coaching.

In the National, Yasser Alvi likens the ongoing spat between Shahid Afridi and Waqar Younis, Pakistan's captain and coach respectively, to the one that occurred between England's Kevin Pietersen and Peter Moores two years ago. He notes the success England had in replacing those two with more understated characters.

In time, though, the PCB may just have to bite the bullet and follow England's lead. Waqar's public squabbles have made his position almost untenable and, given current Pakistani woes, the team would be better off with a specialist batsman as the coach. England's fortunes improved remarkably when they replaced the two squabbling incumbents with a well-educated, "boring" but impressively focused captain in Andrew Strauss, and a tactically astute and apolitical foreign coach in Andy Flower

West Indies may have won a Test match after two years but their off-field problems have not disappeared. On caribbeansportsnetwork.com, Tony Becca analyses WICB director Hilary Beckles' statements that Chris Gayle is a don-like figure in West Indies cricket. Becca says Beckles' comments were born out of frustration and were inappropriate given his standing.

I have heard the fans refer to West Indies players in some really derogatory terms, and I have heard them say that the players of today are not like the players of yesterday. The truth, however, is that Beckles is not a normal fan. Beckles is an educated man, he is a professor, he is principal of the university, he is a director of the WICB, he should not have said it, and if he is sorry that he said it - especially if he did not mean it - he should, immediately and unreservedly, say "I am sorry" to Gayle for linking him with Dudus.

Over three days of a tense, gripping, low-scoring opening Test, played out on a sub-standard surface a four-man bowling staff has given West Indies their best chance of victory for some time writes Tony Cozier in the Nation News. It is now up to them to finish the job.

In restricting Pakistan’s first innings to 160, gaining a lead of 66 – worth double in such circumstances – Bishoo was capably supported by Rampaul’s controlled aggression that was again evident in his two immediate wickets yesterday and the nagging medium-pace of the much derided captain Darren Sammy.

A lot more hard work lies ahead this morning if they are to convert their advantage into the rare victory the game in these parts so badly needs for a host of obvious reasons.

The first IPL had novelty and glitz on its side. The second had daring — for relocating to South Africa at a moment’s notice. The third, back in India, still had Lalit Modi to glamorise it. But excess is proving to be the keynote of IPL4 writes Scyld Berry in the Sunday Telegraph.

But while Pollard, and Chris Gayle, and Dwayne Bravo hit their ‘DLF maximums’ in front of vaguely interested crowds, West Indies play their Test series against Pakistan in bare, listless stadiums. Even if it is not what it was, at least the IPL can claim to be not half as desultory as much of Test cricket has been made by its administrators.

Shane Warne has finally called time on his professional cricket career with his annoucement that this would be his last year in the IPL. Writing in the Indian Express, Aditya Iyer says Warne’s second coming will always be remembered for the way in which he led Rajasthan Royals to an improbable championship in the tournament’s first year.

To become an overnight success, the IPL institution desperately needed a fairytale, an ashes to glory story. And Warne, a cricketer, poker pro, rock star, hair expert, newsmaker and an alleged sex offender -all rolled into one - gave it to them. The world will never know the path IPL would've charted had Warne's glorious brush with leadership not unfolded like a soap opera in the first season, but one thing is for sure - the world, and the IPL, is richer with the experience.

Sher Bano, a 17-year-old Pashtun girl from Pakistan who spent a year as an exchange student in the United States, has become a regular contributor to the New York Times blog, On the Ground, ever since she returned to Peshawar. In April, she wrote a piece on how the World Cup semi-final between India and Pakistan gave her country hope and brought Pakistanis together but in the wake of Osama bin Laden's death, the New York Times editors decided not to publish the piece until now.

But the best thing about all this was that it united Pakistan into a single team, one nation! We played, prayed and cried as one Pakistan. There were sermons in mosques and churches where people gathered to pray for the match. On television, celebrities from different fields would gather and watch the show live. My brother got a free Coke from a grocery store manager because Sachin, the famous Indian player, made a big mistake while my brother was in the store. I was invited to a Quranic recitation gathering called “khatam” at a friend’s place, held in honor of the Pakistani Team! But I didn’t go.

Even after the match, when I visited a hospital in Peshawar, I saw a note displayed in the reception area. It praised the cricket team for uniting Pakistanis and said that the team Captain, Shahid Afridi, ought not to be sorry for the defeat. I noticed many passing men who’d look at the note and then smile. For a country divided into sects, religions, provinces, regions, and political parties, this is a big achievement. It rekindled a hope in me… I realized that if we can come together for cricket, we can come together over other issues as well. If we united to deal with Pakistan ’s major problems, we may find a solution to them.

England wicketkeeper Craig Kieswetter talks about his reasons for turning down the Indian Premier League and how he is desperate to play for England after ironing out his flaws. Here's more with Steve James from the Daily Telegraph.

“It was a blessing in disguise to be dropped,” he admits, “I thought I could manage it mentally, but I couldn’t. This winter I have matured as a person and as a cricketer. When you play for England and do well, people start throwing things at you. That life is fantastic, but I think I lost track of the reality of scoring runs and taking catches, of what my job really was.”

The International Cricket Council’s cricket committee met at Lord’s last week. And it came up with a list of wholly sensible recommendations, just as you would expect when some good and shrewdly selected cricketing people are gathered together, writes Steve James in the Daily Telegraph.

And the likes of Clive Lloyd, Ian Bishop, Mark Taylor, Gary Kirsten, Ravi Shastri and Tim May certainly fall into that category. As ever, though, the problem will come next month in persuading the mandarins on the ICC’s chief executives’ committee and Board to adopt these proposals.

England’s mission to rise to No 1 in the Test rankings by the end of the summer, restated recently as a priority by Andrew Strauss, has begun following a request that Middlesex play Saturday’s tour match against Sri Lanka at Uxbridge rather than Lord’s, writes Derek Pringle in the Daily Telegraph.

Strauss, who was presumably behind the move, makes his first appearance in the middle since returning from the World Cup.

Getting him back in the groove before the Test series begins in 12 days makes sense but so too does denying an inexperienced Sri Lanka side a preview of Lord’s, the venue for the second of the three Tests.

As the man whose England side holds the Ashes and as someone whose one-day goals have evaporated through retirement from that format, Strauss will be motivated to reaching the summit.

Stephen Brenkley recounts the story of England and Warwickshire bowler Frank Foster in the Independent, who was an England star 100 years ago but died penniless in a psychiatric hospital.

From cricketer of genius, who pioneered leg-theory bowling, led Warwickshire to their first County Championship title and played a key role in a legendary Ashes series victory, the rest of Foster's life was catastrophic. He died in a psychiatric hospital alone and touched by madness.

He was an undischarged bankrupt who had consorted with prostitutes and been implicated in the murder of one; he was estranged completely from his family and the prosperous high-street clothing store chain they ran; he had no friends in cricket; he probably had no friends in the world.

Former New Zealand opening batsman Mark Richardson tells Peter Thornton in the New Zealand Herald how he finds discipline in long-distance running and is now addicted to it.

It is a mental battle and it was the same in cricket. I tried to bat time and with control at about 80 per cent. New Zealand Cricket is struggling with that at the moment - we don't pace our innings. For me the key to batting was being patient and the end of the innings was the finish line.

Out of the Ashes, released last year, charted the rise of the Afghanistan cricket team. This summer, the similarly-named From the Ashes tells the story of the Botham-inspired 1981 Ashes series and Fire in Babylon provides a fresh perspective on the world-beating West Indian team of the 1970s and 1980s. Barney Ronay, writing in The Guardian, asks whether the new wave of sports documentaries mark the start of a new relationship between sport and film.

From the Ashes and Fire in Babylon will duke it out for the title of most successful British cricket film of all time, if only because they are pretty well the only British cricket films. That they should be on general release in the same month suggests at worst a bubble, at best a movement, or perhaps simply a sense of a tenacious mini-genre beginning to bite. Sport, for so long a bystander in the multiplex foyer, might finally be about to take its seat in the main screen.

Sri Lanka have never won a Test series in England which has involved more than a single Test and will surely find it impossible to rectify that record without their bowling colossus Muttiah Muralitharan writes Derek Pringle in the Daily Telegraph. The control he was able to exert on the opposition will be difficult for Sri Lanka to reprise.

Despite that gaping hole in Sri Lanka’s resources England’s batsmen cannot be entirely complacent, even if Murali and Lasith Malinga, another who recently called time on his Test career, won’t be around to torment them.

Sri Lanka will not be cowed easily. Dilshan, defiantly not a product of one of the elite Colombo schools, is a tough competitor who is prepared to mix it with his opponents a bit like Javed Miandad used to do for Pakistan. The combination of Dilshan and Stuart Law, the team’s Australian coach, means they will not lack the direct approach.

Jonathan Trott’s superb concentration and insatiable appetite for batting have made him England’s most consistent No 3 since Wally Hammond writes Simon Hughes in the Daily Telegraph. The No. 3 spot was a major problem for England for a decade, but with his successes, as seen during the Ashes, Trott has solved the problem with a simple philosophy, as he explains to Hughes.

“Batting No 3 you’ve got to expect anything so you can’t be surprised by anything. You just go with it. I don’t think about my innings or going out to bat until I’m actually doing it.

"You can work yourself up in the dressing room. Imagining things are there that they’re not. You have to back yourself and trust your instinct.”

Despite their Ashes success over the winter England and Andy Flower realise that there are still elements that can be improved writes Mike Selvey in the Guardian. How best to adapt the education from the Australian experience to future tours? In spite of the result, were there things that did not go right or could have been done better?

Perth and a year before that, the Wanderers in Johannesburg, provided evidence of Flower's concern that the batsmen in particular do not adapt sufficiently quickly when confronted with conditions unusual to them. At the Waca, where there was pace and bounce, they were given an object lesson in how to play by Mike Hussey, who knows the ground intimately. Some, Flower believes, do not acknowledge there is a problem in the first place, a starting post for any rehabilitation. Devising a training strategy to deal with that will be a priority

With the documentary Fire in Babylon releasing across the world, Mike Selvey writes in the Guardian of his experience of facing Michael Holding, and rues the lack of enough quality pacemen in modern cricket.

It was not until other occasions that I realised the trick was not to focus on Holding until he was actually approaching the crease. For now, in the distance, I saw him duck his head in that way a thoroughbred might on the Newmarket gallops that he inhabits now whenever he can, and begin his majestic run. It was mesmerising, for as he strode, Holding's head, held high, swivelled slightly from side to side. The cobra, I am told, hypnotises prey in a similar swaying manner.

On FirstPost.com Samanth Subramanian questions cricket's status as a metaphor for India, and the parallels drawn between happenings in Indian cricket and India as a nation. A World Cup win does not mean the dawning of a new age, neither does the IPL signify economic progress, he writes.

Cricket-as-India has become the worst kind of metaphor. It is continuously interpreted to arrive at the same glib conclusions about a country that appears fated to be explained only in such shorthand. This endless metaphorizing is a part of what Amit Chaudhuri, writing in Outlook, called a new norm: “to see India not as a place, but as a concept you could experience, an idea making its way in the world.”

Chris Gayle has been batting in the IPL matches like someone who has just had a great weight lifted off his shoulders writes Suresh Menon on dreamcricket.com. The supply lines in West Indies cricket are drying up, those with experience, including Gayle are being told by the Board they have no role to play, so it is not difficult to see why the laidback Jamaican is happy to exhibit his wares to an audience screaming for sixes in his adopted home town.

For good or bad, Gayle is showing the way for players of the future. By declining an annual contract from the West Indies Cricket Board, he has kept himself free to play where and when he wants to. Every six, every century increases his market value in the T20 format which is pegged to the here and now. And if there is nothing else to occupy him, he could always announce his availability for Test cricket.

It may appear that the ongoing fourth edition of the IPL lacks the spark and intensity of prior seasons, writes sports attorney Desh Gaurav Chopra Sekhri in the Indian Express, but while it would be unfair to gauge the IPL with the same yardstick as one uses for what was a dream World Cup 2011 for every Indian, the past couple of weeks have witnessed developments that are worrying for the IPL’s long-term growth and viability.

Of immediate concern is the choice that cricketers are forced to make with regard to playing for their countries or for their career sustainability. In particular, the situation faced by two impact cricketers — Chris Gayle and his ongoing tussle with the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB), and Lasith Malinga’s retirement from Test and his impending dispute with the Sri Lankan Cricket Board

In the upcoming ICC world cricket schedule for the next seven-eight years, bilateral series are likely to overlap each of the future editions of the IPL. Not only that, in four of the five upcoming seasons, the IPL will follow immediately after an ICC world event — thus leaving the IPL, again, susceptible to saturation and declining viewership/ revenue. What this will lead to is either uncertainty in choosing rosters for teams — IPL or national, or it could lead to warring factions of boards making fair or unfair demands of the ICC, BCCI and, even more unfortunate, the players.

Kepler Wessels, writing in Super Sport, says the appointment of South Africa's next coach comes at an important time for their cricket, and evaluates the four options on the cards.

What will it be this time? Will it be an appointment of a stand-alone coach who will be tasked to stamp his authority on the team and the captain, or will it be the other way round where the coach will once again be moulded by the senior players.

That approach hasn't worked. It may be time to evaluate the merits of the candidates on a stand-alone basis and decide who will make the best contribution in taking the team forward. Also, if for some reason Kirsten doesn't take the job and the appointment committee decides that they are unsure, there is nothing wrong in appointing a caretaker coach for a while.

Lasith Malinga has been far and away the best bowler in the 2011 IPL and while his action may not lend itself to imitation, there are still lessons to be learned from his methods, writes Indranil Basu in the Times of India.

For one, Malinga is adept at not pitching the ball in a good length area, which is between four to six metres from the stumps. His preferred length is between six to eight metres, and by mixing his deliveries, he ensures that none of the batsmen are able to read him easily.

By the time you have read Malinga, an over is already up. Then there are the variations. If a batsman is expecting Malinga to bowl one of the deadly yorkers, there could be a bouncer - either fastish or a markedly slower one - in store.

Duncan Fletcher has the advantage of his predecessor's tenures to guide him as he takes on the role of India's coach, says David Norton, writing in the Sport Collective. Also, the BCCI, he says, showed new-found efficiency in appointing the new man.

Where Chappell had failed by trying to stamp his personality on an India side under the influential captaincy of Sourav Ganguly, Kirsten succeeded by redefining the role as a supporting one, staying in the background and going about his business in the same determined but unfussy manner with which he had accumulated 7,289 Test runs for South Africa.

So Fletcher comes to the position with the advantage of having had predecessors who are near-textbook examples of how and how not to make it work.

Richard Lord, writing in the Wall Street Journal, tells us why older players have become a such an important feature of the IPL.

It wasn't supposed to be like this — whizz-bang Twenty20 looks very much like a young man's game. But shorter game length and the IPL's seven-week season mean it's less physically demanding than other forms of the game...

Older players are attractive to IPL teams because the concentrated format makes every ball that much more important, and therefore makes a clear head, psychological strength and a mental database of information about similar situations correspondingly more important too. They're also useful in an unofficial coaching capacity, mentoring younger players. And, last but very far from least, they're attractive because they're famous.

Peter Griffin, writing on the website firstpost.com disagrees with the view to call Sachin Tendulkar 'god'. Every time you ascribe divinity to the man, Griffin argues, you’re doing him a great disservice.

You’re ignoring the hours and hours of practice that made handling a bat second nature to him. You’re ignoring the fact that his coach, Ramakant Achrekar, ferried him from game to game at maidan after madian on his scooter, so that on a given day he got more turns at bat in a competitive environment than anyone else. You’re ignoring the more than 10,000 hours of purposeful practice that he had put in, honing his skills, before he made his India debut; hours that most others managed to do only by their late teens at best, more likely in their early twenties.

There were two acts of sportsmanship in a recent game between Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire. Chris Read walked when he thought he had been caught but the fielder had dropped the ball. Read, who was out of his crease, was then run out but Yorkshire captain Andrew Gale withdrew the appeal and let Read bat on. With so many dangers lurking just beyond the boundary, such men are the tonic cricket needs, says Ted Corbett in Sportstar Weekly.

At a time when cricket is in a lot of trouble it is good to see such ancient ideals as fair play being remembered and Gale, who is being considered as a Test batsman and a long way in the future as Test captain, has done his chances of a bright career no harm at all by this single action.

He has only been in charge at Headingley for one season but good reports of his leadership are everywhere and in a world in which change for its own sake seems to be the rule he ought to get himself measured for an England blazer soon.

Mike Haysman in his blog on supersport.com attempts to analyse the factors behind Gayle and Sehwag's ability to clinically execute and thrash an attack to smithereens that leaves everybody stunned.

Let's make one thing perfectly clear right at the off. Apart from both having 'an eye like a dead fish', they are gifted with extraordinary ability, hence the continued savagery they are able to employ. When they are in the character of a one-man wrecking machine, with strike rates often in excess of 200, they do it for a significant period of time. It isn't a lucky cameo teetering on extermination; it's a game breaking performance of duration aided by an uncluttered mind.

The IPL has given India’s domestic players the chance to strut their stuff on the big stage and several of them have been catapulted into the national side on the back of successful Twenty20 performances since 2008. But players need more than just the shine of the IPL on their resumes to succeed in international cricket, write Bharat Sundaresan and Karthik Krishnaswamy in the Indian Express.

Of the 19 cricketers who have made their ODI debuts for India since the first season of the IPL, 10 were picked largely on the basis of eye-catching displays in the aforementioned Twenty20 jamboree. Of those 10, only Yusuf Pathan and Ashwin were part of India's victorious World Cup squad. Apart from these two and Ravindra Jadeja -who has figured in 35 ODIs -the other seven have, between them, made only 21 appearances for the one-day side. For one reason or the other, not one player among Manpreet Singh Gony, Abhishek Nayar, Sudeep Tyagi, Ashok Dinda, Umesh Yadav, Naman Ojha and Saurabh Tiwary retained selectorial confidence for longer than five matches.

To be fair to the selectors, most of these players were only given opportunities as part of squad rotation in the months leading up to the World Cup. But the fact that so few made a persuasive case for more chances perhaps showed the disparity in quality between the IPL and international cricket. It also challenged the wisdom of picking players for 50-over games based on their T20 displays. Keeping in mind their mixed fortunes, it isn't clear how much emphasis the selectors will place on IPL performances this time around.

Alastair Cook is an excellent choice as England’s one-day captain writes Steve James in the Sunday Telegraph, and will be as effective a leader as Andrew Strauss. What’s more, his one-day batting will soon prove to be considerably better than Strauss’s, and he might even make the Twenty20 side again.

Cook is the man. He will prove his batting worth too. His overall ODI record may not be outstanding, but his last outing in Bangladesh was telling.

Recent evidence has proved that to be a tricky place to play in one-day cricket, but, in captaining three victories, Cook made 64, 60 & 32 from his three innings, with a strike-rate of nearly 91, higher than that of his partner Craig Kieswetter (86), who made a century in that series.

Vic Marks in the Observer argues that the new, improved opening batsman in Alastair Cook is worthy of a place in the one-day side even if he is not captain.

There are concerns that the job might diminish Cook at Test level. But this argument could be applied to any of the other candidates. We do know that Cook enjoyed the task when he took charge of the one-day side in Bangladesh. In three matches he averaged 52 with a strike-rate of 90 and he is supposed to be weak against spin, the one area in which Bangladesh have international quality. During the tour the captaincy seemed to enhance his play.

Now that England's captaincy dilemma has been resolved, Andy Bull in the Observer writes that Andy Flower must focus his attention to carefully managing Kevin Pietersen and his fragile ego after the England batsman was overlooked for the one-day captaincies.

Not for the first time, Pietersen is going to have to cope with the rejection. As Andy Flower knows. "I think he may be disappointed not to be involved in the leadership team for the next few years," the England coach says.

There is a ring of permanency about that phrase "the next few years". Flower is trying to build a leadership group that will last long into the next generation. Pietersen has no place in it. So long as Flower is in charge, his shot at the captaincy has come and gone

Steve James in the Sunday Telegraph looks at how the Loughborough’s National Cricket Performance Centre, as it is now known, has transformed itself into a world leader in cricketing development.

The strength in depth is remarkable; the selection is astute, and the coaching and training increasingly top-notch

The Academy has changed, as Harrison’s Glamorgan colleague Mark Wallace so eloquently describes in his article ‘From boot camp to think tank’ in this year’s Wisden.

Shivnarine Chanderpaul has been involved in a war of words with the WICB and the team management over the past week, but is likely to be picked for the first Test against Pakistan. As biting as Chanderpaul’s condemnation has been, writes Tony Cozier in the Sunday Sun, he and coach Ottis Gibson must come to some settlement of their differences prior to Thursday’s Test.

If they remain inflexible, it is impossible to imagine the coach and the most experienced player sharing the same dressing room, pulling in the same direction. It is an unsettling thought.

If Gibson has gleaned anything from this early experience in his term, it is an appreciation of the complexities of West Indies cricket and cricketers. As Greg Chappell discovered to his cost in his turbulent stint in charge of India, different situations and different players require different treatment

Faf du Plessis reveals some of the things that happen in the Chennai Super Kings dressing room on supersport.com. Doug Bollinger is a loud mouth and a prankster, while Scott Styris isn't too keen on 12th man duties, he says.

Due to the big squad, there’s usually about six guys sharing the 12th man duties and everyone is pretty good about it, except Scott Styris. We think he’s trying to be part of the management team, so he’ll catch balls and hit balls, while the rest of us are running around doing the dirty work. There’s a theory that he’s got his eye on a coaching job, so we’ve given him quite a bit of stick. In fact, myself and Tim Southee clapped the other day when he brought drinks on for the first time!

Peter Roebuck, in the Hindu, says while the IPL is growing in stature globally, that should not mask significant setbacks in other parts of the game. The recent ructions in Sri Lanka and the West Indies, the lack of interest in domestic cricket in Bangladesh, and most of all the shortening of the South Africa-Australia Test series are all ominous signs for the global game, he writes.

But cricket is not in its right mind. Instead it has been taken over by apologists whose thoughts turn to the frenzied mob and the bottom line. None of them has sufficiently considered the bigger picture. Probably the game can be uplifted only by those currently consumed by its dazzle because they have its ear.

While India is cricket's global superpower, there are no Indian umpires on the ICC's elite panel, Kiran More writes in DNA. The solution to that problem, he says, is to encourage more former players to take up umpiring.

If I had to point out one area where we could see a significant improvement, it is the umpiring standards in domestic cricket. Like in the case of our national cricket team, where a good side is built on the basis of strong grassroots and domestic structures, umpires too cut their first teeth at domestic competitions.

Have the Bollywood stars who gave the IPL its glamour in the first few seasons lost their appeal? Pradeep Magazine asks the question in the Hindustan Times

It is hard to say whether these men and women have lost their appeal or the star-struck Indians are more in love with the idea of glamour than glamour itself. Or, is it that once these ageing stars overexposed themselves, their aura too vanished? I wonder what agony the Badshah of Bollywood would have gone through on discovering that the Kolkata crowd had largely kept away from the Eden Gardens in their opening match.

Tillakaratne Dilshan, Sri Lanka's new captain talks to Dilanka Mannakkara in the Daily News on the upcoming tour of England,the new-look squad and how he will look to blend his aggressive approach with his captaincy.

I am a positive character so I always try to do positive things, be aggressive and win games. I might do some changes when compared to Sanga and Mahela because all of us think differently. I go to every match thinking that I want to win it so there might be a few changes on the field.

It is going to be tough and this time around in England especially the early part of the summer are very testing conditions for any player no matter how good you are The youngsters will have to adjust, but on the other hand even experienced players will find it difficult to play in England with the ball swinging around a lot. It is going to be a huge challenge for me but I have faith in my squad. The conditions are going to tough and there is a new coach and I am a new captain as well so I am eagerly awaiting for the challenging tour.It is a rebuilding phase and young blood needs to be infused to the team since we are aiming at the 2015 World Cup.

Stuart Broad was wearing Graeme Swann's tie when he was unveiled as England's Twenty20 captain at Lord's on Thursday. Writing in the Sun Graeme Swann says that is probably the closest he would ever get to the job himself.

I would have accepted if I'd been asked - there can be no greater honour in cricket - but, if I'm honest, I'm happy to remain one of the foot soldiers.

I've never had strong captaincy ambitions with England. I like to be a bit of a joker around the dressing room, taking the mickey out of the lads. I'm not sure I could continue doing that so easily if I was put in charge.

Geoffrey Boycott in the Daily Telegraph writes that England have been strong enough to make a good first move with their captaincy appointments; they now need to show the same strength and start including some new faces in the one-day and Twenty20 teams.

It is time to start again. We made some appalling selections in India and our team did not look like they could win an egg cup let alone the World Cup.

Andy Flower and the selectors must not waste this opportunity to be strong, brave and far sighted by telling some of the older guys, ‘sorry we are moving on’.

Now that the captaincy issue has been resolved, there is another more fundamental problem, though, that has yet to be solved writes Barney Ronay in the Guardian - billed as the Battle To Fill The Number Six Slot. It is the most interesting position in England's batting order and it must be filled by a larger than life player in step with its riotous possibilities.

It is impossible not to think of Ian Botham, who stayed concreted in at No. 6 even as his career congealed. Botham had a lot of what I would ideally want from my No. 6 batsman.

Does anyone give a toss? That's the question Chloe Saltau asks in the Age, with a legal dispute involving broadcast agreements meaning Australians haven't seen a single ball of the IPL this year.

More relevant, for the game that has hitched its future prosperity on Twenty20, is a survey of Indian TV audiences that suggests the lustre is fading even in the game's heartland. In season one, Indians abandoned soap operas for the IPL, but viewing figures for this year's first 26 games were down 22 per cent, the lowest in the league's history.

Explanations include cricket fatigue after India's World Cup win and the mass movement of the players to new teams.There are lessons for Cricket Australia, which will launch a city-based Big Bash League in December and hopes it will, eventually, generate as much TV revenue as international tours.

Senior players have highlighted the demise of the Sheffield Shield as the root of Australian cricket's tumble from the top says Malcolm Conn, writing in the Daily Telegraph.

Simon Katich believes the competition lacks experience and labelled the conversion of the state second XI to an under-23 tournament of three-day matches a "failure". Stuart Clark claimed that for the first time in his 15-year career he feared for the safety of an opposing opening batsman because he was "scared" and could not cope with fast bowling.

The current and former Australian veterans are saying publicly what many others are voicing privately to the team performance review set up following last summer's Ashes debacle. Their views are diametrically opposed to Cricket Australia.

The ECB has taken the radical decision to go with three captains, across the three formats, with Alastair Cook taking over the reins of the ODI side from Andrew Strauss, who remains Test captain, and Stuart Broad as captain in the Twenty20 format. Mike Selvey in the Guardian writes that if Cook and Broad do well in their roles, the Test captain's position could come under threat.

The danger to Strauss's ambition to lead the Test side into both Ashes series in 2013 is that the one-day side will flourish under Cook and so put the sort of pressure on his Test leadership that eventually caused Hussain to pass on those reins to Vaughan. It is a risk Strauss recognises, although the team would have to make massive progress for that to happen. Four series against subcontinental teams this winter and two at home this summer with the World Cup finalists will not make that any easier.

Derek Pringle in the Daily Telegraph writes that a system involving three points of reference for players involved in all three formats does not appear ideal but Andy Flower, the principle architect, believes his grand experiment is the way forward.

It certainly looks as if Flower will assume the autocratic role once filled by the single captain of old. If he does not, how will differences of opinion over who plays in each of the sides become settled? What if Cook wants James Taylor, the highly promising young batsman from Leicestershire, to play in the 50-over side but Broad does not want him in the T20 side? Flower will have to make that call, as he does already for Tests in collusion with Strauss, but you can see how it might quickly become messy.

In the same newspaper Jonathan Liew takes a tongue-in-cheek look at how Strauss, Broad and Cook were (probably) welcomed into their new roles.

Alastair Cook, England one-day International captain.

MEMO: From Andy Flower
Hearty congrats, Ali. Sure you'll do well. Thought of the day: now you're ODI captain, time to think about breaking into the ODI team?

England have gone where no side has ever previously voluntarily trodden, writes Stephen Brenkley in the Independent but neither Cook nor Broad seem equipped for the roles they have been selected for.

The interviewing panel may like to assume that in Cook they have chosen a like-for-like replacement for Strauss, a solid left-handed opener on whom more flamboyant characters can depend. But, for all Cook's impressive attributes, it would have been bolder to pick a more obviously accomplished one-day player, even a specialist unfettered by concerns in other parts of the game.

Broad will not have many games in which to lead before England have to defend their World T20 in Sri Lanka next year. But it is hard for a fast bowler to captain in any form of cricket – which is why so few do it at Test level – and in T20, where so much is happening so quickly, it may be harder still. As it is, both appointments look like an audition for the Test captaincy, which may easily now come up sooner rather than later.

England's new Twenty20 captain Stuart Broad writes in the Daily Mail that he is 'desperate to hit the ground running'.

I may not have much captaincy experience under my belt but I can honestly say I've always tried to think like a leader whenever I'm out in the middle: what fields I'd set, how to attack a new batsman, which bowlers to use - that kind of thing.

Back to the Guardian where David Hopps writes that Cook or Broad - whoever does the best job - will get to lead England in the 2015 World Cup.

Oliver Brett on the BBC website writes that while three captains seems at least one too many, facing a hectic schedule, and by design or otherwise, England might have inadvertently arrived at a new blueprint for dealing with the complex burden of international cricket.

Dave Tickner in the Sporting Life writes that while we don't know whether England's decision will work, if the split captaincy is ever going to succeed, this is the time and this is the place.

Amal Silva, the former Sri Lankan wicketkeeper batsman, who scored a century at Lord's in Sri Lanka's first Test match in England, talks about getting sledged by his hero Ian Botham, choosing the school Prince of Wales ahead of St. Sebastian’s and accepting the challenge to do the dual role of keeping wickets and opening batting to Rex Clementine in the Island.

The British press said that Sri Lanka will go home in three days, not five days. Ian Botham said that Sri Lanka were a piece of cake for him. This was after they had lost to West Indies 5-0, mind you. That really motivated us and we wanted to do well. We put up a good show and the English didn’t know where to hide

With Sri Lanka set to start their tour of England later in the month, Rex Clementine reminisces, in the Island, about Sri Lanka's win at the Oval in 1998 and other moments of glory on English soil.

Never a person to mince his words, captain Arjuna Ranatunga rubbed salt into the English wounds at the post match media conference, after the historic 1998 Oval triumph, when he was asked the reason why England didn’t award Sri Lanka a three Test series. "I don’t know. Probably they don’t want to lose 3-0 to us," he said in the typical sarcastic Ranatunga style.

In the Daily Star, Mohammad Isam explains how cricketers in Bangladesh have lost interest in the domestic four-day competition, and how the National Cricket League has come to be dominated by two sides.

After having surveyed through players in the competition, it has been gathered that there is a huge lack of interest. That is mainly due to the ridiculously low pay they receive during a match. And a lack of competition is another major reason. The points table of this year's competition says a lot about the quality and standard of cricket played. While Rajshahi and Dhaka have already qualified for the final (to be held from May 10 at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium), the rest, particularly the bottom two, have provided nothing to first-class cricket in Bangladesh.

In the Guardian, Mike Selvey analyses the flagging viewership of IPL 2011, and says India should have learned from England, who went overboard with the number of domestic Twenty20 matches in a season and thus made the novel concept humdrum.

The third ought to be the most worrying, though, and it comes back to the English experience. The marketing people call this "cricket fatigue", which in essence means that a quarter to a fifth of those who followed IPL last year have had enough of it. Few games have caught the imagination.

With Alastair Cook expected to replace Andrew Strauss as England's one-day captain, Mike Selvey writes in the Guardian that Cook should not even be opening for England in ODIs, let alone captaining. He points out that Cook's appointment would also mean England would have three different captains for the various formats of the game.

But what is of overriding concern is the effect that the captaincy could have on Cook's own game, the bread and butter of Test cricket. A year ago he was being tormented outside off stump, his bat edge drawn to the ball as if magnetised. Wicketkeeper and slips dared not waver in concentration for a moment. Then, finally, in Australia, he got his bearings, memorably so, to the tune of 766 Test runs. Fundamental to that was his unwavering capacity to ignore, for hour upon hour, the delivery outside off that so often had been his undoing.

Yet the angled nudge down to third man is a default shot in one-day cricket, an instinctive stroke, productive in the frequent absence of close fielders and one that those grounded in ODIs who then come to Test matches have to fight to expunge from their games. Think Eoin Morgan. Yet here we shall be, asking Cook to reintroduce that to his weaponry.

In the Telegraph, Huw Turbervill looks at previous occasions when England have had different captains for the longer and shorter formats of the game, and whether the experiments worked.

Adam Hollioake was made England's 50-over captain while Mike Atherton was Test skipper. Hollioake led an inexperienced line-up to an unexpected triumph in the Champions Trophy in Sharjah in late 1997 and the move was applauded.

From being a net bowler for the Kochi Tuskers Kerala franchise to picking up the Man-of-the-Match award in his debut IPL game against the Delhi Daredevils, which included the wickets of Virender Sehwag and Y Venugopal Rao, Kochi paceman Prasanth Parameswaran has taken his first steps towards national recognition. Nihal Koshie in the Indian Express tracks Parameswaran's journey.

The excitement in Parameswaran's voice is hard to miss when he speaks about the day he got spotted by Lawson. "I wanted to impress people be cause all the big players were around. But frankly, initially, I didn't expect to be picked. I knew that coach Lawson was happy with the way I bowled in the nets. But getting a contract with Kochi Tuskers Kerala was unexpected," Parameswaran added.

An editorial in the Indian Express analyses Sourav Ganguly's inclusion the IPL and states that the one thing we can all learn from his return is: never write Ganguly off.

When Ganguly was cold-shouldered by all the IPL teams in the auction for the fourth season, it was believed that, pushing 40, he was staring at the end of his playing career, that his days as captain and cricketer were finally over. But then Ganguly, the master of reinvention, never seems to see that door marked exit.

Steve James, writing in the Daily Telegraph, relives the - rather hilarious - experience of having the ball come crashing through the window of the room where he was commentating during a Glamorgan game in Taunton.

...So as the ball was making its unerring way towards us, with [Edward] Bevan becoming more and more anxious as he described its path, I decided it was time to duck. The thought of glass flying into my face was too much to bear. Bevan also decided to turn his back, but obviously a little later. Listen to the clip and the sound of breaking glass is simply comic. Just writing this now I am struggling to contain my giggles.

Andy Flower has renewed his contract as England's team director. In the Guardian, David Hopps lists the key issues Flower now needs to resolve.

Talk of England players' excessive workload does not please everybody. Envy is part of the reason, as is the tendency of some players to go off and play IPL whenever they get downtime. But England's programme last winter was excessive, undermined their World Cup challenge and betrayed a squad full of committed, hard-working professionals. England's MD, Hugh Morris, has told Flower he is sympathetic, but a reduced commitment overseas could go hand in hand with fewer internationals in an England summer and that would infuriate counties. Will England dare to rest more players against weaker opponents?

Since the advent of central contracts, England players have chosen when to appear for their counties, Derek Pringle explains in the Daily Telegraph. When the national players do turn out in the Championship, as many are due to in the coming week, it gives the selectors a chance to watch how the talented county players deal with the best, he writes.

If he can be impartial, given his concurrent role as Warwickshire’s director of cricket, Ashley Giles will be reporting back to his fellow selectors on how well Varun Chopra, the early-season run machine with two double hundreds, copes with Anderson’s snaking swingers. It will be unthinkable if a selector is not at the Oval to see how James Taylor, Leicestershire’s supremely talented batsman, copes with the steepling bounce from a revivified Tremlett. In fine form, Taylor is one of a select few who could challenge Ravi Bopara for the Test spot vacated by Paul Collingwood and a good showing this week would advance his case.

The web has wrought all kinds of innovations in cricket-writing, says Andy Bull, writing in the Guardian. And, he says, a new blog on the workings of the West Indies Cricket Board threatens to change the game again.

The web has wrought all kinds of changes in cricket-writing. Cricinfo's growth is just the most conspicuous manifestation of the evolution. The web has fostered a new generation of writers, amateurs and outsiders who have traded access for style, swapped the traditional pretence of objectivity for a more wilfully subjective approach. Cricket has more voices now than ever before. The difficulty can be figuring out which ones to listen to.

For the last fortnight I've been turning over that exact question while looking through the pages of a remarkable blog – WICB Exposé. If it is genuine, then this is a site that really could change the game. Unlike most bloggers, the person behind WICB Exposé appears to have inside information. Lots of it. In fact they seem to have the kind of information that a lot of journalists could only dream of, and more tellingly, that the few who could access would feel compelled to sit on for fear of alienating the source that gave it to them in the first place.

David Lloyd catches up with Graeme Swann as he prepares for the Test series against Sri Lanka at home. Read it all in the Independent on Sunday.

"It's important for us to keep getting better and better, especially in our home conditions. We have got to make it as tricky for people playing England in England as teams used to find taking on Australia in Australia.

"Being the No 1 Test team would be a great title to have and it's what we are going for. We've made no secret about that – we want to be No 1 in both Tests and one-dayers. We've got a better chance of doing it, sooner rather than later, in Test cricket, whereas the one-dayers might take a bit longer."

Tishani Doshi reviews Shehan Karunatilaka's book, Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew, in the Observer. Karunatilaka's debut novel, says Doshi, lays bare Sri Lanka's soul through a made-up sporting hero, and is not just about cricket.

It's a story about many stories: friendships, rivalries, nationhood, the undesirability of old age, the quantification of genius and other "unknowables", like how much love do you need in a lifetime, and is sport really greater than life?

WG Karunasena, the 64-year-old narrator of Chinaman, is a grumpy old man in an endearing Walter Matthau kind of way. He's convinced that "unlike life, sport matters".