A bill that seeks to bring the BCCI and other national sports bodies under federal transparency and accountability laws has sparked controversy in India. Opinion is divided on whether an independent body like the BCCI which does not take financial assistance from the government should be subject to such regulation. Ashish Magotra, on firstpost.com, says that the BCCI is doing a much better job that other sports bodies in the country and should be left alone.

While the move to ensure more transparency and make the players come under the WADA-specified anti-doping rules should be welcomed, the government should learn from its various misadventures with the other sporting organisations around the country to realise that it just isn’t equipped to handle an organisation as big as the BCCI.

The ICC's annual Test XI underlines one thing in particular: that bowling stocks are at a generational nadir, writes Barney Ronay in the blog The Spin in theGuardian.

The Spin is, of course, entirely unqualified to explain why this talent-drain should have taken effect. Some will say it is merely cyclical. Others will point to the de facto collapse, for various reasons, of two great Test bowling nations in West Indies and Pakistan. Perhaps there will even be those who suggest Test bowling is a refined art, one that rests on an acute and painstaking process of skill-refinement and the honing of a specific kind of fitness, something that is just much harder to achieve on the current multiformat treadmill.

Easiest of all would be to blame the decline of Test bowling on the lukewarm, generalist's skill-set of the sport's newest and shortest format, Twenty20. The Spin, naturally, would never stoop so low. Although it is worth noting that Bresnan is at least up for an entire award – Twenty20 International Performance of the Year – for his 3-10 against Pakistan last year, while Shane Watson is also in the mix for for scoring 59 (yes: 59) against England.

Steve James, in the Daily Telegraph, writes of the significant role statistics play in a team's preparation.

Cricketers, despite their games being defined by statistics, are like most other sportsmen in being a little coy about numbers. Ask a batsman his average, and he will generally play it cool. But he knows. And these days he will know much more than just that figure. Recently I chanced upon a county team's crib sheet for a Twenty20 match. The statistical detail was mind-boggling. There were figures for everything from the 'dot ball limit' at a certain ground to the overall number of boundaries usually required to win there, setting such targets as scoring a minimum of seven boundaries in the first six overs.

Osman Samiuddin, writing in the National, looks back on how Pakistan cricket was rocked, yet again, one year ago, and how the team has responded creditably on the field in the aftermath of that scandal.

A year on, Salman Butt, Mohammad Aamer and Mohammad Asif - a spine for the side - are gone, probably forever. Even the News of the World is gone. Pakistan are still standing; standing still if nothing more. They are not better without the three but they have not been worse either. The bite, the glamour is gone, resilience and grit is in. Learning how not to lose, winning ugly, these are the new goals.

They have not lost any of three Test series since, though only one - against South Africa - was quality opposition. They reached the semi-finals of the 2011 World Cup in an unusually coherent manner. And they have been competitive against all opposition in 50-over cricket; only India have won as many ODIs since then. Herein lies the central truth that underpins ... Pakistan cricket. It does not quite reach Rudyard Kipling's standards of meeting triumph and disaster, and treating them just the same. But just to remain, to be alive after facing both, is sometimes an achievement.

Mathematics is rather important in one-day cricket, says Steve James, writing in the Daily Telegraph. Just ask the captains who were at at the chaotic England domestic Twenty20 Finals Day in Edgbaston last week or the South Africa team from the 2003 World Cup ...

Recently I chanced upon a county team's crib sheet for a Twenty20 match. The statistical detail was mind-boggling. There were figures for everything from the 'dot ball limit' at a certain ground to the overall number of boundaries usually required to win there, setting such targets as scoring a minimum of seven boundaries in the first six overs.

Hadley Freeman, writing in the Daily Guardian, has a tongue in cheek look at what's come over Shane Warne these days.

Leaving aside the fact that he appears to have morphed from the chubby, frosted-tip rogue that he was for several decades into Dale Winton's blond brother, all with the help of nothing other than the Estée Lauder moisturisers his girlfriend Elizabeth Hurley happens to shill for, it's the man himself that concerns me ...

I have been informed by the Guardian's lawyers that I am not allowed to talk about the eyeliner and Botox that Shane clearly is not using. I am, however, allowed to wonder where a man even buys a tan sweater vest such as the one Shane wore for his little golf game. Surely, I thought, looking at his matching tan trousers, his humiliation must now be complete. And then, proving that in the celebrity world of self-abasement there really is no such thing as "bottoming out", Shane started tweeting Ping Pong, otherwise known as Elizabeth Hurley's parrot.

Scyld Berry, in the Daily Telegraph, claims England are favourites to take the ODI series.

India are using the 10-day respite between the Tests and the one-dayers to acclimatise some of their young-buck batsmen to English conditions, and Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma have made some one-day runs as well as toning up India’s fielding. But the essential problem remains: new Indian batsmen, like these two and Suresh Raina, groom themselves for stardom in the Indian Premier League, not in the School of Hard Knocks.

In the Independent, Stephen Brenkley responds to those who claim England are No.1 because their opponents were hopeless.

Jigar Naik is the first Leicester-born Asian to represent the county. After the euphoria surrounding his county's win the national T20 final on Saturday, Naik is now ready to take on the Indians in the tour game. Sandeep Dwivedi in the Indian Express catches up with him.

“It’s funny to say this, but I got 52 text messages yesterday,” says Naik. While most of them dished out the routine ‘congratulations’, Naik found the remaining part of every message quite amusing. “They read, ‘But how about getting us tickets for the India game?’” he adds with a laugh. Naik, though, understands the sentiments. For had he not been a part of the upcoming game, he too would have tried his best to get into the ground.

The WICB-WIPA battle has raged on endlessly, but the latest development - the US$ 20 million lawsuit slapped by the players association on the board - could have far-reaching implications for the game of cricket at large, and West Indies cricket in particular. A post in CaribbeanCricket.com details some of these.

If successful the WIPA legal action will allow players such as Gayle, Bravo, Kieron Pollard and others to effectively ply their trade as cricketers-for-hire/cricketing mercenaries without any restrictions and without them having any obligation whatsoever to play for the West Indies.

It is very likely that if successful other players from around the world will use this precedent to file similar actions against their national boards and if they too are successful then the international teams will be reduced to second and third string sides for the majority of their matches and the viability of international cricket will be severely compromised.

On the face of it, the debacle in the Test series in England can be seen as a one-off, writes Ayaz memon in the Deccan Chronicle. However, it also showed that some problems exist. Without timely intervention, this could cause grave damage in the medium and long terms to the performances and prestige of the national team.

So India were pathetic in the series and were roundly thrashed. But this still does not mean Indian cricket is dead. I’ll save the requiem for another day and sound a wake-up gong instead. There is much merit in Indian cricket – a terrific balance sheet, the largest base of registered players, a committed and humongous following, facilities which are very good and improving by the day – to suggest that a major crisis can be averted: if there’s a vision and will.

Peter Roebuck, writing in the Hindu, says India must examine the evidence provided by their heavy defeat to England and respond accordingly, forgetting about past records and big reputations.

It is over. India's steady rise in the last 15 years or so reached its highest point in 2011 as the team attained top position in the Test rankings and won the World Cup ...

India has an old batting order, an unreliable pace attack, a spinner lacking bite, poor fielding and abject running between wickets. It is hardly a recipe for success. Clearly the time has come to forget about deeds and debts and champions and crowd pleasers and sentiment and to focus on rebuilding.

Rohit Brijnath, writing in Mint, says 'effort is a voice in the athlete's head' that pushes him to go the extra mile, and this is the voice that India did not seem to hear in the England Test series.

... [India lacked] effort in concentration when the ball was doing some swinging dance; in pushing the body Anil Kumble-like into one more hard over bowled, then another, then 40; in keeping the right body language in the 89th over. Yes, it’s bloody hard. It’s supposed to be.

Failure in England wasn’t simply lack of effort, for that diminishes England and reduces sport to the simplistic. India unravelled, like a seam in a faded dress, because its cricket is confused. It’s as if No. 1 in Test cricket — a grand achievement — had been earned and there it ends, instead of resetting the bar ... Wherein you say, screw luck, damn conditions, forget injuries — they’re sporting staples — every series just has to be won, till this greed infects the system, till suddenly one day you’ve won 16 Tests in a row and still ask, what about 17?

Rahul Dravid has made a virtue of adversity, says Pradeep Magazine, writing in the Hindustan Times.

He [Dravid] is there, always there, like a dutiful servant, who has, without complaining served you so well that you take his contribution for granted. It is rare to find him being lauded and feted, like the others, when he scores, but very common to raise doubts when he fails ...

This English attack, that too in their own conditions, is perhaps among the most threatening in the recent history of the game. To have first negated them when they were at their most menacing and then having mastered them, that too when no one around him could put bat to the ball, will remain one of the greatest batting feats of all time, comparable to the best - from the Bradman era to the present, which includes Tendulkar as well.

Sanjjeev K Samyal, writing in the same paper, looks back on Dravid's time with Kent.

He [Simon Willis, Kent's high performance director] recalls: "He [Dravid] was among the easiest guys to handle. I remember he came over early that season, which is very rare for an overseas player. And in England we do a lot of running pre-season and fitness. He really got involved. It was a bit of a culture shock for him. I don't think at that time they [India] had done a lot of running and fitness."

The BCCI may be the richest cricket body in the world but 70% of the money they earn from television rights goes to its member boards, Nikhilesh Bhattacharya reports in the Hindustan Times. The BCCI does not have any control over how the state boards spend that money and, according to HT, a lot of the money is wasted on building stadiums that cannot even be used to host international games.

The TCA has a bank balance of more than Rs 55 crore. The plan is to build a stadium near the Agartala airport and expand the facilities at the MBB Stadium and convert it into an academy for the Northeast. Land in both locations has been leased to the TCA for 20 years. The budget is "Rs125-130 crore for the two projects", says Ganguly. While the academy makes sense, the international stadium does not. Agartala does not even have the kind of hotels required to accommodate international teams.

Munaf Patel is enjoying huge support from the Gujarati community in the UK, according to the Hindustan Times' Sanjjeev Karan Samyal. There are many people from Munaf's region now living in England, and all have a story to tell about how they know him.

There was a security person at Edgbaston during the third Test who was desperate to meet him: "We hail from the same taluka (town) and our village team used to invite him to play important games, mainly in night tournaments. My brother played in that team." Munaf understands the genuine affection and tries his best to oblige as many as he can.

Despite making a late entry into the international game, Saeed Ajmal has quickly emerged as one of the top spinners in the world. In an interview with PakPassion.net, he speaks about his county experience at Worcestershire, having Sachin Tendulkar in trouble at the World Cup, his mastery of the doosra and a new variation that he is working on.

Sachin Tendulkar is a world class player and going up against him was a challenge. That was the first time we came up against one another. He was having a really hard time picking my doosra. You can study videos as much as you want of a bowler, but going up against a new player on the field is always a different challenge. There's a world of difference between what you see on videos, and what you encounter when facing someone for the first time. As I say, he's a world class performer and I thank the Almighty that on the day I did well against him.

After MS Dhoni's struggles with the gloves in England, former India Test wicketkeeper Nayan Mongia, who toured England in 1996, talks to the Hindu's S. Dinakar about what is required to keep wickets in English conditions. The main problem, according to Mongia, was Dhoni did not get enough practice games before the series.

“There is late swing, both away and inwards. The ball wobbles in the air. A 'keeper needs to keep the ball under his eye. And his shoulders have to be flexible and not stiff as he has to change directions with the ball. I felt Dhoni's shoulders were stiff and this was the principal reason for his problems as a 'keeper in the English conditions.”

Despite England's complete dominance of India, many will always associate the summer with "Gentleman Rahul", writes Rob Smyth in the Guardian. He says the fact that Dravid made the runs in losing causes only embellish his efforts.

Dravid has always been one of the most admirable men in sport yet, almost impossibly, over the last few weeks he has made us admire him more than ever before. He batted with immense pride and dignity to make three centuries, two of them as a stand-in opener, a role he has never enjoyed. Dravid was both kingpin and handyman. He filled in not just as opener but also as wicketkeeper when MS Dhoni bowled at Lord's; he also defused any lingering controversy over the Ian Bell incident at Trent Bridge with an honest and perfectly judged interview at the close of play. You wouldn't be surprised to hear he also fixed a leak in the dressing-room and drove the team coach back to the hotel one night.

In the second half of his interview with Rediff's Ayaz Memon, Dravid touches upon the role of money in a cricketer's life, Tendulkar's longevity and its impact on him, and goes on to outline his future plans.

There is a criticism that there's so much money in Indian cricket that a lot of players are become soft and not achieving or actualising their potential. Do you think that's a threat?

I think people have to learn to cope with it. Fact is, this is a new development. It took me 10 years of playing international cricket to think that I would be comfortable in life. The earlier generation took maybe 20 years. Luckily for us, cricket is sport where there's more money coming in, so it's become easier for the next generation which follows us to get the kind of money which will make them feel comfortable at a younger age.

Writing for thewest.com.au, Tom Moody says Shaun Marsh, his ward at Warriors and Kings XI Punjab, is primed for a Test debut in the upcoming series against Sri Lanka.

I am not going to compare Marsh to his WA teammates Adam Gilchrist, Simon Katich and Mike Hussey but there is one strong thread running through the careers of each one of them. They were all closer to 30 than 20 when they made their Test debuts and soon forged stellar careers built on the solid foundation of many seasons of State cricket. There is every reason to think Marsh could follow that path.

Amid India's floundering performance in England, Rahul Dravid was the only batsman to rise above the debris and was rightfully named the team's Man of the Series. Three centuries, 461 runs and opening when the team needed him, bears testimony to his performance on the tour. Ayaz Memon speaks to Dravid on his cricket and his life: how he prepared for the tour, what Indian cricket needs to do to improve its stature, whether easy money is to the detriment of young cricketers, his other interests, and his future. More from rediff.com.

Did you set yourself any targets for this tour? You are on the wrong side of 30, and while sports medicine has improved fitness standards, you would have to say that the best part of your career is behind you...

Definitely. No doubt I know I'm closer to the end than to the beginning. I understand it fully. I didn't set targets in terms of the runs that I want to score, but, obviously, I wanted to have a good tour. But you can say that about every tour, every tour you want to have a good one.

A 0-4 licking represents a hopeless performance by any reckoning, writes Ayaz Memon in the Mumbai Mirror and it is time for a serious rethink from the administrators and players alike. But at the same time, he warns that a knee-jerk reaction and inaction are two sides of the same coin and would only complicate matters further.

The BCCI needs to urgently define its priorities. As the richest cricket board in the world, it must spell out for itself and its players what its ambitions and targets — medium and long term — are. Test matches are not won on the back of T20 hoopla, inconvenient as this may be to players and/or franchise owners in the IPL for instance. A vision that promotes sustained excellence is desired, but that cannot come without a change in culture in how Indian cricket is run.

In the same newspaper, Sriram Veera looks at how the past four editions of the IPL have been followed by losses for the Indian team - most recently, the England whitewash.

An editorial in the Times of India echoes Ayaz Memon's view, stating that hysteria and witch-hunts are entirely counterproductive. But, at the same time hard questions cannot be postponed any longer.

Another editorial in the Hindustan Times states that to take succour in the perception that England trounced India because of injuries in the visiting team and/or a lack of will is laughable.

In the same newspaper, Amol Karhadkar looks back at India's frequent injury problems - a major feature of the England series with Zaheer Khan, Harbhajan Singh, Yuvraj Singh, Gautam Gambhir, Virender Sehwag, Ishant Sharma and Praveen Kumar, all suffering injuries at various points - and writes that there are serious shortcomings in the Indians board's system of injury management.

Every time a half-fit player has taken the field -there have been numerous instances -the murmurs of a player's self-assessment being preferred over the physio's arises in Indian cricket. At a time when the medical team for the first time has an all-India look, the possibility of the support staff being bogged down by a player's star appeal increases even more.

On a lighter note, Sandeep Dwivedi in the Indian Express pieces together the funnier aspects of India's whitewash.

August 19: Taunts greet Indian faces everywhere. A friend stumbles upon a chair at a cafe and an English fan says: “You guys can’t keep your furniture intact, can you?” At the game the steward quips, “Tell your team to stick around for five days since I get paid by the hour.”

And in a similar vein, the Daily Telegraph has obtained a "leaked copy of the BCCI’s review" of the recent England v India Test series. One of the recommendations include copy of Honey Kalaria’s ‘Bollywood Workout’ DVD to be made available to RP Singh at the earliest possible convenience. Jonathan Liew has more.

The poor form of Sachin Tendulkar also came under consideration. The committee were of the view that rather than this detracting from his own reputation, Tendulkar’s relative lack of success resulted wholly from the failings of the 10 team-mates around him, who failed to give him the support he needed. In particular, the committee noted the egotistical, self-serving actions of Rahul Dravid, who took it upon himself to score most of the team’s runs without regard for the interests of the team.

Recommendations: All members of the team, with the exception of Tendulkar, to be dropped from the side with immediate effect.

Harish Kotian on rediff.com looks at the factors that contributed to the 4-0 series whitewash, and suggests measures to stem the rot.

Nitin Naik in the Times of India comes out with a vision document for the Indian team, charting the road ahead.

Penalise players who lie about fitness

This England tour has been a classic example of opaqueness on the part of the BCCI, selectors and doctors and physios at the NCA. How come Zaheer Khan went to England without anyone testing his fitness? Did Sehwag bat for three hours daily at the NCA and do all the fielding drills in training post his shoulder surgery to qualify as being fit for a Test match? Did Gambhir do the same after he injured his shoulder in the IPL? The time is ripe for the BCCI to make an example of all these cases. Make the physio passing the player fit and the cricketer, whoever it is, accountable. If it's found that the player has lied and he breaks down again, a ban of no less than six months should be imposed.

The recriminations over India’s 4-0 whitewash at the hands of England have had one common thread – the influence of the IPL. In Outlook, Rohit Mahajan lays out the damage caused by the money-spinning league on India’s ability to compete in Tests.

We’re the world ODI champions but, having lost the No. 1 ranking in Test cricket so spiritlessly, are we doomed to remain only one-day wonders? However much the fan may hate it, sooner rather than later Tendulkar, Dravid, Laxman and Zaheer Khan are going to go. What happens after that? “I fear we’ll get thrashed in Test matches—as we were in England, and it will get worse when players like Tendulkar, Dravid and Laxman are gone,” says Ramachandra Guha, historian and cricket writer.

India was world number one despite the BCCI’s awful domestic policy. Now that fairytale is over, writes Suresh Menon in Tehelka.

At the end of the Edgbaston Test, which saw India give up their top ranking, Mike Atherton asked Mahendra Singh Dhoni, “Did you cherish the No. 1 spot?” Dhoni did not give a direct answer. The truth is embarrassing: India did not cherish and, therefore, did not put much effort into protecting their ranking. Players had begun to believe in their own invincibility, and the cricket board had placed its trust in its ability to manipulate events.

An editorial in the Express Tribune says Waqar Younis' calling it quits as Pakistan captain will be viewed differently by different people, but it is not an unexpected move given the current atmosphere in Pakistani cricket.

The resignation of Waqar Younis as coach of the Pakistan cricket team is sure to elicit mixed reactions. The beloved Shahid Afridi resigned the captaincy and retired from international cricket in part because of a feud with Waqar, whom he felt was undermining his authority. At the same time, there has been a marked improvement in our cricketing fortunes since Waqar took over from the malleable Intikhab Alam.

... He cited medical reasons for his departure and it is no wonder that he was worried about his health given all the stress he has been placed under since taking over. He has had to deal with the ramifications of the spot-fixing crisis, train a team that cannot play at home, manage players who are constantly at loggerheads with one another and report to a chairman who is easily the most incompetent in the history of international cricket.

The tribute and respect England won at The Oval flowed partly from some exceptional talent, but it had a different kind of foundation and impetus, says James Lawton, writing in the Independent.

It was based on a magnificent collective will and understanding. It grew from an acceptance that the past was too littered with mediocrity, too many teams who were not prepared to work hard enough, and maybe not suffer enough, for the goal of one day announcing themselves as the best in the world.

Shane Warne, writing in the Daily Telegraph, says England will now have a big bullseye on their back as the No. 1 team in the world and must retain their hunger to remain at the top.

When you are the best, everyone sees you as the benchmark. They chase you and work out ways to hunt you down. So it is important England stay hungry and start to dominate.

India simply weren't up for the fight, says Steve James writing in the Daily Telegraph, and, subsequently, England embarrassed them.

They [India] were knackered. But just as crucially they thought they were knackered. And once that mindset was adopted, they stood no chance. We should not forget that there were periods early in the series when India competed fiercely. But they were only short periods. They simply could not sustain a challenge. By contrast England never dipped in their intensity. Their standards of fitness and fielding were so far ahead of those of the Indians that it was embarrassing.

Kunal Pradhan, writing in the Mumbai Mirror, says even if India were match-fit, which match were they fit for?

A common refrain when a player is returning from injury or vacation is that it doesn’t matter if he’s fit, but if he’s match-fit. That refrain now needs to be modified in cricket’s post-Twenty20 avatar: He may be match-fit, but which match is he fit for. If you wake up RP Singh in the middle of the night after a non-stop flight to London from a holiday in Miami, and ask him to bowl four overs, he’ll do it without breaking into a sweat, and even get a couple of wickets. It’s when you tell him to bowl 25 overs with the field up that the problem begins.

As a result of England's 4-0 victory, Ted Corbett in the Hindu writes that cricket, which had taken third place behind Premier League football and the coming Olympic Games in the country, is at an all-time high in the public estimation.

An editorial in the Indian Express looks at how Rahul Dravid stood tall among India's ruins during the Test series.

... Quite wonderfully, this ignominious rout reminded us this team [India] includes not just the highest run-maker (and century-scorer) in Test history but also the second-highest. Rahul Dravid drove, flicked and cut his way to his sixth century on English soil in the first innings of the Oval Test, and forced us to confront the fact that he, as wicketkeeper, slip fielder, batsman and inspiration, has been the bedrock of his team’s successes for 15 years.

Karthik Krishnaswamy, writing in the same paper, runs through India's list of injured and underprepared.

Rahul Dravid's century on Sunday was a masterclass of application, accumulation and dedication, writes Simon Hughes in the Daily Telegraph.

It is a measure of his mental impregnability. He attributes his unparalleled concentration to letting his mind wander between balls, then taking two deep breaths just as the bowler turns at the end of his run.

In the same newspaper, Scyld Berry writes Sachin Tendulkar has an opportunity to salvage some pride for the hosts with his 100th international century.

In the Daily Mail, Nasser Hussain says India can't afford to let Dravid retire at a time when he is at his peak and his team is struggling.

In what is surely his last Test in England, Dravid left a final reminder of a career of unswerving commitment, writes David Hopps in the Guardian.

Also in the Guardian, Paul Weaver writes Ian Bell isn't just England's best batsman, but also their best fielder.

Meanwhile, in the Daily Mail, James Anderson writes about the secret behind his 'wobble seam' ball.

Osman Samiuddin analyses Waqar Younis' resignation as Pakistan coach in the National, and says it was a build-up of small battles that finally led him to quit.

There was the England tour last year that took so much out of him, the beginning of the end in New Zealand where the Shahid Afridi spat first became serious and even at the World Cup, by which time he said in an interview he felt one of his achievements had been to get out of bed every day and go to work. "Some days I didn't feel like getting out of my room, thinking another controversy," he said.

Cricket is in the midst of a bowling crisis, writes Richard Lord in The Wall Street Journal. Only England, and arguably South Africa, bowl as well as they bat, he suggests, a variety of factors - from the increasingly packed international schedule, to the rise of Twenty20 cricket, to the surfeit of lifeless pitches around the world - having come together to thin the ranks of quality seam bowlers, particularly in Tests.

There's a strong and understandable financial aspect to this. Professional cricket is a short career, for many there are limited prospects afterwards, and as a fast bowler, that entire career could end at any moment. So it's natural to follow the money, particularly when it's kinder on that fragile body. This is often seen as somehow mercenary and vaguely unsporting; in other words, the exact behavior that would be commended as laudable ambition in most careers gets condemned as disloyalty in sportsmen.

MS Dhoni's tenure as India captain is now facing its first major challenge. The Mumbai Mirror's Deepak Narayanan writes that his legacy could be defined by whether he is proactive enough to stand up to the BCCI and the inhuman schedules they are imposing on the Indian team.

Can, or will, Dhoni fight the fight for more logical schedules? The board’s stance on the too-much-cricket issue has been clear: Players can take a break whenever they please, board officials have said time and again (‘except during the IPL’ is implicit, even if the words are never spoken aloud publicly). The IPL’s business model is such that it hangs by the hurting tendons and strained muscles of India’s big guns: Can you imagine people tuning in to watch Rajat Bhatia versus Dhawal Kulkarni if Virender Sehwag and Sachin Tendulkar decided to give the tournament a skip? And with the BCCI itself being the biggest shareholder of the league, priorities are bound to get warped.

In the Guardian, Mike Brearley compares this England side to the one that won the Ashes in 2005, and the current squad comes up trumps, though he prefers Michael Vaughan to Andrew Strauss as captain because the former had more flair. He says Graeme Swann, James Anderson and Matt Prior are England's three key assets.

I think one would want Michael Vaughan, Marcus Trescothick, Andrew Flintoff and Steve Harmison. Ian Bell and Kevin Pietersen were in both sides. The rest of the team would be Alastair Cook, Matt Prior, Stuart Broad, Graeme Swann and Jimmy Anderson. Which suggests a five to four balance in favour of this year's side. Note that such a selection omits Andrew Strauss, Jonathan Trott, Tim Bresnan, Chris Tremlett and Eoin Morgan.

Whether or not he is bumped up to his preferred position, Ian Bell has turned himself into a fine Test batsman, Steve James says in the Telegraph.

Bell is undoubtedly the more adaptable batsman, able now to play so many different roles according to the situation. Trott only knows one way; a hugely effective way, granted. You’d think he couldn’t bat at No 5. But, just to befuddle more, he did so on debut here in 2009, making 41 and 119!

Apart from Rahul Dravid, the rest of India's batsmen have endured a torrid tour of England so far. Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar and VVS Laxman are all past 35, and while the young batsmen have failed to inspire much confidence in England the Sunday Express asks the question: who will replace India’s once-in-a-generation cricketers? To understand what the future holds, the team spoke to to the men who were responsible for giving the likes of Tendulkar, Laxman and Dravid their first Test caps.

Akash Lal (North Zone representative on the selection panel that picked Sachin Tendulkar): Domestic cricket must still be given the highest priority. If I had to pick someone to replace the top order, I would look for correctness of play. When Sachin was picked he was technically very assured. Nowadays I am aghast to see that we are facing the same traditional problems against the ball leaving the off stump, and the rising delivery. I personally think that Rohit Sharma has been given a rough deal by the selectors. He first got a chance in Australia and he performed really well on surfaces that were really difficult to bat on. I think the selectors have forgotten about him.

Ajit Wadekar (The chairman of selectors when Harbhajan Singh made his debut for India in 1998): For now with Harbhajan struggling the way he is, the selectors should definitely go for R Ashwin. Ashwin has shown his class and temperament with the ball every time he’s gotten a chance. I don’t agree with people who tag him as a limited-overs specialist. Ashwin possesses a very deceptive action and always looks focussed on improving himself with every outing. He never seems short of ideas, and I am sure that he will be a valuable addition to the Indian Test team. I think the selectors should draft him into the Test set-up right away.

Former England captain Mike Brearley is regarded as one of the finest captains in the history of the game. He tells Sanjjeev K Samyal in the Hindustan Times, that while things have gone against India on the tour of England, their preparation has been poor and it has been sad to see their decline.

What about team's preparation? They play one game at Taunton. Threefourths of the team comes from West Indies, the rest come from India having not played at all. It seems priorities are not right, as a team and individually. Is it too easy to make a million dollars and the advertisements on top of that? They are in a very nice position, your Indian stars.

One of the things about captaincy is when things are going badly you have to intervene more. You have to be more proactive, be more energetic. When things are going well, you can almost take a back seat and just fine tune the machine. When Ishant Sharma had that excellent spell in England's second innings at Lord's, having reduced them to 62 for five, if Ian Botham was doing it, you couldn't get the ball out of his hands and I wouldn't let him. You have to seize those moments, they don't come back. It was ridiculous to start with a part-time spinner after lunch. I would have started with Sharma and Kumar

V Gangadhar in the Hindu documents the story of how Mansie, a cricket fan from Mumbai who idolised Malcolm Marshall and West Indian cricket, moved to Barbados and then ended up transforming Marshall's grave.

The grave was uncared for, dirty, wild grass grew everywhere. No one bothered. Choking back tears and furious, Mansie who was as pushy as her father was not, decided to act. She attended a Cricket Legends Match in Bridgetown and made friends with many former famous players, particularly Walsh and Ambrose. After listening to her lament and anger on Marshall's grave, Walsh, asked her to meet Rev. Wesley Hall, former West Indian fast bowler, then a Senator, Minister and now a priest. Ambrose who joked that he did not talk to married women relented and lent his support! Hall, a Barbadian, who had officiated at the funeral was appalled and promised to remedy the situation.

Ian Bell and Kevin Pietersen dominated the Indian attack on the second day at The Oval with their 350-run third-wicker partnership. Theirs is a double act that has left India as the hapless fall guys, writes Paul Weaver in the Guardian: Ian Bell plays the straight man while Kevin Pietersen offers audacious entertainment.

Of the two, Bell is surely the better batsman, for he has a touch, a timing and a refined technique that are all foreign to Pietersen. But Pietersen, the wildest of wild cards, is the more unsettling opponent for any bowler. Once he starts hitting boundaries there is almost nowhere to bowl to him. Against Bell, a bowler can maintain some semblance of self-respect; against Pietersen, he can easily become ragged.

On most days Pietersen would have been the dominant partner in the partnership, but this time it was Bell who wrote down the agenda - and quite exquisitely so, writes James Lawton in the Independent.

The best of Ian Bell, we saw here again, seems unstoppable now. It was remarkable enough that he should produce his 16th Test century so soon after his superb 159 at Trent Bridge. More striking still was the sheer quality of yesterday's performance.

In the Telegraph, Simon Hughes analyses RP Singh's poor performance and asks India if these are the best bowlers they've got.

On Friday Singh’s speed and threat declined further, worn down by the burden of bowling more than four overs in a match, and by the excellence of England’s third-wicket pair. There was barely enough pace for Ian Bell to play his favourite late cut, while Kevin Pietersen chose a more forthright approach, coming down the wicket to him in the latter part of his innings and once pulling him for four off the front foot several strides down the pitch.

The recommendations of Don Argus' review were far reaching and will shake up the cricket structure in Australia. Dare Indian cricket appoint similar bodies to examine its procedures? asks Peter Roebuck in the Hindu.

India, too, has suffered a painful setback. Not that every defeat ought to cause a commotion. Someone has to win, someone has to lose. Just that some losses by their very nature tell a tale.

A few years ago another ailing cricket community put itself in the hands of outside forces. By 2007 English cricket was back in the doghouse as the team was trounced 5-0 down under. The Schofield report was instigated and its suggestions were adopted ... Andy Flower and Andrew Strauss were products of that report, or anyhow the desire that provoked it.

One of the grandest unfulfilled talents in English cricket's recent history - Mark Ramprakash - has gone worryingly quiet this season writes Barney Ronay in the Guardian. And the author is worried that as the season draws towards its autumnal hibernation, Ramprakash might unexpectedly retire.

I should say this is based solely on pessimistic intuition. Ramprakash has another year on his Surrey contract. He has simply gone a little quiet in recent weeks. But still there are worrying signs. He has a single hundred this season. A while ago he was given out "obstructing the field", an incident that has an air of alienating weirdness about it. Plus Alistair Brown has just retired, another Surrey-tinged 41-year-old, whose bat in his mid-1990s pomp made an extraordinary cracking sound, like a man cleaving an antique pine front door in half with a single blow from a fairground strongman mallet.

The Argus report into Australia's performance has been presented and already there have been casualties. The most obvious was Andrew Hilditch, who is no longer chairman of selectors. Chloe Saltau in the Age writes that it's surprising Hilditch lasted so long, given some of the glaring mistakes he and his panel have made - as recently as this month.

So the story goes, Hilditch recently phoned a member of team management in Sri Lanka to inform him Aaron Finch would be left out of the Twenty20 team. When Hilditch was asked why, he said the selectors felt Shaun Marsh was a better proposition against destructive fast bowler Lasith Malinga. Malinga, though, was injured, and had been publicly ruled out of the series. The exchange suggests a scarcely believable lack of awareness, and while cricket insiders laugh in telling the story, its theme is a common one when the topic of selection is raised.

Also in the Age, Greg Baum notes that now the off-field heads have rolled, the players must justify their own positions.

Whatever your standpoint on the remedial measures - to make coach and captain selectors, for instance - it is clear that Australian cricket will be run differently henceforth. As when a football club sacks its coach, everyone with his head above the parapets is nervous. But it does not finish there. Unlike at a football club, the Argus report puts the players squarely in the gun.

Peter Lalor, in the Australian, compares the Australian side in Sri Lanka to the Soviet cosmonauts who called home from space one day to be told their country no longer existed.

For a start, on-tour selector Greg Chappell has just been informed he is no longer a selector. Although he will remain in that job until somebody is found to replace him ... Coach Tim Nielsen finds himself in real Twilight Zone territory. His biggest concern is that the job as he knows it has been scrapped and he will have to apply if he wants to take on the new enhanced coach's role.

In the Herald Sun, Ron Reed notes that reading the Argus report, "one is reminded of the English cricket writer who lambasted the Poms during a tour of Australia a few years ago with the acidic observation that there were only three things they could not do - bat, bowl and field."

In the Sydney Morning Herald, Peter Roebuck notes that much work remains to get Australian cricket back on track.

The next step is to call to account those responsible for the debacle. Abysmal decisions have been taken in recent times, the three-year contact given to Nielsen, the faith shown in Chappell, the foolish season launch, the doomed nomination of John Howard, the appointment of Craig McDermott as bowling coach, the undermining of the state 2nd XI competition, the contacts given to T20 bubblers and denied to accomplished cricketers, the grovelling before Indian power (not least in forcing players to play T20 a few days before a Test series was to begin), the toleration of conflicts of interest. It tells of incompetence in high places.

On evidence of his performance on the first day of the Oval Test, RP Singh's selection was a disaster and painted "the perfect picture of all that has gone wrong for India on this tour," writes Sandeep Dwivedi in the Indian Express.

His presence in the tour party has exposed India’s bench strength, and his presence in the playing XI, ahead of the regular squad member Munaf Patel, has put a question mark on the team management’s judgement. Giving RP the new ball was just another one of Dhoni’s many puzzling decisions of the tour.

It took only one ball to lay bare India’s hopelessness. RP began with one way down the leg side, which reached Dhoni’s gloves after bouncing a couple of times. RP, who hasn’t played a Test since mid-2008, and whose last first class game was eight months ago, improved somewhat with his third ball — down the same line, but this time only one-bounce to the keeper.

In the Independent, James Lawton says this about RP Singh's first over: " ... when it was over you weren't so much concerned about the commitment of one 25-year-old international sportsman as the entire future of the most superior form of a great game."

This, you had to believe, was a near perfect reflection of India's calamitous surrender to the point where they came here with only the slimmest possibility of avoiding a humiliating 4-0 whitewash. Singh made such an idea not much more than a fantasy. His first delivery came in at 77.5mph, trailing down the leg side. England's captain, Andrew Strauss, looked a little bemused. He then played Singh's second delivery off his pads with such nonchalance he might have been away on some distant beach amusing his children with a little beach cricket.

"Poor Fletcher: he had to hit the ground running, but the landing’s scorched his feet," writes Vijay Parthasarathy on First Post. "The cricket coach increasingly reminds me of Mr. Weatherbee – the bumbling principal in those old Archie comics, who floundered often but strove manfully to do his duty."

With India seemingly in cruise mode, it seemed Fletcher simply needed to focus on man management. He needed to establish a rapport particularly with senior players and earn their respect so as to slowly gain the authority to rein in some of the more exuberant ones. Unfortunately he’s going to have to do some firefighting first. The coming months could prove extremely stressful.

Meanwhile over the next year Fletcher will get compared to every past coach, foreign and Indian. He is at the very least answerable to Kirsten’s apparition, to say nothing of the BCCI and countless disapproving fans. He must think, ruefully: did Kirsten really have to win nearly everything at stake, take India to the number one spot in Tests and then rub the World Cup trophy in everyone’s face like that?

The Oval Test could be Suresh Raina's last chance to nail down that No. 6 position in India's Test side, until more vacancies open up in the batting order, writes Sriram Veera in Mumbai Mirror. And once again it's the short ball that's been his problem.

There has been a visible difference between his approach in West Indies against Fidel Edwards and now in England. Back there, he hardly tried to play the pull; he preferred to duck and weave ...

Here in England, curiously, he has shown a preference to try pulling. Of course the attack is more varied here; England can create a sense of claustrophobia with their all-round attack, especially in these conditions, and wear down the best, forcing you to make mental errors.

With the England tour subjecting Indian cricket fans to a rude awakening from what has been a fairytale year, the panic button has been pressed writes Desh Gaurav Chopra Sekhri in the Indian Express. But finger-pointing and blame-game won’t take Indian cricket very far.

There isn’t a quick-fix solution to being underprepared given the current situation. Practice matches sound fine in theory with plenty of upside — acclimatising to the conditions the most obvious — but in the present circumstances our players need time to recover from fatigue and injuries. Aggravating an existing injury or managing to get injured during a practice match would have greater ramifications than would some batting and/ or bowling time.

If India have to win The Oval Test, they need a solid opening partnership reckons Sourav Ganguly. Here's more in the Mid-Day.

If Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir can fire at the top of the order, the others will suddenly feel better about their batting. Sometimes that's all it takes ” one blazing century by Viru (Sehwag), and suddenly things will change.

Twelve years back, at The Oval, Nasser Hussain was booed by the fans after his side lost woefully to New Zealand and conceded the series. Returning to the same venue now, England's former captain, writing in the Daily Mail looks back at England's momentous journey since that low.

Back to 1999, and I can recall a lower order of Andrew Caddick, Alan Mullally, Phil Tufnell and Ed Giddins — one of the worst tails in the history of Test cricket. Now look at the guys who come in after Eoin Morgan: Matt Prior, Bresnan, Broad, Graeme Swann, even Jimmy Anderson. It’s the kind of depth and multi-skilled line-up that Fletcher used to dream about. And that’s what England have become: 11 guys with no weak link.

BBC's Sam Sheringham takes the opportunity to salute five unsung heroes who played their part in England's rise over the last decade.

Cooley, a Tasmanian who never played international cricket, was lured to England by his compatriot Rod Marsh and, after initially working with the ECB Academy, he soon became involved with the senior bowlers. In 2005, he helped mould Steve Harmison, Matthew Hoggard, Andrew Flintoff and Simon Jones into a formidable unit, using a blend of raw pace, seam movement and reverse swing to repeatedly dismantle Australia's much-vaunted batting line-up.

There have been glimpses of genius from Ishant Sharma in England but not enough consistency to suggest he can take over the role of India's spearhead, Sandeep Dwivedi says in the Indian Express.

After that spark at Lord’s, Sharma hasn’t come across as a bowler who could run through the England side. He definitely is the only Indian bowler to display the hostility that the home pacers have dished out, but the wickets haven’t come. Sharma has shown that he has the skills but the three Tests have also exposed his inability to adapt to the varied pitches. He has beaten the bat with the inswinger but he hasn’t plotted well to come up with the ball that holds its line or even the yorker at the right time. Against the left-handers, he has bowled wide outside the off stump, making it easy for the batsmen the leave the ball.

Harbhajan Singh has faced plenty of criticism over his recent performances outside the subcontinent, but Kartikeya Date argues on his blog A Cricketing View that the spinner's reduced effectiveness is because India's second and third fast bowlers have been mediocre.

From an uncertain start to his Test career, Matt Prior is one of the leading wicketkeeper-batsmen in world cricket today and part of the world's No. 1 Test team. He talks to Paul Newman in the Daily Mail about his journey so far - from the criticism, to working with Bruce French, the importance of the Pakistan series last summer and more.

‘Your dream as a kid is to play for England and when you are left out you go into some deep and dark places. The worst thing that could happen in my world was being dropped by England but when it happened I realised it wasn’t as if my world was over. Once I’d cleared the haze it almost gave me the freedom to say, “This is the player I want to be”. I was going to play for England again whatever it took.’

In the Daily Telegraph Prior writes about the key areas he focussed on that helped him improve his wicketkeeping - from clear thinking to maintaining the perfect posture.

PERFECT POSTURE Good posture is essential, it gives me a powerful and balanced position to move to any ball quickly and with confidence. My legs can’t be too bent or my back hunched and I don’t want to have straight knees or to lean back. I want to be in a shape like the letter Z. Once you have that position, if you are stood back or stood up, it doesn’t change. The only thing that changes is the set-up. It is similar to a slip catcher’s position and, at the point of delivery, we all look the same in the cordon.

While England's climb to the No. 1 spot has also been surrounded by talk over what they need to retain it for as long as possible, Andy Bull says it is now the time to revel in what England have done. After all, aren't days like these are why we became fans in the first place, he asks in the Guardian.

I suggest we start by temporarily suspending our critical faculties, for the next seven days at least. Shut down the part of you that demands to know whether England won this series because India's top players were too old, or too ill-prepared, or too obsessed with the Indian Premier League. Shout down the voice that wonders whether England are only No1 because the competition is not as strong as it once was or could be. The caveats belong in the small print, and can be kept for another occasion.

Geoffrey Boycott is thrilled and delighted by the England team's performances this summer. But he writes that it is a shame that they have risen to No. 1 in the world in an era when other countries' Test teams are declining. More from the Daily Telegraph.

India are the paymasters of cricket. Every time their board auctions a TV rights package, at least five broadcasters bid. And those same broadcasters provide vital funding for other countries when India tour abroad. So if India sneezes, the whole world catches a cold.

I'm not suggesting that England should bowl long-hops to Sachin at The Oval just to keep the viewers on the sub-continent happy. But I am worried about the long-term future of Test matches.

Andrew Strauss's CV has Ashes wins home and away and world No 1 spot on it, but the way he saved a flailing side makes the opener, the finest leader his country has had, writes Stephen Brenkley in the Independent.

Perhaps because he is not an attacking captain by nature, perhaps because he does not set tricksy fields, perhaps because he is not an instinctive changer of bowling, it is easy to overlook his virtues. Strauss is endlessly patient as a captain in that he allows strategies to unfold to their logical conclusion.

He could do with a few more runs himself – though as captain he averages more than Vaughan, Hussain and Atherton. But he has taken English cricket to a great place. The time has not yet come but it will be fascinating to see what Strauss, now 34, does next. He could write a book on the art of captaincy and conflict resolution.

Graeme Swann, who has spent a fair bit of cricket career standing next to Strauss at slip, admits that the England captain is a bit of a hero to him. Here's more in the Sun.

His statesmanlike qualities extend beyond the routine stuff such as making bowling and fielding changes or team talks. When stories such as match fixing or even last week's riots demand a firm but sensible voice, Strauss is the man to deliver the perfect words.

Steve James, writing in the Daily Telegraph, says England need to manage Andy Flower's workload as coach.

I have long worried about his workaholic tendencies. He just never stops. His conscientiousness is central to England’s success, but, whilst the players get their breaks, he never does. He dotes upon his family, but he is also incredibly loyal to his close group of friends, the England team, and, indeed, the game of cricket as a whole. Few people I have met in cricket love the game more than Flower. Probably only Duncan Fletcher, actually. Flower sees wider scenarios.

In their ascent to becoming the world's No. 1 Test team England have been ably supported by a strong support staff. Paul Newman in the Daily Mail profiles the men who have provided arguably the best and most specialised preparation to any team in Test history.

Graham Gooch There were concerns that Gooch belonged to a different era when Flower made him batting coach but England’s record run-scorer was an inspired appointment, drumming into his charges the constant need for ‘daddy’ hundreds and working for hours on end with both top batsmen and tailenders with his ‘dog ball thrower’ gadget.

David Saker Paid his own way from his home in Melbourne for his ECB bowling coach interview in 2010 rather than rely on a video call. The extrovert Australian quickly made his mark by telling Flower he wanted Chris Tremlett in the Ashes squad, then resisted Australia’s efforts to lure him back, saying: ‘They weren’t interested in me before I came to England and I’m not interested in them now.’

Every batsman is given different gifts, and run-hunger and the intuitive facility to grasp the craft of scoring are just as valuable as exceptional physical skill, writes S Ram Mahesh in the Hindu. And while he may appear stiffly methodical at the crease, his love for the activity of run-making is evident to all.

His innate endurance (a less-recognised physical gift, like his knack for working the ball to the on-side) helped him on two levels. He was so fit that he barely broke a sweat, and this fitness in turn allowed him to concentrate better, his body making few demands of the mind.

India's spectacular surrender in England has sparked outrage among Indian cricket fans and critics alike, writes Amrit Mathur in the Hindustan Times. But will things finally change? Here's a look at what definitely won't, says the author.

Will there be less cricket? The chances are slim considering that the BCCI has confirmed international commitments under the FTP. Also, more cricket means more money for all concerned (Boards, sponsors, broadcasters and players), so no one complains.

Three years after Sourav Ganguly vacated his middle-order spot in the Test team is now being used for a seemingly never-ending game of musical chairs writes Deepak Narayanan in the Mumbai Mirror. India have played 29 Tests since Ganguly retired. In those 29 Tests, six batsmen have been tried out in the middle-order, with two others in the opening slot and yet, either through ill luck or incompetence, none of them have been able to seal their spot.

Ganguly (39) is already finding his feet beyond the boundary and he will at some point be joined by Laxman (37), Dravid (38) and Tendulkar (38) a generation of batsmen who hit the ground running in Test cricket, men who made it in spite of the system, not because of it.

This is unlikely to happen again, for not only is the system still shambolic, we’ve also got Twenty20 to deal with now. There is talent there: Rohit Sharma, Kohli and Pujara, especially, seem to have the goods. Neither is it as if this generation dislikes Test cricket, or dismisses its importance, just that their skill-sets seem to fall short of both their ambitions and our expectations.

Several Indian papers have editorials saluting the England team for their ascent to the top of the rankings, and wondering where it all went wrong for India. The Hindu says England deserve to be No. 1 in Tests because of the respect they give the format.

England's greatest accomplishment has been the gathering of a group of diversely skilled bowlers; any team aiming to be No.1 needs bowling ammunition. They aren't treated as well as batsmen, but bowlers are the most important part of cricket: their health directly affects the health of the game, for batting evolves in reaction. England's recent success in winning and regaining the Ashes, and building a strong record at home, has been driven by the bowlers. In James Anderson, Stuart Broad, Chris Tremlett, Tim Bresnan, and Graeme Swann, Strauss has real quality to call upon.

The Indian Express says what the drubbing in England has highlighted is "the gaping holes in cricket management" in India.

There’s a need to go back to the basics of cricket — rigorous training schedules and practice matches, lay-off and rehabilitation of injured players and the art of grooming a second rung. There’s also the need to adapt the best practices of scheduling from sports like soccer where domestic, league and international fixtures are taken into account to create a seamless calendar.

Pradeep Magazine writes in the Hindustan Times that the series defeat should not come as a surprise, that it was a disaster waiting to happen.

IPL per se cannot be the cause of this disaster, but it's scheduling at a time when the entire Indian team needed rest most certainly is. Can anyone in an objective frame of mind disagree that the Dhonis, the Tendulkars, the Sehwags and the Gambhirs of the team should have used this opportunity to recuperate instead of further damaging their bruised bodies and jaded minds. The lure of money and the backing of the Indian Board -- who could have, if they wanted, forced them to skip the tournament - proved a greater incentive than commitment to their craft and the country.

In the Guardian Mike Selvey traces England's route to the top, putting it down to "two good ECB chairmen, three coaches, five captains and a lot of preparation." And the same paper also has a short editorial on England's success.

England's ascent to No. 1 has been a long process and the result of detailed management, writes Michael Vaughan in the Daily Telegraph.

Another dominant display took England to the top of the rankings © PA Photos

How long will England remain No.1? Vic Marks, in the Guardian, says the team will have to achieve something they haven't done since 2000-01 - winning a series in the subcontinent.

But winning in the subcontinent is a little more complicated. England have not won there since the winter of 2000‑01, when Duncan Fletcher and Nasser Hussain conjured stunning series victories in Pakistan and Sri Lanka. It is this side's ultimate challenge and it usually requires a change of plan. In Sri Lanka England will have to play two spinners and that may also be the case against Pakistan.

You may share this column's exasperation for the call for England to play five bowlers during this summer — or indeed during the last Ashes' winter. But the need to introduce a second spinner on the brown tracks and under the unrelenting sun of Colombo or Chennai will have to prompt a change.

In the Sunday Telegraph, Steve James writes that while Andrew Strauss and Andy Flower take most of the plaudits, credit must go to former coach Duncan Fletcher as well for putting in the foundations of a strong side.

On Saturday, James Anderson once again proved too hot for the Indians and during his four-wicket haul, he went past Alec Bedser's wicket tally. David Lloyd pays tribute in the Independent on Sunday.

In the Mail on Sunday, Patrick Collins describes the moment of victory, when England confirmed their place at the top of the table.

Anil Kumble says in the Hindustan Times that England were "the better prepared, the more charged up and by far the fitter" team.

There is some merit in each of the 'whys' that have been discussed as the reason for India's poor showing: fatigue, mental and physical, lack of a culture of fitness, lack of preparation, the almost child-like belief that since everything has been going well so far, it will continue to do so and sheer momentum will carry India over the line, the injuries to key players Zaheer Khan, Harbhajan Singh, Gautam Gambhir, Virender Sehwag.

In the Mumbai Mirror, Deepak Narayanan terms this series India's worst collective performance in a while.

Worse than the 3-0 whitewash in Australia at the turn of the century because that was a result everyone - including BCCI secretary Jaywant Lele - expected.

Worse even than the hiding the West Indies handed to India, in India, right after the 1983 World Cup, for then at least there were three drawn Tests in six.

"The stellar batting superstars and best pace bowler are ageing, the best spinner has lost his sting, and the pace attack lacks a genuine tearaway strike bowler who can run through the top order." Soutik Biswas lists India's trouble on his blog in the BBC.

If there ever was a truly disheartening and depressing day for an Indian cricket fan, this was it and it brooks no competition whatsoever, writes Sriram Dayanand on his blog.

On his blog A Cricketing View, Kartikeya Date argues that India's defeat should be blamed on their lacklustre fast bowling.

In his Yahoo blog, Venkat Ananth explains how Indian cricket has got its priorities in a twist, leading to their shambolic showing in England.

Morgan's hundred at Edgbaston showed that the selectors got it right when they preferred him to Ravi Bopara at the start of the summer, writes Nasser Hussain in the Daily Mail. Though Morgan is trying to find his way as a Test cricketer, it was good to see him try and adapt, observes Hussain.

All the headlines will rightly go to Alastair Cook, but Eoin Morgan will be quietly chuffed with his day's work. It's been a year since he scored his first Test hundred and in some ways your second can be the toughest.

It's the innings that confirms to a batsman in his own mind that he belongs at this level. You can dismiss all thoughts that the first hundred was a fluke and just settle down a bit.

Morgan never quite found complete fluency; but he got his runs against all-comers, going to his second Test match hundred. However, with Bopara, there was a fatalistic air about his innings, as if he believed he had not much to gain and a lot to lose and a general lack of conviction, writes Simon Hughes in the Daily Telegraph.

He [Bopara] had just watched his chance of an extended run in the team disappear (not helped by the presence of the temporarily absent Jonathan Trott in the England dressing room) and was soon out lbw for seven, half-forward to Mishra. England suspect he is a touch fragile, and he proved that too.

Alastair Cook batted for more than 13 hours in England's first innings at Edgbaston and in the Daily Telegraph Scyld Berry writes that by batting for so long, for so many, Cook egged on his teammates to aspire to higher achievements — individual ones and thus, such is the dual nature of cricket, collective ones.

So it was that Cook did not reach a triple-century. But one day a member of this extraordinary England side surely will, because Cook has shown them how.

In an age of instant gratification, Alastair Cook's powers of endurance and appetite for batting almost defies credibility writes David Hopps in the Guardian.

He does not spit defiance, contort his face with concentration, or scan cricket's records with selfish intent. He does not even sweat. He merely understands his limitations and plays, quite contentedly, entirely admirably, within them. For a very long time.

If you are England captain Andrew Strauss and coach Andy Flower and you want to rule the world, and believe one sure-fire way of doing it is working a little "mental disintegration" on the opposition, Cook, the batting star of Bedford School who has become the most resilient pillar of England, is most assuredly your man, writes James Lawton in the Independent.

There was a time when broadcasters had to be up to scratch in terms of certain basic requirements, especially when it came to having high-class commentators. But now, sadly, there are quite a few misfits writes David Frith in the Indian newspaper DNA.

It’s one of the great sadness of our time that starry-eyed producers have an obsession for employing men (at a rumoured salary of £600,000 per year for some of the Sky commentators), who once played international cricket, as if this achievement alone guarantees not only a suitable voice for long-term broadcasting but a good grasp of the language too. Occasionally, this is achieved.

With India on the verge of going down 3-0 to England in the four Test series and losing their, no. 1 ranking, the criticism of the team’s (lack of) preparation for the tour has come from all corners. On Sportzpower.com, the Insider pins the blame for the India’s shambolic performance squarely on the shoulders of the BCCI.

The BCCI has no plan, full stop. Things happen and the board only looks to multiply the financial gains.

It need not have been this way. India could have learnt a thing or two from what England and Australia have done. Off the field we look to dominate the cricketing landscape like the two once did, but can't we borrow a thing or two from what they have done on the field?

In the Indian newspaper DNA Vijay Tagore interviews former England opener Dennis Amiss, who also has plenty of experience as a cricket administrator - 12 years as Warwickshire chief executive and several as the ECB's deputy chairman.

You have to have some other skills to be a successful administrator. I was very lucky that I had both cricketing and business backgrounds. I could bring that into administration that I’ve done in Warwickshire and England and Wales Cricket Board.

It is not easy because here they are looking for business-oriented people to run the counties. There is so much pressure to make money in the game. If you don’t, your club is going to suffer. The chairman and chief executive have to have these backgrounds.

After witnessing Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cook grind India down with a 186-run stand, Scyld Berry writes in the Daily Telegraph that they provide England with that vital ingredient of a great team - a redoubtable opening combination.

Strauss and Cook are not an opening pair to keep opening bowlers awake and fearful through the night as Haynes and Greenidge did, and Hayden, and Sanath Jayasuriya of the third pair on the list. Strauss and Cook seek to wear down and accumulate, to take the shine off the new ball and allow their more gifted middle-order team-mates to cash in. Their style is probably in their natures; it is certainly in the nature of English cricket that opening pairs have more to cope with than their counterparts overseas.

In the Guardian, Vic Marks describes Cook shrugging off a brief dip in form to make another big hundred.

There are signs of evolution in Cook's batting. Increasingly he cracks the ball through extra-cover, hitherto a bit of a no-go area. Off the back foot he hits in that direction with surprising power and a vertical bat. Moreover the cover drive now looks a much more natural shot for him. After about four hours at the crease he indulges himself with it.

"Imagine scaling Everest only to discover the final leg of the climb was to be made via an escalator," is how Martin Samuel describes England's nearly-confirmed ascent to No. 1 in the Daily Mail.

The dumping of Simon Katich from Cricket Australia's contract list this year signalled that the selectors wanted to build a Test side for the future. But in the Daily Telegraph, Malcolm Conn wonders why they aren't revamping the one-day team as well.

The World Cup is the only one-day tournament that really counts and the next one is almost four years away. From the team that played overnight, Ricky Ponting (36), Mike Hussey (36), David Hussey (34), Brett Lee (34) and possibly Doug Bollinger (30) won't make the 2015 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand. If the selectors are serious about building for the future, why aren't players like Shaun Marsh, Callum Ferguson, David Warner, Aaron Finch, James Pattinson and John Hastings in the one-day team?

Former international umpire Darly Harper, who recently retired from umpiring, talks to www.cricketweb.com on how he got into umpiring, criticism dealing with it, the DRS and his post-retirement plans.

Back in Australia I'm going to take up baseball umpiring, just as a hobby. I'm not seeking to go up the MLB level! I just want to experience what it will be like in another game that I have great passion for, to see what the ball is like when it's coming towards me instead of going away from me. I have a book planned too - I know what I want to write about and I am keen to do it myself. I think I could write something entertaining, factual and a little bit provocative and thought provoking as well.

August 11 was the 34th anniversary of Geoffrey Boycott's one hundredth first-class hundred, scored in an Ashes Test against Australia on his home ground at Headingley in 1977. Boycott the player is receding into the past today, but an entry in the in the blog www.oldbatsman.blogspot.com reminisces about the time its writer watched him bat.

John Arlott, as he often would, made a telling and melancholic point about Geoffrey. 'He had,' Arlott said, 'a lonely career'. That is true, but in essence the great batsmen are alone, or at least they are when they bat. He is, in his quirky way, less alone now. I'm glad I saw him play.

Saqlain Mushtaq, the former Pakistan offspinner, defends Harbhajan Singh in an interview with the Hindustan Times, saying the Indian batsmen simply haven't scored enough runs to support their lead spinner.

He was on the verge of 100 Tests. He was a bit upset to get injured when it was time to play matches where conditions would have suited the spinners more. The criticism of Harbhajan has been unfair. Swann hasn’t done well either but no one is talking about him. He was bowling on the first day at Lord’s when conditions suited the fast bowlers and you are blaming Harbhajan. Not one, two or three years, he has done well for 12 years. The difference is their batsmen have got runs, yours haven’t. There is a negative sort of attitude against Harbhajan. With Murali, Warne and Kumble retired, for me, he is the No 1 spinner in the world. It is important not to confuse him.

Nasser Hussain writes in the Daily Mail that it is sign of the quality of England's bowling attack that the rolled over India's strongest batting line-up for 224.

In the old days, if you lost Darren Gough or Andy Caddick to injury, there was often a big drop in quality to find a replacement. Now, they lose Chris Tremlett and in comes Tim Bresnan. Steven Finn is waiting in the wings. It’s an astonishing conveyor belt.

Just look at the ball which Bresnan produced to get rid of Dravid. It was an absolute pearler that angled in, then nipped away and took the top of off stump. You need something special to get rid of Dravid — and Bresnan, a bloke playing his ninth Test, had the answer.

In the Independent, Jon Culley salutes Tim Bresnan, who continues to show he has what it takes to cut it at the top level.

MS Dhoni has had a forgettable first two Tests, but managed to hit some form in Edgbaston. Sandeep Dwivedi writes in the Indian Express about how Dhoni reverted to the carefree, stroke-maker that he was early in his career.

There are days when one cannot help referring to Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni as just Mahi — the boy from Ranchi who didn't hone his cricketing skills at some reputed cricket academy but till late in life was a football goalkeeper. When Dhoni broke into India's celebrated batting line-up — one that had men with perfect high left elbows, men who seamlessly transferred their weight into silken touch — he stuck out with his less-refined brand of batting.

But like in the past while dealing with a run slump, Dhoni turned into Mahi as he faced possibly the biggest test of his captaincy career.

In the Guardian, Vic Marks says this was the first time Dhoni played his natural game in this series.

Dhoni was able to emulate what Broad achieved in Nottingham, when England were 124 for eight. He dragged the Indian score not as far as respectability but at least beyond calamitous. Uncomplicated aggression was rewarded and, briefly, India appeared to be back in the game. The field spread, the run rate galloped and the bowlers became a little ragged. This tends to happen to all bowlers when they are attacked successfully. It is one of the merits of taking the bold course.

Scyld Berry writes in the Daily Telegraph that though the innings showcased Dhoni's fighting qualities it is too soon to say that 'Dhoni is back'.

The ICC Test Championship Mace on display © Getty Images

Emma John has an amusing article in the Guardian about the mace presented to the top Test team in the world. She wonders whether the ICC decided on a mace as a prize since it signifies "authority, power, medieval concepts of feudalism".

As prizes go, the mace is gloriously bonkers, a surreal reminder of just how trivial a concept sport is. Congratulations, you have won a purely fictitious battle, whose outcome is of no lasting consequence – now have this ludicrously expensive replica of an ancient bludgeoning instrument. And yet, given the chance to have my photo taken with any sort of trophy or even – crikey – hold one, I will go weaker at the knees than Ben Foden at a Saturdays gig. Maybe it's because they're markers of permanence in an otherwise impermanent and ultimately meaningless milieu. As Keats said, a thing of beauty is a joy for ever. And a mace is for life, not just for Christmas.

Cricket as a retreat from the harsher realities of the world does not please everybody, but the game's sense of moral compass has never seemed more valuable, writes David Hopps in the Guardian.

Seven hours at a Test match was an opportunity to become absorbed in something different. There was talk of spectators who had become caught up in the riots, whose houses had been broken into, or shops damaged, and as the crowd became silent one wondered if thoughts were straying elsewhere. Then Gautam Gambhir dragged Tim Bresnan on to his stumps, driving, and the crowd roared its approval. It was a powerful, communal roar. It has rarely sounded so good.

Emmad Hameed traces the history of tape ball cricket in Pakistan in Dawn. The tape ball is harder than the tennis ball, swings more, and flies faster off the bat he explains.

The transition from tennis to tape tennis ball came around the time the Kerry Packer revolution hit international cricket, the introduction of white balls, coloured clothing, black sight screens and floodlit cricket brought a new dimension and thrill. While closer to home, tape ball generated a new interest in players and fans alike.

Gergo Racz, writing in the Wall Street Journal, says cricket isn’t as popular among the Hungarian youth as football, water polo or handball, but the Hungary cricket league has been making headway over the years.

[Hungary] aims to become an affiliate member of the International Cricket Council in 2012. The Hungary cricket league has been in existence since 2007, with seven teams and about 150 adult players. There’s also a national squad, where two of the players are women.

Tanya Aldred pays tribute to Rahul Dravid in the Daily Telegraph, highlighting his battle with Shane Warne during a low-profile county match in 2000.

Warne, who had claimed supremacy over Dravid, pulled every one of his multiple tricks; Dravid, who had claimed he could read Warne from the hand, watched, waited and masterfully dispatched; the holiday crowd who had paid just £9 to get in sat in rapt concentration. The winner? Dravid, with 137, 73 not out and a Kent victory to his name. And as he walked off after his 137, every Hampshire player, every spectator and every journalist, stood and applauded.

Stephen Brenkley looks at the times England have struggled to complete the job in Test series over the past couple of years and writes in the Independent that this time against India, it should be a different story.

On three of them, as it happened, their opponents merely delayed the inevitable, on the other, the series ended in a draw.

Today at Edgbaston, gloriously revamped at a cost of £32m, England will embark, riots notwithstanding, on their attempt to ensure that they are not deprived by India. Delay this time may prove costly. There is much to suggest that England can win the third Test to go 3-0 ahead, which will secure both the rubber and the No 1 place in the world Test rankings.

Rob Bagchi writes in the Guardian that Edgbaston would be a great place for England to reach top spot.

Lord's is more majestic, Trent Bridge more picturesque, Headingley had more comically lugubrious characters, one of them famously selling choc ices, and the ambience at a packed Old Trafford or The Oval can sometimes match its peak fervour, but Edgbaston, where the third Test is scheduled to begin this morning, has such a knack for producing a raucous atmosphere and dramatic matches that it is easy to understand why most England players cherish it as their favourite ground.

In the same paper, Mike Selvey also expects England to reach the summit. He says that though England lack the bowling firepower of the great Australian and West Indies teams which dominated cricket over the past three decades, they still have the muscle to be No. 1

The England side of the Andrews, Flower and Strauss, understand to the full not just their strengths but also their limitations. They bat well, brilliantly at times, but not so well or consistently that they could compete, in theory anyway, with the stellar nature of India's top order. But then they know that the lower-order batting, unmatched in the game at the moment, can compensate. This is not arrogance but the sort of trust in one another forged in places as disparate as Melbourne and the Bavarian Alps.

In the Daily Mail Nasser Hussain looks at the newcomers in this Test, Virender Sehwag and Ravi Bopara.

When Rahul Dravid clicked, no one else did. When Praveen Kumar bowled well, he had no support. When Ishant Sharma wreaked havoc, runs were leaked too easily at the other end. Kanishkaa Balachandran, writing for firstpost.com, says that India can bounce back in the series only if they figure out a way to work as a team.

India just needs to turn the clock back four years to their previous tour of England for inspiration. Curiously, for a side high on numbers, only one player, Anil Kumble, managed to score a century. Their 1-0 series win was built on crucial half-centuries and a staggering 16 fifty-plus stands, boosted by a stable opening pair. Zaheer then complemented their efforts with a match-winning 5-wicket haul at Trent Bridge. England found India’s synchronicity too overwhelming.

Zimbabwe bowler Kyle Jarvis talks to Cricket365's Tristan Holme about his dad Malcolm (who played in Zimbabwe's debut Test), his injury ordeal and the effect Tamim Iqbal's comments on the penultimate day of the Harare Test had on his team.

Kyle Jarvis was just three-years-old at the time so he was too young to remember watching his father play in Zimbabwe's first Test, but that doesn't mean he hasn't heard all about it. "Mostly he's always telling me about how he would have had Zimbabwe's first Test wicket but for a dropped catch. And then he'll chirp that one day maybe I'll be as quick as he was."

"... I was struggling to bowl and everyone just said, 'Ah you're being soft. Come on, just bowl through it'. But it was in fact a stress fracture." The mental toughness required to come back from the injury has stood him in good stead ... "I spent a lot of time lying down watching TV, which was what I had to do. It was basically seven months with the feet up, it was pretty terrible to just watch your mates play on TV."

The Daily Star takes a tongue-in-cheek look at Bangladesh's loss to Zimbabwe in the first Test.

Rahul Dravid has done the right thing by announcing his retirement from limited-overs cricket after the ongoing tour of England writes Nirmal Shekhar in the Hindu. For far too long, the self-effacing and classy Bangalorean has allowed men with a fraction of his skills as a cricketer to use and discard him as they pleased.

Greatness must not lend itself to the whims and fancies of people who fail to understand its true value and adamantly refuse to give it the respect it deserves.

A man less committed to the cause of the nation would have hesitated to answer such a mindless call to arms. But Dravid being what he is, has put up his hand without so much as a murmur.

But enough is enough. Our selectors seem to want him only in the toughest of conditions when the fair-weather ‘greats' are found wanting. That's clearly an insult to an upstanding sportsman who has never given less than 100 per cent, whatever the situation.

There are ways you must bowl at Alastair Cook and ways you must not, writes Nasser Hussain in the Daily Mail. While the Australians erred, bowling short at him, the Indians have figured out the recipe to cause Cook problems.

They have mixed it up, dragging the England opener across his stumps with outswingers, then nipping the ball back in as they look for leg-before.

Ok, Hawk-Eye suggested the two balls that got him lbw at Lord's and Trent Bridge were both going over the stumps, but the point is that India have worked out a way of bowling to Cook - and he doesn't like it.

Tim Bresnan, England's latest allrounder has been on the winning side in all eight of his Tests and welcomes comparisons with a much-vaunted predecessor, Andrew Flintoff. He talks to Donald McRae in the Guardian.

"There's no point attacking anything in life and thinking I'll be average at this. That's a poor way of thinking. So you have to set yourself targets and strive to be as good as you can be. Freddie was definitely a game-changer and it would be very nice to be thought of in the same bracket as him," he says.

Zimbabwe's return to the Test arena is merited, writes Somerset batsman Nick Compton in the Guardian, but the hard work will have to continue if the most is going to be made of the country's cricketing potential and fruitful communication between the Board and the players is crucial. Compton, who has a significant connection to the country through his mother, spent last winter playing for the Mashonaland Eagles franchise in Zimbabwe.

For me, it's simple: ZC needs to regain respect as a board. It needs to include players in the decision-making processes. It's the players who will determine the strength of Zimbabwean cricket and if the board expects the team to show commitment, unity and a strong work ethic, it needs to be the first to display those qualities. The administrators need to back the players and give them the respect they deserve.

England’s current wealth of fast bowling resources is one of their biggest advantages, if not their biggest advantage. What makes it even more of a decisive edge is that most of the bowlers know how to use a cricket bat as well. Stuart Broad played two vital innings in each of the first two Tests against India, while Tim Bresnan’s 90 at Trent Bridge punished a flagging attack and made sure there was no let-up after centurion Ian Bell was dismissed. In the Guardian, Vic Marks reckons this “band of batting bowlers” will be around for a long time.

By contrast in 2011, England have Bresnan and Broad at No8 and No9 (with Swann to follow) and they provide a magnificent insurance policy. Recently only the South Africa side at the turn of the century, with so many all-rounders down the order, could rival this depth of batting.

Former West Indies fast bowler Winston Davis, paralysed after a freak accident, tells Clayton Murzello in the Mid-Day how spiritual awakening has given him a new lease of life.

"Let's put it like this - you can do a lot of things with a computer, you can discover new use of it and that is what happens with me. I have met people similar to me and they are still carrying their burden. They have no peace. Within a short span of time, God has given me peace. I don't lie on my bed thinking what I have lost ¦ I never did that. When I wake up, I cannot wait to get out of bed. Some people stay in bed. I want to be able to do things. God has given me the chance to do that."

West Indies were the last team to beat England in a Test series - a hard-earned 1-0 win in the Wisden Trophy in 2009. So why are England, then fifth on the ICC Test ratings, now within one match of rising to No.1, while the West Indies are stuck at No.7, asks Tony Cozier, writing in the Nation News.

... money is not the only, not even the primary, reason. More significant is the stability that has underpinned England’s rise as opposed to the perpetual, self-inflicted chaos keeping the West Indies where they have been for so long. England’s consistency that has carried them towards the pinnacle they have not reached since the 1950s is revealed in the composition of the XI blown away for 51 by Jerome Taylor at Sabina Park two years ago and those who humiliated India, the present No.1, in the second Test at Trent Bridge last week.

Eight of those devastated in the debacle of Kingston (Andrew Strauss, Alastair Cook, Ian Bell, Kevin Pietersen, Matt Prior and Stuart Broad of the playing XI, James Anderson and Graeme Swann temporarily in the reserves) were among the jubilant victors in Nottingham. On the other side, only two of the triumphant West Indians (the evergreen Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Fidel Edwards) were still around for the recent final Test against India.

Ravi Bopara must add mental strength to abundant talent to make the most of his one-match chance against India, says Derek Pringle, writing in the Daily Telegraph.

There is no doubting Bopara’s talent for hitting a cricket ball hard, often, and in ways most batsmen would never attempt. Graham Gooch, England’s batting consultant, has been Bopara’s mentor at Essex for almost a decade and reckons he has not worked with a more talented player.

But talent, while needed to gain a player entry to the big league, is not often enough to keep them there, and it needs to be backed by a focussed mind, something that comes less naturally to the easy-going Bopara.

Gundappa Viswanath, writing in the Indian Express, says that while he isn't sure how logical it is to pick a player who played his last ODI two years ago, Rahul Dravid will adequately adjust his game to the needs of limited-overs cricket in the series in England.

Never for once am I doubting Dravid’s ability to succeed in the one-dayers in England. I always believe that if you have a solid foundation you can do well in any format of the game. A player as technically sound as Dravid can score runs even after a two-year hiatus and in England, you have to play proper cricketing shots to score runs.

An editorial in the same paper says the multifaceted Dravid has once again revealed signs of his greatness and durability.

Greatness has its pronounced markers, its genuine, unalloyed signs. Rahul Dravid revealed a succession of them in England, as he opened, played one down, kept wicket, scored a ton and met the English pace attack in the eye. His exceptional longevity is a truth acknowledged in Tests, but as the selectors recalled the 38-year-old for the forthcoming one-day internationals and T20, the many-sidedness of that durability was in evidence.

On the CNN-IBN website Gaurav Kalra criticises the BCCI for dismissing concerns over its contracts with leading commentators Ravi Shastri and Sunil Gavaskar as "frivolous and trivial."

Imagine a senior reporter is discovered to be on the pay roll of the Congress Party. When confronted by the editor in chief the reporter argues he is under no compulsion to toe the official party line. A Congress party spokesperson concedes the contract exists but says when this reporter speaks it is "purely his opinion". With that knowledge in the public domain can the reporter continue to hold the trust of the viewer? Does his position in the organisation not become untenable? Why else was he on the pay roll unless it was to make the Congress Party's case? Where is the return on investment if what he spoke was "purely his opinion"?

Gamini Goonesena, who captained Sri Lanka in their pre-Test era and played for Cambridge University and Nottinghamshire, died at the age of 80 earlier this week. Mahinda Wijesinghe pays tribute in Sri Lanka's Sunday Times.

Goonesena was a mere ‘net bowler’ and had not been selected for a single game during the season. Conducting practices that fateful evening was coach F.C. de Saram, a percipient observer of the game and its players. In an inspired move, breaking with all traditions, de Saram insisted that Goonesena be picked for the ‘Big’ match to be played over the weekend.

This was an unprecedented move in the long history of the tradition-steeped Royal-Thomian encounter, when a player was making his debut in the ‘Big’ match. Many eyebrows were raised, traditionalists were shocked, and the dreams of a few young hopefuls shattered. Goonesena played and climbed the first steps on the ladder of fame by capturing 4/46 in the match – dismissing both Thomian openers in the crucial second innings – as Royal cruised to a comfortable 9-wicket victory.

As former England wicketkeeper Paul Nixon's retires, Jon Culley, writing in the Independent, looks back on a career beset by the clinical inability to concentrate.

[Michael] Vaughan and [Duncan] Fletcher liked Nixon's effervescent energy, believing the endless chatter for which he was renowned behind the stumps would lift team-mates and distract opponents. Steve Waugh, the former Australian captain with whom he would often share dinner when they both played for Kent, likened him to a mosquito he wanted to swat.

Given that sledging is almost in a wicketkeeper's job description, no one thought Nixon's behaviour particularly odd. Yet he now believes it was this inherent hyperactivity that perhaps denied him earlier recognition ... "It definitely harmed my cricket over the first few years ... The bowler could be running in and I'd be looking at field placings when I should have been concentrating only on the ball."

With unparalleled skill and an extraordinary work ethic to add to his incredible versatility, Rahul Dravid has outdone himself writes Madhu Jawali in the Deccan Herald.

No Indian cricketer has been as accommodative as Dravid. If there’s an award for selfless cricket, then the 38-year-old has little challenge. That’s not to cast aspersions on the others. But where the rest are happy disposing of the normal duties, Dravid has often been asked to step out of his comfort zone to meet the requirements of the team.

“There are not many who will agree to keep wickets, and there are fewer people who agree to open. But Dravid has always done that for us without any complaints. We are lucky that we have somebody like him in our side,” said Dhoni, acknowledging his former captain’s commitment to the team’s cause.

Following the selectors decision to include Dravid in the limited-overs squad for the England tour, Sriram Veera asks - Will the ODI team really benefit if India win on the back of Dravid? Is such short-term gain meaningful? Dravid himself, by announcing his retirement, has made that a rhetorical question. More in the Mumbai Mirror.

While Dravid is a hard man to read at the best of times, the timing of this announcement, at the end of a play when Indian team’s spirits were already low, suggests he has had enough. Treated as a beast of burden for too long, it was time he told the cricket establishment to get off.

England offspinner Graeme Swann is also a known prankster and a master mimic. Sandeep Dwivedi in Indian Express finds out that Swann’s attitude and persona were shaped by an atmosphere at home that allowed children to be themselves.

The mood in the England camp can be gauged by the happy slip cordon, especially when Swann is around. Father Raymond says that Andrew Strauss seemed a relieved man at Trent Bridge when a hand injury had forced Graeme to field in the deep.

“He is either in splits because of some joke that Graeme has cracked or has his fingers in his ears,” he says. With the motor-mouth within handshaking distance, the boredom of a long-drawn day doesn’t affect the team. Raymond adds how Strauss loves pulling his son’s leg by calling him a “buffoon” and Graeme gets back by labelling the England captain “upper-class”.

James Anderson, the Mail on Sunday, lists out the ten decisive moments that have taken England closer to the No.1 ranking in Tests.

6. The Pakistan slurs brought us closerHow we came through the match-fixing scandal showed just how close we were.

When the mad accusations about us being involved were made just before the one-dayer at Lord’s, we had a long meeting into the early hours debating whether we should turn up or not.

We weren’t happy about playing in that series but we were determined to do a professional job and move on, so to win the series in the end was huge.
7. Preparation for Ashes 2010-11Didn’t start great when I had a rib busted by Chris Tremlett in a Bavarian forest boxing ring, but underpinning all our efforts has been our physical fitness and the work of strength and conditioning coach Huw Bevan and fielding coach Richard Halsall.

Bowling coach David Saker wasn’t a high-profile appointment but his work has been invaluable and spin coach Mushtaq Ahmed’s speeches hit the spot. Players and management are together, not us and them.

Ravi Bopara is the right man to replace Jonathan Trott for the third Test at Edgbaston, writes Steve James in the Telegraph on Sunday.

James, in the same newspaper, says the England team that beat Australia in 2005 is better than the one leading the series 2-0 against India.

England's Test attack possesses a dedication to fitness and a craving for career longevity that could be the real deal, writes Vic Marks in the Guardian.

Paul Newman may have played a part in getting the concept of rankings for Test cricket off the ground 18 years ago but he doesn't feel the current system gives an accurate reflection of where teams actually stand. Read more in the Independent on Sunday.

Today's ICC Reliance Test Championship uses a ratings system developed by David Kendix, an actuary and cricket scorer. It is based on some complex calculations, though the basics are not dissimilar to the system that originated from Independent Towers, with results covering a rolling four-year period and taking into account the number of matches and series played.

The current table shows India in the lead, ahead of South Africa and England. However, while India are widely recognised as the world's best one-day side (even if, ironically enough, they lie third in the official ICC one-day rankings behind Australia and Sri Lanka), you might struggle to find neutral observers who regard them as the best Test team.

Jacqueline Smith, writing in the New Zealand Herald, says Tangiwai, a movie named after the country's biggest rail disaster, is as much the tale of how cricketer Bob Blair braved the news of his fiancee Nerissa Love's death to bat for his team in a Test against South Africa.

He eventually got her letter, posted from Taihape - the final chapter in their tragic love story. She would meet him off the boat and they would be married, she wrote. But first, he needed to concentrate on hitting a six for his country ...

It was Christmas Eve, 1953. With 151 dead, many more injured, and a lump in the back of the throat of the nation that would last for generations, the site was renamed Tangiwai, or river of tears.

Why would a blind person love cricket? In the Guardian, Peter White, who was born without his eyesight explains how he is charmed by the game's sounds, scores and slowness, and provides a rare insight into gamesmanship among the vision impaired.

In these soft days, I gather blind batsmen don't run: scores are based on how far the ball has been hit. At the special blind school where I and my friends regularly played, two totally blind batsmen would cheerfully hare off from opposite ends for quick singles, frequently colliding in the middle with earth-moving consequences (one of them my now slightly crooked nose).

The value of mimicry in blind cricket must not be underestimated. Mischievous fieldsmen would often imitate your batting partner in calling you for an impossible run. Compared with the gamesmanship employed by blind players, the likes of "bodyline" Jardine, Tony Greig and Paul Collingwood are mere babes in arms.

The Guardian's Barney Ronay profiles the curious rise and rise of Ravi Shastri as one of the foremost voices in international cricket, and how his spat with Nasser Hussain over England's perceived "jealousy" of India might be just what the doctor ordered.

Chief cheerleader-cum-nightclub doorman for the IPL and India's most visible TV commentating presence, Shastri has become a strangely central figure in new-era cricket, the personage who most clearly embodies the attitude and style of the branded global game as it turns its face towards its largest market. It has taken some time for a new tone and timbre to inveigle itself into the post-Benaud broadcasting vacuum. But hold on to your hats, something's got to give because he's firing on all cylinders: Shastri is perhaps the closest thing we have now to a reigning voice of cricket.

In Outlook magazine, Rohit Mahajan details how Sunil Gavaskar and Ravi Shastri face a conflict of interest over their BCCI contracts.

All these factors have increased the danger of the commentators turning into defenders of BCCI policies. This seems to have happened with Shastri, who didn’t respond to Outlook’s attempts to talk to him. The dashing commentator was a member of the icc’s Cricket Committee, which, in May this year, unanimously recommended the use of Decision Review System (drs) in all Tests, odis and Twenty20s. He never raised a dissenting voice then. But, as a commentator, Shastri is a vehement, aggressive opponent of the drs. During the second Test, he said on air that those who criticised India’s opposition to drs were jealous of its success. This led to a sharp exchange, again on air, with his colleague in the box, Nasser Hussain.

In the Daily Telegraph, Malcolm Conn interviews Ricky Ponting on retirement, whether he draws strength from watching Sachin Tendulkar, MS Dhoni's decision to reinstate Ian Bell at Trent Bridge, the hook shot, fatherhood and more.

Ponting was particularly impressed with Dhoni's recall of England's Ian Bell during the second Test this week, when Bell walked off believing it was tea and was then run out. "From the outside Dhoni has always been pretty willing to play the right way," Ponting said. "Four years ago there was a different captain and he had a fair bit to say about different things. I thought he was way out of line with some of the things that he said. The right outcome has been met (with Bell's recall), which is what you want to see in the game. That's a good sign for international cricket."

In the aftermath of India's struggles in the first two Tests against England, opener Wasim Jaffer, who has played 31 Tests for India, finds his name being discussed for the first time since he last played for India in the home Test series against South Africa in 2008. Sanjjeev Karan Samyal catches up with Jaffer, who is in England, where he finds out that the more Jaffer has looked at India's performance, the more convinced he has become that "he could have made some difference". More from the Hindustan Times.

“After the West Indies tour I felt I had a chance as both openers had not done well and Virender Sehwag was not available for the first couple of games. Also, the last time I played here I did well. I don't understand the reason why they are not considering me. I have got the runs in domestic cricket.“

Former India captain Sourav Ganguly said after the Trent Bridge defeat that Jaffer would have been ideal as a stop-gap replacement for Sehwag. With Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir back for the third Test, Jaffer is no longer anxious about a call from the selectors. “There's very remote chance now, it's out of my mind now,“ he said.

The cricketing world's collective eye may be trained on the England-India series, but an equally important series is underway in Harare. The Wall Street Journal's Richard Lord outlines the importance of the Zimbabwe-Bangladesh one-off Test, given the routine difficulties faced by Test cricket's also-rans.

Limited-overs internationals expose players to quality opposition, but not in a way that equips them for the challenges of a five-day game. This Zimbabwe side has been quite competitive at One-Day International level, but that's largely because of its battery of slow bowlers; now the team finds itself facing a format where a line-up of solid seam bowlers, something it notably lacks, is the foundation of most strong outfits. Bangladesh, likewise, play far more limited-overs than Test cricket, and again its spinners have been its most potent weapons, thanks to the country's low and slow home pitches. Away from home, particularly in Tests, Bangladesh's bowlers have consistently struggled.

One of the bright spots for India on their tour of England so far has been the bowling of Praveen Kumar. But while he has been enormous fun to watch, a bowler of high skill, Mike Selvey writes that you cannot see him lasting. More from the Guardian.

Disguise is paramount, and, as yet, the England batsmen, while negating Kumar to some extent by standing down the pitch (a more competent stumper than MS Dhoni would stop that soon enough), appear not yet to have broken the code of which way he is going to move the ball. Kumar does not noticeably telegraph his intention by a change of action which some, in going from side on to more open, do. Nor is there a discernibly different grip. Instead it comes from the wrist action: he works the ball as if attempting to force it round an obstacle mid-pitch.

Looking back at India's decision to recall Ian Bell in the second innings in Trent Bridge, Andy Bull in the Guardian writes that the decision was a testament to their character and sportsmanship, not to the moral superiority of the sport they play.

The credit is India's alone. The prattle about other sports learning from India's example seems insufferably pompous coming from a game whose history has been as riddled with controversy as cricket's has.

Cricket has always aroused strong reactions in the subcontinent. Fans in the Indian subcontinent take the team’s wins and losses personally, soaring to great emotional heights with a six that wins the World Cup, then crashing to earth when the Test team is dismantled in England a few months later. Occasionally, the emotional spills over and cricketers have had their houses stoned and effigies burnt. In Mint, Sahil Tripathi writes that India’s cricketers deserve better and that there are more important things fans can get angry about.

Indeed, Indian cricketers have given the nation many hours of joy. And as Ramachandra Guha pointed out in his sociological history of Indian cricket, A Corner of a Foreign Field, more is demanded of the cricketers because they are the only ones who make Indians feel that their country matters in the pecking order, where it is at the top. They give Indians something to root for. So they have no choice but to win, which places a superhuman burden on 11 men—because the rest of the Indians can’t. And make no mistake, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, V.V.S. Laxman and their teammates, are more upset about the loss than any of the fans are. They can bounce back; it won’t be easy. But if they don’t, it is because they are facing a superior team. There is no shame in losing to the better team.

While England have been an inspirational team so far, one of the very best that they have fielded for decades, India, at the moment, are a collection of individuals, some of them giants of the game, but lacking the obvious cohesion and sense of purpose that their opponents carry with them writes Mike Selvey in the Guardian. And while England have shown their capacity to fight their way out of a corner, India look bereft of that spirit which can overcome adversity.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni is right to point out that many of his team, in effect, are now in the middle of a seven‑Test series being played over a nine‑week period. For that, blame the Indian board which sanctions their contribution to the future tours programme. However, that does not excuse the lackadaisical manner in which they prepared for the first Test, something which allowed England to sprint out of the blocks at Lord's and then stretch the lead in Nottingham.

Virender Sehwag will be looked at to provide an antidote to the cowering pusillanimity of some of India’s batting so far writes Steve James in the Daily Telegraph. But he is likely to have to be very tough over the next few weeks if he is to breathe life into the ailing beast that has become India’s batting.

It is a role Sehwag is rather well placed to fill. He is, of course, one of the finest batsmen of this and any generation, a man who grabbed Test-match opening batsmanship by the scruff of the neck and dragged it into an era forever postmarked Twenty20.

The possible return of Virender Sehwag and Zaheer Khan, who has contributed just 81 balls to the Indian series effort, should lift spirits, writes Dileep Premachandran in the Guardian, but few imagine that they will have the effect of a magic incantation against an English team who appear to have most bases covered.

While India have struggled with injuries, the bottom line is that England have been quite brilliant so far and they deserve great credit for making life look desperately difficult for the visitors, writes David Lloyd in the Independent. But surely there must be more to come from these visitors, he asks.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni, captain of a team now clinging to the title of world's best by their very fingertips, was given every invitation to raise a nation's spirits immediately after Monday's crushing defeat in Nottingham – and the best he could do, really, was to tell countless millions of fans to hope for a change of fortune.

Writing in Mumbai Mirror, Ayaz Memon asks MS Dhoni's critics to hold their guns, since the captain has been unfortunate with form woes and injuries to key players.

It’s easy to get swayed by emotion over Dhoni’s gesture in withdrawing the appeal against Ian Bell, now part of one of cricket’s biggest debates, though this does play a significant part in this assessment. There are several and very strong votaries that the laws of the game are paramount, but not if they reduce the dignity of the game. The ‘conscience call’ taken by the Indian team was correct and memorable.

England's victory over India in the first two Tests puts them on the verge of being the best in the world. What can the rest of us learn from their march to the top, asks Jim White in the Daily Telegraph.

But what even Flower would admit is this: none of this, the team ethic, the captaincy, the application of sports science, would have brought England to where they are without the raw material to work with. Above all, Flower has been blessed by happenstance delivering him a generation of talent unavailable to his predecessors, albeit some of it hailing from parts beyond these shores. Obdurate batsmen, swashbuckling all-rounders, a clever spinner, a battery of fast bowlers: he might have made them better, he might have forged them into a formidable unit, but these were some players to start with.

England have the depth and ability to become the No. 1 team in the world – as soon as next week – and keep it that way for a while, writes Simon Hughes in the same newspaper.

Hutton’s England might just be superior to all – they were unbeaten in 14 series between 1951 and 1958. But it will take a quite exceptional group of men to knock Strauss’s team off their perch when they are anointed sometime in the next three weeks.

Stephen Brenkley in the Independent writes that in the wake of another resounding victory, it is natural to pose the question - how good are England?

Rob Smyth in the Guardian looks at how England are piecing together the perfect team in their bid to become the world's No. 1 Test team.

England are on the brink of topping the world rankings, writes David Lloyd in the Independent but there are five goals they must achieve to stay there in the long term.

Back to the Daily Telegraph where Alan Tyers takes a tongue-in-cheek look at what England need to do to become the new Australia.

Andrew Strauss has won a lot of admiration for his leadership, calm determination and fair treatment of team and opponent alike. However, he has a long way to go to match Steve Waugh when it comes to being flinty, taking the team to war memorials and talking about how much he likes his cricket hat.

Paul Nixon's upcoming retirement will mark the end of the line for eccentric international wicketkeepers, writes Rob Bagchi in the Guardian. One way to gauge the gulf between England and India so far in this series has been the contrasting demeanours of the men behind the stumps.

Teams now require gamechangers in the role, counterattackers with the bat who can also pile on the misery at an astonishing rate when their teams are well set.

In that role Prior has flourished and his keeping has improved to such an extent that the order in which the terms batsman and wicketkeeper are joined has become irrelevant. Dhoni has to restore that verve to his game, and do it quickly.

Looking at Harbhajan Singh's performance over the first two Tests against England, Sandeep Dwivedi in the Indian Express writes that the man who usually gets wickets in a bunch has not been at his best in England. For most of the first two Tests that India have convincingly lost to England, the man who generally rejuvenates a disillusioned Indian team with an unexpected wicket or with motivational chants has gone missing.

In hindsight, Trent Bridge would have been the ideal venue to give Harbhajan Singh a break. It would have given the troubled offie a rare fortnight-long rest to sort out his bowling. The seaming conditions at the ground, not far from river Trent, would have also provided the captain an excuse for making the bold decision. (While dropping seniors, the decision-makers need to have at least one politically correct reason to sound convincing at press meets.)

But with the next two Tests to be played on surfaces at Edgbaston and the Oval where spinners do have a say, Dhoni will now have to take a tough call. Harbhajan’s strained stomach might make things easier for the team as they sit to pick the playing eleven for the third Test.

Whether he likes it or not, Rahul Dravid has always been India’s odd-jobs man, writes Aditya Iyer in the Indian Express. When push comes to shove — as it often has during Dravid’s time — the best in the business does the dirty work.

No other great No.3 has suffered as much as Dravid. Out of Ricky Ponting, Don Bradman, Viv Richards and Jacques Kallis, the West Indian is the only one to have opened — and he did so just twice. Dravid has opened 21 times, averaging just 36 at the position.

VVS Laxman said early in his career that he would rather face the second ball of the day than open the innings — the mindset is supposedly starkly different. The point was well taken by the team management. At the fag end of a 15-year career, Dravid still awaits his turn.

England's 12th man in the Trent Bridge Test, 21-year-old Scott Elstone, took two key catches against India in the closing stages of the game. Howeber, he had to skup the post-Test celebrations to prepare for a second XI match. He tells Andy Wilson in the Guardian just how the experience was for him.

"It's been a bit mad on Twitter and Facebook for the last couple of days," Elstone said. "I've known for a couple of weeks that I was going to be doing 12th man in the Test, but it was only when Jonathan Trott got his shoulder injury that I realised I was going to be on the field quite a bit. It's a bit daunting going into that England dressing room in the first place but all the players were great."

Observing England's battering of India in the first two Tests from afar, Robert Craddock writes in Brisbane's Courier Mail about the methodical steps taken to reach the top, and how they contrast with the attitudes of other nations, particularly Australia.

When England were thumped 5-0 in Australia in 2007, they set a goal to become the world's premier Test nation. Australia talk a lot about regaining the top ranking but the chatter is shallow and unconvincing - Twenty20 cricket is now Australia's shiny new toy and logic says you can't be Beethoven by day and the Wiggles by night.

Richard Hinds, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, brings himself agonisingly to the conclusion that England are the best team in the world, having got there by means that reminded him of the great Australian sides of the past.

At 8-124 on the opening day of the second Test at Trent Bridge, and with the ball swinging like a wind chime in a hurricane, England were under siege. The subsequent half-century by Stuart Broad was the sort of match-turning performance once expected of Adam Gilchrist or, given Broad then took 6-46 - including a hat-trick - Shane Warne. Like Old Australia, England's batting has more depth than Curtly Ambrose's bath tub, meaning a quiet start to the series by Alastair Cook has been inconvenient, not fatal.

Looking back at India's defeat at Trent Bridge, James Lawton in the Independent writes that while England came into the series hard and belligerent, India came to England under false pretences.Thrashed at Lord's, overwhelmed again at Trent Bridge, the Indians have failed to earn even this most slighting of tributes.

With Sehwag and Khan injured, and the great triumvirate of Tendulkar, Dravid and Laxman contemplating the end of magnificent careers, what have the Indians shown us? They have produced skeletal performances. Their captain, MS Dhoni, a giant of the World Cup, has been lost at the batting crease and at times his wicketkeeping has been embarrassingly rank.

The seam bowlers have been dogged but rarely inspired, and if the conditions have not helped spin, Harbhajan Singh has scarcely been recognisable. Yesterday the slow bowling of Suresh Raina was pitiful enough to make you avert your eyes, especially when Stuart Broad heaved successive deliveries into the crowd.

Though the series was billed as a world heavyweight contest, it has been so one-sided that everybody has been short-changed writes Scyld Berry in the Daily Telegraph. India’s board have failed to prioritise Test cricket since the Indian Premier League was launched; they have failed to prioritise this series in particular.

For the Indians to play in the West Indies one week and a Test at Lord’s the next week is an error for which the administrators concerned should be held accountable.

England look like the No. 1 side in the world and India do not - they look flat, they look jaded and there is no energy in the field - writes Jonathan Agnew on BBC Sport.

For a tired and ill-prepared team with a listless captain at the helm, the world No. 1 tag seems at the moment to be too heavy a responsibility to shoulder, writes Sandeep Dwivedi in the Indian Express.

Since their tour game at Taunton some 20 days back, India have looked a jaded, ill-prepared, disjointed side with most players showing no stomach or will for a fight. The listlessness and lethargy of skipper M S Dhoni during his team’s long wicketless phases has been a talking point through the series.

If England become No. 1, they must develop the attitude to dominate writes Kevin Mitchell in the Guardian. While they are almost certainly about to replace India at the summit of Test cricket, staying there will be a challenge they have not faced since the ICC introduced the rankings eight years ago.

This England team can achieve anything now, writes Stephen Brenkley in the Independent. So complete is their control of this Test series that prospects of a whitewash are looming into view.

Two weeks ago that notion would have seemed risible. India had been the No. 1 side in the world for almost two years, they had a vaunted batting order, a venerated captain and a calm sense of their own worth. Their bowling was less potent but it had prospered against decent opponents.

As of last night, most of that hardly mattered. England have outplayed India in each of the first two Tests, exhibiting skill, intelligence and resilience

Writing in the Daily Mail Nasser Hussain says that the current England side is the best England team he has ever seen.

In the same newspaper, Lawrence Booth writes that when Dhoni padded up to his first ball, leaving Tim Bresnan on a hat-trick and India 55 for six, the gap between the tourists’ aspirations and harsh reality felt almost too big to be true.

In Mid-Day Clayton Murzello writes that to think that India won't lose another Test in this four-Test battle sounds very improbable. India have to get real if they want to deny England from running away with Test cricket's top spot: After day two at Trent Bridge, they couldn't bat, bowl and field.

What India have lacked most on the tour of England, according to Kepler Wessels, is courage. Some of the India players may be among the highest-paid players in the world, he writes on Supersport.com, but money doesn't buy good old-fashioned guts.

In the Cricketer, Dileep Premachandran blames India's poor planning for their defeats in the first two Tests, which he believes is their most comprehensive hammering since 1999.

England have come a long way in the last 12 years – from the world's worst Test team to virtual table-toppers, for a start, writes David Lloyd in the Independent. And while the reasons behind their climb are many and varied, the run-scoring ability of the lower order is an especially significant factor.

Since 2008, England wickets seven to 10 have accumulated more than 5,700 runs at an average of 27.57. And, during that time, there have been 11 century partnerships and 25 of 50 or more. Impressive statistics? Definitely – and unmatched by any other team.

One of the key figures in that lower order at Trent Bridge was Tim Bresnan and Vic Marks in the Guardian writes that while Bresnan is a stout, dependable, cheerful, no-nonsense man, whom you would welcome into the trenches, down the pit, in the dressing room, he is also a very serious international cricketer and on the brink of being a regular one.

He was drafted into this Test match only because Chris Tremlett was injured. Now, after taking seven wickets and scoring 101 runs at Trent Bridge, how can he possibly be left out of the XI at Edgbaston next week?

There is something wonderfully reassuring about having Bresnan and Broad at eight and nine in the order. Bresnan bats with pleasing orthodoxy. He may look like a tail-end, blacksmith biffer. In fact he moves into line in a manner that any true Yorkshireman applauds with an imperceptible nod of the head. For all those muscles Bresnan prefers the cover drive to the swat over mid-wicket.

James Lawton, writing in the Independent, says by commuting Bell’s sentence, India saved Trent Bridge from bitter scenes of recrimination, but laws are not there to be pushed aside when it suits the prejudices of any particular audience.

He [Bell] left his ground when play was still alive. He was run out, not sneakily, iniquitously or any other way that would have justified the bear-pit booing which greeted the umpires and Indian team when they returned to the field while the Trent Bridge crowd still believed that Bell's innings was over.

What really was the basis of the appeal to Dhoni by Strauss and Flower? Was it that there had been a miscarriage of justice? No, that couldn't be so because the Indians and the umpires had all behaved impeccably. They had followed the laws of the game, quite simply ... The truth is that when cricket was asked a basic question yesterday it blinked in an entirely unsatisfactory way.

Bell made a mistake, writes Geoffrey Boycott in the Daily Telegraph. He had nobody to blame but himself but India did a good thing for cricket.

The incident should have been avoided. Bell made a careless and stupid mistake. Don’t blame the umpires for carrying out the laws of the game.

Don’t blame the fielder who stopped the ball, fell over the boundary, picked up the ball and threw it in not sure if it was four or not. And don’t blame India for running him out. He was miles out of his crease and out of order marching off for tea.

In the same newspaper, Steve James writes that a similar incident would not have occurred with the other Warwickshire batsman in the England side. Of that you can be certain. Jonathan Trott would not have been run out, as Ian Bell was on Sunday. Bell is, however, very different from Trott. He is of the modern breed of batsmen who seem to go walkabout a lot more often.

Back to the Independent where Angus Fraser writes that Dhoni's decision to recall Bell wasn't weak; he did the right thing as winning at all costs is not cricket.

An editorial in the Indian Express states that Dhoni's decision to recall Bell was simply the easy way out. It is more than about what it takes to be number one; it is about treating each moment, each decision, with the respect that competitiveness deserves.

Yet the lesson that India began learning 10 years ago, when Sourav Ganguly broke decisively from the nice-guy archetype that had dogged the national team for decades and stared down opponents, seems to have been worryingly forgotten of late. Instead, another pattern is discernible: a casualness, a desire to cement popularity rather than competitiveness, and even a natural inclination to stand apart from the rest.

In its editorial, the Telegraph states that there is no disputing the fact that Bell was out - nothing in the spirit and the letter of the law had been violated. But with his recall everyone, including the umpires, broke the law which says a batsman can be recalled only while he is still within the playing arena. It is difficult to comprehend what spirit was being upheld.

Brendon Gallagher in the Daily Telegraph looks at instances in other sports when the need and desire to do right outweighed the urge to win at all costs.

Michael Vaughan, writing in the Daily Telegraph, says England bossed India on the field of play and even managed to convince them that Ian Bell should be given another chance – a brilliant performance in every respect.

England arrived yesterday thinking the pitch was doing a bit. But they came out with a very aggressive mindset and were looking to score rather than survive. When they discovered the pitch had flattened they were already in the right frame of mind and in the groove. They hit India off their lines and lengths as the likes of Hayden and Langer would have done in the past.

... Bell was dozy and he knew it. He saw Praveen Kumar’s reaction on the boundary and thought it had gone for four. He even appeared to give the indication that it had gone for four to Eoin Morgan. But crucially the umpire had said nothing. He did not call four and he did not call tea. When the bails were taken off and Bell turned round to see what was happening he knew he had made a mistake. It was then that he actually played the situation very well. He knew he had messed up but outwardly gave a very cool impression of not really knowing what all the fuss was about.

Oliver Brown, in the same paper, says MS Dhoni's captaincy was found wanting at Trent Bridge.

Dhoni’s men were swiped for 417 as England surged through the gears ... How did Dhoni let the unravelling happen? To a point, he could claim that the third-day pitch rendered batting conditions more benign than at any stage during this compelling duel. But some of his decision-making behind the stumps was unfathomable. Throughout a listless afternoon session, he persisted far too long with the underwhelming Harbahjan Singh, who was struggling with a stomach strain. Equally, the taking of the second new ball was hardly the moment to deploy the part-time left-arm spin of Yuvraj.

After Ian Bell's century on day three, England find themselves in the fortuitous position of having two fine No. 3s in their team, says Vic Marks, writing in the Guardian.

Trott, it is recognised, has been superb at first-wicket down over the past two years but it is unthinkable that he would have taken the game away from the Indians with such alacrity ... It [Bell's innings] was like watching Dravid on Red Bull. Every movement was polished and precise, every shot a delicate persuasion of the ball towards the boundary.

Australia's selectors have received plenty of criticism lately, and are one of the chief subjects of the Australian team performance review due to report to the Cricket australia board in August. Writing for The Drum, the ABC's Gerard Whateley makes a passionate plea for action to "take our team back".

That this panel has been allowed to appoint the next captain, end careers, hand out contracts and pick the next team is beyond negligent. It's reckless. It's a failure of every principle of accountability. Cricket Australia will say it has a review underway into the Ashes failure. It's August people. Simon Katich has done your work for you. Selection policy and practice has been incoherent. It actively undermined confidence and morale. If those entrusted with the responsibility won't act then we the people simply must.