Think of a Maasai warrior and the image that comes to mind is of a tall, strong man with a spear hunting lions in the African bush. But thanks to a South African woman named Aliya Bauer, the image of a Maasai warrior crunching a cricket ball through cover might soon accompany it. Seven years ago Bauer was posted to the village of Il Polei in Kenya to work on a research project about baboons. Without a TV, she was suffering from cricket withdrawal. Her solution - teach the local people how to play. Writing in the Guardian, Andy Bull describes the birth of the Maasai Cricket Warriors and its impact on the community.

Better yet, being the person she is, Bauer has been using the cricket programme to target social problems in the Maasai community, such as the spread of Aids. The Maasai are traditionally polygamous, which has contributed to the syndrome's growth. "The teachers also taught us how to incorporate HIV/Aids awareness into cricket and coaching," Nissan says. "I now integrate HIV awareness into cricket. I teach the ABC approach – Abstinence, Be Faithful and Condom Use. Abstaining from sex is like a batsman abstaining from hitting balls in the air so he is not caught. Being faithful to ones partner is like how batsmen must communicate to decide whether to make a run or not. And use of condoms is like how batsmen must protect their wickets.”

Simon Hughes argues in the Daily Telegraph that the ICC missed a huge opportunity to bolster the status of Test cricket by bowing to pressure from broadcasters and scrapping the Test Championship set for 2013.

In the past fortnight there have been two of the closest and most gripping Test-match finishes in history. The World Test Championship is necessary. It would give every match a wider context and teams something to aim for, as well as a proper global climax for the five-day game that the 50-over and Twenty20 format already enjoy.

In Tehelka, Suresh Menon makes the case that India's team of the 2000s represents a golden age for Indian cricket, even more than the 1970s and early 1980s team did. He says what made the team so great is not just the number of away wins or the individual prowess of any of their players, but the fact that there were so many different characters in the team and that they held firm in the face of a match-fixing scandal and other controversies.

India needed a strong captain who would obviously be seen to be above the temptation. In Ganguly, who has not been given sufficient credit for this, they found the man. Even the silver spoon that he was born with was made of gold, so there was no excessive greed or need as in the case of some colleagues. The strong team he built — Harbhajan Singh and Sehwag completed the picture — was seen to be above suspicion. Had the Indian public turned its back on the game after Azharuddin admitted that he had used his supple wrists not just for scoring runs but for counting his ill-gotten wealth too, Indian cricket might not have recovered.

In an interview with Ian Chappell for the Sunday Telegraph, Mickey Arthur talks about why Australia need a coach, the relationship he expects to have with Michael Clarke, why he wanted the Australia job and more.

I am really excited about the way Michael Clarke has gone about his captaincy. I think his captaincy has been very positive, it's been aggressive and has been on gut feel and I have really enjoyed it and I like that. But the one thing that Graeme had was that he had the ability to be able to get the best out of his players and he had an aura in the dressing room. I'm pretty sure Mike has that aura, but that's what made Graeme truly good.

Sri Lanka's dramatic slip in form since the World Cup can be attributed to several factors, many of which aren't in the control of the players, such as payments long overdue from the board. The board's financial crisis isn't helping either, writes Saadi Thawfeeq in the Nation.

Cricket is the only sport today that Sri Lanka can compete with other nations and win. But unless it is rid free of politics and politicians it is in great danger of going into decline. Politics has been the bane of sport and in a country like Sri Lanka it is sad that it continues to flourish via interim committees. It is only the ICC’s recent strong stand taken against government interference in the running of a national cricket board (that allows them to suspend a member country) that has moved the Sri Lankan government to call for elections which has been fixed for January 3, 2012.

On New Zealand's previous tours of Australia, the strategy of being aggressive has produced mixed results. Now with Australia fielding a weakened attack, minus Pat Cummins, it's important that New Zealand don't go on an all-out attack and instead be patient, writes Mark Richardson in the New Zealand Herald.

Good things will come to those Black Caps batsmen who wait. This is because they won't have to wait too long. The feeling is that, when you bat against Australia, you have to be aggressive and take it to them. That is a mentality that sits well with our top six - but this time I feel that approach is not necessary.

In the Sunday Star Times, Phil Gifford lists three reasons for New Zealand to be modestly confident of beating Australia.

The last time the Black Caps beat the boys in the baggy greens, in 1993, Jim Bolger was prime minister, an 11-year-old boy, Dan Carter, was in Year 7 at Ellesmere College, and a hot New Zealand movie The Piano featured another 11-year-old, Anna Paquin.

Aakash Chopra slams the Karnail Sigh Stadium - Railways' Ranji Trophy venue in Delhi - on Yahoo! Cricket. He criticises everything from the pitch to the lack of sufficient groundstaff to the fried snacks served to the players. The problem, he explains, is that Railways and Services do not receive the annual allowance the BCCI gives other teams.

On the morning of the match, the wicket-keeper pulls out his helmet from the first over (even for the fast bowlers) knowing well that a lot of balls would stay dangerously low and he may get hit because of bad bounce. If there's too much dew and fog (which delays the removal of covers), one must resign to the fate of playing with a bar of soap because there are only four grounds-men at the venue and it's unrealistic to expect them to get the ground ready in time. Yes, they have a super-sopper but unfortunately they don't have the manpower to make it count on such mornings. What's new - you'd ask, since most non-descript venues do wear a shabby look. Alas! These are the ground realities of Karnail Sigh Stadium - Railways' Ranji Trophy venue in Delhi, and not some club ground in a small town

Robert Craddock discusses the problem of Australia's fast bowlers getting injured too often, in the Herald Sun. The main question, he says, is whether to give fast bowlers workload restrictions or let them build up rhythm and strength by bowling continuously.

vThe Argus interviewers were bombarded with theories from well-known cricket people who pointed out that West Indian great Courtney Walsh bowled more than 30,000 balls toiling year round for the West Indies and Gloucestershire for 14 years and barely broke a toe nail. Once asked to the secret of his longevity, Walsh replied "I never stop ... I'm almost scared of stopping. You have a Mercedes you keep it running."

Looking ahead to New Zealand's Test series in Australia, Glenn Turner, writing for Fairfax Media, says: "It is fair to say, though, that the talent gap between New Zealand and Australia is much closer than it has been for many years."

Most of New Zealand's discussions will centre on whether to play four or five frontline bowlers. The discussion should be shortlived, because the batting tail is too long if all four seamers play. On a bouncy pitch against quickish bowlers it would be an unexpected bonus for any of our four seamers to contribute much with the bat. Wicketkeeper Reece Young is a useful batsman, but he has limited experience at this level and therefore batting at No 8 makes more sense than No 7. I prefer Daniel Vettori at No 7 rather than No 6 too, which means Dean Brownlie comes in at 6 and can also be used to bowl a few overs.

Adam Parore, writing in the New Zealand Herald, has a different point of view: "Ross Taylor and coach John Wright face one conundrum: do they go for broke and choose five frontline bowlers and drop a batsman, or stick to the tried and trusted formula of six batsmen, wicketkeeper, spinner and three fast-medium bowlers? I'm inclined to think five bowlers is the way to go, and accept that that is something of a punt."

Also in the New Zealand Herald, David Leggat elaborates on the selection system John Buchanan and Kim Littlejohn have put in place in New Zealand.

Here are the relevant percentages which will help decide who makes the cut, and who misses out: 35 per cent significant performance; 25 per cent consistent performance; 15 per cent contribution to the team; 10 per cent fielding; 10 per cent fitness; and 5 per cent selectors' intuition. This plan is the work of NZC director of cricket John Buchanan and his fellow Australian Kim Littlejohn, the national selection manager. Be confident it's not the brainchild of coach and former New Zealand captain John Wright.

The fact that more people turned out to watch a dead rubber in Mumbai than for the previous two Tests between India and West Indies proves that India is obsessed with Sachin Tendulkar's 100th international century, Deepak Narayanan writes in the Mumbai Mirror. Tendulkar himself, though, Narayanan says, is used to pressure and won't let it prevent him from reaching the landmark.

Tendulkar is no stranger to pressure. On the field, there’s the pressure to score runs, to pick up the odd important wicket, to be a superhuman cricketer who’s allowed very little room for error — for that’s his job. Off the field, the pressure to return every smile he spots, for not doing so would be considered rude; the pressure of measuring every word he speaks in public, because of how much weight they carry; the pressure to be absolutely perfect, because the country would accept no less from a man they believe is god.

In the Guardian, Mike Selvey writes about New Zealand great Martin Crowe's failed attempt to return to competitive cricket. He says comebacks rarely work and are usually novelty one-offs.

For someone so long out of the game this was always going to be a pipe dream, even if Crowe did "rediscover the joy of batting" in his preparations. Players older than he have played Test cricket (the eldest, Wilfred Rhodes, was 52 when he played against West Indies in Jamaica in 1930), and others have turned out in the county game. In 1982, for example, Raymond Illingworth was 50 when he decided to replace Chris Old as Yorkshire captain. He led Yorkshire to the 1983 Sunday League title. The previous season, Fred Titmus, then almost 50, had turned up at Lord's for a pipe, a cuppa and a chat. He found himself playing against Surrey, taking three wickets.

The fact that Australia have appointed a foreign coach reveals a lot about where their cricket is at, Kepler Wessels writes on Supersport.com. It may also have ramifications on how many Australian coaches find jobs with other national sides, he says.

The decision at the conclusion of the review was that the Aussies wanted to return to the good old days of Australian cricket and adopt the hard line that made them so successful. The ideal candidate for this coaching style was Steve Rixon. He learnt his cricket and much of his coaching approach from the highly successful Bobby Simpson who coached Australia successfully for many years. It was thought also that captain Michael Clarke wanted a higher work ethic and more discipline. With all that in mind, Rixon was the strong favourite to get the job. What made Cricket Australia backtrack and go the diplomatic and non-confrontational route again is not quite clear.

The Economist looks at the life of Basil D'Oliveira, and the enormous support he received from fans after being dropped for the 1968 tour to South Africa. He received so many letters that the post office had to employ separate staff to just to deal with them.

Soon attention was focused on England’s scheduled tour of South Africa in 1968-69. Mr D’Oliveira was desperate to return to his homeland. He was a hero among the country’s blacks and coloureds and wanted to prove that he rightfully belonged on the cricket grounds from which he had been banned. As if to dispel any doubt, in the last game before the squad was announced, he scored a wonderful 158 to help England beat Australia.

And here's how their South African correspondent reported the events in 1968.

In the Sydney Morning Herald, Greg Baum recounts Australia's dramatic chase at the Wanderers.

Tahir screamed for lbw. Cummins said he felt it was going to leg. Johnson said to him it had pitched outside off. ''That's just what I thought!'' Cummins said. The appeal failed, and so did the referral, by a splinter. In the dressing room, lounge room and bedroom, there was relief and there wasn't.

Cummins thought to himself: ''There's four to win. If he throws it up there, try and go over the top somewhere.'' As he related this later, Clarke rolled his eyes. Here was youth's blithe innocence. Two balls later, Cummins pulled Tahir for four and the win.

Also in the Sydney Morning Herald, Richard Hinds praises Pat Cummins for how he handled himself in situations that might have broken more experienced men.

Enter Cummins, so callow that the birth date on his player profile would have prompted cynical smirks had he been picked for Pakistan. At 18, some of us lacked the wit to find our way to the lecture room, let alone produce an over of such speed and variation that 40-time Test centurion Jacques Kallis was befuddled, then defeated.

At 18, some of us could barely pluck up the courage to extend an exploratory arm at the drive-in cinema, let alone put our body in the path of a Steyn thunderbolt in the Johannesburg gloaming.

"Where to now for the Proteas?" asks Kepler Wessels on Supercricket. "They have an easy summer ahead. First they take on Sri Lanka and then New Zealand. They should beat both teams at a canter. The question is how will the South African selectors and coach Gary Kirsten view the upcoming two series?"

There is no doubt that the Proteas will be disappointed with the outcome of the Test series. They were without question the stronger outfit. They would have expected to beat an average Australian team on home soil. The South African team were brilliant in Cape Town during the first Test match where they came back from the brink to win in incredible fashion.

On Sport 24, Rob Houwing has tough questions for South Africa: "Why do they struggle to string together even two good performances on the trot? Do they really have the mental and physical hunger to get to the pinnacle and stay there? Do they just not actually appreciate how good they should be as a unit, given the various stellar individual resources at their disposal?"

Australia's move for the South African coach Mickey Arthur is an indication of a new realism and humility, writes Vic Marks in the Guardian.

Like many of the best coaches Arthur does not appear to have an ego; he does not crave attention; he recognises the primacy of the captain in running a successful cricket team. We have seen that he can work extremely effectively with a strong, decisive captain, for that is what Smith has undoubtedly been for South Africa over the past few years. He can dovetail effectively, relieving the captain's burden, filling in the gaps.

The temptation for Australia now is to believe that they are only as good as their last match. Fortunately, that falsism never was applied to Don Bradman. Now Australia, under new management, again must show themselves to be better than that, writes Greg Baum in the Sydney Morning Herald.

India await, with New Zealand as an entree. England is far ahead of anyone else in the world now, but, fortunately, also distant in Australia's program. One thing is certain: whatever changes are on the new selectors' minds, they must make them immediately. The idea of valedictory appearances against New Zealand makes no sense. Cheap runs and wickets would only cloud the picture. New Zealand treats series against Australia as their Ashes, and will give an honest contest. But in their most recent Test, they only narrowly escaped defeat by Zimbabwe.

Jesse Ryder tends to get more attention and column space on his weight, rather than his cricket. But John Wright has publicly backed the batsman, saying that he is capable of getting the team runs. The upcoming series against Australia will be Ryder's chance to prove his coach right, writes Mark Reason in the Dominion Post.

"Not bad for a fat lad," was how Freddie Flintoff, rolling around in his Lancashire vowels, famously defined one of his early swashbuckling efforts for England. But will Jesse Ryder be able to boast as much after the upcoming matches in Australia? Will we hear: "I'm the rock hard tub of lard" after a double century or will the fat boy melt away in the heat of Brisbane and Hobart?

Batting or bowling, Jacques Kallis has the numbers to prove that he's one of the all time greats, even if does not always gives the impression that he belongs in that pantheon, says the Old Batsman in his blog.

As an all-rounder, he has a batting average that dwarfs Flintoff's, along with 46 more wickets at the same price. Hadlee, Botham, Imran and Kapil have outbowled him, but Kallis has 10 more hundreds than all of them put together. And Sobers? Well Sobers can match that average, but nothing else. Kallis has sustained it for another 4,000 runs, has scored 14 more centuries and has 35 more wickets at cheaper cost.

So what is it about Jacques that leaves him so ill-considered by the wider world? Botham, Imran and Kapil lifted their countries, raised them up ... Kallis has been less overtly heroic. The South African methods of winning have been to grind relentlessly from a position of advantage. Kallis is not a victory from the jaws of defeat merchant; the greatest deeds of Botham, Imran and Kapil had a context that Kallis's often don't.

Does it mean anything when one of India's Test hopefuls, Rohit Sharma, scores 175 in the Ranji Trophy, when at the same time three others hit double-centuries and an all-rounder not in the reckoning for a Test slot, Ravindra Jadeja, hammers 314, asks Kunal Pradhan, in the Mumbai Mirror.

There are several players [from the past] who never got a chance to play for India, but were respected as much as their international counterparts, first as hopefuls, and then as people who provided perspective to another future star’s performance ... Scoring runs against them meant something, and taking their wicket was the yardstick of a young player’s potential. But now that the Ranji Trophy has been first diluted and then completely dissolved in a haze of meaningless runs on flat tracks, Indian cricket has reached a stage where such pointers have ceased to exist.

Osman Samiuddin, writing for the National, anticipates much change on both batting and bowling fronts, especially in Test cricket. The bowlers, he says, might come to the forefront once more, after the glut of runs in recent years.

[Venkatesh] Prasad, now an Indian Premier League (IPL) coach, noted his greatest challenge with bowlers was ensuring that their thinking - that eight runs conceded in an over, with one boundary, wasn't bad - was not embedded when they moved to different formats. It is the unsaid flip side of this that is our concern here, of batsmen who feel invincible because they hit more boundaries than ever before but actually become more vulnerable precisely because of that ...

In the Telegraph, Geoffrey Boycott remembers Basil D'Oliveira as a lovely man who was strong and determined underneath. He also showed really good temperament before going out to bat.

I used to tease him about it and say each morning “Basil. How old are you today?” When I had regular fallings out with Yorkshire in the 1970s he always used to say to me “come and play with us at Worcester”. My reply was “if I do, you won’t get many knocks, batting at number 4 behind Tom Graveney and me.”

In the Independent, James Lawton writes that D'Oliveira's life was the triumph of a man who helped shape huge, civilising steps for humanity simply because he played cricket superbly well and just happened to have a little more enterprise, and mobility, than so many of his more resigned fellow victims of apartheid.

Going back through the life of the fine cricketer these last 24 hours or so is to be reminded of a man who understood more than anything that he had one life, one talent, and that however hard the pressure, however alien the environment his destiny found for him, he had an obligation to do all that he could to make a different kind of life for himself and his family.

On Yahoo Cricket, AR Hemant explains why Vinod Kambli's serious allegation that there may have been dishonesty involved in India's decision to field first in the 1996 World Cup semi-final has not been taken seriously by other cricketers and the BCCI. Kambli, he says, has a reputation for being involved in controversies and will unfortunately be remembered more for that than for being a fine batsman.

It didn't help that Kambli, despite his best intentions, had the tactfulness of a five-year-old. There's a story about him that a Mumbai cricketer once shared. When Kambli, still 17, hit his first ball in Ranji Trophy for a six, he immediately held up his hand to stop the non-striker from taking a run. "Kambli was sure so he had hit the ball for a six, he didn't want to waste his energy running for that shot," the cricketer said. But the non-striker was a heavyweight in Indian cricket and a man not to be trifled with.

Mark Richardson writes in the Herald on Sunday that New Zealand possess the core of players to become a top-four Test team within three years.

Right now the batting has almost emerged and is closer to the surface than the bowling. The top five of Brendon McCullum, Martin Guptill, Kane Williamson, Ross Taylor and Jesse Ryder picked itself and has the potential to be a regular and formidable force.

For me, Ross Taylor is the only one I'd say has made the step from potential to realised talent but I only say that because I have high expectations in terms of international test standards for all of these five. If our team is to be a force, all these players must become 40-plus per innings players on average.

Basil D'Oliveira 1931-2011 © Getty Images

Author Peter Oborne, Basil D'Oliveira's biographer, remembers the former England all-rounder on BBC Sport. Listen in here.

D'Oliveira was a fine cricketer in his own right but he will be best remembered as the man who unwittingly began apartheid's demise in 1968, says Jonathan Agnew, writing for the same site.

No other sport played a bigger part in bringing down apartheid than cricket and it all came about because of the ugly scenario in 1968. D'Oliveira's is the example I use when people tell me sport and politics should never mix. Sport can have huge political influence in the right situation.

Scyld Berry, writing in the Daily Telegraph, says no professional cricketer could have had a career so full of emotion and controversy as D’Oliveira.

In non-white South African cricket, on rough pitches usually of matting, D’Oliveira hit 80 centuries before trying for better luck abroad ... The confusions which D’Oliveira had to overcome in his career were illustrated when he returned by ship to Cape Town at the end of his 1960 [England] season: so sporting, if only in the literal sense, were many white South Africans that he was feted on landing, and driven in triumph through the streets, accompanied by bands, to a reception by the Mayor of Cape Town. Yet, at the same time, his heavily pregnant wife Naomi was not allowed to use the whites-only toilet at the docks.

The Independent on Sunday has a comprehensive package on D'Oliveira. Peter Hain, the Labour MP and anti-apartheid campaigner whose efforts helped stop South Africa's tour of England in 1970, writes about how D'Oliveira became the catalyst for the global campaign to defeat apartheid in South Africa.

In the same paper, Stephen Brenkley details how John Arlott helped bring D'Oliveira to England, which Arlott regarded as "the single act he was most proud of in his life." Guy Fraser-Sampson looks into the role then England captain Colin Cowdrey played in the D'Oliveira affair. And Rob Steen points out that the details of the famous selection meeting in 1968 after which D'Oliveira was left out of the South Africa tour are still scarce.

In the Observer Mike Brearley analyses the social significance of the D’Oliveira affair, and also looks at the burdens D’Oliveira had to bear.

He was under pressure from all sides, from militant black groups accusing him of selling out, to friends relying on him to carry the flag of non-white cricket, to those who would prefer him to be out of the picture.

And here's the paper's obituary of D'Oliveira.

On CricketWeb, Martin Chandler looks at the life and times of D'Oliveira.

What could have become of Dolly had he conducted himself differently? What dark threats might he have received in those difficult and stressful days? It is frightening to imagine ... But to my mind that serves only to underline the respect due to a man who, despite the enormous unfamiliar pressures heaped upon him, maintained the same quiet and unruffled dignity throughout his long life.

D'Oliveira's biographer Peter Oborne, writing in the Daily Telegraph, says the cricketer had never imagined that he would become central to the most important sporting controversy of modern times.

Back in the 1960s, the majority of the British sporting public had never given so much as a passing thought to the terrible injustice of South African apartheid. But when they saw this quiet, unassuming man banned from playing the sport he loved just because of the colour of his skin, the British people gave their hearts to Basil D’Oliveira because they sensed that something was badly wrong.

Following his exclusion from the third Test against West Indies, has Yuvraj Singh hit a dead end with regard to his Test career? R Kaushik has more in the Deccan Herald.

Is it a lack of technique that has prevented the 29-year-old from nailing down a Test match slot despite eight years and 37 games? Is it a lack of temperament? Of hunger, desire and ambition? Is it the absence of that single-mindedness and unwavering discipline that the five-day game necessarily demands? Or is it just plain bad luck, in the shape of untimely illnesses and injuries?

David Frith, who has written a book on cricketer suicides, explores the matter further in an article in Daily News and Analysis.

There are theories as to why cricket seems to have such a high rate of self-destruction (to which may be added alcoholism, which is what one might term Suicide Mark 2). It seems to me that the long days of dedication which cricket demands by its often punishing format can wear a man down, especially when he doesn’t know where his next run or wicket is coming from. Despite the comradeship on the field and in the dressing-room and club bar, a man who is out of sorts still needs somehow to find a good night’s sleep.

A vicious circle is created: sleepless night, worrying about the next match, brooding over recent failures, which can even seem like humiliations; followed by further nervous performance and an extension of the bad run of form or, perhaps worse still, bad luck, such as a bad umpiring decision against you. It is all very wearing.

The England team is in the middle of a rare two-month break from the international scene ahead of a hectic two years of action that begins in the UAE against Pakistan from January. Andy Flower, their team director, needed the break as much as anyone but is so focussed on his role that he is always planning for the next challenge.

He is also happy to put something back into the game and Paul Newman, of the Daily Mail, caught up with Flower during a coaching clinic in London for a wide-ranging chat which included the 5-0 whitewash in India, player autobiographies, the team's behaviour and his future.

"The Swann book wasn't ideal. If we can avoid situations like that they're best avoided because we pretty much live together for a large chunk of the year. For instance in 2012 we are going to be away from our own homes for 240-plus nights. When you are living together like that as a group you're not going to agree on everything but there needs to be a degree of harmony and honesty.

'That situation arose and I think it was dealt with efficiently and maturely by both guys, especially Kevin Pietersen. He conducted himself well through a tricky situation. I know it sounds a little silly but I was proud of him."

RDJ Edwards interviews former cricket anti-corruption chief in the Cricketer magazine. Condon says there's no reason to think fixing is widespread now, and says he would be surprised if the number of players that have caused concern reached double figures.

By about 2007 cricket was getting complacent and the boards weren’t really listening to the warnings so avidly. They were falling on deaf ears because the sport had been kept relatively clear for six, seven or eight years.

But probably the greatest trigger point was the explosion of T20, because it brought with it massively more unregulated cricket, using international players. The ‘anything goes’ party atmosphere allowed some really bad people back into the game. Some of the notorious fixers from early years started to re-emerge on the circuit in India, Pakistan, South Africa, Australia and the UK.

Venkat Ananth, writing for Yahoo Cricket, puts forward a suggestion on how the BCCI could start something called the 'high performance programme' to benefit Indian cricket in the long run. The National Cricket Academy, he says, has to reinvent itself.

Firstly, the high performance programme will or should ideally consist of three tiers: the Indian national team, the India 'A' squad, and the High Performance/Academy structure, with the country's top fifty-sixty players as a part of this setup. This is much like football clubs across Europe (the first team, reserves and the academy). Each individual unit will have close to 20 players each on full-time contracts with dedicated coaching and support staff. What this ensures is the automatic expansion of available bench strength to a minimum of 30 players, and a maximum of 60. The three primary objectives of the High Performance mechanism will be intake, exposure and evaluation.

Ayaz Memon writes in Livemint that Peter Roebuck's shocking death may revive the debate on whether cricketers are more prone to suicide than other sportspersons.

This is an unusual and chilling premise which seems to fly in the face of common perception. What makes a cricketer so different from a footballer or Formula One driver, one may ask. But documented evidence would suggest that the premise is not entirely unfounded, for suicides in cricket seem to outnumber those in any other sport several times over.

The Guardian's Mike Selvey writes that Roebuck distanced himself from the English media for the wrong reasons.

Michael Henderson, writing for the Spectator, says that Roebuck, who wrote a history of Somerset cricket, was following in one of the county’s macabre traditions.

In the Times of India, Makarand Waingankar recalls an interesting anecdote from almost three decades ago when Sunil Gavaskar batted left-handed in a Ranji Trophy game against Karnataka.

In walked Gavaskar at No. 8, and when he took leg stump guard with a left-hand batsman's stance, everyone on the ground was shocked. Raghuram Bhatt, remembering the incident, says, "I just couldn't believe my eyes. But he batted superbly. I had six fielders around the bat, but Sunil would play with soft hands and drop the ball dead at his feet or pad up. That was master class of how to play on a turning wicket. Mind you, he batted for a long time."

Peter Roebuck funded the education and well being of several underprivileged youth in Africa. One such person lucky to cross Roebuck's path was Psychology Maziwisa, who met him in Harare during a Test match in 1999. Maziwisa recounts his experiences with Roebuck and how the friendship turned rocky when Masiwiza became associated with the Zanu-PF party. Read on in the Sydney Morning Herald.

It is no small thing to take anyone under one's wing and to proceed to nurture them with everything one has, including one's own resources. For what it's worth Peter had over 35 Zimbabweans in his capable care at the time of his death and my guess is that he had spent something in the region of $500,000 of his personal funds to help realise some African dreams. Put it this way: whatever the precise circumstances of his death he has left the world a better place.

Nearly 20 years ago, Roebuck wrote the foreword for David Frith's book By His Own Hand, which looks back at cricket's dark past with suicides. In the Independent, Frith writes that some of Roebuck's observations back then of the fragility of cricketers now seem haunting, in light of his death.

Most poignant of all now is to reflect on Roebuck's almost triumphant claim in that foreword: "Some people have predicted a gloomy end for this writer," he wrote of himself. "It will not be so."

In the Telegraph, Steve James remembers Roebuck as the man who inspired him to write about his county experiences and also to join university.

I remember what he said because I kept it written on a scrap of paper. I still have it to this day. “It is the stance of any man of dignity to try to be able to dictate to one’s employer, not let them dictate to you,” he said. “Getting a degree allows this to happen.”

The tributes continue to pour in for Peter Roebuck, often touching on how hard it was to get to know the man behind the writer. In the Guardian, Vic Marks writes movingly about a “complex man with a brilliant mind”.

To me, Roebuck was a passenger or driver on countless tortuous trips around the country looking hopefully and often haplessly for the team hotel; in the car he was impatient and garrulous. As a roommate, he was opinionated, usually very confident in the merit of those opinions and never dull, yet capable of self mockery and as prone to self-doubt as any other cricketer.

In the Telegraph, Derek Pringle says Roebuck ‘s complexities meant he was destined not to lead an easy life

Suicide is something Roebuck, 55 when he died, predicted would never take him, though those who had known him since his youth were less certain.

In his foreword for the reprint of David Frith’s book on cricket suicides, Silence of the Heart, he wrote: “Some people have predicted a gloomy end for this writer. One former colleague said so to my face in September 1986. It will not be so. The art is to find other things that matter just as much as cricket, which stretch you just as far.

Chloe Saltau, who worked with Roebuck, describes in the Sydney Morning Herald how generous he was to young writers.

Also in the Sydney Morning Herald, Time Lane recollects an instance when Roebuck was caught wrong-footed, but even then he wasn’t wrong.

Paul Newman, in the Daily Mail, says that Roebuck’s death is the “last great mystery of a complex and often tortured life that was full of questions and very few answers".

Siddhartha Vaidyanathan writes on his blog about meeting Roebuck as a young reporter covering his first Test match in Bangalore, and says that Roebuck's most enviable quality as a writer was his ability to capture the quintessence of a momentous event.

Neil Manthorp, on www.supersport.com, writes about being intimidated by Roebuck's eccentricities and falling out with him over the issue of Zimbabwe's return to Test cricket.

Former Australian spinner and ABC Grandstand commentator Kerry O'Keeffe has a heart-warming tribute for Peter Roebuck, who died in South Africa on Saturday. O'Keeffe recalls Roebuck's love and knowledge of the game, and shares some lovely anecdotes about his radio colleague for 11 years.

In the Sydney Morning Herald, Greg Baum tries to piece together the parts of a man whom not very many new.

He was complex, intense, taut, edgy, opinionated, a little manic, mostly cheerful, sometimes broody. He was a contrarian, not for the sake of it, but because he always had another view. He spoke quickly, in a clipped tone, needing to get the thoughts out so that more could follow; his broadcast voice was his street voice. He did not do small talk, ever.

In the same paper, Malcolm Knox also attempts to explain the man beyond the writer.

There was a carapace of Roebuckness that not even his best friends could get through. It was the one remnant of his English upbringing that he couldn't shake off. He was instinctively generous - through counsel or guidance or financial aid, or more formally, through friends in coaching or the LBW Trust, a global charity for which Roebuck was a driving force. When he knew he was needed, generosity was his reflex. He helped more than he knew. Yet he was embarrassed by emotions and a hard man to convince of his own good deeds. He made us laugh very much more often than we could make him laugh.

In his blog on cricketnext.com, Gaurav Kalra regrets that he did not become better friends with the man he calls “keeper of cricket's morality”

Peter viewed cricket from the prism of a larger world-view. He argued vociferously for Zimbabwe's exclusion from the world game, pointing repeatedly at the seedy corruption among its administrators. He lawyered with passion for the continued presence of minnows in the World Cup, despite their abject performance in the sub-continent.

Also in the Sydney Morning Herald, Patrick Smithers compiles a selection of vignettes from a memorable writing career.

Read our collection of tributes here.

The reactions to Australia’s stunning collapse for 47 in the Newlands Test have been predictably scathing. Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, Malcolm Conn adds to the castigation of Michael Clarke’s team, calling it “the worst Australian side in a quarter of a century”.

The embarrassing loss means Australia have won just two of their past 12 Tests. That dreadful sequence is the most miserable since Border's battlers went 14 Tests in a row without a victory from November 1985 to January 1987. At least that struggling side had some valid excuses. The game in Australia was still healing following Kerry Packer's World Series Cricket schism of the late 1970s and had been gutted by rebel South African tours of the mid-80s.

Ian Chappell, also writing in the Sunday Telegraph, is a little more restrained, saying that the time has come to wring the changes, including replacing former captain Ricky Ponting.

For a long time, Ponting has been a tremendous player who intimidates opponents. However, the expected rejuvenation resulting from relinquishing the captaincy and moving down the order hasn't eventuated. It's starting to look like Ponting's is a terminal decline rather than just a slump.

Clarke's brilliant hundred at Newlands has established his credentials as a tactically proficient captain who can lead and score runs. There's less reason now to retain Ponting and the selectors may decide - as the American baseball manager once said to his departing star player: "We lost with you, we can sure as hell lose without you."

In the Sydney Morning Herald, Peter Roebuck echoes Ian Chappell in saying that the selectors have some tough choices to make, particularly in the case of Mitchell Johnson.

Assuming Ryan Harris is fit, and he looked sore at the end of the Test, the only other doubt concerns Mitchell Johnson, the most frustrating cricketer in the country. Johnson bowled without pace or swing at Newlands and batsmen have rumbled him. Not until a few runs were required for victory did he attain full speed, 145.8 km/h, or take a wicket as Hashim Amla drove loosely.

In the same paper, Tim Lane writes that few Australian losses have been so embarrassing.

This match was played by cricketers whose attention span has been compromised by the emphasis on the comic book form of the game. What other conclusion is to be drawn after Michael Clarke's and Graeme Smith's innings provided such weighty bookends to this procession of self-destruction?

Only two Indian bowlers, Anil Kumble and Kapil Dev, have taken more Test wickets than Harbhajan Singh. While Kumble and Kapil are guaranteed to be remembered as legends, what about Harbhajan, asks Deepak Narayanan in the Mumbai Mirror.

There’s the brash, young sardar who decimated the Aussies in that 2001 series. There’s the off-spinner who pushed a man as parsimonious as Kumble out of the one-day playing XI for a couple of years. Or will we remember the man who lost his flight and his bite? A man looking increasingly lost with every milked single, his frustration written in large letters on a furrowed forehead.

From the slow decline of Test matches to Pakistan's spot-fixing scandal, England's head coach Andy Flower tells the Telegraph's Robin Scott-Elliot that it's time to put cricket first and money second.

"The intent behind which nations draw up their fixture list is an intent based on financial gain as opposed to testing the best against the best. Because of that we have a jumbled fixture list. We have situations where we play seven-match one-day series, which are too long and, if they're one sided, can be damaging for the game. We have situations whereby two of the best and most exciting nations in the world – Australia and South Africa – are playing a two-match Test series. That's a ridiculous situation and I'm saddened by it. The intent behind creating the fixture list has to be addressed. We want to find out who the best side in the world is and we want to have them compete in exciting conditions and exciting series but at the moment the intent is a financial one and that's why the fixture list is comprised."

"It's time - and it has caught up with Ricky Ponting," Malcolm Conn writes in the Herald Sun, a day after Australia were razed by South Africa at Newlands.

Some former teammates of Australia's best batsman after Sir Don Bradman were right to believe that when Ponting retired from the captaincy this year he should have walked away altogether. His downward spiral has become a free fall but Ponting is not tumbling alone among those who were involved in Australia's second-innings debacle yesterday. If Simon Katich was sacked to rebuild for successive Ashes campaigns in 18 months, then the new selection panel under chairman John Inverarity has much to do.

"Madness, chaos, calamity and bizarre were the sorts of words thrown about Newlands as the Australians collapsed to 9/21," writes Peter Roebuck in the Sydney Morning Herald. "A few others might be added, including inept, irresolute, reckless, feckless and foolish."

A hundred years ago it was not unknown for a new cricket nation to be dismissed for 20 or 30. The pitches were rough and sometimes wet, the players were inexperienced and often out of their depth, the bats were thin and the gloves were spiky. Nowadays the players are professionals, fit, seasoned, trained, protected and surrounded by advisors. And the pitches are the same. It is just about conceivable that they might fall for 80 or 90, as did the hosts in their first innings. But 9/21?"

Also in the Sydney Morning Herald, Greg Baum writes: "At practice, Australia, conscious of a habit of losing wickets in a rush, had put a premium on the first 20 balls. In the middle, they lost their heads. Only two Australian batsman made it to 20 balls. One, Phil Hughes, was dropped en route. The other was No.11 Nathan Lyon. But no South African after the opening pair lasted 20 balls either. The bowling was good but no better than that. The batting was atrocious."

There's more from Greg Baum, and he says the mindset of Australia's batsmen was an acute problem. "Too many Australian batsmen played like dunces. Brad Haddin waltzed down the wicket as if this was beach cricket. It was the most spectacularly ill-considered, ill-conceived and embarrassing shot played by an Australian batsman since, well, Steve Smith at the fag end of the Ashes series in Sydney in January. Even the estimable Mike Hussey threw his bat at a wide ball, his first and the first after a break."

"Australia put off the post-mortems until after the match but there's no avoiding it. We need to talk about the 11. Or, at the very least, the top seven," writes Peter Lalor in the Australian.

If Australia is serious about the future in the wake of the first Test debacle against South Africa then Patrick Cummins must replace Mitchell Johnson, writes Malcolm Conn in the Courier Mail.

Much is expected of young New Zealand batsman Kane Williamson, and he hasn't done badly in his short international career so far. Daniel Richardson profiles him in the New Zealand Herald.

Considering the pressure that comes with being a test No 3 - sometimes you're a faux opener, sometimes you're the Mr Fix-it, sometimes you have to set the pace - the weight of a nation's cricketing hopes are on young shoulders, but Martin Crowe says it isn't going to be a burden for Williamson.

"Nah, not at all. He'll find playing at the top, month in, month out, you have your ups and downs. He'll be playing against Australia [next month] and that will certainly test him. But he'll grow into the role as he matures and there's no stopping him scoring as many runs as possible. He's just one of those finds that come along every now and then, so we are lucky."

Malcolm Conn, writing in Australia's Daily Telegraph says the Cape Town debacle shows that batsmen brought up on a glut of short-form cricket and easy Twenty20 money are unwilling or unable to deal with the moving ball.

... this is not an aberration but increasingly Australia’s norm as soon as the ball starts to move consistently. The last two Ashes series highlight that. It is the third time in little more than a year that Australia has been bowled out for under 100 once the ball started to deviate. Australia was dismissed for 88 against Pakistan at Headingley and 98 against England in Melbourne ... This South Africa-Australia Test series is a beacon to the marginalisation of the once sacred game.

Fast bowler Andre Adams is performing well in English county cricket and tells Radio Sport's Guy Heveldt that if he was able to come back to New Zealand, he'd be up to international level. Listen in here.

In a review of Imran Khan's autobiographical book Pakistan, A Personal History, the Economist says that the impression left for the reader is of a man who is likeable and sincere, but not much gifted at understanding the motivations and plans of those around him.

But even by his own record, Mr Khan comes across as naive, short on the cunning displayed by Pakistan’s brilliantly awful politicians, who milk funds from the state to keep control of their regional fiefs. More important, he still looks unable to organise. He talks grandly in his book of Pakistan’s desperate lack of strong institutions, arguing that these are what made Western countries flourish. Yet judge by how his own party has failed to develop over the years, and Mr Khan seems to have little gift for building any structure that goes beyond his personal brand.

In a South Africa dressing room that has tended to value experience and consistency over youth and flair, the selection of Vernon Philander and Imran Tahir to play the first Test against Australia at Newlands represents a significant departure from the norm, writes Telford Vice in BusinessDay.

The inclusion of Philander and Tahir marked the first time that a Proteas Test team has featured two debutants since Wayne Parnell and Ryan McLaren cracked the nod in the fourth Test against England at the Wanderers in Johannesburg last January, which was 11 Tests ago.

That, in turn, highlights a point that is particularly pertinent in the modern SA. Unlike Parnell and McLaren, Philander and Tahir are both players of colour although the latter hardly counts because he was born and raised in Pakistan.

Pragyan Ojha, who took a career-best 7 for 109 in the Delhi Test against West Indies, speaks to Sai Mohan in Mid-Day about making a successful comeback to Test cricket and his goal of becoming one of the leaders of India's bowling attack.

You've developed a slower version of your arm ball which has been getting you good rewards...
Yes, it is basically one of my biggest weapons now. I have to keep varying my pace, otherwise batsmen will get used to my bowling. I don't have too many major variations from the back-of-the-hand or fingers. I realised that you cannot experiment too much. I am a very simple bowler and person. Most of the great left-arm spinners, my heroes, were all simple left-arm spinners. If you see Bishanpa (Bedi)... he told me one day that the main things for a left-arm spinner are perseverance and accuracy. If you have these two things, only then you can try and bring in variations and do other things. I want to learn more about great left-arm spinners.

In the Guardian, Mike Selvey reflects on how England's fielding has improved from the time he was an international cricketer.

This sea change has not happened by accident. The work put in, under the direction of Richard Halsall, is intensive and technical. Attention is paid to the smallest details. Halsall's research has taken him to baseball for throwing and movement; to goalkeeping coaches for information on narrowing angles; and to squash, where anticipation, based on an opponent's trigger movements and body language, is so important.

Sachin Tendulkar has been searching for his 100th international hundred since the 2011 World Cup. He appeared to be on his way in the fourth innings of the first Test against West Indies in Delhi, as he and VVS Laxman were shepherding India to victory. Then calamity (as far as the fans were concerned) struck. On NDTV.com, Madhusudan Srinivas paints a picture of the anguish caused by Tendulkar's dismissal for 76.

Dupont executive Bharat Sharma and his techie wife clicked pictures on their mobile phone cameras leaning over our third floor balcony, trying to catch the slightly disheartened Sachin, trudging back with bat held usual style, shoulders not slumped but not exactly exuding the familiar confident swagger. 'Saali ..expletive deleted' ball ko abhi neeche rehna thaa, (did that ball have to stay low now), couldn't it have been Laxman,' said a bearded kurta pajama from another corner, loudly, spitting paan.

Vivian Richards talks to Mid-Day's Clayton Murzello about Joe Frazier, who died on November 8 after a battle with cancer.

The West Indies team members started calling Richards Smokin' Joe after the batting great "stood up for Frazier at most times" during "arguments" while on tour. Richards said: "We (in the West Indies team) used to speak often about our favourite boxers. I always admired Ali. He was the greatest really, but I just loved the attitude of the smaller man, Frazier. He wasn't as physically tall as some of the boxers who were six feet, four or six feet, five. Joe was about five feet, 10 or 11. His tenacity stood out - he moved forward and never took a step back. He was like a raging bull."

"Until recently, I've not known what to make of Misbah-ul-Haq," writes Osman Samiuddin in the National. "We're never sure how history will judge someone until they are done, but over the course of a career or life you can make out a tilt in one direction. With Misbah, whose batting provides no clue - sharp and attuned one day, lethargic and disoriented the next - I've just not been able to decide."

You see, Misbah's real misfortune is that his rise to captain has coincided with the age of Shahid Afridi, a vibrant, expressive media-savvy charmer and a man of such colour it blinds you to what is really inside. Afridi has also led successfully in this time and he remains a people's captain, the anti-establishment rouser to Misbah's system lackey. Much of Pakistan embraces Afridi's irrationality without understanding what he is, and more after each ball bite, each pitch-spiking, each retirement and subsequent unretirement, each public spat.

Misbah, by contrast, is pheeka, or bland. To triumph or defeat, to boundary or dismissal, he gives no reaction and how can you love no emotion, no jazba (passion)? The one revealing image I recall is his sunken head, on his knees leaning against his bat, just after the shot that ended the 2007 World Twenty20 final. You cannot even see his face. So when Afridi agitated against Younis Khan's captaincy, people got over it. But when Misbah was part of a similar movement? Not forgotten.

In the Age, Greg Baum writes, "Ricky Ponting is perched on that precipitous threshold between a brilliant and complete career and one season too many. If he is still good enough, a rapid succession of matches against South Africa, New Zealand and India can be his Indian summer. But South Africa is not the sort of team inclined to strew his way with palm fronds.

At the nets, Ponting is indefatigable, spending longer there than any other Australian player. As long as there is one ball left to hit, throw or catch, he will. He is whippet-fit. It is not desperation, just Ponting's way and always has been. He still loves cricket, and still hopes it might give up one last secret to him, if only he is patient. It is admirable, but now could become a complication. Ponting is toiling as hard as always, but always is not forever.

In the WAtoday, Marcus North recounts the time he faced Patrick Cummins.

The first ball goes pass my left ear before I can even react. I had that feeling you get when you just wake up after you made the mistake of turning your alarm off when you thought you pressed snooze. I had a look around the field and the placement of the fielders suggested that he seemed more interested in knocking my head off than getting me out. I thought "this kid is not just a great talent but a mind reader as well". The overs that followed were full of aggression and intimidation and I would be lying if I said I wasn't concerned for my health and safety. The inevitable eventually happened, a fierce blow to the head. Thankfully the helmet took the impact and I was left just a little shaken.

Sir Paul Condon, in the Daily Telegraph, says the ICC should also consider punishing national boards if their players have been found guilty of being involved in corruption.

So what is the best way forward? The ICC must have the courage to support its current anti-corruption infrastructure. More resources may be necessary to monitor the growing volume of matches and tournaments. The ICC must insist and ensure that every national board, team management and tournament organiser has accredited measures to prevent and detect malpractice.

In future, if cricketers are found guilty of corruption, consideration should be given to punishing national boards and if possible tournament organisers, if they have been negligent with regard to the guilty behaviour.

In the National, Osman Samiuddin says the ICC's Anti-Corruption and Security Unit has done more than its critics think to curb corruption in cricket, and needs our trust.

There was a special attraction at Papatoetoe Recreation Ground as the New Zealand legend, Martin Crowe, all of 49, took his first steps towards returning to first-class cricket. He fielded at slip, scored an unbeaten 15, and gave everyone a reason to turn up. Ben Stanley was there and reports on the day in the Dominion Post

Players on both teams averaged around 23 years, born around the time Crowe already had a reputation as one of the most elegant batsmen in test cricket history. Yet the age differences didn't seem to bother Crowe. He chatted to his keeper and second slip throughout the game, but was relatively quiet, even unanimated.

Andrew Alderson of the New Zealand Herald also had a chance to relive the past on the occasion of Crowe's return.

Crowe was blessed with an intuitive sense of PR as cameras were thrust in his direction, adding a surreal element to the reserve grade XI contest. Crowe donned his gear and a traditional bandana and warmed-up with a few practice shots. The cameras lapped it up as he showed the maker's name, a Gunn and Moore "Flare" to be specific. There must be a cheque in the mail for such golden publicity.

In the same paper, Mark Richardson feels that New Zealand's hard workout in Zimbabwe should serve them well when they face tougher challenges in Australia, and at home against South Africa next year. He says the series against Australia should spark interest back home in New Zealand.

As India take on West Indies in the first Test, Harbhajan Singh is conspicuous by his absence. Instead, it is R Ashwin who is India’s offspinner of choice. After geting his chance in the one-dayers, Ashwin now has the opportunity to prove he can cut it at Test level too. In the Indian Express, Karthik Krishnaswamy attempts to answer two questions: How Ashwin will bowl and what he will bowl.

With the taller, slower Ashwin, mystery takes a back seat to his more obvious physical gifts. Delivered by long fingers from a top of a high-arm, open-chested action, his off breaks turn a decent distance on surfaces with any amount of assistance, and the overspin he puts on the ball gets him dip and bounce.

Mumbai cricket has more than its fair share of stories of determined cricketers using cricket to escape poverty and the squalor of their surroundings. Sweety Abdul is one such rising star, who stays in a small hut that dots the boundary at Cross Maidan. Devendra Pandey, of Indian Express, speaks to the young girl who has just made it to the Mumbai senior team.

The jersey, which marks Sweety’s entry into the Mumbai senior team this season, will have to hang outside on a tree, along with her pads and her bat. The small hut that the all-rounder shares with her ailing mother and sister — her father died when she was nine — has little space. The nights are long and dark, with no electricity.

The spot-fixing trial is over; the players judged to be guilty and sentenced to jail terms. The post-mortem, though, is still being conducted. In the Guardian, former England captain Mike Brearley, writes that fixing is radically different from "garden variety" cheating (picking the seam, unfairly claiming a catch etc) which occurs within the framework of the game, and therefore threatens to undermine the sport itself.

In sports-mad South Africa, Cronje's good looks, excellent play as batsman and captain, and apparent decency and honesty, made him an ideal icon for the country as for advertisers. But he it was who stooped to serial dishonesty, even seducing the most junior players in his team to be his cronies. Cronje was a fascinating example of the splits that occur in so many people. On the outside, and in many of the contexts of his life, he was a decent, loving, honest, honourable man. But scratch the surface and you found this other self, this shadow self, corrupt, dishonest, devious, which he himself may have been puzzled by.

For such reasons, those guilty deserve penalties with a deterrent element. I support the calls for strong action against people engaged in such corruption.

In the Express Tribune, Faras Ghani describes what it's like, from a cricket journalist's point of view, to report on players whose fall was as meteoric as their rise.

You call each other by name, handshakes don’t have the same value anymore, food and drinks are shared and, perhaps a minor glitch of the job, the holiness of a player tones down to a meek normalcy, an act unimaginable when it all started. You forget that once upon a time, in front of that TV, you would’ve killed to meet that person, only to boast about it for months in front of the less fortunate.

In India Today, S Kanan writes that India should take active measures to curb the issue of corruption in cricket.

I had written two days ago how in the draft sports Bill being mooted by sports minister Ajay Maken, there is no mention of punishment for match-fixing and related activities. Even after the verdict in London, Maken has remained quiet and not reacted. And that is a bit surprising as he usually loves to offer comments on sporting incidents, even if it does not relate to us.

In the Telegraph, Geoffrey Boycott says that spot-fixers have got off lightly, despite their jail sentences.

But while Amir might have deserved a less punitive sentence than Butt, all four of them are getting off lightly. This sort of dishonesty ruins the whole experience of watching sport, and even playing it. Soon we will find that every unexpected result, every interesting or unusual event on the field, is surrounded by a cloud of suspicion.

Stephen Brenkley, writing in the Independent, says that Salman Butt’s betrayal is all the more painful because of the brief glimpse he offered of a new era for Pakistan cricket after he was made captain.

He had become poetic by now and when he surveyed the ground his hand swept across the building site that Edgbaston then was. He said that, like his team, it was in the throes of rebuilding but that one day his team, like this great stadium, would be magnificent again. What a statesman, what a leader he seemed then.

India failed in their first big overseas tour of the season, failing to win a game in England. At the end of 2011, they will face their second big tour to Australia. Granted, Australia aren’t the Test force they were a few years ago or even the force England are today, but they will still provide a stern challenge at home. First though, India plays three Tests against West Indies in India. Writing in DNA, Suresh Menon says the series provides India and the BCCI a chance to iron out the kinks ahead of Australia.

Playing at home means it would make no sense to pack the batting – it is the bowling that needs to be experimented with so a proper combination emerges. Zaheer Khan’s fitness and future are uncertain, which means besides Ishant Sharma, there is room for at least two others. Whether both Varun Aaron and Umesh Yadav will play the first Test or not, they will have to be blooded at some point. Likewise with the leggie Rahul Sharma, so that when the selectors sit down to choose the team, they have enough information on all the candidates.

James Lawton, in the Independent, says that while member boards or the ICC may not have done enough to eradicate corruption in cricket, the sport should have someone to meet Mohammad Amir and tell him he can still make use of his gifts upon his release.

Former England captain Michael Vaughan remains at the head of those unimpressed by the decision of the ICC to ban Amir for a mere five years. Vaughan says there should be no quarter, that Amir has forfeited the right to play the game for which he was so superbly endowed. He speaks, persuasively enough, of the need for a deterrent.

Yet the value of a deterrent has always been in direct proportion to the means of enforcement and how does that sit with the feeble record of the International Cricket Council's anti-corruption unit in the Pakistan affair?

The same paper carries a report on the "demeaning conditions" at Wandsworth Prison, where three of the accused could be in for a tough time.

In the Express Tribune, Imran Yusuf writes that the lack of apology from the PCB after this scandal shows that the game is being run by people who don't really understand the meaning of sport.

We are made mugs for getting up in the middle of the night, lunatics for investing deep emotional attachment, and fools for arguing with friends in deadly comic earnestness our take on a team’s strategies.

Paul Kelso, writing in the Daily Telegraph, says the convictions of the three Pakistan cricketers are a hollow victory in the battle against corruption in the game.

In the Daily Mail, Paul Newman says cricket has reached its tipping point vis-a-vis corruption and now has an ideal opportunity to eliminate fixing.

In his column in the Daily Mail, Nasser Hussain wonders if he'd played a match during his career that may have been dodgy.

An editorial in the Guardian hails the investigations into the spot-fixing scandal as a major breakthrough, and calls for greater powers for the ICC to tackle corruption.

Agents and players may been sentenced in this case but the bigger criminals are still at large, says Richard Williams in the same newspaper.

Sachin Tendulkar speaks to BCCI TV about the importance of the Ranji Trophy in the development of cricketers in India

In the Sydney Morning Herald, Peter Roebuck writes: "Never forget that at the time of his criminal activities Salman Butt was captaining his country. Never forget that he was at the pinnacle of his career and at the top of a huge cricket community in a nation of 180 million people. Never forget that cricket is one of the few consolations available to the poor of that nation. Never forget that Pakistan is a troubled country with a fractured history, and that cricket is its national game. The scale of the betrayal is numbing."

How much money do people want? It is a question that can just as easily be put to dictators with their billions, bankrupt bankers awarding themselves fat bonuses, politicians rorting the system, squillionaires avoiding tax and the rest of the fallen. Sportsmen do not exist in isolation, are not God's special creations. They are corrupt because the world is corrupt.

"Three cricketers have been pursued for corruption. They have not only been banned from the game, they now face time in jail. As deterrents go, there cannot be a more daunting one for future cricketers who may be tempted," writes Osman Samiuddin in the National.

And for the three individuals, is there sadness that they are lost? There was when the scandal first broke and there was when they were then banned from the game, particularly at losing bowlers as gifted as Amir and Asif. Their careers had already been broken by the time of the trial.

But now their lives stand to be, which evokes an altogether different, indescribable emotion. It can only be captured by the news of the birth of Butt's second child, a boy, born about an hour before the verdict was delivered; a life created just as one responsible for it was all but finished.

Scyld Berry in the Daily Telegraph: It is thought that, when Mr Justice Cooke passes sentence on the three Pakistan players towards the end of this week, Amir might escape a prison sentence on the grounds that he pleaded guilty; and his youth - he was officially 18 at the time he bowled two deliberate no-balls in the Lord’s Test last year - will also be taken into account. But the stigma will remain: Mohammad Amir fixed. And maybe the cricket world should not feel compassionate towards him but, rather, that the ban and the sentence to come are right.

"An easy quid begins to look a whole lot less easy when a sportsman stands to go to jail for it," writes Greg Baum in the WA Today. Sportsmen frequently are called hardened, but not in the sense of criminals, who factor the risk of incarceration into their dealings.

In the Guardian, Vic Marks says: The trio's guilt comes as no surprise to former players. Indeed, a "not guilty" verdict from Southwark would have been far more depressing for the game. A simple photo from that Lord's Test match of August 2010 was as eloquent as any barrister's summing up.

There was Pakistan's captain, Butt, at mid-off as his bowler entered his delivery stride. Any cricketer knows that a mid-off fieldsman would be focusing on the batsman at this moment, in anticipation of the ball being hit in his direction. Where was Butt looking? At his bowler's feet, checking, presumably, that he would indeed bowl a no-ball, as had been agreed with the News of the World's "fake sheikh", Mazher Mahmood.

"Maybe Amir, dazzled by the quick money which his father and brothers could not expect to earn in their lifetimes, would have fallen in almost any circumstances. He could have said no, but with what encouragement, what support, what suggestion that he had another choice?" asks James Lawton in the Independent. "These are the questions that must haunt the cricket authorities, particularly as represented by the Pakistani cricket board and the International Cricket Council's anti-corruption unit."

Also in the Independent, Stephen Brenkley revisits the day the spot-fixing scandal broke.

Times of India's Kim Arora reports on the progress of cricket in Kashmir. In August 2011, the Kashmir Premier League, a Twenty20 tournament, was a success and three players who featured in it were subsequently selected to be coached at academies in Chennai and Pune.

The success of the tournament, organised for around Rs 2 crore, has since spurred dozens of younger kids to pursue the game more actively. Now the state's under-14 cricketers have a mini-KPL of their own. Named Sheher-e-Khas, the first edition of the fortnight-long tournament concluded recently. The sight of aspiring cricketers - all with hope in their hearts and a bat or ball in hand - romping about in their blue "India" jerseys is a heartening sight

England's and India's dominance over each other in home conditions proves there is no team good enough to lay a genuine claim to being world-beaters, Sanjjeev Karan Samyal writes in the Hindustan Times.

An example of what former greats think of current standards was witnessed during the Lord's Test this summer. Desmond Haynes was holding court after the third day's play, the battle having been kicked off between the top two ranked sides in the world. A group of eager fans asked him to compare the action on hand with the all-conquering West Indies team in which he played. "The wicketkeeper is collecting the ball below his waist. Even in the final session of the day, our 'keeper would be collecting balls consistently at shoulder height," the former opener summarised