The MCG Test had enough incidents to suggest that supporting or opposing DRS is far from a black-and-white decision. Greg Baum of the Age writes that India's rejection of the system is stubborn, even contrary, but it is not without justification.

In a short time, the DRS has come to be accepted as infallible. This fits a tendency in all walks of life to devolve responsibility, if possible, to inanimate devices. Fans dwell on it. For players, to walk or not to walk is no longer an ethical issue; the technology will decide. Umpires yield to technology, just to be safe. Two of the effects of the DRS are to show that umpires mostly are right and, at the same time, to shake their confidence.

England may be the top Test side in the world, but it is a different story in the one-day game, where they are somewhat less than proficient. There was the 6-1 drubbing by Australia after the Ashes and the 5-0 whitewash in India later in the year. But no one expected them to lose to Ireland in the World Cup after they racked up 327 for 8. Not even Kevin O’Brien, who took matters into his own hands with a blistering hundred. In the Telegraph, Jonathan Liew recaps one of 2011’s Alternative Heroes.

Soon the required run-rate, which had threatened to climb into double figures, was heading south. “There wasn’t too much going through my head,” O’Brien says. “I just cleared my mind and told myself to enjoy it. We probably knocked them back a bit. With 16 overs to go, we needed six or seven an over. From there we thought: ‘Gee, we could win this game’.”

While Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman still earn their places in the team on merit, at some stage India needs to look to the future, Gaurav Kalra says on cricketnext.com. If their spots are considered permanently occupied, anyone who comes in to the No. 6 position is always going to bat like it his last Test, he says.

At the heart of Indian cricket's predicament lies an emotional response to a practical problem. Succession plans are ruthless in their design and do not rest on the current ability of the men who are sought to be replaced. Of-course Tendulkar is still the best man for number four. Undoubtedly there aren't any batsmen more suited to bat at three and five than Dravid and Laxman. But must the immediacy of a task be the over-riding concern at all times? Must the desire to let them choose a "grand exit" over-ride the shape and form this cricket team takes in the future?

After Australia's compelling 122-run win against India at the MCG, Greg Baum, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, says the Test team has seemingly got their killer instinct back.

In the first week of this year, Australian cricket was a humiliated entity. Since then, it has submitted to three reviews and spilled every position and structure. It has played nine Tests in three countries, beaten Sri Lanka, South Africa and now India, but also lost to New Zealand. It has made as few as 47 and as many as 488 in an innings. It mounted a record run chase against South Africa, but failed in a modest one against the Kiwis. It has tried 18 players, some of whom were uncertain that the cap fitted, others unsure that it still did. But, oddly enough, the spinner was a constant. Yesterday, it finished this most tumultuous of calendar years with a thumping victory over cricket's powerhouse, witnessed over four days by the biggest crowd for an India Test in this country. Teams being rebuilt are mercurial, but this one at least can believe that its best is good enough.

Sourav Ganguly, writing in the same paper, says Michael Clark deserves a lot of credit for the win.

One can see a good camaraderie between Ponting and Clarke, and that's a big thumbs-up to the skipper. A lot of teams have leaders who look to keep the past captain away as they want their own boys and own group, but Clarke has showed enormous maturity in that department. That will really stand him in good stead with his tenure as captain. You can see that in the way Ponting and Hussey bailed him out of trouble at the crucial juncture.

Peter Siddle and James Pattinson, who played important roles in Australia's victory, started out at a small cricket club in the suburb of Dandenong in Melbourne. Rohit Bhaskar of the Hindustan Times finds out about their younger days from the people a the club who watched over their growth.

It is not just India's performance which was amiss at Melbourne, but tactics and motivation too, says Ayaz Memon, writing in India Today.

The abject surrender in the first Test - and especially the second innings - not only belies expectations of a first-ever series win Down Under, but throws up several new stringent queries, the most pertinent being whether MS Dhoni's team has not been hyped way beyond its abilities.

The last twelve months have seen some spectacular highs, both on and off the field. There was Virender Sehwag’s ODI double-hundred, England’s ruthlessness in retaining the Ashes Down Under and Kumar Sangakkara’s stirring ‘Spirit of Cowdrey’ lecture. In the Guardian's The Sport Blog, Mike Selvey recounts these and others in his XI highlights of 2011.

We shall never see Dravid bat again in a Test match in England, but what a legacy he left. None of India's travails last summer could be laid at his door, and to score at Lord's, Trent Bridge and the Oval, three centuries in four Tests, mostly in adversity, was remarkable. Calling him the Wall does not do him justice. This is the Great Wall.

As South Africa attempt a huge chase in Durban, Neil Manthorp says, on SuperSport.com, that they need a hero. He points to Gary Kirsten's 275 in Durban in 1999, which he says saved Kirsten's career, and says perhaps one of the members of the current team who are under pressure should take the approach Kirsten did in that game: that it is better to accept one's fate and just bat calmly in the hope of going out on a high.

The difficulty for the likes of Jacques Rudolph, Ashwell Prince and Mark Boucher is that a white-knuckled, intense determination is unlikely to help them as they contemplate the dreadful, personal consequences of failure in the second innings. Instead, like Kirsten did at the end of 1999, they will be better served by coming to terms with the reality that all good things come to an end. Their best chance of ensuring that it doesn’t happen will be to be at peace with their fate when they walk out to bat sometime in the next two days.

As players get older, they understand the game more but they also know more about what can go wrong, Greg Chappell explains in the Hindu. He writes about how he he spoke to Sachin Tendulkar during his time as India coach about trying to think like a young player, who is only enthusiastic about scoring runs and is not worried about making a mistake.

As a young player all that matters is cricket and batting. One hundred per cent of one's mental capacity is devoted to training and playing. Doubts are pushed to the back of one's mind by the excitement and expectation of a big score. As one gets older other things start to impinge on that mental space. The doubts find a way to slip to the front of the mind; being careful takes over from looking out for scoring opportunities.

In the Hindustan Times, Sanjjeev K Samyal and Amol Karhadkar say that even though India won the World Cup in 2011 with a young side, the players who stand out in Indian cricket are still the experienced trio of Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman.

Three years ago, the India selectors pushed the first of the Fab Four, Sourav Ganguly, into retirement. Perhaps, it was a signal to the ageing middle-order troika that their phase out was not far away. But they kept coming back with superlative displays. Natural talent apart, the key to their success is single-minded focus and a disciplined life.

The Sydney Morning Herald's Andrew Wu looks back on some memorable debuts at the venue that will host its 100th Test in the new year.

Born Reginald Erskine Foster, but better known as Tip, Foster was the only man to captain England at football and cricket. His 287 on debut in 1903 has stood for more than a century as the highest score made in an SCG Test ... Foster's debut effort remains the highest score by a Test debutant, well clear of the unbeaten 222 by South Africa's Jacques Rudolph in 2003.

Who would have thought, after taking 1-150 on debut at the SCG, that the chunky 22-year-old with a blond mullet would retire with more than 700 Test wickets and be regarded as one of the best players ever? Shane Warne was punished by opener Ravi Shastri and a softly spoken teenager called Sachin Tendulkar in the 1992 Test against India. Shastri hit a career-best 206 and shared in a 196-run stand for the sixth wicket with Tendulkar before entering the record books as Warne's first Test victim.

Greg Baum, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, says on Wednesday at the MCG, the pitch did a bit and so - subtly - did the bowlers, but the batsmen flattered them.

Once, most good batsmen played late, with soft hands, delaying contact until all the movement of the ball was spent. Rubber-wristed Indians were past masters. Now, nearly everyone commits forward, bodily expressing the all-sports mantra about the necessity of getting on to the front foot. But in many, the display of strength becomes an exploration of limitations. Only Ponting, among the contemporary Australians, is catlike enough to press forward, then retreat without unbalancing himself.

Sourav Ganguly, the former India captain, writing in the Age, says Australia should allow the likes of Ricky Ponting and Michael Hussey to breathe easy so that they could create an atmosphere that will help young players develop.

On a wicket which helped the bowlers, two senior guys [Ponting and Hussey] stood up when it was required. Their stand could be the deciding factor in this Test match. Watching them play, I felt it was not just the runs they made, but the manner in which they played that told its own story ... We all know Australian cricket has a history of slowly leaving ageing players out and bringing in young players. [But] the likes of Ponting and Hussey need to be handled carefully. One shouldn't have young players coming into a losing culture. It takes away the faith and belief and could hurt them mentally.

Team culture building exercises are often a nuisance for players, Glen Turner says on stuff.co.nz. He says cricket is a game that is still revolved heavily around individuals and those individuals respond to motivation in different ways, and hence should be given freedom to prepare and think in the way they want to.

All of the attempts at cultural transformation and the flood of peripheral information seem to largely ignore the character and entrenched practised behaviour of people generally. To think that players' behaviours and motivational stimulus are going to change overnight is unrealistic, no matter how well the various corrective measure programmes are presented. The make-up, personality and state of mind of players varies from bullet proof to depressed. Players within the same team are personally stimulated by all sorts of things. They range from internal to external drivers; from self fulfilment, to doing it for others; to national pride, to money and statistics.

On First Post Abhilasha Khaitan says she prefers to enjoy the spectacle of Sachin Tendulkar scoring a fluent 70 than worry about a meaningless landmark.

From where I was sitting, Tendulkar’s 70 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground was worth its weight in tons – yes, even a hundred tons. It was wrapped in confidence, flair and consummate ease as he lived up to his larger-than-life legend in front of a largely knowledgeable, intense crowd that could not stop talking about him. It was all Tendulkar after tea on Tuesday, both on and around the field, with stories from as far back as his growing years being recounted by Australians in the Members’ Reserve where I was sitting, even while the protagonist, unconcerned with the drama around him, played his part with the bat.

In an exclusive interview with Pakpassion.net, Bazid Khan, son of former Pakistan great Majid Khan and nephew of Imran Khan, talks about the advice his father gave him and how he has coped with the expectations that come with having famous relatives.

Sunil Gavaskar talked about his son going through the same thing. It is quite difficult as you are always compared to your father and how good he was; how good you are and all that is added pressure. But the pressure on yourself also, I think it increases with this expectation. But it has its pros and cons, and it is something you can’t avoid, you can’t change, and you have to bear it.

The ICC’s inaction and the BCCI’s arm-twisting tactics have left cricket in a situation where the use of technology is not uniform across series, Kunal Pradhan says in the Mumbai Mirror. This leaves players feeling cheated and people talking more about the DRS than the actual cricket, he says. The solution Pradhan offers is for the ICC to insist on a uniform system and if they decide not to use the technology currently available to invest in further research to develop technology that will make the game more fair.

Therefore, on the topic of the Decision Review System in cricket, which has been analysed threadbare this year, going over the merits and demerits of every component – Hawk-Eye, Hot Spot and Snicko – comes later. First, the world cricket governing body (the ICC, not the BCCI) needs to take a call on whether ensuring that results of close matches are not altered and peoples’ careers not cut short by inadvertent human errors, is important to it or not. If it is, it should evaluate the technology available and ascertain if it offers a solution. If it does, the ICC should take a vote of its member nations and decide for or against implementing the rule, irrespective of what the BCCI, or any other minority group, no matter how rich, may have to say about it.

If Twenty20 pyrotechnics do not grab the attention of the younger generation, then Boxing Day crowds may begin to go the same way as those of the one-day game, says Malcolm Conn, writing for Foxsports.com.

... there were only two crowds of above 50,000 on the opening day of the MCG Test during the first 15 years of the "tradition", both against England. It wasn't until Sri Lanka attracted a surprisingly healthy 55,000 on Boxing Day 1995 that large crowds became a regular feature of cricket's biggest day.This was about the time that the primary school kids who were seduced by the one-day razzmatazz of lights, coloured clothes and action introduced by World Series Cricket had grown into discerning adults ... The bad news was that with sports fans under 25 there is an increasing vacuum and with 10-15 year-olds cricket ranks eighth [among Australia's most popular sports].

ESPN's Wright Thompson, an American journalist, on his experience of watching and reporting on a Test match at Lord's.

A few clouds change a game, so the old saying at Lord's is that you need to always be looking up. Other things create microclimates, which change the game. When a new stand was built at Trent Bridge, the ball moved less. At seaside grounds, tides affect the swing. Captains study the tides. This is wonderful stuff. I imagine the American cable television show, where red-faced writers scream at each other about the tide tables, about the phases of the moon, about how volcanic activity in the Ring of Fire is messing with the barometer, Woody Paige having an aneurysm over hectopascals.

All this, I realize, is part of the joy of Test cricket. The outcome of the games is so closely tied to nature that watching demands an awareness of the world around you. Modern inventions mostly keep the world at bay. Don't like the weather? Close the windows. Turn on the AC. Light a fire. But following Test cricket requires, for at least five days, being governed by subtle shifts in the elements, just as surely as an ancient sailor.

Following the drubbing in England, the good news for the Indian batsmen in Australia is that the ball will not do as much, laterally, for as long as it did in England, writes S Ram Mahesh in the Hindu. The bowlers will have bounce to work with.

Unlike the Duke, with its prominent, hand-stitched seam, the Kookaburra ball, with its flatter, machine-stitched seam, allows a batsman to settle after the newness has worn off. Also, an Australian summer is drier than its English equivalent. The less water-charged the atmosphere, the less the ball is observed to swing. On Australia's firmer wickets, moreover, the ball doesn't deviate off the surface to the same degree it does in England.

A run to the World Cup semi-final, and a rare Test victory over Australia were among the highlights of 2011 for New Zealand. The Herald on Sunday reviews the year.

New Zealand cricket fans caught a glimpse of the future this year, and it looks promising. We've seen potential in the Black Caps before, only to be disappointed. This time it could be genuine.

As 21-year-old Doug Bracewell bowled the Kiwis to a famous test victory over Australia earlier this month, he did it alongside two other seamers who are likely to become fixtures in the national side for years to come.

Bracewell had support from Tim Southee, 23, and left-armer Trent Boult, 22. That trio and exciting batsman Kane Williamson, 21, may represent the future core of the team.

And in the same paper, David Leggat presents his wish list for New Zealand cricket in 2012.

In the Express Tribune, Z Ali looks at how the Niaz Stadium, in the Pakistan city of Hyderabad, is in a state of disrepair two weeks before its golden jubilee celebrations are to be held. Among the notable events that happened at the stadium are the first one-day hat-trick, the 1000th Test and the opening match of the 1987 World Cup.

A privately sponsored enclosure is the only decent thing standing with a structure formerly used as a ground-floor pavilion with VIP seats, crying out for repairs. The two-storey pavilion houses termite-ridden cupboards, once used to store players’ belongings, crumbling washrooms and broken frames of historic photographs.

In the Mumbai Mirror, Deepak Narayanan's complied a tongue-in-cheek list of what certain members of the cricket community would like for Christmas.

Dear Santa, I was going to ask for a 100th 100, but then I saw the Australian bowling attack and realised you’d already done your bit. Aila, Sachin

Dear Santa, What do you want for Christmas? Viru

"Sixty-four years ago, in a preliminary to India's first tour of Australia, Don Bradman made his 100th 100. In Farewell to Cricket, he said that it was the ''most exhilarating moment'' of his career," writes Greg Baum in the Sydney Morning Herald. " ... At the start of another Indian tour, this phenomenon is again manifest. This time, cricket aficionados are holding their breath in anticipation of Sachin Tendulkar's 100th century."

Some context: Bradman's eventual tally of 117 centuries comprised 29 in 52 Test matches and the balance in other first-class cricket. Tendulkar's 99 hundreds consist of 51 in 184 Tests and 48 in one-day internationals (but ignores 27 other first-class centuries). This merely reflects the way the game's infrastructure has changed.

Bradman made his 100th hundred in his 295th innings. Tendulkar will have played at least 746. This reflects the way Bradman's standing has remained unassailable. But there is no doubt that the vibe about the imminence of the achievement is almost identical.

Also in the Sydney Morning Herald, Chris Barrett speaks to former Australia fast bowler Mike Whitney, who played against Tendulkar on his first tour to Australia in 1991-92.

Whitney remembers clearly the three-day match in the northern rivers, particularly Tendulkar's 82 in an Indian first-innings total of 209. ''Lismore was a very sporting wicket. If you have a look at the figures, Wayne Holdsworth and I did most of the damage,'' Whitney says. ''It was pretty much a greentop. I think I took six-for in the second innings. The ball was seaming and swinging everywhere, and [Tendulkar] looked unbelievable that day amongst a collapsing batting line-up.''

As we wonder whether Ricky Ponting will ever get his run-scoring mojo back, it's easy to forget where Sachin Tendulkar was exactly five years ago, writes Dileep Premachandran in the Daily Telegraph. "He may have only been 32 at the time but, like Ponting, he was into his 17th season of international cricket. And, to borrow from Dickens, it was the worst of times."

That was then. In the half-decade since, Tendulkar has piled up 4593 runs and 16 centuries at 58.9.He has been an integral part of a side that was ranked No.1 in the Test arena for 18 months and which won the World Cup earlier this year. Along the way, he also became the first man to score a double-hundred in one-day internationals, pillaging an attack led by Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel. Now, months short of his 39th birthday, Tendulkar returns to Australia, the stage for some of his greatest innings.

Sriram Veera turns the attention to Ricky Ponting in the Mumbai Mirror, writing that it is hard not to feel empathy for Ponting as he prepares for the Boxing Day Test; it was not so a few years ago.

Remember Sydney 2008? Remember when he got socked in the eye at a nightclub? Remember him telling Javagal Srinath to get lost when he’d gone to ask if he was fine after being hit by a bouncer? Remember him giving AB de Villiers a cold stare when he had run up to him congratulate him on a hundred? Remember his complaints to the umpires?

But times are changing. It’s hard not to feel sympathetic towards Ricky Ponting these days, even if you’re Indian. A modern-day great is stumbling, the local press has been gunning for him, and Ponting-must-go have been headlines screaming from newspapers lying around in street cafes. It evokes compassion.

As Australia and India prepare for the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne, Ted Corbett, writing in the Hindu, reminds them that England have beaten them both in 2011 and that the Border-Gavaskar trophy is a contest for second place.

England, convincing victor against both teams in the last 12 months, picked up the major team honour in the two-hour British TV sportsfest to announce BBC's Sports Personality of the Year. The programme left a trail of reminders that the Englishmen were the best cricketers in the world. First, there was Kevin Pietersen with the statement that although England respected other Test teams — “frightened of them? Think again.”

Jamie Pandaram, writing in Australia's Daily Telegraph, speaks to Dan Christian's family about his growing up years.

Christian's mother Toni spent hours driving him from Campbelltown to Kensington when Christian joined the University of NSW cricket team, where he was mentored by Geoff Lawson and Michael Slater. "And the M5 Motorway didn't extend all that way back then," Toni laughed. "It was especially busy when the footy and cricket seasons overlapped, we'd be driving from the footy to the cricket, and the cricket to the footy."

She added: "The move to Sydney was a big thing for him at 13, he had to make a whole lot of new friends, but that was his dream, going to St Greg's mainly to play footy. Cricket came second back in those days. "He broke a leg playing footy when he was 14, he had to get screws put in but came back from that fairly well," she said.

In the Otago Daily Times Adrian Seconi talks to Suzie Bates, who was recently named captain on New Zealand's women's cricket team. Bates represented New Zealand in basketball at the 2008 Olympics but thinks her elevation to leadership means she'll have lesser time for basketball.

"I knew saying yes would mean I couldn't just flitter off to play basketball like I have in the past," Bates said.

"That did come into consideration. Also whether I was ready or not was part of the decision process. But it was too good an opportunity to say no and we'll have to see what happens with basketball."

Ed Cowan's rise to the Test team has been followed by many and he has found support from strong quarters. He may not be the most deserving opener to receive a Baggygreen – Phil Jaques and Chris Rogers had more to show when they were called up as openers – but considering his form and the problems Australia face, his call-up is deserved, writes Jamie Alter in Cricketnext.

There's something about the expectancy of an in-form opener entering the Test scene. It can be fuelled by the individual's run-scoring ability, his hunger for big scores in pressure situations. It can be because of an aging veteran's impending retirement, and the interest around whether the selectors will give him the chop. It can be the promise of fresh talent, of watching a batsman with much potential being given the biggest opportunity of his career.

From MS Dhoni's ultimate captain's innings to Alastair Cook finally cutting loose, the Guardian's blog lists a few cherished moments of 2011.

When my colleague Rob Smyth is really tickled by something he tends to gurgle in amused satisfaction. I, on the other hand, squawk like a strangled parrot. Many of the happiest moments of my cricket-watching life have, oddly enough, come while I've been sitting next to Rob, the two of us gurgling, giggling and squawking as we write over-by-over commentary. We are, as you can imagine, a popular pair with our workmates, who are all trying to get on with the business of producing a newspaper. I'm not sure anything we've seen has ever given Rob and I more delight than the sight of MS Dhoni pacing out his run-up so he could fill in Zaheer Khan's missing overs during the Lord's Test. It epitomised the gulf between the two teams, and presaged the shape of the series to come. But better yet was that it showed, again, the sheer moxie of the man: if something needs doing, best do it yourself.

Nur Khan, the former head of the PCB who passed away recently, would be remembered as a visionary when it came to sports administration, even though cricket wasn't his favourite sport, writes Osman Samiuddin in the National. He proposed the idea of neutral umpires in Tests long before the concept was introduced.

At the very first meeting he attended of the International Cricket Conference (as the ICC was then) as head of the Pakistan board, Nur Khan told those around him he was ashamed to be sitting with them.

"I've been involved in other sports and they solved issues by building a proper institution, not a private body like the MCC," he later remembered. "I said aren't you ashamed after so many years that hockey and other sports have 80-90 members? Squash had many countries and here you are only six or seven after so many years?"

VVS Laxman makes another entry to the country in which he has scored a truckload of runs. Another four Tests is a mouthwatering prospect. Jamie Alter looks back at his best knocks in Australia since 2000 in Cricketnext.

What is it with Laxman? Show him a baggy green cap, and he comes alive. From cumbersome, he becomes commanding. Not since Ian Botham has there been a tormentor of Australians. In 25 Tests against Australia, Laxman has scored 2279 runs at an average of 55.58, with six centuries. In Australia, he has 1080 runs at 54.05 with four centuries. Those are staggering numbers, considering the chunk of those runs came against what was the best team in Test cricket.

In an interview to the Sunday Island, Dr Ali Bacher, the former South Africa captain and one of the country's most recognisable cricket administrators, talks about the pain of isolation from the 1970s, the 2003 World Cup, Hansie Cronje, the dangers of IPL excess and more.

I think more players out of the sub-continent will be attracted to India because of the money. The responsibility of playing for the country could become a problem. In addition, I am very happy that the seniors and the best players of the world earn lot of money. What I have seen is that a lot of young players and inexperienced players are earning good money and I don’t think it’s good for their future development.

In the Yahoo cricket website, Rahul Bhatia goes behind the scenes to explore why the BCCI pulled the plug on its US$ 350 million broadcasting deal with Nimbus Communications.

According to a mortgage deed filed by Nimbus, it anticipated earnings of Rs 2761 crore from the rights. The source of this confidence is unclear: the deed states that Nimbus expected to earn Rs 1213 crore in advertising revenues from cricket between 2010-14. However, the ad revenue from all its sports for the previous four financial years was only Rs 360.1 crore. In plainspeak: Nimbus expected a 400% rise in ad revenues.

The BCCI firing Nimbus proves the boom is ending in cricket broadcast business, says Kunal Pradhan, writing in the Economic Times.

Neo Cricket, pretty much a one-product entity, was cutting costs at each step, trying to squeeze out every second's worth of advertising revenue. In spite of all its efforts, however, the money being generated was only a fraction of what was anticipated when it first signed the deal, brokered by the BCCI's former financial whizkid, Lalit Modi.

Michael Clarke, writing in Australia's Daily Telegraph, says his team takes responsibility for the batting in Hobart. Australia, he says, have the prefect chance to start moving in the right direction once more in the Border-Gavaskar series.

When I first came into the Australian team everyone said we had a weakness against spin bowling and we did a lot of work on that. That's what we're doing now against the swinging and seaming ball. We're practising as much as we can. It will take time for us to improve and we will keep working on it. So, I think the pre-Test batting camp is a positive initiative.

[India's] their bowling lacks experience and they're dealing with injuries as well. They'll have concerns there. Zaheer Khan is a big player for them. I think it's going to be a really good contest between youth and enthusiasm versus some old wise heads in the Indian team ... I am 100 per cent confident there'll be no repeat of the unpleasantness the last time Australia played India in a Test series at home.

New Zealand's win in Hobart has shown that the country has a bigger fun base for Tests than the crowds suggest and it's important New Zealand pays more attention to that, such as keeping Boxing Day Tests at the Basin Reserve, writes Adam Parore in the New Zealand Herald.

I had mates of mine texting from all over the world Monday saying: "Are you watching this?". I went out for a drink with Dion Nash on Wednesday and all the guys we bumped into that night were just blown away by that last day and were telling the same stories we were.

Experts world over are slamming national boards for scheduling Twenty20 bashes before important Test series. If the scheduling of the Big Bash League in Australia ahead of the India Tests isn't questionable enough, the scene isn't very different down in New Zealand, writes Dylan Cleaver in the same paper.

The truncated format has always had its detractors, most things that are new and popular come with naysayers. The venom is more pointed this time, aimed at national boards who have succumbed to its commercial appeal at the cost of the more traditional forms of the sport.

In the same paper, David Leggat tries to place New Zealand's Hobart win amongst their other memorable Test victories.

Make no mistake, the New Zealand players at Hobart learned what it meant to win something meaningful. That memory will stay with them for the rest of their careers. A few hours after the win, what sounded like a haka emanated from the New Zealand dressing room at Bellerive Oval

The progress into Test cricket from the limited-overs game by Australia's David Warner has been astonishing and highlights England's old-fashioned thinking, writes Mike Selvey in the Guardian.

Back in the 70s, and even beyond that, there was a firm belief, certainly in England, that you did not need to tinker with the two international formats when it came to selecting teams. There were practical reasons, of a kind, in that it did not seem worth trying to develop a separate side for the few games that were played, sideshow as they were to the main event, and financial resources were a whole lot different. But although there was the occasional exception, usually down to an injury, overriding all this was the maxim that the best players, which for purposes at the time meant Test cricketers, would prove the most adept at cricket played over 60 overs.

"Doug Bracewell was always going to be a tough customer," writes Ian Snook for Fairfax Media. "He had to be just to keep up with his father Brendon. As a three-year-old he fully comprehended "line" and "length" when bowling in the nets and he understood the punishment if the ball travelled down the leg side. This lad was getting ready to play Test cricket."

Brendon is no ordinary individual and no ordinary coach. Cricket oozes out of every part of his body. A New Zealand international at the age of 18, 77 first class games amidst a series of injuries, and most recently running independent academies for 15 years, he virtually swims in a pool of cricket every day. Just as importantly, the cricket skills he develops in the youngsters through his academy are the life skills he installs. Nicknamed the "Get Hard Academy" by many of his former pupils, Bracewell went about developing independent and strong thinkers, preparing them to be decisive and clear decision makers on the field.

"This rare result has launched the [Ross] Taylor captaincy era, with any luck and good management. He now has the best of platforms on which to stamp his mark," writes Chris Rattue in the New Zealand Herald. "The bowlers took responsibility, did the deed, cast their own shadows. The batsmen need to follow suit."

This historic win, achieved without Daniel Vettori, might enable his teammates to lift themselves out of the shadow the former captain inadvertently casts over them.

Vettori's heroics, especially with the bat, are legendary but they have not turned his team or Taylor's into a winning one. His bowling, for all of its delicate arts, does not seem to win test matches either. The Vettori formula has tended to involve rearguard actions and a battle for respectability which has - as the test rankings show - by and large failed. For whatever reason, New Zealand has been lulled into an over-reliance on Vettori, who for all of his excellence does not have Richard Hadlee's superman capabilities. This is not to denigrate a magnificent cricketer, but the load needs to be spread better.

Australia collapsed from a strong position yet again to narrowly lose the Hobart Test to New Zealand by seven runs. Going down to a good bowling attack was by no means the worst thing that could have happened to a side that has struggled like a dialysis patient waiting for a donor, says Malcolm Knox in the Sydney Morning Herald.

The Australian team bottomed out two years ago, when they only just beat the two worst teams to have come here in decades, the 2009-10 West Indies and Pakistan. At that point the team was a sick man in denial, believing he'd burst out of bed any minute. Ricky Ponting and Michael Hussey would come good again, Mitchell Johnson was a once-in-a-generation fast bowler, Shane Watson was the new Keith Miller, Simon Katich was Bill Lawry and Bob Simpson in one, Marcus North was a future Australian captain. The fruits of that thinking were harvested in last year's Ashes embarrassment.

In the Australian, Peter Lalor writes that the folly of axing Simon Katich for Phillip Hughes becomes more obvious with each passing innings, each inconsistent performance and each new low.

Doug Bracewell, and not David Warner, should have been named the man of the match in Hobart, says Fred Woodcock on www.stuff.co.nz.

Now we have a situation where the Australian public jump on their mobile phones to decide the man of the match, with the player who gets the most votes receiving the official award. It's nothing more than a popularity vote.

In the New Zealand Herald, Doug Bracewell's father, and former New Zealand player, Brendon talks about his son and his match-winning performance.

Are the injuries to modern-day fast bowlers really down to too much cricket, Dileep Premachandran asks, among other things, in the Sunday Guardian.

Botham and Hadlee bowled nearly 44,000 deliveries between them in Test cricket alone. Neither possessed a body that would have made them candidates for a Gold's Gym advertisement, but in their prime both were genuinely quick. There's a lesson in there for those entrusted with charting a course for young pace bowlers.

Bangladesh slid to yet another crushing defeat, this one against Pakistan, and the murmurs questioning their Test status are bound to grow louder in its wake. In the National, Osman Samiuddin suggests that instead of castigating Bangladesh and calling for their Test status to be revoked, it would be in cricket’s best interest to help Bangladesh to improve and become competitive.

But even if it could happen, why should it? International sport isn't only about the best teams competing among themselves. It makes space for all kinds of standards and it needs that. In any case, if cricket became any smaller, it would be a glorified hobby, not an international sport. The question should not be so much how Bangladesh can improve itself, but how much more cricket can help Bangladesh improve.

Steve Davies’ selection as backup England wicketkeeper for their tour of the UAE to play Pakistan would ordinarily not have attracted much attention, if any at all. But since Davies is only the second professional to come out of the closet in a major English team sport, his selection is an affirmation that is talent is all that matters, writes David Hopps in the Guardian.

England's selectors stuck with Davies, a cricketing decision made on cricketing grounds. The way to respond to changing social norms is never to allow then to enter the debate. "From a continuity and consistency point of view, he gets the nod," said the chief selector, Geoff Miller. It is good to see that these days even "the nod," the oldest selectorial cliche in sport, is without prejudice.

Rohit's journey back to the Indian team included an 'eggcentric' diet, jogging with his driver and shedding eight kgs. Sandeep Dwivedi and Devendra Pandey, writing in the Indian Express, tell us more.

In January, he was an India discard who was desperate to take a grip of a career that seemed to be rapidly slipping through his fingers. On his flight back to India at the end of the ODI series against South Africa in January this year, where he had a highest of 23 from five games, Rohit asked himself an important question: Did he like the way he looked? The answer was easy—all he needed to do was to look at the mirror and play his old tapes. He was to return home and tell his friends that the next time he would be on television, the world would see a different him.

February and March become the months when [Abhishek] Nayar and the Mumbai team fitness trainer Amogh Pandit moved to Rohit’s 10th floor three-bedroom apartment at Bandra. Morning paranthas were replaced with protein seeds, cornflakes, oats and 8 pm became the new dinner deadline.

The BBC's Charles Haviland examines the controversies in Sri Lankan cricket.

Cricket is Sri Lanka's universal game and almost nothing gets in the way of it, whether it is played in the street or at the Kettarama Stadium. In 2007 the Tamil Tigers even declared a ceasefire throughout the World Cup. But the national team's recent loss of form, combined with endless tribulations off the pitch, has plunged many fans into gloom.

... Speaking to the BBC this week, Mr Aluthgamage denied interfering. "If there is politics in cricket, in the past World Cup Sanath Jayasuriya should have been in the team. Because he's a member of parliament and he was in our party ... Yet for 12 years the game has been run by politically appointed, unelected committees, something that will only change with board elections in January as demanded by the International Cricket Council.

Among current batsmen, Virender Sehwag is the one most likely to bring on an epidemic of insomnia among opposition captains, says Ian Chappell, writing in the Hindustan Times.

Part of Sehwag's charm is his refusal to conform. It was illuminating when Sehwag told dashing David Warner he had the opportunity to be more effective as a Test player than as a T20 batsman because of the field placings in the longer game. This was when the pair were opening for Delhi in the IPL and it is confirmation that while Sehwag may have a lot of natural talent, his batting isn't totally devoid of thought.

In Sehwag's batting, the vagaries of daily life are reflected better than in any other player in the history of the game, says Aditya Iyer, writing in the Indian Express.

We groan when Tendulkar cannot put away an impending landmark, we scream if Dravid cannot stage a comeback and cry when Laxman is dismissed during a chase. They were expected to do it, and didn’t. With Sehwag, anything he does is expected ... On one end, he averages 35 in one-dayers and has never understood a format created for him, T20. At the other, he is one of only four players to record two triple centuries in Tests and is India’s record holder for individual innings in Tests and one-dayers.

There’s no showiness about Sehwag's batting, no frills, says David Frith, writing in DNA India. But any comparison between his and Richards' batting can be made only on a purely technical basis.

I’m not keen on comparisons, largely because they are unprovable, even with the aid of statistics — though they are often utilised as the framework of a persuasive case. Could Sehwag have smashed this 219 off that formidable 1984 West Indies pace attack, for instance?If he had, that would certainly have proclaimed him as one of the very greatest batsmen in history. It must be conceded that this Caribbean line-up is far from impressive. As it is, with his swag of Test match triple-centuries and double-centuries the chunky Indian opener already occupies a special place in the Hall of Champions.

Saqlain Mushtaq, Chaminda Vaas and Makhaya Ntini talk to Mid-Day's Sai Mohan on the challenge of bowling to Virender Sehwag.

Chaminda Vaas: What can I say about this genius. I bowled a lot to Sachin ( Tendulkar), Azhar ( Mohammed Azharuddin) and other Indians, but I found nobody more difficult to stop. When he [Sehwag] gets going, he’s got the calibre to score big hundreds. He’s never satisfied. He’s a player who can make a lot of runs in whatever format or conditions.

Has any batsman made a bigger impact on Indian cricket than Virender Sehwag, asks Deepak Narayanan in the Times of India.

Sehwag has the highest, secondhighest and third-highest Test scores by an Indian. He also now holds the record for the highest individual oneday score in history. His Test average is over 50, his one-day strike-rate is touching 105 ... When he gets to three figures, he makes it count: the average for his 100+ scores in Tests is 184.71; in one-dayers, the corresponding figure is 147.84. You don’t need stats to prove he’s a match-winner but here’s one anyway: In ODIs, 14 of his 15 tons have won India the match. In Tests, which India has won, Sehwag averages 57.16; when you combine that with a career strikerate of 82, the numbers take [on] a new meaning.

Sehwag reduces the art of batsmanship to the bare minimum, says Ravi Krishnan, writing in Live Mint. In this era of professionalism, he says, Sehwag is an anachronism.

See ball, hit ball. He might be on 150 or zero. Modern day crickets rate athleticism highly and are ever eager to talk about hitting the gym. Our hero waddles around with a pudgy figure which bespeaks a rich diet of milk, butter and paneer, which the Jat wrestlers in the Najafgarh area of Delhi where he grew up swear by. In times where cricketers are forever in the public gaze and depend upon reputation consultants and diction coaches to burnish their image, he hardly cares for political correctness.

In the Guardian, Mike Selvey says a rotation policy, something Mickey Arthur, the new coach of Australia, has supported, may not go down with those players who want to play and see being part of a playing XI as a challenge.

I think that for all the superficial way in which players will buy into the system, there will be, lurking beneath the surface, a resentment. Winning a place in an international side is a challenging thing, and once there performance is everything. Membership of a team should never be a sinecure, or a meal ticket.

Once, nations schemed and tinkered before testing themselves against the indomitable West Indians, and, later, Australians. Now the robust and healthy selection debate about the Australian team this summer can be reduced to a single pertinent question: How would we fare against England? writes Richard Hinds in the Sydney Morning Herald.

The new Australian selection panel's first test might be whether they are willing to make the potentially unpopular decision to drop Ponting and/or Hussey, even after they have scored decent runs. To make the assertion that others are not only capable of matching those contributions, but more likely to do so in 2013 when it matters most.

The test applies not only to the veterans. Such is his raw talent and dead eye, it would not be surprising if Phillip Hughes slashed a big score in Hobart. If so, it should buy him only enough time to prove he can close the vast gap between his occasional success and more common failures. As it is, the thought of Jimmy Anderson bowling to Hughes on a seaming pitch beneath a cloudy sky does not overwhelm one with confidence.

"Ridiculously, there is a faint sense of relief on seeing Samit Patel for the first time since he last appeared on our television screens, playing for England in the final match of the disastrous series of one-day games in India last October," writes Richard Rae in the Independent. "After years of being defined by failing to meet the standards of fitness expected of the modern international cricketer, the penny that dropped at the beginning of last season appears to have stayed dropped, and the Nottinghamshire allrounder looks to be in pretty good shape."

Steve James, in the Daily Telegraph, takes an emotive look at a new book by Chris Arnot which celebrates some of Britain's cricket grounds that have been lost. James played on some of the venues and wished he had the chance to play on others, such as the Central Ground in Hastings.

"Elegant four-story Regency houses with wrought iron balconies peered loftily over the Alfred Coote stand, built above the Queen’s Road shops in 1959,” Arnot writes of it, “Rows of boarding houses clambered up the cliffs towards the castle ruins cresting the summit. Gulls soared overhead and John Arlott’s claret-honed tones rose to new levels of lyricism as he set the scene for Sunday afternoon viewers during BBC2’s coverage of John Player League matches.”

Watching Sachin Tendulkar try his best to score his 100th hundred has shown just how difficult it is to score a century, and it's a marvel that he's managed to do that 99 times against the world's best bowlers, writes Tom Alter in Firstpost.

When he got out on 94 in Mumbai, it was all my fault and the fault of about nine crore others just like me. You see, in my hotel room in Indore, I had done everything – ‘do not disturb’ on the door, volume on the tv off, tea in hand, settled and comfortable and I was not going to move. And he started off with such precise power, he raced to 94 – raced, paced, chased; not, not chased.

In The National, Dileep Premachandran writes that Irfan Pathan has done enough to earn a recall to the national team as the selectors pick Praveen Kumar's replacement for the Australia Tests. His success in the previous tour in 2007-08 should spur him on.

The flight from Sydney to Perth takes more than four hours, and most members of the Indian cricket team had their earphones plugged in almost as soon as they took their seats. One of them, though, was reading a copy of Inside Sport, and his own one-page profile. He smiled through the initial paragraphs and then sat up with a start when he came to one that spoke of how senior members of the team had subjected him to "Sir Gary"(Sobers) jibes when on a flight to the Caribbean. A few minutes later, a colleague who was sitting next to him told Irfan Pathan that I had written the profile.

Brendon McCullum is no opening batsman, and his talents will remain further unfulfilled while he continues in the role, writes Chris Rattue in the New Zealand Herald.

His technique is too risky, too loose. McCullum, who has a decent test average by New Zealand standards, doesn't look like an opener. He doesn't have the application to adapt his game either.

"When Justin Langer and Matthew Hayden tore into opposition bowling attacks, they did so with a sense of control. It did not look reckless," writes Mark Richardson in the New Zealand Herald. "If this expansive top order wants to do Test cricket justice, they must pay more than lip service to it and apply more of the proven basics of the game."

Unlike the truly great attacking openers - a rare breed including Australian Matthew Hayden, who is about to take up the T20 cudgels at the age of 40 - McCullum lacks a base from which to consistently launch his brilliant shot-making against new ball attacks. Hayden destroyed opponents with a presence that said he had learnt the opener's craft, and then expanded upon that.

The cricketwithballs blog says cricket is run by a 1 % minority - administrators and politicians - while the 99%, the fans, have no say. The blog lists the shortcomings of the ICC and all its member boards, and suggests fans take a more active role by emailing the ICC with suggestions for what changes could be made to the way the game is run.

We can all sit around with our friends lazily whining about the abominable job the ICC has done to run cricket, or we can type down our thoughts on just what we think they should be doing. We can ask for minutes of their meetings to be made public. We can ask for a fans associations to be allowed to represent the fans. We can mention that the world cup is for the world. We can tell them the true marketing value of Tests. And we can remind them that this is a game that people only make money from this game because of our love for it.

In Mid-Day, Shishir Hattangadi, the former Mumbai captain, responds to Ajit Agarkar's decision to return home from Cuttack after being dropped for the Ranji Trophy match against Orissa, and Zaheer Khan's ensuing criticism of the Mumbai team management.

In the 35 years that I [Hattangadi] have seen Mumbai's cricket (and I must be honest in saying that watching both of you [Agarkar and Zaheer] has given me as much joy), I have met people I have loved, hated and been indifferent to. But I have never been able to doubt their intent of having the good of Mumbai's cricket at heart. Your myopic assessment of individuals is obviously based on an intuitive vision and first-hand experience. I trust you will use this same vision if and when you see something amiss in the corridors of power of the Board of Control for Cricket in India.

It is often said that New Zealand raise their game when they face their Trans-Tasman rivals Australia but the reality over the past decade is quite different, writes Will Brodie in the Sydney Morning Herald.

It’s as if sports-starved fans have contrived to accept the myth of Kiwi competitiveness out of hope for a compelling Australia v New Zealand series, desperate to avoid the dullness of the past decade of Test cricket played between these two teams.

In the Guardian, Mike Selvey writes of one of the most exciting young pacemen around, Pat Cummins, and the dilemma he presents for Australia vis-a-vis protecting him from the rigours of international cricket.

There are two points at issue here. First, injury prevention is a worthy enough aim, but should it be the primary consideration or should fast bowling be regarded as a high-risk occupation? Motor sport would be a whole lot safer, after all, if they all drove a little slower. Thus, play less cricket and there is less chance of injury. Bit facile that, but then again, if indeed injury prevention is high on the priority list, what is the most appropriate way of implementing this?