Has anyone up there contemplated life after Graeme Smith, Jacques Kallis and Mark Boucher? They had better do so sooner rather than later, says Telford Vice in Business Day.

Individually, Smith, Kallis and Boucher will leave some of the deepest impressions on South African cricket that will ever be left. Collectively, they have ruled the Proteas’ dressing room for almost 10 years. The most emphatically competitive of them is the one who will be the first to go. I have known Boucher since he was a shy, flop-haired schoolboy and I will never know a human being more focused on winning.

Kallis always seems to be somewhere else, even when he is in the next chair at a dinner table. Few cricketers are blessed with his talent, but his greatest gift is his supernatural ability to shut out everything unneeded as he goes about wielding all that talent at the opposition. There is no captain in cricket quite like Smith, who wears his heart not on his sleeve but on a chin he juts at the world with cartoon carelessness.

There are reports of a rift between him and Virender Sehwag, he has to deal with senior players coming in and out of the side, and young players under-performing, his captaincy is attracting criticism; yet the BCCI says it does not take MS Dhoni's statement that he may retire from one format of the game in 2013 seriously. When will the administrators take the pressure on Dhoni seriously? Rohit Mahajan asks in Outlook.

Dhoni’s ODI runs have led to his partial rehabilitation in the affections of fans—confirming the irrationality, and brevity, of public memory. But spare a thought for Dhoni—he’s not been given the team he wanted, he’s mentally and physically fatigued. He has spoken often about a tiring excess of cricket, that he might give up Test cricket. It’s a cry for help that the BCCI has refused to heed

Elmo Rodrigopulle, writing in the Sunday Observer, says Neville Casiechetty and Ranil Abeynaike were outstanding cricketers who excelled in different eras.

Neville showed his prowess with the bat in the early and mid fifties. He learnt his cricket, like did most Bens by first playing softball cricket at the St.Lucia’s Cathedral Square. From there he graduated to the first team at St. Benedict’s , and what a batsman he turned out to be. He was the quintissential batsman that spectators yearned to see. And he seldom let them down.

Ranil was a fine allrounder and a classy genteleman. He batted and bowled left handed and after a successful stint for the school by the sea, he played for SSC with great success and the national cap was not long in coming ... After his playing days were over, he moved to Australia where he learnt the art of preparing wickets and served as a curator at the SSC. He also excelled as an international cricket commentator for many TV channels. He recently completed 25 years of cricket commentating.

Stuart MacGill, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, says it's important to embrace an individual's bowling style and try to enhance their strengths, hoping they get it right more often than not.

The reason I hadn't said anything to him [Steve Smith, during the BBL] in the nets is because I couldn't see anything wrong with the way he was preparing. He has undoubted talent with the ball, and I consider his future to be as a bowling all-rounder who brings the added bonus of being able win matches for Australia with the bat. Yes, he could bowl better during matches. I have no doubt that he stays awake at night thinking just that. But if a 22-year-old surrounded by everything that he loved didn't get a little distracted every now and then, you'd call for the men in white coats.

Matthew Wade, the Australia wicketkeeper, has revealed that he was diagnosed with cancer when he was 16. The Sydney Morning Herald talks to Wade about his battle with the disease and how it affected him.

''It was just a surreal sort of thing. It didn't hit home until I sat there and they told me basically that I was going to go through chemotherapy and lose my hair and all that sort of stuff. As a young bloke at 16, I think that's when it hit home that this was pretty serious. Before that I didn't really know, I just thought I'd have an operation and it would be taken care of. Then, sitting down and talking about it, I realised how serious it was and I was pretty lucky to get through it.''

Cheteshwar Pujara, speaking to BCCI.tv in an interview, says his problems with fitness are behind him and he's focussed completely on the game.

Fitness wise I have completely recovered and there are no issues with the knee. I had the ACL injury for which I had a surgery. It was disappointing because I was out when I was in form. It took me five months to recover but now I am very confident. The foremost thing for a cricketer is being fit on the field. You shouldn’t have any niggles or pain when you play and should be able to focus on the game. I have gotten there now.

In Supercricket, Kepler Wessels writes that New Zealand would be better off without their intimidation tactics and just continue to play the game hard. South Africa should learn to be ruthless and focus on learning to win consistently, rather than experimenting to find the best combination needed to win.

It is time for the team management to show their hand as far as what they believe the best one-day combination for South Africa is at the moment. Against Sri Lanka the Proteas experimented so much that the series ended in a disorganised fashion. The last two matches resulted in two losses and what should have been a five-nil series victory ended in a rather untidy three-two win. Unfortunately during this experimental period not a great deal was revealed as to exactly what the best combination is for South Africa in the one-day format.

India's national selectors and the BCCI must now ask the critical questions of Sachin Tendulkar. Retirements from international sport are deeply personal and deservedly so, but is it really time for others to make decisons for Tendulkar? Gaurav Kalra writes in Cricketnext.

Cricket has often shown us how a man's destiny may or may not be in his own hands. For every Imran Khan who bids farewell on the day he wins a World Cup, there's a Javed Miandad, crawling out in ignominy. For every Sunil Gavaskar who produces a master-class in his final skirmish with an arch rival, there is a Kapil Dev who zealously drags an inadequate body towards a personal milestone. Cricketers are a self-serving breed but unlike us average Joes this is not a character flaw. They draw sustenance for the daily grind from the streak.

“Go when people ask why and not why not,” was Vijay Merchant’s sagacious advice to all cricketers, but most find themselves betwixt and between this. Choosing when to retire is one of the hardest decisions for an elite sportsman, and countless studies show that many have got it wrong, writes Ayaz Memon in Livemint.

Retirement is a complex and painful process in any walk of life, but even more so for an elite sportsperson. Research shows most athletes are poorly prepared for retiring. They miss the competition, the money and the adulation. They are also scared of adjustments to a new identity and a new way of life.

Alastair Cook, who wasn't part of England's Twenty20 plans, was added to the squad as injury cover, following his new-found one-day form. However, his inclusion has a certain vagueness attached to it because they didn't specify exactly who was injured, writes Barney Ronay in the Guardian.

It is tempting to conclude that this minor confusion is a consequence of emphatic success in the 50-over series sploshing over into the Twenty20. Given his status and his superlative form, it seems fair to conclude that England want Cook in the Twenty20 team. Injuries, as yet unspecified, have given an opportunity. But the lack of clarity gives a perception of baggage attached to the selection that still presents a minor distraction.

Ricky Ponting says he wants to continue playing Test cricket and that he feels he can continue to contribute to the success of the team. I believe he can, as he proved recently in the Test series against India, but I also believe it will be the selectors again who will have to call a halt to his Test career when the time comes, writes Michael Slater for Wide World of Sport.

There has been plenty said about the way Ponting's one-day career has ended so seemingly abruptly. If I was one of the selectors I would have gone to Ponting the day before he was dropped and suggested that he take the opportunity to announce his retirement, in exchange for a final farewell game at Bellerive Oval in front of his adoring home crowd.

Knowing Ponting he would have looked me squarely in the eye and told me that he wanted to continue playing. If the selectors wanted to end his career, then the blood would have to be on their hands. For all I know that very scenario may have occurred. The point is he was never going to retire while he still had the passion to train and play at the highest level.

In the Hindu, Greg Chappell writes: Readers in India might find it hard to believe that the selectors have called stumps on the ODI career of one of Australia's most decorated players. The outpouring of emotion in Australia will be noteworthy, but restrained, compared to what I imagine would happen in India if the same fate befell Sachin Tendulkar.

One of the great strengths of Australian cricket is that we have a robust, and transparent, selection system. The National Selection Panel is independent and appointed by the Board and is not subject to interference. John Inverarity and his panel have been vested with the authority to make decisions of this magnitude.

At some stage in every great player's career, the selectors will have to decide whether giving the champion a few more innings is a better return on investment than giving the next potential champion a start in his career. If it is not, then the tough call must be made.

After the incident at the Gabba, where R Ashwin appealed for a run out against Lahiru Thirimanne who was backing up too far at the non-striker's end, Greg Baum, in the Sydney Morning Herald, dug up some history of the beginnings of the Mankad.

Mankad, a left-armer, twice ran out Australian opener Bill Brown while backing up on India's tour of Australia in 1947. The first time was in a tour match at the SCG, and followed a clear warning from Mankad to Brown. The match is better remembered for Bradman's 100th first-class century ...

But Bradman, the Australian captain, was mystified by the fuss. ''There was absolutely no feeling in the matter as far as we were concerned, for we considered it quite a legitimate part of the game,'' he subsequently wrote. ''For the life of me, I can't understand why [the press] questioned his sportsmanship. The laws of cricket make it quite clear that the nonstriker must keep within his ground until the ball has been delivered. If not, why is the provision there which enables the bowler to run him out? By backing up too far or too early, the nonstriker is very obviously gaining an unfair advantage.''

If Ryan Gosling - Time Magazine's coolest person of the year in 2011 - were a one-day player, he'd be a finisher, reckons Rob Smyth. In the Guardian's Spin blog, he investigates what makes the Bevans and Dhonis of the world tick.

Bevan was a miracle of imperturbable efficiency; Christian Ryan wrote he had a "calculator for a brain and a tweezer for a bat". In one sense Dhoni is Finisher 2.0, because he has added huge hitting to Bevan's repertoire of deft boundaries and furious running between the wickets. Bevan hit 21 sixes in 232 ODIs; Dhoni has struck 136 in 201. Then again, Bevan rarely needed to resort to big shots, so well did he manage his innings. It's almost impossible to split them. If you were picking an all-time one-day XI, he and Dhoni would be two of the first names on the teamsheet.

MS Dhoni recently said India's three senior batsmen could not play in the same XI because they concede an extra 20 runs in the field. The Indian Express' Sandeep Dwivedi says Dhoni is justified in saying that because runs have become easier to score in ODI cricket than stop. Indian batsmen have had a lethargic attitude since the days of Dilip Vengsarkar, he says, and just scoring centuries without contributing in the field may not be enough anymore.

The modest coach tried his best to dissuade the young cricketers from aping Vengsarkar’s non-existent pre-batting workout but it was futile. The impressionable boys had cracked the secret of “effortless” batting by watching their hero in action. Endless laps of cricket field, frog jumps or sprint sessions that their coach advocated were a waste of time, they concluded. Rolling wrists followed by a draining net session was the recipe for success at the top level. Actually that was the template Indian batsmen have followed for years.

In the Daily Star, Bishwajit Roy says the crowds for the ongoing Bangladesh Premier League have been an embarrassment for the organisers. The other worry about the tournament, he says, is that the local batsmen have not been among the runs.

Only on two occasions - both involving hometown franchise, Chittagong Kings, playing at the Zohur Ahmed Chowdhury Stadium - did the crowd really look like a decent one. Otherwise, despite the cut down of the ticket prices, it has been quite an embarrassment for the organisers who have only looked at each other for answers for such low interest.

A post on the Old Batsman's blog says Tendulkar's greatness will not be diminished if he finishes on 99 international centuries. The blog tells the story of how a scientist turned statistician tried to find the extra four runs that would take Don Bradman's average up to 100.00, but how it is probably better that Bradman finished on 99.94.

Yet there is an undeniable romance to his finishing on 99, if that's what he does. It's the number he'll be remembered by, purely because it's the number that best represents the epic grandeur of his enduring brilliance. If the number shows both his greatness and his humanity, if it tells his story the way 99.94 tells Bradman's, then it will be perfect whether it's 100 or not.

Simon Hughes, writing in the Daily Telegraph, takes a look at the hard work, new rules and bits of luck that have contributed to England's one-day triumph in the UAE.

Two new balls: The use of a new ball at each end is huge advantage to England, now [that] they have such an impressive seam attack. Stuart Broad and James Anderson were missing from the one-day series in India which England lost so heavily, leaving Steven Finn as a lone strike force. Now there is no let up on the Pakistan batsmen, who are anyway technically flawed.

Sachin Tendulkar has played far too long, and for the most part with unmatched brilliance, to wait for some kindly soul to tell him that he is past his shelf-life, says Nirmal Shekar, writing in the Hindu.

In sport, quite often, not being a genius may be a virtue of sorts. For, the very tag, ‘genius,' might lead you to delude yourself into the belief that nothing is impossible, even after 22 or 23 years of wear and tear in international sport as the country's most celebrated sports icon. A lot has been said — especially by former sportspersons who themselves stayed on well beyond their use-by date — about Sachin Tendulkar's ODI career. Whatever the intentions, these gems of seemingly timely advice are clearly uncalled for. No matter his form in the ODI tri-series down under, Sachin Tendulkar will be the first to know when his time is up.

Ricky Ponting chose this fate. At any time since relinquishing the Test captaincy almost a year ago, he could have announced his own retirement, as a Test player, or one-day player, or both. He decided to persevere until the selectors dropped him. Now they have," writes Greg Baum in the Sydney Morning Herald.

But one intrigue remains. If he finds he can live easily with this way of bowing out, then he will again submit to the selectors' will as a Test player. If, perchance, he discovers this exit to be demeaning, then he must leap first, choosing his time and place.But when?

In the Age, Chloe Saltau writes: " ... the most compelling reason for Ponting to stay on is that the batsmen on the fringe of the Test team are not presenting irresistable cases to push him out of it. Phillip Hughes and Usman Khawaja have both taken significant steps backwards this summer, and Shaun Marsh did not cope with the blowtorch that settled on him in his first summer as a Test batsman, in the position that Ponting has owned for the bulk of 162-Test career."

South Africa opener Richard Levi has hit the headlines with an electrifying 117 off 51 in Sunday's T20 against New Zealand. Now, he will have to deal with the hugely inflated expectations from fans and the media, says Rob Houwing in Sport24.

Not for a second am I suggesting Richard Ernst Levi will come to be known as a one-knock wonder - quite clearly he has some special qualities as a limited-overs opening batsman - but he is probably going to find it hard, at least for a while, to live up to the giddying, meteoric hype he created in this match.

People will flock to see him in one-day combat - there’s got to be at least a fair chance he will somehow winkle his way into the Proteas’ ODI plans on this very tour - and be “disappointed” for the short- to medium-term future whenever he gets out for a cracking 45 or 50: that’s how quickly expectation can take hold in sport.

In the Mumbai Mirror, Sriram Veera talks to former Australia fast bowler Michael Kasprowicz, who reveals the tips former India fast bowler Javagal Srinath gave him on the 1998 tour to India.

Srinath told him two simple things that changed Kaspa’s tour around. “I notice that you are drinking too much water. You are gulping it. Just sip some and spit out,” Srinath told Kaspa. “I was amazed by it. Because it was so hot I was drinking water at every opportunity at the end of an over at the outfield. And now Srinath tells me I am drinking too much. Don’t gulp, just sip. And it worked,” Kaspa told Mumbai Mirror yesterday.

Then came the second advice. Kaspa recalled asking Srinath for tips on reverse swing. “He told me just keep the ball dry. Both advices fitted and worked for me.” In the second innings, he took 5-28 from 18 overs and bowled Australia to a Test win. “Because you were so sweaty and the ball would get wet. I said ‘Thank you’ to Srinath. That was the key. After that spell I started to feel more comfortable and confident in Indian conditions.”

Why is Brett Lee working at a clothing store? Aditya Iyer has more in the Indian Express.

Ravindra Jadeja's jackpot at the IPL auctions makes him the latest in a list of small-town cricketers to strike it rich, literally overnight. The Indian Express profiles the stories of some of the IPL's nouveau riche.

Those close to Jadeja remember the more difficult times. He lost his mother Lata in 2005 in an accident; the trauma affected him so much that he wanted to quit cricket. His coach Mahendra Singh Chauhan made sure Jadeja stayed focussed. After India won the Under-19 World Cup in 2008, came the first shower of riches for Jadeja, who was the vice-captain of the team: Rs 15 lakh from the BCCI, a Rs 25,000 monthly salary from Reliance for the next three years, and a Rs 20 lakh contract for two years for IPL-1. “With money, life has certainly improved. It makes you and your family secure,” Jadeja says. He went on to play for the Rajasthan Royals in IPL-1 and was bought by the Kochi Tuskers in the third edition of the league for nearly a million dollars, though he never got to play that tournament. Since then, his net worth has climbed steadily.

The Mervyn Westfield case proves that the spot-fixing malaise is not restricted to players from any particular country, writes Vic Marks in the Guardian. Inconsequential domestic matches will only encourage temptations, he says.

On the broader front this tawdry episode might resonate with county committees and the England and Wales Cricket Board when they reconsider – yet again – the Morgan report. Westfield's demise came about in a meaningless match at Durham, which happened to be televised and which was therefore available in the subcontinent. It was the ideal game for a spot of fixing since no one beyond Chester-le Street and Chelmsford cared a jot about the outcome.

"With Clarke unavailable for one ODI, it seemed logical that either the vice-captain, David Warner, took his place or Haddin returned to the side," writes Ian Chappell in the Courier Mail. "Neither occurred and Ponting was re-appointed for a day. A vice-captain won't learn much about leadership by watching someone else perform the task."

As recently as Mark Taylor's captaincy reign, Australia had Ian Healy, Shane Warne, Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting, all capable of leading the side if something happened to the skipper. In the past couple of weeks, Australia have plucked George Bailey out of the first-class ranks to captain the Twenty20 side and now the vice-captain of the ODI side has been passed over. This gap in the Australian cricket education process needs to be rectified quickly.

Sports psychologist Rudi Webster who has worked with the India and West Indies sides, writes in the Mid Day that Yuvraj's power of perception of his illness will go a long way in fast-tracking his recovery from cancer.

Yuvraj's thinking, attitude and mental state will be critical in his recovery because they will enable him to tap into the enormous healing powers that already lie within him. For centuries yogis have been telling us about the powerful effects of the mind on the health and function of the body.

Yuvraj will change the path and trajectory of his recovery if he changes the limiting beliefs and values, and the negative thinking and mental pictures that are likely to hold him back. The values, thoughts and pictures that he puts in his mind today will determine what he becomes tomorrow.

Sanjay Jagdale, the BCCI secretary, tells the Hindu's Vijay Lokapally about his determination to improve the standard of domestic cricket - even if it means Ranji Trophy matches at neutral venues - and, subsequently, the stock of the national team.

"We have to stop thinking of local benefits and have national interest in mind. If we want to perform well overseas on seaming and bouncy pitches, the steps will have to be taken now. I want the juniors to play on such pitches. Look at the pitches we had at Valsad and here (in Indore for the Duleep Trophy). Good for cricket. We have to get our priorities right. Please give us two years..." The board is also launching a scheme to educate the curators. "This is being done on top priority," Jagdale insisted.

Fans don’t accept failure, won’t tolerate heroes having frailties they themselves have, writes Rohit Mahajan in the Outlook magazine. But illness doesn’t discriminate. Yuvraj Singh, the Man of the Tournament in the 2011 World Cup, is currently undergoing treatment for cancer in the United States. But, as Mahajan writes, Yuvraj is focused not merely on getting well, but on getting back on the field. Having gone through this difficult phase, he’s also recognised the good he could do by working on cancer awareness.

“That’s a wonderful thought,” says Harmala Gupta, 58, who was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 33 when she was in Canada, where she got treated. “There is so much negativity about cancer in our country. People say things like, ‘How did this happen to you, you are such a good person!’ As if cancer happens to bad people. Yuvraj has an opportunity to do a great deed, like Armstrong has done in the US. Cancer treatment is very expensive in India, and there’s no health insurance. That needs to change. He can educate people, inspire them.”

In 12 months Alastair Cook has gone from non-selection to automatic pick in the ODI side. The Telegraph's Simon Hughes writes that his twin tons in UAE showed just how the England one-day captain has managed the transformation.

Cook is resourceful where his opening partner, Kevin Pietersen, is inflexible. Cook takes an over or two to assess the conditions and the pitch. In spite of the compulsory attacking field at the start – therefore with enticing boundary opportunities – he plays himself in. He does not look to assault the opening bowler as an Adam Gilchrist or a Sanath Jayasuriya might. He shapes to nudge and nurdle for a couple of overs and keep his wicket intact. He quickly sizes up the percentage shots and the productive areas.

Kevin Pietersen - the man who dominated both Shane Warne and Muttiah Muralitharan early in his career - has quite explicitly blamed the DRS for changing the way he played spin bowling. Andy Bull writes in the Guardian's Spin blog that Pietersen's batting isn't the only thing that has changed since the advent of the DRS.

During Pakistan's series victory over England it felt as though there was hardly a single facet of Test match cricket that had not been changed, one way or another, by the DRS; batting technique, bowling technique, the balance between bat and ball, the decision-making processes of the umpires and the experience of the spectators in the ground, all had been altered.

On the first day of the third Test, for instance, as well as 16 wickets there were eight referrals, seven of them for LBW appeals. The nuanced rhythm of the day's play, which should allow for languorous contemplation as well as demanding rapt attention, was disrupted. The narrative was reduced to a series of DRS talking points.

Nawroz Mangal, the Afghanistan captain, is the rugged face of Afghan cricket with a story fit for the big screen, says Shahid Hashmi, writing for Yahoo Cricket.

When Nawroz Mangal led Afghanistan against Pakistan last week, it was the end of a long journey which started with his family's flight from Soviet troops, and continued when he picked up bat and ball as a young refugee ... "That period was difficult for all the family," the Afghan captain told AFP in an interview. "We were financially hit and living in refugee camps was very tough on us. The best part of those ugly days was that I learnt this beautiful game of cricket."

Why is it that subcontinent teams receive more criticism for not being able to handle bounce than England, Australia and South Africa receive for not being able to adapt to spinning conditions, Dileep Premachandran asks in the National. Two more questions: Why hasn't England's No. 1 ranking been questioned after they were whitewashed, and why has Ian Bell not got as much stick as Suresh Raina for being incompetent in alien conditions?

India's cricketers have been ridiculed in recent times for their abysmal showings in England and Australia. Reams have been written about the batsmen's inadequacies against fast bowling and especially short-pitched deliveries. In some cases, it is not just their techniques that have been questioned, but their toughness and appetite for the game. You rarely see such scathing criticism when England, Australia or South Africa fail in the subcontinent or the Middle East.

Michael Bevan talks to the Daily Star's Mohammad Isam about his career, why he was able to finish so many games, and his stint as coach of Chittagong Kings in the Bangladesh Premier League.

"As a person, I am quite reliable and dependable. So I felt it was my duty to be there at the end. I think the other reason was that my strategy was pretty good. I timed and paced chasing runs correctly. It gave me a chance to be there till the end."

In the Hindu, Greg Chappell recalls a training session in 2005 when MS Dhoni first made him sit up and take notice. Chappell also analyses the effectiveness of Dhoni's batting and captaincy, and his significance to world cricket.

Dhoni's grounding in tennis-ball cricket is obvious in the way he bats. He has an inimitable and unorthodox technique. With his strength, he is capable of hitting balls into places that only few others can conceive. He is the best attacking player of the yorker I have ever seen. I once saw him hit a James Anderson yorker straight back over the bowler's head for six. It was awesome.

In a world that seems to revolve around money, is there anything about modern cricket that inspires? Tom Alter asks on Firstpost.

Money has spun its vicious web, and all of us, so intent in praying to it, have forgotten that it has to come from somewhere – some scheme, some scam. It no longer comes from ticket sales – nothing as simple and human as that – it comes from air-conditioned rooms filled with sweet suits and plump faces and vampire thoughts. Cell phones spout forth numbers and figures – statistics not of bat and ball, but of balance and bank. Plots are hatched – not how to dismiss a batsman, but to capture viewers and create markets where they do not exist.

In Outlook, Rohit Mahajan says Yuvraj Singh will show the same ability to bounce back from his illness that he did to star in the World Cup when people had written him off.

It’s not a sad story, it needn’t be a sad story, for it’s the story of a hero, and a hero must smile through pain as he does through pleasure. And hasn’t Yuvraj Singh had many reasons to smile? Didn’t April mark the pinnacle of his career? Written off when the World Cup started as ‘finished and over-the-hill’, Yuvraj became the Man of the Tournament, winning four Man of the Match awards. On March 24, 2011, as he guided India to a win over defending champions Australia, propelling them into the semi-finals, every young boy in the country wanted to grow up to be Yuvraj Singh.

After Sachin Tendulkar was not named in the XI for India's Commonwealth Bank Series match against Australia in Adelaide, the Times of India's Vinay Nayudu documented the reactions of fans and experts to Tendulkar's exclusion.

On the other hand, as expected, the general sentiment among spectators at the Oval was largely of disappointment. "It's disgusting," said an elderly gentleman with a big wave of his hand. A keen cricket follower, Todd Russell said he felt like being taken for a ride. "I was fortunate to see Sachin in action during the Test match here, but missing him today is again a disappointment. I guess everybody wants to see Sachin in action."

The final of the Ford Trophy produced a scarcely believable turnaround in the last five overs, with Central Districts going on to win. Dylan Cleaver captures the drama in his match report for the New Zealand Herald.

Central Districts were 225-8 chasing Auckland's 282-8. Mason's highest score in 96 List A matches for CD was 20 - yes 20. The man at the other end, Marty Kain, had scored a total of five runs in an eight-match career. Logic insisted Auckland would win, giving them a successive domestic limited-overs double. Centurion Neal Parlane would be the hero, the Asti Spumante had been delivered to the visitors' changing rooms and "Auckland" was in the process of being etched on to the trophy.

Scyld Berry writes in the Sunday Telegraph that England must turn to pace to put Pakistan's batsmen on the backfoot in the one-day series coming up.

When the first of four day/night internationals begins on Monday, England will go the same way — downhill rapidly — if their pace bowlers cannot strike decisively. England have won a single competitive match since September, a Twenty20 international against India, and four more defeats would take their total to 12 to set against that solitary win.

In the Observer Barney Ronay writes that the series could be the last chance for Kevin Pietersen to rescue his flagging one-day career.

Pietersen's return at the top of the order is a reprise of the role he attempted, with some success, at the World Cup, before injury struck. It is also something approaching a final roll of the dice for a player once recognised as unquestionably England's top 50-over gun, but who has not scored an ODI hundred for three years and whose lustre as a match-winner has unquestionably dimmed.

In the Independent on Sunday, Stephen Brenkley writes that this will be a big series for Pietersen and Joss Buttler.

It hasn't taken very long for fast bowler Doug Bracewell to cement his place in the New Zealand Test side. In the Herald on Sunday Andrew Alderson talks to him about childhood training, IPL money, food in India and more.

Brendon [Bracewell] ran the original Bracewell academy at Te Puna, just out of Tauranga (he now runs a similar concept in Napier). Boys aged 10 to 13 would come in over the summer to train a week at a time. Graduates have included current Black Caps Kane Williamson (21) and Trent Boult (22).

Doug grew up needing to be physically and mentally tough to survive. That has since prompted a description of him as "21 going on 31".

The highlight (or lowlight for some) was a visit to what Bracewell snr coined "Get Hard Park" in the fields surrounding Te Puna Rugby Club. Boys would be cajoled into shuttle runs and sprints up a hill. After stumps were pulled on a day of "test" cricket, recruits often played rugby followed by barbecues before retiring to their bunkroom barracks.

In the Hindu, K Gopinathan recalls snapping a photo of Richard Hadlee taking his record-breaking 374th Test wicket at Bangalore in 1988.

“Thank you for capturing the special moment,” Hadlee wrote on the photograph. Then Kuggeleijn rushed into the room saying he too wanted a signed photograph.

Twenty-five years later, I met Sir Richard at Friday's press conference. The great man remembered. “Yes,” he said, “You got it from a top angle, it has become history.”

Glenn Turner, writing on stuff.co.nz, dispels some of the myths surrounding ODI cricket. There is no need, he says, to keep wickets in hand for the death overs, consolidate after the fall of a wicket or set targets. When broken down, the game, he says, comes down to scoring runs without worrying about losing wickets and restricting runs in the field.

"A good score on this pitch is ... " The obvious answer once again should be "as many as we can get". This may appear a flippant answer, but it is a senseless question. The infinite numbers of factors that come into play throughout a game are hard enough to judge at the end of the contest, let alone at the beginning. This is just another addition to the dreaded predeterminations that players are often exposed to.

Yuvraj Singh's illness should not be turned into a spectacle, Pradeep Magazine writes in the Hindustan Times. The way details of his ailment have been treated as gossip, he says, reflects on the fact that Indians treat their sports stars as commodities.

His fans have a right to know what his condition is, and by when he could be back on the cricket field. The problem arises when we treat even this personal tragedy as a matter of public discourse in which speculation, gossip, fact and fiction merge so that the story becomes too soppy or even juicy.

Why is India suddenly using a rotation strategy for the Commonwealth Bank Series when they have refused to use one in Tests for the last year? Ashish Magotra writes on Firstpost. Moreover, he asks, why are they resting players when the next major tournament is the IPL?

In fact, more than anything else, it makes one wonder why the batsmen need to be ‘rested’ now? Are they saving up their best for the IPL? Do they want to be fit for the ‘big’ event? What other reason could this selection committee and the team management have of suddenly lapsing into a rotation policy in the middle of a tough tour of Australia?

As IPL evolves, it will need to upgrade its process of selecting players, writes Desh Gaurav Chopra Sekhri in the Indian Express. While it is in the enviable situation whereby the world’s best cricketers and overall talent pool, with very few exceptions, are usually available for selection, Sekhri writes, the process of player selection, retention, and transfer will have to develop to keep pace with the rapidly evolving (and escalating) pay scales and related requirements to ensure parity and equitable distribution.

Universally, the auction system is the one aspect of the IPL most feel requires immediate change. A system designed to select players on the basis of market forces, the auction is conceivably meant to determine players’ values, along the lines of a player draft as per the US leagues or any other professional sports league. Its implementation, however, leaves much to be desired, and this is due to the fact that draft systems or player trades/ loans evolve over time, and are not based entirely on individual parameters that revolve around money.

A recent insurance commercial featuring Yuvraj Singh, who is currently undergoing treatment for cancer in the United States of America, has come under criticism, with the insurance company being accused of cashing in cynically on the cricketer's condition. But, writes Sandipan Deb in the Mint, what is astonishing in Yuvraj's masterful handling of the situation

The controversy on the ethicality of running the ad is redundant. Yuvraj Singh, faced with the most fearful crisis in his life, has just shown us how to brilliantly manage perception, and come out stronger and bigger. We want to see this man, with his wonderful talent and now-evident titanic willpower, back on the field for India, as soon as he thinks he is ready

In four tests New Zealand's Doug Bracewell has taken taken 21 wickets, and inspired a historic win against Australia in Hobart. But, as Mark Geenty finds out in the Fairfax NZ News, if Bracewell hadn't broken his ankle on a rugby trip to Perth aged 17, rugby might have just won over cricket.

The oval ball game was king for young Bracewell, a promising first five-eighth or fullback who emerged through Rathkeale College into Wairarapa-Bush age-grade sides. He'd played at Hurricanes junior tournaments against the Whitelock brothers, rising stars with Manawatu, and wanted a taste for more. His father, Brendon, arranged him a season in Perth on leaving school. Then, perhaps to New Zealand Cricket's eternal relief, fate intervened.

In the Hindu, Greg Chappell has a column on what top batsmen should do when going through a poor run of form. He says that instead of obsessing over replays and looking to tweak their techniques, batsmen will be better off if they "take a deep breath, start watching the ball again and trust their instincts".

The human brain is multi-layered; in simple terms, the ‘conscious' mind is the hardware that deals with the big-picture whilst the ‘sub-conscious' mind is the software that runs the physical programme.

When all is well, the player allows each part of the brain to do its job. This could be as simple as saying to oneself ‘watch the ball' — which gives the conscious mind something to do while letting the sub-conscious mind get on with what it does best.

The Economist's sports blog Game Theory looks at how DRS has altered many aspects of cricket - the way batsmen play spinners, the increased boldness of umpires when it comes to lbw decisions, the reduction in the tension between teams, and the introduction of a new tactical angle to the sport.

DRS has also made cricket more civil. Because the teams themselves now have a stake in the decision-making, captains can no longer berate an umpire’s perceived bias or accuse a batsman of poor sportsmanship. If they are convinced of their case, they can refer it to a higher authority. It is now unthinkable that play might be halted for a day because of accusations of umpiring impropriety, as happened following the Shakoor Rana affair during England’s tour of Pakistan in 1987. The recent series was played in a fine spirit even though the two sides have a long history of cricketing acrimony.

With tours to Sri Lanka and India coming up, Andy Flower has plenty to work to do with England's batsmen. With the exception of the relatively inexperienced Eoin Morgan, dropping even one of the senior players will be a big call because if one of them's left out now, the chances of a comeback are slim, writes Michael Vaughan in the Telegraph.

For the next eight months before India, Flower will be working on improving how the players pick off ones and twos. A lot of net sessions will be geared so the lads can play in the subcontinent. They have boundary options, but you have to be able to go down the wicket on these slow low wickets. You cannot punch the ball off the back foot as the old way of working the ball off a length for ones and twos is dangerous because of the pace modern spinners bowl at – Abdur Rehman was bowling at 56mph.

Dropped from the one-day squad after averaging just 8.50 in the three Tests in the UAE, Ian Bell is itching to rectify his game and make a strong comeback. In his column for the Independent, Bell wants to get to Sri Lanka ten days before their first warm-up game and work on his game against spin.

Physically, I don't feel as though I need a break. Some of the younger English players have been playing domestic cricket there and, if it's possible, I'd jump at the chance to do something similar. When you play on the subcontinent, it's vital to get used to the climate and the conditions. In Sri Lanka, I expect it to be hot and humid, so practising there would be far more useful than doing batting sessions in an indoor school.

Australia's Damien Fleming was involved in probably two of the most famous death overs in World Cup history, in 1996 and 1999. He recounts those nerve-wracking moments to Aditya Iyer of the Indian Express.

When it was one to win off four, Fleming says an interesting incident occurred on the field. “I told Tugga that I wanted to come over the wicket to change the line and bowl a yorker. But Steve didn’t even look at me. He said ‘Yeah, whatever.’ The captain knew that the ship had already sunk,” reckons Fleming. The pacer did so eventually, and the rest as he says is ‘bizarre history’.

Jonathan Agnew, writing for the BBC, says after the debacle in the UAE, England now have some serious thinking to do before the two Test matches in Sri Lanka in March and April.

I simply don't think its right that players can be picked match after match if they are not performing, and it would not be remotely right if the same top six rock up and play in the first Test in Galle because they have failed here. They need to give someone else an opportunity, because Sri Lanka would be a good chance to blood a young player.

Expectations of a run-soaked series on docile pitches were confounded by Pakistan's underestimated spin bowlers writes Vic Marks in the Guardian. Now, the England batsmen may be wondering, whether their Test careers are secure.

Batsmen, even the best ones, may be afraid of the odd unplayable delivery, but they fear even more not being able to work out how they are going to get their runs. Especially in an age when runs frequently gush at four per over they cannot bear the prospect of suffocation at the crease. On these surfaces – against highly skilled practitioners – the England batsmen could not fathom where they could score. That breeds a certain panic

Doubt can accrue in a batter's psyche like unwanted freight, and spin is often the greatest cause says Jon Hotten, writing in the The Old Batsman blog.

The UAE whitewash does not make England's batsmen bad players, writes Nasser Hussain in the Daily Mail. It means, Hussain writes, that they are not the finished article, and just because they have bashed Australia and India around, it doesn’t mean they have sorted out the game. Cricket has a habit of hitting back and biting you on the backside.

The case of Kevin Pietersen confounds me because he has performed against great bowling but in recent times has struggled against decent bowling. And I haven’t liked the sight of him and others staring at the big screen, shaking their heads after DRS verdicts. It’s the same for both sides. Work it out and get on with it.

Pakistan are in such an improbable high at the moment, in order to sustain their achievements they would have to wait months, writes Osman Samiuddin in the National. Their next assignment is in Sri Lanka in May and after that there is nothing until Tests against Zimbabwe and South Africa early next year.

By then, Misbah will be close to 39 and others such as Younis, Ajmal and Abdur Rehman are also getting on. In any case, a year is a particularly long time in Pakistan's cricket, and a stretch of inactivity unravels the tightness of a side like little else.

In the Mumbai Mirror, Deepak Narayanan likens the IPL to a big family seen in Indian TV soaps, with the powerful patron, successful uncle, bratty teenagers, earnest youngsters, uncared-for step sons, and even an exiled producer. As with those families, irrespective of occasional rifts, he proclaims that the show will go on.

As it often happens with longrunning soaps on TV, the mistake many viewers make is they try and judge this IPL family by the standards that apply to real life. They get angry when one of them gets out-ofturn favours, they are appalled by the high-handedness of some of the elders, they are stunned by the spineless acceptance of arbitrary decisions. In the real world, this would be unacceptable behaviour, the experts fume, forgetting that this isn’t the real world.

In the wake of Sahara's pull-out and the India team's slump, the BCCI has to buckle down and chart a roadmap for the game rather than get entangled in legal battles, writes Sahan Bidappa in Deccan Chronicle.

On a number of occasions in the past, many of the IPL franchises have openly questioned whether the board respects the rights of all the league's stakeholders. At one stage, Royal Challengers Bangalore owner Vijay Mallya, who has served on various committees in the board, had gone to the extent of asking if the franchisees were merely slaves of the BCCI.

In Mid Day, Clayton Murzello talks to former South Africa allrounder Dave Callaghan, who beat cancer in the early 1990s.

"Yuvraj will do well to tell himself, 'by the end of my treatment, I would like to play... for example... next year's IPL (Indian Premier League). A target to work towards is important," said Callaghan. "I told myself (in 1991) that at the end of my treatment which was four to six months, I would like to play one first-class match again."

In the Mumbai Mirror, Sriram Veera wonders why MS Dhoni decided to leave out fast bowler Umesh Yadav and go in with three spinners in the first ODI at the MCG.

“Our loose deliveries were too loose. That was the difference,” Dhoni said at the end of the game. Ah, oh ok. Case solved then. Dhoni also talked about the lack of resources. It’s not clear why he rested Umesh and he also went on to say that “we don’t have a fast-bowling all-rounder”. How does the team view Irfan Pathan? A batsman? A bowler? What?

Following a splendid start to his Test career in India, R Ashwin's stock has dropped in Australia, partly due to his own undoing and partly owing to unimaginative captaincy and dropped catches by his colleagues. In his hurry for instant results, he overused the carrom ball, and eventually his line became predictable, writes G Unnikrishnan in Deccan Herald.

It was quite disappointing to see Ashwin continue to operate in the same way as he did in Tests. Strangely, Ashwin seemed incapable of doing anything different to keep the batsmen under check, as there simply was no urge to fight back – a trait he often showed in the past when batsmen took him on.

Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman may have failed in Australia, but that's no reason to scoff at the legends, writes Suresh Menon in the weekly magazine Outlook.

Tendulkar, Dravid and Laxman have an influence well beyond runs made and victories achieved.

For one, it is entirely possible that Indian cricket itself might have taken a long time to recover from the match-fixing allegations a decade ago. Skipper Mohammed Azharuddin confessed to having manipulated results and without the obvious integrity of men like Dravid and Laxman, and those who have retired like Ganguly, Anil Kumble, Javagal Srinath and Venkatesh Prasad, the game might have been destroyed.

Significantly, these batsmen brought to the game an Indianness, the inherited technique and uniqueness of a nation that is sometimes reduced to the cliche, ‘oriental magic’.

In the New Zealand Herald, David Leggat writes that anything less than a three-Test series is meaningless, for the sake of protecting Test cricket. Three in the ongoing home series against Zimbabwe may be pushing it too far, but one Test isn't enough to prepare either team for further challenges in the season.

Remember the great majority of money comes from broadcasting deals, and put this in a New Zealand context. The turnstiles weren't exactly whirring at McLean Park last week. Would more people have turned up if admission was free? Would the loss in paying customers have made such a huge dent in the NZC coffers?

In Stuff.co.nz, Mark Geenty charts the rise of Tom Latham, son of former New Zealand international Rod.

When he left school and Canterbury Cricket pounced, Latham also had to shed some weight. Fletcher estimates he lost 10 to 15kg under the eye of their trainers. A hooker's build no more. His batting, glovework and outfielding stepped up another notch. Fletcher says his wicketkeeping is good enough to be a backup on tour, and if required could even follow BJ Watling's recent example and step up to a fulltime role.

The frenetic fall of wickets and early finshes to the first two Tests in the UAE will have done little for the bank balances of the Pakistan Cricket Board or the local organising authorities, but the golf clubs of Dubai have probably done all right out of them, with the travelling supporters finding plenty of time to kill, writes Paul Radley in the National.

Is someone sat on the fast-forward button? This Test series was always supposed to be brief, with three matches to be played back to back, and at venues barely 80 miles apart. But this is getting ridiculous now. If this morning brings the same havoc as yesterday’s first session did, this could become the first Test match for the Twitter generation: all over in 140 overs. Hash tag: shockingbatting.

Osman Samiuddin in the National writes that in sport, the business of retirement can be an unsettling one, not only because it is not easy to know whether something irreversible has set inside a player or whether it is merely a temporary slip. While they make make adjustments as they recognise the approaching of the end, what the sportsmen are really doing, writes Samiuddin, is battling the conceit of the rest of us who think we know that it is time for them to leave.

Why should sportsmen care what people say? Why should Dravid, Laxman, Federer go at any time other than of their own choosing?

It is not for them to understand they are past it. This is all they have known. It is what they have sweated towards their entire lives. To expect them to leave voluntarily and suddenly, when others think the time is right is presumptive nonsense.

In the early 20th century, Australia was gripped by a sectarian conflict between Catholics and Protestants, one which was believed to play a part in Donald Bradman not being so popular among some of his team-mates. Before Bradman's time, cricket wasn't free of this divide and it was captured through a sensational divorce trial between a Test cricketer, Arthur Coningham and his wife Alice Dowling, who he claimed was seduced by a Catholic priest Denis O’haran in Sydney. It was a trial which changed Coningham's life, for the worse. Sriram Veera chronicles that passage in Mumbai Mirror.

So the ingredients for a pot boiler were set: A fascinating character, a divorce, a catholic priest, and a nation split in its loyalties. Alice confessed to Coningham about her affair and that the father of their third son was actually O’haran. Coninham saw it as an opportunity to make some money; he tried to blackmail the priest for compensation but when that didn’t work, he went for divorce, naming O’haran as co-respondent and claimed £5000 damages for loss of honour.

After India's twin debacles in England and Australia, Makarand Waingankar in The Hindu asks if there are any solutions in sight to improve Indian cricket. The Talent Resource Development Wing (TRDW) which was successful at one time in fast-tracking Indian players, was inexplicably scrapped.

The BCCI must appoint a fact finding committee under Ganguly. As he is still playing, he will know the ground realities and can decide better. He should be allowed to choose his committee members and present his report of solutions in two months. Asking seniors to retire is no solution. We need to find replacements and start India ‘A' tours immediately.

In the same newspaper, former Australia captain Greg Chappell writes that until fielding and fitness are given more importance, India cannot be successful.

Before the series there appeared to be very little between the two teams but, once they walked out onto the MCG, it was obvious that Australia was the team prepared to do the hard work necessary to win.

Successful teams are just that, a team. They bat and bowl in partnerships and they support their bowlers with a committed fielding effort that leverages the bowling performance

Former Australia fast bowler Jeff Thomson talks to Rohit Bhaskar on bowling to Sir Don Bradman, meeting George Best and the best batsmen he bowled to. More from the Hindustan Times.

It was at Adelaide in 1977-78, when India was touring Australia. Sir Don was batting in a suit, no pads, no gloves, just a bat. He must've been around 70 and hadn't batted for almost 30 years and he was still so good. It was a turf wicket, and I bowled within myself, but there were a couple of young blokes who were bowling at full speed and he was carting them all over the place. Along with meeting Georgie Best, bowling to Bradman is the greatest moment of my life.

There's a lot of speculation that, following the twin failures in UAE, Eoin Morgan's 15-Test career might be over. Andy Bull writes in the Spin blog, that it is important that Morgan bounces back from his current predicament "because he is too talented for his Test career to be over already".

Right now the disparity between Morgan's performances in limited-overs and Test cricket is so great that it feels as though he is shaping up to be the next Michael Bevan, a brilliant one-day player whose flaws mean he in incapable of mastering Test cricket. With Bevan though, the suspicion was that his problems were technical – he could not find a method to cope with short-pitched bowling. Morgan's troubles seem to be in his head, as he struggles to find a way to adapt his game to the demands of Test cricket.