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.

Jonathan Liew, a member of the Daily Telegraph, is put on Stuart Broad's diet for a few days, and tells the tale. The diet is great if you are a fast bowler, he says, or if you like the taste of pureed grass ...

The first delivery arrives in a handsome hessian box. Soulmate give you three meals and two snacks per day, to be eaten roughly three hours apart. In total, this provides about 2,000 calories, although this can vary from diner to diner. Cyclist Ed Clancy, for example, will receive about twice as much. Eagerly, I dig in. The mango and blueberry yoatie – oats smothered in yogurt – is fine; the chicken and peanut salad is particularly impressive, the meat fresh, tender and utterly lean. A pot of nuts, seeds and raisins is less enjoyable – generally, I try not to eat anything you could buy in a pet shop ...

Andrew Strauss should not get caught up in trying to ensure England's series against Pakistan in the UAE is incident-free, Michael Vaughan writes in the Daily Telegraph. England's aggressive body language in the field is one of their biggest strengths, Vaughan says, and they must use it because they will be up against the best bowling attack they have faced since they went to South Africa two winters ago.

Aggression is not all about being lippy. England are aggressive in other ways. In the field it is with their body language and the way they hunt in packs. They crowd the batsman and constantly throw the ball in to the keeper which annoys the opposition and keeps them on the back foot. Matt Prior is at the heart of it all with the tempo he brings to the fielding unit. England have a body language that says “we want to be out here”.

Scyld Berry, in the same paper, says Andrew Strauss and Misbah ul-Haq seem calm and wise, so the usual dose of controversy that England-Pakistan series spark might be missing from the field of play this time around.

Stephen Brenkley, writing in the Independent, says England have a selection conundrum on their hands in Monty Panesar.

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.”

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.

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.

"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.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Will the usage of two new balls in an ODI innings - among a series of changes made to on-field rules - force the ECB to switch to a 50-over format for its one-day competition on the domestic circuit? Steve James wonders in the Daily Telegraph.

Our domestic one-day cricket is still played over 40 overs rather than the 50 used in ODIs. I may have mentioned this before. It is not unconnected to the fact that, while England might be the No 1 Test team and World Twenty20 champions, they have never won a World Cup.

Back to his best in Tests, he has all the skills to establish himself as the best 50-over batsman in the world, writes Mike Selvey in the Observer.

England now need this return to form, and rediscovered enthusiasm, to be channelled into the one-day game. He is in the prime of his life as a batsman now, that period where a little of the exuberance of youth remains but it is now allied to the calculating mind of an experienced, mature batsman.

Basil D'Oliveira, who dominated the headlines during the cancellation of the 1968-69 England tour of South Africa, turned 80 on Tuesday. Mike Selvey pays tribute in the Guardian.

For a definitive account of what occurred, and the repercussions, Peter Oborne's book, Basil D'Oliveira: Cricket and Conspiracy, is the place to go. We are all familiar, though, with what happened. And through it all, finger-poking aside, Basil kept his counsel and his dignity. What would have happened had Prideaux been fit (who ironically was soon to make his home in Bloemfontein, the scene of the infamous speech by John Vorster condemning D'Oliveira's subsequent selection as replacement for Tom Cartwright), or if any of the catches squandered during his innings were held, is a matter of conjecture. No doubt the tour would have gone ahead as planned and it would have been left to others to help start the process of sporting boycott and ultimately the dismantling of apartheid.

India losing to England in England is one thing. England beating India in India is quite another. But this is an India in transition and that gives England a great chance to come out on top, Mike Selvey says in the Guardian.

There may not come a better chance to take on India on their own pitches. Injury continues to sideline Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag, the most destructive and experienced opening pair in the game, and also Zaheer Khan, currently the best in the business in his own conditions, and Ishant Sharma, who would probably have shared the new ball with him. There is no Yuvraj Singh, the player of the World Cup, to torment them in the middle order, and no more of the abrasive Harbhajan Singh, who has been dropped. Only the indefatigable MS Dhoni remains of the superstars, so this promises to be a contest between two sides in transition.

One of the standout features of the current England team is its professionalism. They are single-mindedly focused on winning games and there are none of the off-field shenanigans that have distracted previous England sides. On his England cricket blog, Ted Corbett contrasts the start of the team's tour of India with the first time he covered England.

Yesterday there was no Botham figure, no brooding captain like Willis, no Duke of Buckingham type like Insole. Midway through the tour, I heard years later, he had told another reporter that the players were taking drugs. "They wouldn't dare," snapped that reporter - who more properly belonged in the 18th century - but it was the start of all the troubles afflicted England for the next 15 years.

Barney Ronay profiles Stuart Meaker, who's been picked for England's ODI series in India, in The Observer.

For Meaker the last six months have been a period of rapid ascent all round, from a peripheral figure in a Division Two County Championship side to a first international call-up in a squad of 15 for the five-match series, which starts on 14 October, and a reputation as the coming man in England's ever-engorging entourage of athletic young pace bowlers.

Stephen Brenkley, in the Independent on Sunday, recaps an excellent summer for England.

Never has an English season started so early – for a century and more May was perfectly acceptable – and never has it finished so late. (The first hundred, incidentally, was scored for MCC by Rahul Dravid, who was to leave a deeper imprint later). There was plenty to cherish and savour in the filling.

Dominic Cork has retired from professional cricket. Barney Ronay pays tribute in the Guardian and says Cork renews the nostalgia for the 1990s, a decade of contrasts for English cricket.

If the 1990s was a period when everybody in the England team seemed to have wandered in from a different movie – the parping slapstick of Phil Tufnell, the lonesome John Wayne heroics of Mike Atherton, the cannon-fodder bit parts of all those endlessly machine-gunned one-Test extras – Cork at least found a franchise sequel in county cricket. Here he ossified into a reassuringly timeless figure, a constant of the Ceefax page and the buried county scores panel, a kind of modern pastoral sprite forever nosing his walnut-trim six-gear Ford Mondeo saloon around some county ground gyratory system.

Peter Moores, the former England coach who oversaw Lancashire's rise to the top in the County Championship this season, reflects on his side's success and whether or not he would have done things differently when in charge of England, in an interview in the Guardian.

Moores might be intent on creating a legacy for Lancashire but he can also claim to have played some part in England's remarkable rise. Asked where he contributed most during his difficult 20 months in charge of the national team he pinpoints three areas – player selection, appointing various support coaches and, most tellingly, in restructuring the national academy at Loughborough. "I took over from Rodney Marsh at the Academy [in 2005] and as soon as I got there I sensed something was wrong. It was geared towards about 18 or so 23-year-olds. What it really needed to be was a performance centre that could support everything to do with England cricket. I had a big role to play in turning that academy into a performance centre and it was hard to do.

Chris Cutmore profiles, and speaks to, England cricket's newest star Jonny Bairstow in the Daily Mail.

Bairstow's power suggests he could, in future, fill the glaring gap in England's one-day batting order, a missing link that was painfully exposed in the World Cup quarter-final mauling by Sri Lanka. England have longed for an attacking opening batsman to clear the infield during the crucial opening overs and powerplays; can Bairstow fill such a role in future?

As West Indies arrive in England to play two "unwanted" Twenty20 matches, we are reminded of English cricket's "ill-advise" association with Allen Stanford some three years ago, writes Stephen Brenkley in the Independent.

This, then, is the man who was to be one of the saviours of English cricket. How far removed all this is from the summer afternoon in 2008 when Stanford, who owned banks in Antigua and offered financial advice to the super-rich, landed at Lord's in a helicopter to formalise his deal with the ECB. How the ECB must wish it had never happened. Stanford, who had already promoted Twenty20 cricket in the West Indies with some success, had been looking for an inter-national partner for a while. England eventually fell into his arms.

Stuart Broad's shoulder injury leaves his Twenty20 side searching for leader. Who better than an in-form Kevin Pietersen, asks Stephen Brenkley in the Independent.

It is possible that the selectors might ask Alastair Cook, the 50-over captain, to step in as a short-term measure. Although Cook is not in the T20 side because he is deemed not to have quite the appropriate qualities, it would be a valid call.

Equally, Cook has already had a long summer and may need the week off before leading the team on the sub-continent. Pietersen is more at ease with himself than for some time and is also in splendid form. Although he was a reluctant convert to T20 he has shown himself to be highly adept at it.

Jonathan Trott and Alastair Cook have an aversion to flamboyancy but nothing could contain the air of triumph as England swept the board at Monday's ICC awards, writes Barney Ronay in the Guardian. Before Monday night no Englishman had been anointed ICC Cricketer of the Year in the seven-year history of cricket's grandest gongs. Andrew Flintoff had a share in 2005 but no Englishman had been granted the Test laurels outright either.

And so to Trott and Cook's triumph, the centrepiece of the evening. This really did feel like a defining moment of ascension for a team built around two of the most quietly acquisitive, notably unflamboyant of modern batsmen. England players talk reflexively of building, working hard, staying hungry (Cook promised to work hard "for the 24 months coming up". OK, Alastair. And do try and enjoy it a little bit). But for one night at least this was a moment to take a deep breath and enjoy the view.

Geoff Miller, England's national selector, has overseen the most settled regime in the post war history of English cricket. Daniel Narcross, of Spin magazine, asks him all about it.

“We’re looking for players not to be looking over their shoulder the whole time so they can instead focus on the team ethic,” says Miller. “We give the players honesty. We give them a fair crack. We give them consistency and continuity. It’s no accident [that we have a settled side]. It’s done by meticulous method. When I was playing, far better players than me didn’t know if they’d be in the side from one game to the next.”

Though it can be a little startling on first viewing, Eoin Morgan's wobbly-kneed, crouching trigger movement is simply a technical refinement, writes Barney Ronay in The Spin Guardian blog. What's more, Morgan's "defining exoticism" suits him, and you might as well get used to it because it's here to stay.

Perhaps the first unusual thing about the Lunge is that it should be seen as unusual at all. It is a mark of how carefully styled batting techniques have become in the age of top-down micro-analysis that this bending of the knees should seem so striking. In the pre-modern era the range of different "set-ups" was far more varied. Notable stand-outs included: the swaying, wafting bat waggle of David Gower; the hunched, fidgeting broad-shouldered ballerina elegance of Mohammed Azharuddin; the extraordinary Kim Barnett, who used to come Riverdancing in from short leg; Derek Randall who appeared to have been caught sneaking off towards point; and Peter Willey who simply stood there, front on, like a caveman playing French cricket.

In their 96 one-day internationals since the end of the 2007 World Cup, England have tried 19 different opening combinations between 12 players writes Steve James in the Sunday Telegraph. And Saturday’s brief proceedings with the bat in the first one-day international against India at Chester-le-Street emphasised why it has been so difficult to find a settled England pairing.

This was a glimpse of what so much of county cricket’s one-day stuff is like. The ball nipped around under grey skies on a pudding of a pitch, and the bowling was of negligible pace. And the orders? Make maximum use of the powerplay overs and their concomitant field placings. Oh, and don’t get out. All the very best.

It is why so often the more conventional opener outscores the batsman built for savagery. As Jonathan Liew pointed out, in the recent Sri Lanka series Cook’s strike rate was higher than Kieswetter’s. Plod was quicker than the pugilist.

Two years ago, ECB chairman Giles Clarke was widely criticised for the Stanford debacle, but now with the England team have a fantastic run, he is as secure as ever in the job and is expected to be elected unopposed for a third term next year. Paul Newman interviews Clarke in the Daily Mail.

"We will not stay at No 1 unless the conveyor belt is really strong. When one goes about the counties I find it fascinating to hear about the quality of the 16-, 17- and 18-year-olds coming through.

"We have shown what we can do if there is a shared focus across the country. I’m hugely encouraged England is now the place everybody is looking at to know what to do. For so long all we used to hear about was the Australian way."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Crace, in the Guardian, reviews the BBC documentary Botham: The Legend of '81.

A true veteran of the county scene, Mark Ramprakash has been playing first-class cricket since 1987. The domestic game has gone through many changes since then, not the least of which has been an increasingly crowded schedule, exacerbated by the advent of Twenty20 cricket. County cricketers increasingly find themselves switching between formats with little or no time for readjustment, a situation that Ramprakash finds very troubling, and he warns, in his blog for The Cricketer that "cricket’s authorities in this country are aiding and abetting the demise of Test match cricket by their continued insistence that we should play County Championship and Twenty20 matches right on top of each other".

I understand fully the need for county clubs to make money from Twenty20, and county finances are currently under a lot of strain, but the domestic fixture list is so confused and damaging to our players at the moment that the English game’s authorities are effectively saying that practice – proper practice and preparation for different formats of the game – is not anywhere close to being a priority. One of the things that has always bugged me about how English cricket is perceived from outside is the view that we don’t take preparation seriously at county level – that another game and another innings will be along shortly so why worry? I think player preparation at county clubs has actually improved during the latter part of my own career – but where are we going now with the fixture list we have had to endure for the past couple of years?

Ireland-born Eoin Morgan risked his Test place to gain experience in India and it's paying off handsomely – now he has eyes on leading his adopted country. Stephen Brenkley meets Morgan. More from the Independent.

"It is absolutely a long-term target of mine," he said. "If you asked anybody, would they like to captain England in a Test match, one-day international or Twenty20, they would jump at the chance."

"I am a leader within the batting unit. A good leader leads from the front and the way in which I play can have a positive effect on the side. It is something that I can develop over time." And time, not to mention timing, is on his side.

Stephen Brenkley revisits England's remarkable comeback in the Headingley Test against Australia thirty years ago. Five people who witnessed the heroics retell their story. More in the Independent.

Day Five: The Commentator, Henry Blofeld, Test Match Special

'I don't think I have ever found it harder not to be biased on air'

It was probably wishful thinking. At breakfast on the Tuesday the feeling was that this extraordinary game might even have something more to offer. At 351 for 9, England were 124 runs ahead and yet...

In the Test Match Special box there was a happy mixture of gallows humour and extravagant optimism. Even the Australian commentator, Alan McGilvray – and Australia has never had a stauncher supporter – was prepared to concede that England had an outside chance. I don't think he meant it.

Bob Willis reflects on his devastating 8 for 43 at Headingley in the Independent.

There has been an alarming decline in the number of Afro-Caribbean cricketers in the English set-up, since the era when the likes of Devon Malcolm brought an edge to the national side. The Daily Telegraph's Scyld Berry traces the recession to the ending of funding of Haringey Cricket College - the nursery of Afro-Caribbean talent in England - and terms its reactivation an important initiative.

English county cricket is well organised and well-coached – and perhaps too much so. No sign on the horizon of an unorthodox 'crackerjack’ bowler who can surprise opponents, like Lasith Malinga or Muttiah Muralitharan: and if Afro-Caribbean cricket dies, another source of England’s potential supply is eliminated.

Devon Malcolm, with his express pace, had this unorthodox quality. Afro-Caribbeans, like him, have taken almost 600 Test wickets for England and scored almost 8,000 Test runs. A fine XI could be made from those who represented England and England A: Michael Carberry, Wilf Slack, Mark Butcher, Roland Butcher, Mark Alleyne, Paul Weekes, Keith Piper, Chris Lewis, Phillip DeFreitas, Dean Headley, and Malcolm himself.

Alastair Cook's exuberant reaction after England beat Sri Lanka at Old Trafford showed just how much that win meant to him as England captain. There are moments when the game unhinges the most equable of men and Old Trafford yielded such a moment writes Patrick Collins in the Daily Mail. Especially when that captain is untried, unproven and uncertain about his ultimate role in English cricket. Like every other captain of England, Cook is permanently on trial.

His batting - in terms of both speed and productivity - has been virtually beyond reproach. And if he has been occasionally reluctant to slap down one or two examples of indiscipline within the English ranks, he has handled himself effectively. In general, Cook has faced his challenges quietly, with the air of a man who has carefully considered all of the consequences. For he knows, better than most, just how bruising those consequences can be.

Jonathan Agnew on BBC Sport writes that Cook has answered his critics in fine style. What we have learned is that Cook is capable of scoring runs when he has the responsibility of captaincy. That was the big question he had to answer, and he has done it.

He has had a fantastic series, and not just with the bat. He has shown a calm head in the field and I liked the way he felt confident, bold and flexible enough to take the batting powerplay early.

Now that Cook has proved his doubters wrong, its time for England's Test captain Andrew Strauss to do the same in the Test series against India writes Derek Pringle in the Daily Telegraph.

Despite his impressive Test credentials, Alistair Cook has had to deal with plenty of criticism in his career. The latest salvo came after he was appointed England's one-day captain. Considering he was not considered good enough to be part of England's World Cup squad a few months ago, some skepticism was perhaps justified. But Cook has responded with two fine innings against Sri Lanka, proving he has the potential to adapt to the one-day game. Writing in his blog for the Cricketer, Jonathan Agnew says Cook shows the folly of pre-judging class players.

Perhaps being named as 50-over captain, together with the questioning of his right to be in charge, has forced him to expand his game. But, so far, he has risen to the challenge very impressively and that should not be a shock to us. Cook is a very bright bloke, he’s got a serious Test batting record and he’s shown throughout his career that he is an incredibly quick learner. What’s happened in this one-day series against Sri Lanka has merely been an extension of that.

Stuart Broad may be England's new one-day captain but he remains wicketless after the first three games against Sri Lanka, continuing his struggles to take regular wickets in recent times. Writing in the Guardian, Vic Marks makes the case that a spell on the sidelines might be the best thing for Broad as it would allow him to figure out his problems and come back stronger.

Broad himself must be desperate. Why else would he take the umpire Billy Bowden to task at Headingley for declining to give Jeevan Mendis lbw? That decision had no bearing on the outcome of the match since the appeal was made after the penultimate ball of the Sri Lanka innings. It could only affect Broad's bowling figures. That final column would be barren no more if only Bowden would raise his finger. It is a very bad sign that Broad should lose it over such a trifling matter.

Mike Brearley, the former England captain, in the Observer, looks back at one of the greatest Test series of all time, 30 years on.

The first thing I should say is that the train of events in 1981 was extremely fortuitous. In that third Test at Headingley, for a start, Ian Botham and Graham Dilley, whose second-innings partnership of 117 turned the match, could have been out at any moment. Kim Hughes and the Australians were criticised for bowling too wide to them and it was true, they should have tightened their line. But on any other day they would have edged rather than missed, or edged more thinly, or the ball would have landed differently from one of the thick edges.

Had the Guardian website been around then, how would it have covered the series? Rob Smyth tries to find out.

In the last couple of years England has grown into a strong side, driven on by a smiling captain who understands sportsmen, by a coach whose solemn face camouflages an active brain and with talent to spare, writes Ted Corbett in the Sportstar.

So much is growing within this New England that they can beat India — perhaps by no more than 1-0 in the four-Test series — and set off towards global supremacy for the next half dozen years.

England not only have a talented and settled line-up but perhaps the best reserve strength since the mid-1950s when Peter May and his selection panels could leave out highly skilled men like Fred Trueman, Peter Loader, Frank Tyson, Tom Graveney, Willie Watson and a dozen more and still beat Australia and anyone else in sight. Look at their skill base of 2011 in detail and you will see what I mean.

Scyld Berry, in the Daily Telegraph, says ODIs, for England, have been the most problematic of the formats and it'll also be a major challenge for Alastair Cook who's taken over as captain in the 50-over version.

Cook also has to jump in at the deep end after having one hand tied behind his back: 50-over county cricket has been banned by the England and Wales Cricket Board. So Cook has had nowhere to practise the various areas in which he now has to excel if he is to lead England into the 2015 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.

Barney Ronay, in the Guardian, says there was too much focus on Samit Patel's physique following his recall but his skills have been overlooked.

England allrounder Samit Patel's recall to the national ODI side has prompted much discussion over his fitness state. So intense has been the focus on one man's unchiselled abs, observes Barney Ronay in the Guardian, it is almost tempting to wonder if there might be something else going on here.

If there is a coherent source for the rather unkind public debate over Patel's heft it is the England management's fixation with nurturing a pack-like sense of intimidatory conditioning, the relentless corporate identity that so thrillingly steamrollered the Australians in the winter

Patel may or may not make it as an England player, but determination cannot be measured by muscle tone alone and here is a man who is plump with acquired cricket knowhow.

At his peak, Ian Botham was one of the best allrounders to ever play the game. He also lived life to the fullest off the field. In the Guardian, Mike Selvey wonders how Botham’s hard-charging lifestyle would have fit in with today’s emphasis on fitness and preparation, and whether Botham would have been able to adapt to meet those requirements.

It is 31 years now since Ian Botham produced what was then, and remains the most remarkable all-round performance in a history of Test cricket that will extend to 2,000 matches when England play India at Lord's in a few weeks time. In Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai, Botham scored 114 in his only innings, sandwiched between bowling figures of six for 58 and seven for 48, or 13 for 106 in the match. In statistical terms, the performance itself is astonishing enough, but what makes it all the more remarkable is that it was achieved on the back of the most ferocious 48-hour bender that came in the aftermath of a particularly dismal tour of Australia, the sort of excessive indulgence, they say, that would have felled a rhinoceros.

June 21 is the day it goes hilariously wrong for England on the field. Rob Smyth, in the Observer, chronicles some of England's miseries on that day in the years gone by.

England's performances on 21 June, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s, have generally been pitched somewhere between gentle self-deprecation and vile self-loathing – a quintessentially English comedy to sit proudly alongside Fawlty Towers and The Office. England have not played Test cricket on 21 June since 1998. A good job, too, because on that particular day they are pathologically incapable of being anything other than truly, madly, deeply inept.

Steve Harmison, dubbed "Nasser Hussain's white West Indian" by Steve Waugh during the 2002-03 Ashes tour, remains the only England bowler to top the ICC's Test bowling rankings since the system was established in 1987 and before the ratings were applied retrospectively to mark every player in Test history. He provided of great moments before his sudden decline writes Rob Bagchi in the Guardian.

And yet for all England's success without him there is a sense of waste. Courtney Walsh took 297 Test wickets after his 32nd birthday, Sir Richard Hadlee 252, Glenn McGrath 186 and Curtley Ambrose, the bowler Harmison at his best most resembled, 147. He said last year that if his England career was over, he at least had the memories. So have we, Steve. So have we.

Over the last few years, James Anderson has emerged as England’s key strike bowler, but it wasn’t always clear whether he would be up for the job. In the Independent, David Lloyd explains that Anderson is now a different man on the field, even if he still retreats into his shell when faced with the press.

"I'm a different bloke when I've not got these things [tape recorders] and you guys in front of me," said Anderson with a smile when asked to explain his personality changes. And so he is, clearly. It was obvious to everyone that England missed their most experienced bowler during the drawn Lord's Test. But, perhaps less evident, the side strain that prevented Anderson from facing Sri Lanka also deprived Stuart Broad, Chris Tremlett and Steve Finn of someone who has become a guiding light in the pace union.

After a decade spent trying to obtain elite status for the Hampshire venue, Andy Wilson writes in the Guardian that the excitement is close to fever pitch as the Third Test between Sri Lanka and England - the first ever at the Rose Bowl - draws closer.

"It's going to be amazing really, somewhat dream-like," Bransgrove said as he made late checks before young Tremlett and the other players arrive for this morning's official practice sessions. "The more I am asked to speak about it, the more overwhelming it seems to be getting. It is a combination of excitement with trepidation, not just for me but all the other people who have worked towards this day, because it has been very much a team effort at Hampshire. I'm sure we will enjoy it, but we will also be relieved when it's all over next Monday night."

Craig Kieswetter appeared very much a work in progress in his fledgling international career, writes Barney Ronay in The Guardian. But an "impressively focused and ambitious young cricketer" re-jigged both his batting and his wicketkeeping over the winter with the help of former England players Graham Thorpe and Bruce French and has stated his ambition to become England's first-choice keeper in all formats.

At the age of 23, Kieswetter has carved out a niche as a notably fast-forward kind of cricketer, not just in his batting style but in the content-rich detail of his tyro career to date. In the last five years, he has played representative cricket for South Africa and England, rejected the country of his birth, been picked and then dropped by England's one-day selectors, remodelled his game at least once and earned a distinction unmatched by any cricketer in England's history: a man-of-the-match award from the final of an ICC trophy, in which his team were victorious.

Looking back on Kevin Pietersen's tenure as England captain, team-mate and England fast bowler James Anderson observes, in his column in the Mail on Sunday that Pietersen is actually much better suited to having a smaller but still important leadership role within the team, without the extra pressure of captaincy.

Perhaps the biggest lesson the experience has taught him is the value of team spirit and togetherness. His period in charge under the new coach Peter Moores was not a great time for the team; there were some big characters, big egos and big opinions in the dressing room. To me, too many people were bothered about who was the coach when they should have been focusing on performances on the field.

While he will probably say different, there may have been a time in the past when Kevin was possibly not the perfect team player. He still has a big voice in the dressing room but these days he is a strong team man. What's more, when he's with us, there is no 'brand' in sight.

Despite his successes the criticisms against Alastair Cook are harsh, rather like picking fault with a thread in the Bayeux tapestry - but they are being made. And it is to Cook’s credit that he was still willing to address them honestly observes Steve James in the Sunday Telegraph.

Talking of right decisions, there are those who feel Cook should not even be in the one-day side, let alone be captain. There are some who worry that it might affect his Test-match game. "I think it will actually help me expand my game," he says. "They are separate skills, but that is one of the challenges for a batter. I’ve got no fear of going in at the top order and not scoring quickly enough. I think I can do that."

It is praiseworthy to create something out of nothing - in the Rose Bowl’s case, to make the 10th Test ground in England and Wales out of what was a hillside farm, writes Scyld Berry in the Sunday Telegraph. Where cattle grazed 15 years ago, Chris Tremlett will at fine-leg when the third Test against Sri Lanka starts on Thursday.

At the same time, however, English cricket will move another step away from our inner cities, on a course which will take it - unless arrested - from being an urban to a suburban sport. While the cars drive into the Rose Bowl through the only entrance (mercifully, there is now a second exit), youngsters in Leeds will be less interested in cricket than they would have been if there had been a Test this year at Headingley.

Whatever happens on the pitch at the Rose Bowl this week it is a something of a triumph for Rod Bransgrove, the chairman and chief executive of Hampshire CCC, that a Test match is taking place there at all writes Vic Marks in the Observer.

So this Test match should be a celebration, although this was not reflected by the mundane but useful content of the latest email to emanate from Hampshire CCC, which reads "Transport Options Increased for England's Rose Bowl Test". The Rose Bowl has always been a bit of a bottleneck and in one sense those at the club will be hoping that this issue resurfaces this week. At least a transport problem will mean that there are plenty of people in attendance.

The footnotes of sporting history are laden with seemingly absurd excuses that might in fact be the plain truth, says Matthew Norman, writing in the Daily Telegraph.

When another tennis player, Richard Gasquet of France, blamed his positive cocaine test on being contaminated by a woman he snogged in a Miami bar, everyone ridiculed him. But forensic tests bore his account out to the satisfaction of the ATP.

All in all, then, the inadvertent ricochet theory, be it bat or glove or some mystical combination of the two (where the hell is Hawk-Eye when you need it?), demands the benefit of the doubt; and that Matt should petition the Court of Arbitration for Sport to overrule his ICC reprimand. The anecdotal evidence in his favour is overwhelming. Given how he kept wicket in the second Test, after all, is this a man who can honestly be trusted to judge a bounce of any kind?

A line of succession has been seemingly ordained in English cricket, observes Stephen Brenkley in the Independent: Andrew Strauss is the Test captain and when he abdicates, the job will pass on to Alastair Cook, with Stuart Broad the next nomination. However, in the past few months another member of the England team is laying claim to consideration.

It is not only Ian Bell's stature as a batsman that has altered. The view of him as a smart, intelligent cricketer who understands the nuances of the game, is tactically aware and bursting with ideas has gained in popularity.

There will probably be no change for two or three years, though sporting events can move rapidly. Cook is the intended successor, but he should not be anointed yet.

On June 10, 1991 England completed their first Test win at home over West Indies in 22 years with a 115 run-win at Headingley. Mike Selvey in the Guardian revisits that victory and looks at the performance of one of the chief architects of that victory, Graham Gooch, who made a heroic second-innings bat-carrying 154.

He was a giant of a batsman and 20 years ago on Thursday he completed a giant of an innings, an effort so monumental that it deserves to be ranked not just as the finest innings ever played by an England captain, or even the finest by an England batsman, but perhaps one of the truly great innings of all time

Michael Vaughan leads a two-hour discussion on BBC radio on stress-related illness in cricket, examining what causes it and what the game can do to reduce its prevalence. Among his guests are former England opener Marcus Trescothick, whose international career came to an end due to stress-related illness.

In the Daily Telegraph Steve James says that while Cricket Australia seem to be on the right track as they are likely to reconsider the split-innings experiment and instead revert to 50-over cricket for the Australian state cricketers, what is disturbing is that county directors of cricket in England have apparently voted in favour for the 40-over stuff.

What’s more, I hear that the mood has shifted somewhat among county players. Many of them are now pleading for 40 overs. In isolation, if asked, they would say that all domestic cricket should mirror international cricket, but when asked in the context of the absurdly onerous schedule, they would say they prefer 40 to 50 overs. It seems that 50-over cricket is just too arduous.

Matthew Hoggard might not be in the frame for England anymore, but as captain of Leicestershire, he has an upfront view of first-class cricket and in his column for the Independent, lays out what he has learned over the last week, including the dangers of playing too much T20 cricket and his advice for Kevin Pietersen.

Like Kevin Pietersen, I refuse to accept that I have a problem when batting against left-arm spinners. Unlike KP, I am sometimes forced to deny that I have a problem batting against right-arm spinners, left-arm fast bowlers, right-arm fast bowlers...

Now, it is not for me to offer Kevin any advice about the art of batting. Except this. If I was him, I wouldn't hit the ball into your foot when trying to drive expansively in the nets. It bloody hurts.

Jade Dernbach's selection for the Lord's Test was a watershed for the England team which could have contained more players born in South Africa and Ireland than in Britain writes Barney Ronay in the Guardian. The real draw of all international sport arrives post‑natal: it is a business of testing how we do things, refining a methodology, ranging the products of one minutely constructed culture against another. Once this process is diluted, the magnetism fades a little.

The only relevant question is: what does this player tell us about English cricket? The more they tell you, the more English they get to be.

By this formula Dernbach is entirely English. He came to England aged 13 having only ever played rugby. His success tells us about Surrey schools and the county academy. Craig Kieswetter, on the other hand, a South African Under-19s player, tells us above all that South African cricket produces explosive adrenaline-cricket wicketkeeper-batsmen.

Of course, this is all no more than fan chat. Winning is everything and England have quite rightly picked their best teams. And for all this sense of a blurring of the lines, Test cricket will remain fascinating simply because it is Test cricket – albeit it is at its best when at its purest, methodology ranged against methodology, each part a chapter in the same larger story.

Sport is full of turning points that could have led to a parallel universe, as the England captain demonstrated in the first Ashes Test in Brisbane observes Mike Selvey in the Guardian. It is the Sliding Doors principle of a parallel alternative to events hinging on the outcome of a small, apparently insignificant factor. Andrew Strauss' dismissal in the first Ashes Test in Brisbane could well have been one such moment.

"Getting out like that was hard for me," he told me. "Harmison's was a bad ball to start the series but he ended up bowling OK in that match. We just played badly and were badly beaten. But people still look back at that ball which I don't think had a bearing on the outcome. So when I got out, I thought: 'OK this is fine, this is not a precursor to what is coming any more than Harmison's ball was.' Deep down, though, I was fighting against it, and thinking: 'I know what they are going to write.' Test cricket can always ask some pretty serious questions of you and I realised that I was going to have to dig pretty deep in the second innings."

He might not have the flair of a Lara or a Sehwag, but Jonathan Trott's remarkably successful run has allowed England to bat around him and he performs a crucial role for the team, writes John Stern in his blog with The Cricketer. After a brief wobble during the winter in South Africa, Trott "has gone back to basics and the results, if not the process, are eye-watering".

Since the start of May 2010, he has scored 1,317 Test runs at 94, 72 more runs than the next man on the list Sachin Tendulkar (1,245 at 77). The others with 1,000 or more are Alastair Cook (1,125 at 66), Jacques Kallis (1,104 at 110) and Virender Sehwag (1,003 at 52).

If one looks beyond the averages to the strike-rates, it gets interesting. Of the 20 leading Test run-scorers since May last year, only Sehwag has a strike-rate above 65 runs per 100 balls. His is 89. Trott’s is a steady 50, three an over. Others in the top 10 are slightly higher than that but not much. Tendulkar, for example, is 51. Others of note include Shane Watson whose strike-rate is 48 and Rahul Dravid 41.

In the Independent, Stephen Brenkley recounts how Jonathan Trott, the balding, bottom-handed, risk-free shoveller of a batsman, who has never hit a six in Tests or one-dayers has worked himself up to being England's cricketer of the year.

Trott appears to have shed all needless adornments in the pursuit of his objectives, save for his extravagant preparation in the middle. It is a measure of the change in attitude towards him that his insistence on scratching out the crease, wandering down the pitch and excavating some more before being ready to bat, was once seen as an absurdly irritating piece of gamesmanship and has become an endearing affectation. That apart, Trott lacks style.

Trott may look unprepossessing, more like the watcher at a sporting event than the watched observes Derek Pringle in the Daily Telegraph, but it probably says more about our prejudices in our image conscious world than it does about Trott, who in any case gave us a grandstand view of his potential on his Test debut, when he made a nerveless hundred against Australia at the Oval.

England’s extraordinary win at Cardiff, the first time they have won three Tests in a row by an innings since beating New Zealand in 1958, has produced a spike in ticket sales for the Lord’s Test, which begins on Friday.

Of course the prospect of Trott grinding out another big hundred might be seen as a counter attraction. But if you enjoy seeing England win, as they have largely done over the past year, then the two have become closely entwined.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alastair Cook, England one-day International captain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chris Woakes caught the eye during his international debut in Australia last winter - both with bat and ball - and he's started this domestic season in fine style to keep himself well in the England reckoning. Paul Newman caught up with him in the Daily Mail and found a confident young man eager to make his mark.

'A lot of my early form has been down to playing four-day cricket in the West Indies with the Lions before the season,' said Woakes, who has a century to his name already this year to add to his 17 Championship wickets. 'The England performance programme has played a massive part in my development and, after a winter playing mainly with a white ball, facing good opposition on flat wickets in first-class cricket was ideal. It got me off and running.'

Woakes is just one of a number of young England cricketers enjoying impressive early-season form ahead of the international summer. Over at The Cricketer website, Christopher Martin-Jenkins says the signs are very promising with plenty of options to choose from.

Other things being equal, Anderson will no doubt lead the attack at what used to be called Sophia Gardens on May 26, with two from Tim Bresnan, Chris Tremlett and Stuart Broad. But what a line-up of reserves that would leave: Finn, Shahzad, Onions, Woakes, Dernbach, Harris, Roland-Jones…. there is a case, certainly, for a system of rotation.

Scyld Berry, writing in the Daily Telegraph, tells us about Siegfried Sassoon - the soldier and the cricketer.

Sassoon was the bravest of cricketers on two counts, and possibly three. First came his physical, military bravery, when he led his men over the top several times in the First World War, including at the Somme, armed only with a pistol, and was awarded the Military Cross in 1916 “for conspicuous gallantry” ... What sets Sassoon apart is that he risked being shot when on leave from the trenches as well. His statement of protest against the mad futility of the First World War was read out in the House of Commons by an MP. Pacifists such as Bertrand Russell had protested against the war, but not somebody who had been there and done that.

Barney Gibson - who broke a 144-year-old record on Wednesday to become England’s youngest first-class cricketer - on getting a call up for Yorkshire's first team and sitting down to homework after dinner. Rob Stewart reports in the Daily Telegraph.

Gibson, a pupil at Crawshaw School, Pudsey, was given permission to take time off after being called into the team and he quickly showed the old ‘if you’re good enough you’re old enough’ adage was true, as he dealt with the pace of England’s Ajmal Shahzad before being mobbed by his team-mates after taking a stunning catch in the 10th over to dismiss opener Luc Durandt off Oliver Hannon-Dalby.

“I spoke to the head teacher, who said she was really happy for me but told me not to forget about my school work. I’ve just got to get on with it after we’ve eaten, but it would be nice to watch a bit of the Barcelona-Real Madrid game as well.”

There's a refreshingly youthful look to many of the squads on the English County circuit, writes Barney Ronay in The Observer, and that bodes well for the future of the national team.

Three matches into the current season the County Championship already appears to be undergoing a generational changing of the guard, showcasing not just the much lauded endeavours of Reece Topley – a 17-year-old fast bowler from Essex who is currently the leading wicket-taker in the country – but a thickening posse of young English batsmen with their eye on an early-season Test spot. The present may be racked with financial strife for many counties but the future seems likely to benefit from the breath of regeneration percolating around even the most leathery of dressing rooms.

Syld Berry, writing in The Telegraph, doesn't see the domestic situation in England as quite so rosy. Indeed, he blames the 40-over domestic limited-overs format for England's failure in the 50-over World Cup. Touching on the issue of Associate involvement in the next World Cup, Berry suggests that the easiest way for England to improve by the next tournament in 2015 would be to induct players such as Ryan ten Doeschate, Kevin O'Brien and Paul Stirling into their ranks - a suggestion that even he concedes is "cynical ... But not quite as bad as banning 50-over County cricket".

But it is also irritating that the public in this country are deprived of the excellent spectacle that is a 50-over match on a dry pitch, when the right schedule is so easily attainable: start the season with the championship, go into 20-over cricket in June then 50-over cricket in July, and finish off with the championship, instead of squeezing in CB40 matches at every spare moment.

In the Independent on Sunday, Jon Culley says: "The temptation to hail Ben Stokes as the new Freddie Flintoff – maybe even the new Ian Botham – has already proved too much for some to resist. His employers do not care for such labels, which they see as inviting unwelcome pressure. Yet if you will insist on taking three wickets in one over, knocking off a 135-ball hundred and then hitting five consecutive balls for six, all in the same day, it is difficult to avoid being noticed."

Perhaps his background will help him cope. His father, Ged, is a former New Zealand rugby league international who brought the family to England in 2003 when he was offered the coach's job at Workington. Ben, born in Christchurch – although with no trace of a Kiwi accent, and ambitions only to play for England – was 12, and while he had played a little cricket, he was more interested in following his dad into rugby. While some of his mates might have imagined themselves being Flintoff, such fantasies never crossed his mind.

Three matches into the current season the County Championship already appears to be undergoing a generational changing of the guard, showcasing not just the much lauded endeavours of Reece Topley – a 17-year-old fast bowler from Essex who is currently the leading wicket-taker in the country – but a thickening posse of young English batsmen with their eye on an early-season Test spot, writes Barney Ronay in the Observer

"In the next week or two Andrew Strauss will meet with Andy Flower to discuss whether a fifth country will need a new one-day captain," writes Scyld Berry in the Sunday Telegraph. "At first, on returning home, Strauss was inclined to go. After reflection, he should be persuaded to stay, at least for the one-day series against Sri Lanka that follows the three-Test series."

Alastair Cook, at 26, is far and away the strongest candidate to lead England into the 2015 World Cup in Australia — where pitches have tended to suit him — and New Zealand. But he is a man best equipped to bat all day, such is his self-discipline and strength of character, and by nature a Test batsman.

So the arrangements that will give Cook the best chance of succeeding as a 50-over batsman and captain will have to be elaborate, lest he starts off on the wrong foot and never arrives. He has to bed in first as a one-day batsman, without thinking about the captaincy as well.

England's team director Andy Flower is unlikely to be tempted by any offer to replace Gary Kirsten as the India coach, writes Mike Selvey in the Guardian but the ECB would do well to make sure their diamond is not purloined by a third party, be it India or anyone else.

Flower's relationship with the ECB is as a staff employee, with all the contingent protective rights that this brings. It is unlikely that this locks him into a fixed term. The board may well be looking to change that, tying him into a fixed-term deal with an option for extension.

Of most concern, however – and this is something I've written about before in this column – ought to be the prospect that the intensity of the scheduling could prove too debilitating for him to last the course unless he can be protected from himself. He was an angry man, with no small justification, when confronted with the itinerary between the end of the Ashes and the World Cup. Now he will insist on having some input into scheduling.

If the England and Wales Cricket Board was worried about Andy Flower being lured away by Indian cricket’s largesse, it clearly does not know its man, says Derek Pringle in the Daily Telegraph.

Loyalty and integrity could be his life’s guiding principles and while money most certainly talks in modern sport, Flower would be deafer than most to its siren call.

Loyalty and integrity have contributed to his success as England’s team director, too, and explain why he is respected alike by friend and foe, but they are just two of the ingredients.

In the Guardian, Frank Keating looks back at the rivalry between Glamorgan and Gloucestershire, and the role played by the combative allrounder Wilf Woolley in fostering it.

Our Boy Scout niceties were appalled, for instance, when our upright young champion Tom Graveney's 200 out of 298 all out against Glamorgan in 1956 was publicly and sneeringly dismissed by Wooller as "quite the worst double-century that can ever have been scored".

Simon Wilde, cricket correspondent for the Sunday Times, explains why it was worthwhile to write a new biography of Ian Botham, hardly the most underwritten of cricketers.

Botham's life may have been often chronicled, but not always well. I found myself constantly surprised by fresh details: from the great-great-grandfather named Chappell, to his grandparents being married a short walk from the ground where he would play his first match for England; from him picking a drinking mate for a Sunday league match against Glamorgan, to him having a Mickey Mouse phone in his bedroom; from the chambermaid delivering a breakfast of two pints of milk and the racing papers, to the steps he took to leave Somerset before the trouble over Viv Richards and Joel Garner ever arose.

Seventeen-year-old Reece Topley is leading wicket-taker in English first-class cricket this season. Though he has to go back to school - and, as he turned 17 only in February, he is not yet even in his second year of A-levels - Scyld Berry in the Sunday Telegraph reckons that school, after three consecutive matches in the first fortnight, is no bad place for Topley. He has to be allowed to grow in peace.

So the future beckons for Topley, and the present isn’t too bad either, as he bowls a full and old-fashioned length that draws batsmen into the drive, and the Tiflex ball that is used in the second division swings copiously. As he grows stronger, he can develop the plan B of banging it in and pushing the batsman back, as Voce and Sidebottom learned to do. And maybe go one better.

In the Sunday Telegraph, Steve James speaks to Jonathan Trott, who is fast becoming England's most reliable batsman in both Tests and one-dayers. Trott reveals that his favourite memory from the Ashes victory in Australia doesn't involve his batting, but his fielding.

It is his running out of Simon Katich on the first morning at Adelaide. “I’d like to think that I helped to start the day off well,” he says now with an understatement not necessarily apparent then, when he began a joyously celebratory run that threatened never to end. “I’ve got a habit of doing that,” he admits, “I just get a bit excited and think I’m a [football] striker. If I take a catch, I’m pretty similar.”

Kevin Howell in BBC Sport writes that players should be told that if they want to go and play as 'freelance' performers, do so and that the ECB should stand up to players and agents who want the Indian Premier League money and still to turn out for England and their county clubs.

I for one don't blame them chasing the money. It's a correct freedom of choice. But if that's the path they take, the clubs and the England and Wales Cricket Board should from next season say 'fine but we'll talk about different contracts and see you in June for our T20 and we'll pick our Test team from those who are fully committed to it'. Will that lead to us losing our best players? Possibly. But a compromise is unsustainable and I don't think it will.

Hampshire captain Dominic Cork has completed the transition from show pony to war horse, writes Robin Hutchison in the Daily Telegraph.

“Fortunately I’ve changed as a person,” he says. “When I first took over at Derbyshire, I was a bit stubborn at times. But you learn as you get older that you have to open yourself up and listen.

"I’m keen that the dressing room is not dominated by the captain. I want the youngsters to express themselves. I’ll still always have my opinion, but age has mellowed me and I now realise that my opinion is not always right.”

While county cricket has had notable success in feeding the England Test team, maybe it's time to look to the franchise model for limited-overs domestic competitions says Robin Scott-Elliot, writing in the Independent.

In Britain there is not the all-consuming passion for cricket, nor the vast numbers wanting to watch it that has helped India become the game's powerhouse. But that does not mean a franchise system couldn't work well for Twenty20 in this country; a spread of urban bases can easily ensure nationwide reach. Perhaps they could assume responsibility for all limited-overs cricket. Scrap the embarrassingly pointless 40-over competition and reintroduce a 50-over knockout with a showcase Lord's final. That helps rid the game of the impenetrable mess that is the current fixture list and leaves the counties to concentrate on feeding the Test side, a role they are meeting with a notable degree of success.

Ravi Bopara has shown his class by jettisoning the gold of the IPL to have a chance to push for a Test spot. For that brave decision alone, he deserves to be in the starting XI for the first Test against Sri Lanka, writes Barney Ronay in the Guardian, contrasting it with Eoin Morgan's decision to turn out for Kolkata Knight Riders.

In a sense Bopara leaves the selectors little choice. What kind of message would it send out now to prefer Morgan? Bopara scored an excruciating 16-ball duck in his first innings since deciding to force the selectors' hand with sheer weight of runs in county cricket, but in effect we know enough about him already. He may or may not be good enough, just as Morgan may or may not be. But it would be sound self-promotion if Bopara's stance - Test cricket over gold - were to be rewarded.

England's Ashes hero Alastair Cook in conversation with David Lloyd, writing in the Independent, on darts, helping out on the farm, the secret of batting and whether he expects to be the next England captain.

Surely all those big [Ashes] numbers add up to a life-changing experience? "No," says Cook with a smile and a look of relief. "I've probably been recognised a few more times in the street or when out shopping, but that is about it."

While most of his Test colleagues played a one-day series Down Under and then went straight into the World Cup, the opening batsman returned to a somewhat less glamorous routine: batting in the indoor nets at Chelmsford, training, promoting Samsung's latest notebook baby and helping out on the farm owned by his girlfriend's family.

At 40, Paul Nixon is the third-oldest cricketer on the county circuit, but despite undergoing a fifth knee operation just two weeks ago, the veteran gloveman shows no sign of discomfort says Justin Goulding, writing for the ECB website.

While the longevity of Mark Ramprakash, 42, and Robert Croft, who turns 41 next month, is to be applauded, neither has spent the best part of a quarter of a century, in Nixon's words, “doing 1,000 squats a day”. Such is the wicketkeeper's lot, and it is testament to Nixon's fitness, professionalism and enduring love of the game that he remains a key figure on and off the pitch at Grace Road.

Celebrating the start of the county season in England, Dominic Cork in the Independent writes that while there are quite a few people who are quick to knock county cricket, he believes that the standard is as good as it ever was in his time, even though we no longer see as many top quality overseas players committing themselves to a county for a whole season.

The domestic game in this country is alive and kicking. Yes, there are economic problems and a lot of counties are experiencing financial difficulties, but that is not a situation limited to cricket by any means. Plenty of businesses are struggling in the current climate.

The county championship in England begins on the same day as the Indian Premier League starts in India and the contrast between the two could not be greater, writes Paul Newman in the Daily Mail.

One is traditional, old-fashioned and, to many, an anachronism in an impatient modern world; the other is full of glitz, glamour and, above all, money. Are those cricketers who take to the field at Chelmsford and Bristol today really playing the same game as those who will do battle in Chennai?

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Steve James says the time has come for overseas players to be excluded from county cricket, as the plethora of international cricket and the IPL has ensured you just cannot sign the stars any longer.

It [signing overseas players] is just not worth the money or effort any more … Gone are the days of ‘Proctershire’ when Mike Procter became as much a part of Gloucestershire folklore as the Severn Bore, of Viv Richards and Joel Garner at Somerset, of Clive Lloyd at Lancashire, of Malcolm Marshall at Hampshire, of Richard Hadlee and Clive Rice at Nottinghamshire and so many more legends who made various counties their second homes.

England need to start planning for the next World Cup right now says Geoffrey Boycott, writing in the Daily Telegraph. Playing nine limited-overs internationals in Australia after the Ashes tried England physically and mentally, he says, and took away their best chance of winning the World Cup.

This winter was always going to be heavy enough on players with an Ashes series and a long World Cup, but money was put before the best interests of our team. If we had to play nine one-day matches in Australia we should have sent our A-team lads. Our major Ashes players should have gone home to rest and freshen up.

The selectors need to start planning for the next World Cup in Australia in four years’ time. They need to think of the conditions and the type of cricketer needed to do well out there and the age of the players when that tournament starts … identify some youngsters. Give them experience, time to play and make mistakes and learn from those errors so that by the next World Cup they are battle-hardened.

"Some from the England squad and management have been away since the end of October, with only three nights at home. Surely this ought to be illegal under employment law?", asks Paul Hayward in The Observer

If a working man marched off to other continents for six months and came home for three days in all that time he would probably be demonised as an absentee or deadbeat dad. When wealthier people do it we call them England cricketers. Please let's not mention the armed services. Signing up for wars is not the same as being forced on to a pitiless fixtures treadmill to satisfy the needs of sponsors, governing bodies and television.

In the same newspaper, Barbara Ellen launches a strong criticism of Geoffrey Boycott's comments over Yardy's departure from the squad, labelling his words as narcissistic.

The crippling effects of depression generally, and depression in sports-people in particular, were widely documented last week and, in fairness to Boycott, he never set himself up as an expert. Nor did anyone expect (or want) Boycott to start weeping, or lighting incense sticks for Yardy. Still, this is a grown man entering his 70s, a pundit for decades – one would have thought he'd understand the basic mechanics of empathy.

Meanwhile, James Corrigan writing in the Independent, says Boycotts's comments exposed sport's great misunderstanding of depression.

Boycott was ignorant. Yet so too were the majority of the commentators ... Depression doesn't come on due to playing too much cricket ... Alastair Campbell explained it best. "How would Boycott have felt if I had suggested to him that his cancer had resulted from poor performance as a sportsman or sports commentator?" Campbell wrote on his blog. "I'm afraid that's not how it works. For depressives, depression just is, the same as for cancer sufferers, cancer just is, and if you catch a cold, you just do."

In the Guardian, Mike Selvey says Michael Yardy "will not be the last England player to leave a tour early for the sake of his mental health."

One morning in Canberra in the winter of 2006-07, Trescothick and I were standing together by the hotel breakfast room toaster having a natter. He was in a fine mood and looking forward to the series. This was no front. Two days later, he had been spirited from the country and was on his way home. No support in the world was able to ensure that once he left the security of his family environment the curtain would not descend once more. It was a great loss to England cricket but quite literally saved Trescothick's sanity.

The back story with Yardy is not dissimilar. By all accounts he has been battling the illness for some considerable while, but this has been a long winter. He was not part of the England Ashes squad, but, in the knowledge he would be involved in the one-day matches that followed he played cricket in New Zealand before joining the squad after the fifth Test in Sydney. So he too has been on the road effectively for five or six months.

If nothing else, Michael Yardy’s illness reminds us that sportsmen are not immune from a condition that is estimated to affect one fifth of the population at some stage of their lives. Depression strikes down people from all creeds and classes, even those who enjoy fame, money and glamorous perks, writes Simon Briggs in the Telegraph.

In the Independent, Stephen Brenkley says: "This article is being written in the confines of a well-appointed hotel room, the 21st that this reporter has stayed in this winter (two, maybe three, to go). Some have not been so well-appointed. Hotel rooms drive players crazy eventually, they drive reporters crazy and anybody who says that you both have the best jobs in the world – and we all know it, we can never forget it – should remember Mike Yardy and the players to come, for whom they are not all days of wine and roses."

Meanwhile, writing for BBC Sport, Michael Vaughan remembers being captain when Marcus Trescothick suffered from depression. Trescothick's instance came as a surprise because no cricketer had really gone public with such a problem earlier, says Vaughan, and this highlights the fact that the international cricket schedule is ridiculous.

In the Independent, Angus Fraser pays tribute to Fred Titmus, the former Middlesex and England allrounder, who died on Wednesday at the age of 78.

As a person Titmus was old school. He had a dry sense of humour and was very witty but he could also be caustic and blunt. He showed his tenacity by recovering from a horrific boating accident in Barbados on England's 1967-68 West Indies tour, when the propeller of a boat removed four of his toes. It would have ended the careers of many cricketers but in the summer of 1968 he returned to take 111 wickets in a season for Middlesex.

Scyld Berry, in the Daily Telegraph, says Titmus was a master of his craft and that did not include offspin alone.

Mike Selvey, in the Guardian, says Titmus was an astonishing player who excelled for five decades, knew all the game's intricacies but liked to keep it simple, and was his mentor.

The new county season is just weeks away, but the mood up at Yorkshire is fractious to say the least. At their recent AGM, the county's executive chairman Colin Graves attempted to defend the controversial £21 million pavilion at Headingley, which was officially opened during the Pakistan-Australia Test match last summer.

Chris Waters of The Yorkshire Evening Post was there to hear Graves claim that the club had received numerous positive comments for “one of the best facilities in English cricket”.

At the risk of sounding like a wet blanket, one wondered to whom Graves was actually referring.

Was he referring to Yorkshire’s electronic scoreboard operator, who resigned in protest over the fact his seat in the pavilion does not afford him a view of the electronic scoreboard?

Was he referring to Yorkshire’s players, some of whom were said to be so unhappy with their facilities they wanted to move back to their old position on the other side of the ground?

Was he referring to Australia captain Ricky Ponting, who was heard to remark during last summer’s Australia versus Pakistan Test: “If we ever have to come back to this place again, it will be too soon."

And Yorkshire is also the focus of a piece by Tanya Aldred in The Daily Telegraph, as she reflects on the potential impact of the BBC's planned cull of regional radio.

Dave Callaghan, who does 31 reports a day during the season for the five interested local BBC stations, is a cricket obsessive, a Yorkshire geek, and a broadcasting pro. But he, and hundreds of others like him, with a byzantine sporting knowledge built up over thousands of balls, and hundreds of polystyrene cups of strong tea, could disappear if the BBC go ahead with their plan to swing the axe at local radio.

The new county season is just weeks away, but the mood up at Yorkshire is fractious to say the least. At their recent AGM, the county's executive chairman Colin Graves attempted to defend the controversial £21 million pavilion at Headingley, which was officially opened during the Pakistan-Australia Test match last summer.

Chris Waters of The Yorkshire Evening Post was there to hear Graves claim that the club had received numerous positive comments for “one of the best facilities in English cricket”.

At the risk of sounding like a wet blanket, one wondered to whom Graves was actually referring.

Was he referring to Yorkshire’s electronic scoreboard operator, who resigned in protest over the fact his seat in the pavilion does not afford him a view of the electronic scoreboard?

Was he referring to Yorkshire’s players, some of whom were said to be so unhappy with their facilities they wanted to move back to their old position on the other side of the ground?

Was he referring to Australia captain Ricky Ponting, who was heard to remark during last summer’s Australia versus Pakistan Test: “If we ever have to come back to this place again, it will be too soon."

And Yorkshire is also the focus of a piece by Tanya Aldred in The Daily Telegraph, as she reflects on the potential impact of the BBC's planned cull of regional radio.

Dave Callaghan, who does 31 reports a day during the season for the five interested local BBC stations, is a cricket obsessive, a Yorkshire geek, and a broadcasting pro. But he, and hundreds of others like him, with a byzantine sporting knowledge built up over thousands of balls, and hundreds of polystyrene cups of strong tea, could disappear if the BBC go ahead with their plan to swing the axe at local radio.

From The Ashes, a new film on the 1981 Ashes series that’s scheduled to release this summer, showcases how Ian Botham’s deeds remain imperishable despite all the changes England have witnessed says Barney Ronay, writing in the Guardian.

There are so many elements to the story … My first thought had been: maybe this isn't just a story about Botham. Perhaps Botham could be cast more broadly as an icon of changing times, a triangulation of early 1980s power fringes alongside Di and Thatch. And there are many other fascinating actors in the piece, notably the Australians Rod Marsh and Kim Hughes. Really, though, what comes through still is the self-contained brilliance of Botham's deeds … uncobwebbed by three decades of subsequent superlatives.

Steve James, writing for the Telegraph, says while the England squad has admirably accepted Steven Davies’ bold coming out, it remains to be seen how his admission will be received by opponents and the wider cricketing public. While cricketers supposedly have an unwritten rule against getting personal while sledging, he points out sexual connotations are hardly unknown.

If there are bigots and homophobes out there, they are hardly likely to announce themselves now. They will bide their time. I worry in particular about Twenty20 crowds. They are not exactly your typical cricket gatherings.

There are a number of smart alecs, cowards who can make their comments often without punishment. I just hope they don’t target Davies. And if they do, colleagues, opponents and officials must act. It must not be tolerated.

Steven Davies' decision to reveal he is gay has received huge support from within and outside cricket. He joins a select list of professional sportsman to go public with their sexuality and, in the Guardian, David Hopps says that it shows how British sport has matured in recent years.

Davies has been set upon announcing that he is gay for some months. All that has been at issue has been when and how. Midway through the Ashes series was universally agreed not to be a very good idea. But while he has agonised about the detail, the chilled-out support of the England dressing room has helped to stiffen his resolve.

This is not just the England squad that won the Ashes in Australia, this is the England squad that learned officially before the Ashes tour of a gay man in its midst, shrugged, dealt with it, offered its backing and got on with trying to win cricket matches. If Davies is now automatically an icon for young gay men who wish to play any kind of team sport while being open about their sexuality, never mind achieve at the highest level, then the England cricket team deserves to be seen as a model for a team that dealt with admirable sang-froid with the recognition that it had a gay man in its midst.

Jim White in the Telegraph tells the story of council-run cricket facilities in decline says it's no surprise the England team is made up almost entirely of South Africans and public schoolboys.

In the past two decades, council-run cricket facilities have disappeared faster than Jonathan Trott's hair. With no statutory obligation to provide leisure activities, the wonderful stock of pitches built up over the generations has disappeared. Health and safety, compensation culture: any excuse is seized by councils to absolve themselves of the business of preparing surfaces. And the cuts have provided the perfect fig leaf to complete the process. As with free tertiary education, vibrant local libraries and rural bus services, one of our greatest sporting achievements – the widespread provision of municipal pitches – is disappearing before our eyes.

From the hapless wicketkeeper to the furious captain, Barney Ronay, in an entertaining Guardian blog, finds something all too familiar with England's World Cup squad.

Some time tomorrow England's cricketers will belly-flop across the line to complete their final match of the southern summer. After which, pre-devastated by a month of the usual 50-over disintegration, they will head on towards the World Cup: frazzled, held together by surgical splints and seized with the usual sense of looming event-panic. Things were supposed to be different this time. The two Andys, Strauss and Flower, were supposed to have scoured away the stench of ancient 50-over confusion. But these things obviously run deep and, looking again at that compellingly sensible squad of players, dusting off the freshly crayoned swooshes and exclamation marks, it has all started to look oddly familiar. Here comes the World Cup: and here come the same old guys.

With the ECB facing legal action to return around £2.2 million (US$3 million) received from the disgraced financier Allen Stanford Scyld Berry, in the Telegraph, revisits the episode and argues that is was the counties, as much as Giles Clarke, that wanted a dip in Stanford's pool of gold.

The ECB’s latest error is the seven-match abomination in Australia, which allows the England players a three-night break at home between their Ashes tour and the World Cup. Three nights at home between October and April, and jet-lagged ones at that.

Worse still, the ECB and Cricket Australia have just combined to desecrate the only thing left in international cricket that has been sacred. Staging Ashes series in England in 2013 and 2015, with another in Australia in between, devalues a tradition going back 130 years – over-killing which shows that they cannot be entrusted with guarding the flame. Their talk of 'maximising the Ashes brand’ was simply disgusting.

When it comes to getting into bed with Stanford, however, I do not think that the ECB under Clarke’s leadership can be singled out for exceptional criticism — any more than other people and organisations shoving their snouts into the trough in the Indian summer of western capitalism in 2008. From financiers to bankers to batsmen, the West was a Gadarene herd with only one thing on its mind.

It's always worrying when a team fails to defend 333 but despite sliding to their fifth defeat in six against Australia Lawrence Booth, writing in the Wisden Cricketer blog, insists there is still hope.

All, weirdly, is not lost. By piling up 333 against an attack in which Australia’s big three seamers – Brett Lee, Shaun Tait and Mitchell Johnson – produced the combined figures of 25-1-168-4 – England at least answered some questions about a batting line-up that had been curiously frail in three of the previous five games.

The sentiment is echoed by Andy Bull, in his entertaining Spin newsletter in the Guardian.

As hangovers go, this is a bad one. England look shot. Spent. Burnt out. They have a thick layer of grey fuzz on their tongue, and their bloodshot eyes seem to be sitting above deep, saggy bags of pallid flesh.

Meanwhile in the same paper Rob Bagchi looks at Eoin Morgan, the star who England's ODI fortunes seem to rise and fall on.

It has been such a shame to see Eoin Morgan struggling in the first five one-day internationals of this gruelling marathon series in Australia because over the past five years for Ireland and then England he proved himself a master "finisher", a true heir to the punchy prototype Neil Fairbrother and his team-mate in toil, Paul Collingwood.

Jonathan Trott has shown he can bat till the cows come home, but can he force the pace, especially in the knockout stage of the World Cup against the spinners on a turning track? Scyld Berry in the Telegraph says that England would like to see what Trott can do when there is no pace on offer.

He doesn’t do sixes: six-hour vigils, yes, but not sixes over the rope. He has yet to hit his first in Test or one-day internationals, although the slog-sweep that he unleashed during his Adelaide century could be the portent of one.

But it was when David Hussey came on with his part-time offbreaks that we had an earnest of what might await in the World Cup ... Even though he had posted his hundred, Trott at Adelaide failed to get a single one of Hussey’s four offbreaks off the square and chopped on the last of them.

It's no secret that England, despite their recent win, look a touch jaded in their ODI series against Australia. While key players have been given time off or headed home with injury, one pivotal man has been present throughout. Mike Selvey, writing in the Guardian, thinks the ECB should take matters into their own hands and give Andy Flower a break.

This schedule is tough on the players, but for the man in charge, there is little respite.There have been not only two full English summers, including an Ashes series, each home Test effectively seven or even eight days from the team gathering to the end of the match, and full tours of up to three months to the West Indies, South Africa, Bangladesh, the West Indies again for the World T20, and now Australia. In a week's time he and the team return to England for three nights, before they fly to Bangladesh for their preamble to the World Cup. If they progress to the final, they would be home towards the end of the first week in April.

Meanwhile Lawrence Booth, in the Wisden Cricketer blog, says Jonathan Trott's all-round showing at Adelaide has presented England's management with plenty to consider.

England have a problem, and I’m not talking about the fact they still need to win three in a row in Australia to avoid a first series defeat in any form of the game since September 2009. No, the problem is the oldest one in cricket – the one which says it would be a much simpler game if you could squeeze 12 into 11.

Two men are currently complicating England’s World Cup selection – and a solution isn’t immediately obvious. While Jonathan Trott has played himself into contention with successive knocks of 84 not out and 102, Paul Collingwood is living off scraps. This morning in Adelaide he batted at No.7, from where his run-a-ball 27 felt like an unexpected bonus. He is clinging on for dear life.

It wasn't long ago England were all-powering Ashes winners. Now they have lost four games in a row and their premier spinner is heading home with injury. So what's gone wrong? Paul Newman, writing in the Daily Mail investigates.

The first sign that England's muddled thinking - a feature of their one-day cricket since they came so close to winning the 1992 World Cup - may have struck again came when they announced their 15-man squad. In a major surprise, opener and keeper Steven Davies was dropped, despite a strike-rate of 108 from seven one-dayers, in favour of Test keeper Matt Prior, admittedly in the form of his life.

Andy Wilson in the Guardian examines the credentials of six of the batsmen in contention to replace Paul Collingwood in England's batting line-up, alongside Eoin Morgan: Jimmy Adams, Ravi Bopara, Andrew Gale, James Hildreth, Adam Lythe and James Taylor.

With the English papers abuzz with stories from the Ashes, Simon Heffer takes the opportunity to reflect on the aesthetics of cricket. Commercialism has stained the international game and, today, the only real cricket you'll see in England is played on village greens and school fields, he writes in the Sunday Telegraph

The curse of money has led to the very appearance of the players changing. They no longer wear flannels and cotton shirts on which the sleeves can be rolled up and down: they are in pyjamas (coloured pyjamas for one-day matches) saturated with the logos of their various sponsors, and with ubiquitous sponsors' baseball caps for the mandatory post-match over-the-moon/sick-as-a-parrot interview imported from soccer (alongside the numbers on the back of the shirts in most forms of the game).

November 1 marked an anniversary that passed many people by and one that the ECB are still trying to forget. It was two years since England took on Allen Stanford's All Stars in the now infamous match in Antigua for the prize kitty of $20 million. The scorebook recalls a 10-wicket thrashing for England and plenty of embarrassment, but that doesn't begin to tell the story of how Stanford's world was already falling apart around him.

Andy Bull, from the Guardian, was one of the journalists to cover the story from the start to, well, as far as it's gone, and he delves into his own archives to remember the murky tales that developed. It's all the latest edition of Spin.

I first met Stanford in February 2008, three months before the ECB signed its deal with him. A friend was working at a consultancy who had been doing some work for Stanford's firm, and he had heard word that Stanford's people were looking to make contact with some English cricket journalists. He put them in touch with me. A few weeks later I flew out to Antigua along with three other journalists, two English and one Australian. The trip was entirely at Stanford's expense.

Mike Selvey, writing in the Guardian, says the ECB is getting things right by investing heavily in coaches at the game's grassroots in England with 33,000 coaches graduating from the board's Coach Education Programme since it was started four years ago.

Things are, I am told, starting to change. The realisation is there now that the investment has to be at the most formative stages and this goes not just for players who might have been identified as potential elite cricketers but for those who wish to play cricket recreationally for the sake of the game. To this end one of the most heartening pieces of news to come from the ECB recently was that 33,000 coaches have graduated from the ECB Coach Education Programme, which is run in conjunction with Sky Sports, since the scheme was launched four years ago. That, as they point out, is enough to fill Lord's. No fewer than 10,000 of these have qualified in the past year alone.

Andrew Strauss has made all the right moves both on and off the field, suggesting that he may be born for the job of leading England, according to Jim White of the Telegraph. Strauss discusses his evolution in the job, and looks forward to the Ashes in an interview with White.

"A cricket dressing room is quite a cynical place. If someone says something out of character it will be noticed. Besides, cricket is very specific: you have to go out on the field and do the same job as the people you're captaining. You can't hide away, you either lead by example or you don't lead.

"I don't need to dream of lifting the urn," he says, "because I know what it's like."

In the Sun, England offspinner Graeme Swann recalls being inspired at the age of seven by Mike Gatting's triumphant tour of Australia in 1986-87, and hopes his team can similarly inspire children during the upcoming Ashes.

As Geoffrey Boycott turns 70, Bill Bridge of the Yorkshire Post reflects on the life and times of a cricketer-commentator who "made history and divided Yorkshire".

...He is revered by many who follow the game – especially in Yorkshire – as a great batsman, perhaps the best Englishman of that calling since the Second World War. For others – many of them in Yorkshire – he will never rank alongside Herbert Sutcliffe and Sir Leonard Hutton and will forever carry the stigma of being the individual who brought a great county cricket club to its knees.

To sum up assessing Geoffrey Boycott is like – and this comes from several good sources – batting with him.

"If one of the aims of England’s recent camp to Germany was to give players a sense of perspective in their lives, it was not necessary for Eoin Morgan," writes Simon Hughes in the Telegraph.

“I’m pretty grounded anyway,” he [Morgan] said, sipping weak tea in a simple Finchley cafe. He does not live in a swish apartment – just an anonymous block of flats off the North Circular Road – or wear loud T-shirts or gallivant around at sponsors’ launches or celebrity parties. “We didn’t have anything as kids, just sport and each other [he has five brothers and sisters], so I take nothing for granted. I didn’t need to spend four days sleeping on the ground in a leaking tent to remind me how lucky I am to do what I’m doing.

It was a season that will be remembered for all the wrong reasons, but Lawrence Booth, in the Wisden Cricketer, has come up with a list of ten positives from England's home summer.

It all felt a bit pumped up, but there was no escaping the visceral pleasure England derived from their win that night. Six series wins out of six for the summer and a team united. That, more than victory over a side they had grown to despise, should be the season’s defining moment.

Mike Selvey reasons in the Guardian why he believes Graeme Swann is England's best offspinner since Jim Laker and Fred Titmus, and possibly their best ever.

What elevates him is his cricketing intelligence. He understands his game and the art of spin bowling and blends it with spark, unquenchable spirit and optimism. I don't know if Fred has seen him. He is not a well man now, Alzheimer's taken hold a while since. I hope to see Parfitt next week and find out how he is. I think, though, Fred would take a look, puff on his pipe and pronounce approvingly and understated: "Good, ain't he JT." That, Swanny, would be the highest praise.

Onward then and upward. To the stars as far as England are concerned after the most demanding of all seasons. Their mission in the next seven months is straightforward: win the Ashes in Australia for the first time in 24 years, and win the World Cup for the first time full stop, writes Stephen Brenkley in the Independent on Sunday.

For reasons best known to themselves, England have gone on a bonding session for four days. Apparently they are not fed up with the sight of each other after a season which began in April, or February if you count the Bangladesh tour. If it helps to devise plans to ensnare terracotta urns, all well and good. England have their best chance for decades of retaining the Ashes in Australia. They last did so in 1986-87 when Mike Gatting's side were not tipped to keep the prize won in 1985 by David Gower's side.

This will not be easy because Australia being Australia, they are developing a new team of their own. They may spring on England some new fast bowlers like Josh Hazlewood, only 19, and Peter George. Hazlewood's cause for a dramatic debut has been diminished by having to withdraw from the squad to tour India because of a stress fracture to his back.

In the Observer, Vic Marks says: "Sport's most captivating contest cannot be renewed soon enough after the havoc wreaked during a summer spent hosting Pakistan."

"When I was the England captain, there were periods I felt Andrew Flintoff was draining me, as I was spending so much time managing him," writes Michael Vaughan in the Telegraph. "But when you retire, you look back on your career and I've realised I would not be doing what I am doing now, or have the reputation I have, without Freddie Flintoff."

I made things very simple. I used to tell him to watch the ball and hit it so he would be entertaining the crowd and entertaining me on the balcony. I told him that was his job. With the ball, he just wanted to do the basics, such as hit the top of off stump. He did not like to bowl slower balls because he didn't think he had to. He didn't want any fancy field setting.

He was not a believer in the modern ways. He couldn't understand the fitness work and the little gimmicks that, say, a Duncan Fletcher would bring to the team or a Paul Collingwood would suggest in a team meeting. Over a period he would frustrate the majority of the team because he didn't need to do a lot of the things the others had to go through. Fred was just too good. His abilities were natural.

The timing of his departure was crass but the all-rounder's part in Ashes folklore is undeniable, writes Mike Selvey in the Guardian.

The manner in which Andrew Flintoff chose today to acknowledge a fitness battle lost even as the tightest County Championship for years was coming to its conclusion did him little credit. What abject, thoughtless timing, a slap in the face for the game that nurtured him and set him on the road to fame and considerable fortune.

He and his advisers are sufficiently familiar with the machinations of many media desks which know little of county cricket and care even less, seeing only celebrity and names, to understand what would be placed top of the agenda. It is an uncharacteristic faux pas at odds with someone known for the generosity of his spirit.

In the Independent, James Lawton says, "He wasn't always brilliantly served by the workings of his head but then anyone with a heart and a talent as big as Freddie Flintoff's was always going to blast his way through the most critical judgement."

Adios Freddie © PA photos

John Stern, writing in the Wisden Cricketer, says the retirement of Andrew Flintoff is hardly surprising news following his absence since the end of the Ashes in 2009. Also not surprising, he adds, is the indifference with which his decision might be received.

In my limited dealings with Flintoff he was charming, polite and great company. But endearing though his ‘I’m just a thick lad from Preston’ schtick is, it is highly cultivated. The oft-made claim that he doesn’t really like the spotlight are contradicted by the endless endorsements, some of them embarrassing in their overtness, and the Christ-like affectations of last summer.

In the Daily Mail, Paul Newman calls Flintoff "a lion-hearted, inspirational player who enjoyed great moments while never becoming one of the greats". He also says Flintoff was never as popular with the team as he was with the public.

The timing of yesterday's announcement summed up why Flintoff was never as popular within the game as he was among the supporters. It should have been the day when a great finale to the Championship race could be celebrated, when the grand old competition of the domestic season had a rare day in the sun. Instead it was a day hijacked by Flintoff, who could have waited but who orchestrated his retirement at the behest of a sponsor and overshadowed the drama of Nottinghamshire's unlikely triumph at Old Trafford.

When we look back at Flintoff's injury-hit career, in which the second half was spent more in rehab than on the cricket field, we realise it was comprised of islands of ecstasy amid a sea of inconsistency, writes Derek Pringle in the Daily Telegraph.

On the Cricket365 website, Mike Atherton writes that the sadness Flintoff feels on his retirement from cricket is likely to be diluted by a sense of relief.

The calls for Andrew Strauss to be dropped from England’s one-day side ahead of the 2011 World Cup appear to be unending, despite his recent match-winning hundred against Pakistan. Strauss doesn’t have the attacking shots necessary to succeed in the subcontinent, his critics say. Not everyone agrees, however. Writing in the Independent, Stephen Brenkley thinks this line of thinking misses the big picture.

Since his career restarted early last year, he has batted 32 times at an average of 42.03, scoring those runs at 5.19 an over, hitting 145 fours, 4.5 an innings, and 13 sixes. The increased aggression and its results are plain.

But there is much more to Strauss's place in the team than that. He is the captain and his importance in that role cannot be underestimated. There can be no room for sentiment in selecting sporting teams (although, on the other hand if there is no room for it in sport, where is there?) but Strauss's position embraces a great deal more.

In the Guardian's weekly mail, the Spin, David Hopps hands out the gongs for the 2010 county season. Besides the usual 'Cricketer of the Year' and 'Team of the Year', Hopps also names the 'Dullest cricketer of the Year' and 'Most fondly missed cricketer of the Year'.

Six days before Andrew Strauss scored his fifth ODI hundred against Pakistan, Derek Pringle, Alec Stewart and Darren Gough had picked their 15-man squad for the 2011 World Cup and had left out the England captain. And despite Strauss's match-winning century, Pringle writes in the Telegraph that Strauss's omission has merit.

Having experience of England in the subcontinent for more than two decades, including their abysmal showing in the 1996 World Cup, their biggest failing has been their under-utilisation of the Powerplays. With that premise, the focus inevitably shifted to picking a top three best-set to remedy that. After a lengthy discussion, we settled on Steven Davies, Ian Bell and Kevin Pietersen, with Matt Prior as back-up opener.

The argument against Strauss was centered on the likely sluggish nature of the pitches and the difficulty they would present to someone most comfortable scoring his runs square of the wicket.You also need to be able to put pace on the shot with a wristy flick or an artful bottom hand, something Strauss only really possesses when cutting.

Chris Read, the Nottinghamshire keeper was badly treated by England – and Duncan Fletcher in particular. He talks to Mark Sellek in the Independent on Sunday.

The Fifth Test at the SCG in 2007 was the last time England picked him. But that wasn't the last of it. Read was singled out for criticism by Fletcher in a score-settling memoir. Contrary to Marsh's assessment, Fletcher thought Read's keeping was flawed, and his batting lacked defensive technique. Much worse was the implication that Read was too timid mentally to be a Test cricketer.

Read's own form has been outstanding since 2007 (he has averaged 45, 55, 75, and 50 in the past four Championship campaigns). "It sounds sort of arrogant to say it, but there have been times when I just know I'm going to score runs. I know my own game inside out. My keeping, which in most people's eyes is my stronger suit, hasn't dropped off either."

Kevin Pietersen and Dimitri Mascarenhas' tweets may have drawn official ire but a ban on Twitter is not the answer, writes Emma John in the Guardian.

But, leaving the ECB's legendary moral rectitude aside, a ban would be a terrible mistake on its part. Twitter is one of the best marketing tools an under-rated England team has going for them right now. Graeme Swann and James Anderson's on-off "bromance" has been a cracking storyline and frankly deserves some sort of Bafta recognition, if not a full-blown film adaptation starring Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller. They have 60,000 supporters each, which is 57,000 more than any of the counties have at their average gate. Tim Bresnan, the pair's oft-maligned stooge – the Karl Pilkington to their Gervais and Merchant – has 20,000 followers, and he's not even in the Test team.

If you aren't au fait with Steve Davies, England's newest wicketkeeper, Stephen Brenkley has some information on him in the Independent.

Davies was one of Surrey's legion of signings this season. There were those who feared that such a quiet and unassuming chap would find the move too much. Worcestershire, quiet, sleepy, rural Worcestershire seemed to fit his personality rather more than the city slickers at Surrey.

But he fitted in immediately and when nobody else could make a run at the start of the summer he carried the batting. Pressed into service briefly as Championship opener, he has averaged almost 50 in that competition and is the county's leading one-day run scorer.

Mike Selvey writes in the Guardian that while Kevin Pietersen's rapid descent "from Kensington Oval to Kennington Oval in the blink of an eye" is quite shocking, the county break will give him a chance to regain his swagger before the Ashes.

In Pietersen we have someone whose cricket is almost driven by the internal engine of his ego. No one can match his strut. Underlying it, though, say those who know him best, is an insecurity that ultimately (and uncharacteristically) manifested itself in his soul-bearing interview on Sky last week where he made it plain that his confidence was shot. When the cock of the walk is reduced to that, it really is time to sit up and take notice.
...
As with, say, David Gower, we need to recognise and accept him for what he is while not trying to make him what he is not. The break now will do him nothing but good: an opportunity to take stock. He will be stronger for it. If anyone outscores him this coming Ashes series, then my bet is they will have played exceedingly well to do so.

Pietersen may have lost a lot of ground recently, but one thing he hasn't is his air of popular magnetism, writes Guardian's Barney Ronay who mentions the "pleasing circularity" of Pietersen seeking rehabilitation at the Oval, where five years ago he scripted an Ashes epic.

Emerging at first wicket down in Surrey's chase – greeted by wild cheers and whistles – Pietersen got the chance to exact revenge on Worcestershire's bowlers, which he set about with an array of leg-side flicks in a perky 38 before being caught and bowled by his personal bowling nemesis, the left-arm spinner – on this occasion Shaaiq Choudhry, playing in just only his sixth match. England's selectors, having taken a huge gamble in dropping their star batsman, will be hoping for a similar, albeit more concerted response in the coming weeks.

"It would be tempting to present Kevin Pietersen’s omission from England’s one-day squad as a morality tale about how the mighty have fallen, as that is plainly how the man himself sees it," writes Derek Pringle in the Telegraph. "But top-notch sportsman that he is, Pietersen is as fallible as the rest of us when his mind, hardwired to the pursuit of constant success, starts to question itself."

The truth is that KP has not been at the top of his game for a while now, especially in one-day cricket, the format he used to confirm his international pedigree with England in spectacular style, when he scored three hundreds in six games against South Africa.

He last passed fifty in 50-over internationals just under two years ago at Cuttack, when he was still captain. That same evening, the terror attacks on Mumbai commenced, though for Pietersen it has been his demotion back to the ranks that has had the greater affect on his cricket.

Pietersen is hurt by his omission but he should eventually come to thank the selectors. England need him in Australia this winter, but not as much as they once would have done. If he realises that he may be restored, writes Stephen Brenkley in the Independent.

This is Andy Flower and the England selectors sending out a message - it doesn't matter who you are or how good you are, if you take your eye off the ball you will be left out of the England cricket team, writes Nasser Hussain in the Daily Mail.

How he reacts now is crucial. He must not huff and puff and sulk. He must score big runs for Surrey. That is the point of what England have done and that is how Pietersen will regain that rhythm and form, even if he does it by scoring Second Division runs.

I have no doubts at all that Kevin Pietersen will be in the England team in Australia and I can see why the selectors feel this is the best way of helping him recover his form in time for the biggest series of them all. We all want to see the KP of old firing again, not least the selectors, who have made another strong call.

In the Guardian, Rob Bagchi says that if there is one consolation from this benighted series it is that England's fielders are among the very best we have ever had.

The era of hiding duffers such as Phil Tufnell, Devon Malcolm and Alan Mulally at fine leg and long-off is over. Every one of this side chucks himself about with abandon for the cause and executes the basics with finesse. There is no better exemplar than James Anderson who takes every chance that comes his way and never concedes two runs when the ball is within 20 yards of his position like so many lumbering carthorse bowlers in the past did.

England’s loss to Pakistan in The Oval test has raised plenty of questions about the capabilities of the team in an Ashes year. But could losing be a good thing? In the Daily Mail, Nasser Hussain says the loss is the wake-up call England needed to force them to confront their deficiencies.

What will concern Andy Flower is the repetitive nature of some of the dismissals of his players in the last three Tests.

Kevin Pietersen is playing away from his body because he is searching for the ball, Andrew Strauss has been getting out the same way to Aamer, while Paul Collingwood has played on more than once. I would also sit Jonathan Trott down and ask him why he has gone completely into his shell a couple of times. There is a spell with Pakistan, after the shine has gone off the new ball and before it is reversing and turning, when they provide you with a really good time to bat. Trott was in then and could have been more positive.

In the Independent on Sunday, David Lloyd compares England's Class of 2004 to the Class of 2010 and says "Strauss's charges are a work in progress with dreams of becoming the finished article".

For the moment, though, it is interesting to measure the team of 2010 against the one that walloped New Zealand and West Indies in 2004. And while marks may vary by a point or two here and there, depending on who is awarding them, most observers would agree, surely, that Strauss's current set still have ground to make up on their record-chasing predecessors.

Strauss is one of only two players to appear in both classes (the other being Anderson). And although the Middlesex man made a wonderful start to his Test career by scoring a century on debut at Lord's in 2004, he had played only six matches by the time England headed for The Oval. Strauss may not be in the same rich vein of form six years later, but throw in all the experience gained along the way and most would prefer the proven 2010 model.

Alastair Cook is the latest to come under fire for his performance. But it is time for some generosity. This England cricket team is in fine fettle, writes Steve James in the Sunday Telegraph

Finding a reliable opening pair is among the most difficult of tasks for a selection panel. England have a generally sound, settled partnership; surely much better than Australia's makeshift alliance of Shane Watson and Simon Katich. And so, unless calamity strikes, Cook must go to Australia, where the bouncier pitches will suit his game, with the pull shot as its strongest pillar.

In the Observer, however, Vic Marks is of the opnion that some time off will do Cook good.

"I would hesitate before making judgments about Stuart Broad on the back of his behaviour in the last Test, when he threw the ball at Zulqarnain Haider in his follow through. Broad was responding to frustration, not pressure," writes Duncan Fletcher in the Guardian.

There is no doubt he was in the wrong. He made two mistakes. Firstly, it was clear he had no intention of hitting the stumps with his throw. Secondly, he reacted badly. He should have said sorry sincerely. Instead he offered only a cursory apology, as though he felt it was just a necessary gesture he had to make. As a coach I do not think the situation calls for anything other than a quick, quiet chat with him, over breakfast or at one side of the next net session. You do not need to call a meeting or take a headmaster's approach, lecturing the player about how you never want to see them doing that kind of thing again. These are grown people after all.

As the reaction to Stuart Broad and Saeed Ajmal proved, there are as many different understandings of the spirit of cricket as there are people who play and watch the game, writes Andy Bull in The Spin.

In the Daily Mail, Nasser Hussain says the England selectors should tell struggling opening batsman Alastair Cook that his Test spot is on the line.

The work Cook has put in on his technique with Graham Gooch seemed to have worked in South Africa and Bangladesh during the winter. His alignment, head position and foot movements were pretty good. But that all seems to have gone now and he has all sorts of concerns again.

Writing in the Independent, Stephen Brenkley says Cook's form is one of a few issues England need to sort out before making the trip to Australia for the Ashes.

In the Guardian, Duncan Fletcher writes that despite the success of England's swing bowlers against Pakistan, the key bowler for the Ashes tour will be Graeme Swann.

If England are going to become the top Test team in the world they need to be able to win on flat pitches in conditions that will not suit Anderson nearly as much as those at Trent Bridge. In Australia and India, Graeme Swann will become the key to the balance of the side. He will have to keep it tight at one end while the quick bowlers rotate at the other. If the opposition can discomfort him, suddenly England's attack is not going to look nearly so effective.

Swann has already proved his worth, but he is going to have to do that again and again as England go forward. Because if I was coaching a team who were playing England, he is the bowler I would be looking to undermine.

The Independent's David Lloyd argues that England's new bowling coach might just be the man to help the fast men thrive in Australia.

The million-dollar question is whether Messrs Anderson, Broad and Finn will be effective enough when they are operating on generally batsmen-friendly surfaces in Australia with a Kookaburra ball that swings less, and goes soft more quickly, than its English, Duke, equivalent.

Why not? That is the optimistic way to look at three young bowlers who appear to enjoy hunting as a pack and are apparently blossoming under the guidance of England's still new bowling coach, David Saker. And, if Mr Saker, born in Melbourne and of Victoria and Tasmania fame, cannot give them a few pointers about succeeding Down Under then who can?

With Australia's era of dominance coming to an end, the field is wide open in the race for the top spot in Test cricket. Duncan Fletcher writes in the Guardian that England are one of the contenders and their performance on flat tracks that don't suit their seamers will determine whether they can break away from the pack.

If England are going to become the top Test team in the world they need to be able to win on flat pitches in conditions that will not suit Anderson nearly as much as those at Trent Bridge. In Australia and India, Graeme Swann will become the key to the balance of the side. He will have to keep it tight at one end while the quick bowlers rotate at the other. If the opposition can discomfort him, suddenly England's attack is not going to look nearly so effective.

In the Telegraph, Geoff Boycott writes that the England-Pakistan series is more like Men v Boys. Even if England win all four, the Ashes will be a different ball game.

This mismatch is the reason why we have to be careful reading too much into England’s performances and tactics and get carried away about The Ashes this winter. On a tactical front England are always going to pick six batsmen because they don’t make enough runs in the first innings to pick only five. They make too many mistakes and get themselves out.

England have been going through a purple patch in all three forms of the game recently. They lifted the World Twenty20 trophy, knocked Australia over in their ODI series and tamed Pakistan in under four days at Trent Bridge. In the Daily Telegraph, Simon Hughes lists ten reasons why England will soon be top of the cricketing tree.

Much of this has been achieved through attention to detail, orchestrated by Flower. He has drawn his influences from a number of sources, notably Moneyball, the book by Michael M Lewis that reinvented how baseball players were analysed. England spend more on research and have better facilities than any other country, and are reaping the rewards.

But there is a human element too, centered around a collection of specialist coaches as astute as any in the game. Their achievements disprove the old theory that coaches are vehicles that transport you to the game.

England were tenacious in the field against Pakistan, with Paul Collingwood in particular snaffling a couple of sharp chances at slip. Angus Fraser, who wasn’t the most brilliant fielder himself, explains why good fielding is so important in the Independent.

Good teams are vibrant, energetic and athletic in the field. They focus on their job and like an anaconda they constrict their prey, squeezing the life out of it by ruthlessly exploiting every mistake it makes.

Poor teams are the opposite. They tend to be lethargic, lonely and lost. They drift aimlessly around a field like lost goats that are solely interested in themselves. When a wicket falls they force themselves to join their team-mates, it is not instinctive.

In the same paper, Stephen Brenkley describes how England came to be the best fielding side in the world.

This was the sort of stuff that England have been promising to provide for a while. It is two years since they hired the specialist fielding coach, Richard Halsall, and no area of their game has improved so markedly and collectively.

Andrew Flintoff’s failure to recover from the knee injury that has sidelined him since last year’s Ashes has raised major questions about his cricketing future. But in the Guardian, Mike Selvey says it doesn't matter anyway, because Flintoff the cricketer has been replaced by Flintoff the personality.

The emphasis is changing. He is not Fred the cricketer any more, he is Fred the personality. He is earning millions through not playing cricket, the income from which would be small beer by comparison. It would be hard to believe that he has exiled himself in Dubai primarily for tax reasons or warm weather rather than getting paid a large sum to promote the place. A major high street bank rewards him handsomely because he is an "A list" companion of choice for major clients. He is going off on a motorcycle "odyssey" across India for some TV company or other. The cash is rolling in and will continue to do so.

In the Daily Mail, Nasser Hussain also writes that Flintoff's England career may be a thing of the past.

... the fact is that Flintoff's body has reached the point where he will never fully recover and he can only ever be patched up. We have seen it before with Michael Vaughan, Ashley Giles and Simon Jones. This has been going on for a long time and, basically, Freddie's body is just packing up in terms of him being a top-flight cricketer again.

Stephen Brenkley says in the Independent that Flintoff is in danger of becoming an irritatingly peripheral figure, hanging around, determined to have a few more pay days.

Watching Kevin Pietersen's batting struggles is not a pretty sight writes Stephen Brenkley in the Independent. A dipping average, a searching for the ball and and anxiety about his shots are all worrying signs for England. Especially with the Ashes looming.

When his short-lived captaincy ended in tears in early 2009, Pietersen averaged slightly above 50 in Test cricket, the benchmark for possible greatness. Since then, his average has been 42.92 and, since his return from the Achilles operation which forced him to miss most of last summer's Ashes, he has scored 550 runs at 39.28, which makes him human after all. He is struggling and part of the trouble is that he is having to try to rediscover form in international cricket.

However, some good news for England, following wicketkeeper Matt Prior's century in the first Test against Pakistan. Writing on the cricket365 website, Alan Tyers says that Prior has never been a fan favourite. One of the reasons is because he has made few big contributions when the chips have been down. Hopefully, following, Trent Bridge, that perception will have changed.

This ton at Trent Bridge, though, is a proper Test ton: made in the second innings, against a genuine Test class bowling attack in helpful conditions, with the team in a spot of bother. A few more of those, especially if one of them comes against Australia, and I guarantee that Matt Prior need never worry about not having the full backing of the England fans again.

Martin Kilner writes of his recent conversion to a cricket fan, brought about by Sky Sports' "exemplary" coverage of the ongoing Tests, in the Guardian.

As luck would have it, during the lunch break, Sky filled in some of the gaping holes in my knowledge of the game with archive features; one looking at past Tests between England and Pakistan, and another on the history of the one-day game. I am aware of the arguments for widening cricket's constituency by showing it on terrestrial TV but, from a purely selfish point of view, the all‑encompassing nature of the satellite coverage provides the kind of total immersion I need at this stage.

After having experienced more highs and lows than most players, Steve Harmison's international career may seem to have hit a roadblock, but the Durham fast bowler is not fretting over what might have been. In a free-flowing interview with the Independent, Harmison talks about the giddy highs of spearheading two successful Ashes campaigns, the jostling for fast-bowling spots in the English side, the state of pitches in England and more.

England have an exciting group of fast bowlers, and if they can leave the most skilful of them, Jimmy Anderson, out of the one-day team, then it shows how much competition there is. I'm really pleased for Steven Finn. England need a tall hit-the-deck bowler, and Finn gives them that. He'll make mistakes, but I hope people are more patient with him than they were with me.

Kevin Pietersen's failure on the first day in Trent Bridge is one too many for Henry Blofeld who writes in the Daily Express that the flashy batsman is completely out of form and living on borrowed time in the longest version.

We cannot go on saying Pietersen is a batsman who can change a Test match in a couple of hours. He used to be able to do that but he has not scored a Test hundred in 22 innings since March 2009 in Trinidad.

Nasser Hussain in the Daily Mail blames Pietersen's failure on his lack of match practice ahead of the Test, due to a fractious relationship with his county Hampshire.

Counties should do everything possible to help the England team but Hampshire were within their rights to say last week: ‘Sorry Kev, you have never done anything for us when we needed you, why should we put you in our 40-over team now you need us?’

I was talking to Shane Warne about Pietersen yesterday and he said that he could be as good as anyone in the world, with the exception of Sachin Tendulkar. But he has to remember that when he was scoring lots of hundreds, he was playing regularly. England players are generally overworked these days but Pietersen is undercooked.

Vic Marks in the Guardian writes that Eoin Morgan's century and Ian Bell's form may have the selectors thinking about leaving Pietersen out of the Ashes tour party.

It is a century that puts the cat among the pigeons. Ian Bell, nursing his injured ankle, can only look on from the sidelines, albeit with his stock high. Ravi Bopara is scoring stacks of runs for Essex. And yet England are only likely to pick seven batsmen in their tour party to Australia. After this innings it would be remarkable if Morgan was not one of those.

Surely they could not omit Kevin Pietersen? It remains just about unthinkable but Pietersen was all at sea today. He has been practising assiduously in the nets at Lord's, but that is not the same as scoring runs in the middle in county cricket. The problem is that there appears to be nowhere for him to play county cricket now that his ties with Hampshire are being severed.

The Old Batsman blog pays tribute to the Sussex allrounder Robin Martin-Jenkins, who has retired to pursue his new career as a Geography and RS teacher at Hurstpierpoint College.

RM-J was a name like no other, not just because of the famous - and rightly proud - father, but with its feel for the amateur days of decades past. There was something of the curate about him, and the Sussex faithful would sometimes serenade him with a chorus of 'RM-J my Lord' as he bustled in with his quicker-than-you-think medium pacers.

England fast bowler Steven Finn is a keen writer as well as cricketer. Here is his first published effort in the Observer – about his hero Glenn McGrath.

I have only ever seen McGrath bowl live once, at the Walker Ground in Southgate in 2004 against Yorkshire. McGrath donned the blues of Middlesex in three national league games that summer. I remember perambulating round the ground, taking in the performance of my idol from as many angles as possible. From side on, I could see the incredible carry that he was getting, sending the ball firing through to the wicketkeeper. From behind his arm I could see the "shape" he was getting on the ball, taking it consistently away from the right-hander. The rhythmic run‑up and the unique and individual way he jumps in towards the stumps at release of the ball – just as every coaching manual says you shouldn't! This all added to the magic of the moment I was caught in. It showed he did it his way and also gave me something to relate to as a cricketer. Because I was doing a similar thing when I was bowling.

Finn emphasised his admiration for McGrath in an interview to Donald McRae.

"You know," Finn says, "I would spend hours in a net like that, trying to bowl like McGrath, or copy his mannerisms. That's where my love of cricket started, dreaming of bowling like McGrath or Flintoff. And that's why, now, it seems bizarre I'm actually that person on TV when I'm playing for England. Your mind can start racing then and you can get ahead of yourself. But that's why it's important to remain realistic. I've only played four Tests against Bangladesh and, although I've got some wickets, I know how much I've got to learn. I've got some big challenges ahead – whether it's to try and stay in the Test team for the series against Pakistan or to get stronger in my body. I've been thinking a lot about how much better I can get if I work hard and stay level-headed."

England made Kevin Pietersen available for Hampshire because he needed some batting practice ahead of the Tests against Pakistan. Hampshire, however, decided not to select him. in the Sunday Telegraph, Steve James says the situation needs to be sorted out.

You can see Hampshire's point. Pietersen has already said very publicly and very pointedly that he will not be a Hampshire player next season. Their chairman, Rod Bransgrove, is a good, proud man of strong principles. He feels let down. He was miffed that the England and Wales Cricket Board would not permit Pietersen to speak at a Q&A session the night before the Australia one-day international at the Rose Bowl. He is hardly a friend or ally of ECB chairman, Giles Clarke.

And, yes, Pietersen can sometimes be gauche. Whatever his inner thoughts and feelings, he should not have revealed them so soon. His commitment is questionable in the extreme ...

But is this snub right? Overseas players flit in and out of counties like partygoers trawling High Street pubs on a Saturday night. It seems bewildering that, amid the smorgasbord of county fixtures, Pietersen could not find some practice. Only in this country could this happen.

Development isn’t just an economic buzzword, it has become a sporting one as well. Across the globe, various professional sports bodies are pushing the development of their respective disciplines. Implicit in development is the concept of inclusion – the more people you can get playing your sport, the better your chances of success. Writing in the Guardian, David Conn finds fault with the ECB’s approach, saying it hasn't been inclusive enough.

Clarke accepts that cricket, perhaps more than any other sport, reflects this country's gaping inequality, with laundered fields and pavilions at private schools while Tye labours ina series of meetings to see an Astroturf strip laid in his school's local Ordsall Park.

"It is fair to point to the divide," says Clarke, "although it is a wider problem than just cricket. Our job is to encourage participation, and integration of different ethnic groups, which cricket has a great ability to do because of Asian communities' enthusiasm for the game. We are having to address years of decay and deprivation, but we are making progress."

The oldest domestic competition in the world, The County Championship, begins on July 20. Stephen Brenkley of The Independent looks forward to the return of the Championship.

The oldest domestic competition in the world has been treated dismissively lately, rather like the old duffer in the pub whose tales of yesteryear are tolerated but who some say has outstayed his welcome and frankly is going gaga.

It fails to garner the necessary coverage any more, in any form of the media; it is treated as an afterthought, an irrelevance, a necessary evil. It has done nothing to deserve this.

Franchise Twenty20 cricket seems closer than ever in England after this season had smaller crowds due to a bloated fixture list, high prices and lack of star names, writes Will Hawkes in the Independent.

There may have been more games this season, but that hasn't necessarily translated into more spectators. Take Surrey. In past seasons they have sold out home games for fun, but this time only the London derby with Middlesex attracted what they might consider a decent crowd.

Derbyshire, meanwhile, drew more to their game with the Australians (3,000) than came to any of their previous six home Twenty20 matches

Sportsmen of all stripes tend to spout platitudes to the press. Worried about generating the faintest whiff of controversy, today’s top players content themselves with the blandest of statements, which are then prettily packaged by journalists and devoured by readers. It is a vicious cycle. Occasionally, however, some players manage to break the mould. In his Guardian blog, The Spin, Andy Bull claims the greatest achievement of the Andrew Strauss – Andy Flower combination has been to their willingness to tell it like it is.

The single best thing about the tenure of Strauss and Andy Flower is that they have banished bullshit. Listening to Peter Moores explain away his team's poor performances you felt like you were taking part in a motivational seminar for middle-managers at a municipal leisure centre. You could go in, sit down, switch on a tape-recorder and hum Bob Dylan's To Ramona to yourself ("I can see that your head/has been twisted and fed/by worthless foam from the mouth") safe in the knowledge that 30 minutes later you would be typing up a piece about the need for consistency, good areas and missing pieces of the jigsaw.

Vithushan Ethantharajah of sport.co.uk indulges Kevin Pietersen in a free-wheeling interview that deals with unsolicited 'rotation', non-existent Twenty20 freelancers, and criticism from the man he displaced from the England side - Graham Thorpe.

“I think he’s probably been wanting to say it for a long time since I took his place. It’s nice that Thorpey’s got himself mentioned in a few interviews and that he’s done an interview. It’s probably nice for him to see his name in the papers, it’s nice, and it’s good. I couldn’t care what he says or anything else; it’s not constructive and probably no point saying it. I’ll be in his position in a few years time! He’ll talk about players who are in-form and out of form, but at least he’s got himself in the media, must be really nice for him!”

In his Yahoo column, Graham Thorpe is startled by the decline of James Anderson's stocks, from being touted as the leader of the England attack to losing his Twenty20 spot and being 'rotated' out of the Bangladesh series.

It is not good for team morale to simply 'rotate' your key players as it leads everyone to believe that they have been dropped. Which, given Anderson's shoddy form of late, is entirely believable. If Anderson was being rested, which coach Andy Flower implied in his post-match interviews, then the fact that he spent most of the Bangladesh innings on the field as a workhorse substitute fielder is absurd.

Eight weeks short of his 20th birthday, Ireland batsman Paul Stirling is already being compared to Eoin Morgan. Like the new England sensation, Stirling could well follow the route from Ireland to the English side through a stint with Middlesex. Ian Callender of the Belfast Telegraph profiles the youngster and explores the possibilities ahead of him.

One of his Ireland team-mates, John Mooney, said this week if he was given the choice of paying to watch Morgan, Stirling or Ed Joyce, the former Ireland and England batsman who is set to return to the Irish side, it would be Stirling every time.

There is much to be set right about England's one-day side following their consecutive defeats at the hands of Australia in the two dead rubbers, writes David Lloyd in the Independent on Sunday.

In fairness, Strauss and Flower have been saying exactly that throughout the past fortnight. They know Australia will go into the 2011 World Cup, to be held on the subcontinent, as tournament favourites while England can expect to be among a cluster of countries considered capable, if everything comes together, of denying the holders a fourth consecutive triumph.

Shaun Tait's menacing pace has given England much food for thought in their ODI preparations, writes Steve James in the Telegraph.

Tait has risen magnificently to each occasion. The spells have been short and sometimes expensive, but they have always been box office.

With Australia already 2-0 down, his call-up was just too late to shift momentum immediately and change the series result but, without doubt, he has sent shuddering tremors through England’s batting ever since he bowled Craig Kieswetter first ball in the third match at Old Trafford. Even Eoin Morgan – conspicuously struggling with the short ball – has appeared mortal.

Nasser Hussain, writing in the Daily Mail, says England's recent limited-overs success gives plenty of hope but they have to determine how best they can transfer their current run into the World Cup in the sub-continent.

It has been interesting to watch Andrew Strauss in practice with batting coach Graham Gooch before each of the four one-day internationals because the captain is clearly working on his game with the sub-continent in mind.

Stephen Brenkley looks into how England have dramatically changed their limited-overs fortunes after their listless 6-1 thrashing at the hands of Australia soon after last year's Ashes. In the Independent, he picks bold selection, sound strategy, improved fielding and Australian fallibility as reasons for England's series victory.

But it is clear that Australia are not what they were. Their batting line-up is that which has dominated in recent times – they were supreme in the Champions Trophy in South Africa last autumn – but it is not only undercooked in this NatWest Series, it is also showing signs of decline.

Could it be that Ricky Ponting, one of the great players of this or any generation, is beginning to show signs of decline? Suffice to say that it looks increasingly probable that he will not recapture all his old glory (but Ponting being Ponting, he also knows that recapturing the bulk of it in the World Cup next year is more important than doing so now).

On Cricket365, Peter May says that though England are an improved side, Andrew Strauss' side may not be as perfect as its fans would like to believe.

The NatWest Series is talked of as a pointer for the Ashes in October and next year's World Cup. This despite the fact that each side will likely change four players from Old Trafford on Sunday to the Gabba in November. Or that Australia haven't lost in Brisbane since their 1980s nadir. Or that the World Cup is in India not Lancashire. Or, as far as this old rivalry goes, that Australia tend to do it when it matters.

In his column for Yahoo, Graham Thorpe writes that Australia have become an ordinary side and England is now a better team in every facet of the game.

England have a real opportunity to whitewash the tourists and continue the kind of winning mentality that should hold them in very good stead in the lead up to the Ashes. You can run through almost every department and find that England have the upper hand, which tells you a lot about the dominance the side currently have.

Strauss is leading the side from the top of the order with authority and conviction; Kevin Pietersen and Eoin Morgan are class acts in the middle order; James Anderson and Stuart Broad look by far the most threatening pacemen; and Graeme Swann and Michael Yardy have the upper hand in the spin department.

England's exit from the football World Cup has coincided with their cricket side's unprecedented rise across all three formats. In Times Online, Richard Hobson reasons that a predilection towards club culture has cost the country's football set-up dearly, and contrasts it with the way Andy Flower has ensured the opposite with the cricketing framework.

The significant, blindingly obvious difference is that in cricket the England side is paramount. Increasingly the county game revolves around Andy Flower, the team director, like the planets orbit the sun. The opposite happens in football, where clubs are serious, multi-million pounds businesses and take priority over the national team. Supporters have their allegiances too. Even those who fork out hundreds of pounds to follow England abroad weave the name of their club team into the red and white flag.

Only six weeks ago, the suggestion was heard in some quarters that Andrew Strauss was outmoded as a one-day cricketer. But with a series win against Australia and sound touch with the bat, he has out those doubts to rest, writes David Hopps in the Guardian.

England had won World Twenty20 and one-day fashions were designed on slicker, brasher lines. Strauss, it was suggested, was stuck in the world of the gentleman's outfitters. But it was Strauss who held England together with a restrained 87 from 121 balls, a judicious one-day innings, as traditional as a pin-stripe suit.

In the Independent. Stephen Brenkley ponders whether England’s new found aggressive approach is the right way to go about retaining the Ashes come November

Under Strauss and Andy Flower, the coach, England have changed. Their fielding now fairly bristles with genuine purpose. And the same applies to their batting and to their bowling. It is not about being gung-ho, going in with bats blazing and letting slip the forces of bowling hell, but there is a purposeful, hard-eyed method based on controlled attack, bellig-erent strokeplay and rapid, roughing-up bouncers, rather than attrition.

England must decide whether this is the way to retain the Ashes, whether in Australia over the course of 25 days of the most intense cricket this winter they can see off Australia by taking the game to them. Or if the best way is to wait patiently, to sit in as it were, hope to see cracks in the opposition armoury and then pounce (this is how England won two memorable series in the sub-continent a few years ago, in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, under the great captain Nasser Hussain).

Eoin Morgan's century against Australia was among the best ever for England in the limited-overs format, says Stephen Brenkley in the Independent.

While he was about it, Morgan also confirmed that within little more than a year he has become one of the most accomplished limited-overs batsmen in the world. What made it truly outstanding, as England beat Australia by four wickets in the first match of the NatWest Series, was Morgan's serenity.

He came in when England were in trouble which, at 97 for four in pursuit of 268, was in danger of becoming deep trouble. But his patience as he felt himself into the match was consummate. The innings spanned only 85 balls but it was not until the 19th of them that he struck the first of his 16 fours. The pace and timing, embellished by the bravura quality of his strokes, were impeccable.

Simon Hughes, in his blog in the Daily Telegraph, says Morgan has the potential to better Michael Bevan, as he has a greater range of shots as well as better control in his strokeplay.

James Anderson recently voiced his unhappiness over being rested for the tour of Bangladesh as well as not getting a game during England’s victorious ICC World T20 campaign. On Yahoo Cricket, Graham Thorpe says England need a settled Anderson if they are to have any chance of retaining the Ashes.

The paceman said being excluded took the wind out of his sails and made him angry, but he cannot be too outspoken considering that England won both the Test series, then the tournament in the West Indies. It is only natural that a competitive sportsman will be unhappy at being left out of the side, and it is a positive sign that England have strength in depth at last.

However, Anderson has always been an unpredictable cricketer who has incredible good days and pretty atrocious bad ones: England need him to feel settled. There are some cricketers who respond well to competition, and Paul Collingwood is one of those; but the Lancastrian is a player who needs to be encouraged.

With the World Cup around the corner, England's preparation is off the boil since they haven't played too many ODIs recently. Scyld Berry writes in the Telegraph that the game against Scotland in Ediburgh will launch their search for the right combination, with Craig Kieswetter and Michael Yardy likely to feature prominently in their plans.

To accommodate Yardy, he is likely to bat as a sober No 6, working the ball around amid some giddy talents. Luke Wright is slated to be the aerial hitter at No 7 and, if he is at the wicket at the 40-over mark, to orchestrate the batting power play of five overs, which was England's embarrassment last year. Naturally enough Wright said that Yardy, his Sussex captain, was "very good if we've had a collapse, someone we bat around".

In the Independent, Stephen Brenkley writes that despite the rise of Craig Kieswetter in the shorter formats, Matt Prior deserves the big gloves for the Ashes.

There remains a nagging doubt that Prior, Ashes hero that he is, has not been treated with quite the propriety he deserves. Through constant application, his wicketkeeping has progressed enormously and if he has put in the hours, the big secret is still a simple one: he stays lower for longer.

Apart from anything else, Prior is the most unselfish of cricketers. He always does what he thinks the side wants. It is some attribute to have. This is not to say that Kieswetter is selfish. Far from it, because going out and slugging at the top of the order demands the virtue of putting your own figures second.

In the Wisden Cricketer, Alex Bowden is worried about the response to the Friends Provident Twenty20 tournament, which is hardly an 'event' like the IPL. Lesser fixtures wouldn't hurt, and it would also increase attendances for the matches. In some cases, less is more.

I went to India for the IPL. Whatever you say about that tournament, it’s an event. There is one match at a time and you can follow the tournament with ease. The English version features three or four matches a day and it’s also come hot on the heels of the World Twenty20 and the IPL before that. It’s a tournament, but it’s not an event. England’s win in the Caribbean may have spurred interest, but county Twenty20 matches feel a bit like getting some grissini brought to your table after you’ve had a steak.

From being "one innings away to the chop" to becoming England's most-capped ODI player, and later, only the third Englishman to captain a team of world champions, Paul Collingwood has come a long way. He relives the ups and downs with Peter Hayter of Mail Online.

‘I know I’m not the most talented cricketer in the world. There are more than enough people telling me. But I don’t need telling. I know I’ve got to keep improving my game and in the past I’ve always been right on that limit of “This could be my last game or my last tour”. When cricket is your love and what you do for a living, all that talk does hurt. I’m not kidding you. You might try to put on a face because you don’t want to bring the team down with you. But there are moments when, literally, you are in complete despair, in tears, thinking, “Where do I turn to? Where am I going to go from here?”.'

Scyld Berry, in the Telegraph, reviews what the Friends Provident T20 has thrown up so far. The tournament this season lacks current internationals, hasn't produced enough runs and has not attracted as many female fans as it did when Twenty20 first took off in England, he says.

England’s league would more closely resemble India’s if more current internationals were involved. But West Indies and South Africa are engaged, like Sri Lanka and India, and Australia are about to be, which leaves the remaining, mostly ageing, stardust to be spread around 18 counties - and the situation is aggravated when England’s World Twenty20 winners are limited to token appearances, such as Kevin Pietersen to one.

Among the many wicketkeeping battles in English cricket is the ongoing one between Matt Prior and Craig Kieswetter. Stephen Brenkley writes in the Independent on Sunday that despite Kieswetter's impressive show on the international scene, Prior's experience, his unselfishness and significant improvement with the gloves must warrant a place in England's Ashes squad.

Kieswetter was called up by England as soon as he was available, having served a four-year qualification period after deciding that he was not after all South African and would throw in his lot with the land of his mother, or at least the one next door to his mother, she being Scottish.

He has said and done all the right things since he first pitched up in Dubai last autumn and from there went on to Bangladesh and the Caribbean. Little more could have been asked of him.

Yet there remains a nagging doubt that Prior, Ashes hero that he is, has not been treated with quite the propriety he deserves. Through constant application, his wicketkeeping has progressed enormously and if he has put in the hours, the big secret is still a simple one: he stays lower for longer.

Simon Wilde speaks to Steve Finn about his self-criticism over his performances against Bangladesh, his fitness and his influences in his development as a fast bowler. Read the interview in the Sunday Times.

Several days after his second five-for in Tests, he is still spitting nails at how badly he thought he bowled against Bangladesh at Lord’s and Old Trafford. “It was the worst I’d bowled this season,” says this season’s leading first-class wicket-taker.

“I took wickets and bowled some good balls but overall it was disappointing. I went for 180-odd runs in the first game and 80-odd off 18 overs in the second. Building pressure is paramount in Test cricket. I didn’t do the things I’d wanted to do. It bugged me then and it bugs me now.”

The English press are largely happy with the decision to reward most of the World Twenty20 winners with a place in the squad for the upcoming one-dayers against Australia. England have long struggled to find a settled one-day opening pair, and Michael Atherton writes in the Times that he is intrigued to see how the latest combination - captain Andrew Strauss and newcomer Craig Kieswetter - will work.

The story of the tortoise and the hare needs no retelling, but depending how restricting English conditions and a decent pace attack will be for Kieswetter, the contrast between Strauss’s tortoise and Kieswetter’s hare will be significant. If Kieswetter can succeed in scoring big runs at a quick pace, then that will add pressure on Strauss, especially if the captain fails to translate good early-season Test form on to the one-day stage.

Mike Selvey writes in the Guardian that the squad is the clearest indication that Andy Flower sees the Twenty20 success as a blueprint in the build-up to the 2011 World Cup.

Stephen Brenkley has similar views in the Independent, where he also writes that Strauss' place in the ODI side isn't under as much pressure as is being made out in the media.

England have a probable 21 one-day matches between now and the start of the World Cup next February. It is their objective to refine the muscular approach which has pervaded all three elements of their game in the last nine months, starting with the Champions Trophy last September.

One of the two main orchestrators of this is Andrew Strauss, the captain, who overhauled England's philosophy with the coach, Andy Flower – which is why suggestions that his place was vulnerable were at best premature, at worst uninformed nonsense. Strauss needs some runs in the sense that batsmen always need runs but it is clear that England want him to be at the helm come the sub-continental World Cup.

One of few surprises was the recall of Ian Bell, who has been rewarded for working to improve his strike-rate in limited-overs formats says Derek Pringle in the Daily Telegraph.

On Cricket Central, Richard Hobson makes a spirited case for keeping Strauss as one-day captain.

The ECB's latest sponsorship deal with Jaguar is a reflection of cricket's upward social mobility, writes ED Smith in the Times.

In the Eighties and Nineties, cricketers had to beg their local dealership for whatever was going spare — perhaps a nice white Ford Sierra with a tail fin and electric sunroof. In return, the car was plastered with the player’s name and cricketing CV. Yes, you got the Sierra, but it came at a heavy social price. Not every player, of course, viewed driving a car embossed with his own name and accomplishments as an embarrassment. Some went straight back to the garage to ask for bigger print.

Michael Atherton, writing in the Times, says that despite the debate surrounding Andrew Strauss's role in ODI cricket, he still remains the right man to lead England in the 50-over version. His captaincy, Atherton adds, has had much to do with England's resurgence over the last 12 months.

Strauss, said Flower, has been as much the architect of England’s recent resurgence as anybody. That may be so, but is he good enough to get into the best side?

For the moment, Flower believes he is, although the nature of one-day cricket in England will not make this proposition an easy one to prove. There are 21 one-day internationals before the World Cup next year, 14 of them in England this summer, in conditions very different from those the team will face in the sub-continent.

Simon Hughes, in the Daily Telegraph, agrees. He adds that Strauss's adaptability in the batting order and his multiple roles make him that much more valuable.

England have raised the bar in limited-overs cricket with their World Twenty20 triumph, and Andrew Strauss has the challenge to ensure his team lifts its game in ODIs, writes Mike Selvey in the Guardian. Strauss' adaptability to the demands of the format will be one of the things to watch out for in the upcoming games, he adds.

Despite an excellent start to his Test career, Jonathan Trott has not been given his due by the media, says Lawrence Booth in the Wisden Cricketer. Had he been a born-and-bred Englishman, he adds, the treatment could well have been different.

Trott is an atypical modern England batsman because he is happy to stay in second gear for an entire day and more. We prize stiff-upper-lipped captain/openers; middle-order stylists; and the very occasional destroyer (read Kevin Pietersen). But bubble-dwelling run-machines arouse our suspicion. If they happen to have been born elsewhere, so much the worse.

Trott has already been quietly dropped from the Twenty20 and ODI teams, but English cricket should be careful what it wishes for. It can’t welcome a player who fulfils the qualification criteria, then get snotty when he fails to drag us to the edge of our seats while expertly doing his job.

Writing in the Guardian, former England coach Duncan Fletcher reckons Jonathon Trott’s double century against Bangladesh proves he is the man England need at No. 3

So underpinning everything he did in the first Test was the knowledge that if he failed, he was likely to be cut from the side. His critics will be quick to point out that runs scored against Bangladesh count for less. But this is where it is essential to have a real understanding of the range of difficulties Test cricket throws up. Scoring big against a weak bowling attack has its own problems, especially for a man under pressure for his place in the team. Firstly there is the added expectation. Against Bangladesh a century is not necessarily enough to make a convincing case because it comes with a caveat. The most impressive aspect of Trott's 226 was the way in which he carried on after reaching his hundred. Weaker players would have thought: "Right, that's enough," and switched off.

I don't like to read too much into one game, but I would say now 100% I'd take [Steven] Finn to Australia this winter. He has height, pace, bounce and has shown here that he can use angles intelligently. Finn is a real find for England, writes Nasser Hussain in the Daily Mail.

It is the first time I have ever seen Finn bowl live and I have been hugely impressed. Specifically, I have been impressed because he can make things happen and take wickets on a flat pitch and in batsman-friendly conditions. Finn looks to have a good brain, is mature and has good people like Gus Fraser around him at Middlesex, who will make sure he does not get carried away with his success in his first home Test. The only possible issue with Finn will be his workload - we have seen with people like Ryan Sidebottom in recent years that the extra demands of international cricket can take a toll on a bowler's body.

In the Guardian, Vic Marks says, "Unlike previous England bowlers who flickered brightly but briefly, Finn appears to be here to stay."

After only half a day in the field on Friday it was already obvious that England are lining up Steven Finn to be a fixture in the first XI before the Ashes series this winter. It will be an interesting summer as we watch the continued development of this England bowling attack and start to see what the genuine options will be in the winter in conditions that will, as ever, reward the taller, quicker bowlers, writes David Gower in the Sunday Times.

The current management of Broad gives us a clue as to the treatment Finn, as a 21-year-old, can expect over the next few years. Sports science tells us that young bodies are highly susceptible to strain injuries, especially when involved in something as basically unnatural as fast bowling, and it is an almost impossible balance for a captain to strike in trying both to get the required work out of his young fast bowlers and not to break them.

When someone like Finn sets pulses racing over here, it is safe to assume that alarm bells will ring 10,000 miles away. He is new, he is extremely tall, he threatens to bowl at 90mph and he could be a crucial member of England's attack this winter. Cue a bit of consternation Down Under, writes David Lloyd in the Sunday Telegraph.

In the Daily Mail, Nasser Hussain stands up for the policy of rotating players, even if it deprives English fans from watching their favourite players at home.

People might point out it's wrong for Collingwood to make a quick buck in the IPL and then sit out a Test series in front of his own fans. But, again, that is the reality of the world we live in. You can't stop the players chasing the money. The only question that matters is: how do you best manage the situation for the good of English cricket?

What England are trying to do now is cover every base. When I captained England in Australia in 2002-03, we lost Darren Gough and Andrew Flintoff to injury, as well as Graham Thorpe, who was having personal problems. But we ended up having to replace them with guys who had hardly any experience of international cricket. The result? We got stuffed.

Duncan Fletcher writes in the Guardian that Eoin Morgan has displayed the right temperament to suggest he has the nous to succeed in whites. However, he insists that Morgan must prove also prove that he has the technique - more specifically, that he can handle the bouncer.

I have never believed that good batsmen should be pigeonholed as specialists in one form of the game unable to make it in another. The best players can succeed in any format if they are given a chance to settle. Just look at how Jacques Kallis and Rahul Dravid have taken to Twenty20, which was supposed to be a young man's game. This is not to say that Morgan will necessarily succeed. The one clear early hurdle he must clear is showing he can play the short ball. That is always a key indication of whether a good one-day batsman can also perform in Test cricket. A player who struggles against bouncers will never do well in Tests.

Michael Bevan was a classic case. In Test cricket a batsman needs to be able to play the short ball effectively. That does not mean he has to attack it but he does need to survive it, typically by ducking underneath. Bevan used to get locked into position, and that always left him vulnerable. If Morgan has any failings against short-pitch bowling they will soon be exposed, maybe not now, but later in the summer.

David Lloyd previews the first Test between England and Bangladesh in his skysports.com blog. He reposes a lot of faith in Steven Finn, who is a shoo-in for his Ashes starting eleven.

Steven Finn should be exciting to watch and I'd have him in my team for the first Test match in Brisbane. He's a perfect player for that environment and a lot of people are saying he's reminiscent of Glenn McGrath. It would be ideal for England if he could get anywhere near as good as that.

He has worked under Angus Fraser at Middlesex, who has obviously drilled the disciplines of bowling into him. Fraser is a terrific man and worked incredibly hard on his fast bowling.

Now when you hear Finn speak you hear plenty of "Fraser-isms" such as hard work, discipline and not giving anything away. The rewarding thing is you get rewards for hard work.

With Monty Panesar struggling for form and wickets, Bill Day introduces us to Moeen Ali in the Daily Mail, saying Ali could take Panesar’s place as Britain’s multi-cultural cricketing icon.

The product of a cricket-mad Muslim family, the 22-year-old could become a new iconic figure for multi-cultural Britain, attracting the same cult following as Monty Panesar, as England go from the 'Sikh of Tweak' to the new 'Bearded Wonder'.

Moeen was taught the game by his father Munir who, frustrated by the lack of opportunity for Asian and other inner-city kids to break into top-level cricket, teamed up with his brother Shabir to build a net in his back garden, and created the Streets2Arena, a coaching academy in the Midlands that still flourishes.

Their success is such that the family have already produced one England Test player, Shabir's son Kabir Ali, who is now at Hampshire, while Moeen's elder brother, Kadeer, plays for Gloucestershire and his younger brother, Omar, has an MCC Young Cricketers' contract

With Jonathan Trott having been dismantled mentally in South Africa during the winter and Ravi Bopara having suffered similarly against the Australians last summer, England are seeking a middle-order batsman of pedigree to sit alongside Kevin Pietersen, Paul Collingwood and Ian Bell, writes Mike Selvey in the Guardian.

The choice of Morgan is a tricky one. Here is a player whose experience over almost 50 first-class games for Middlesex, in which he has scored just six hundreds, at what these days is a modest average of around 36, hardly offers obvious credentials for Test cricket. Little of his cricket upbringing has been directed at anything other than one-day cricket, in which he has become one of the world's rising stars ... Flower can be certain of one thing – Morgan's ability to rise to the occasion.

Test match and Twenty20 cricket are as different as chalk and cheddar, but in Eoin Morgan the selectors believe they have seen depths of talent and levels of composure that will enable him to transfer easily success from one form of the game to another, says Mike Atherton in the Times.

"In a lifetime of cricket he [David Lloyd] has been nothing but himself. What a self it has been, too: warm, engaging, daft, outspoken, emotional. His career, famously, has embraced being player, umpire, coach and commentator-pundit, all done at the highest level. If he won only nine Test caps as a player, he would have won 109 as a commentator," Stephen Brenkley on David Lloyd in the Independent on Sunday.

Bumble likes pubs, probably as much as he likes cricket, and he still adores that after all these years. He has two locals, one round the corner from home in Cheshire, one a train ride away in the heart of Manchester. He likes to arrive at around 5.30pm, have a chat and a pint and then push off home. Early doors, he calls it. "I am a massive protector of the British pub," he said. "Too many of them are going to the wall, but it's a place of conversation and a good sup. I don't do music and bandits, just conversation, a good sup, see you tomorrow."

In the Guardian, Mike Selvey writes that Paul Collingwood and Andy Flower will test their rotation policy in the home summer against Bangladesh, and the player likely to get a break is Stuart Broad.

As a young fast bowler of slender build, Broad needs more careful management than some. But what of Collingwood? The argument will go that if he requires rest now, then some of that has to be down to his participation in the physical flog that was the Indian Premier League. He chose to go, and was allowed to do so by his employers. Would it be right then, not least to the public who would feel entitled to watch the best England side available, to omit him from the Bangladesh matches on this basis?

Keeping with England's most recent T20 success, Malcolm Knox writes in Back Page Lead that the ugly truth about world cricket is that England have better players than Australia.

New dad Kevin Pietersen has been busy changing nappies ever since he got back from the Caribbean. He tells Jim White of the Telegraph of his sleep management during the World T20, the camaraderie in the England dressing room and much more.

"Thank goodness for sleeping pills," he says. "I took a couple, was spark out for the whole flight, arrived in Barbados, had a quick spin on a jet ski with Colly [Paul Collingwood], something to eat, went to the team meeting, had another sleeping pill, slept for 11 hours and was totally refreshed and ready to play the next day. It's probably the last decent night's sleep I'll have in a while."

In Mail Online, Alan Fraser provides a definitive account that traces Eoin Morgan's development from batting on a concrete pathway in a Dublin courtyard to donning England colours and mowing bowlers to all corners.

Running down one side is a pebble-dash wall - sporting a couple of feeble examples of graffiti - which would prevent a left-handed batsman from attempting anything approaching an off drive. He would have little alternative but to cart every ball to leg and towards a play park.

This was where and how the fledgling Eoin Morgan, England's latest batting sensation, spent his winter nights when the grass was sodden - which was most of the time. From those tiny blows could be traced the origins of that six over midwicket which Morgan, 23, smote during the latter stages of last weekend's World Twenty20 final victory over Australia, prompting the notoriously difficult-to-please commentator, Ian Chappell, to remark: 'There's some good English willow around - maybe it's Irish willow.'

In the Wisden Cricketer, Lawrence Booth writes that Andy Flower's track record of making the right decisions for English cricket needs to be trusted in dealing with the Andrew Strauss ODI conundrum.

England under Flower have barely put a foot wrong – and when they have, redemption has been swift: Ravi Bopara was dropped for the Ashes decider, Owais Shah booted out of the one-day team, and Paul Collingwood rested from the NatWest Series. There is a decisiveness about Flower that makes the old days of wrongly aligned planets and Calcutta smog look like low farce.

Selection for the World Twenty20 was neck-on-the-line stuff too. What previous regime would have dared drop their shop-window fast bowler? Or drafted in a pair of relatively untested openers? Or encouraged the slow bouncer? Mike Yardy as a second spinner? Luke Wright at No 6? These were all products of a coaching mind that knows itself and isn’t swayed by others.

The travails of Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cook in the current county season proves that the championship is still a stern test of abilities, writes Christopher Martin-Jenkins in the Times Online.

So far this season it has produced some interesting, vibrant and, on the smaller grounds at least, well-supported cricket. The England Test players who have missed the party in the Caribbean, notably Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cook, have been reminded what a stern school the county circuit still is.

Neither of the established opening pair has found batting easy on pitches inclined to give bowlers just a little bit more help in early season than the Test surfaces of high summer: Strauss has scored 249 runs from his ten innings at an average of 24.9, Cook 155 from six innings at 25.

Steve James has no hesitation in naming Eoin Morgan in the England Test side that will defend the Ashes this winter. Read his justification in the Telegraph.

Is Morgan's basic technique that unconventional anyway? He does have a low, tight grip on the bat handle. But Sanath Jayasuriya didn't have too shabby a career with something similar. And Morgan dips slightly as the bowler approaches – dangerous because if it happens too late the eyes are moving and a moving camera always takes unreliable pictures of line and length – but so does Trescothick, and he has managed just fine.

The future shape of English first-class cricket will be decided in the coming days, as the ECB mulls over a consultation document in which are outlined five proposals of varying degrees of radicalism.

With the summer schedule already filled to the brim, something is going to have to give, and one way or another, that something seems certain to be the County Championship.

How, though, will it be restructured? To have your say, go to The Guardian, which is conducting a poll, the results of which will be published in the near future. The various options are outlined below:

BBC Radio’s beloved Test Match Special has won the Sports Journalists’ Association award for best radio programme this year. Martin Johnson pens an appreciation for the show in Test Match Extra, and argues that cricket is one of the few sports which is more enriching to listen to on the radio than watch on the television.

TMS constantly delights its small army of listeners with its seamless blend of expert analysis and coffee morning banter, even for those who’ve never seen a game of cricket, and who wouldn’t quite know whether a reference to the man at mid off being a little too square was a reference to his fielding position or his dress sense.

In the Guardian, Frank Keating looks back at Harold Larwood's almost unnoticed departure from England, 60 years ago to the day, with only a pressman and Douglas Jardine to wish him well.

Same quay, same boat and carrying the very same suitcase as he had 18 years before. Harrowing irony for now, 18 years on, the renowned fast bowler – possibly, even in 2010, still the most far-famed fast bowler of all – was not surrounded by jostling well-wishers, a commotion of newsreel cameras, swankpot MCC bigwigs, nor any press of press men.

That notorious Bodyline tour of 1932‑1933 saw the captain and unswerving autocrat Douglas Jardine ruthlessly let the former Nottinghamshire miner Larwood off the leash not only triumphantly to regain the Ashes, but tumultuously to scare the wits out of Australia with 33 wickets in the five Tests at 19.51 apiece.

	Whatcha talkin' 'bout, Willis? © BCB

From fast-bowling great to cult hit on TV, Bob Willis tells the Independent he would ban overseas players and despairs at how our game is being run.

"I would stop all overseas players in the Championship. Overseas players, it is said, can improve those around them but I remember Gordon Greenidge and Barry Richards at Hampshire, a great opening partnership, but Hampshire didn't produce any other batsman who played for England except Paul Terry, who won two caps, which defeats the argument. But generally it's evolution versus revolution and it's not evolving too well. We're always followers."

Writing in the Times, Mike Atherton has come out strongly against the ECB for the way it has effected unsound changes in the domestic scene, the latest of which is move to institute a conference system, which "is a possibility because — wait for it — it works in the United States".

Consider what the cricket supporter in this country has had to put up with over the years: the championship has moved from three-day to four-day cricket and from one division to two, while the premier limited-overs competition has been reduced from 65 overs to 40, with multitudinous changes in format along the way, before being swamped completely by Twenty20. It is hard to maintain loyalty if you are not sure to what it is you are supposed to be loyal.

A move to a conference-style system, within the present structure that does not allow for the weaker clubs to strengthen their playing resources to any great extent, would be a recipe for disaster, a muddle of the free market and the welfare state that would produce a low-intensity, uncompetitive environment ill suited to the demands of the national team.

Stuart Broad's turning out to be one of the most expressive England cricketers around. Apart from taking wickets, he's also in the news for the wrong reasons, like the ball-tampering allegation and on-field conduct. He tells Simon Briggs of the Telegraph that he is just a passionate cricketer.

"Obviously I don't want to get overstep the mark, so it's something I'm aware of. But I certainly don't want to lose my passion for the game and I don't want to be tamed down. I have to be in that sort of bubble to get the best out of myself. When I watch my favourite teams play other sports, I think of Wayne Rooney who throws himself about and is aggressive and passionate, and people like Martin Johnson who used to get stuck in."

In the Sunday Times, Simon Wilde looks at the development of two of England's most exciting home-grown prospects - batsman James Taylor and fast bowler Steve Finn.

At 5ft 5in, Taylor, whose father, Steve, is a former National Hunt jockey, is easily the smallest English player on the circuit, but he regards his lack of inches as an advantage. He enjoys facing the fast men, who find their short-pitched balls either fly harmlessly over his head or are cut and pulled with brutal force. Bowling to Taylor at one end and the 6ft 10in Will Jefferson at the other must be the equivalent of patting your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time.

The Observer says the mad dash for Twenty20 riches by the game's administrators is serving neither spectators nor players. It urges the ECB to stop valuing short-term profit over long-term stability.

It is time for a coherent plan to be formulated by the ECB alongside its international partners that provides a balance between all forms of the game, which allows our players the time and space to improve, which will last more than one season and which does not necessarily kowtow to the largest cheque.

In the Independent on Sunday, Stephen Brenkley shows how insufficient efforts to reform the county have been by highlighting the similarity between Grounds to Play, the new five-year plan for English cricket, and Raising the Standard, a blueprint from 14 years ago.

In the Guardian, Mike Selvey is highly critical of the ECB's move to stretch the county season at both ends, which he believes has compromised the championship's integrity.

So disrespectful is the schedule to the integrity of the County Championship – for which the winners will receive £500,000... – that some will have completed four matches before the daffs are over, with all the impact of the weather, and half the programme by the time the football World Cup kicks off. It is as if the County Championship, which should provide the breeding ground for future England Test cricketers, has become the stale bread surrounding a cash-cow filling of Twenty20.

In the Wisden Cricketer, Lawrence Booth lists five things he would like to see in the new county season which is about to begin.

Fingers crossed for Simon Jones. Hampshire are the latest county to take a gamble, but his career has long since lapsed into a nostalgic gaze at 2005 and the fear must be that his fragile body will break down again. Even so, a dream: Jones – whenever he makes it back on the field – holds it together for just long enough to have one more tilt at the Aussies and put the Brisbane 2002-03 nightmare behind him.

He may have been dropped by the England and Yorkshire selectors, but Matthew Hoggard, in his new role as captain of Leicestershire, tells the Guardian that he has a lot to offer to his new county.

Coming to Leicestershire as captain gives me a clean slate. I've come here to do a job which I'm more than capable of doing. I'm going to prove that to myself and my team and become a good leader. The key will be to judge the situation right. Is it time for me to put a hand around their shoulders or give them a rocket up the arse? I need to get that right but I'll still tell the truth. I'll call a shovel a shovel and a pick a pick.

Sir Alec Bedser's death has triggered a series of tributes. The Telegraph looks back at the life and times of the man who retired in 1955, as the world's most successful Test bowler, with 236 wickets to his name.

Gathering himself at the start of his run-in with three walking steps, he would approach the wicket with nine mastodontic strides. Arrived at the crease, his left arm would be flung up high, while his body — pivoting on a firmly braced left leg — adopted the classical sideways-on position. The right arm, high at the point of delivery, would follow through to describe almost a full circle.

Derek Pringle observes in the same paper, that Bedser thoroughly deserved his knighthood, a rare honour for a bowler.

In a sporting era where materialistic rewards were few, his playing career was the very epitome of service, a foreign word to most modern players. His 236 Test wickets were the most ever taken by the time he played the last of his 51 Tests in 1955.

Simon Hughes goes a step further, calling Bedser the "Shane Warne of his time".

The Times has unearthed a gem - a letter from Bradman to Bedser that sealed the friendship between the two Ashes rivals.

“It did seem to me that the best ball you bowled was the one which went away to the slips off the pitch and if you could reproduce the one with which you bowled me in Adelaide then you would not have to worry about any others.”

Christopher Martin-Jenkins revisits the memorable rivalry, in the same paper.

He was humble, down-to-earth, unspoilt, loyal, always willing to serve and a master of British understatement. “Bradman,” he would say in response to yet another inquiry, with a gentle smile and in a voice somewhere between a growl and a whine, “Yes, he could play a bit.”

The Guardian's obituary says it would be hard to find a more endearingly old-fashioned, uncomplicated man – or, many would say, a finer bowler – than Sir Alec Bedser.

A one-dimensional, some would say unworldly, bachelor, his conservative attitudes and single-minded lifestyle, generated by upbringing and reliability, Bedser did what he was asked, avoided social excesses and lived for his cricket.

Mike Selvey looks at why Bedser was a genuine giant of England and Surrey cricket, in the same paper.

There was a deal more to him than the stereotypical fellow who bowled a season's-worth before the end of May, wearing hand-me-down boots, before walking home each night to Woking. But the wisdom came on the back of thousands of overs, delivered faithfully and with such stout heart that it is a wonder that finally it has stopped beating.

Alec Bedser was often mistaken for his identical twin brother Eric. The BBC's tribute includes a wonderful anecdote about the two brothers.

Against Old England at the Oval in 1947, Alec bowled the first three balls to Frank Woolley and Eric completed the over. The batsman never noticed the difference, but turned to the keeper and remarked, "He's got a wonderful change of pace."

Stephen Brenkley writes in the Independent, that the selection of the England side for the World Twenty20 tournament, including three new-faces, is a shot in the dark and is not based on detailed planning.

Michael Lumb is the latest to be called up as a catch-all opener, in the footsteps of such discards as Vikram Solanki, Darren Maddy, Joe Denly, Matt Prior and Luke Wright to name but a handful. It's possible they have landed on a correct combination, but impossible that this has come about through careful planning rather than blind panic.

Dileep Premachandran writes in the Guardian that blocking Indian players from county cricket makes little sense, especially in the case of players like Yusuf Pathan and VVS Laxman who aren't part of the national team in all three formats, which reduces the need for them to be rested.

The most perverse case is that of Laxman. He hasn't been part of India's limited-overs plans for years, and it's doubtful whether he will get an IPL contract next season. To deny him a stint with Lancashire is nothing short of restraint of trade. In a recent interview, Dravid spoke of how difficult it had been to mentally adjust to not playing all the time after he was jettisoned from the one-day squad. For Laxman, who has played only Tests for years, any match practice is valuable. With (yet another) series in Sri Lanka scheduled for July-August, denying him a few hits in the early part of summer makes no sort of sense at all.

Christopher Martin-Jenkins, in the Times, suggests an alternative - which, he hopes, could be adopted next year - for the crammed schedule for the summer of 2010. He recommends a return to the 50-over format in the domestic circuit for the one-day competition and proposes a shorter County Championship.

It makes no sense for our county cricketers to be playing a 40-over competition this season while all except South Africa still play 50-over domestic tournaments to prepare for the next World Cup. The final will take place in Mumbai a year from tomorrow. Does anyone need to be reminded that the country that launched professional one-day cricket has yet to win a World Cup?

The start of the English domestic season and the subsequent schedule reflects the shift in priorities among counties and the ECB, writes Simon Wilde in the Sunday Times.

Tradition counts for nothing any more. Anything can be sold or moved for a price. Tomorrow’s match in Abu Dhabi has been relocated from Lord’s partly to facilitate a project being driven by MCC to find a suitable coloured ball for day-night Test cricket, and partly because the season is starting earlier than ever. There is also MCC’s financial deal with Abu Dhabi.

Vic Marks, in the Observer, while agreeing that the decision to start the domestic season in Abu Dhabi marks a departure from the conservatism that once characterised English cricket, says it might just be a good idea. The experiment with pink balls, he adds, too may prove a favourable development.

The England and Wales Cricket Board is one of the six large sports governing bodies that have gone up in arms against the media regulator Ofcom's attempt to force Sky Sports to lower its prices for selling its sports channels to competitors, in England. Owen Gibson gets behind the scenes in the Guardian.

Six of the largest governing bodies – the Rugby Football Union, the England and Wales Cricket Board, the Professional Golfers' Association, the Football Association, the Premier League and the Rugby Football League – have written an angry letter claiming Ofcom has not taken into account the impact of its decision on sport and has ignored their views.

It is understood that Ofcom is determined to press ahead and feels its case is backed up by the evidence. It has been investigating the issue for almost three years and will claim that governing bodies have had ample time to make their case. Ofcom will attempt to apply the cuts immediately but Sky will apply for a stay on the verdict while its appeal is heard.

The consequences of making the Ashes free-to-air would be vast and a compromise needs to be put in place, writes Mike Brearley in the Guardian.

Almost 80% of the England and Wales Cricket Board's income comes from broadcasting. The huge increase in revenues from this source over the past 13 years – it was £15m in 1997, £64m in 2010 – has been used to prop up the (in some cases) ailing counties, but also, importantly, it has boosted coaching at all levels of the game. Since 2005, 24,000 new coaches have been trained. In particular, the broadcasting money has been used to fund the significant increase in cricket played by disabled people; and it has greatly enhanced women's cricket in this country. All three national teams, men, women and disabled, won their respective Ashes series last time round. England's women are world champions at one-day cricket and at Twenty20. One fifth of the ECB's spending goes on grassroots cricket and it has contributed to the growth and quality of the game.

In addition to such support, the ECB have also funded the highest level of cricket. Central contracts have changed the face of the top professional game. And there is now a national cricket performance centre. All this would be threatened if the income from broadcasting were to be cut.

Mike Atherton is concerned about the depressing culture of failure among British cricketers of Asian origin. Writing in the Times, he wonders why Ravi Bopara, Monty Panesar, Owais Shah and co. are not emulating the feats of players like Hashim Amla who have made it big in non-Asian sides.

The idea that some kind of cultural divide is to blame finds credence, perhaps, in the failure of Panesar to kick on. In these pages yesterday the spinner was quick to blame himself for listening to others instead of his instincts. There is an echo here of his failure to impose his ideas upon the England captain he played under mostly, Michael Vaughan. Vaughan always set Panesar’s fields for him, yet Andrew Flintoff has recounted how Panesar, before his debut in India, came to his room full of ideas about his field placings.

Kevin Pietersen may have had an ordinary tour of South Africa but he's not lost any confidence in his own abilities. That and other reflections in his revealing interview with Lawrence Booth in the Wisden Cricketer.

You scarcely need to read between the lines: Pietersen still sees himself as England’s main man, despite averaging 25 in the four Tests; and the conviction runs so deep it slips out as instinctively as one of his flamingo whips to leg. Despite all he has been through, Pietersen’s subconscious is still doing the talking.

It is not long before he is at it again. This time the subject is his position in the batting order – mainly No.4 since he moved up a spot for the second innings at Melbourne in 2006-07. The question – “Doesn’t your best player bat at three?” – may be ingenuously leading but the answer warms to the theme. “Kallis bats four for South Africa, doesn’t he? So that doesn’t ring true. And I bat four for England. What number does Yousuf bat for Pakistan? Four? Ponting’s three – but he’s probably the only one. He plays on good wickets, mind you. I’ll bat three there [on Australian pitches], no problem.”

Lawrence Booth believes that the recent clash between Lalit Modi and the ECB over the Champions League dates, underlines England's standing in the Twenty20 scheme of things. Writing in the Wisden Cricketer, he says that Modi’s attempt to reconfigure England’s domestic calendar is symptomatic of their apathy towards the format.

At almost every turn, England has treated Twenty20 like a necessary evil. Even when the format emerged on the county scene in 2003, it was regarded as a crowd-puller rather than a legitimate form of cricket. After all, left elbows are supposed to be high, not jockeying for position in a mascots’ race or levering oneself out of the pitchside Jacuzzi.

	Tom Graveney in action © Getty Images

Of all the great batsmen Mike Selvey bowled at or watched, none produced a shot as sublime as a legside boundary from Tom Graveney on a grey day in Worcester 42 years ago. Selvey recalls the day in the Guardian and how Graveney's unhurried, unflustered style was a delight to watch.

It is the second occasion, however, that carries a special significance for me. We were at New Road, myself and Surrey team‑mates, on the last day of August two years later, to play Worcestershire. This was only my fifth appearance in the County Championship and I knew nothing. There is no romantic recollection of it being an azure summer's day, with the cathedral shimmering and the Severn slumbering by. It was sweater weather and the pitch, looking at the card, must have been a green top of a kind that once offered rich pickings for Jack Flavell and Len Coldwell.

But it was on that day, from the New Road end, that I bowled to Graveney and was primary witness to a single stroke that defined everything that has followed for me since. The delivery, such as it was, contained no particular merit. It was on a length, lively enough in pace from a whippy youngster and not badly directed at around middle-and-off. At least it deserved respect. What followed is as clear as day.

	Bubbly, aggressive and in your face © Getty Images

Ajmal Shahzad, England's newest recruit, is not lacking confidence as he prepares to face Pakistan and Bangladesh. He tells the Guardian's David Hopps about breaking through barriers for Yorkshire and getting in shape for his country.

"Suddenly I enjoyed getting up at half past six to go for a run with the sun shining. Because I am from an Asian background, my mum makes a lot of fried food and curries and chapatis. I don't eat them any more. The penny dropped for me and I have cut them out of my diet for 18 months. I eat a lot of grilled food, although I still have to have a bit of spice in it. I have learnt what I need to put into my body.

"When you can see the results, you understand. In a year I went from 15 stones to 12 and a half stones. My body felt good, I felt lighter, just as strong, I could run further. I was a big lad as a kid as well. When Tim Bresnan got into the England side and I finally got a regular chance at Yorkshire, bowling long spells up the hill at Headingley, I knew I was fit enough to do it."

John Stern writes in the Wisden Cricketer that there seems to be a 'certain generic, faceless, smugness about the current lot' of Australians.

It frustrates me how easily I can feel sorry for opponents of my team. It happens less in football because of the shorter time-span (and, er, because I support West Ham) but whenever England enjoy sustained periods of cricket dominance I find that I start to sympathise with the opposition. I don’t want them to win, I just start feeling sorry for them which, I know, is both patronising and disloyal.

	"It's a good job my cricket is all right" © Getty Images

The Guardian's Andy Bull corned England allrounder Tim Bresnan and grilled him on scuba diving, how to make Yorkshire puddings rise and why Snoop Dogg always carries an umbrella.

Are you a rugby man? Yeah, I do like rugby. I'm more of a rugby man than a cricket man. Err, no, I mean, not a cricket man, I'm more of a rugby man than a football man.

And music? Obviously the Kings of Leon.

Obviously. What about Dr Comfort and the Lurid Revelations? Hah, I've not actually heard Graeme Swann's band, but I did hear him sing last week. He sang at his own wedding. Can you believe that? He just grabbed the mic and started singing along with Oasis.

Daniel Brigham writes in Wisden Cricketer that by brazenly setting up a scheduling clash between the Champions League and the county season, Lalit Modi is showing how archaic the English domestic game is.

It’s time that the ECB and the counties realise that to keep up with the rest of the world, a more marketable number of teams – 10 or fewer – is a must so that the talent isn’t so thinly spread. A shorter season is also necessary, running from May to the end of August. This way it will avoid the rain, the cold, the football and fan burnout.

A severe kick up the backside shouldn’t have been needed to stir the counties into action, but that’s what Modi has provided. History tells us it won’t provoke much of a reaction, but surely even the counties must realise something has to be done now.

England must improve their decision making and the best way they could do that is by playing, writes Mike Selvey in the Guardian.

We got an example of prescriptive thinking at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in 2006, when a member found on the floor a copy of England's bowling plans – their "dodgy dossier" – and stuck it in the public domain. It detailed how they intended to deal with each batsman, which plans, if executed properly, would mean that Australia would scarcely muster double figures between them. Of particular memory, apart from the worrying fact that "nick" was spelt with an additional "k", was the "bouncer essential" observation for Andrew Symonds. True as this may have been, it was mortifying to see, for five and a half hours, a man set deep on the hook for each of his 156 runs, during which time, despite many invitations to do so, he did not attempt the stroke once. The plans did not cater for that but there was no plan B.

Bob Willis is of the opinion that England should be in no hurry to find a replacement for former bowling coach Ottis Gibson who has resigned to join the West Indies team. Writing in Skysports.com, he believes that this gives the England think-tank an opportunity to reassess the structure of their “hopelessly top-heavy” back-up staff. He recommends Darren Gough and Allan Donald as potential stop-gap replacements.

I've got great respect for Darren Gough after what he did during his England career and perhaps he'd fit the bill if he's back on the cricketing track rather than the celebrity one. If Gough is happy to fill the role part-time, that's the way I might do it short-term.

Allan Donald's name has also been mentioned and, of course, he has a definite advantage over someone like Ian Pont or Kevin Shine, who was shoe-horned into the job in 2006, in the sense that he has been there and done it at the highest level.

The first time Ricky Ponting took a break from the Australia captaincy he was publicly censured by Steve Waugh, his predecessor. “The Australia captain is the benchmark of resilience and mental toughness,” Waugh said, and ought to be seen to be “almost indestructible”, writes Mike Atherton in the Times.

When asked before the Johannesburg Test last week what were the secrets to his early success as captain, Strauss talked of removing what he thought previously to be a “top heavy” style of leadership. Strauss’s England, we are led to believe, is a happy commune, where the most junior man’s thoughts carry equal weight to the captain’s and where the leader’s actions are not to be divorced from the rest.

No doubt, though, the junior mess were not asked what they thought of their captain pulling rank and missing what is known on the circuit to be least glamorous and most arduous of tours.

Andrew Strauss's decision to skip the Bangladesh tour raised a few eyebrows, but he has a firm backer in Mike Selvey, who writes that the decision is justified after an exhausting year. He also backs Alastair Cook's appointment in the interim. Read on in the Guardian.

He is jaded: not close to cracking up, but sufficiently so to lend an impression that the calm common sense that characterises him could give way to a simmering anger at the slightest thing. Only in his first innings of the series, when he trail-blazed the forthright approach he wished his side to follow and in so doing pretty much put the lid on the career of Makhaya Ntini, was he approaching his best.

In the Times, Michael Atherton disagrees and says that Strauss should not be resting, He also shares his views on the Test squad.

The selectors have been following Tredwell for a while now but his selection means England have two off spinners and that is not ideal. By all accounts Tredwell has really impressed in the nets and has looked dangerous, but from a captain's perspective it leaves England short of variety.

Simon Hughes, writing in the Daily Telegraph, recaps England's performance in the noughties, the highs and the lows, and concludes that the lack of quality players in the line-up as well as the domestic circuit would ensure that the team will muddle along the middle for some time to come.

England remain hampered by their inability to produce enough players of really high quality. The top dozen inhabit an exalted sphere which is hard to penetrate and has considerable power. The best players know they are more or less irreplaceable.

That will change only with the emergence of heroes who inspire the next generation. And, never mind all the spending on 'grass roots', that only happens through the oxygen of mass-audience television. Which means that England, in spite of Andrew Strauss's pragmatic approach, will probably remain middle-of-the-road for the time being. Or, as he succinctly put it after winning the Ashes this summer, "When we're good, we're good enough, and when we were bad, we were awful."

As a child, Graeme Swann’s ultimate dream was to pick the final wicket is an Ashes decider. When he had the good fortune of living his boyhood dream, picking the wicket of Michael Hussey at The Oval in August, Swann’s joy knew no bounds. Speaking to Stephen Brenkley from the Independent, he relives the trance-like state of mind he experienced immediately after sealing the Ashes for his team.

That ball bounced a bit, it didn't turn as much as others. I remember just floating it up. I saw Cook catch it. I know people say they don't remember what happened next but I don't remember what happened next for the next five or 10 minutes.

I have seen a video of me being interviewed afterwards and I look as drunk as though I had been drinking for 12 hours. It was a phenomenal moment. I was drunk with joy and it was the first time in my life that I have experienced anything like that, especially through sport, apart from when Newcastle beat Manchester United 5-1 about 15 years ago.

James Lawton, writing in the Independent, makes a case for Andrew Strauss to be voted the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year. He points out the turmoil in which Strauss inherited the England captaincy and the turnaround he wrought by regaining the Ashes.

Ryan Giggs is considered an infinitely stronger contender than Strauss at 5-2 and there is no question that he is a candidate of great merit, his evergreen, biting performances reminding us of all the quality that he has brought to a career which has seen him outstrip in character and consistency all of his Old Trafford contemporaries except the equally phenomenal Paul Scholes, the best English midfielder of his generation.

Yet Strauss's position in the odds table remains both an oddity and a scandal. Above anything else, it suggests a profound failure in the sports public to muster even the rudiments of proper analysis; a sweeping assessment perhaps but then what other conclusion survives even the barest examination of quite what Strauss achieved in the wake of the embarrassing denouement of Kevin Pietersen's ill-starred captaincy.

	Jack Russell and Mike Atherton rush off at the end of their epic stand © Getty Images

In 1995, England's captain Mike Atherton on their first post-apartheid tour played a career-defining knock of 185 – and reminisces about it ahead of the series with South Africa. Vic Marks has more in the Guardian.

He clipped a short ball from Donald off his hip. "When I hit it I thought that's three." In fact it hit the midriff of Gary Kirsten at short leg and bounced to the ground. "It would have been an unlucky dismissal. But the adrenalin was pumping now. I was waiting for a short one next ball." It duly arrived and Atherton hooked it for four.

He embraced a startled Smith, who expected Atherton to show his customary reserve in his celebrations – "I just released all my emotions for a minute or so." Now the fluency returned. But at 11.45am Smith was out, caught at third man. Enter Jack Russell.

The Times has published a series of vignettes which give a taste of the joyful way that Alan Gibson, the county circuit’s most colourful chronicler, operated. It's a fun, easy read. An excerpt:

The Hampshire announcer, 1974 Mr Shepheard’s best moment came when he said: “Play has been resumed in the Test match — oh, and by the way, President Nixon has resigned.” The cheer, a mixture of irony, relief and scorn, brought a man running out of the bar, thinking another wicket had gone. When he discovered it was nothing so important, he went back in again. Thus do the mighty fall.

In the same newspaper, Gibson's son Anthony captures the essence of a man whose writing on the county game brought it to life in a unique way.

He could turn his hand to so many different subjects, be so many different people, dominate the conversation in so many different areas, that he never quite fixed on what his central purpose in life was and never really derived much satisfaction from his achievements, perhaps because he knew that they were only a small part of what he was capable of.

With Andrew Strauss lukewarm about Bangladesh, England have earmarked Alastair Cook for the job. He has little to no experience of leading and is unlikely to get any before England come calling, writes Mike Atherton in the Times. So, in the spirit of generosity, he offers Cook an annotated version of a talk given by Mike Brearley at the Festival of Free Thinking in Gateshead last month.

Paul Collingwood's robustness, his natural inclination to play off the back foot and the lack of flashiness in his batting makes him the typical north-England cricketer, writes Harry Pearson in his blog in the Guardian. He contrasts his style of play with David Gower, the characteristic southerner, with a cavalier approach to the game and a penchant for free-flowing strokeplay.

My dad approves of Collingwood's sensible haircut and the fact he has no visible tattoos or body-piercings. He likes him because he is strong off the back foot. Being strong off the back foot suggests a man who has not been mollycoddled in his youth. Batsmen who have spent their formative years playing on good, true wickets get on the front foot at every opportunity. Those who have been brought up playing on nasty, deceitful wickets prefer to wait and see what happens. They don't take things for granted. They kn