As Pakistan depart England after a tour besieged by grave controversy, James Lawton, writing in the Independent, says cricket must not cast them into the wilderness.

What cricket cannot afford to do is write off Pakistan as a lost cause before properly recognising that it is not in a position to hand down such arbitrary moral judgement; not, at least, without acknowledging that the richest part of its empire, India, is also beset by terrible doubts about its freedom from spot- and match-fixing and that even such a sturdy sports nation as South Africa was unable to escape one of the worst examples of corruption in the history of any sport.

None of this is likely to sweep away the great mountain of doubt and dismay that has accumulated in England this summer – or diminish the challenge of attempting to reform a Pakistani game that operates in a society where corruption is not so much a threat as the norm and the legitimate rewards of the most successful Pakistani cricketers are dwarfed by those of their chief rivals.

While Nasser Hussain isn't condoning the controversies that marred the English summer, writing in the Daily Mail, he says "you've got to admit that watching Pakistan is never dull."

Like them or loathe them, they know how to electrify a crowd. Deliberate no-balls or not, Mohammad Aamer and Mohammad Asif were great to watch during the Tests.

There's Saeed Ajmal with his doosras, the theatrics of Shoaib Akhtar, the reverse-swing of Umar Gul and the late hitting of Abdul Razzaq. And we haven't even mentioned Shahid Afridi.

There may come a point sometime soon when temporarily removing Pakistan from world cricket may be the only way to preserve the game's dignity. It hasn't come quite yet, because everyone is innocent until proven guilty, writes Nasser Hussain in the Daily Mail.

I've generally agreed with Imran Khan on this: You can't kick out a team just because of two or three bad apples. But we're seeing now what happens when accusations are bandied around with no thought for their consequences. Would Jonathan Trott and Wahab Riaz have had their dust-up before the start of play yesterday if Butt hadn't accused England of throwing the Oval one-dayer? Possibly.

But it's no surprise that tempers are fraying at the end of a summer in which England have had to put up with so much.

In the Daily Telegraph, Derek Pringle says, "Charity and sympathy are deserved by the millions ruined and damaged by the monsoon floodwaters, but Pakistan cricket is rapidly becoming a monster only a mother could love."

Claiming the world is against them is how the ruling class there operate. I have visited Pakistan four times and always found it a beguiling place. The resilience of the people (England's 2005 tour came just a few days after the Kashmir earthquake) and their friendly hospitality have always been memorable features of the place, but they do not deserve the leaders they get, including in this instance Mr Butt.

What happens next could finally rid the game of the spectre of corruption and prove that the International Cricket Council really are capable of running the world game strongly and efficiently, writes Nasser Hussain in the Daily Mail.

If Salman Butt, captain of the Pakistan team, and Mohammad Asif, who is an experienced bowler and no stranger to brushes with authority, are found guilty they must be banned for life, no question. But the jury must remain out on Mohammad Aamer because we don’t know what pressure he was under, if he is indeed guilty, and we don’t know if an alleged deliberate no ball was his first and only offence.

If it was a first offence maybe we need to be lenient, but if there have been other alleged misdemeanours then the game needs to be very tough with him, too. He is old enough to know right from wrong.

What they did looks like a crime against cricket. And if there is no firm response from the Anti-Corruption and Security Unit, we might as well disband it, writes Geoff Boycott in the Telegraph.

The evidence looks so bad that, whatever the police make of this case, the ACSU will be under pressure to take strong action. Within the disciplinary hearings, the burden of proof might as well be reversed: it is up to the players to prove themselves innocent.

In cricistan.com, Abdul Habib separates the facts from the fiction surrounding Yasir Hameed's video released by the NOTW. As any Urdu speaker would testify, Hameed's words have been distorted in an attempt to sell newspapers, he writes.

With criminal convictions looking increasingly unlikely, the game's corruption unit will pick up the investigation into the Pakistan betting scandal, writes Mike Selvey in the Guardian.

What happens to the three Pakistan cricketers under investigation is another matter. On the face of it, the News of the World appeared to have managed a perfect sting, where the subject Mazhar Majeed seemed able to satisfy that paper of his ability to manipulate events within matches. The no-balls at Lord's, apparently to order, appeared to verify this. However, anyone who has had a cursory look at the 2005 Gambling Act will understand the difficulty in converting allegations into convictions, given the demand for hard evidence that, say, the bowling of such no-balls is directly associated with the sort of criminal gambling activities that are also alleged. There has to be a paper trail.

After a bizarre day that featured half-baked briefings, backstage maneouvrings and a clumsy Pakistani counter-attack, the International Cricket Council finally made its presence felt in this sad and unedifying story, writes Derek Pringle in the Telegraph.

The tipping point for England seems to have been the comments Ijaz Butt, the chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board, made at 9pm on Wednesday. In an interview with the BBC, Butt was adamant that the three would remain part of the tour, unless they were charged with an offence. Outraged that Pakistan could be such ungrateful guests, after the summer’s mercy mission that brought them Tests against Australia, the ECB’s top brass swung into action.

Forthright talks ensued through the night, between Butt, Giles Clarke and David Collier, the ECB’s chairman and chief executive, as well as Haroon Lorgat, the chief executive of the International Cricket Council. Nobody would officially confirm the precise content of the discussions but it would have been surprising if they had not pointed out what Pakistan cricket stood to lose by playing hardball over the players given the damning nature of the News of the World’s dossier.

In the Back Page Lead, Malcolm Knox questions the intelligence of the kind of bookmaker who takes bets on something so specific and meaningless as a no-ball at a particular instant, that in most cases should betray prior knowledge. He also manages to find a silver lining around the dark cloud that has emerged because of this scandal.

If bookmakers are stupid enough to take spot bets that are fixed, and players are corruptible, then the result will be that the bookmakers will be stung often enough to refuse taking such bets. If the Pakistan players are corrupt all or most of the time, the market would have become a sham and would have ceased to exist. The fact that the market does exist tells us one thing: most of the time, the players are trying their hardest. When they are not, they are choosing their moments selectively. Otherwise there would be no bookies left to fool.

While there is an understandable desire for swift resolution, the complexity of the spot-fixing case and the need to get any punishments absolutely spot on means that the ICC must take its time here, writes Rob Smyth in the Guardian.

Perhaps the desire for smallish bans simply stems from a need to see Amir again. The thought that his career is over is far too heartbreaking to even consider. It is his involvement that has made this case so sickening and sad. We tend to reach for hyperbole at times like these, but Amir really is comparable with any 18-year-old bowler in the history of the game. And those who would easily dismiss him as a greedy deviant should recall his overwhelming joy at taking a Lord's five-for on Friday, when he bent down to kiss the turf. The News of the World described it as "a kiss of betrayal", but it wasn't: it was the kiss of a kid who adores the game. He may have done something gravely wrong; if so, we must hope the ICC does not compound it with a hasty and excessive punishment.

Omar Waraich of the Independent joins the former Pakistan captain Imran Khan as he tours his flood-stricken country on a relief mission – and tries to make sense of the betting scandal gripping cricket.

The controversy recalls a moment in 1989, when he [Imran Khan] was warned of a plot to corrupt his team. "I was called in the middle of the night," he says. "It was the final of the Australasia Cup against Australia in Sharjah. I was told that four of our main players had either been bought or would throw the match.

The next morning, Mr Khan summoned his team. "I told them, 'Look, I know all of you and I know cricket. If I see any of you underperforming, I will not just have you banned, I will ensure that you go to jail." He told the coach to bet the team's entire prize money on winning. It worked. "We won the match," he says, and later it was "confirmed that bookmakers had tried to influence the players".

Amid Pakistan's general lawlessness, is it any wonder that cricketers have lost their way? asks Mustafa Qadri in the Guardian.

Pakistan is a different country now, overpopulated and underdeveloped with a government that doesn't even pretend to care unless you have money, influence, or the media puts you under the lens. The overwhelming mindset for success is to achieve it at all costs, by any means, and as quickly as possible.

The shambolic Pakistan Cricket Board has no system for preparing our cricketers for the demands of international sport, from the most basic to the more complex. So it is no surprise that athletes with astounding natural abilities exhibit self-destructive tendencies.

"Pakistan have been this way before — their Qayyum Inquiry into match-fixing was damning when it was published in the summer of 2000 — but that was in a time of peace in the country," writes Scyld Berry in the Telegraph on Sunday after spot-fixing allegations rocked the Lord's Test. "This latest incident has occurred when the country’s cricket team can only play abroad because of the security situation, and only makes a sad situation tragic."

Mohammad Amir is one of the bowlers at the centre of the controversy. He took a six-for in the Lord's Test and spoke to Amir Rashid on how he had to fight a life-threatening illness before making it big as a Test cricketer.

"I got ill with the dengue virus in Malaysia before the 2008 Under-19 World Cup when I was 15," he said. "I was in a very bad condition, it was a death situation, the doctors thought I was going to die – it was very bad. I was in hospital for one week and was on 24 drips a day. The doctors were surprised when I came round. When they sent me home they said that for one month I couldn't do anything and just to rest. That time was very bad for me and for my future. I was really scared."

I've heard a lot of chat this summer from some of the more experienced [England] players about how much the ball is doing and how hard it has been for batting. To which I'd say: welcome to proper Test cricket, writes Nasser Hussain in the Daily Mail.

Test-match bowlers are allowed to make the ball misbehave - and Test match batsmen should be able to deal with it. I've never been the sort to bang on about 'in my day', but this was the kind of challenge we faced more often than not. If it wasn't Shaun Pollock and Allan Donald running in at you, it was Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis, or Glenn McGrath and Jason Gillespie. You had to learn how to score ugly runs when the ball was moving. I may have had my faults as a batsman, but that was something I prided myself on. And I believe it's something this England team should be better at.

After Steve Finn's "Pakistan is a batting collapse waiting to happen" comment, James Lawton writes in the Independent that England have to watch for complacency.

Finn's assumption that he could so brusquely trash a team that had just beaten his own in a memorable Test match, and from a position of such slender, and favourable experience, rather more than hints at the old English disease: a self-belief that is maybe too quickly acquired, and too easily shed.

Former England coach Duncan Fletcher writes in his column in the Guardian that Kevin Pietersen is lacking first-class match practice, and says a lot of work needs to be done on Pietersen mentally and technically to get him back to scoring big runs.

In the same paper, Mike Selvey writes that the prospect of cloudy skies during the Lord's Test will favour Pakistan more than England.

They are on a natural high after their win at The Oval, and their bowling has come together brilliantly as a unit. This final Test is a game they have to win – and as long as the ball continues to chatter they will be happy enough to take their chances with the bat. On the other hand, while the desire to win every game is uppermost, England, leading the series, will feel less of an imperative to force the game. A draw will suit them fine.

Simon Hughes points out in the Daily Telegraph that if Alastair Cook and Andrew Strauss put on 54 runs, they will become England's most productive opening pair of all time.

England’s twin batting collapses against Pakistan at The Oval has raised questions about the solidity of their batting ahead of the Ashes later this year. In the Independent, Stephen Fay says England’s soft underbelly has been exposed, and batting coach Graham Gooch must bear the blame.

With the loss of six wickets for 27 runs in 15 overs, a dreadful truth was exposed. England's batting is dangerously brittle. The truth has been masked, partly by the fact that of nine Tests played so far this year, four were against Bangladesh. Dropped catches had let them off the hook against Pakistan when they collapsed at Old Trafford and Edgbaston. On Friday the mask was ripped away.

This was a sad litany of batting breakdown. Jonathan Trott, Paul Collingwood and Matt Prior all edged Aamer, thinly to the keeper or thickly to gully. Kevin Pietersen and Eoin Morgan saw their defences pierced by Ajmal's spin. The cumulative impact of these batting failures is illustrated by the averages of the top batsmen in nine Tests this year, including this one. Four of the top batsmen average below 40. Strauss manages a disturbing 33.08. Collingwood (37.00), Morgan (36.57) and Pietersen (36.14) are little better.

Following an unsatisfactory start to the summer, Alastair Cook, England's captain in waiting, came into his own with a timely century at The Oval just when the worries were beginning to mount with the Ashes in mind. Andrew Strauss and Andy Flower were desperate for him to get back in to some form, and he didn't disappoint, writes David Hopps in the Guardian.

Cook does not seem the type to read motivational books, a point in his favour if so, but a growing sense of need brought motivation nevertheless. Before play began, he did something very English in its politeness and handed around a box of biscuits and perhaps vowed at that moment he was not about to bat like a custard cream.

In the Daily Mail, Nasser Hussain compares Cook's knock to Andew Strauss's face-saving century in Napier two years ago which more than just revived his career.

This was all about Cook’s mindset more than his technique. Yes, he wasn’t looking back at his bat in his stance, which was a good sign and one that showed he wasn’t worrying too much about his technique. But the key was that he had cleared his mind and was determined to be positive.

In the Independent, David Lloyd says the Last Chance Saloon has shifted from Cook to Kevin Pietersen, who's now due for a big score.

Of England's current top order, Andrew Strauss and Paul Collingwood have walked out to bat for England knowing that one more flop would almost certainly see them cast into the wilderness while Pietersen is trying quite a few people's patience of late. And Jonathan Trott and Eoin Morgan can rest assured their turn will come.

In the Telegraph, Simon Hughes writes that two elements played a big role in Pakistan's transformation after tea on the third day - reverse swing and the doosra.

Ajmal has both deliveries at his command and excellent disguise. Not one of the England batsmen read him confidently. This is partly because he bowls each delivery with a scrambled seam, so the batsman cannot use the seam as a guide to which way the ball is rotating. It is largely guesswork until someone has been in for a while.

Mohammad Yousuf went from pariah to potential saviour as he returned to the Pakistani fold for the third Test against England. And with team scores of 80 and 72 in their last two Tests, Pakistan were in desperate need of a saviour. So how did he do in his first international innings since being banned following the disastrous tour of Australia? He simply batted like a king, writes Paul Weaver in the Guardian’s Spin Blog

This was the day Pakistan rediscovered their mojo and their MoYo, as Yousuf is referred to in internet circles. He batted for only two and a half hours and scored just 56 but, for the first time in this series, Pakistan bossed the stage and England's bowlers looked a bit fed-up – no bad thing with the Ashes round the corner.

Changing name and religion did not have a noticeably adverse effect on Muhammad Ali's career and the batsman formerly known as Yousuf Youhana has been an even more formidable player since making the same alterations towards the end of 2005.

Yousuf is not just a good player, he is a great one. He is right up there with Javed Miandad and Inzamam-ul-Haq – Miandad may well be the finest of them but Yousuf has the higher average.

"There is an interesting comparison to be made between Mohammad Yousuf and Alastair Cook, two batsmen who will be starting the third Test under intense pressure," writes Duncan Fletcher in the Guardian. "They will be judged largely on how many runs they score, but I suspect that both have been picked partly because of other considerations. There are aspects of team selection that some pundits and members of the public do not appreciate."

When a player is in a poor run of form, critics on the outside will always wonder why you are standing by him. The answer is often in the contribution he makes to the team behind the scenes. This is the situation England are in with Cook. The management seem to see him as a positive influence on the dressing room. When some players hit a poor patch of form they can become so self-involved that they do not realise the negative influence they are having on the rest of the team. Others will make an effort to stay positive in public but will never quite put their hearts into it. You can hear in a player's voice whether he really means what he says. It is a rare and valuable team member who can genuinely encourage and push other players along, even when he is on a poor run himself. I assume Cook is like that.

In just three Tests as Pakistan captain, Salman Butt has experienced all the highs and lows cricket has to offer. In his first Test after taking over from Shahid Afridi, Pakistan bowled Australia out for 88 and went to win the the second neutral Test to draw that series. Unfortunately for him, the team followed it up by being bowled out for 80 and 72 in successive Tests against England. Despite the ups and downs, Paul Weaver writes in the Guardian, that Butt is the best man to skipper Pakistan in these dark times.

This country produces some of the world's most richly gifted cricketers but their ability to self-destruct is even greater than that to detonate their opponents. They present madness in mime – earlier this month the former captain Aamer Sohail described Pakistan cricket as a "basket case".

Butt confounds this caricature; he is neither brilliantly talented nor chronically disruptive. He is, though, an impressive young man, and he speaks with a fluency and a quiet dignity in the middle of the wreckage of his country's cricket.

Simon Hughes, writing in the Daily Telegraph, says Alastair Cook's unusual dismissals in the Test series against Pakistan are a sign of a lack of form, caused, to an extent, due to a preoccupation with technique.

Despite his [Cook's] fine overall record, he does not imbue anyone with much confidence. What he probably needs is an outing for Essex at Twenty20 finals day on Saturday with instructions to forget about footwork and backlift and go and give the ball a thump. After failing against a good attack on two tricky surfaces, he should probably be given the chance to recover his poise in more benign conditions in the third Test at the Oval.

If Stuart Broad' s transgression on Sunday was a one-off incident, a case of his aggression getting the better of him for the first time, then I would not have a problem with it. But if you take Stuart's history into account you have to say that he has been pushing things to the limit for some time, says Nasser Hussain in the Daily Mail.

I said last season, when Broad's place was being questioned by some, that England should invest in him and stick by him and he has become an integral and exciting member of this England team.

This should not make him change his attitude completely, just that he needs to be careful. He again celebrated wickets yesterday without appealing and that is another habit he must get out of.

Mike Selvey writes in the Guardian that the word 'mercurial' might have been coined specifically to define the Pakistan team. Given the kind of heady crests and grinding troughs they have beeen through in recent times, England will do well to expect a strong comeback from the visitors in the second Test, though given the right conditions the hosts should still prevail, he says.

The manner in which Pakistan came back from their defeat in the first Test against Australia to win at Leeds is warning enough to England that in helpful conditions their pace trio can be devastating. Nothing can be taken for granted. But this England team is well grounded – Andy Flower has seen to that – and it is hard to see how, given a good run with the weather (and heavy rain is forecast for tomorrow so that is not certain) they will not continue to make life difficult for Butt and his side.

The praise for James Anderson just keeps on coming. In the Guardian, Mike Selvey compares him to a young Ian Botham, before going on to explain how Anderson gets such movement with the ball.

Botham was – and Anderson is – a swing bowler through and through and at this point we should be clear about the distinction between that and someone who can swing the ball. It is not just nit-picking semantics. Matthew Hoggard, say, could swing the ball, but he did so on his action, with a lowish arm, and one way only. A genuine swing bowler is a manipulator of the ball. He can work it this way and that at will with a tilt of the wrist and little more. He uses swing as a spinner does variations. Botham could do this and so too could Richard Ellison and the Worcestershire bowler Phil Newport, who had a brief flirtation with the England side.

Given the serious feuding in the Pakistan team over the past few years, Andy Bull says coach Waqar Younis' idea of choosing a young squad was a sensible one. Why, then, did Pakistan fall back on Mohammad Yousuf, captain of the winless tour of Australia, after just one defeat, Bull asks in the Spin, the Guardian's weekly cricket email.

No Englishman has swung the ball so devastatingly since the youthful, lithe Ian Botham in the late 1970s, writes Vic Marks about James Anderson in the Observer after his 11-wicket match-winning haul in the first Test at Trent Bridge.

Today we witnessed Anderson the artist again. The supple wrist in alliance with the first and second fingers on his right hand smoothly released the proud seam of the ominously dark Dukes ball down the Trent Bridge pitch. And the ball swung in – or it swing out – depending upon Anderson's whim. On days like this he is as beguiling as any classical wrist‑spinner.

David Lloyd, writing in the Independent, says England's excellent slip-catching was the highlight of an outstanding fielding performance in the first Test against Pakistan. Their display vindicated the decision to recruit a specialist helper, Richard Halsall, in 2008.

Halsall, born in Zimbabwe, played second XI cricket for Lancashire before graduating in sports science. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given that, as an 11-year-old, he represented the North of England against the South at throwing the cricket ball, he has found his niche helping top-flight players hone their fielding skills.

Events at Trent Bridge must have had Halsall purring with delight – at least when he was not shaking his head in dismay at some of the efforts of Pakistan's fielders. While Collingwood and Co looked capable of catching pigeons, the visitors showed how not to do it. Calamity keeper Kamran Akmal had no real rival for the dunce's cap, despite one remarkable take to get rid of Kevin Pietersen, but Imran Farhat also grassed a sitter at slip to give Eoin Morgan a life.

Despite the Ashes win in 2009, there are faultlines in the England Test line-up that were evident during the defeat in South Africa, writes James Lawton in the Independent. The series against Pakistan is a chance to address them ahead of the Ashes later in the year he says.

Now, there is a new invitation to prove that English cricket has grown strong again at some extremely broken places. The Pakistanis have new leadership, new talent and apparently a fresh appetite for returning to the mainstream of Test cricket after the ravaging impact of last year's terrorism. It offers the perfect challenge for a team who enjoy plenty of reasons to believe that they will triumph here before going back to Australia to consign to history the memory of an England team that simply fell apart four years ago.

Mohammad Aamer was a handful for the Australians and will look to continue in the same form in the upcoming Test series against England. Writing in the Guardian, Dileep Premachandran says that from wanting to imitate Wasim Akram, Aamer today is a far more complete bowler than his idol was at the same age.

While he aspires to be the "second Rawalpindi Express", there are no doubts in Aamer's mind over the identity of the man he idolises. Mudassar and Aaqib Javed have been big influences, but for a left-handed kid from Pakistan bowling fast there could only ever be one hero. "It's always been Wasim [Akram]," he said in a TV interview earlier this year.

In addition to the stock delivery that leaves the right-hander, Aamer has learnt to bring the ball back in. He bowls a mean bouncer, and the yorker can surprise the most accomplished batsmen

England may continue to be Pakistan's new 'home' in world cricket, since it could be a while before international cricket is played in Pakistan. Writing on the Dreamcricket website, Suresh Menon says that the thing to note in the just concluded Pakistan-Australia Test series was the presence of non-partisan fans who turned up to watch two teams they had no emotional stake in. It is the non-partisan spectator who does not care which team wins so long as the match is competitive and played in the right spirit, who might be the game’s new fan base.

Cross-national fandom is not unusual. Sachin Tendulkar is popular in Australia, England, the West Indies, anywhere he plays. An India versus Pakistan match in Australia is guaranteed to bring in the crowds, both ardent supporters of the teams as well as the neutrals.

Perhaps it is a giant leap from watching Pakistan play Australia in England to assuming that South Africa playing Sri Lanka in, say, Mysore is what cricket needs. But if that happens, the spectator will not complain.

England's Ashes thoughts must go on the backburner with Pakistan looming, writes Andy Bull in Spin, the Guardian's weekly cricket email. If England look too far ahead they will miss obstacles in front of them. Pakistan pose their own easily underestimated challenge.

It will be hard enough to get through the next 800 words without mentioning the A-word. Never mind the next four weeks. Such is the hold of that series on the public imagination that both Australia and England have found their upcoming fixtures against India and Pakistan are being framed in terms of what they will mean for this winter's contest.

If England fail to focus on the here and now of the next match then they may find that, once this series ends, that sing-song confidence is not be quite so voluble.

Nasser Hussain tips England to win the Tests against Pakistan 2-1. In the Daily Mail he lists five things England have to be fearful about in this series, and five reasons for them to be cheerful.

Amid the turmoil in Pakistan cricket, the national team comprising young players, with its thrilling win over Australia, has "offered a powerful argument for a revolution," writes Kamran Abbasi in the Dawn.

We all assumed that Wasim Akram was a once-in-a-lifetime bowler, but perhaps we were wrong. The most remarkable aspect of Pakistan’s first defeat of Australia in 15 years is that a relatively young and untried side has succeeded in the face of endless controversies.

Setbacks, groupings, and any disaster you could wish to imagine have hampered Pakistan’s progress. Three Test captains have tackled Australia this year, which itself speaks volumes.

There are concerns amid the victory, says Khalid Hussain in the News, and they lie in the batting which he believes is not good enough to win Pakistan a Test series.

Suddenly the Trent Bridge Test, which begins on Thursday, has a bit of spice. England will not be playing a ramshackle band of exiles rudderless in a foreign land. They will be playing the conquerors of mighty Australia. Pakistan have just played four matches against Australia (two Tests and two Twenty20s) and they have won three of them, writes Vic Marks in the Observer.

Stephen Brenkley has similar thoughts in the Independent on Sunday.

A question that was continually asked at Headingley during the second Test between Pakistan and Australia concerned which attack any self-respecting batting order would prefer to face. The answer was always the same. Australia's attack has been largely inconsistent and unthreatening, awry in length, especially, and line. Their leading wicket-taker in this short series has been Shane Watson, a muscular bowler who can demand concentration if there is swing around but who should cause no batsman sleepless nights ...

Pakistan's seam-bowling trio, led by the 18-year-old speed merchant Mohammad Aamer, was constantly on the money in Leeds. If conditions helped, they were all convincing in various parts of the match. There will be no cheap runs for England's batsmen and the new ball threatens to provide England's top order with a torrid time.

Andy Bull, writing in his blog The Spin in the Guardian, says Shahid Afridi's daring, swashbuckling approach to the game is what makes him the most enjoyable cricketer to watch.

At the age of 30 Afridi still bats like the 16-year-old who hit the fastest-ever ODI century in his very first international innings. Reckless, irresponsible, idiotic, there is not another player in the game who is as much fun to watch. He is a proper swashbuckler, a cricketer who, as I wrote last year, bowls leg-spin with the cunning of Cardinal Richelieu and bats with the foolhardy panache of all three Musketeers rolled into one.

Umar Akmal needs to have a big series © Getty Images

In the Sunday Telegraph, Wisden editor Scyld Berry cheers on Pakistan who he fears will be thrashed in the Tests against England and Australia over the next two months. He says that despite their potent bowling attack, they will struggle due to the lack of a settled pair of openers, the absence of a senior batsman in the middle order and the short time to switch from Twenty20 to Tests.

... it will be surprising if such a disorganised team is not hammered in the next two months by countries with all the necessary infrastructure to hand. And the impact of such a hammering could be even more far-reaching.

What pleasure will the new generation of Pakistani cricketers – real talents like Aamer and the cavalier batsman Umar Akmal, officially 20 – find in Test cricket, if it means nothing more than a flogging thousands of miles from home? Pakistan zindabad! Underdogs, come on!

Forget about Australia's one-day form, Pakistan will provide a better measure of Ricky Ponting's team in the neutral Tests ahead of the Ashes, writes Steve James in the Sunday Telegraph.

All we can really conclude from the recent one-day series is that these Australians are like walnuts: seriously tough to crack. ... Now [in the Tests against Pakistan] we can gauge more prudently whether, say, Ricky Ponting and Michael Clarke do have genuine problems against the short ball, because one-day cricket's endless demand for scoring can blur both judgments and perceptions. Did the West Indian Kemar Roach really inflict lasting psychological damage upon Ponting in Perth last winter? Mohammad Aamer, Mohammad Asif and Umar Gul may provide the answer.

Simon Barnes, in the Times, criticises the ICC for changing the status of the controversial Oval Test in 2006 from that of a forfeited match to a draw.

Certainly, it [the ICC] has decided that history can be undone and put together again in a new form. In a strange, and rather disturbing, precedent, it has said that the match between England and Pakistan at the Brit Oval in 2006 was not, after all, a win for England. It was a draw.

Julius Caesar lives, Pyrrhus survives and the history of the world is thereby changed for ever. It’s a bizarre business, the more so because on one level, the ICC seems to have got it right. That match in question ended when Darrell Hair, acting on a half-baked hunch and an overcooked sense of his own importance, called the match off.

While one leggie occupies England's thoughts, another, very different one has been rampaging around the county circuit over the last two years. Mushtaq Ahmed hasn't taken as many Test wickets as a Warne or Kumble, but his career has been just as intriguing, if not more, than either. Brian Viner, in The Independent, chats to the little 'un.

And what guidance has he in turn given Warne? He grins. Under the severe, grey-streaked beard, the 37-year-old still has an appealingly cherubic face. "He doesn't need my tips, although in 1993 when he was touring for the first time in England and I was playing for Somerset, [the Australian wicketkeeper] Ian Healy asked me to have a chat with Warney, to advise him how to bowl in English conditions. I said to him that in the early summer in England the wickets are slow, so you have to bowl quicker, with less spin but more pace, getting people out with pace not variation." A chuckle.

The incident in question came at The Oval in August when Pakistan were accused of ball tampering and then refused to resume after tea, eventually forfeiting the match. Wilby was unimpressed with Sky’s main men:

They proved themselves utterly inadequate. They lacked even one person, a Benaud, an Arlott, even a Christopher Martin-Jenkins, who could bring journalistic qualities - an inquiring mind, a hunger for information, a desire to explain - to the occasion. They could tell us next to nothing about what was happening behind the closed dressing-room doors. More seriously, they failed to give the events any wider context.

Why were they so impotent? Wilby reckons that it was because they were all former players. Instead of drawing on their rich experience – and remember that the Sky team included several players who had first-hand exposure to ball tampering (witnesses to rather than perpetrators of, it should be said!) - they played safe.

As former star players, still deeply embedded in the game's culture, the Sky commentators rigidly observed its codes of omertà during that dramatic day at The Oval. In so doing, they failed their viewers.

	© Getty Images

The weekend newspapers were almost universally critical of the way the whole episode was dealt with, and while there was not much sympathy for Darrell Hair’s on-field actions, there was concern about the way the ICC has treated him.

Leading the assault was Michael Atherton in The Sunday Telegraph. he wrote that the affair:

Showed the ICC at their worst: prevaricating, in that a judgment which should have been handed out on the fourth evening of the game was allowed to fester for a month; callous, when it revealed confidential e-mails from an employee; and ultimately fudging a verdict so as not to upset the key players in this very political game – the Asian bloc.

When the big issue arose, the ICC official froze. Woe-betide anyone who walks out to bat with a logo half an inch too big, mind you. Moreover, shortly after the ICC announced that Hair had been withdrawn from the Champions Trophy because of security concerns, India, the host country, flatly contradicted the game's chiefs. Who is being open and honest?

Stephen Brenkley in The Independent on Sunday was in an equally unforgiving mood:

The ICC are a governing body, but only when their members can be bothered to let them be so,” he wrote, adding that the blame lay with the members. “The ICC look as toothless today as they can have ever done. That will remain so until their members allow them actually to govern.

In the News of the World, Richie Benaud described the hearing as "crass and unbecoming". He added:

There are two men with stilettos between their shoulder blades - the Pakistan manager Zaheer Abbas, who has been sacked - and Hair, the ICC umpire. But at no point in any of this has Hair acted alone.

Reacting to Malcolm Speed’s comment that “we all move on and put this issue behind us”, John Stern in The Sunday Times said that:

There seems little chance of that when so many questions remain unanswered and so much resentment remains.

Referring to Darrell Hair, he went on:

He claims that he is happy with the support he has received from his employer, the ICC, although it is hard to imagine he really believes that. The ICC hung him out to dry by publishing the e-mails in which he demanded $500,000 to resign and also by standing him down from this month’s Champions Trophy in India, citing security concerns — a claim that has been denied by the Indian cricket board.

In The Australian, Malcolm Conn cut to the quick:

What a joke: the ICC has dedicated next month's Champions Trophy to the spirit of cricket … whether it's from players or the game's governing body, the rhetoric does not match the reality that the game is still a shambles and has little credibility as a major international sport.

	© The Daily Telegraph

In The Independent, Angus Fraser reveals that he has actually seen the ball at the heart of the whole row:

The state of the ball surprised me. It was protected in bubble wrap and treated as though it was part of a murder investigation. My first impression was that there was not a great deal wrong with it. I expected there to be more. This was not a ball that was about to reverse swing - the phenomenon created by the type of ball-tampering the Pakistan side had been accused of - extravagantly. The seam and quarter seam were in as good a condition as you would expect from a ball that was 56 overs old. They had definitely not been tampered with. There was a contrast between the two sides of the ball, as there always is. This is because one side has sweat and spit put on to it and is polished, while the other is left alone. The darker side is the one that has been polished and it generally looks tidier, while the other side always appears rougher.

In The Daily Telegraph, Simon Hughes, who was one of the expert witnesses called to the hearing, said the conclusion was:

A victory for common sense, an entity that had been in short supply at that same venue a month earlier … it emerged during the hearing that that afternoon was one of allegation, obfuscation, provocation and indignation resulting in the forfeiture of a Test match. There was chaos behind the scenes in the pavilion after tea. At the very moment officials were indulging in desperate brinkmanship with the enraged Pakistanis, the on-field umpires were independently removing the bails to declare the match awarded to England. It is clear that, with a bit of discretion here and a deep breath there, this fiasco would never have come about.

In a column in the same paper which will infuriate those who back Pakistan’s indignation, Derek Pringle offers a different take on why Hair was appointed to so many Pakistan matches:

According to one umpiring source, he has warned them about suspected malpractice over the ball eight times in that period [four Test series in 14 months], so the Oval, despite the sketchy evidence, may have been a last straw. Perhaps the question the PCB need to ask themselves is why Hair, a stubborn but principled man, was given so many of their Tests to stand in? Could it have been that the ICC wanted the team's wilder excesses to be placed in check by an umpire bold enough to take on the players?

	© The Guardian

Boycott in particular delivered a veritable tour de force. At one point, he took the infamous match ball in his hand, held it up and said: "That's a good ball, not just a playable ball. Boycott also took exception to the idea that an accusation of cheating should be tolerated. "If me or any of my friends were ever called a cheat," he told the hearing, the accuser would be "decked with a bunch of fives".

Elsewhere in The Guardian, Mike Selvey suggests that Hair has been stitched up by the ICC and that he is effectively finished … and the excuse put forward for his omission from the Champions Trophy is risible:

To invoke grounds of safety and security, when he has received by all accounts a single cranky email and no other threat, is just an expedient way of keeping him out of the way. But the umpire himself has said that he has been given no assurances of any firm commitments beyond that, or even an indication that there would be any. He is in limbo, on gardening leave, technically employed but actually unemployable.

In The Times, Simon Barnes believes that Hair “stood on the authority of his office, but a changing world had moved on without him”. He continues:

My colleague, Christopher Martin-Jenkins, is concerned that insufficient respect for the umpire is a recipe for anarchy. With both respect and affection, I am inclined to disagree. I think that if the umpire gets too much authority, there will be occasions when the authority is abused.

In the Daily Mail, Nasser Hussain raised a question over a man who was at the heart of the behind-the-scenes shenanigans but who has somehow escaped almost unscathed – mathc referee Mike Procter:

Procter didn’t do his job properly … he sat there for five days worrying about small things like illegal logos, but when something major came up he did nothing about it.

Also in the Daily Mail, Mike Dickson is of the view that whatever the rights and wrongs of what Hair did, he has not been treated well by the ICC. At The Oval he faced the media without a lawyer sitting next to him, as Shaharyar Khan and Ranjan Madugalle had, and no other official involved at the match was asked to stand up to be counted:

Hair has been hung out to dry or cut adrift might be a more appropriate metaphor.

	Ranjan Madugalle and David Pannick QC prepare for the hearing yesterday © Getty Images

In The Daily Telegraph, Simon Briggs claims that the Pakistan Cricket Board’s legal team are ahead on points:

In the course of the hearing, it became clear that Darrell Hair and Billy Doctrove — the umpires at the centre of last month's ball-tampering storm — had not fully followed protocol during the emotional and chaotic afternoon of Aug 20. Insiders say this has weakened their case substantially.

The mood of the meeting is reported to have been largely sympathetic towards Pakistan. While it has been acknowledged that Inzamam's sit-in protest was inappropriate, the umpires' conduct has provided Pakistan's lawyers with an opportunity to argue extenuating circumstances.

He adds that the PCB will argue that the disrepute charges should be kicked out as a result, and furthermore:

Extended to its logical limits, this argument could be used to support a change in the result of the game, which would then become a draw or no-result rather than an England win. But this will not happen, if only because of the upheaval it would cause within the betting industry.

In The Times, Matthew Pryor also suggests that things are going Pakistan’s way:

With so many lawyers in the room, the ball-tampering allegations that, if proved, would lead to only a fine or a ban of one Test match or two one-day internationals, are likely to be thrown out. There would seem to be a lack of the evidence required in a court, if not by ICC rules. If the verdict goes against them, Pakistan are likely to appeal or take Darrell Hair, the umpire, or the ICC to court. But they may yet be celebrating with President Musharraf, of Pakistan, who arrives in London tomorrow to meet Tony Blair, at a function in Park Lane.

	© Daily Telegraph

Today, a report by Christopher Martin-Jenkins in The Times claims that Inzamam did not act on his own in refusing to resume play after tea but was persuaded by others.

The refusal to take the field may not have been his idea but that of Waqar Younis, the touring team’s bowling coach, or one of the other senior figures in or around the Pakistan dressing-room at the time, The source said that Waqar, who was suspended and fined in 2000 when found guilty of changing the condition of the ball by a referee in Colombo, took Inzamam into the lavatory for a secret discussion at the start of the tea interval, from which point the situation spiralled out of control.

In The Guardian, David Hopps concentrates on the roles of the officials, and particularly that of Mike Procter, the match referee, whose actions, or lack of them, make him appear increasing ineffectual:

Pakistan's lawyers will also claim that the match referee, Mike Procter, failed for several hours to inform Pakistan of the ruling by umpire Hair that they had forfeited the match. They will argue that it was this breakdown of communication, rather than any act of rebellion led by Pakistan's captain, Inzamam-ul-Haq, that was primarily responsible for the Test not continuing.

In The Daily Telegraph, Mihir Bose claims that Billy Doctrove was at odds with Darrell Hair and Procter.

I understand that Hair and … Procter, have strongly declared that they believe the ball was tampered with. In contrast, Doctrove's statement is far less strong and open to interpretation that he may not be entirely convinced that this is the case. That Doctrove should have doubts is no surprise. In his match report on the incident he is said to have suggested that the umpires allowed play to continue for a few more overs to identify what caused the ball to change condition. Hair, though, persuaded him that if the ball had changed condition it should be replaced immediately. Doctrove agreed.

Bose goers on to state that Inzamam’s defence will centre on suggestions he was unaware of much going on around him:

[His] statement is believed to include further evidence of how the Pakistani captain saw that dramatic Sunday's play. I understand Inzamam says he did not see Hair's signal awarding England five runs, did not know why the ball was changed, and only realised what had happened in the dressing room. He will admit that the team's failure to take the field after tea was a mark of protest against the ball-tampering charge but that he did not know Pakistan stood to forfeit the match if his team failed to take the field.

	© Daily Mail

Drafts of a few general questions had been forwarded to representatives of Kevin Pietersen, Ian Bell and Paul Collingwood — who were all at the crease around the time of the furore. The Professional Cricketers’ Association have sought assurances about the confidentiality of their replies. However, there was no followup from the ICC and the players have gone on holiday.

In The Independent, Angus Fraser summed things up:

One side will, undoubtedly, claim victory but the whole affair has done nothing but damage to the game.

	It's verdict time for Darrell Hair on September 27 © Getty Images

Given the lack of television evidence, and the absence of any absolute condemnation from the expert witnesses, Inzamam will not be charged with ball tampering. In order for the ICC to save face, however, he will be charged with bringing the game into disrepute and so the blame for the cancellation will be laid firmly at his door. A small rap on the knuckles, maybe a fine and a small suspension, will ensue.

Read the full piece in The Telegraph.

	Inzamam-ul-Haq: an awesome presence at the crease © Getty Images

Watching with intense pleasure his two cameo masterclasses at Lord's in July I was smitten by a rare and cherished eureka moment which has not gone away. As the burly, noble fellow toyed with England's perspiring bowlers in the sun, I half closed my eyes and, of a sudden, the revelation overwhelmed me - in form, style, bearing and ingrained majesty, Inzy must be the nearest thing I'd ever seen to witnessing WG Grace at the wicket. The massiveness was all, and the control. In my reverie, it really could have been "the Champion" down there.

	'I think the selectors have a fair idea what sort of captain I am, and likewise with Fred [Flintoff]' - Strauss chooses his words before the big day © Getty Images

Two months ago, assuming his return to full fitness, a Flintoff-led England in Australia looked inevitable. But Strauss' candidature has gained momentum as his calm and authoritative leadership has guided England to a victory against Pakistan in the Test series and a drawn NatWest Series that had seemed beyond them. The decision, to be announced tomorrow, remains too close to call.

Mike Selvey applauds Darren Gough's determination to win back his England place, if not his performances once there.

Not long after the selectors had announced their provisional squad for the current one-day internationals, a message was passed to me, apparently from The Dazzler. "Tell Selvey," it went "that he can stick it up his arse."

	'Trescothick deserves our compassion' - Ian Botham © Getty Images

His wife Hayley’s post-natal depression after the birth of their daughter, Ellie, in April 2005 is thought to have contributed to his sudden inability to cope with the strain of being away from home last winter, after a constant succession of high-profile appearances for England at home and away.

Richard Hobson feels that the accident to Trescothick's father-in-law could have been the turning point.

Last November he considered leaving the Pakistan tour when his father-in-law, John, suffered serious head injuries after falling off a ladder at home. Trescothick was put through the distressing experience of watching CCTV footage of the accident via his mobile phone. It is easy now to imagine that as a turning point.

Instead of pouring scorn on Trescothick's request to skip next month's Champions Trophy in India, he deserves our compassion, says Ian Botham in the Daily Mirror.

Let's face it: nobody will care about Trescothick skipping a superfluous one-day competition if England come home with the Ashes in the New Year. Surely that's what we all want - and if it takes a bit of leeway from the compassionate society for Tresco to join the party, let's give him the breathing space he needs and leave the cynicism for later.

	© The Daily Telegraph

The BBC’s veteran Pat Murphy accused Sky of having “power without responsibility" for the way they presented and commented on the footage of Shoaib Akhtar working on the ball.

And Derek Pringle in The Daily Telegraph was equally critical:

“In a mischievous piece of commentary, Sky failed to draw their own conclusions, leaving it for viewers to email in their thoughts. Nasser Hussain's trenchant thoughts after England's innings — that Shoaib, was "very silly to do it in the current climate" as it would be "all over the morning paper" — was ironic given Sky's instigative role.”

Pringle also noted:

“The pictures, shown in slow motion, mostly looked innocent (you are allowed to clean the ball under the umpire's supervision). Yet when a bowler uses his thumb to lightly pick at something out of their line of sight, there is always room for other interpretations especially when you've been punished for ball-tampering before, as Shoaib was in 2003.”

In The Guardian, David Hopps wrote:

“Anyone who contends that the pictures shown constitute evidence of ball-tampering would find identical incidents taking place every day that first-class cricket is played. The nub of Pakistan resentment is less that they are being accused of cheating than that they are the ones who are being singled out.”

Richard Hobson in The Times said that: “the sequence was suspicious but inconclusive, because at no stage was it certain that his nail dug into the ball.”

You can see a video of the incident at The Corridor

Derek Pringle, writing in the Daily Telegraph, believes that the first innings may point to ball suspicions.

One answer that has come to light, via the usual information creep, is that the ball Pakistan used in England's first innings displayed such obvious signs of tampering (much more than the ball the umpires eventually changed) that Hair, at least in his own mind, needed only slender evidence in the second innings to pounce.

... Asif's methods of polishing the ball, which he does with both hands on both thighs, though not at the same time. The mystery though is that a red stripe (the usual sign that a ball is being polished) appears only on his left thigh and not his right.

Hair’s career options seem to be widening, even if he is removed from the ICC’s elite panel. Alex Brown writes in the Sydney Morning Herald Hair could be appointed on the international panel, which is one step down, while Ivo Tennant says in The Times there is a chance of him being an assessor of first-class umpires in England.

	© Getty Images

One of the main reasons cricket is so wonderful is its crowded cast of crackpot characters and rich history of skulduggery, the latter being an inevitable consequence of the dopey old game's beautifully intricate construction.

The Dawn's Kamran Abbasi minces no words in his column:

Hair has completely crippled his case. Not just the trumped up ball-tampering charge against Pakistan which only seemed to rest on Hair's ‘honourable’ interpretation of the condition of the ball — his honour is now dust — but also Inzamam's disrepute charge which any reasonable lawyer should be able to argue was a consequence of Hair's unwillingness to communicate fairly with the Pakistan captain.

Mike Atherton is surprised at how a small drama has turned into such a big crisis.

In time, people will look back in amazement at how one little pimple was allowed to grow and fester into a boil that finally burst at Friday's press conference, spreading puss all over the game.

Vic Marks wonders how Darrell Hair can possibly continue to officiate at the highest level of the game following his request for a secret pay-off.

The current laws governing action over suspected ball-tampering need to be redrawn to avoid the shambles that was the end of The Oval test match, argues Will Buckley.

"Whatever happens it is unlikely that Hair, 53, will stand in another international match. His relationships with Pakistan and Sri Lanka were already shot, and now he has shot himself in the foot," says an editorial in The Age.

Graham Halbish, the former Australian cricket chief, believes Hair's emails should not deter the ICC from thoroughly investigating the ball-tampering claims against Pakistan.

There's an Indian view as well. Writing in the Hindustan Times, Pradeep Magazine says Hair, who most in the sub-continent believe is prejudiced, has given them reasons to smile.

And, according to Chloe Saltau, Inzamam-ul-Haq was never a big hit among Australians.

One of his old adversaries, bowler Damien Fleming, believes there is hardly an Australian player who could say he knows Inzamam. He remembers dismissing him in a World Cup game at Headingley. "He was sort of looking for a bit of love. I yorked him, hit him on the toe, he ran, and then when he was about to get run out, he started limping. It was almost like, 'You guys shouldn't get me out because I'm hurt'," Fleming recalled. "Inzy is one of the better batsmen I ever bowled to, but as for his personality and emotions, I wouldn't have a clue."

Nirupama Subramanian, of The Hindu, tracks the Pakistani newspapers' strong reactions to Darrell Hair.

	Harsha Bhogle: Inzamam is one of the game’s nice guys. He looks relaxed, at peace with the world, and is respected. Some of those are fine qualities for a leader but there are others too © Getty Images

The Pakistan Cricket Board has much to answer for writes Asif Iqbal in The News.

In this entire controversy, the relationship that Darrell Hair enjoys with other functionaries of the ICC has been a revelation. The match referee Mike Proctor wanted to restart the match but could not prevail upon Hair to do so; the ICC chief executive, who plays a rather bigger role than his position as a paid executive of the ICC would perhaps merit, is also reported to have spoken to Hair, but to no avail. One would have thought that in terms of the hierarchy of the ICC, both the match referee and certainly the chief executive are above the umpire but Hair could flout both.

When the dust settles on this one, Pakistan will have to find another leader and leave Inzamam alone to charm the world with the quality of his batting, writes Harsha Bhogle in The Indian Express.

There can be no more resounding victory than honour questioned and vindicated. But Pakistan chose to sit out and I’m afraid that was a huge failure of management. They needed a calm, shrewd mind in the dressing room and they were let down. The captain has to bear the brunt for that, but so must the manager.

Mark Nicholas writes in The Daily Telegraph that reverse swing will be forever clouded in suspicion.

What on earth has Billy Doctrove's agent been doing with himself this week? asks Harry Pearson in The Guardian.

There's his client at the centre of one of the biggest sports stories of the year and all we hear is Darrell Hair this and Darrell Hair that. If I were the Dominican umpire I would be seeking alternative representation. Unlike Umpire Doctrove, Umpire Hair seems unlikely to be forgotten in a hurry. Hair today, gone tomorrow - I think not.

Mihir Bose, writing in the Daily Telegraph, reports that Bob Woolmer is on the verge of resigning as Pakistan coach. He reveals further schisms in the Pakistan camp.

To add to the farce, 20,000 spectators at the Oval were looking on in bewilderment when the Pakistani dressing room door opened and out emerged Kamran Akmal, the wicketkeeper, without pads but with a copy of a newspaper, which he sat down and read on the balcony. Commentators have taken that as the Pakistan side showing disrespect to Hair, but I am told that is not the case. Inzamam did not even know Akmal was doing that. It was just a young player, who knew he had no part to play in Inzi's decision, deciding to leave an overheated dressing room and seek some peace on the balcony.

With a bit of statesmanship, it should be possible to make it plain to Inzamam-ul-Haq that he acted foolishly and that standing on national dignity is no excuse for a cavalier disregard for cricket’s laws and rules, without exacerbating the crisis unnecessarily and without any loss of dignity or appearance of weakness on the ICC’s behalf, writes Christopher Martin Jenkins in The Times.

Mike Selvey, in The Guardian, shares Bob Woolmer's opinion on Law 42.3. That it's an ass.

Allow bowlers and fielders to scratch, rub, scuff and pick the ball to their hearts content but to do so mindful that this is the only ball they will get inside 80 overs until they get another new one to desecrate.

Read Andrew Miller's piece on the same subject on Cricinfo.

Darrell Hair may not score a goodwill ambassador job in Pakistan anytime soon, but the Australian umpire has achieved something rare for cricket - front page news in the US.

In The Daily Telegraph, Andrew Baker states that the reaction had the ball-tampering accusations been made against an English player would have been far less dramatic.

“Let us imagine that Sunday's alleged offence had been committed by an England player. This is not beyond the realms of possibility, as any Australian player from last summer's Ashes series might attest, and as the chortling former bowlers in the BBC's commentary box would confirm. Andrew Strauss would most likely have accepted the five-run penalty with a shrug and told his fielders to get on with it. Tony Blair would not have been contacted by mobile phone on his Caribbean holiday, images of Darrell Hair would not have burned on the streets of Stockwell, and ambassadors would have slept untroubled. Nobody, frankly, would have cared very much.”

Baker adds that the Pakistanis’ reaction is, nevertheless, understandable.

“It follows that for a Pakistani player to be accused of cheating, or condoning cheating, is not just a serious slur but a wearisomely familiar one. The response is passionate because it rejects the lazy lumping together of one people under one characteristic.”

In his article, Baker also refers to an editorial earlier this year in the Karachi-based News newspaper which is sure to ruffle many feathers. In it, broadcaster and foreign correspondent I Hassan, talking about a local festival, offers the following opinion:

"Regrettably, one has to say that our people cheat at every step in every walk of life. The concept of fair sport does not exist - be it getting a big contract or just a licence. Our people, unless vigilantly checked, will cheat. Even the fear of God does not prevent them from doing so."

Fazeer Mohammed believes that if the Pakistanis were really serious with all of the post-match comments about their country's honour being at stake, then they should not have returned to the field.

What is it about us former colonials that we feel compelled to measure ourselves by our one-time masters' yardstick of what constitutes civility and fair play? Giving up a Test match is as legitimate a protest as any other, especially if the degree of the perceived offence goes beyond issues of umpiring incompetence, or even bias. Those strident defenders of Victorian values, who will tut-tut and mutter disapprovingly about such behaviour being just not cricket, need to come to terms with the reality that this is only a game, and if it means being disrespected and insulted - as the Pakistanis claim - then it isn't a game worth playing.

For an outsider's account of the crisis, read Aakash Chopra's England diary in The Hindustan Times.

Even as I write, I am idly surfing the internet and hearing of mini-rallies and demonstrations around Pakistan in support of their beleaguered captain and team. I can see an outpouring of emotion on the British websites.

To blame Hair for not having the perfect response to an unprecedented event or to play down the seriousness of Inzamam’s behaviour is fatuous, says Martin Samuel in The Times.

As one of the ten best umpires in the world, we presume that he knows the difference between balls weathered by play and one that has been altered artificially. Ian Botham, Nasser Hussain, Michael Atherton and the many others queueing up to argue that something is only true if it is captured for action replay have lost sight of the primary issue. No incontrovertible proof is required beyond the belief of the umpire that cheating has taken place. Everything else is chatter

Andrew Baker, writing in the Daily Telegraph, sees it as a clash of cultures.

The patronising explanation is that Pakistan is a young nation with comparatively few cultural, economic or sporting achievements to boast of. Cricket therefore assumes an iconic importance, and the players assume the mantles of heroes. Accuse a Pakistani cricketer of cheating and you accuse the nation.

The ECB's cloak-and-dagger approach to the ball-tampering furore has obscured the affair's central issues, says Mike Selvey.

ICC clowning around is no joke for Inzamam, writes Martin Johnson in the Daily Telegraph.

The answer to all this would be for the ICC to downgrade ball-tampering from its hanging offence category, but you have to wonder about common sense being embraced by any ruling body that can clamp down on an umpire for wearing two sun hats [ Neil Mallender was the official punished]. In the meantime, Hair resumes his umpiring in a second XI game at Chesterfield next Wednesday, and Derbyshire's bowlers will doubtless be preparing for the game - behind locked bathroom doors - with a pair of nail clippers

Should coaches be allowed to talk to officials during Tests? Yes, says Micky Stewart, former England team manager, while Stephen Moss, Editor of Wisden's new anthology of modern cricket, says an emphatic no. Click here to read The Guardian article.

	© Getty Images

“No one is bigger than the game. Cricket if nothing else is a game built on rules, pages and pages of them. A player if feeling aggrieved about a ruling can sound off about it, but the game must go on. To withdraw from the contest is to abandon the principles of the game. It also achieves nothing in winning the contest against your opponent.”

The article goes on to slam remarks attributed to senior Pakistan officials that they would not play were Darrell Hair to be appointed to matches involving them in the future.

“Pakistan, in a burst of petulant indignation, said they would not play any more matches if Darrell Hair was the umpire. First, no team has the right, nor should it be able, to dictate who the ICC appoints to officiate a match. Pakistan say they have had "problems with Darrell Hair before". Last year Pakistan took umbrage at several Hair decisions, yet in 2003 Pakistan were the beneficiaries when decisions by the same man upset South Africa in a series against them. Pakistan are guilty of playing the man. Darrell Hair did not make up the rules, he just applied them as he saw right and proper to do (and we would argue this whatever his nationality).”

	© The Daily Telegraph

A spokesman for the England and Wales Cricket Board, James Avery, admitted Fletcher spoke with Procter before play but denied he had made a 'specific complaint about the state of the ball'. Yet sources close to the team have revealed that Fletcher did play agent provocateur, a role that probably influenced Darrell Hair's decision to pull Pakistan up for ball-tampering in the 56th over of England's second innings.

The Guardian's Mike Selvey fears the Anglo-Pakistan relations could be hit if it turns out that Fletcher had indeed alerted the officials.

If it was established that England had indeed prompted the umpires' investigation, it would throw back Anglo-Pakistan relations by a decade. It might further draw comment on whether they themselves were speaking from the high moral ground when it was their mastery of reverse swing, often as early as the 30th over of an innings, which helped win the Ashes and drew admiration. Suggestions that this was aided by the use of sugar-infused saliva from sweets has not been proved, but it is a wonder that a number of England players still have their own teeth.

Mike Marqusee feels that Pakistan's stand at the Oval is a salutary reminder that cricket is a game stamped by empire - and resistance to it.

Simon Barnes, of the Times, has ripped into Darrell Hair, saying a series that had exemplified all that is good about cricket was ended by one man’s vanity.

He will also argue that he was standing up for the laws of cricket when he stopped the match and refused to restart it. If you read the laws, you will find that he is right. If you park on a double yellow line for two minutes outside the chemist to get some urgent medication for your dying wife, the policeman who fines you is also acting according to the law. He is also acting without humanity and common sense.

Ted Corbett, writing in The Hindu, desribes how Bob Woolmer made his players swear on Koran that they had not indulged in ball-tampering.

John Woodcock says Hair lost the plot at the Brit Oval on Sunday.

Roy Hattersley's editorial in the Daily Times comes down heavily on the commentators:

... they take refuge in talk about sensitivity and obligations to the paying public. Their response to Monday’s events at the Oval was demeaning because it lacked courage as well as logic.

	© The Daily Telegraph

Ted Corbett, writing in The Hindu, tries to track where it all began:

The whole affair began, according to tales sweeping the Oval ground, when an England and Wales Cricket Board official went to the umpires' dressing room in the morning and asked them to watch out for ball tampering by the Pakistan players.

Geoffrey Boycott, writing in The Daily Telegraph describes the events as “farcical and reflected little credit on the England and Wales Cricket Board or the International Cricket Council”.

The ICC must be blind or stupid not to have realised that there is history between Darrell Hair, the umpire who accused them of changing the nature of the ball, and Pakistan. There were mutterings after the Headingley Test that Pakistan didn't like Hair's attitude.

Mihir Bose, cricket historian, feels the attack on Inzy's 'izzat' (honour) was the final straw.

Inzamam is one of those Pakistanis who passionately believes that a man can lose everything he has, including his life - but not his izzat. For him, the manner in which Hair took the decision as much as the decision itself meant that Inzamam's personal izzat, and that of his beloved Pakistan, had been besmirched.

Derek Pringle, Daily Telegraph's cricket correspondent, says pride, principle and prejudice replaced runs, wickets and catches.

"Everyone who follows the game, and has its interests at heart, needs a full explanation now, not least from the umpires and match referee," writes Mike Selvey in The Guardian.

In the same paper Lawrence Booth writes how Hair’s future is in doubt.

Simon Barnes writes in The Times “a small judgment about a small infringement of the laws created a day of outrage, distress and fury”.

Pakistan were not accused of ball-tampering yesterday. They were judged and found guilty by the umpire, Darrell Hair, as they sought to halt England’s second-innings resurgence. This is a profoundly serious business in cricketing terms. It is not like calling a woman a tease. It is like calling her a whore. Well, there are women who are whores, but you’d better be bloody sure of your facts before making the accusation.

Ian Botham, writing in the Daily Mirror, blames ICC for the chaos that enveloped The Oval.

Kamran Abbasi, writing in the Dawn, the Pakistan daily, writes that Hair has a track record of poor decisions and sparking controversy in matches involving Asian teams and feels that Pakistan would have been as mightily offended if the umpire involved had not been Hair. .

The Sun's John Etheridge writes on how an 18-stone Aussie called Darrell Hair trampled his feet all over the name of cricket with an astonishing display of pig-headedness.

James Lawton says in The Independent “a Test match died at the Oval yesterday for a lack of trust between those who play cricket and those who administer it”.

The Telegraph, the Kolkata-based daily, tracks Sky Sports’ live coverage during the choatic unfolding of the events and records what the star commentators had to say. Click here to read.

Cricinfo’s coverage starts here.

Mike Atherton, writing in the Sunday Telegraph, feels that there is only one consolation England can take from their insipid performance at The Oval. The fact that they've succumbed to the death-rubber syndrome.

Even when they've been on the field in this match, England have remained mentally out to lunch. Quite what this means when it comes to choosing a captain for Australia remains to be seen, but England have been so flat here that it can't have done much to advance the case for Andrew Strauss, writes Martin Johnson in The Daily Telegraph.

Much more of this and the Australians will be downgrading their Ashes alert from critical to something a good deal less than severe. The commando camp they've set up in Queensland will have to be replaced by more traditional methods of preparing for the Poms. "Now then lads, we'll all meet up in the pub the day before the first Test, and drinking is strictly limited to 12 large tinnies per player."

Read Simon Barnes in The Times who says that England yesterday reminded him of the saddest, bravest, most pathetic sight in sport: that of the plucky British female figure skater who finishes a promising 23rd.

Simon Barnes finds sporting values to the fore despite supposed tensions at The Oval:

It was Pakistan’s day and if the England supporters were disappointed, they didn’t seek to assault the opposition in revenge. And across the country, as people watched on television or listened to the radio, the match was enjoyed in a way that was - almost certainly - cheerful, enthusiastic, appreciative and utterly without fanaticism.

The Daily Telegraph's Martin Johnson writes on Kevin Pietersen's dismissal at The Oval and casts a funny look at the rest of the happenings on the first day:

On a day when it was announced that Marston's Pedigree were the team's "official" beer, Pietersen's decision to dispense with any kind of initial reconnaisance made you wonder whether he'd also been appointed as the beer's official taster.

	The genius of Monty © Getty Images

Fletcher is a fellow who by habit will look on a glass as half-empty rather than half-full and, since Panesar's elevation to the England side, it is the spinner's shortcomings with bat and in the field, rather than potential with the ball, that have occupied the coach's attention.

A brilliant performance...in the past week appears to have swayed the hangdog coach towards the view that he might just have a genius on his hands.

But can Panesar play Warne's role in England's four-man attack for the Ashes? Read Mike Selvey's piece in The Guardian for more.

There were many aspects to admire about England's victory over Pakistan at Headingley, but one of the most notable changes since earlier in the summer - especially the Lord's Test against Sri Lanka when they shelled nine catches - was the quality of the fielding. There were four run-outs (three from direct hits) and some fine catching. Steve James, in the Guardian, pinpoints this improvement as the key to England's series win.

England always want three wickets per Test courtesy of their fielding unit, so that group is in credit by one here; maybe two if you include Collingwood's stunning low catch at third slip to get rid of Umar Gul yesterday.

Simon Hughes takes a similar theme in The Daily Telegraph and says it helped to make up for the loss of Andrew Flintoff.

With England's attack being understrength, possessing a collection of fast, agile fielders with a deadly aim is the equivalent of having an extra bowler. Don't forget the catching either. Marcus Trescothick put in extra slip-catching practice yesterday morning, as usual wearing weightlifter mitts, and it was he who snaffled the first chance just before midday, a low catch off Matthew Hoggard which had taken an irritating time to materialise.

	The Full Monty © Getty Images

Following another superb performance from Monty Panesar, William Hill, the bookmarkers, have slashed his odds to win the BBC's annual Sports Personality of the Year Award:

Monty Panesar has been slashed from 5/1 to 7/2 favourite with William Hill to win the BBC TV Sports Personality of the Year Award after his latest three wicket haul as England dismissed Pakistan to win the Test Match. Hills also make comic/swimmer David Walliams 7/2 joint favourite and then offer Steven Gerrard at 9/2 third favourite for the Award, and also offer 8/1 Jenson Button; 10/1 Ricky Hatton; 12/1 Joe Calzaghe; Dean Macey; 16/1 Andy Murray; 20/1 Kevin Pietersen; Colin Montgomerie.

Andrew Flintoff won it in 2005 following his heroics in the Ashes. Never before have two cricketers won the award in successive years.

It was inevitable that the rather comical dismissal of Inzamam, in which he tumbled over his stumps flicking off the bails with his arm, would appear as a video on the internet somewhere. And it has. Worth a look.

Pakistan have to bat last and could yet be beaten themselves, but their resilience and skill, aided by badly mistaken England tactics, have set up an intriguing last two days, writes Christopher Martin-Jenkins in The Times.

Superbly though both [Younis and Yousuf] of them played, they were helped immeasurably by the dressing-room decision to abandon far too soon the old Headingley principle of bowling on a length around the line of off stump in sure and certain hope of eventual edges to normally positioned slips and gullies. The pitch, it is true, lost pace much more quickly than had seemed likely on Saturday, rather vindicating Inzamam’s judgment that the first day was the best for the fast bowlers. England, however, simply played into their opponents’ hands, first by trying to bounce them into submission, as to some extent they had on the bonier Old Trafford pitch, then by losing patience and attempting instead to bore them out.

Inzy is cricket's guilty pleasure; the ultimate schaudenfraude cricketer, says David Hopps in The Guardian.

Panesar beat an attempted sweep with a ball that not only spun back but seemed to give Inzy an electric shock. Then began the Inzy heptathlon. His first event was the shot putt as he lumbered round, virtually bent double, only for it to metamorphosise into the high jump as he tried to clear the stumps - a leap of 27 inches, nearly six feet below the world record - flicked off the bail with his glove and finished straddled and confused, as if looking for the landing mat.

Are you a traditionalist or a moderniser?, asks Mike Atherton in The Sunday Telegraph. Do you believe a wicketkeeper is there to catch the ball, tidily and unobtrusively, or do you believe that he also has to score Test match centuries? Were you a Jack Russell or an Alec Stewart supporter? Your answers to these questions will depend on whether you believe Geraint Jones or Chris Read should walk out at the Gabba in three months' time.

While Read's selection was surprising to me in its timing - a Test match had just been won but the series not yet secured - it demonstrated absolutely where the selectors' priorities lie. By dropping Jones at a time when his keeping had improved immeasurably, the message is as clear to Read this time around as it was when he last felt the selectors' axe in the West Indies three years ago: runs are essential.

Marcus Trescothick had to abandon England's winter tour and is still looking for top form. But the man with the unlikely nickname tells Kevin Mitchell that it is just a question of time before he is back to his very best.

'You're never far away. You can just be one innings away from clicking back into form. That could be 30, then you're away. You might start with a hundred, who knows. It's a feeling, very much so with my game. I can feel when it's about to go. You start picking the ball up easily and early, your feet get in the right place, your head's still to watch it nicely, then you click. The concentration kicks in after that.'

The general assumption after Monty Panesar's demolition job in the second Test at Old Trafford was that Headingley would be filled to the brim with local Asians eager to catch a glimpse of England's new hero. But, as Owen Slot reports in The Times, the influx has been nothing of the sort.

Like a certain village in Gaul with an Asterix against its name, the stands at Headingley Carnegie seem immune to any invasion. We may have had Pakistan in the field and a Monty and a Sajid in the England dressing-room, but out there in the crowd, multi-culturalism has yet to catch on

	Chris Read made 38 in his first innings back in Test cricket © Getty Images

Although Kevin Pietersen took the headlines on the opening day at Headingley, one of more interesting passages of play came during the final session after he had retired hurt with cramp. It brought in Chris Read for his first Test inning since 2004. He played a few handsome shots, but also showed his nerves and Simon Hughes, in the Daily Telegraph, says his 38 raised as many questions as it answered.

His attempts to convert himself into a serious runmaker have been admirable, but, on yesterday's evidence, Read is still a jaunty short story rather than a more substantial tome. It is seven years since he made his Test debut, and the memory of him being bowled bobbing under a Chris Cairns slower ball, which prompted the newspaper headline, 'You Silly Ducker' hangs around like a dark cloud and refuses to budge.

However, in the Guardian, Lawrence Booth says that Read's 38 suggests he has the ability to succeed in Test cricket.

If the tension was getting to him, he did not let it show too much after his account-opening Chinese cut. There was a nervy cut at Nazir but shortly afterwards Read went on tiptoes to time the same bowler through the covers. It was mischievously tempting to see something of Jones in the stroke. Then, when Danish Kaneria dropped short he rocked back and cut him for four more. He was on his way.

Read was helped in his innings by Pakistan's use of their opening batsmen - Salman Butt and Taufeeq Umar - for six overs of part-time spin and Geoff Boycott, also in the Daily Telegraph, says it was one of the worst periods of bowling he has watched.

Shortly after Pietersen went off, having done all the hard work, Pakistan lost the plot altogether.
It was almost as if they said, 'We've been unlucky with the umpiring, we can't get these guys out, so we will just sit back and wait for the new ball'. Their two opening batsmen bowled absolute rubbish. It wouldn't have been decent bowling at me in the back garden when I was nine.

In selecting Chris Read ahead of Geraint Jones for tomorrow's third Test against Pakistan, England have given him his third, and probably final, chance to prove that he can become an international cricketer, writes Angus Fraser in The Independent.

The omission of Jones does not signify that his time with England has come to an end. Far from it. Jones is not the first England player to be given a timely kick up the backside by the selectors and he will not be the last.

Also read David Hopps's piece in The Guardian where he says Jones has not only handed over the wicketkeeping gloves to Read, but also the pressure.

The tactic to practise batting against short-pitched bowling on a slab of marble is still a sound one and we shall continue to do so, writes Bob Woolmer in The Times.

It is a misconception that the best way to combat steep bounce is to get behind the line. One alternative method is to leave more balls outside off stump, and another, when attacking Harmison and others, is to play more “high shots” such as cutting over the slips, as John Edrich, Alan Knott and Tony Greig did on fast, bouncy surfaces in the 1970s, and hooking.

	© Getty Images

"The Australians, in that endearingly smug way of theirs, have been so busy airbrushing history since last summer that half the population still think they hold the Ashes. Their opening batsman, Justin Langer, was recently floating the suggestion that his team had become so bored and complacent with constantly sticking it up the Poms that getting beaten was actually a brilliant idea."

Not content with only upsetting one country, Johnson then turns on Pakistan's batsmen, whose bravery he questions:

"Their coach's plan to get them ready for Harmison by pinging a cricket ball at a marble slab would have been better served by cutting a hole in the practice net in the general area of square leg in order to provide them with an escape route ...

"This is a team who congregate for five prayer meetings a day, and Harmison at full throttle on a bouncy pitch is certainly no impediment to acquiring religion."

	© The Observer

Even though Steve Harmison grabbed 11 wickets and the Man-of-the-Match award, it was Monty Panesar who grabbed the media attention.

Vic Marks, in The Observer, wrote that at last Panesar had cast off the label of being something of a comedy figure:

“Panesar has dominated in a manner that has embarrassed some pundits. One or two had advocated an all-seam attack for England. In the first innings Panesar was Harmison's ally and patently the second most important member of Andrew Strauss's attack. Yesterday he was the main man.”

Huw Turberville in The Sunday Telegraph said that Panesar was now assured of Ashes selection:

“England coach Duncan Fletcher has never appeared to be fully convinced of Panesar's abilities, expressing concern at his lack of batting and fielding skills. But surely this performance will have persuaded him the 24-year-old warrants a place in England's starting line-up for their Ashes defence this winter, even if Ashley Giles regains fitness.”

	© The Mail On Sunday

“His big challenge will come in Australia this winter where the pressure on the entire England team will rise to new levels and where the home crowds will be quick to seize on any signs of weakness. By the look of it, he has the capacity to cope with them but he will have to be wary of an Australian batting force that will be intent on making life as hard as possible for him.”

Jon Culley in The Independent noted that if BBC Sport were scratching their heads for a nominee for the Sports Personality of the Year after a fairly bleak year elsewhere, they now have a clear contender. He added:

”As a display of attacking spin bowling, yesterday's performance by the 24-year-old Northamptonshire player was as good as has been witnessed from anyone in an England shirt in decades.”

	© The Daily Telegraph

Yesterday, however, Steve Harmison blasted out Pakistan. While the pitch was poor, it was the fast bowling that grabbed the headlines.

Derek Pringle in The Daily Telegraph was blunt, arguing that “it was a gutless display by the visitors, with many of the later order backing away”.

But he also pointed out that while the pitch may not have been perfect, Harmison’s performance was, nevertheless, a great one.

“With his height and pace, Harmison can be a handful on most surfaces, but when given conditions that amplify his gifts he brings a fear factor that make batsmen do foolish things. Of his victims only Inzamam-ul-Haq was dismissed by a ball that did anything unexpected, in his case climbing sharply from a good length after hitting one of the many cracks pitting the surface of the pitch.”

In The Guardian, Mike Selvey was in no doubt that groundsman Peter Marron’s work was not good enough.

“The pitch did not quite play to order. It had promised pace, which it delivered, and ditto good carry. What should not have been evident yet was a nasty, if occasional, variation in bounce as the ball struck either side of the cracks, which, if the sun continues to bake the surface, will only get wider and more influential.”

Selvey was also critical of the Pakistan batsmen who, he wrote, “batted with questionable commitment and a negative mindset”.

	© The Mirror

“Harmison and England were aided by a fast, bouncy and slightly unpredictable pitch, and a woeful batting display from Pakistan. The venom of Harmison and the steep bounce he extracted from the helpful surface unsettled the tourists who showed minimal resistance.”

In Dawn, Kamran Abbasi pondered Inzamam’s decision to bat:

“Winning the toss turned into a nightmare for Inzamam-ul Haq. He is unlikely to see a quick end to the public debate about his decision to bat first on a hard, greenish track, under gloomy skies and a humid day. Forgive my meteorology but weren't those once known as ideal bowling conditions?”

He also had little time for the Pakistan batsmen:

“Most of these fair-weather youths have grown fat on the plunder of lifeless pitches. They have indeed pulled Pakistan out of some desperate situations but those rescue missions have been in conditions that have offered little for bowlers. Yesterday, a more testing examination questioned the quality of their defence. The same examination that is failed each time we tour Australia, and particularly at Perth. On this evidence we are no more ready.”

Once upon a time, Shahid Mahmood might have cursed a scoreboard that showed Pakistan all out for 119, writes Richard Hobson in The Times . Yesterday, from high in the members’ area, he looked down with paternal approval. His allegiance is now firmly with England and Sajid, his son, had helped to dismiss one of the best batting teams in the world in less than two sessions.

The moment Panesar was tossed the ball yesterday, then, saw him under some pressure, says Jon Culley in The Independent. At 90 for 2, Pakistan had recovered from the latest failure of their top order. What is more, Younis Khan and Mohammad Yousuf, two parts of arguably the finest middle order in world cricket today, each looked well set. Yet Panesar was nerveless,

	Flintoff might be spending a lot more time on the sidelines © Getty Images

England are dreading the catastrophic news that Andrew Flintoff might be unfit for the second Test against Pakistan at Old Trafford, or worse. Here's what the papers had to say.

Far from playing again this week, Flintoff must be fearing the possibility that an arthroscopy on the left ankle will now be advised to deal with the tiny fragments of bone or crystal shown by a scan on June 5, writes Christopher Martin-Jenkins in The Times. Any operation would mean a further six weeks of rehabilitation, leaving the possibility of only two four-day games in September before final decisions are taken about his fitness to captain England in the Ashes series.

Angus Fraser says, in The Independent that the Ashes should be Flintoff's priority. "The first Test against Australia in Brisbane is now only four months away and it is this series that should dominate the thoughts of Flintoff's medical team when they meet today. If Flintoff's misses the second Test he has no chance of playing in the third at Headingley, which starts three days later. It would then appear pointless to rush him back for the fourth so it is the Ashes that should take centre stage."

"If Flintoff is out, England will almost certainly revert to the side that emerged from the first Test at Lord's with a tame draw," writes Andy Wilson in The Guardian. "There is one possibility of a change, however, and that would be to replace the underperforming all-rounder Liam Plunkett with the Lancashire fast bowler Sajid Mahmood."

According to Derek Pringle "Flintoff's absence, should the selectors decide to leave him out when they name the England squad tomorrow, would mean a reprieve not just for Andrew Strauss, as the stand-in captain for a stand-in, but also for Ian Bell, the man earmarked to be jettisoned despite making a hundred in the first Test."

	Under fire: Hoggard and his colleagues © Martin Williamson

“The situation on the final day was crying out for the ball to be pitched up but instead our batsmen were given plenty of wayward, short-pitched bowling (by Liam Plunkett as well as Harmison). It was too easy for us to pick off the bad balls and Harmison has to think about his bowling a little bit more.”

Just for good measure, Younis went on to say:

“It is wickets that you have to take as a fast bowler - that is how you earn your living - but sometimes simply banging it in short is not enough. You have to use your brain as well as your brawn.”

Given that Pakistan conceded 824 runs in the match and failed to bowl England out either time, some on the England side might argue that Younis should be concentrating on sorting out his own problems before attacking the opposition.

	Panesar's foibles have endeared him to all in rapid times. But can he deliver? © Getty Images

Steve James writes in The Guardian that

the quickie was expected to exploit any variable bounce, but he simply did not deliver. All the great bowlers have always attacked from the Pavilion end here. Qualms about his action meant Harmison spent much of this match operating from the Nursery end..

All eyes were then on Monty Panesar.

From round the wicket the first delivery drew Faisal Iqbal forward and snorted past his outside edge in a classical piece of left-arm orthodox spin bowling. Some observers even swore that there had been a deflection. Television technology demurred.

England's newest pair of spinners - Panesar and Pietersen - are definitely not their secret weapon for the Ashes, despite Panesar confounding Iqbal with his first ball after lunch and Pietersen claiming his first Test wicket with a bit of Hollywood. Read The Times for more.

The first Test draw was more of a sparring match than a proper bout writes Simon Hughes in The Telegraph

The tempo suited the original heavyweight, Inzamam-ul-Haq, who does everything at his own leisurely pace. He prepared for his innings before play with the kind of net you associate with the village players of Hambledon. No pads, no gloves, and stroke a dozen gentle half volleys back to the bowler before heading off for a cup of tea...He ambled to the wicket, his beard and rotund form making him look like a latter-day WG. His first-innings dismissal had had the essence of Grace, too, Inzi getting his legs in a bit of a tangle, then looking round in disbelief at the disturbed stumps. You almost expected him to mutter the Urdu for "Strong wind today umpire, isn't it?"

	'A moment of madness' - Ian Bell is run out trying to get Andrew Strauss to his century © Getty Images

Lord's saw the beauty and the beast as Andrew Strauss' rush of blood proved his undoing, says David Hopps in the Guardian. Mark Nicholas calls it as a moment of madness. Read Martin Johnson's take on the subject here.

You could say that Bell was unlucky to be run out by a direct hit from Inzamam, which is cricket's equivalent to being killed by a falling meteor while out walking the dog on Dartmoor. If International Cricket Council regulations permitted, the Pakistani captain would employ a butler to do his fielding for him.

From supercharged leg-break to swish of the bat Afridi ensures there is never a dull moment, writes Lawrence Booth.

When Afridi is not running an impatient hand through his luxuriant mane, he is generally chuntering at anyone who has had the temerity to steal a single, or throwing his hands up in pantomime-dame despair as a brisk leggie rips unjustly past the outside edge. On Friday he sent down an 80mph bullet to Monty Panesar, which may have been Test cricket's fastest leg-break since Bill O'Reilly called it a day in 1946. It raised eyebrows and oozed irritation.

Simon Briggs, of The Telegraph, watches Danish Kaneria and Shahid Afridi spin their web at Lords and compares their respective arts - Kaneria, the thinker, vs Afridi, the pounder.

It has been a 12-year wait for England to declare both innings, says Simon Hughes.

	John Stern 'So the paradox is that Jones, picked for his batting, is becoming a sounder keeper and a less effective batsman. How far will the tables turn?' © Getty Images

Mike Atherton tries hard to find the problem area of Mohammad Yousuf and Inzamam-ul-Haq.

To get an insider's view on the weaknesses of Inzamam and Yousuf I asked Ramiz Raja, the former Pakistan opening batsman and now commentator, how best to dismiss these two batsmen. He thought for a while and then said 'run them out'. The problem for England is that I'm sure he was being serious.

As England's bowlers toiled against a resilient Pakistan, Mike Brearley, in the Observer, blames climate change.

John Stern, writing in the Sunday Times, believes that Geraint Jones holds advantage over rival Chris Read.

Simon Wilde feels that in the absence of Andrew Flintoff, it is vital for Harmison to stand up and deliver.

Harmison hasn’t always been big on responsibility. At school, he was inclined to go missing from class and in his early days as an England cricketer didn’t always do the management’s bidding. It’s no coincidence that he really doesn’t like bowling at Lord’s. He says it’s not just the slope that makes him feel uncomfortable, it’s the whole place. And why should he feel at home at a place so redolent of authority? The great feature of his annus mirabilis of 2004 was that he did lead from the front on a regular basis, from his astonishing demolition job in Jamaica to his surgical excision of the same West Indies side at The Oval. Unfortunately, he found the view from the top of the world rankings vertigo-inducing and he has been slipping towards earth ever since.

Andrew Strauss asserts the England team are far from a spent force.

	Paul Collingwood symbolises the rise of Durham © Getty Images

Rick Broadbent, of the Times, is also not impressed with Jones.

His 18 improved on his averages in his last two Test series and also helped him to a world record. Jones has now gone longer than anyone else, 45 Test innings, without getting a duck. ... Alas, that just shows how numbers can get in the way. The truth was that his main achievement on a lustrous Lord’s day was to press Chris Read’s case for inclusion in the team.

Paul Collingwood marks the rise of Durham with a flourish, writes Simon Hughes.

With a low back lift, he punches rather than assaults the ball, chipping it around the green with deft placement and control. You could bank on him getting down in two from anywhere. Becoming something of a spin specialist, he has, in seven Tests against sub- continental teams this year, made only three less runs than Kevin Pietersen, and at a significantly better average. ...With a slightly crooked bat in defence, he might yet come unstuck against bouncy Australian bowlers, but it won't be for the want of trying.

Amongst the newcomers rushed into action, Alastair Cook alone has proved that he belongs in the highest company, writes Peter Roebuck in The Hindu.

Flintoff's appeal is not limited to field of play. Simon Briggs reports that thousands watched England's colossus practice in the nets.

Revolution? Panama hats and blazers still set trend at Lord's. Jim White reports in The Telegraph.

As Pakistan's tour of England gets underway, the thousands of immigrant Pakistanis face a dilemma of which team to support - their country of origin or their adopted country. Jack Shencker of The Guardian spoke to a few immigrants, who had some interesting things to say.

"I would normally support Pakistan, not just because they are the underdog in terms of technology and resources but also because both the players and the country want it more"

Five dropped chances by Pakistan on the opening day threw Bob Woolmer's theory of IPS (Ideal Performance State) into The Thames. David Hopps digs deep into the murky world of sporting acronyms with an original slant. Read on in The Guardian.

Please try to concentrate, otherwise you may well be dismissed as GROLI, which happens to mean Guardian Readers Of Limited Intellect, as if such a thing could possibly exist.

A three-day match against Leicestershire, a one-day bash in Scotland, a four-day fixture against England A at Canterbury and a Twenty20 slog, irrelevant to the longer form of the game, has been the sum total of our preparation before the first Test, which starts today, writes Bob Woolmer in The Times ahead of Pakistan's first Test against England at Lord's.

I am expecting a dogfight, not least because positive results are normally obtained on three of the four Test grounds we are playing on, namely Lord’s, Headingley and the Oval...

Pakistan’s preparation going into the first Test of the tour can hardly be described as satisfactory, as their suspect batting has had little exposure to front-line English bowlers, writes Asif Iqbal in The Khaleej Times. He adds that for Danish Kaneria to succeed,he needs the weight of runs to bowl at so the onus is on the batsmen to perform.

With so many injuries and the batting having had limited exposure on this tour so far, I would expect Pakistan to approach the Lords Test with a great deal of caution.

Matthew Hoggard has been spending time in an oxygen chamber to speed up his recovery from a hand injury. It wasn't the most exciting experience but he hopes it will help him play against Pakistan at Lord's. Read about Hoggard's time in the chamber in The Times.

My ears usually pop shortly after going in, but then the effect is the same as taking a dive 14 metres under water. It’s basically like taking a dry dive. I haven’t dived properly before. I’ve always liked the idea of it, but I’ve actually been pretty scared. Unsurprisingly, it’s not quite as scary doing it without any water, but one bright spot of this recuperation process is that I think I may have conquered my fear of diving. So next time I have a holiday, I think I may be heading underwater.

"Non first-class cricket in Pakistan has been played with a tape ball in every galli (lane) and rural field for 20 years," writes Osman Samiuddin in The Guardian. "Parallel to this period has been an assembly line of fast bowlers, able to extract reverse swing almost on demand."

Until Andrew Flintoff and Simon Jones last summer, old cricket balls were mostly useful in Pakistani hands. Explanations for reverse swing came within quotation marks, accompanied by winks and nods - "working hard on the ball" or "rough outfields help" mostly meant "show me a finger nail/bottle top and I'll show you a collapse". Last summer reverse swing became a science. Vindicated Pakistanis blustered. They might also have pondered the role of the tape ball - a tennis ball covered with electrical tape.

It will be a pleasure to return to the majesty of Test cricket after the frenzy of the football, writes Mike Marqusee in The Hindu.

While kids in England were watching football on the telly, their counterparts in Pakistan were bowling and batting in whatever space they could find and with whatever implements came to hand. As in India, the route from the streets to the stadiums is circuitous and littered with obstacles and injustices. But in Pakistan it tends often to be a shorter leap, and more of the elan of street cricket — the hustle, the improvisatory spirit — survives in the Pakistani game. Combine that with sophistication of technique and discipline, and you have a cricket team that's both competitive and entertaining.

Inzamam-ul-Haq tells Donald McRae, of the Guardian, he is confident of repeating his success from last winter on his final tour of England.

..it is reassuring to hear that Inzamam is not about to resume the misguided diet which almost ruined his career in 2003. "I never do that again," he promises while patting his stomach gently. "Just before the World Cup I work harder than I ever did. I lose a lot of weight - 17 kilograms!" He shudders. "Can you believe it? It was too much. I didn't score any runs without those 17 kilograms. And that's when I got dropped from the Test team. It hurt me so much that I say I'm not willing to play again. But after three months I realise that I'm only 33 and have many years ahead of me. So I decide to come back.

Putting England’s endless injury list to one side for a moment, Mike Atherton concentrates on the Pakistan side and their abundance of talent and flair in today's Sunday Telegraph.

It is always a treat to watch Pakistan play because their players bring an instinctiveness that is increasingly hard to find in a modern game dominated by a uniformity of coaching methods. This is because the game in Pakistan is still largely unstructured, because their players learn to play the game by playing tape ball on any patch of scrub land that can be found.

If that wasn’t a daunting enough prospect for England to contend with, he sounds a further warning of the support Pakistan will receive.

That particular tour [in England, 2001] was played to a backdrop of race riots in Oldham, Burnley and other northern industrial towns. The issue of identity and race is a more complex one than simply a case of being either 'one of us' or 'one of them' and little that has happened in the intervening years suggests that Pakistan will not enjoy the same level of support that they enjoyed then. England's players should brace themselves for a fierce time on and, especially at Headingley and Old Trafford, off the field.

It's been three years and 32 Tests since Andrew Flintoff last missed a Test for England, and it has shown in the remarkable run of performances the team has put together in that time. But, on Thursday morning at Lord's, his team-mates will have to look elsewhere for inspiration. Mike Selvey, writing in The Guardian, suggests that the man who was widely lampooned for his early-season performances, Monty Panesar, could well provide the X-factor.

As Pakistan arrive in England for a heavy summer of cricket, Scyld Berry warns that the hosts will be up against tough and talented opponents.