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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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