NCA trainees to be taught the Rhodes way?

Jonty Rhodes can teach a few tricks © Touchline

In addition to the possibility of roping in Geoffrey Boycott as a batting coach, officials at the National Cricket Academy will try to get Jonty Rhodes to give the new generation of Indian cricketers a fielding lesson or two. India's fielding was certainly up a notch or two in Australia and Pakistan, with Mohammed Kaif and Yuvraj Singh responsible for some superb stops in the field, but Sunil Gavaskar - who had come down from Mumbai last week to help inaugurate the new batch at the NCA - reckoned that a special touch wouldn't be amiss for the fielders of the future.

"And who better than Rhodes?" asked Brijesh Patel, the NCA's director. Patel revealed that Rhodes had made himself available in the first week of June. "He has given us a specific period because he has to return home to be with his wife who is expecting," he said. "We have informed him about our terms and conditions and it's up to him now to consider it. But we are hopeful that he will come."

Rhodes sprang into cricket's consciousness - literally - a dozen years ago, when he was responsible for the spectacular run out of Inzamam-ul-Haq in a World Cup game at the Gabba in Brisbane, an airborne achievement forever immortalised by pictures taken by the few photographers who had gathered outside the boundary rope.