The Surfer

There is very little for Kiwi fans to salivate over in terms of our team's shambolic Test performances of late and their main emotions will be a combination of fear, foreboding and trepidation. The current New Zealand team is a product of a Kiwi cricketing environment that is at the nadir of its fortunes: a depressing mix of injuries and unavailability, allegations of nepotism and half-truths, inexperienced players thrown in the deep end, a chorus of embittered former players, administrators and commentators whinging from behind the boundary rope, and a series of catastrophic public relations cock-ups.

Gautam Gambhir was a player who once made you care for him. Earnestness seeped through his visage. Here was an international player who openly talked about his insecurities, self-doubts, and his struggles. Even when he failed, he made you step back from the passions of the moment to understand, through his innate sincerity, the darker and deeper motivations that run through a sportsman trying to battle it out at the top. Somewhere in the last 18 months, that old Gambhir began to fade away ...

The first step is acceptance. Some of us arrive at that stage a tad too early, almost in panic, some never do, and some like Gambhir try avoiding that stage. He was definitely lucky that there was no great competition to his spot and he kept getting chances ... [Now] signs of his combative spirit popped up on his twitter page last Sunday, the day he was dropped for the first two Tests against Australia. "No sympathies plz … Had my bak to d wall in d past 2, dis is no difrent. Will fight," he tweeted. Hopefully this is an acceptance that he needs to improve and not a closing of walls inside his mind.

I think T20s have the ability to breathe life into the domestic scene and that's where their focus should be - exclusively. They should be used to draw the crowds to local games and be a pathway for our young talent, in terms of experience and wages.

For the good of the country, Brendon McCullum must open the batting in Test matches because, if he doesn't, there is no room for Luke Ronchi - and that would be a crying shame.

The game was introduced after thousands of Rwandans, having grown up playing cricket in exile in nearby countries such as Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, came home to rebuild their lives after the genocide.

I tend to try a little bit harder, and longer. You plan for a little bit longer. The pressure makes you narrow your focus and find a place where you can be mentally calm but up for it. That is the hardest thing - learning just when to conserve your mental energy for, and knowing that you are going to need a lot of it to bat in Test cricket.

The following summer my feet started to hurt and nobody could get to the bottom of it. I wasn't right but I carried on going because I had a devil and an angel on my shoulders. The devil always won. Have a day off? No, I'd just get on with it. I came back but I wasn't the same; it was getting worse and I was in agony. We had a televised game at Bristol. I ran in on the fifth ball and collapsed in a heap. It was like a knife going through me. But I refused to get stretchered off and finished my over. When I walked into the dressing room, I knew that was the end of my career.

We may be living in a difficult age where Big Brother is everywhere and Orwellian dystopia dominates our consciousness constantly. But that is no reason to turn a pre-Test series practice game in a college ground into some kind of in-camera trial of skills.