The Surfer

I think coming just before the Champions Trophy in England the IPL will provide for perfect preparations for the shorter version of the game and will help me get ready for the season in England. May I also say that the India series in February-March means that I will be accustomed to the conditions well before the IPL starts and can give my best to my team from the very start of the tournament.

Bowling gives me that high. Contributing to the team's success gives the kind of high that as a cricketer and athlete you always strive for. And I still want to go out there and do things for the country. I still have plenty of things to offer. That's my faith. I have had that kind of faith in my ability and that's what drives me to try and make this comeback.

I have drawn up umpteen alternate scenarios - what if Mongia had stayed sane? what if Tendulkar had tried to loft Saqlain inside-out? what if Joshi had struck another straight six? what if Srinath had lost his head and actually pulled off a mad hoick? - but also reflected on more weightier matters - would Tendulkar have changed his batting style into a more ruthless, error-free one had India won this match? Would the innings be enshrined in legend as the greatest, his greatest? Would we have ever had the million debates about his ability at the finish?

Both rest on the assumption that a renewed period of cricket success is as far away as inserting the right names in a management diagram. Warne's names aren't even that new. Rod Marsh as selector? He is. Mark Taylor as chief executive? Mark Taylor, a director of CA until a couple of months ago, was one of the signatories to the Argus Review which underpins the current approach. A coach chosen on the basis of impressive performances against Australia? It was CA that took this step when they appointed Mickey Arthur eighteen months ago; would Stephen Fleming be so much better?

A simple criteria is pick your best team and stick with it in all forms, then the players get used playing together and being with one another on tour, you get to know the person, too much chopping and changing leads to insecurity, players then start to look out for themselves and over their shoulder, this breeds selfishness. It's also why rotation and resting players will never work. I believe the players should be united, take ownership of this, it's a very powerful and strong message to send to CA if the players message is "I do not want to be rested or rotated I want to play every game, if I don't perform drop me". If this decision comes from the players then CA have to respect that and follow suit on selection accordingly, this will then mean someone is accountable ... The team should be selected first, not the captain, the captain will be chosen from the team selected.

It did not have to be a big occasion for him to pull out all the stops. Here he is at Grace Road watching the Australians during the 1993 Ashes tour. Shane Warne has just bamboozled the Leicestershire batsmen and this is just a sentence from the match report he sent into the paper. "Two or three batsmen rolled back to the pavilion in a daze of eye-rolling double-takes after being scrambled and poached by an outrageous right-angled extravagance which dips in serenely to land on the uncut edges of the strip far outside the left peg before snapping back a full yard to nip away the off-bail." Brilliantly, beautifully barmy.

The promotion of Sanath Jayasuriya is a dark day in Sri Lanka's cricket history ... SL's flouting of a proposal it actually supported at ICC level eighteen months ago has grave implications for the country's cricket. Above all, though, it savours of an act of arrogance by Sri Lanka's United People's Freedom Alliance, of a piece with its growing authoritarianism and hubris.

Last August, while Unmukt Chand and Co. celebrated winning the U-19 World Cup, Ankit Bawne sat at home, despondent but determined to prove a point. Bawne had been stripped of the India U-19 captaincy due to age-related discrepancies. "It played on my mind but I knew I had to go and perform and show the world I was good enough," he says. And he did. In a desolate season for Maharashtra, who finished bottom of Group B, Bawne was one of the sole bright sparks. He scored one century and six fifties, often making runs in pressure situations.

At 17, Ishwar Pandey walked into a ground in Rewa for a selection trial. He fancied himself as a batsman, but was selected for his bowling, courtesy coach Aril Anthoni, who was impressed with his physique and pace ... Pandey took 31 wickets in his his first two seasons, but raised his game after becoming the leader of MP's attack, following TP Sudhindra's life ban. The fast man topped the wicket charts with 48 scalps, leading to call-ups from India A and Pune Warriors. Despite the wickets, Pandey rues one moment with the bat. At number 11, he had struck three sixes in scoring 24 in a tight chase against Mumbai. Attempting another, he holed out. MP fell short by 7 runs. Even a draw might have kept them in contention for the knockouts.