The Surfer

Miller is a rather different beast to Morkel, because although he is every bit as accomplished as a clean, big-distance striker of the ball, he does not offer the bowling option Morkel does. But if the Proteas can somehow rebalance their side to still have enough depth and variety to their bowling arsenal, the KwaZulu-Natalian may have the chance now to re-establish his credentials as an X-factor batsman down the order.

If South Africa manage to find places for both Morris and Miller against New Zealand, they certainly ought to be fielding teams with appropriate "oomph" in the lower-order positions. Lions favourite Morris, the 25-year-old son of lanky former Northern Transvaal left-arm spinner Willie, is more renowned as a slippery, skilful pace bowler of promise, but also goes about his batting duties with urgency and gusto.

He has done so in the most unromantic way. His batting is based on a calm, sweatless ability to take each ball on its merits and patiently accumulate runs. He is not a romantic figure like Tendulkar or a punchy one like Ponting. Charisma eludes him; he is a model of hard work and strict discipline.

In being dropped from the one-day international (ODI) squad for the series against India later this month and retained, narrowly it turns out, in the Twenty20 squad, if the end has not come definitively, its beginning has.

Afridi's overall form in 2012 has been very poor, by numbers and by deed. It cannot be said that he has been unlucky, that he is bowling well but the wickets have not been coming. He is not bowling well at all.

The second chapter in particular, which opens with an intricate description of Warne's approach to the crease and then leads the reader through the four stages of Warne's career, is as good as anything I have read on the game. On Warne is not a biography, but a portrait, and expertly painted. Haigh cuts out the extraneous information and concentrates on the essence, capturing it through judicious use of anecdotes, statistics, quotations and his own observations.

For most of MS Dhoni's tenure as captain, Zaheer has taken his wickets in carefully timed bursts. At one point, India's entire bowling strategy at home revolved around these bursts. Keep the batsmen quiet. Pack the off side. Have Ishant Sharma bowl wide of the stumps. Use the spinners in a holding role. Bring back Zaheer when he is fresh. When the ball is reversing. When a wicket has fallen against the run of play.

"Lot of hard work has gone in during the pre-season camp and luckily everything has fallen in place for me. I wanted to make a comeback to the Indian team desperately but never expected that it will happen like this. Before the season my focus was on learning to control my strokes. Can't believe it's resulted in a Test call-up."

The IPL, per se, may even have been a good idea had it been tempered to better reflect the kind of cricket they propagated. But the point where it became more rewarding than the Ranji Trophy, where it was insidiously sold as a cauldron that would brew excellence, and became more alluring than playing for India, was where the glass of milk was toppled unceremoniously on the floor.

To appreciate how far England's cricketers have travelled, it is necessary to remember where they started. In late March, Andrew Strauss sat in a bleak back room in Galle and attempted to rationalise England's fourth consecutive Test match defeat.

They were under a new captain in Alastair Cook, who had to replace one of the most successful and popular men to have held the post in Andrew Strauss. Not only that, but the series initially followed a depressingly predictable script when India won the first Test in Ahmedabad with contemptible ease. But what has happened since is extraordinary. Even though Cook has called incorrectly for all three tosses, England have played cricket that must rank with the best they have ever produced overseas.

Down Under they have this absurd belief that once an Australian ranked bowler bowls more than 80 overs in a month, he is considered a substantial injury risk and his workload must be dramatically reduced if not temporarily ceased altogether. Peter Siddle, for example, was rocking up 140 overs in November but the question needs to be asked: "How demanding is that work load?" Their perplexing rotation policy is muddled.

A tour to South Africa is not to be missed and Taylor is paid to play cricket. He needed to pick up his bat, give Brendon McCullum the support that Taylor himself was denied by people who should know better, and got on with his fabulous Test career. Life is too short to miss out on such opportunities, and in the scheme of world injustices, a lot worse happens to millions on a daily basis ... South Africa are the best team in the world and New Zealand desperately need Taylor there. It is a royal chance for the man himself to show his best stuff.

So how did Hesson, a 38-year-old career coach, come to be in a position of such control? His trajectory to the top of New Zealand cricket was atypical for an international coach, a position which usually arrives after a lengthy playing career at the highest level or, at least, first class cricket. Instead, after representing Otago B an as opening batsman and finding his path to the provincial side blocked by the likes of Mark Richardson and Matt Horne, Hesson began his coaching career 18 years ago ... 23-year-old Hesson became the youngest person to attain an NZC level three coaching qualification and put it to immediate use, becoming coaching director at Otago Cricket."

Now the batsmen make so many sloppy errors, loose shots and have technical deficiencies in footwork. I have never seen an Indian batting side play such slack, loose and appalling shots in their own country. This is their own territory where they have reigned supreme. They usually bat people out of the game. Now they couldn't bat their way out of a paper bag. And this is the fundamental problem with Indian cricket.

It showed when the selection committee picked replacements for Zaheer Khan, Harbhajan Singh and Yuvraj Singh. While it looks it's over for the three, their replacements hardly inspire confidence. Only Parvinder Awana is seen as someone with potential. The addition of Ravindra Jadeja and Piyush Chawla doesn't make the team any better or stronger. Jadeja recently made headlines with two triple tons in Ranji Trophy, but he was dropped earlier this year from the one-day team for inconsistent performance. Chawla's showing has been below par even in first-class cricket.