The Surfer

The team simply cannot use Taylor's leadership as an excuse for their own inadequacies. Too often the players have been allowed to look for scapegoats instead of looking within. Too often their voice has had too much influence. This had better not be another one of those times.

But at what point does the onus fall on players to stop worrying about what they haven't got and develop the wherewithal to get better with what they do have? To do what Cairns et al did over a korma and look each other in the eye and say, 'you're not aiming up and it's hurting the team'? It's a point emphasised by former New Zealand coach Warren Lees. He calls it self-reliance, a stunningly simple concept that has got lost among players accustomed to having everything laid on.

Funny how things turn out. Australian teams in Ponting's pomp hosted the defeated sides in their dressing rooms, giving them a glimpse of what it was like where the elite lived. Patting them on the back, offering them a consolation beer.

"We spent more time in the South African rooms than we did in our rooms, walked right into one of those drinking games that they play and ended up getting involved in that and sculling four or five beers," Ponting recalls.

Rugby was a sport trying desperately to stay in the dark ages, resisting change at every turn; cricket was a sport forced into modernity by Packer's money and broadcasting savvy. In one of those serendipitous sporting intersections, New Zealand finally had a team that was ready to take advantage of the sport's boom.

NZC is running five national schools competitions: the primary school tournaments for boys and girls, followed by the junior secondary schoolboys for years nine and 10, then the Gillette Cup (boys) and NZ Community Trust (girls) senior secondary schools events. In Auckland the numbers for the primary school tournaments jumped from 44 to 69 entries this year. Gillette Cup numbers have increased from 192 to 209 nationwide this year. So a pathway is there to follow.

He has an incredible temperament for Test cricket. He is very calm. He doesn't look too far ahead. He literally does play the game one ball at a time. He has a great defensive technique and there is no ego to his game. In his batting there is a complete lack of emotion, which is perfect. Underneath there must be a lot of emotion but he allows his mind to control any nerves, frustration or fire in his belly.

Taylor has always appealed as a decent man, possibly not ideally suited in all respects to the job. But there's ways and means to make change. People should be treated with respect. Whichever way NZC try to slice it, there's been little shown to Taylor.

I couldn't see it to be honest. All I saw was a left-hander whose head fell over when he played his shots and was full of nudges and nurdles. His name was Alastair Cook and he scored his 23rd Test hundred, more than any other Englishman. At the time I just said to Keith: 'That's all very well, Fletch, but I'm worried about my game here, not him!'

Yes, their media had some strong words for the team after the Perth defeat, but they chose not to use their flashy highlighter when it came to labouring the point about Ponting's announcement. Should he have been roasted for announcing his retirement plans before the all-important Perth Test? However tough the Australians are made out to be, one doubts whether Ponting's decision would have not affected the thought process.

Is that charge sheet - thin as it is even by my reckoning, and I'm counsel for the prosecution - sufficient to disqualify the Tasmanian from being "a Great"? Probably not, but it's strange that I'd prefer to watch both his predecessor and his successor as batting or leading, not to mention plenty of others. I never felt that frisson of excitement when he walked to the middle and I was always glad to see the back of him whether at the crease or in the field and you're just not supposed to feel that way about great players. I feared and respected him as an opponent, but I didn't really connect - maybe that abstract element "connection with me" as a lover of the game, would have been enough to iron over the narrow cracks detailed above. But I never did connect with Punter the cricketer and now I never will.

In the past, Panesar might have countered by bowling faster and straighter. As the ball was not turning that would have played into the batsman's hands. Here he was more imaginative, throwing the odd one up higher to invite the drive. Sehwag attempted one and got an inside edge to square-leg.

The first thing that fails a batsman needn't be physical at all. It is more likely to be the faith his fans have in him. The clamour for Tendulkar to step down is, those on the ground in India say, as loud as it has ever been. Once-upon-a-time, of course, it would have been blasphemy to say such a thing, as Hayden suggested. But the marketing men no long beat their way to Tendulkar's door, which is as sure a sign as any of his current standing among the wider public. Canon have just cancelled their advertising contract with him. Coca-Cola, Adidas, and Aviva haven't aired any commercials featuring him since the summer, when he endured a dismal series against New Zealand. Impervious as he has always been to the enormous pressures he labours under, it seems unlikely that the furore surrounding him now will distract him any too much.

"So why did relations between the Board and the players break down? The more I've reflected on this, the more I've concluded that World Series Cricket was a social as well as an economic upheaval. In the 1970s, it was common to talk about 'the generation gap'. A yawning one had opened up in Australian cricket. In 1976, Len Maddocks was the youngest member of the Board: he was 50. The majority were over 60. Sir Donald Bradman was approaching 70..... Ian Chappell, by contrast, was 32 when he retired from Test cricket in 1976, and in Australian cricket terms he was old. Rewards were too little, touring requirements too onerous, and tenures too insecure for players to linger longer. "

Taylor is a good man and a very good player. He doesn't deserve this humiliation. McCullum is a good man and a very good player. He doesn't deserve the opprobrium and innuendo that's about to rain down on him if he is handed the captaincy at the expense of the former.

If you listen to notable critics, particularly Martin Crowe, the seeds of New Zealand's decline were planted in an emphasis on biomechanics. For others it was the creation of a centralised academy at Lincoln. Most acknowledge a poor domestic scene is a key problem. Put another way: the only thing everyone agrees is that it is broken. In the latest survey by the players' association, one figure stands out in flashing neon. A staggering 64 per cent of the country's professional and semi-professional players "are not aware of, and do not understand, how the NZC high-performance programme works".