The Surfer

On a day when the rest of his team-mates mustered 197 runs between them, his experience was invaluable. The Indian team are not so richly stocked with young talent that they can afford to do without a man who has played so many matches. And here is an indication of how, if he chooses to, he can play on, by tempering his game, and trading exuberance for experience, strokes for self-knowledge.

Buchi Babu's decision to retire was to pay handsome dividends for Indian cricket. He realised that Indians could only organise scratch teams to play but had no clubs to raise teams to meet other teams. He organised a meeting of several young men from well-to-do families of Madras and explained to them the need for a club. Not waiting for their support, he secured a site on the Esplanade. The ground was levelled at Buchi Babu's expense and was converted into an ideal space for cricket. That was in 1888 and, thus, was born what Buchi Babu christened the Madras United Cricket Club, the MUCC, or the MUC as it would later become. It marked the birth of Indian cricket in the city.

A personal view was that even without DRS, it would be ingrained in the modern umpire to think and make decisions as if it were there. Certainly I could see no reason for the standard to drop. In fact the realisation has come that far from being better umpires because of DRS, it has made them subservient to it.

A keen student of bowling and a quick learner, Finn has observed how Zaheer Khan uses these spells mainly pitching the ball up at a skiddy pace, swinging it a bit either way and varying his position on the crease from both over and round the wicket. Finn is quicker than Zaheer, but does not bowl the same full length. He will need to adapt to be effective. A shorter, slingier sort of bowler is best for these conditions: think Waqar Younis or Darren Gough in their pomp (though, in fact, Gough never played a Test in India). It would be hard for Finn to lower his delivery angle, but variations of release points and speed will be important.

And the walls were somewhat thin. The hotel may have been built in the latest western style with no concrete spared, but nobody had thought about sound-proofing or noise insulation. Outside the window, lorries roared, auto-rickshaws swerved and horns blared, except perhaps for a couple of hours before dawn. A journey by road in India then, before toll bridges and flyovers, was at the speed of the slowest bullock cart.

Tendulkar's ego has always been a complex one; he doesn't like to fall prey to his ego. It's a feature of the almost-maniacal, critical self-control that accompanies the Bombay school of batsmanship. They rarely indulge themselves. If a bowler, like Ashley Giles did to Tendulkar, opted for a negative line, you can bet that a Lara, Richards or a Sehwag would try to take him on. Tendulkar never indulged in such showmanship; he just tried to wear the bowler down.

The late Peter Roebuck's infamous call for Ponting to be dismissed as captain at the start of 2008 may have been a little over-egged but it caught a little of the mood outside Australia about Ponting, Australia and their unhealthy machismo. And it may have been after this point that the fire in Ponting's public persona seemed to dampen a little; was it Roebuck's piece? Probably not as much as it was Australia's difficulties in adjusting to life after Glenn McGrath, Shane Warne and the rest of them, or the fact cricket was changing. Ponting, wrinkled, losing hair, became a little more statesmanly somehow.

At the Sheikh Abu Naser Stadum in Khulna yesterday, Tamim went in the fourth over of the match, caught at deep square leg off a pull off Andre Russell for five. Hearts stopped, heads dropped in the stands. But this series seems to be about breaking old perceptions, a trend started in earnest in March. Another wicket, that of Naeem Islam's, fell with the score on 21. From there Anamul Haque -- playing only his second match -- and skipper Mushfiqur Rahim put together Bangladesh's highest partnership for the third wicket.

The message was clear -- 'our best batsman may have gone and you may have had us 21 for two, but it's not time for backward steps yet'.

It all sounds very easy, but in the heat of the battle people have to make decisions. And that brings in game-plans, concentration, real clarity in your method and a balance of aggression. Some players naturally like to be more aggressive in their play. But if you have five fielders around the bat, you have to work out how you can possibly move some of them. Just by showing intent, a captain might start moving some of those players back. You have to work out the risk-reward side of it.

Dhoni surely believes that by picking ideas to fit his preconceptions and then repeating them tirelessly while cleverly manipulating the media and using them as he pleases, he can get what he wants. Then again, seemingly reasonable demands are quite often based on unreasonable foundations and Dhoni's prescription to cure the ills of the Indian side at home would certainly belong to this category.