The Surfer

Pujara is certainly a cricketer built in his image - a throwback to an era of batsmanship featuring orthodoxy and resolution and eschewing all that modern ostentatiousness and newfangled shots. Dravid was his idol, his blueprint, and he has enjoyed the benefit of his experience, willingly passed on recently in a couple of lengthy conversations on the art of batsmanship.

Beforehand there was the suspicion that England were taking on a "Dad's Army" of a side. India have some senior citizens and the English optimists surmised that in their dotage some of them "don't like it up 'em", to borrow a phrase of Corporal Jones.

Raj Singh, a cricketer, administrator and historian, paid handsome tributes to Nayudu's batting: "Tall and well built, Nayudu was blessed with supple wrists and, like nearly all his countrymen, a keen eye, and he was a strong player in front of the wicket, his driving was clean and powerful. He was a clever slow to medium bowler who could spin the ball and flight it and a very fine batsman. In his best days he was worthy of a place in almost any side."

Ridgway had been to India in 1951, with the Commonwealth XI. "S'alright," he said. "It's too overwhelmed with people all the time, mile after mile of people, busy, busy, busy." And for the fast bowlers, like Fred, it was hard and thankless work. He taps his finger on the table top. "The pitches were like this, brown, no grass, no movement at all. The longer you bowled, the slower it'd go. And the sweat! I bowled one over in Bombay and thought 'Oh crikey', the ground was wobbling under my feet. So I said to Nigel Howard, 'I can't bowl on this, mate, it's too hot'. But someone had to. So I cut my run down and bowled for another hour."

"We have another small problem with the pitch - the police use the grounds for football, too," admitted Salia Kamson Kamara, a development officer with the Sierra Leone Cricket Association, as he surveyed police trainees running across the pitch and raising clouds of red dust. ""The amazing thing is that even with all this, cricket has brought us laurels," Kamara said.

Some people just want to concentrate on what they do and back themselves on the day to take wickets but I'm the kind of person who likes to do as much preparation as possible. I like to see where batsmen like Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli score their runs and how they have been dismissed in the past. That way I know I've prepared well and have the plans clear in my mind come Thursday morning. Once you are on the pitch, it's just a case of executing your plans as best you can. You can do as much talking as you want but it is about producing those skills under pressure at international level.

Sunderam continued to live life with zeal even after he stopped playing cricket till he died at 80, two years back. A bowler who could have achieved all the heights in the world, Sunderam suffered because he was too much of a gentleman. He said yes when he could have politely said no. Greed has spoilt many a thing in the world, and sadly for GR Sunderam, it was other's greed that ruined him.

So to the neutral, at its core this series is about recalibration, not Indian revenge for the summer of 2011 or the English search for a first series win in India since 1984. Do not take this the wrong way: both are compelling motivations, but because the mighty have fallen so mightily, it is human nature to know how low they have sunk.

"Cricket is a great game, it teaches you so much about life. I drew lot of inspiration from my cricketing career. I treated it as one bad session or one bad day in Test cricket where you have to fight hard to recover. While going through the treatment I used to watch my old videos and that really used to inspire me," Yuvraj said. "I always believed that if I get my life back I would get my cricket back because that is deep-rooted in me. There were times I got depressed with the pain and what all my body was going through but I was determined to wear that jersey once again."