The Surfer

"I have to admit that saying goodbye to the game was little bit difficult because it was all that I’d known. Ever since I was 18, I was a professional cricketer in north of England. The back injuries and back problems that I had caused so many technical deficiencies. Every day of the last 3 years of cricket was a struggle. To try to correct my action, to try to find the right rhythm to bowl every single day seemed different. It wasn’t so much physical pain as much as it was just knowing what I wanted to do, knowing where to put the ball, knowing how to get the batsmen out, but being incapable of executing it, because I couldn’t put the ball where I wanted to."

There is no mystery, just excellence in the fundamentals, which when added together amounts to crushing efficiency. South Africa score runs at the top of the order, reinforce that with a no-frills orthodoxy in the middle and bat long into the tail. In fact Imran Tahir is the tail. The attack is so well balanced, captain Graeme Smith can afford to hold back his most potent weapon, the Usain Bolt-quick Dale Steyn, bringing him on first change. What a haughty message of supremacy that is to send to the oppo.

Over the last 18 months Finn has graduated to being a fast bowler. That is now his natural style. Despite a smile that is almost cherubic and more frequently sighted than with many in his trade, Finn is now the team's most aggressive bowler. Currently the comparison with Broad, once regarded as England's "enforcer", is instructive. It seems as if Broad has to strain to bowl fast at the moment, to push his body to the edge for that extra yard of pace. Finn does not.

Reprieving Hashim Amla and AB de Villiers was as expensive as most of the chances they [England] have shelled this summer. It can only be a combination of being under pressure, waiting a long time for chances and being in the field for longer periods.

Those breathtaking flicks and nudges, those majestic drives and the nonchalant pulls, he had come to master them all. At a nets session one remembers coach John Wright calling a young batsman and telling him, “Watch him, but don’t try to imitate. Only VVS can play them.” Yes, only Laxman could have played with such imperious dominance ... His batting was so strikingly contradictory to his character. Off the field he couldn’t hurt a fly but Laxman, the batsman, could destroy the most-famed bowling attacks. And here too, he would carry on the job in a manner that left even the opposition admiring his art.

He was like those fairies in tales, divine beings that would grant you wishes. You could ask for something you had been wishing for a long time, something you thought you would never see on a cricket field. And he would make it happen. Not once, not twice but over and over again. He heard your inner voice. And he responded with a magical touch.

For the past two decades, the West Indies’ free-fall from top to bottom of the heap has been caused by a complex assortment of factors. It has been accelerated by a debilitating loss of self-belief.

Old habits die hard and several surfaced against New Zealand. Yet, the West Indies have started to win again, often clawing their way out of difficult spots. It is a start to overcoming their negative mindset. It is a well-used cliché in all sport, but accurate all the same, that winning is as much a habit as losing.

In their advertisement for a new coach, NZC wonderfully described themselves as a "world-leading sporting organisation". This is the world-leading organisation that took months to decide on a new captain after Vettori stepped down - and the same organisation that appointed Buchanan over the top of a surprised and offended Wright. You'd think any world-leading sporting organisation would ensure the best possible results from an expensive and important tour like that of the West Indies. Instead, they put in place measures that led to embarrassing losses.

The death of cricket as a major sport in this country has been posed before. Now, to prevent that, the NZC board, officials, the new coach and the team have to become a "world-leading sporting organisation".

Sometimes the impasse results from bad chemistry, each party to the conflict getting under the other's skin, pressing, as we say, the other's buttons, so that tiny pinpricks, as in domestic disputes and breakdowns, become infected wounds, even bones of contention.

Misjudgment seems to me to be one of Pietersen's main failings. My impression is that he is an insecure and divided person. I do not think he is malicious or in a deliberate way destructive. I imagine that his mood switches from high to low, so that he is liable either to be over the top, regarding himself as above reproach, untouchable, able to get away with anything, or else to be low, from which position he feels the need to build himself up, to excite himself by provoking responses, even negative ones.

Pietersen, it was made clear on Wednesday, faces a long battle to ever be welcomed back into the fold but questions need to be asked as to whether a dressing room in which team spirit and unity are so important has played any part in forcing such a gifted, if flawed, individual into the wilderness.

It takes all sorts and some people are more sensitive than others.

"I like training for one or two hours here. In China we train for four hours, have some rice and then train for another four," says Shuao. "And here you can say 'hello' to another player in training. If you do that in China you must run 10 laps of the pitch."

If Cricket Australia wants its Big Bash League to be taken seriously, if it wants the cricket to be seen as anything other than incidental to the marketing stunts around the edges, then it cannot enlist the two great sprinters as BBL players.

It’s one thing to have disturbed Chris Gayle’s stumps in a charity match, but another for an athlete worth a reported $US9 million a year to his major sponsor to face, say, Pat Cummins, bowling at 150-km/hr, with champions league money on the line.