The Surfer

Lewis, you suspect, inhabits similar psychological sporting territory as someone like a Flintoff - or a Paul Gascoigne. Sportsmen who can genuinely entertain, relying on instinct and genius rather than technique, discipline and drills, but who then struggle to replace the adrenaline and excitement once their playing days are over.
One should not feel sympathy for Lewis. The families of those affected by the kind of drugs he was trying to import will tell you he deserved all he got. His actions were as dim-witted as they were deplorable. But for a cricketer who always came across as slightly troubled, it is easy to see how it all unravelled once the bright lights of his sporting career faded.
"There was perhaps a touch of anger, maybe a touch of disillusionment at the time," Lewis says. "In order for me to take certain actions like that, I think I must have shut down half my brain."

The never-ending IPL saga reminds me of Alibaba and the Forty Thieves. It seems that a small-time employee has run away with his chief's ill-gotten booty and they are using all means -- fair and foul -- to get him back.

This is almost cause for the return of his Fast Bowlers' Union membership card. One imagines the closest Dennis Lillee or Jeff Thomson ever came to a vacuum cleaner interrupted him in a hotel room after he slept off an all-nighter. Then again, Boult has never been your average fast bowler. There was a story doing the rounds, maybe spread by a fellow Black Caps' fast bowler, that Boult one winter decided to play rugby instead of soccer. On his way to his first practice he saw the players going through some hit-ups, tucked his newly bought and moulded mouthguard back into his sock and circumnavigated the field on his way back to soccer.

Crony capitalism thrives as long as the bond between politicians and businessmen remains intact. In the real economy and realpolitik, the bonds can be, and are, ruptured by scandal and the public anger that follows -- 2G and Coalgate forced a pause in rampant cronyism in telecom and coal. But in cricket, despite scandal, despite public anger, nothing has changed. There is no alternative -- there is no Narendra Modi to take on the Congress -- because everyone who matters is on the same side.

This is not an argument for politicians to keep away from sporting events completely. US President Barack Obama is often spotted at the NBA and NFL games, he has even starred in a YouTube video, displaying a spot of fancy dribbling. But when powerful politicians are seen in the players' dugouts, when they invite accusations of stitching up consortiums for franchises, or when politicians head most of the state cricket associations and openly push and pull for a place under the IPL officialdom's sun, there is certainly reason to worry. By hyphenating their names with the IPL, politicians have lost the moral authority to play the bigger and much-needed role of rule-enforcer.

Test cricket is a dinosaur, not as a game -- still its most elegant form -- but in its apparatus. Here it is again, creaking and clanking down the road to its own oblivion. The fixture to which everyone is working was drawn up five years ago, and is set in stone for another eight years, locking in the West Indies and locking out New Zealand for another couple of cycles.
The West Indies have fallen on such hard times that for this Australia series, according to cricinfo, they used stumps from a previous series, with the name of England crossed out with a marker pen. It is depressing to imagine what state the Windies might be in eight years. They are not coming back any time soon.

Cricket's good old political takeover, which seemed unshakeably permanent for eternity and beyond, was now threatened by a corporate coup. Power equations, rules, culture and even the BCCI constitution -- nothing was untouched by change. Cricket was in a tearing hurry, thanks to the Twenty20 format. The aesthetics of the game were sacrificed on the field. In the BCCI's corridors, due diligence and institutional ethics were alien words. There was no time to sit and brood. It was time to make quick millions, virtually everyday. Even Modi-baiters were enjoying the new perks. They had plush offices and revised travel allowance/ dearness allowance at the end of business-class travel.

It's part of a pattern whereby the women's game is - in all respects - reduced. Women play Tests over four days, not five. Those Tests are one-offs, not series. Their Ashes contest rests on limited-overs games. Double-headers are granted like favours, but their summer decider could be a curtain- raiser to a meaningless men's T20. Whatever the practical arguments, these things can't help but give a perception of the women's game as quantifiably lesser, smaller, a pat on the head.

I've spent a couple of evenings with Shastri in the past few months discussing cricket. He has not only expressed great faith in Kohli's ability to make a lot of runs and lead the team with distinction, but found himself reliving his younger days through him. "I see so much of myself in him,'" Shastri said. "He is passionate, aggressive, speaks his mind, willing to take the fight to the opposition and cares a fig about what people think about the way he lives his life. That requires self-belief.".

McCullum would never let a game drift. He would rather set fire to his cricket bag than a let an afternoon session pass by uneventfully. Most of this New Zealand team have followed their leader. The players are thrilled to plug into the new attitude. There is even a constant energy in the slip cordon, among men who spend most of their day squatting in the sun, waiting for something to happen. New Zealand are playing interesting cricket. In the past few months McCullum's gung-ho attitude has cost his team their chance of winning the World Cup final and a series victory in England. The decision to bat first in Melbourne was crazy. It looked daft at the time and so it proved.

The BCCI is not motivated in this instance by any thoughts of improving the team, whether senior or junior. What it is reaching for is self-preservation. If it were keen on giving more work to former players who know the game, why would Syed Kirmani complain that he was being ignored?