The Surfer

What is it about comparisons between cricketers of different eras that make one sit up and take notice. When Don Bradman said, ‘I never saw myself play, but when I saw Tendulkar, I felt he has a similar technique,’ the world picked the story up. Similarly, when Garfield Sobers said that Subhash Gupte was clearly superior to Shane Warne, eyebrows were raised. The player, who took 149 wickets at an average of 29.55 in 36 Tests without the support of alert fielding, was dropped because of dirty politics. Later, the BCCI made amends recommending him to the CBFS in Sharjah. At a time when Gupte was bowling exceedingly well, this one-sided decision of the BCCI shattered him. A frustrated Gupte left for Trinidad and cricket lost a bowler forever.

There had been concerns that, with Jonathan Trott at No.3, an opening partnership of Cook and Bell might mean a one-paced top order. Yet sport moves pretty fast and that perception might be outdated. Cook, whose resourcefulness and ability to surmount significant obstacles is little short of remarkable, has expanded his game enormously since becoming captain a year ago. At that point he had a strike rate of 71.38 and an average of 33.00; since then he has a strike rate of 91.59 and an average of 54.57. Those numbers would satisfy any opener – any batsman, in fact – in the history of one-day cricket.

Bell hasn't been helped by the fact that his role has rarely been defined. Being an opener should suit him the most – it is the place for the orthodox strokeplayer, who can penetrate the field during the Powerplays. Bell certainly has the capacity to be England's take on Mark Waugh or Sachin Tendulkar, not so much a pinch-hitter as a pinch-stroker.

Before anybody gets into the Indian team, he needs to spend about 3 years in the Ranji Trophy. The point is – a) we will get to see the consistency of the player, and b) he would go through the ups and downs of his cricketing, and the way he comes out of it. That is going to teach you a lot! Once he comes into the Indian team he would be so experienced that he would know what to expect at the international level.

Jharkhand is a state known for its mineral riches, carved out of southern Bihar in 2000, had supplied an unusually high number of players to IPL teams. In all, seven players – MS Dhoni, Saurabh Tiwary, Varun Aaron, Shahbaz Nadeem, Ishank Jaggi, Rahul Shukla and Sunny Gupta – figured in playing elevens at one point or another, with varying degrees of success. A state that had never produced an India cricketer before Dhoni was now suddenly supplying a steady stream of players to a higher grade. Dhoni has played just four first-class matches for Jharkhand, and not once since he made it to the India team. That he has still inspired a generation of cricketers tells you about the power of one.

Part of the beauty of it has been the sense of anticipation each time they meet. Between July 2009 and February 2011 they met each other 34 times in all forms of the game and now here we go again. Thus is the greatest of all sporting rivalries being devalued by its frequency. On the other hand, it is an opportunity to have a sneak preview of some players who Australia intend to be their future.

Two departments, which have long been considered our weak links — batting and fielding — have shown little improvement, despite the appointment of a coach of the calibre of Dav Whatmore. The stunning batting collapses during the series exposed the extreme lack of form of some of our leading batsmen. In addition, the ham-handed fielding proved especially costly during close encounters.

The lack of clear thinking on the part of the team management when it came to selecting the playing-eleven also contributed to the series loss as Pakistan were left ruing the decision of dropping their best bowler, Saeed Ajmal, from the final match.

It is good to see intriguing spinners emerge from the Caribbean islands, but it is hard to fathom why batsmen who are brought up on a diet of spin bowling are succumbing to the slower bowlers.

I am not blaming the IPL for the lack of application but merely pointing out that adapting to different formats can be a difficult task at times. There have been too many instances of the middle-order batsmen not converting their starts into something substantial which is more of a temperamental flaw than a technical one.

This is the same Neil Wagner who is yet to play a single game of international cricket and the same injury-prone Mark Gillespie who is currently battling an ankle ailment.

Granted, Wagner looks like he could be a player of genuine quality at test level and being a left-armer, he offers something different but to contract a guy who is yet to prove himself would be nonsense.

On the other hand, while Gillespie's 11 wickets against South Africa in the final two tests of the home summer in March were eye-catching, the fact remains he is a bowler who turns 33 this October and admits he regularly plays in a great deal of pain.

Back-to-back Ashes series were staged just after the First World War, with justification. People were gagging for peacetime activities, for some sense of normality to be restored. Now we are talking about plain commercial greed. A hundred years ago or now, however tastes and attention-spans may change, a four-year cycle is best. So while decoupling Ashes winters from World Cups is part of the truth, a much larger element of it is that English and Australian administrators wanted to pack another Ashes series into the Future Tours Program and increase the money they can get from their broadcasting deals.

In the months leading to stamping its authority against the West Indies, England found enormous stumbling blocks in Asia's heat and turgid pitches. A trip to the Middle-East proved more to be a walk in the scalding desert sands rather than the expected jaunt like breezing through the Dubai Shopping Festival. The sub-continent has to be nailed if England can truly lay claim to its credentials of being a domineering team.

Bangladesh and a weakened South Africa. And it doesn't even have official status. Couldn't get much more meaningless than that. Right? Wrong. In 20 years of covering international cricket, I can barely recall a bilateral or triangular series in which there has been more fun, determination and 'point' for all the players involved here.

Zimbabwe survive on scraps and the chance to play against the 'big boys' comes around all too infrequently. There are young and gifted players emerging all the time in this country and the only real chance for them to learn is in real match situations. Bangladesh were so desperate for international cricket they would have played a series against any 'B' team, in any country and any format. They had three invitations knocked back. You don't suppose they're sitting in Harare thinking "why are we here?" do you? And what of South Africa? If any of Kallis, Steyn, de Villiers or Morne Morkel were here, I would have jumped on the 'pointless' bandwagon. But they're not. They're resting.