The Surfer

These days, the buzz in Mumbai is about three teenagers - Sarfaraz Khan, Arman Jaffer and Prithvi Shaw - and their superlative scores with the bat. For the first time since Sachin Tendulkar made his debut, these three youngsters have set the city grounds on fire ... Sarfaraz has smashed 31 centuries while Prithvi has over 25. Arman has crossed the 100-mark on 55 occasions - 28 of them coming in one season. That’s a total of around 120 tons between the three.

For more than a decade, he terrified batsmen with his extraordinarily long approach to the crease, likened to that of a galloping horse, which culminated in a fast, explosive delivery sometimes followed by a menacing stare. But despite his threatening presence, Hall was full of compassion, especially for an injured player, many times at his own hands.

That attitude made Hall one of the more popular cricketers of his day, especially in Australia, where he captured the imagination of the public with his famous final over in the 1960-61 tied Test in Brisbane, the images of which are immortalised through choppy black-and-white footage – a true West Indian treasure.

It (vision of Victoria Park as a cricket venue) involves a substantial dollop of wishful thinking and an unspecified and unsourced amount of funding. It also ignores Colin Maiden Park, a stopgap venue that has already proved itself eminently suitable for first-class and limited-overs cricket. Developing that ground further is a more obvious step if cricket's governors wish to play tests at boutique grounds.

Those with long memories will recall 2008 and the sight of some of the game's great names fawning at Stanford's side when he helicoptered into Lord's with, allegedly, his US$20 million in a large chest. There's more than a few people rattling round the game at a high level who should be looking for a corner to hide whenever Stanford's name is mentioned.

For more than a decade and half now, Pakistan have been struggling to establish a solid opening pair. Perhaps, it has rubbed off on their middle-order too. The middle-order’s shortcomings of the last few years are evident from the table below where they stand at number seven in terms of average, only ahead of West Indies and New Zealand. Their strike rate (72.87) is the worst among all.

The inter-zonal Duleep Trophy - long ago a prestigious selection trial tournament - has been tried out in many formats (knock out, league, jumbled teams with an overseas team from England, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe). Batsmen amassed runs, bowlers bagged wickets aplenty in the Ranji Trophy with an objective of impressing the selectors and making it to their zonal teams. They felt extremely proud. But after 51 years, there’s a palpable feeling among the fraternity that the Duleep Trophy is not anymore a big attraction for senior cricketers ... the tournament can be made a meaningful platform exclusively for A teams (under-25 age group) with a rule that each zone must field at least two or three under-19 players.

The life of an international sports star seems glamorous in its essence, but with the fame, fortune and the fancy hotels comes a dark side of life which often gets swept under the rug. The pressure of needing to perform to stay in the team, the expectations of fans, the media’s constant autopsies and being measured by your averages all make for a volatile combination that, if left to simmer, could plunge players into the deep end of a dark and dangerous illness.