The Surfer

I feel that it is important to embrace cricket at all levels in whichever country you are based, in order to get a feel for the national cricket culture & structure. I have a real desire to experience as much of Pakistan as possible, both from a cricket perspective and beyond. I would love to get a taste for the cricket talent that inhabits Pakistan, wherever time allows me to.

Domestic cricket in the Caribbean does not prepare new batsmen. They have only six first-class matches per season, unless their team reach the semi-finals, in which case they have seven, or eight with a final. This isn’t enough, for quantity never mind quality. Nobody in last season’s domestic first-class competition scored 600 runs; only one batsman scored more than one century, Assad Fudadin, a reserve batsman on this tour, who made two.

In terms of balls bowled Swann's wait for his wicket at Trent Bridge pales into significance compared with other Test match toilers. When Chanderpaul was lbw it was the 147th delivery that Swann had propelled here. The Australian, George Tribe, endured greater frustration; he bowled 592 deliveries without taking a wicket at the Sydney Cricket Ground.

The 100th anniversary of the Triangular Tournament coincides with the Test at Trent Bridge and the Indian Premier League Twenty20 final. It is not difficult to foretell, if gloomily and if we do not act quickly, where the future really lies.

Someone asked me what will you do for your 50th (birthday) and I said, ‘just knock one into the gap, quietly take a single because you have had enough 50s as a player, and make sure you lift your elbow 50 times instead of the bat. In life, the hundred is when you turn 60. Hopefully, you reach there and when you do, one must celebrate it like a hundred.

Given its nature, it is natural for the IPL to become a lightning rod for everything else that happens outside it. It acts as a heightened stage on which middle-class consumerist society plays out its fantasies, anxieties and conflicts. Every popular activity is a text of sorts in which the prevailing concerns of the day find expression but the IPL by virtue of the heightened nature of the stimulation it provides, is a particularly articulate site of expression. Some of the key 'highlights' of this season give evidence of this;each in its own way shedding light on some larger issues.

No one, in all seriousness, can accuse the BCCI of being even remotely responsible for the unsavoury events that took place lately involving some players in hotel rooms and some owners of team franchises on the grounds. These were acts of individuals, and barring one, where a franchise owner remonstrated with the umpires over a decision that went against her team, they were unconnected with the game itself.

“There's just so much cricket being played right now (especially) when you are playing every format. I think the great thing is that when you play for South Africa, Gary (Kirsten) who is now the coach recognises that and gives guys the options. He knows it is impossible to keep playing all the time and every format of the game, he gives guys the option - 'Do you want to play, don't you want to play?”

The doctors of cricket persevere, worried more about the allegations of fixing games and furtive violation of rules than the peccadilloes and sexual misdemeanours of players. But their prescriptions are bound to fail for they, as also us, ignore the profound truth about the IPL: it is a metaphor for a changing India, of what it has become ever since generous shots of testosterone were administered to its society through the opening of the country’s economy. It is not about debating the efficacy of competitive economic models. It is about staring into the mirror and examining what we were and what we have become, and what we might eventually culminate in.

The payments are supposed to honour those who graced the game of cricket in India according to the BCCI’s own announcement. Many of those who will benefit played in the days when cricket had few monetary benefits. But it now appears that it’s being used as a payoff to seal the lips of the cricket fraternity and buy their loyalty.

The IPL has given capitalism and entrepreneurship a bad game. But it has also been bad for Indian democracy, in that it has vividly and even brazenly underlined the distance between the affluent, urban middle classes and the rest of India. Consider the fact that no city in India's largest State, Uttar Pradesh, which has an excellent Ranji Trophy team, was awarded a franchise. Nor any city in Bihar, Orissa, or Madhya Pradesh either. To leave out four of India's largest States — all cricket-mad, and which collectively account for close to half the country's population — must seriously disqualify the League's claim to be ‘Indian.'

It was a tough decision for me at the time. I picked Broad and James Anderson in place of Steve Harmison and Matthew Hoggard, two mates who had done a lot for me down the years. But it was time to move on and regenerate the team. By just observing him in the nets we knew straightaway Broad would be a top international bowler. It was not just his skill levels but his competitive nature. He had a fire in his belly that I like in a bowler. All bowlers need to have that desperation to succeed. He hates being hit for runs and it is good to see a bowler show passion even to the extent of questioning the umpire when he doesn’t give runs as leg byes.