The Surfer

On-the-field matches have been closer than ever before, 18 games going to the last over and 10 settled off the last ball. Tournament records have been registered for the highest partnerships in first, third, fourth and sixth-wicket stands. The bowlers have picked up 26 man-of-the-match awards during the season. In terms of landmarks and drama, then, this has been a memorable tournament but one rather overshadowed by events away from the square that have fed the news as well as the sports pages throughout India.

How lucky a captain is Mahendra Singh Dhoni? Most people would unabashedly say, well, of course, very. Speaking of the role luck plays in the life of a captain, here’s what one of Australia’s great captains, Richie Benaud, had to say on the matter, “Captaincy is 90 percent luck and 10 percent skill. But don’t try it without that 10 percent.”

“I did a programme for the Discovery Channel last year called Alone In The Wild, where I spent a week on my own in Botswana, in the Okavango Delta. While I was there, I filmed elephants, lions, giraffes and zebra outside my tent – just me, on foot. Each country offered different things. In Australia I went crocodile hunting, and in Tanzania we tried to find the wildebeest migration, which is slightly scattered these days,” Flintoff said. “Building a relationship with Thomas, a Maasai elder, was special. But spotting the pygmy elephants was a real highlight – just how close we got to them. There I was, standing next to a herd. I didn’t expect that.”

It was a soulless place with an industrial feel but not so now. This is an airy but intimate ground, a proper county ground for county cricket without, as we now see, pretensions beyond its station or means. It does what it is supposed to do. The cricket centre that replaced the football stands is first class and Gallone's famous ice cream from the van at deep midwicket continues to be so. There are gatemen in white coats. And for us hacks a press box that has no frills or frippery and is rather tired, but offers a fine view and has a kettle. We are humble folk and ask little more.

"Sudhir and I have played many matches together for Tatas and Mumbai. I shared a lot of partnerships with him. As a batsman, I found him technically very sound and an excellent player of fast bowling. In my second match, I shared an opening partnership of 250 runs with him for Mumbai against very good Baroda attack. He was a typical Mumbai player: mentally tough and disciplined. He was good as a captain too; a good student of the game, he knew how to get the best out of his players. He played the game the hard way and expected others to do the same."

"I had a number of incidents in my own car when you'd get your wing mirrors smashed off and your windows punched in," Hesson said. "Those sort of things you just go, 'Oh, well, that's just Kenya, you have to toughen up a bit'.

What are the factors to indicate that the board’s human resources policies will create a pleasant and comfortable environment for those who desire to function as true professionals? To start with, where is the respect for the board when they have lost every matter that went to abitration with the West Indies Players’ Association (WIPA)?

The West Indies will find the going in Nottingham even tougher than they did at Lord's because the ground is renowned as a swing bowler's paradise and in James Anderson, Stuart Broad and Tim Bresnan, England have three of the best in the business. The Windies attack has plenty of pace but you wouldn't call them big swing bowlers, so conditions are likely to favour England heavily.

Parliamentary fundamentalists are upset that Sachin has not rushed to eat sugared toast and drink semi-sipid coffee in Central Hall. But no one has answered a basic question: What's the hurry? His nomination did not come with a sell-by date. Nor is Sachin in any haste to shake the nation and wake the Government with fiery oratory on the impending collapse of telecom infrastructure.