The Surfer

Fisher was 16, Lindley 14 and Price 13. Today they are 73, 71 and 70, and inevitably a little creakier, but still as fit as septuagenarians have any right to be. Fisher, a wicketkeeper with 1,219 catches and 510 stumpings to his name (to put that latter figure in perspective, the aforementioned Rod Marsh made 88 career stumpings, Alan Knott 207 and Bob Taylor a mighty 264), insists that he has no more trouble bending his knees than he ever did. More perspective is required: Lindley's exact contemporary Geoffrey Boycott hung up his boots in 1986.

Over the centuries, the game’s law-makers and administrators have tended to be batsmen, ready to claw back any advantages bowlers have gained with an over-compensation in favour of those who wear the pads. After all, most of the game’s Laws seek to make a batsman’s life easier and a bowler’s harder.

... Teams have shown an unwillingness to expend energy in trying to promote local talent in their teams. For most of them, it’s just about fielding the best XI and hoping that success will automatically ensure fan connect. Otherwise, how do you explain some of Mumbai’s best players plying their trade outside, which is also the case with Delhi and other franchises.

Among Mumbai’s Ranji Trophy players in the IPL, Rahane and Ankeet Chavan are with Rajasthan Royals, Abhishek Nayar is with Kings XI Punjab, Iqbal Abdulla is with Kolkata Knight Riders and skipper Ajit Agarkar is with Delhi. Only Sachin Tendulkar and Rohit Sharma are regulars in the MI playing XI. Sharing the feelings of the Mumbai cricket fraternity, a young pace bowler who was with MI for the first three seasons before being off-loaded, says: “Where are the Mumbai boys in the team? No one looks after the interest of the local players.”

Given cricket's messy politics and selfish personal agendas, there is a legitimate argument to be made for the appointment of an "outsider" with a strong background in business. But that argument is mightily outweighed by the desperate need for a working understanding of a game -- and industry -- that is close to unique in the world of sport.

South Africa's status in the global community has been maintained only by the performances of the national team for the past two years. It is a short-term situation that cannot last. The new man needs to have an empathy for the grassroots of the game as well as for its pinnacle. Richardson, a lawyer from the Eastern Cape with a long and distinguished international playing career and an equally successful administrative one, is almost too good to be true. If a CV of the ideal candidate was drawn up, it would be hard to believe his was real.

The difference between a bent arm and one that straightens ought to be, well, straightforward. But judging with the naked eye how many degrees an arm has extended while taking issues such as abduction and wrist rotation into account, not so much. In other words, you can't trust the naked eye where chucking is concerned. So it's time to take the responsibility for reporting bowlers out of the hands of the on-field umpires, who have quite enough on their plate already and simply don't have the tools at their disposal to make a decision that could seriously affect someone's career.

"It seemed strange to me that so little was known about him, and that his death attracted so little attention," said Sproul, who is in Cotter's home town of Sydney this week to launch the book he researched with NSW lawyer Max Bonnell; Tibby Cotter: Fast Bowler, Larrikin, ANZAC ... Sproul believes the circumstances of Cotter's death were one of the reasons it was glossed over at the time and later. "We now believe he was shot by a Turk who had surrendered but had not been checked for weapons," he said.

As much as possible in an era before television or internet, Cotter was a celebrity, His face was on cigarette cards and in newspapers throughout the British Empire. He changed the game of cricket forever as the first bowler to use the bouncer as a regular intimidatory weapon and the first to bowl to a slips cordon. Cotter's bowling style was like Jeff Thomson's. Cotter's strike rate is equal to Glenn McGrath and Dennis Lillee.

Whether you are Virender Sehwag or a village-green clubber, it will take you around 200 milliseconds to react to the ball. The best batsmen are set apart by what happens in the next 200 milliseconds, which the book calls the preparation stage. This means deciding on the shot, moving into the correct position and swinging the bat. (The third stage, hitting the ball, accounts for the last 100 milliseconds.) And here the margin between us and them is miniscule.

Fate was cruel to this man. It took him to a certain distance, but not to the next level. Paddy was stuck in transition. Life always kept him in the queue and at the end of it, brutally conveyed that his wait had been useless. He never got to play for India, despite claiming 589 first-class wickets at an average of 19.69. Of what use was his talent? It didn't fetch him contentment. It didn't get him happiness.

You only need to re-invent something if it’s broken and, whatever people might be thinking, the IPL isn’t broken. But what any event needs is constant evaluation to ensure it doesn’t go stale and the IPL is no different in that regard. When we set up the IPL, one of the fundamental criteria was to be innovative on an ongoing basis and people should always be looking at new, exciting ways to package this prized asset. Show business and glamour are definitely part of the package but at the end of the day it’s about cricket and some of the finishes we’ve seen already in IPL5 prove that the IPL is alive and well! The secret for the future, is to use that strength as the cornerstone of ongoing development to maintain its long term health.

"The pitches are doing plenty throughout the game. It has been very difficult and it is more about trying to bat a very aggressive way whenever possible. I don’t feel that is proper batting. I feel proper batting is treating the ball on its merits."