The Surfer

This historic win, achieved without Daniel Vettori, might enable his teammates to lift themselves out of the shadow the former captain inadvertently casts over them.

Vettori's heroics, especially with the bat, are legendary but they have not turned his team or Taylor's into a winning one. His bowling, for all of its delicate arts, does not seem to win test matches either. The Vettori formula has tended to involve rearguard actions and a battle for respectability which has - as the test rankings show - by and large failed. For whatever reason, New Zealand has been lulled into an over-reliance on Vettori, who for all of his excellence does not have Richard Hadlee's superman capabilities. This is not to denigrate a magnificent cricketer, but the load needs to be spread better.

The Australian team bottomed out two years ago, when they only just beat the two worst teams to have come here in decades, the 2009-10 West Indies and Pakistan. At that point the team was a sick man in denial, believing he'd burst out of bed any minute. Ricky Ponting and Michael Hussey would come good again, Mitchell Johnson was a once-in-a-generation fast bowler, Shane Watson was the new Keith Miller, Simon Katich was Bill Lawry and Bob Simpson in one, Marcus North was a future Australian captain. The fruits of that thinking were harvested in last year's Ashes embarrassment.

England's selectors stuck with Davies, a cricketing decision made on cricketing grounds. The way to respond to changing social norms is never to allow then to enter the debate. "From a continuity and consistency point of view, he gets the nod," said the chief selector, Geoff Miller. It is good to see that these days even "the nod," the oldest selectorial cliche in sport, is without prejudice.

But even if it could happen, why should it? International sport isn't only about the best teams competing among themselves. It makes space for all kinds of standards and it needs that. In any case, if cricket became any smaller, it would be a glorified hobby, not an international sport. The question should not be so much how Bangladesh can improve itself, but how much more cricket can help Bangladesh improve.

Botham and Hadlee bowled nearly 44,000 deliveries between them in Test cricket alone. Neither possessed a body that would have made them candidates for a Gold's Gym advertisement, but in their prime both were genuinely quick. There's a lesson in there for those entrusted with charting a course for young pace bowlers.

Cricket is Sri Lanka's universal game and almost nothing gets in the way of it, whether it is played in the street or at the Kettarama Stadium. In 2007 the Tamil Tigers even declared a ceasefire throughout the World Cup. But the national team's recent loss of form, combined with endless tribulations off the pitch, has plunged many fans into gloom.

... Speaking to the BBC this week, Mr Aluthgamage denied interfering. "If there is politics in cricket, in the past World Cup Sanath Jayasuriya should have been in the team. Because he's a member of parliament and he was in our party ... Yet for 12 years the game has been run by politically appointed, unelected committees, something that will only change with board elections in January as demanded by the International Cricket Council.

In January, he was an India discard who was desperate to take a grip of a career that seemed to be rapidly slipping through his fingers. On his flight back to India at the end of the ODI series against South Africa in January this year, where he had a highest of 23 from five games, Rohit asked himself an important question: Did he like the way he looked? The answer was easy—all he needed to do was to look at the mirror and play his old tapes. He was to return home and tell his friends that the next time he would be on television, the world would see a different him.

February and March become the months when [Abhishek] Nayar and the Mumbai team fitness trainer Amogh Pandit moved to Rohit’s 10th floor three-bedroom apartment at Bandra. Morning paranthas were replaced with protein seeds, cornflakes, oats and 8 pm became the new dinner deadline.

Part of Sehwag's charm is his refusal to conform. It was illuminating when Sehwag told dashing David Warner he had the opportunity to be more effective as a Test player than as a T20 batsman because of the field placings in the longer game. This was when the pair were opening for Delhi in the IPL and it is confirmation that while Sehwag may have a lot of natural talent, his batting isn't totally devoid of thought.

We groan when Tendulkar cannot put away an impending landmark, we scream if Dravid cannot stage a comeback and cry when Laxman is dismissed during a chase. They were expected to do it, and didn’t. With Sehwag, anything he does is expected ... On one end, he averages 35 in one-dayers and has never understood a format created for him, T20. At the other, he is one of only four players to record two triple centuries in Tests and is India’s record holder for individual innings in Tests and one-dayers.

I think that for all the superficial way in which players will buy into the system, there will be, lurking beneath the surface, a resentment. Winning a place in an international side is a challenging thing, and once there performance is everything. Membership of a team should never be a sinecure, or a meal ticket.

The new Australian selection panel's first test might be whether they are willing to make the potentially unpopular decision to drop Ponting and/or Hussey, even after they have scored decent runs. To make the assertion that others are not only capable of matching those contributions, but more likely to do so in 2013 when it matters most.

The test applies not only to the veterans. Such is his raw talent and dead eye, it would not be surprising if Phillip Hughes slashed a big score in Hobart. If so, it should buy him only enough time to prove he can close the vast gap between his occasional success and more common failures. As it is, the thought of Jimmy Anderson bowling to Hughes on a seaming pitch beneath a cloudy sky does not overwhelm one with confidence.