The Surfer

The decision at the conclusion of the review was that the Aussies wanted to return to the good old days of Australian cricket and adopt the hard line that made them so successful. The ideal candidate for this coaching style was Steve Rixon. He learnt his cricket and much of his coaching approach from the highly successful Bobby Simpson who coached Australia successfully for many years. It was thought also that captain Michael Clarke wanted a higher work ethic and more discipline. With all that in mind, Rixon was the strong favourite to get the job. What made Cricket Australia backtrack and go the diplomatic and non-confrontational route again is not quite clear.

"Not bad for a fat lad," was how Freddie Flintoff, rolling around in his Lancashire vowels, famously defined one of his early swashbuckling efforts for England. But will Jesse Ryder be able to boast as much after the upcoming matches in Australia? Will we hear: "I'm the rock hard tub of lard" after a double century or will the fat boy melt away in the heat of Brisbane and Hobart?

Tahir screamed for lbw. Cummins said he felt it was going to leg. Johnson said to him it had pitched outside off. ''That's just what I thought!'' Cummins said. The appeal failed, and so did the referral, by a splinter. In the dressing room, lounge room and bedroom, there was relief and there wasn't.

Cummins thought to himself: ''There's four to win. If he throws it up there, try and go over the top somewhere.'' As he related this later, Clarke rolled his eyes. Here was youth's blithe innocence. Two balls later, Cummins pulled Tahir for four and the win.

Like many of the best coaches Arthur does not appear to have an ego; he does not crave attention; he recognises the primacy of the captain in running a successful cricket team. We have seen that he can work extremely effectively with a strong, decisive captain, for that is what Smith has undoubtedly been for South Africa over the past few years. He can dovetail effectively, relieving the captain's burden, filling in the gaps.

India await, with New Zealand as an entree. England is far ahead of anyone else in the world now, but, fortunately, also distant in Australia's program. One thing is certain: whatever changes are on the new selectors' minds, they must make them immediately. The idea of valedictory appearances against New Zealand makes no sense. Cheap runs and wickets would only cloud the picture. New Zealand treats series against Australia as their Ashes, and will give an honest contest. But in their most recent Test, they only narrowly escaped defeat by Zimbabwe.

As an all-rounder, he has a batting average that dwarfs Flintoff's, along with 46 more wickets at the same price. Hadlee, Botham, Imran and Kapil have outbowled him, but Kallis has 10 more hundreds than all of them put together. And Sobers? Well Sobers can match that average, but nothing else. Kallis has sustained it for another 4,000 runs, has scored 14 more centuries and has 35 more wickets at cheaper cost.

So what is it about Jacques that leaves him so ill-considered by the wider world? Botham, Imran and Kapil lifted their countries, raised them up ... Kallis has been less overtly heroic. The South African methods of winning have been to grind relentlessly from a position of advantage. Kallis is not a victory from the jaws of defeat merchant; the greatest deeds of Botham, Imran and Kapil had a context that Kallis's often don't.

There are several players [from the past] who never got a chance to play for India, but were respected as much as their international counterparts, first as hopefuls, and then as people who provided perspective to another future star’s performance ... Scoring runs against them meant something, and taking their wicket was the yardstick of a young player’s potential. But now that the Ranji Trophy has been first diluted and then completely dissolved in a haze of meaningless runs on flat tracks, Indian cricket has reached a stage where such pointers have ceased to exist.

I used to tease him about it and say each morning “Basil. How old are you today?” When I had regular fallings out with Yorkshire in the 1970s he always used to say to me “come and play with us at Worcester”. My reply was “if I do, you won’t get many knocks, batting at number 4 behind Tom Graveney and me.”

Going back through the life of the fine cricketer these last 24 hours or so is to be reminded of a man who understood more than anything that he had one life, one talent, and that however hard the pressure, however alien the environment his destiny found for him, he had an obligation to do all that he could to make a different kind of life for himself and his family.

[Venkatesh] Prasad, now an Indian Premier League (IPL) coach, noted his greatest challenge with bowlers was ensuring that their thinking - that eight runs conceded in an over, with one boundary, wasn't bad - was not embedded when they moved to different formats. It is the unsaid flip side of this that is our concern here, of batsmen who feel invincible because they hit more boundaries than ever before but actually become more vulnerable precisely because of that ...