The Surfer

With the taller, slower Ashwin, mystery takes a back seat to his more obvious physical gifts. Delivered by long fingers from a top of a high-arm, open-chested action, his off breaks turn a decent distance on surfaces with any amount of assistance, and the overspin he puts on the ball gets him dip and bounce.

The jersey, which marks Sweety’s entry into the Mumbai senior team this season, will have to hang outside on a tree, along with her pads and her bat. The small hut that the all-rounder shares with her ailing mother and sister — her father died when she was nine — has little space. The nights are long and dark, with no electricity.

Playing at home means it would make no sense to pack the batting – it is the bowling that needs to be experimented with so a proper combination emerges. Zaheer Khan’s fitness and future are uncertain, which means besides Ishant Sharma, there is room for at least two others. Whether both Varun Aaron and Umesh Yadav will play the first Test or not, they will have to be blooded at some point. Likewise with the leggie Rahul Sharma, so that when the selectors sit down to choose the team, they have enough information on all the candidates.

Former England captain Michael Vaughan remains at the head of those unimpressed by the decision of the ICC to ban Amir for a mere five years. Vaughan says there should be no quarter, that Amir has forfeited the right to play the game for which he was so superbly endowed. He speaks, persuasively enough, of the need for a deterrent.

How much money do people want? It is a question that can just as easily be put to dictators with their billions, bankrupt bankers awarding themselves fat bonuses, politicians rorting the system, squillionaires avoiding tax and the rest of the fallen. Sportsmen do not exist in isolation, are not God's special creations. They are corrupt because the world is corrupt.

And for the three individuals, is there sadness that they are lost? There was when the scandal first broke and there was when they were then banned from the game, particularly at losing bowlers as gifted as Amir and Asif. Their careers had already been broken by the time of the trial.

But now their lives stand to be, which evokes an altogether different, indescribable emotion. It can only be captured by the news of the birth of Butt's second child, a boy, born about an hour before the verdict was delivered; a life created just as one responsible for it was all but finished.

The success of the tournament, organised for around Rs 2 crore, has since spurred dozens of younger kids to pursue the game more actively. Now the state's under-14 cricketers have a mini-KPL of their own. Named Sheher-e-Khas, the first edition of the fortnight-long tournament concluded recently. The sight of aspiring cricketers - all with hope in their hearts and a bat or ball in hand - romping about in their blue "India" jerseys is a heartening sight

“Sachin is God”, reads the T-shirt that many fans surprisingly wear. One, muscles rippling beneath the words, actually had two women with him as he craned his neck to see what he could see. Fifteen minutes he was there—I know because I waited too, for my daughter’s school bus—as one woman spoke on her phone and the other filed her nails. Just a building, I couldn’t help saying as I walked past, just a man. The nail-filer flashed a smile no less condescending than a truck driver’s had been, months earlier. “Yes, but this is Sachin’s biggest fan!” She raised her voice enough that Tendulkar’s security guard—another new man—turned to look: “The BIGGEST!” Yes, but what was this biggest fan doing? He stood immobile, immovable, uncannily like a giant praying mantis clothed in white and suffering a neck problem.

An example of what former greats think of current standards was witnessed during the Lord's Test this summer. Desmond Haynes was holding court after the third day's play, the battle having been kicked off between the top two ranked sides in the world. A group of eager fans asked him to compare the action on hand with the all-conquering West Indies team in which he played. "The wicketkeeper is collecting the ball below his waist. Even in the final session of the day, our 'keeper would be collecting balls consistently at shoulder height," the former opener summarised