The Surfer

This Friday, in Hyderabad, Cook begins his third series as England's one-day captain. He harbours ambitions, after England were undefeated against Sri Lanka and India, to gradually turn his team into as formidable an outfit as they are in Test cricket. As the current world No1, with Cook scoring 1,504 runs in his past 12 Tests, at an average of 94, England have been crushingly good in the five-day game. Cook, meanwhile, won the ICC's Test Cricketer of the Year.

The story of the Compton cricket club is a fascinating tale, and one the club hopes to tell soon through a book and a film. The story started when British film producer Katy Haber moved to Los Angeles in the early 70s to work with Sam Peckinpah. Haber counts Straw Dogs with Peckinpah and Blade Runner with Ridley Scott among her numerous production credits. In 1995, she founded the Compton cricket club's forerunners, the LA Krickets, with her friend Ted Hayes. The Krickets were a group of homeless young men, skirting the edges of crime and all that crime brings. Hayes is a famed LA social activist who started the Dome Village homeless community in the city's downtown core, and whose primary address at one point was Marvin Gaye's back garden.

India has been a fascinating place, not just for the cricket. I managed to soak up some culture in Bengalooru, and the Somerset team made a visit to a local orphanage where we played some cricket with the kids and donated money. I also took a few hours out to visit the local city market and that was as raw as India comes – spices, teas, flowers, clothes, you name it and they'll get it.

After dropping off the radar for four years, Nehra returned in 2009, took 65 wickets in 48 games at an impressive strike rate of 33. Believe it or not, he’s been India’s fittest fast bowler in this period, and most effective too. He was an integral part of India’s road to the World Cup victory. As baffling as it is, he has not been considered, even after recovering from an injury. It wasn’t he who declared himself fit, but the physiotherapist at the NCA who issued the certificate. Perhaps, after the English fiasco the selectors aren’t willing to take a chance with any player without testing his match fitness. But then why isn’t he given a chance to prove his fitness? He isn’t picked even for the Challenger Trophy. Is there more to it than meets the eye?

But what the talent drain from South Africa to England does show, yet again, is that players are following the money—in England, India and Australia. That doesn't just affect domestic teams: it also affects international teams in a very direct and obvious way. South Africa, currently rivalling England for the top spot in world cricket, isn't affected as much as nontest-playing Ireland, for example. If an Irish player wants to test himself at the highest level, he has to move to England and qualify to play there. So far batsmen Morgan and, less successfully, Ed Joyce have crossed the Irish Sea in this way; Morgan has had a tentatively encouraging start to his test career, and a barnstorming start to his limited-overs career.

The Australian system was so robust till a few years ago, because playing domestic cricket was mandatory for all players. Likewise, the change in the England team's performances in recent years is not just because of a more hardy mindset and fine coaching, but because of a more diligent talent search that made participation in domestic cricket imperative for every player.

The period goes from the captaincy controversy surrounding Brian Close, through the South Africa apartheid saga and the introduction of one-day internationals, up to the players' revolt over pay, which – combined with the media war between Kerry Packer and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation – led to the defection of almost all the international stars to Packer's World Series Cricket. Fraser-Sampson has interviewed several survivors from that era; he also uses the memoirs of John Snow and Derek Underwood, as well as Colin Cowdrey and Raymond Illingworth, to good effect. Though far from impartial, he tries to present the motives of those of whom he is most critical in the best light.

England now need this return to form, and rediscovered enthusiasm, to be channelled into the one-day game. He is in the prime of his life as a batsman now, that period where a little of the exuberance of youth remains but it is now allied to the calculating mind of an experienced, mature batsman.

Apart from seeing no conflict of interest in what he is doing, he had this to say in his defence to the Outlook magazine: "The positions with the KSCA and NCA are honorary jobs, and I have to look after myself. At this stage of my career, I have to do that. Otherwise, you'd have to become like Gandhi and give up everything." What can one say to a man to whom the Indian cricketing fraternity owes so much for his deeds on the field, except that why get into such a position at all.

After interaction with many State curators over the years, it is observed that from choosing soil to pitch preparation everything is carried out using a thumb rule. There is no mechanism in place to select good quality soil. What the soil contains must be known to the curators but with hardly any choice to know what it contains, the soil is selected in huge quantity by thumb rule.