The Surfer

Cricketers, despite their games being defined by statistics, are like most other sportsmen in being a little coy about numbers. Ask a batsman his average, and he will generally play it cool. But he knows. And these days he will know much more than just that figure. Recently I chanced upon a county team's crib sheet for a Twenty20 match. The statistical detail was mind-boggling. There were figures for everything from the 'dot ball limit' at a certain ground to the overall number of boundaries usually required to win there, setting such targets as scoring a minimum of seven boundaries in the first six overs.

The Spin is, of course, entirely unqualified to explain why this talent-drain should have taken effect. Some will say it is merely cyclical. Others will point to the de facto collapse, for various reasons, of two great Test bowling nations in West Indies and Pakistan. Perhaps there will even be those who suggest Test bowling is a refined art, one that rests on an acute and painstaking process of skill-refinement and the honing of a specific kind of fitness, something that is just much harder to achieve on the current multiformat treadmill.

A year on, Salman Butt, Mohammad Aamer and Mohammad Asif - a spine for the side - are gone, probably forever. Even the News of the World is gone. Pakistan are still standing; standing still if nothing more. They are not better without the three but they have not been worse either. The bite, the glamour is gone, resilience and grit is in. Learning how not to lose, winning ugly, these are the new goals.

They have not lost any of three Test series since, though only one - against South Africa - was quality opposition. They reached the semi-finals of the 2011 World Cup in an unusually coherent manner. And they have been competitive against all opposition in 50-over cricket; only India have won as many ODIs since then. Herein lies the central truth that underpins ... Pakistan cricket. It does not quite reach Rudyard Kipling's standards of meeting triumph and disaster, and treating them just the same. But just to remain, to be alive after facing both, is sometimes an achievement.

Recently I chanced upon a county team's crib sheet for a Twenty20 match. The statistical detail was mind-boggling. There were figures for everything from the 'dot ball limit' at a certain ground to the overall number of boundaries usually required to win there, setting such targets as scoring a minimum of seven boundaries in the first six overs.

India are using the 10-day respite between the Tests and the one-dayers to acclimatise some of their young-buck batsmen to English conditions, and Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma have made some one-day runs as well as toning up India’s fielding. But the essential problem remains: new Indian batsmen, like these two and Suresh Raina, groom themselves for stardom in the Indian Premier League, not in the School of Hard Knocks.

Leaving aside the fact that he appears to have morphed from the chubby, frosted-tip rogue that he was for several decades into Dale Winton's blond brother, all with the help of nothing other than the Estée Lauder moisturisers his girlfriend Elizabeth Hurley happens to shill for, it's the man himself that concerns me ...

I have been informed by the Guardian's lawyers that I am not allowed to talk about the eyeliner and Botox that Shane clearly is not using. I am, however, allowed to wonder where a man even buys a tan sweater vest such as the one Shane wore for his little golf game. Surely, I thought, looking at his matching tan trousers, his humiliation must now be complete. And then, proving that in the celebrity world of self-abasement there really is no such thing as "bottoming out", Shane started tweeting Ping Pong, otherwise known as Elizabeth Hurley's parrot.

So India were pathetic in the series and were roundly thrashed. But this still does not mean Indian cricket is dead. I’ll save the requiem for another day and sound a wake-up gong instead. There is much merit in Indian cricket – a terrific balance sheet, the largest base of registered players, a committed and humongous following, facilities which are very good and improving by the day – to suggest that a major crisis can be averted: if there’s a vision and will.

“It’s funny to say this, but I got 52 text messages yesterday,” says Naik. While most of them dished out the routine ‘congratulations’, Naik found the remaining part of every message quite amusing. “They read, ‘But how about getting us tickets for the India game?’” he adds with a laugh. Naik, though, understands the sentiments. For had he not been a part of the upcoming game, he too would have tried his best to get into the ground.