The Surfer

What is the Indian way? And have we lost sight of it in our obsession with centuries and rankings and Tendulkar? It was a question answered easily at one time. ‘Indian' meant wristy batsmen and cunning spinners, flashy if inconsistent all-rounders and flamboyant wicketkeeper-batsmen.

Dravid, for all his years of worship at the altar of orthodoxy, still plays the cover drive and the square cut in the Indian way, with the wrists doing all the work. Laxman is in the long line of Indian batsmen from Ranji to Vishwanath to Azharuddin who deal in surprises and unexpected gifts. At the top of the order is Virender Sehwag who has rewritten the book on opening batsmanship ... Among bowlers, Anil Kumble was a great original, as is Harbhajan Singh. Ditto Mahendra Singh Dhoni.

The following day the volatile Croft became enraged with a Goodall decision when Hadlee was on strike and flicked the bails off. He followed this act of petulance by colliding with Goodall when storming in for a subsequent delivery. While Croft claimed it wasn't a deliberate act, television footage suggests otherwise. "Live it didn't look deliberate," Lees said. "It didn't seem that bad, but when you saw the replay you thought what the hell are you doing?" "It's physical assault, and there's no doubt it was deliberate," Glenn Turner says. The New Zealand batsman was a commentator during the series. "They thought Fred had it in for them. They were convinced the racist side of it was coming into the decision-making."

Increasingly, Mumbai's cricket talent comes from the distant suburbs and while it is wonderful that more players are getting a chance, it makes one wonder whether the elite schools of south Mumbai are becoming too effete to compete with the vigour required? It seems that unless your parents are members of some fancy club, your exposure to sports goes no further than the television.

The Australians have some problems in the batting department. Of late, they have put much onus on the skills and resolute of the batting of opener Shane Watson who has played his innings with more guts and spunk than the rest of the pack. Ironically, their best batsmen – by a few fathoms from the rest – Ricky Ponting seems to have lost some of his magic while the new skipper Michael Clarke too gets his act right sporadically ...

The Australian fast bowling arm - with Mitchell Johnson, Ryan Harris and Peter Siddle leading - is more potent than anything that Sri Lanka could offer barring the T20 bowling skills of Lasith Malinga. However Trent Copeland, James Pattinson, Nathan Lyon and Michael Beer are new to the Lankan conditions ...

This England-India series is a very important Test encounter and one wishes more voices like Nasser Hussain, David Lloyd and Sourav Ganguly would illumine our understanding of the duel. In fact, Ganguly has all the makings of a sharp, incisive critic of the game, though he needs to be more fluent and witty, qualities that make Hussain a listener’s delight.

Commentating on the 2005-06 series, the former England captain and now a respected voice on British television, Mike Atherton, had made this stunning revelation when he was in India: “Local commentators are asked not to mention sensitive subjects or controversial selection issues, no matter how germane they might be to the action...and with compliant commentators on board, they (the audience) will hear only what the bcci want them to hear.”

Their [Tendulkar and Dravid] nicknames suggest that one (The Little Master) is a craftsman while the other (The Wall) spends his life as a labourer: the architect and the hod carrier, if you like. But that is monstrously unfair on the hugely talented Dravid and there is not a team in the world that wouldn't welcome this 38-year-old into their line-up ... Someone worked out the other day that Dravid has spent almost a month of his life batting in Test cricket. For most of yesterday it looked as though it would take England a month of Saturdays to shift him ...

Less than a fortnight ago, the concept of dropping Broad seemed mildly attractive ... If his deeds in the first Test, in which he took seven wickets and scored a crucial 74 not out, provided an adequate response, this raised the bar to the roof. On the first day, Broad made 64 in horrid conditions when England were on the verge of collapse. Now, with India in firm control, he bowled one of the unforgettable spells ... It was in fact the best spell by an England bowler since Andy Caddick took five West Indian wickets in 14 balls at Headingley in 2000.

"We are an entertainment package across the board now. In the end that's what I really enjoyed about Test cricket; it was how I could really bring to the table those skill sets I had for one-dayers and learned in Twenty20 cricket ... Apart from Ashes Tests and the Indian summer, I think as a cricket lover that Test matches sometimes have leaden strides despite all the concentration on them and that reeks of over scheduled matches."

''The Melbourne Stars have launched their season with a bang,'' said one [release]. Ah, the good old reliable bang launch. You might have expected, for this new game, an updated bang, but no: this was the usual, stock-standard, time-tested, good-to-go bang, unchanged from the time of Bradman. This missive also talked about some bloke called Hussy, but what's an ''e'' between friends? ... The Melbourne Renegades tried a bit harder. Their pitch to the media told of how they would unveil their ''look, attitude and ambition''. They will, it added, be taking a ''super-cool, all-out-attacking attitude''. And there we were, thinking that they would block it out for the first 10 overs, then reassess.

Evans of Maber Architects in Nottingham has been the guiding light in the rebuilding of Trent Bridge, making it the most enchanting Test ground in this country outside of St John's Wood. According to the locals it is the construction of the new stands that has made Trent Bridge an even more fecund hunting ground for swing bowlers.

It is because they learnt something utterly pivotal to their hopes of hanging on to their status as Test's cricket best team. This was that it may not be quite enough for them to win back their old appetite for the battle – and at least some of the confidence in supreme talent that first enabled them to conquer the world. They might just have to face up to the fact that here, at Edgbaston and then in the fourth Test at The Oval, they have opponents who have developed a resilience that may indeed be nearing world champion levels.

Waiting is Test cricket’s separation point. Waiting for openers to settle in, the shine to wear off and Warney to come in. Waiting for tea when Laxman the fencer might walk in, waiting for the pitch to turn and Tendulkar to elevate on tiptoe and drive straight. Waiting as a partnership drones on for eventually a wicket or many will fall. All this I cherish. But I am only a spectator, I need a player to understand the viscera of waiting, so I call Dravid because no one waits like Dravid.

And yet Dravid, in his own way, has been every bit as important to Indian batting as has been Tendulkar. Some of the statistics that have been unearthed in the past week or so tell their story in a way that such figures often fail to do. Of Tendulkar's 51 centuries 11 have come in a losing cause. By contrast, before this last match Dravid's 128, made against Zimbabwe 13 years ago in Harare, was the only one of what is now 34 hundreds that has resulted in defeat for India. Dravid represents security.

At Lord's only Dravid, on the third day, reminded us of the quality that made India's surpassing of the great Australian empire so inevitable. Only he looked comfortable in the skin of a leader of the world game. Over the next few days he has to revisit such high ground in the company of Tendulkar, hopefully recovered from his virus, and Laxman. Most vitally, the entire Indian team have to look much less of a parody of the best Test force in the world. Can they do it? Cricket will be much poorer for their failure.