The Surfer

If you have the world's best batting line-up, and your best bowler is on the comeback trail, why would you shoot yourself in the foot by going in with just four bowlers? ... Much of Dhoni's reputation rests on his occasional illogical and unexpected moves that turn out well. He is a gambler whose moves are put down to 'intuition' and 'feel', and when these succeed he is feted. In fact, he nearly had Kevin Pietersen's wicket when he came on to bowl, and had the batsman fallen who knows what turn the Test would have taken? Pietersen survived, thanks to the DRS, and went on to make a double century. [But] While flamboyant gestures sometimes come off, there is no substitute for straightforward cricket thinking.

More than half the members of this England team – Andrew Strauss, Alastair Cook, Kevin Pietersen, Ian Bell, Matt Prior, Jimmy Anderson and Chris Tremlett, to name names – will, no doubt, recall the frustration they felt in 2007 (and, for sure, remember that the opposition's last batsman, Sree Sreesanth, somehow survived a leg-before appeal as the weather closed in).

Certainly, Sky's opening caption on day one of the Test against India, IT.. DOESN'T..GET..BIGGER..THAN..THIS, spelled out in huge letters across the screen was beginning to look a slightly wobbly premise – depending on what you take IT to mean – as famine in Africa, massacre in Norway, and the death of a talented young singer, all laid claim to being BIGGER.

In the past two summers, Qazi, like many other youth of Kashmir, was out on the streets of Shopian, hurling stones in protest against the alleged rape and murder of two women in the district. Today, though, he doesn’t hurl stones, only bats fabulously, taking his team to the final round of the Kashmir Premier League. This is the Valley’s first-ever T20 cricket tournament, modelled on the Indian Premier League (IPL), and organised by the Army and the state government. The team names have a flamboyance familiar to IPL fans: Shopian Super Kings, Budgam Badshahs, Srinagar Sherdils, Ganderbal Gladiators and Kupwara Knights, among others. The Army sponsors the teams, and provides them cricket kits, and even -refreshments.

Sitting in its opulent psychedelic drawing room, reminiscent of a futuristic sci-fi flick, one of the richest self-made 29-year-olds in the country says that “money after one point of time is irrelevant”. There are some roads he won’t cross. “Young kid on the road seeing me endorsing a pan masala/tobacco brand will fell there is nothing wrong with it. I won’t do that.”

Dravid was the artisan in this team of artists, the bedrock behind New India's early success under Ganguly, a throwback to an earlier era when craft and painstaking effort wasn't unfashionable. He would build his innings brick by effective brick and win match after match, yet shrouded in layers inside was a gorgeous strokeplayer of delightful ease, to be brought forth only when danger had been thwarted and the time was right for a display of arrogance.

Stop, Stuart! Yes, David Saker, England's respected bowling coach, did indeed use that "enforcer" word during the Sri Lanka Test series when talking about Broad's role. But with conditions at Lord's yesterday crying out for the ball to be pitched up most of the time, Strauss's first-change bowler went back to the method that brought him so much success against Australia two years ago.

The 1911 team has gone down in history as the first all-India cricket squad, since members of different faiths and regions were represented. Their travels across England were followed by the educated urban elite at a time when Indian nationalism was getting a more radical edge, in the last years of Bal Gangadhar Tilak and just before the emergence of Mohandas K Gandhi.

Here he grasped a basic obligation. It was to be the backbone of his team, the guarantee of a solid start to one of the most important Test series England have ever played. He met it with an unswerving concentration and when Rahul Dravid dived for a catch that was rejected by the third official Pietersen's reaction was a perfect symbol of his vast body of work.

He chose to ignore the Indian appeals, utterly, and proceed with the building of an innings which might just prove to be the most significant of the summer. The details tell of escalating authority. In the end he finished in the kind of imperious hurry most familiar to his warmest admirers, reaching his third double century in Test match cricket just before Strauss waved in the declaration.

If the 30-year-old from Cape Town ever takes his eye off this reality for even a second it might be prudent to check if the earth is still riding on its axis. Trott, with his eternal fidgeting and pitch pruning and guard rituals, has never been a sumptuous vision of cricket's greatest possibilities. Indeed, he is more the grit in the corner of your eye. Yet once again England have a huge debt to the man who opened his Test account for them with an Ashes century at the Oval that underpinned one major shift of power in the modern game. Now, on the other side of the Thames, he has preserved England's chances of creating another one against the number-one ranked Test nation.