The Surfer

Gautam Gambhir: An impressive guy and a tough batsman in the new Indian mould. When India lost two quick wickets in the World Cup final, Gambhir was the bloke who came in and steadied the ship. He’s not an old-style Indian bully, scoring easy runs on flat tracks. He loves the competition and I know Duncan Fletcher’s very impressed with him...

Yuvraj Singh: An enigma. It’s fair to say he’s not the most popular guy on the international circuit, but Dhoni enjoys the fact that he’s not going to be pushed around. He’s in your face and lets you know how good he thinks he is. He’s another batsman England reckon doesn’t fancy the short stuff, but he plays spin pretty well and if he makes a good start to the series, we may see a bit of the strut that gets up opposition noses.

For the next few days, and the rest of this English summer, perhaps all we can do is hope that what we see is another reason to believe that Test cricket is too good, too valuable, to be left in the hands of those whose loftiest ambition will always be to turn a quick profit today and hope that tomorrow has something to offer.

Around a billion Indians are perfectly sure about his genius. His gifts are obvious and he has lavished them on both forms of the game. Any doubts about his ability to provide under the most strenuous circumstances have long been allayed and the fact that he has amended his style to ensure longevity and yet retained or even increased his effectiveness makes him the leader of the modern triumvirate [that includes Ricky Ponting and Brian Lara].

... it was the fifteen-year old Bombay schoolboy, Sachin Tendulkar, who cornered most attention ... on his first-class debut , he struck a fluent 100 not out from 129 balls ... and followed it with other fine innings to top the Bombay aggregate with 583 runs at an average of 64.77. Technically sound and alert to the loose ball, Tendulkar showed astounding maturity for one so young and looked to be a Test cricketer in the making ...

England captain Andrew Strauss describes himself as a winner, but for all the kudos of his three Ashes triumphs, the man on the other side of Thursday’s coin toss has done it all: World Cup, World Twenty20, World No 1 in Test cricket. And he has done it with such serenity and poise that you would think he was still playing in a tape-ball street game back in his native town of Ranchi. This is one of Dhoni’s greatest talents: the ability to transmit calm and relaxation to his players when things are tight. Yet it is something of a conjurer’s trick, for he is keenly aware of the responsibility he carries. Indeed, he himself sometimes feels the need to escape from the pressures of fame climbing aboard one of his 25 beloved motorbikes ...

He [Strauss] no longer has a complete empire on which to fall back. So now his international future will stand or fall on his Test record alone, on the success of the team and the runs he contributes personally. The young pretender is in place. Strauss believes, and he may be right, that concentration on one aspect will buy him time. Yet it may also place too high a demand on this drive to succeed. He has little margin for error now.

“In those days, we would rarely get a chance to play in England, we believed that education in cricket was incomplete till we didn’t play in England.” Contractor felt that the conditions in England were always treacherous in some sense. The 78-year-old, who played in 31 Tests, said uncovered strips and unpredictable weather didn’t help their cause as they had very little protection too. “Helmets were an unknown commodity then and we players made thigh guards with a chunk of sponge or rubber."

There should not be an unhealthy competition between the formats. The challenge for administrators is to get that balance so that all can coexist together. The difficulty is that commercially, shorter forms of the game make more sense than Test cricket so it is a challenge for administrators to look at the bigger picture rather than just the bottom line ... Sometimes that means investing in something that is not the most profitable in the short term knowing that in the long term it might pay off.

The Lankan attack with the departure of especially Muralitharan, looks utterly wayward with the exception of off spinner Suraj Randiv who is beginning to grow his spinning fangs. Even Lasith Malinga who spearheaded the Mumbai Indians bowling attack in the IPL T20 was found wanting at times [against England] due to the lack of quality support. This is where a person in the calibre of Rumesh fits in like a glove. He understands what a bowler needs and knows how to hone it. As a matter of fact it was Rumesh who initially nurtured the fast bowling arm of Sri Lanka Cricket, when it was groping in the dark.

Even in the 1990s, when England were perennially rubbish, the excitement surrounding the Ashes continued to linger. Thus, one has to respect its position in the agenda of global cricket. However, there is no better time to explode the myth that the Ashes are the ultimate prize for English cricketers than right here and right now. It all starts with the most magical coming together of statistics, an eclipse-like moment in which the 2,000th Test is also the 100th between England and India.