The Surfer

The shock waves are so deep, they could even change the way Australia play the game, certainly this summer. Will the Test attack be so brazen as to bomb the Indian batsmen with short balls? What if someone else got hit and seriously hurt? Is it really worth it? And what about sledging? Doesn't it all seem a little childish now? Desperately sad events such as Hughes' injury put life and sport into perspective.

In the MCG nets on Wednesday morning, Test fast bowler Peter Siddle told his Victorian teammate Marcus Stoinis to step aside so he could send down a bouncer. Emotions are so raw, it's easy to believe cricket might have changed forever.

Four weeks ago we chatted in the UAE after the first Test. Alex Doolan looked an unlikely selection for the next match and I suggested to Hughes he was a fair chance to replace him. He wouldn't have a bar of it. It annoyed him that anyone would question Doolan's place in the side. He didn't want to get into the team if it was on those terms. "I've been treated like that too many times myself to want to see anybody else get dropped in these circumstances," he said. And "Dools is my mate" he added.

What we never see are the professional batsman's everyday bruises, the welts and grazes and cuts and deep purple contusions. Because nobody outside the changing room witnesses what happens to an average batsman's body on an average day facing fast bowling, the spectator might forget what a cricket ball can do ... Retired cricketers in commentary booths turn fear into funny stories, so that you would never know how often they were shaking to their bones.

I am motivated by criticism, to be honest. I'm never hurt by it. Because I was taught very early in life that failure teaches you more than success ever can. So when I am not scoring runs, I am expecting criticism because I have already criticised myself for it. The idea is to challenge yourself before anybody else has an opportunity to. This is why nobody had to coax me to get a county stint in Derbyshire. I knew there was a problem and had already made up my mind to find solutions.

Close geographically to Thixendale but a world away in terms of cricket is the Lancashire League, which once could rival county cricket for crowds and star overseas players. Now many clubs are faced with big debts and the days of signing overseas stars such as Allan Donald (Rishton), Learie Constantine (Nelson) and a young Shane Warne (Accrington) are long gone.

"It is in the league's rules that you have to sign an overseas player but you have to pay them a salary of over £5,000 for the summer, an air fare, you can't get car insurance for the summer for less than £1,500 and then you have their accommodation costs. Overall it is about £10,000 which could easily pay for three level three coaches doing 100 sessions a year with the kids," Michael Brown, the chairman of Burnley Cricket Club, said.

Cricket Australia keeps telling us "but the television numbers are great". And this may be so. But we don't want the soul-less look of big cricket games in empty stadiums here that we see in too many other cricket nations. Tickets should be dirt cheap if that's what it takes. After all, gate money is now a minor component of overall revenue. Crowds must be encouraged at any cost.

In the poker game between bat and ball, Bhuvneshwar knows he isn't the only one who can count his opponents cards. "Batsmen know that I swing the ball both ways so they will be ready for that. My goal is to delay what they think I am going to do until the last moment," he says. That, however, is something that doesn't usually happen. "The batsman isn't a fool. He knows what I am thinking. He will consciously plan not to get out in that manner. If he does get out, he usually gets out some other way because that's not where his focus is. So if the plan is to get a batsman out caught behind, I will probably only get him out that way around 20 percent of the time," he says.

He played in the first XI in his last three years of school, improving from medium pacer to genuine fast bowler, and relished testing himself against good opposition after a mate encouraged him to play in the Imparja Cup in Alice Springs. Lees is a seventh-generation Flinders Islander, indigenous through his father's side of the family. He describes his Aboriginality as "very important ... a big part of my life". Jason Lees doesn't ponder it often, noting that many Straitsmen generations back had Aboriginal wives. "We've just always classed ourselves as islanders and got on with everyone really."

Not many people know Ryder well but those who do saw his Friday drinking and Saturday no-show at Dunedin airport coming a mile off. He was five days out from leaving for Dubai with New Zealand A in a trial run for selection in the World Cup 30. The spotlight was intensifying. He gave a half-hearted press conference in Hamilton three weeks ago which hardly suggested a man desperate to play on the biggest stage of all.

'They don't have any excuses and the World Cup gives England a great opportunity in one part of the world where we should do pretty well in one-day cricket. But having lost a lot of one-day games recently they have to turn that around quickly. They can't say they're using Sri Lanka as a building process. They need to win there and win well. I look at the side and think it's a decent one. There's a lot of talk about England being too stodgy and slow but that's not about having the wrong tactics, it's about not delivering on them. England have been fearful and not playing the type of one-day cricket they need to, probably because they've been lacking in confidence.