The Surfer

Sangakkara played cricket because of his passion for the game and for his understanding of how important it was to the morale of his people. It was more important than money and ego – and certainly it dwarfed, in his mind, any gaining of political influence. It meant that when he performed so steadfastly in what seemed certain to be a lost cause yesterday his work seemed to give off the kind of glow not normally associated with an admirable, if, in his terms, routine performance

So often we naively want our sporting heroes to impress us in a wider sense and so often they disappoint. Beyond their sporting genius, they have no revelations to make. Administrators quite like it that way. It is the Sangakkaras of the world, sportsmen who have achieved despite the machinations around them, and who dare to imagine something better, who possess a vision to question lesser men.

Broad himself must be desperate. Why else would he take the umpire Billy Bowden to task at Headingley for declining to give Jeevan Mendis lbw? That decision had no bearing on the outcome of the match since the appeal was made after the penultimate ball of the Sri Lanka innings. It could only affect Broad's bowling figures. That final column would be barren no more if only Bowden would raise his finger. It is a very bad sign that Broad should lose it over such a trifling matter.

People talk of the khadoos attitude of Mumbai players; but it must be told, they were ruthless not only with the opposition but also their own players.

In the 1976 match against Bengal at the Eden Gardens, a ball from leggie Rakesh Tandon ricocheted off the stumps and smashed into the face of wicketkeeper Sharad Hazare. He spit blood but didn't take shelter in the comforts of the dressing room because the team needed him. For the next three days, he was on a liquid diet and that too had to be taken through a straw.

Stories of bullying by India are getting louder and they are no longer confined to the usual suspects of England and Australia. The BCCI has long been accused of arrogance, but there cannot be any doubt that the Indian cricket board has given cricket a tremendous boost which has benefited everyone

While the governing body appeared to give with one hand, by guaranteeing extra space for the developing nations in the 50 over flagship, it took away with the other, by cutting the World Twenty20 back from the proposed 16 teams to 12.

And that really puts cricket into its proper perspective. Many of us feel passionately about it from a purely sporting context while others will see its value as a metaphor or a barometer of contemporary West Indian society. Still, after all of that, it's only a game. In the Arab world, like almost everywhere else, football is followed with an almost religious fervour. But the people of that region have taken to the streets for the past five months and have died by the hundreds, maybe thousands already, not over some perceived injustice on the football pitch, but for freedoms that we take for granted.

To find the route that made him a world class offspinner, Harbhajan might have to give up the shorter formats of the game. There is little doubt that one-day cricket and T20 have reduced his effectiveness in Test cricket. It is unlikely that he will take that step, though. For one, he is a fiercely combative player who will see any such move as an admission of defeat. For another, he loves to bowl, and cannot contemplate lean periods, especially if he believes (as he has in the past) that all problems can be solved in the running, as it were. That is, by playing as much as possible.

Whatever said and done, the runner sure did add another dimension to the game, making cricket’s narrative all the more richer. He had to judge the power of his batsman’s shot, making a split second decision on whether to take the single or not. The batsman banked on the runner to give optimum value to his strokes. Like in life as in sport, when a man’s fortunes depend on someone else, drama isn’t too far from the scene.

To put it more simply, it is about being a fan, a follower, a hero-worshipper. If you’ve ever surrendered to the magic of just following a game or a team or a player and wondered why it begins to rule your life, then with his divine craft of philosophising the everyday, the author justifies that love, putting mania into perspective with a wonderful personal journey as a man obsessed with cricket, rugby, authors and poets ... Diagnosed with cancer in January 2006, Smith — a Welsh-born professor of literature at Tonbridge School in Kent — sets forth on a journey with son Ed to India, the spiritual home of the game of cricket.

Eleven days ago Sarwan turned 31. Harbhajan turned 31 yesterday. His figures were 14-3-31-1 and 19-2-42-1: ineffective. In March 2001, he took 32 wickets in three Tests against Australia – including the first Test hat-trick by an Indian – while none of his team-mates managed more than three. He was then a bowler whose stock ball turned sharply and drifted away from the right-hander, and whose whirligig, open action, which sometimes meant he bowled from beyond the vertical – ie 11 o'clock – induced terror in batsmen.

The first thing I should say is that the train of events in 1981 was extremely fortuitous. In that third Test at Headingley, for a start, Ian Botham and Graham Dilley, whose second-innings partnership of 117 turned the match, could have been out at any moment. Kim Hughes and the Australians were criticised for bowling too wide to them and it was true, they should have tightened their line. But on any other day they would have edged rather than missed, or edged more thinly, or the ball would have landed differently from one of the thick edges.