The Surfer

Programmes such as the academy are primarily important so that they [players] don't have to be taught how to bowl, bat, field and behave when they are an international player ... It is highly necessary to have players who only need to adapt to life in international cricket and not the skills.

"There are a number of things that need to change among these players. Here the cricket is built around instinctive play -- aggressive batting. I want to teach them the different, productive ways of playing."

The BCCI or at least some of their senior players are right to have reservations about the ball tracking system and other technologies previously used in reviewing decisions. They are occasionally flawed and in some cases involve a human hand in arriving at their conclusion. However, instead of tinkering at the fringes with the DRS the BCCI should have pushed for genuine improvements.

The DRS should be totally under the control of the ICC and not provided by the television network covering the series. The current situation compromises the whole system. And while they were at it the BCCI should have had the DRS placed in the hands of the umpires to review blatant mistakes. That way, it wouldn’t be used as much as a tactic by the players, as a review system.

The debate whether technology is foolproof or not has its merits, but when players and teams cry foul at umpiring errors and scream murder, it seems logical that anything available to assist the umpires in correcting their errors should be made use of. Especially by a country which believes there is much bias in the umpiring world against them and even goes public with their protests on the evidence of the same technology which they decry.

More than his change of style, Cook has a steely resolve which has been seen in the manner that he has dominated the Test arena in the past eight months after his very career was put in doubt. But combining the roles of opening batsman and captain will push him to the limits.

The notion that an opener should anchor a one-day innings by batting through it probably still existed when he began his career but the widespread tactic now is to make hay during the power plays, a period English batsmen have been among the worst at exploiting. In any case, Jonathan Trott, England’s No3, has bagged the accumulator role, so Cook will have to play something other than Shylock if it is not to end badly.

“I did play a few times for the first XI at school, but I disgraced the side,” he says. “I pretended to bat but couldn’t. I dropped catches – that was my speciality."

He grew up in an era when solid English batsmen like John Edrich and Geoff Boycott would grind out the runs, almost taking root in the dusty soil as they scrapped and prodded their way to big scores. Didn’t he find all that a bit boring? “No, I rather liked that,” he sighs.

I initiated the creation of UDRS in 2007 while on the MCC World Committee due to my experience in TV. But DRS was always meant to have only one challenge, yet ICC started with three! Hot-Spot is instant and must be used; Snicko isn't ready for instant use and therefore can't be used. Hawkeye is 99.5 per cent accurate. It's all there to utilise, but ICC won't pay, and India won't play. It's quite petty really, and cricket loses out again. We are all tired of the grandstanding.

Even Sepp Blatter puts himself up for automatic re-election occasionally. But India have introduced into cricket the concept of president-for-life — Jagmohan Dalmiya, after becoming the first Indian ICC president made himself president-for-life of the Bengal Cricket Association — and so world cricket might have one person in charge in perpetuity even if, like one or two ICC presidents, he does not know one end of a bat from the other.

There was one more reason Gavaskar captured the nation’s imagination. The 1970s was the era of the angry young man, with widespread frustration over the high unemployment rate, among other things. What the original angry young man, Amitabh Bachchan, was to Hindi cinema, Gavaskar was to cricket. He was the lone anti-establishment figure, irreverent and uncompromising, fighting to the last. His image was well-suited to the national mood of the times, when the country was looking to these anti-hero figures for some sort of respite.

Among the seniors was Dilip Sardesai, who ate like a giant and always demanded room No. 8 in hotels; an abrasive and religious S. Venkataraghavan, who mouthed shlokas on the field and did not think twice before declining a gift of cigars from a personage no less than Gary Sobers; Abid Ali, who could bowl all day, bat with determination and gusto, and then ask the debutant to get the winning runs; four different types of spinners—B.S. Bedi, E.A.S. Prasanna, Venkat and B.S. Chandrashekhar—all unbelievably good, a group an English newspaper called “the most dangerous attack in contemporary cricket”