The Surfer

Cricket NSW chief executive Dave Gilbert yesterday conceded that his state must take special care of a special talent who can bowl at 145km/h."The challenge for all of us is that we look after him and keep him on the paddock," Gilbert told the Daily Telegraph. "We all look back and cringe with the way in which we did that in the Shield final. For him to bowl 65 overs in the Shield final was wrong and we certainly learnt from that. That sort of situation will never happen again."

The closer the West Indies got to their target, the louder Gayle got. He continued to shout out advice towards his team mates batting in the centre. He jumped in ecstasy and cheered wildly following every boundary but hooted every time an Indian fielder stopped a ball. The self-imposed West Indian cheerleader was holding court, and his teammates too began to respond to it. More than once Marlon Samuels and Kieron Pollard lifted their bat towards the Mound stand and acknowledge Gayle’s support. That is before Samuels — also playing on his home ground — rushed towards the Mound once West Indies had sealed the match and jumped over the fence to shake hands — almost a la Pat Cash — with his long-time team mate and friend.

Transition or no transition, the seniors generally have a crucial role to play. And it's not restricted to international cricket only. I gained a lot from interacting with my seniors in Hyderabad and Lancashire . Obviously, a lot depends of how receptive you are. If you are receptive enough, you will always gain by interacting with seniors.

They [West Indies] are short on experience. When I played there for the first time, in 1997, they had strong fast bowling attack of Curtley Ambrose, Franklyn Rose and Ian Bishop. Even compared to the team we played in 2006, the current lot is inexperienced. Having said that, there is no denying that there is a fair amount of talent in this team as well.

''I wasn't told that I wasn't in the leadership group any more, basically,'' he told The Saturday Age this week. ''We had the first meeting of the tour … it was about 3 o'clock in the afternoon and I was ringing around trying to get the coach or manager to find out if I was expected to be there. I couldn't get in touch with them … so I just went down and pulled the door open and they were sitting in there.

''Of course, everyone came and apologised later saying, 'We should have let you know'. It wasn't that I was [expecting to be included], I just didn't want to be doing the wrong thing … for a meeting I might have supposed to have been in.''

Busiest of all the Hampshire stalwarts was Nigel Gray, 21 years with the club and now the head groundsman. Back and forth went the covers. The first time they were removed there was some consternation. The strip was barely distinguishable from the rest of the square it was so green. After the mower had set to work the shade lightened considerably but still there was no agonising for Strauss once he had won the toss.Gray's pitch was impressive. The club and the groundsman could have played safe by producing one of those "chief executive" wickets, guaranteed to last five days, low in bounce and a friend to the batsmen. The temptation is always there to provide a surface guaranteed to produce play – and income – on every day (weather permitting).

For Bransgrove, though, the moment of truth (and, no doubt, of huge relief) occurred shortly beforehand when the Hampshire chairman stepped forward to clang the five-minute bell on the pavilion balcony. The sun was breaking through, players on both sides were completing their pre-match preparations and nothing now could stop a dream from being realised.

I didn't wear a helmet because I wanted to show that the bowler wasn't intimidating me, and also that's just the way I liked to bat. I'm not here to say anyone should do the same. He's got to do whatever he wants. But the bowling was maybe more hostile in our time. You could bowl more than two bouncers in an over. And it's not just helmets, all the padding and the equipment, the gloves has got much better. That's a good thing. But back in my time the batsman had to be really brave.

Much has been made in recent years of the overkill of the 50-over game, the number of meaningless matches played and the impact that the arrival of T20 has had on the limited-over game with many fearing for its future. Yet with the New Zealand v Australia rivalry, here was a short, sharp series with drama aplenty on both sides of the Tasman.

Many of the matches have been memorable encounters. Who can forget Mathew Sinclair's searing one-handed boundary-riding catch in Melbourne in the opening game in 2004. Then there was Chris Harris, playing his 250th match, batting No11 with a badly damaged arm trying to steer New Zealand through to an unlikely win in the next game.

And when John Hampshire, the first Englishman to score a century on debut at Lord's in 1969 against the mighty West Indians was dropped after the next match, he preferred to accept the decision of the selectors rather than call for a big press conference like Katich did by blasting all and sundry.

A glance through the records of Wisden and there are dozens of cases of players who had genuine reasons for hitting back at the selectors but unlike Katich none of them did.

Shahid Afridi, we learn for some reason right now, is the leading wicket-taker in the tournament. I am suddenly overcome with a wave of love for Shahid Afridi. All of his demonstrative nonsense suddenly feels like intensity to me. All of his cajoling and firing up of his teammates seems both warranted and necessary, in a game that moves this slowly, yet has this much at stake, national-identity-wise. He has a kind of universal athlete intensity gene which I admire. I know nothing of the man, really. He might be a terrible person, or a tax cheat, or a serial adulterer, but at work, the man wants to win, and his team is not really helping out.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, I am very much rooting for Pakistan. I want to see Shahid Afridi happy.

None of this will please England, and maybe Dhoni, shrewdly in his mind, sees it that way, for one player beyond all has reaped most consistent benefit from it – Graeme Swann ... Swann gorges himself on the readiness of umpires to give lbws where once they were reluctant. Tracking has changed their perception of what is permissible. Almost 30% of 138 wickets have come from lbw. With left-handers alone it is beyond that.

Here is the rub, though. Umpires will still give Swann his lbws because that is how they think. But Dhoni's intransigence on this matter means that his team will have no recourse to challenge that. It is something he might regret.