The Surfer

The upshot [of some wild shots by set West Indies batsmen in the second ODI] was another loss, not because this weakened Indian team is any better but because of rank carelessness. It is a recurring theme. It hasn’t been helped by the present dearth of players capable of scoring a hundred – or, in the present West Indies context, even 50 – and reaping five or four wickets in an innings.

Peter Smith, 14, started playing in sixth grade after watching Lagaan, a sports-themed Bollywood movie, in school for a unit on India. “I’ve always been interested in British sports,” Peter said. Smith immersed himself in the sport by watching YouTube. Then he organised a few foreign-born students — kids from India, England, and Guyana — to play at recess. At home in Oxford he plays on a homemade pitch and travels hours to find teams to play on.

...There are many reasons players play. Part of the attraction for [Neil] Kimberly is the intellectual challenge. “There is certainly a degree of fascination with it. It has a certain mystique with it—all these players dressed in white,” Kimberly said. “There is also an assumption that it’s a slow moving game. But it’s an interesting combination of baseball and chess.”

At the age of 23, Kieswetter has carved out a niche as a notably fast-forward kind of cricketer, not just in his batting style but in the content-rich detail of his tyro career to date. In the last five years, he has played representative cricket for South Africa and England, rejected the country of his birth, been picked and then dropped by England's one-day selectors, remodelled his game at least once and earned a distinction unmatched by any cricketer in England's history: a man-of-the-match award from the final of an ICC trophy, in which his team were victorious.

"Getting away from the game was the right thing at the time, but, to be honest, things got worse and worse," he says ... Vincent took on some building work, working on a friend's home, before he got a job tiling at the new BBC site in Salford ... "After the 160th apartment I did at the BBC, I felt like 'I'm not really sure this is fulfilling my life'," he says. "But I did some more building work, more small stuff: I was digging a hole about a metre deep, I was halfway through it in the pissing rain and I thought – 'I'll just jump in the hole myself, this is not that great'."

A friend arranged for Vincent to return to New Zealand and play in Auckland. It proved to be a turning point. "I was like 'no way', but I went," he says. "When I got there I had to borrow pads, a bat, the gloves, I had two left shoes! I went to the training session, and I kept missing the ball. I was in tears: 'What am I doing? This is so embarrassing.'

Talking of right decisions, there are those who feel Cook should not even be in the one-day side, let alone be captain. There are some who worry that it might affect his Test-match game. "I think it will actually help me expand my game," he says. "They are separate skills, but that is one of the challenges for a batter. I’ve got no fear of going in at the top order and not scoring quickly enough. I think I can do that."

At the same time, however, English cricket will move another step away from our inner cities, on a course which will take it - unless arrested - from being an urban to a suburban sport. While the cars drive into the Rose Bowl through the only entrance (mercifully, there is now a second exit), youngsters in Leeds will be less interested in cricket than they would have been if there had been a Test this year at Headingley.

So this Test match should be a celebration, although this was not reflected by the mundane but useful content of the latest email to emanate from Hampshire CCC, which reads "Transport Options Increased for England's Rose Bowl Test". The Rose Bowl has always been a bit of a bottleneck and in one sense those at the club will be hoping that this issue resurfaces this week. At least a transport problem will mean that there are plenty of people in attendance.

What’s the No.1 challenge in 2011?

Raising the bar entails...

Its ironic but even among senior Indian players there are vehement supporters of UDRS. Virender Sehwag is one and his logic is compelling. I asked him after the world cup if his support for UDRS had dwindled since both in the semi-final and final he referred his lbw decisions, and was proven wrong both times! Sehwag answered that on the contrary he was an even bigger supporter because at-least 'he got a chance' to question the decision. I asked him if Sachin Tendulkar was a convert after he escaped what appeared to be a plumb lbw to Ajmal in the semi-final. And he cheekily answered, 'You will have to ask Tendulkar'!

Players and administrators from both sides disgraced themselves and the International Cricket Council reinforced its utter incompetence when an ugly Sydney Test finished with a racial abuse hearing involving Andrew Symonds and Harbhajan Singh. Clarke was a central figure in the match and admits his behaviour contributed to its degeneration.