The Surfer

When another tennis player, Richard Gasquet of France, blamed his positive cocaine test on being contaminated by a woman he snogged in a Miami bar, everyone ridiculed him. But forensic tests bore his account out to the satisfaction of the ATP.

All in all, then, the inadvertent ricochet theory, be it bat or glove or some mystical combination of the two (where the hell is Hawk-Eye when you need it?), demands the benefit of the doubt; and that Matt should petition the Court of Arbitration for Sport to overrule his ICC reprimand. The anecdotal evidence in his favour is overwhelming. Given how he kept wicket in the second Test, after all, is this a man who can honestly be trusted to judge a bounce of any kind?

“When you are young, you are vulnerable. You don't listen to elders. As you grow, you understand life better. Criticism hurt a lot when I was young. Not anymore. I understand it is part and parcel of the game. But I welcome matured criticism.”

It is strange. The more I yearn for Test cricket the more it eludes me. I am hopeful to make it to the Test team for England. I am working to be fit and hopefully I'll get an opportunity. I want to do well in Test cricket.”

Over the last 20 years, four exceptional right-handers have batted with the lazy elegance of a natural left-hander. They are Inzamam-ul-Haq, Mark Waugh, VVS Laxman and Carl Hooper ... Numbers would never tell the real Hooper story. He was a charmer at the crease, someone who would conjure his runs rather than construct his innings.

Going back to his playing days, Hooper said Wasim Akram and Abdul Qadir were the toughest bowlers he faced. “Akram was sharp, could bowl over and round the wicket with great control, swing and reverse swing the ball, and seamed it around too. Qadir had a bag of tricks as a leg-spinner, every delivery in the over would be different. Shane Warne bowled with great accuracy and had a terrific leg-spinner, but Qadir had more variety.”

Siddons always felt safe in the cricket-mad nation, even if the post of Bangladesh coach ranks somewhere just below prime minister. He was feted often, abused little. There was plenty of advice from the punters, but it was generally good natured.

His main annoyance was the sport's politics, where some in high places boasted zero cricketing knowledge. "Some of the decisions that get made aren't quite from a cricket viewpoint." On the field, losing was a habit, so Siddons was starting low. "I was with the team two weeks before we went to New Zealand and we got smashed in most games and embarrassed in a couple as well. Their skill level was nowhere near international standard. I had just come from the Australian team and I knew exactly the difference, which was huge ..."

He was a giant of a batsman and 20 years ago on Thursday he completed a giant of an innings, an effort so monumental that it deserves to be ranked not just as the finest innings ever played by an England captain, or even the finest by an England batsman, but perhaps one of the truly great innings of all time

It is not only Ian Bell's stature as a batsman that has altered. The view of him as a smart, intelligent cricketer who understands the nuances of the game, is tactically aware and bursting with ideas has gained in popularity.

There will probably be no change for two or three years, though sporting events can move rapidly. Cook is the intended successor, but he should not be anointed yet.

Planning for the Ashes? How would you do that? Maybe you would get a guy like Hauritz and play him for two straight years - as they plan to do with the Katich replacement. Oh, but hang on, the selectors lost their bottle and dropped him on the eve of the first match. Remember they had named a squad of 17? One more player and they could have played summer AFL. That was understandable as Doherty was apparently your man. Well, he was until they lost their nerve with him too. That move didn't turn out well so it was announced that Michael Beer was your man for a Perth wicket. Hilditch said as much. He didn't play in Perth. Nor Melbourne. But he got a look in at the SCG.

It was not simply that England made elementary mistakes in all three departments of the game, errors that they had virtually erased in the four innings defeats they had inflicted in their previous five Tests. There was a perceived lack of ruthlessness about their push for victory. England left themselves 58 overs to dismiss Sri Lanka, having first put the match beyond their opponents ... But a team with genuine belief in being the best ever might have trusted its instincts a little more, offered Sri Lanka just a sniff of victory and then crushed them.

This [Sri Lanka's long innings] had nothing to do with the sameness of the attack – unless you genuinely believe Jade Dernbach would have overcome a tedious Lord's track on his Test debut – and everything to do with bowlers who had a collective off-day. It happens. It just doesn't happen very often these days to England. Andrew Strauss made the very reasonable point that his bowlers aren't robots. But, amid all the talk about England's plans to ascend to the top of the Test rankings, isn't it equally reasonable to wonder why the tall trio all fell short?

England were 22 for three [in the second Test], Strauss, Pietersen and Jonathan Trott all undone inside the first eight overs. Bell announced his arrival by cracking his first ball away square for four, as if to say "what have you lot been doing out here?" From that point on England began to retake control of the innings. His batting was steadfast and, one early edge past slip aside, secure. His fifty took 108 balls, his strike rate a third of what it was in the second innings.

These innings were miniature masterclasses in how to adapt your batting to the needs of your team and the situation of the game