The Surfer

Well, I have tried my hand at acting when I was a kid. I remember I flunked in exams once in school, my father took me to his film set for a role. I managed to do roles in two Punjabi movies as a child artist. One was Putt Sardaran de and the other one was Mehandi Shagna Di. Lets see what happens in the future. But I don't think I can do cricket commentary.

At some point I may update this and provide some more detail on the designers and the competitions themselves, but for now let's just stick with pictures because that's what you're really here for. One final word of warning; uniform designers were dead to me after about 1999 and you might feel the same way, so the final 15 years at the bottom was something of a chore for me and I'm sure it will be for you other purists.

It is in this time, the era of Misbah-ul-Haq that Younis has pushed himself right up in that conversation and made it into an era of his own. Has anyone brought as great a sense of security and comfort as Younis to this flimsiest batting order? It is difficult to remember one who has had to nurture as many young batsmen around him, or who has figured in as many critical partnerships. There is something more there, right? Some heart, an inner struggle that maybe puts him beyond all of them.

West Indian cricket is nearly irrelevant. Yet their teams still are populated by cricketers who a Caribbean commentator once characterised as "a bit too pleased with themselves". Chris Gayle epitomised them: such a devastating player, so insouciant. No successor to Worrell and Lloyd emerged to temper and tame.

The problem with West Indies is that the WICB always pushes things to the brink and waits till the last moment. That's why so many tours begin with players having not yet signed tour contracts. This MoU was signed in September. Why didn't the players know exactly what was in the MoU until they got to India at the end of the month? Why weren't all the players e-mailed the MoU? I'm sure the WIPA and the WICB have e-mails and contacts of all the players. But no. They wait until they get to India, and then try to manipulate the players. They had all the leadup time before the first ODI to try and iron something out but no, no compromise. From the very first instance the prospect of the players striking came up, on October 7 as the BCCI release says, the WICB/Cameron were willing to cancel the tour immediately. The WICB have not denied it. As a matter of fact, the WICB have not even mentioned the BCCI press release. All they've done is put out another press release to divert attention from the BCCI release and of course trying their very best to blame the players. Again, dishonest.

Cricket viewership, even Indian Premier League viewership, is not growing. It has either reached a ceiling (IPL) or a floor (Test cricket). Even limited-overs cricket (the Fifty50) game, the mainstay of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), is showing a worrying pattern. On-ground presence is lower than previously. The BCCI is masking it by hosting matches mainly in smaller cities and towns, where the novelty may still be there. As for television, a comparison between the India-West Indies limited-overs series of 2011 and 2013 would be telling. Both series were played in India. The first was played in the aftermath of India's World Cup victory and showed a TRP of 3.4 (male/15-34/Sec A, B and C). By the 2013 series, the TRP number had fallen to 2.2. TRP figures for the just-concluded (October 2014) India-West Indies series were not immediately available.

It was, as Kevin Pietersen, and his ghost, write in one of the more acute pieces of analysis in KP: The Autobiography, "a moment in time" that cricket "will never have back again". Back then, they write, "English cricket had something it's lost. Superstars. Sexiness. Momentum. The right to be called the national sport." But then there were special circumstances. It had been a generation since England had last won the Ashes, they were playing a team acknowledged as one of the greatest in the history of the sport, and the cricket itself was compelling. And, of course, it was on terrestrial TV. They estimate that a total of 22.65m people watched a minimum of 30 minutes of live cricket at least one point that summer. The audience peaked at 8.4m. Compared to the last series in England, in 2001, the overall numbers had almost doubled. And, more important still, there was a 74% rise among under-15s.

British sports teams have traditionally modelled themselves on the army, with its core virtues of camaraderie and obedience. However, conflictual models may work better. Football's most significant thinker of the past half-century is probably the Dutchman Johan Cruyff. In the 1960s he and his coach at Ajax Amsterdam, Rinus Michels, created the cerebral, flowing style known as "total football". In the 1970s Cruyff became the world's best player. Later he brought "total football" to Barcelona, where it eventually morphed into the "tiki-taka" game that made Spain European and world champions in recent years.

That the boy with the curious eyes had it in him to make it big was a conclusion many had made ever since he picked up a bat and joined a local coaching camp at Dombivili's Railway ground. Madhukar was then posted at Dombivili, 50 km away from Mumbai, and the family stayed at Triguna Apartments at Sangitavadi, a rickety establishment with tiny houses, located in the middle of a congested street that had no bus access to the railway station back then. Rahane, who has a black belt in karate, wouldn't take too long to set upon the path destiny had chosen for him. The exposure to karate gave him an early lesson in fitness and a competitive edge.

Elsewhere, cricket is slipping out of sight. It has become more than ever a sport for the wealthy and the pre-converted, an invisible noise through the wall for the majority of people, whose summer now belongs to the Premier League transfer window and the fall-out from Manchester United's sensational tour of Madagascar. Sealed within its bubble of connected interests, English cricket has stewed and bloomed through a decade of profitable isolation, sweating its pre-existing stars, monetising its goodwill, contracting lucratively. How can this end well?