The Surfer

To call for Strauss’s resignation should in no way be seen as a slight upon the job he has done. Considering the mess he inherited after the Kevin Pietersen/Peter Moores imbroglio in early 2009, Strauss has performed admirably … [but] it is time to move on.

Strauss must, and of course will, continue as Test captain. And he will find the extra rest periods invaluable, just as he did when missing a tour of Bangladesh last March. Alastair Cook deputised then, in both ODIs and Tests, and he should take over now as ODI opener and captain, starting with the match against Sri Lanka at the Oval on June 28. Although the T20 at Bristol three days before could be interesting. Surely Paul Collingwood cannot continue as T20 captain, and Cook would seem a little miscast there. Kevin Pietersen anyone?

On the face of it, Jayasundara’s is a highly enviable job. Not only does he have the vantage point in the entire stadium—the dressing-room—he also gets to mingle with the cricketers. But Jayasundara will tell you it’s no cushy vocation. It requires immense concentration, along with considerable knowledge of intricacies of the game. More often than not, he is the first to start his day and the last to wind up. And he is easily the busiest man in the camp, setting up cameras at the practice grounds or sitting in meetings with batsmen and bowlers.

“During a match, I am with peering into my laptop from the first ball to the last. I am often oblivious to the atmosphere around me as I have to capture every delivery in detail. My work continues even after the match is over and I get to celebrate a win only much later in the night,” Jayasundara says.

Not for the first time, the Proteas were unable to scale an awkward peak when they had sometimes managed to scale peaks far higher. In a creepy repeat of the England game in Chennai, a challenging, but by no means impossible, target initially seemed within their scope. Then wickets crashed, the ball softened, and panic set in. Psychologists call it the return of the repressed.

Cricket Players' Association boss Heath Mills, who has worked closely with the former wild child to save his cricket career, was delighted to see him shine at the World Cup. "He has had his trials and tribulations. But he has kept working hard … he has matured a lot," Mills said … Ryder's manager Aaron Klee said: "It is well-pleasing to see the changes on the field, as well as the changes off the field." Those changes off the field including ditching wild nights out on the town to stay at home and play his favourite computer game – Guitar Hero.

Radio gave the necessary distance—there was not the easy familiarity that television fosters. I once introduced Krishnamachari Srikkanth to a professor who was shocked for a moment that the player didn’t recognise him. “I thought you would be familiar with me the same way I am familiar with you,” he explained. There is something to be said for the romance of the radio, but that is nothing compared to the thrill of television. Increasingly, the camera work takes you closer and closer to the action, statistics are generated regularly, and even if the commentary is sometimes irritating, that is a small price to pay for getting the Tendulkars and Dravids and Sehwags playing in your drawing rooms.

A whole generation has moved from being doers to watchers; from being askers of questions to providers of expertise based on television’s punditry. First class matches, often sold out a quarter century ago, don’t draw crowds.

If a working man marched off to other continents for six months and came home for three days in all that time he would probably be demonised as an absentee or deadbeat dad. When wealthier people do it we call them England cricketers. Please let's not mention the armed services. Signing up for wars is not the same as being forced on to a pitiless fixtures treadmill to satisfy the needs of sponsors, governing bodies and television.

The crippling effects of depression generally, and depression in sports-people in particular, were widely documented last week and, in fairness to Boycott, he never set himself up as an expert. Nor did anyone expect (or want) Boycott to start weeping, or lighting incense sticks for Yardy. Still, this is a grown man entering his 70s, a pundit for decades – one would have thought he'd understand the basic mechanics of empathy.

You have to sweep Murali to negate the variation in spin. With the sweep it does not matter which way the ball is going to turn. Then you force Murali to adjust his length by pulling it back a little shorter to stop you playing the shot. Do that and it means you can play him off the back foot. Then you have a little bit more time to read the spin of the ball off the pitch. This is crucial. It is very difficult to read Murali's bowling in the air because, unlike most off-spinners, the ball always has a scrambled seam, whether it is a doosra or an off-break.

From this springboard of St Anthony’s in Kandy, Murali has leapt on to the high wire and stayed there for two decades, never falling into the political mire, beside which the controversies about his action have been trivial. He did not let slip a comment favouring one side or the other in the civil war. Yet he has helped all sides with the finest humanitarian work that any cricketer has done, driving his lorry to tsunami-hit areas and still funding the Foundation of Goodness which does truly worthwhile work in more than 20 villages.

Back before that West Indies game Graeme Smith had snapped at a journalist who had the temerity to bring it up. "So you have been out in the middle? You understand all that? Every time we walk into a press conference it's the question we expect to get." It has become a running gag since then. It was the first question Smith faced when his team lost to England. "That's not at all predictable," Smith sighed. I guess a lot of cricket fans will be saying the same thing tonight.

Will Wednesday mark a return to the old days of crude nationalism and jingoism? I hope not. I hope fans from India and the few thousand from across the border will be generous in their cheer for both the teams. Who can forget the time when Pakistan lost to India during the 1996 World Cup? Fans in Pakistan smashed TV sets, a college student fired a hail of bullets from a Kalashnikov into his TV set and then on himself, another fan died of a heart attack, captain Wasim Akram received death threats, a fan filed a petition in the court against the "disappointing performance" and a cleric said Pakistan would never win at cricket so long as a woman - Benazir Bhutto was the prime minister - ruled the country. Even the plane carrying the players had to be diverted to Karachi as irate fans waited in Lahore carrying expletive-laced banners and rotten eggs. Surely such passions have abated with the passage of time.