The Surfer

A car slides down this dusty lane and waits until the over is finished. Over here, cars give way to cricket matches. In fact, these days, with Sri Lanka co-hosting the World Cup, everything gives way to cricket matches. TVs are switched on in offices, brothels, banks and tea shops. Work halts, roads empty and all the squabbling that has marked our last 50 years is put on hold.

We forget that we have coastlines to clear, refugees to settle, assassins to catch and most recently, floods to mop up. When a cricket match is on, even the civil war is given the month off.

The ICC [previously] came up with a system where the third umpire could only answer the question put to him by the on-field umpire. I remember one lbw decision where Steve Bucknor decided to ask the third umpire, David Orchard, whether the ball would have gone on to hit the stumps. Orchard agreed that it would have, but pointed out that the batsman had also got an inside edge on the ball. But because that was not what Bucknor had asked him about, the lbw decision was upheld. That was a good example of how stupid some of the thinking has been, and continues to be.

If the ball is going to hit the stumps and it falls within the laws, you are out. It is as simple as that … This 2.5m guideline is designed to allow for the inaccuracies in the Hawk-Eye system. By trying to allow for that smaller margin of error it [the ICC] is jeopardising the entire UDRS system by fuelling the BCCI's argument that the technology cannot be trusted.

He [Sudhir Gautam] says he has told off Sharad Pawar. He has cycled from Bihar to Bangladesh to watch India’s World Cup opener and claimed to have parked the bike at Sourav Ganguly’s house in Kolkata. He has also cycled to Pakistan. He has attended almost every match India have played at home since November 2003, which is when his remarkable story began.

Marriage does not interest him. “How will I travel?” he says. “I have made cricket my life partner.”

New strokes have been added to the game, new strategies abound, but the minds of those who provide the words to the pictures brought to millions of homes have, sadly, remained static.

Sunil Gavaskar tries to be funny, but doesn’t always carry it off, mainly because I suspect his employers do not believe in it … he is stymied by the first law of Indian broadcasting: keep serious and repeat the scores, that’s your job.

Test cricket is real cricket, not because it is played over five days, but because it places bat and ball on par. Twenty20 is a vulgar and debased form of the game, because the bowler gets a mere four overs. Although 50-50 cricket is still biased in favour of the batsman, at least he can go beyond mere slogging to construct and shape an innings, the way Tendulkar and Strauss did in Bangalore that day. Meanwhile, given 60 rather than 24 deliveries, the bowler can still somewhat display his variety and subtlety, as both Bresnan and Zaheer showed us at the Chinnaswamy Stadium.

Back at the hotel, I get a text from Tim Peach, who has made the long trek from Dhaka to Sri Lanka. "Arrived in Colombo. Luggage missing. Voice missing and it is raining. Going to spend the evening counting the insect bites on my legs." A couple of hours later, my phone beeps again. It's another text from Tim: "74 bites on my left leg... 39 on the right."

It has been a long journey for contrasting characters, black and white, struggling and farming, Rasta and reserved. It is a tale of Harare and Bulawayo, backyards and gardens, cricket balls and lemons, a tale of peoples jostling for position.

Let's not talk of politics - the suffering has been bad enough. Was not Christopher Mpofu ordered to cut off his dreadlocks or lose his place? Even now he can scarcely bring himself to look at his pictures on Facebook. Did not Graeme Cremer's sister secure selection for the primary-school team before him. Are not these sufficient traumas?

The public and the press (and probably Siddons, a passionate ambassador for his charges) are seething. Players and team management have been forbidden from speaking to the press except in official, obligatory ICC press conferences.

Associated with the Board since 1975, the 70-year-old is now planning an infrastructure for the “next century.” The first step has been taken by procuring 42 acres of land just outside Chandigarh. “It will be a stadium that will last 100 years,” he promises. Just like Lord's. “Our focus would be on spectator comfort. We would create self-contained parking.”

For a while back then, there was a chance that Kevin Pietersen would become a great cricketer. The time has gone. As he prepared to leave England's World Cup campaign yesterday, 48 hours after it was announced that he would struggle through the tournament, the overwhelming feeling was of relief.