The Surfer

The worrying part about this current team is that the same thing keeps happening. No one has shown they want to bat through the 50 overs and get a hundred.

There is no plan that they're trying to stick to. At the moment there is that much inconsistency that I think people are going to have to start answering questions.

Now we come to the heart of the matter. Why do inaccuracies creep in beyond the 2.5 metre mark? This was the reason that allowed Bell to stay at the wicket even when Hawk-eye showed the ball clearly hitting the stumps.

Players these days are well-trained in handling media, and Haddin has been around a while. He ought to have said that the ICC had a job to do and if there was an investigation, it was no issue to him. That he'd done nothing wrong and his biggest problem was trying to hit the Zimbabwean spinners off the square at the start of that game; that Ray Price, Zimbabwe's dart-thrower, cannot even spell the word loop, and is actually one of the better bowlers going around in one-day cricket. That would have done.

As O'Brien connected with the initial few balls he faced, everybody thought his efforts would amount to nothing more than a defiant gesture. Strauss would have thought it only a matter of time before the Dubliner slogged one up in the air. As his innings progressed, however, and the text messages of "Are you watching this?" began to flash around, concentration on work began to diminish. For a while you relent but then, suddenly, you make a decision – "I've got to watch this".

In India, I saw a side whose undeniably stellar batting, particularly on familiar pitches, ought to be able to bat other teams into oblivion but whose generally mediocre bowling and pedestrian fielding was unable to defend 338 against a batting side as lacking in depth as England's.

In England, I saw a thin bowling attack, shallow batting, and fielding that has yet to come up to scratch. Thus far at any rate, neither look a patch on South Africa, for whom Imran Tahir is a huge bonus, or even Sri Lanka, or Pakistan or Australia.

If there are bigots and homophobes out there, they are hardly likely to announce themselves now. They will bide their time. I worry in particular about Twenty20 crowds. They are not exactly your typical cricket gatherings.

There are a number of smart alecs, cowards who can make their comments often without punishment. I just hope they don’t target Davies. And if they do, colleagues, opponents and officials must act. It must not be tolerated.

Until he [Strauss] took over as England captain two years ago he wasn’t even considered a one-day batsman … All Strauss has really done is added a bit of purpose to an otherwise sound method.

The one extra dimension he has added to his one day game is six-hitting. He rarely hit balls over the ropes until two years ago when he adapted his prowess at golf – he plays off five – into his batting.

Watching Pakistan win at the Premadasa on Saturday, I realised that this team isn't a touring cricket side; it's a travelling theatre troupe, a lunatic repertory company. Tickets to Pakistan matches ought to cost double: Afridi's little army creates more drama in a single Power Play than most sides manage in a whole tournament. Imagine an Indian team made up mostly of Sreesanths and you have an inkling of the theatrical potential of this brilliant gang of drama queens.

Modi would sit, either in his own box or in the box of the home team, and mug for the Modicam, the camera deputed to follow him around in each game. He would chant team slogans and sing team songs, the metal rims of his spectacles glinting in the spotlights … But through all these lusty exhibitions of fandom, Modi would be acutely alert to the demands of his positions as IPL commissioner … his eyes always cocked for something going wrong — for an unwanted guest in an exclusive box, or for a brand not getting quite as much play as it had paid for.

If the IPL’s story is unusual, the story of its architect is positively bizarre. With a string of business failures, a personality with all the tenderness of a battering ram, and a host of foes, Modi shouldn’t have been able to build anything nearly as successful as the IPL. Somehow, and very rapidly, he did — and then, just as rapidly, just when he was perched atop the world, he lost it all.

Davies has been set upon announcing that he is gay for some months. All that has been at issue has been when and how. Midway through the Ashes series was universally agreed not to be a very good idea. But while he has agonised about the detail, the chilled-out support of the England dressing room has helped to stiffen his resolve.

This is not just the England squad that won the Ashes in Australia, this is the England squad that learned officially before the Ashes tour of a gay man in its midst, shrugged, dealt with it, offered its backing and got on with trying to win cricket matches. If Davies is now automatically an icon for young gay men who wish to play any kind of team sport while being open about their sexuality, never mind achieve at the highest level, then the England cricket team deserves to be seen as a model for a team that dealt with admirable sang-froid with the recognition that it had a gay man in its midst.