The Surfer

This is supposed to be the tournament that puts all those moribund moneyspinning seven-game series into some sort of context beyond the purely financial. But it has been so badly served by administrators' bloating the itinerary and so thoroughly eclipsed by a flashier, even more ephemerally enjoyable format that a failure to excite this time will just about render it redundant.

A clutch of recently injured players need to convince everyone, as soon as possible, they are back to full fitness and then shake off any rust. For Tim Bresnan (calf), Ajmal Shahzad (hamstring) and Graeme Swann (back), that opportunity will not come until Friday's second warm-up game, against Pakistan, at the earliest, but Paul Collingwood (back) may be able to play at least some part in tomorrow's fixture.

Only a particular form of genius can take an already bloated format, keep it exactly the same length and give it one inspired tweak. Namely, make absolutely sure you know the identity of the eight teams for the knockout stages before the first ball is bowled, then take a month to get there. It's all to do with money, of course, although one day the television companies and sponsors might twig that selling your product to that bloke on the sofa is not so easy if he happens to have fallen into an irreversible coma.

The crowds will be excitable, as always on the subcontinent, which is just as well because the matches in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh will be played on pitches seemingly prepared by an undertaker with embalming fluid.

Kohli’s cover drive finishes with a top-spin tennis-like flourish and without an extravagant follow through. The wrists come into play only once the bat meets the ball. The use of these supple, but strong wrists has also helped Kohli pick the gaps with ease ...

The makings of the cover drive, coach Raj Kumar Sharma had first witnessed before the Delhi lad turned 10. Even while an eight-year-old Kohli was picking up the nuances of the game at the West Delhi Cricket Academy — located within the premises of the St Sophia School in Paschim Vihar — his cover drive packed a punch, so to speak.

In the past two decades, council-run cricket facilities have disappeared faster than Jonathan Trott's hair. With no statutory obligation to provide leisure activities, the wonderful stock of pitches built up over the generations has disappeared. Health and safety, compensation culture: any excuse is seized by councils to absolve themselves of the business of preparing surfaces. And the cuts have provided the perfect fig leaf to complete the process. As with free tertiary education, vibrant local libraries and rural bus services, one of our greatest sporting achievements – the widespread provision of municipal pitches – is disappearing before our eyes.

Cricket loves its heroes. Tendulkar, Dhoni, Sehwag. Warne, Kallis, Steyn. For the next few months, the game's hero should be the Indian fan. Here come the world's two biggest cricket attractions, right on top of each other. On February 19, commences the 10th cricket World Cup, somehow strung out to 49 games. Then on April 8, less than a week after the World Cup final, begins the first of the 74 games of the fourth Indian Premier League (IPL). In any other country, this would be too much of a good thing. In India, too much is barely enough.

And yet this year's Cup does have a few things going for it. Bangladesh will relish the opportunity to stage such a significant event, and might be inspired to great deeds on and off the field. India's greatest players might seize this last chance to win a World Cup. Heck, the final is to be played in Mumbai, Sachin Tendulkar's home town. It's a mouth-watering prospect. Or the trophy might be taken by a new team. England might prove their recent surge is no mere flash in the pan cooked up by African coaches. Or South Africa might slay their albatross.

That's the beauty of sport. The past is an open book - the future is an empty page.

Like McGrath, Munaf approaches the crease at a stately trot, cocks his wrist under his chin as he moves adjacent to the umpire and skips economically into an upright delivery position. Like the Australian, Munaf delivers from extremely close to the stumps, and smiles only if Hawk-Eye tells him that his previous ball was on course to hit the top of off-stump.

He followed his own line, both on and off the pitch. Most remarkable were his astonishingly contemplative performances at the crease during times of crisis for the national team.

Behind that phlegmatic exterior, though, lurked a measure of mischief, often based on his willingness to confront the game's laws with as much determination as legally permissible, and reinforced by his obsessive desire to win.