The Surfer

You need a certain type of seamer who reverse-swings it with a low arm and bowls stump to stump. Matthew Hoggard, for instance, got seven wickets here four years ago. You can get uneven bounce towards the end of the match but generally the ball just sits up and asks to be hit here if the taller bowlers bang it in short, something Stuart Broad and Steven Finn must be aware of. They need to kiss the pitch instead, keeping it low and moving it in to the batsmen

Some might think that, such are the demands of back-to-back Tests (there are just three days rest between the Tests in Brisbane and Adelaide), it might be best that the players did nothing. “Yes, these back-to-back Tests are very difficult,” says Bevan, “but often if you do nothing you feel worse than if you do some work. We were just blowing some cobwebs away.”

I can recall talking to him during a practice match at Northampton in 2009 where he was trying to regain some confidence but the self-doubt was consuming him. Only wickets will banish the demons from within. I am not sure leaving Mitch out of the Adelaide Test is the best option at present, but I can guarantee you that a selector coming out and stating that he is on borrowed time will help.

The last thing Test cricket needs in a world of Twenty20 is a series of draws that are virtually pre-determined. The Adelaide Oval, where the second Test starts on Friday, has a reputation for being flat rivalled only by X Factor participants.

Part of the problem lies with quality of the bowlers and that is beyond cricket's immediate control. However, the emphasis on ensuring that matches last five days is a mistake. Lively first-day tracks are essential.

Obviously it is a bit early to start worrying about a deadening series. But the warning signs cannot be missed. This was not a great Test. Ultimately it was a dud.

Despite the rain and what play there was available, the pitch said nothing. "You cannot gauge what a one-day match is going to be like from a Test match," Sangakkara said. “We have to see how the pitch behaves under lights. How it will play as more and more matches are played. How it behaves with the white ball.” It is one thing to restructure a playing surface, but without a genuine pre-Test trial with games being played, it is useless.

Sri Lanka captain Kumar Sangakkara, an old boy of Trinity College, grew up playing his cricket at Asgiriya and regretted not having the chance of playing international cricket at his school ground in the future. "I love playing at Asgiriya. It is a fantastic cricket wicket and it has produced great results. If you bat first you lose four or five wickets by lunch and then it settles down and it starts turning," Sangakkara who scored a match winning 152 in the last Test played here said.

To endure a hat-trick, a triple century partnership and still finish the Test with a few men huddled around the Australian batsmen, snarling away without looking too silly, suggests that the tourists finished with the psychological ascendancy. But the cricket itself has offered more concrete confirmation that England will head for Adelaide in a more cheerful frame of mind.

For years the Aussies lectured us about the special powers of the baggy green, but my feeling was always that any special powers they had were more to do with Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath. Would Australia's performance with the ball here on day four have been any different if Steve Waugh or Mark Taylor had been in charge? I don't think so. And the reason - regardless of the outcome of this game - is that this attack lack that extra bit of magic when the pitch is flat and the ball is old.

I'll always argue test cricket is more important than any other form but with a World Cup on the subcontinent next year our ODI form must be the priority. Two chances for development have so far been squandered. In the tri-series against Sri Lanka and India, pitch and weather conditions were very unsubcontinent-like and then in Bangladesh... well, let's not go there.

Though India did not enter a team, the competition nonetheless was rather broad based with nine teams participating. It may have been anything but world standard, still emerging at the top of the table took considerable grit and skill. We think, it is yet another step towards acquiring consistency of performance and falling into a winning groove which have so long deluded us.

When Hussey had added one quick single, to reach 82, Aleem Dar gave him out leg-before to Anderson. Hussey immediately called for the replay and won a reprieve. Channel Nine used to use HawkEye, as Sky do in England, but switched to a New Zealand-made system called Virtual Eye. It would be interesting to know if HawkEye would also have decided the centre of the ball had landed outside leg stump. Anderson persevered. He beat Hussey past his inside edge and outside edge. He beat Hussey when he defended and attacked.

Swann's bowling survived the ravages of "Mr Cricket", a fact confirmed by the excellent delivery which forced Marcus North, such an obdurate figure at times in the last Ashes series, to nudge a catch into the slips. That brought some of the old hauteur back to Swann – and also a rare burst of unstinted praise from maybe the most acerbic of all critics of English cricket, Geoffrey Boycott. He declared: "Graeme Swann has had so much success in Test cricket and not many starts like the one he has had here. When the Australians, and particularly Hussey, attacked him it was a bit of a crisis for both Swann and England – but I thought he came through it very well indeed."

The curse of money has led to the very appearance of the players changing. They no longer wear flannels and cotton shirts on which the sleeves can be rolled up and down: they are in pyjamas (coloured pyjamas for one-day matches) saturated with the logos of their various sponsors, and with ubiquitous sponsors' baseball caps for the mandatory post-match over-the-moon/sick-as-a-parrot interview imported from soccer (alongside the numbers on the back of the shirts in most forms of the game).

Hussey, 35, celebrated his 12th Test century with a highly-charged display of emotion, having been under pressure for some time to hold his place in the middle order. Haddin was more blase´, smashing Graeme Swann back over his head for six to reach his third Test century.

Throughout, Haddin was as still as a statue and as patient as a farmer. Previously he had impressed as an excellent straight driver and a dangerous but sporadically inconsistent scorer. He did not become a great player overnight but he did emerge as a proper batsman. Certainly he thought along those lines, establishing himself at the crease, building his innings and gradually widening his range of shots. In that regard it was a classical display. It was the most measured innings of his career.