The Surfer

If Cricket Australia officials want to have a whinge about India let them do so about how a bus full of Australian players have spent the last three years in the IPL and Australian cricket has barely got a round of drinks out of it.

Gatting might (rightly and voraciously) have spent many of the succeeding 24 years dining out on the feat but his remains the last England team in Australia to secure perhaps the greatest and most evocative of all international sporting trophies. There are sound reasons, Middlesex or not, for suggesting that Strauss may be instrumental in reducing the number of Gatt's banquet invitations, or at least the resonance of his introduction to the assembled throng.

The Chinese are very quick learners. Their complete devotion to mastering anything is simply awesome. Something that is missing in Pakistan and India.

But I must confess I have a few reservations as to whether, at this stage, Pro-Batter is really any better than the old bowling machines that I found such a useful practice tool in my day.

Things are, I am told, starting to change. The realisation is there now that the investment has to be at the most formative stages and this goes not just for players who might have been identified as potential elite cricketers but for those who wish to play cricket recreationally for the sake of the game. To this end one of the most heartening pieces of news to come from the ECB recently was that 33,000 coaches have graduated from the ECB Coach Education Programme, which is run in conjunction with Sky Sports, since the scheme was launched four years ago. That, as they point out, is enough to fill Lord's. No fewer than 10,000 of these have qualified in the past year alone.

Such thoughts are buzzing around the minds of most English cricket fans like flies around jam jars. Will the time Kevin Pietersen has spent in South Africa working with Graham Ford have put right whatever it is that has gone wrong with his game since 2009? Has Ian Bell finally come of age as a batsman? What will James Anderson do when the ball stops swinging after those few first overs? Is Steve Finn too callow? Is Paul Collingwood shot? Will Alastair Cook's technique hold up? Spend too much time brooding on it all and you'll risk slipping back to the English fans' factory settings – abject pessimism interspersed only by occasional flickers of futile hope.

'Fatherhood is the best thing in my life,’ said Pietersen. ‘Having not been selected by England at least I had the chance to spend a bit more time with the little man and it was magical. He’s amazing, absolutely amazing. I’ve worked out that I will be away from home for 220 days this winter and that will be tough. I will only see my family for a short while during that time. It will be the hardest thing this winter.

You might easily be forgiven for thinking that the prelude to this Ashes series had been drawn up by England, not Australia. After its obligatory series of meaningless one-dayers against Pakistan in September, England spent October toiling away in the nets, on pitches prepared to simulate Australian pitches, and using Australian balls. Then it decamped to Australia.

Some of the Australians spent the past six weeks playing in the Indian Champions League in South Africa, then in two Test matches against world No. 1 India in India, then in three meaningless one-dayers against India, two of which were washed out, rendering them in all senses pointless.

Traditionally, Australia first choose their eleven and pick the captain, usually the best batsman, from within (unlike England and India who first pick the captain, thus investing the job with a special aura). With Ponting showing that at 35 he is still the best batsman in the side but not necessarily its best captain, it might be time to throw tradition out of the window and pick a captain who is not necessarily the best player. Australia can afford to do without their most successful captain, but not without their most successful batsman.

Gavaskar says, “The ball was turning square and Raghuram Bhat was pretty much unplayable on that surface. Since he was a left-hand orthodox spinner getting the ball to turn and bounce sharply away from the right-handers, I thought that the way to counter that was by playing left handed where the ball would turn and bounce but hit the body harmlessly (without the risk of getting out leg before wicket).”

“I could understand the adverse reactions,” Gavaskar says. “It was felt that it was done in pique, but it was nothing like that at all. I felt I had zero chance against Raghu batting right handed, and since the match was already decided in Karnataka’s favour, I tried the tactic. If the match was in the balance, I certainly would not have batted left handed. Also, please remember I batted left handed only against Raghuram Bhat. When a right hand spinner (B Vijayakrishna) came along, I switched to batting right handed again.”