The Surfer

Forget the quality of the opposition. Forget the paltry crowds. Think instead of a variety of venues, and an itinerary that puts the emphasis on match fitness rather than looking like a Manpower model. One week, you could be batting on a placid pitch where boredom is the biggest threat, and the next week will find you struggling to put wood on leather as the ball swings and seams prodigiously in overcast conditions.

As a slow bowler, you could revel one week on a dry surface and then get belted the next as the ball moves little off the straight. It adds up to the kind of well-rounded education that every young professional needs.

There is no doubt he was in the wrong. He made two mistakes. Firstly, it was clear he had no intention of hitting the stumps with his throw. Secondly, he reacted badly. He should have said sorry sincerely. Instead he offered only a cursory apology, as though he felt it was just a necessary gesture he had to make. As a coach I do not think the situation calls for anything other than a quick, quiet chat with him, over breakfast or at one side of the next net session. You do not need to call a meeting or take a headmaster's approach, lecturing the player about how you never want to see them doing that kind of thing again. These are grown people after all.

Despite his [Cook's] fine overall record, he does not imbue anyone with much confidence. What he probably needs is an outing for Essex at Twenty20 finals day on Saturday with instructions to forget about footwork and backlift and go and give the ball a thump. After failing against a good attack on two tricky surfaces, he should probably be given the chance to recover his poise in more benign conditions in the third Test at the Oval.

I said last season, when Broad's place was being questioned by some, that England should invest in him and stick by him and he has become an integral and exciting member of this England team.

NZC have tried to keep Ryder on track. They recognise what he can do for New Zealand on the field. His test average of 49.88 is the best of all New Zealand batsmen with a minimum of 20 innings. There is also a milk of human kindness aspect, in that it is right they try to help someone in their wider family who has his problems. But when NZC's general manager Geoff Allott said Ryder "clearly understands we will not tolerate a repetition of this type of behaviour" and confirmed that another similar incident would terminate his contract, it seems a line has been drawn.

Jesse Ryder needs to be made to sing for his supper. His lucrative national contract should be ripped up and he should be placed on match payments. If he's fit and in form, he plays and gets paid. If he gets pissed he doesn't. Everyone's tired of Ryder. His team-mates, New Zealand Cricket, us.

Instead of going into a shell, Yuvraj must enjoy the challenge and banish any negative thoughts the Asia Cup snub might bring to his mind. The grapevine has it that he sulked when he was replaced by Kumar Sangakkara as the Kings XI Punjab skipper. At the P Sara Oval, the venue of the third and final Test, he was heckled by drunk fans when going out with the drinks. ‘Waterboy’ they shouted, and got under his skin. It hasn’t been an easy outing.

Of the many things he has not been given credit for is filling the bowlers with the confidence to bat around him. Yesterday, while even Sachin Tendulkar played and missed, Laxman looked like he was batting on another planet altogether. One where the ball never spins, the bounce is always true and pacemen bowl short only to give him an opportunity to swivel and hook.

It is like any television cameras. The difficulty with the technology is that it is restricted military equipment. In order to use it, you need to apply to the government of the country that produces the equipment and to the government of the country that uses it. It is a military-based camera that is being used first time outside the military. So, this involves a lot of paper work. I can’t take the camera to the US. I can use it in Australia, New Zealand, England, South Africa, France, UAE and India. There is also a catch here.

''It is hard to keep yourself up all the time,” Hussey said, “but it's about pride of performance, and that every game I play I have to win, irrespective of who's playing. If I'm playing with [his wife] Kristy, if I'm playing with you, I'm going to have to win the game. You might be a gun squash player - well, I'm happy to take you down.''

Modi’s current coordinates on this glittering itinerary of leisure is in Bali, for another holiday in a rented house. This will be followed by Bangkok, where his father, K.K. Modi, will celebrate his 70th birthday later this month. And then to perhaps another party, which prompts a BCCI official to chuckle: “He calls himself a businessman? He certainly holidays like no other businessman in history. Reminds me of how he dropped everything and camped in Rajasthan for years to get into cricket administration!”

The feeling in the board is that if Modi had any belief in winning his fight to keep control over the IPL, he’d have offered a bitter, tooth-and-nail fight. “This is the only venture he’s been successful in life, after countless failures in business, and he’d hate to give it up,” says a BCCI official. “However, the fact that he’s staying out of India instead of fighting it out suggests he’s aware of the futility of it all. Instead, he’s just arguing that the BCCI committee is biased, and wants its members to recuse themselves.”