The Surfer

Perhaps a whitewash for either team would have adjusted the balance a bit, but Australia were warm favourites for the Ashes before the ODIs began, and they are still warm favourites now. There is so much that will be different on 25 November in Brisbane, when the first of five Tests starts: a raucous, partisan crowd, a red Kookaburra ball, and changes in personnel for both teams.

Neither starting XI can be determined beyond vague conjecture, particularly in the case of Australia whose fast bowling cortege has been badly affected by injuries for a while.

"I'm not an obsessive kind of guy. But if you speak to cricketers in general, you'll find we're all a bit crazy. We've all got our own weird routines. But I don't do mine to annoy opponents or to be different. I just do it to get myself ready.

"Alec Stewart used to look around behind square-leg before each ball, but no one used to go on about that. But because my crease-scratching takes a little bit longer, and because maybe there wasn't much else to talk about during my double-hundred at Lord's, people started to hone in on it."

The allrounder has been out of action since last summer due to knee surgery, and the 32-year-old has become more of a celebrity than a cricketer since the final Test at The Oval. Flintoff cannot expect to breeze back into a side which has just won the World Twenty20 and is forming a formidable unit in one-day international cricket. This kind of situation is where the selectors earn their money because there will inevitably be a clamour from the media to bring the Lancastrian straight back in.

Ricky Ponting admitted he would love to have Tait in his side for the Ashes, and that all depends on the balance of his pace attack as a whole. If the likes of Ben Hilfenhaus, Mitchell Johnson and Peter Siddle can rattle through a hefty number of overs between them, it would allow Tait to play purely as a strike bowler. Whoever else Australia pick in their pace attack, they would have to be the economical, work-horse type what could enable Tait to fly in with short, sharp and destructive spells. It is in these situations that coaches need to be brave, and Tim Nielsen will know that if Tait is asked to play in the Ashes he would surely do so - but is he courageous enough to pick his side accordingly?

It was, as people said all day, approaching the 125th year of continual cricket at the field, once a portion of the Delafield estate but now owned by the city and known as Walker Park. The players who came out that day were not the British officers of yore, but Bangladeshi cabbies, Indian computer engineers and a Pakistani man who owns an auto-body shop. The Ladies’ Outdoor Amusement Club was not on hand to administer refreshments. Instead, there was D.J. Ralphie, of the so-called Chutney Bastards, blasting rowdy soca from a laptop.

“This is a momentous occasion,” said Clarence Modeste, president of the Staten Island squad. Mr. Modeste, a tall, slim man who is 80 and a native of Tobago, recognized the afternoon with a heartfelt introduction delivered to the teams, both dressed in their blazers and lined up facing one another on the field.

St Peter's Cathedral - where the world's cricketing royalty bade farewell to Donald Bradman in 2001 - will be unseen from most of the ground when the oval becomes a multi-purpose stadium. Much more will be lost when the elegant old ground morphs into a 50,000 seat colosseum in order to welcome football back in four years.

There is a crucial difference between the composition of the ICC groups discussing this seminal restructuring and the MCC world committee. One former Test cricketer will be involved in the ICC's conversations, David Richardson, their head of cricket. It will otherwise include professional administrators. Whereas the MCC group is chaired by Tony Lewis, who with due respect, is one of its least illustrious members. The rest include former Test cricketers and accomplished men such as Andy Flower, Martin Crowe, Mike Atherton, Rahul Dravid, Majid Khan and, as it happens, Dave Richardson.

What is abundantly clear, though, is that international cricket is so rife with racial and cultural division that the future of its competitive framework is at risk. Soon after Howard's candidature for ICC office was announced, I suggested here that international cricket did not need Howard, it needed Nelson Mandela. Of course, there's only one Mandela, and that's the point. It will take an inordinately special human being to defuse the game's tensions.

I think those who favour Howard and his "honest" ways, and see this as a fight between the corrupt ICC and the common man, have failed to see the suspicion or even the depth of dislike the man evokes in our region.