The Surfer

Whether, with the exception of Buttler for Prior, the XI who take the field remain the same is another matter: they ought not to be. There is always a school of thought that suggests those who got things into a mess deserve the chance to rectify it. After a fashion, this is how Cook's continuation as captain, and indeed player, might be viewed. It is certainly the stance that he takes, although he does not use the word "deserve". He does not wish to be seen quitting on a job for which, as captain, he is taking responsibility not just for his recent failings but those of others, senior colleagues largely, as well

Buttler kept wicket at school but it was his batting that astounded and won him a contract at Somerset. His first games for the club were as a batsman, who could strike the ball with staggering purity - and as a quite breathtaking outfielder. Only when England called up Somerset's regular keeper, Craig Kieswetter, to their one-day side did Buttler take the gloves for the county. Initially he did this more out of duty than unbridled enthusiasm.

Cook will not want to resign. He would see that as a capitulation, a big failure of personality. But there was a revealing signal at Monday's post-match presentation, when he said that he was going to continue until he felt a "tap on the shoulder".
To me, that was almost like a cry for help. Somewhere deep down, I believe Cook wants the selectors to step in and pull him out of the fire, before it gets so hot that we lose him for good. This is a man with the capacity to score 13,000 Test runs.

It is as if England have no direction and there's no common sense in the dressing room. Cook needs to go as captain and maybe stay for one more Test as a batsman only. In the famous Ashes series of 1981, Ian Botham resigned the captaincy after making a pair at Lord's, releasing all the mental pressure on himself, and then went out and performed heroics at Headingley.
Maybe the same process could work for Cook.
We saw Cook receive an almost silent welcome from the MCC members on Sunday as he walked back through the pavilion gate, just as Botham did all those years ago. The issues are staring everybody in the face.

England had tried to wind up Jadeja but it hadn't worked. Had they checked with someone in the Saurashtra dressing room, they would have known that instigating Ravindra, or any other Jadeja, a community of warriors and rulers, is always counter-productive. His coach from school days in Jamnagar, Mahendrasinh Chauhan, had once spoken about this 'Jadeja mindset'. "Ravindra plays like a Jadeja. We are a very proud community and have a certain ego."

When they are not looking so lonely and miserable, we look at modern wicketkeepers as blessed, because they are now all-rounders. If they do have a bad day with the gloves, they can always better it with the bat.

It will be in the second innings here - when India will be the real vultures, which at least has a little ornithological accuracy as the birds are making a welcome comeback in pockets of the subcontinent - and in the Tests at Southampton, Manchester and at The Oval, if he survives that long, that Cook must save himself. "I'm not sure he will come through this," said Brearley, with devastating honesty. "A lot will depend on the next match or two. If England lose this series and he fails to get any big scores, it will be hard for him to stay in the job.""

When you're used to bowling in India it is not easy to adjust quickly to bowling overseas. That's because in India it is very easy to find the right pace to bowl at as a spinner as compared to these conditions. Since most wickets in India are pretty slow and low, even if you are a little wayward, you don't get punished. In England and especially Australia, if you pitch it slightly short or wide, you get smashed. I'm sure Ashwin can bowl really well outside India because his record in India is fantastic. And if he can do it there he can do it anywhere.

"Not too far back, I used to sit with the players in the dressing room. Now, I can't go anywhere near them. During the 1974 tour, when India was all out for 42, I offered the players incentive to play well -- 25 pounds for a ton and 5 pounds for wickets. Even when Tendulkar scored 91 in 2007 and India won, I ordered a dozen bottles of champagne," says Puri.

I was shown one further thing. A split screen showed an empty indoor net and two deliveries from a leg-spinner. Each pitched and turned from leg to off, and the picture was then frozen at the point of what would have been impact with a pad in a neutral position. One was striking at about half-stump height, the other maybe two-thirds high. What did I think happened next ?

The first, I suggested, would probably be deemed hitting near the top of the stumps and the second clearing, but I suspected that they were in fact the same delivery filmed from a different height. This was indeed the case, and it showed how wrong we can be when we look incredulous when a ball we think is clearly going to hit is shown to be clearing them by a distance: both were hitting. The perspective is entirely contingent on the height of the camera behind the arm, the lower the camera the better. An ideal one would be in the top of the middle stump at either end.

Take his hundred in the 2011 World Cup final, not because it proved or disproved his quality as a winning batsman, but because it was just an exquisite piece of work, to be appreciated for itself and isolated from something as piddling as a result.

"I do get frustrated at times by them focusing so much on the pace of the bowler," said Jim Allenby, the Glamorgan seamer who averages 27 in first-class cricket. "Equally this obsession with tall bowlers I don't quite understand. At the moment, if you are tall you get taken away to an England programme and if you are fast you get taken away to an England programme. Someone like James Harris, or Will Gidman or countless others are not getting the same recognition as a guy who takes half the wickets and is a foot taller or bowls 10mph quicker."

Wazir's determined innings owed much to an inspired piece of amateur dramatics, which he recalled with relish nearly 50 years later. "I was hit on the front foot by an inswinging full toss from Statham. It was painful, but I could have carried on. However, I decided to stay on the ground, pretending that I could not get up ... I glimpsed the wicketkeeper, Godfrey Evans, from the corner of my eye and could see that he was taken in. He told Brian Statham to pitch it up because I would not be able to play on the front foot. In fact, I wanted the ball pitched up, because short balls on that wicket were much harder to face ... Statham and the other bowlers did pitch it up and I remembered to groan in pain and hop about when I used my front foot."