The Surfer

Conventional wisdom says that Perry will eventually have to choose between her two sports, but she will not countenance that idea and, remarkably, neither sport is prepared to give her an ultimatum. In a day when the major sports are getting down and dirty to fight for the best male talent in the land, cricket and soccer have been remarkably co-operative when it comes to the talented Perry.

Under the customs of the ICC the other directors were duty bound to accept him. Instead they have worked themselves into a fluster of fake indignation. In reality they are scared of Howard. After all, he might call them to account. There are plenty of reasons to object to the former prime minister, none to block his path.

This is a man who took a hundred off the Aussies at The Brit Oval in as highly pressurised a game as he will ever play and then did much to save the first Test against South Africa at Centurion with a rearguard effort when the country of his birth were pushing for victory.

It can't be easy being Test match whipping boys, fronting up expecting another hiding. But they could help themselves by adopting a more positive approach. They seem fatalist in their bowling changes and field settings, almost as if they are apologising for being there. They are like awestruck footballers reluctant to put in serious challenges on more celebrated opponents for fear it would be insulting. They are over-respectful of the batsmen they come up against.

I have never believed that good batsmen should be pigeonholed as specialists in one form of the game unable to make it in another. The best players can succeed in any format if they are given a chance to settle. Just look at how Jacques Kallis and Rahul Dravid have taken to Twenty20, which was supposed to be a young man's game. This is not to say that Morgan will necessarily succeed. The one clear early hurdle he must clear is showing he can play the short ball. That is always a key indication of whether a good one-day batsman can also perform in Test cricket. A player who struggles against bouncers will never do well in Tests.

If you were hoping to cast your eyes over the best England XI for the opening match of the summer, you will be disappointed. As “managing his workload” goes, Stuart Broad’s withdrawal is not quite in the Chris Tremlett class (he was withdrawn from Surrey’s opening match of the season — opening match! — because he was “managing his workload”), nevertheless it is a disappointment. It is, after all, the first Test of the summer. The daughter of the Deputy Editor of this newspaper will regret that his cherubic features will be absent from our screens over the next five days.

Steven Finn should be exciting to watch and I'd have him in my team for the first Test match in Brisbane. He's a perfect player for that environment and a lot of people are saying he's reminiscent of Glenn McGrath. It would be ideal for England if he could get anywhere near as good as that.

Young David Miller certainly looks the part of an international cricketer just two games into his career and South Africa still have one of the most potent bowling attacks in the world. Kallis and De Villiers would be the envy of most major nations in the middle order and Graeme Smith remains a formidable leader despite the nagging and often unmerited criticism from his detractors.

Traditionally in cricket, the senior players in a team act as mentors for the newcomers. When a 16-year-old Sachin Tendulkar made his debut in Pakistan two decades ago, Sanjay Manjrekar, older by seven years, and seen those days as a potential India captain, mentored his Mumbai colleague. In his autobiography M.C.C., Colin Cowdrey has written about how on his first tour, the England skipper Len Hutton sought out Cowdrey Sr. and assured him, “I’ll look after him.”

Admittedly in the limited-overs arena, in particular, a string of low scores can be deceptive: Duminy bats in the middle order and has been commendably unselfish in sacrificing his wicket when there’s a late-innings slog on. That has been apparent a couple of times on the current, extended South African sojourn in the Caribbean, and especially in the Proteas’ dismal ICC World Twenty20 campaign, where he was one of several players who suffered from unacceptably torpid tempos at the top of the order and the haywire that can cause for the soldiers stationed lower down it. But we also can’t use that indefinitely as a mitigating shield to protect Duminy.