The Surfer

Is Morgan's basic technique that unconventional anyway? He does have a low, tight grip on the bat handle. But Sanath Jayasuriya didn't have too shabby a career with something similar. And Morgan dips slightly as the bowler approaches – dangerous because if it happens too late the eyes are moving and a moving camera always takes unreliable pictures of line and length – but so does Trescothick, and he has managed just fine.

"Ironically, as a boy, I saw the West Indies. When I started to play at school, I thought of them. I have worked very hard, training hard. You have to do that or you would not last any time at all, much less 20 years. When you have the natural love of a game, and have done so much hard work over the years, realising that you have had so much difficulty to get into the team in the first place, you know that you will have to keep up that work ethic to still be playing. I eat well, train hard and focus on my efforts and work; major keys to fitness and success."

Accordingly it may seem churlish to suggest they cannot have it both ways. Sincerity, though, is not the issue. Every estate has its part to play. As has amply been proved in India over the last few weeks, the media is the watchdog. All the more reason to insist that it is free to bark whenever it sees fit.

The six can still shed new light on cricketers you felt you already knew well. Against Ireland Luke Wright could be seen making an unexpected American-style whooping noise mid-pitch after crunching a straight hit into the sightscreen, the sort of noise you might hear in a 1980s movie set in a rowdy hard-living country and western-ish bar just before a violent brawl breaks out, perhaps involving Patrick Swayze doing stiff-backed kung fu.

And of course the Following. In the zone where privacy and public space overlap, Twitter is mostly the Facebook of the Famous. It is where the average fan, linked to his favourite, can stalk without being charged. He can read the ‘star’s’ thoughts, check his spelling, hear him speak, see his personal photos without managers or mikes, bodyguards or boundaries.

To be honest, it is not my nature to share a lot (of views). I am a bit of a reserved, private person, but yes, I wouldn't mind sharing a few things. But also, making sure that my personal life is not affected or out in the public completely. It's just striking that fine balance between both and letting people know what I have been up to. The balance is going to be important.

Rules apply to the players (‘Thou shalt not try to better your lot’ as in the case of Ravindra Jadeja), laws to the game (leg before, size of the bat etc), but neither rules nor laws nor regulations seem to apply to officialdom. Till things go wrong, that is, and then everybody looks for a scapegoat who can absorb everybody’s sins. This is not merely the story of the IPL or indeed of the cricket board; it is the story of Indian sport.

Four years ago, when Yadav hitched a truck ride to Nagpur from his village to play a game of tennis ball cricket, he wouldn’t have dreamt where the 25-km journey might take him. Packing his bags in a mad rush on Thursday, Yadav was in a daze. But those who know him were saying they always felt his raw, natural pace would fast-track him to international cricket.

Filming in Afghanistan, in the middle of a war, does not sound the easiest of tasks, but Albone told me this week that only once, returning from Jalalabad, when they were held up by a roadside bombing, did they feel threatened. Otherwise, he says, the war was a footnote to the story. “We wanted to give the Afghans a voice,” he says, and, of course, they wanted to talk cricket rather than war.

Take the West Indies game. England batted superbly, it’s true: an explosive starter, a consolidatory main course and a dreamy dessert. But it wasn’t Frank Duckworth or Tony Lewis who allowed West Indies to batter 30 off 2.2 overs before the rain came and apparently skewed the maths thereafter. Neither did D/L contribute to the eight wides England conceded in 5.5 overs. The truth was England were sloppy and Ryan Sidebottom bowled the wrong length to Chris Gayle. And, don’t forget, West Indies scraped home with only one ball to spare: this was no stroll.

The real good that wealth does is to create more wealth and extend it (however unevenly) to more and more people. The ‘percolation model’ of enrichment is morally repugnant, but it is the model that seems to work most consistently among imperfect human beings. The most depressing feature of the IPL affair is not the money involved, nor the alleged wrongdoing, but the utterly sterile use of that money. It has generated no employment, created no national assets, had no triggering effect on the economy.