The Surfer

Sinclair last played a test against England in 2008. His story is one of New Zealand cricket's most thumbed - two double hundreds and a 150 against Allan Donald, Shaun Pollock and Makhaya Ntini at Port Elizabeth. Those considerable spikes stand out among a pile of troughs and eventually he was dispensed with, only to return as a stop-gap for an ODI against the West Indies a year after his previous appearance. He has had a good season with CD, averaging 58; he has 29 first-class hundreds and a 48.81 average. The problem is: would you put your shirt on getting more runs from Vettori at No 6 or Sinclair anywhere in the order?

McCullum has a terrific work ethic but must split that work between batting, keeping and fitness. His batting quality gained him selection as a wicketkeeper and, to his credit, he has been able to turn himself into the best keeper in the country, but he has yet to realise his true quality as a batsman.

There's nothing new in the power of money shaping cricket's destiny. It's 230 years since Thomas Lord put a fence around his ground and began charging admission. Gamblers and publicans sponsored much of the game's early development. But the ideology of cricket, as it developed in the 19th and for much of the 20th century, disdained the cash nexus. Sordid monetary affairs were disguised behind the cult of amateurism and its ugly shadow, "shamateurism".

It is not just the lure of a noisefest that will bring an audience, however, nor even the attraction that is Twenty20 cricket. Rather it is the pricing. Affordability, so goes the official line, is the key. Tickets cost from US$3 (about £2) for single group stage matches (US$5 for double headers) and US$8 for Super Eight games, while semi-finals are US$10-20, with admission to the final in Barbados on May 16 costing US$20-40.

At the T20 World Cup last year in England, on the eve of South Africa’s semifinal, I got an SOS visit from my Delhi Daredevils’ mate, AB de Villiers in Trent Bridge. India, unfortunately, were already out of the championship and AB, one of the mainstays of the Proteas line-up, had broken all his bats.

He dropped in and asked if he could borrow one of mine. I just said, “My kitbag’s over there, open it and take what you want. We’re out, you’re in, they're all yours”.

“It’s a funny story. I grew up in the bush so I was kind of seeking the city lifestyle. Now I find myself looking for the quiet life again, where I belong. I live 6kms away from Falcon. Ku Harare ndinombouya, but kunotyisa. Isusu tajaira mudondo, tinotsvaga quiet life (I come to Harare once in a while, but it scares me. People like me are used to the bush), ” he explains.

There's no doubt that bad governance from politically motivated, less-than-competent cricket board officials has also contributed hugely to the current cricket scenario. More often than not, it has been the PCB heads themselves - including Lt Gen Tauqir Zia, Shaharyar Khan, Dr Nasim Ashraf and now Ijaz Butt - who have made monsters out of level-headed, talented players like Inzamam-ul-Haq, Yousuf, Shoaib Akhtar, Afridi and many others.

It’s quite absurd actually. If things were so bad in the national team for so many months that you were forced to kick several big names out of it then what was the Board and the management it had hired to run the team was doing all that time? If Shoaib Malik and Rana Naved-ul-Hasan made so much trouble in Australia that the PCB had to ban them for a year, then what stopped it from calling them back home when the tour was still in progress? Why didn’t the team management take action against them and the other culprits then and there when it had the mandate to so?

You also wonder how much both Ashraful and Mortaza have been affected by IPL fortune. The Knight Riders' signing of Mortaza for $600,000 represented perhaps the most bizarre acquisition in the annals of sport. As everyone assembled at the auction in Goa and thousands watching on TV scratched heads in disbelief, he joined the august rank of misfits like the footballers Andrea Silenzi and Juan Sebastián Verón. Apart from being carted all over the park by Rohit Sharma in a match that the Knight Riders had as good as won, he did next to nothing in South Africa.