The Surfer

That ball bounced a bit, it didn't turn as much as others. I remember just floating it up. I saw Cook catch it. I know people say they don't remember what happened next but I don't remember what happened next for the next five or 10 minutes.

I have seen a video of me being interviewed afterwards and I look as drunk as though I had been drinking for 12 hours. It was a phenomenal moment. I was drunk with joy and it was the first time in my life that I have experienced anything like that, especially through sport, apart from when Newcastle beat Manchester United 5-1 about 15 years ago.

It would be foolish to depend on a very small group of players and then discover when the need arises that the replacements are not ready. Skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni for example, is now forced to miss two matches because of India's poor over-rate in the Nagpur one-dayer. This means a wicketkeeper, who hasn't kept for a while, will have to do the job. Yet an intelligent policy of rotation would have ensured that such a person is ready to deliver. This is not to say that Dhoni should be dropped from the team at regular intervals, only that there should be a plan to introduce one or two players into the team just so they keep in touch.

Today, every player in the Indian team can slide. But in the last decade or so, the slide, the dive and the lunge have clearly become excessive and very often unnecessary. Frequently now, you will see a fielder chasing the ball come almost next to the ball and then employ the slide. This takes him a good two meters past the ball before he gets up on his feet and throws the ball back. By doing this he is actually taking a second or two more than he would, if he had just picked up the ball and threw.

There were many heroes in this match, a slow-burning affair that ignited dramatically in the final session of the fifth day. There was Graeme Swann, man of the match for his five wickets and a half-century of glorious exuberance; there was Friedel de Wet, the fresh-faced newcomer, who, late in the day, was given the second new ball by his captain and who nearly bowled his team to victory, taking three wickets after tea, and there was Jonathan Trott, whose five hours of self- restraint on the final day took his team to the point of safety. But without Collingwood’s calmness, toughness and experience throughout the final 34 overs of a pulsating final session, England would have lost.

To me there are two types of batsmen - personality players and situation players. Pietersen is so good that he always plays the same way, the personality way, the ego way. But Trott is impressive in a very different way because he clearly plays the situation, as he has done so well in his highly productive first two Tests for England.

In the Delhi Test against us, my last, the one that earned Gautam Gambhir a ban for having a go at Watson, the same umpire and the match referee were officiating. At that time, the umpire Billy Bowden didn’t see it fit to report Simon Katich who had later obstructed Gautam and the match referee Chris Broad too didn’t bother to act on his own or follow it up with the onfield umpires even though it was very much evident on TV. And as on that occasion, the provocateurs got away in Perth too, with Haddin and Johnson receiving minor reprimands. There doesn’t seem to be any punishment forthcoming for someone who provokes and that to me is against the principles of natural justice.

A few weeks ago in Bridgetown, Barbados, at the headquarters of West Indies cricket, at a press conference to launch the sale of tickets for next year's World Twenty20 tournament in the West Indies - and while Dr Hilaire and Robert Bryan of the World Twenty20 organising committee were speaking eloquently about steel bands, horns, and pot covers, about rum and local cuisine, about dancing and singing, and about producing a "party" to remember - a few stalwarts of West Indies cricket, great players like Sir Everton Weekes, Sir Garfield Sobers, Gordon Greenidge, and Joel Garner, asked one question. They asked the gentlemen representing the West Indies Cricket Board what the board was doing to prepare the West Indies team so that, unlike the 2007 World Cup, the West Indies could make a strong bid for the title.

Dr Hilaire and Bryan could not answer the question.

"A lot of people have asked me what Michael is like. The way he is being portrayed is interesting because people are asking me a lot about him. I don't know the answer. I'm not in the inner circle anymore. I'd be guessing if I answered that."

Not even a surprising decision by a third umpire prepared to ignore the evidence provided by Hot Spot, and so the review system, could take the gloss off a superb chase by the West Indies or a deserved victory by Australia. The West Indians can be proud of their performance. In times past they were granted five-match series but their stocks have fallen and they stand near the bottom of the rankings.

For years they played with arrogance and a sense of entitlement to victory and all the privileges that go with it. But now they have lost their invincibility, opponents loudly question their credentials. Clearly, this irks those accustomed to constant success and, as was the case here, frustrations abound and raw emotions are exposed. Furthermore, few members of this team feel secure and therefore are fractious and vulnerable.