The Surfer

When it comes to it, ambition is a tricky animal. There are those who say overtly coveting this particular job questions if you are the best man for it. Hence the pause. "The truth is I hope I continue to get opportunities, whether it be one-day cricket, now with Twenty20 cricket or hopefully one day I get the chance to captain in Test cricket," Clarke admits. "But it is all so far away. Right now, I am over the moon and stoked I have been given the chance to captain the Twenty20. My leader, still, is Ricky Ponting.”

Amid all the backslapping, it is a point worth pondering. Ricky Ponting's side has slipped to fourth place in the rankings. Along the way, captain and selectors have blundered, with the wrong teams chosen, pitches misread and puzzling tactics pursued at critical moments.

They are trying to pick a fight with Andrew Strauss and Andy Flower. You have to admire them for this. It's the equivalent of trying to goad a right hook from a Carmelite nun. England's cricket captain, who has the impeccable manners and smiling geniality of Lord Peter Wimsey and Boris Johnson combined, is generally acknowledged to be the nicest man in sport. The mild-mannered Flower, meanwhile, he who made the stand of his life against Robert Mugabe's wicked rule in Zimbabwe, is presumably rather beyond such trivialities as what Arthur thinks of his coaching style.

No player of any sport anywhere has so epitomised the notion of making the most of the ability at his disposal. In its way it has been a miracle because when the well, never full, has run dry, he has somehow been able to re-stock it. Sometimes he has needed a dowsing rod as much as a bat.

The advent of protection for batsmen from the late 1970s has been the biggest change to the game since the introduction of overarm bowling. It has altered profoundly the balance between bat and ball ... Nobody, bar Richards probably, is crazy enough to suggest that helmets should be banned. Nobody wants to see people dying for their sport. But to suggest that Tendulkar — or, indeed, any modern, armoured or, to use Richards’s phrase, “pampered” player — is the best ever is demeaning to those former greats who stood at the crease in the knowledge that their next ball could be their last.

Lord's is just the perfect mix of new and old. There are some historic places that you respect but they just seem run down, perhaps in need of a lick of paint. But all the new stands at Lord's complement the splendour of the pavilion perfectly and the proposed new structures at the Nursery End look to be perhaps the best yet.

Lord's is not known as the home of the sport because it's prepared to sell its soul to the highest bidder. It has its reputation because it's an arena where everyone who enters – player or spectator – feels a sense of tradition and history. Even now, 30 years after first entering the ground, I feel privileged when I drive through the Grace Gates or walk through the Long Room. Renaming such areas of the ground, which would be inevitable should rights be sold, would cheapen the experience. Looking at the dressing-room honours boards that represent those who have scored hundreds or taken five-wicket hauls at the ground, would become like reading the menu at a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise.

Alone of the three forms, alone also among major sports, Test cricket is exclusively a daylight game. In its heyday that did not matter because all sport was played in the daytime. But for 25 years sport has been moving into the night. The biggest football fixtures are played after dark, the biggest tennis matches, too. At the Olympics, the biggest days are nights.