The Surfer

What made his series all the more disappointing is that he is obviously one of the stars of world cricket. It's easy to like big Mitch, and there is a distinct reluctance in cricket circles to criticise him. But the truth is, he went from being Australia's trump card to its biggest liability in the space of two months. Twenty wickets at 32 apiece looks fine on paper, but it fails to tell the tale of the lack of control he gave his captain. By the time he got to the series-decider at the Oval, Johnson was a broken man. His bouncers in the second innings were pitching just metres in front of his own foot, and his inept shot in getting out to Steve Harmison near game's end encapsulated his hangdog mindset.

The bowling was poor, but a large part of South Africa's problem was their predictability. England's pre-game team meeting focused on four things: don't get out to Steyn, wait for the bad ball from Parnell, attack the third seamer (Morkel) and don't allow the spinners to settle into a rhythm. England believed strongly that Morkel's confidence was brittle, and that Botha and (especially) Van der Merwe, werehttps://blogs.cricinfo.com/MT/images/formatting-icons/quote.gif spikey individuals who would respond poorly to early pressure. And they were right. But as much as the competitive spirit of the spinners will see them through, Morkel's role as third seamer -- even when shared with Kallis -- may be doomed. As gloriously as his Kluseneresque hitting entertains the crowds, and even wins matches, as it did in Australia at the beginning of the year, Mike Procter and his fellow selectors will now have to address the value of Morkel's batting against the liability of his bowling.

I understand that 40 overs each way makes for a long day, especially with a mere 20-minute break. But it means spectators get a lot of action, which is good. In televised matches, there will be a third umpire to make line decisions: if standing for all that time is such a fag, the team of three umps can take turns and turn about. Now, umps tend on the whole to be good eggs and their relationships with players tell us that perpetual warfare between teams and officials is not a necessary state of affairs. But they are way off the pace on the question of tea.

... when he does eventually retire, will he look back on a career unfulfilled? "I have to be very strong on that," he says. "The answer is that, given the cards I was dealt, I tried my best. I played my first Test at 21 against the West Indies, and I don't know what the selectors were hoping to get from me in a series in which even experienced players struggled, like Allan Lamb. These days, a lot of debutants come in and and do very well, because of that Team England thing. They feel like part of a team rather than a county player playing for England. Ravi Bopara played four Tests and seven one-dayers this summer without scoring a half-century. So it's a different era, but you know what, I'm very proud of the fact that I managed to hang in there for so long, and there was a period in Test cricket when it did go well for me. I topped the averages in Australia [in 1998-99] supposedly against one of the best teams in history. I don't know whether people remember those things, but they're important for me to remember."

Most of the training time is taken up by gym work, which adds strength but you have to include a lot of sprinting as well to ensure that the rhythm is right. The challenge is to get the balance of cricketing skills, strength and cardiovascular training. The skills part is, naturally, most important and it is also necessary to realize that each person is made differently. Which is why it is paramount that one understands the body quickly. Ishant is a young man but he would do well to understand what works best for him and apply that to his bowling and training. He's also a thinking bowler and with the right guidance, he should soon be firing again.

How two pitches that are a mere 40 kilometres apart can be so different in nature escapes me. When batting at the Wanderers, first and foremost on the striker’s mind is survival and that is far from ideal. Cricketers want to play one day cricket on true, consistent tracks so that natural skill levels can be expressed to the maximum. What they have had during this event has stifled flair and in some cases elevated ability. So far, with the semi final stage looming, we have only had one close encounter and that was on the last day of the minor round and that is not a recipe for success.

Shashi Tharoor, the Twitter-minister, posted about this last evening; Partho and his mates have peppered the print media with riffs on this theme; the TV channels are getting nicely warmed up as I write this… and yet, have we done full justice to the tremendous potential [Excuse the emphatic itals in this post, please -- too much Dan Brown lately] of this story? And then there’s the conspiracy angle. Will Pakistan want India in the final? Younis Khan says so, but can we trust him, can we take his word for it and hope that Pakistan will pull out all the stops? Isn’t it more likely that Pakistan — who, as we all know, we can never really trust — will play just below par in order to do the dirty on India? Imagine what a laugh they will have in the dressing room after they’ve contrived to lose to Australia, knowing that the old enemy, still engaged in its own game against the West Indies, now has to go through the motions knowing that its last remaining hope has been scuppered!

Countless PhD theses have been written detailing the allegorical significance of sporting conquest: how triumphing in these contrived duels is a demonstration of alpha qualities — virility, strength and the like; attributes that are deeply implicated in what biologists call “reproductive value”. Some may even argue that sport’s entire appeal is metaphorical; that it is an invented world in which the Darwinian struggle is played out graphically before our eyes, wrapped in a veneer (often wafer-thin) of civility. It is, if you like, the human equivalent of peacocks strutting or deer rutting.