The Surfer

If history is any guide, next summer will be one for sellers of umbrellas and mackintoshes. That is the lesson from the extremely brief record of Test matches played in England between teams who do not wear the three lions.

And after a frustrating few years battling injuries, Shane Watson has looked every bit an international player. He was completely at home opening the batting and performed consistently under pressure. I don't think Watto's cricket or his body have ever been in better shape.

A committee chaired by David Davies, formerly of the FA, is currently considering whether the "crown jewels" list of sporting events, which are required to be available on free-to-air TV, should be changed, with cricket always the prime candidate for restoration to the live list. And here it was on cue, a Test victory inescapably presenting itself as a national unity, "watercooler" moment, the stuff of newspaper front pages, TV news headlines and a letter to Andrew Strauss from a leader yet to overcome his own back foot struggles quite as happily, Gordon Brown.

Will a player feel as happy about baring his soul to someone who has a direct hand on his test place? Moles will argue his relationship with the players is good, and this is a natural next step in his job. And to be fair he is not the first coach on a selection panel.

While both Woods and Federer have millions of fans all over the world, it in no way compares with the millions in India alone who worship the ground Tendulkar walks on and believe that their man can do no wrong. Unlike Woods and Federer whose houses and cars are safe even if they lose in the first round that is not the case for Indian cricketers who have found homes and properties destroyed by an angry crowd after they have not performed upto expectations.

My alternative, though, is Adil Rashid. Yes, he’s a spin bowler rather than a seamer, but there is no reason why England can’t go with three pacemen and two spinners. That’s a balanced attack, to me. Rashid has scored hundreds and taken five wickets in an innings in his past two matches for Yorkshire. He’s a real all-rounder.

When Jagmohan Dalmiya was President of the ICC, he mooted the idea of what was then known as the ‘mini-World Cup’ in 1998 for two very good reasons. The World Cup was not yet an ICC event, and the plan was to make some money for the governing body which would own the new tournament. There was too the noble idea of spreading the game beyond the Test-playing countries. Thus Dhaka and Nairobi played hosts, but by 2002, that ideal was abandoned when the tournament was held in Sri Lanka and then in England. By 1999, the World Cup became an ICC tournament, after it had previously been managed by the respective host countries. Television rights had made the pocket money the ICC earned from the Champions Trophy irrelevant. Twice in recent years, the Champions Trophy was held just five months before a World Cup. It was like going through the motions to satisfy the international calendar.

Four years ago we were living in the middle of a debt-fuelled orgy of consumerism, the kind of age in which an open-top bus parade and drink-fuelled party at Trafalgar Square were fitting conclusions to a wonderfully topsy-turvy series. Now we are a little wiser, a little more sober. Credit-crunched, a lap of honour will have to do.