The Surfer

If you get hit for a couple of boundaries in the first two balls, you are trying to do whatever you can and get done with your over without conceding too many more. The balls that you bowl then will certainly be slightly different from what your plan was originally. In T20 cricket, you are always trying to bowl the ball that the batsman isn't expecting. So, by getting those early boundaries he's ensuring that the bowler's scope is reduced drastically. As a bowler you need to focus on sticking to your guns without letting him decide the areas your are targeting. Yes, even if the first two balls travel to the fence or over it.

The most egregious form of cronyism, however, was the ownership of an IPL team by the recent president (and former secretary) of the Board of Control for Cricket in India. It was as if Alex Ferguson was simultaneously manager of Manchester United and the president of the English Football Association. The cronyism ran down the line. The BCCI chose the commentators on television, favouring those former cricketers who could be relied on to propagandize on their behalf, while keeping out the more independent-minded.

I look at the innings [in Mumbai], and people say it's one of the greatest innings played by a foreigner in India, and I certainly don't understand it. I think when the ball spins so much, it actually is a lot easier to play because if the ball is spinning a little bit, it will get your edge. If it is spinning too much, you play the line, I mean you are going to miss it. It looks good to the viewers. Everybody on TV goes wow it's spinning, it's bouncing and me standing there batting and knowing that Harbhajan, Ashwin and Ojha were spinning it miles, I was absolutely fine with it.

"It began three months ago. We were in Bangladesh on our ICC FTP tour. Initially in the Test matches we played some good cricket and at the same time we were getting acclimatised to the demands of the Bangladeshi wickets and the challenges that come into the game of cricket. After winning the Test series, we had two close games in the T20s, where we won by wafer-thin margins. It was the turning point. There the boys learned to take up the challenges and overcome, however hard they could be. They began to thrive in tight situations."

Kent's ball manufacturers employed several hundred people at the time, many of whom complained of being treated like "sweated labour".

To see the impact of the arrival of four quality bats in Guantanamo was heart-warming, even for a bowler, and of the first cricket helmet the players had ever seen. A useful addition, because the first ball of our middle-practice - just short of a length - went three feet over the batsman's head.

I'll never hit Stuart Broad for six sixes. I'll never strike a ball with the imperiousness of Yuvi, never know how it feels to have such mastery of a difficult game, but his struggle to do something he has done hundreds of times before but just can't summon at a moment of need? Ah yeah, I've been there, and so I suspect have you.

What Yuvraj needed, as he walked off the field by himself after Thisara Perera had cracked the winning run, a scything left-handed power blast that Yuvraj would have struck in his sleep on most days, was not our sympathy, but some empathy. There is not one of us who has not endured a bad day at work, or at home, who cannot understand what he might have felt like. But there are few who have had to live these moments out in the full glare of the public eye.

Australia's women cricketers are under the same umbrella as the men, are paid more handsomely than ever before and in recent seasons have played some of their short-form internationals on the same grounds and days as the men. This was the case in Bangladesh, and in the previous women's World T20 in Sri Lanka. Presently, this coupling gives the women's matches the status and appearance of curtain-raisers. In time, they might be seen as authentic double-headers.

Maybe Shakib does not realise a few things. First of all, maybe he needs to let it sink in that every time he steps out to the field, he is carrying all the hopes and aspirations of 160 million people, for many of whom a victory by the cricket team is the biggest happiness they feel in their everyday lives. In a nation that is torn and bruised and hurting in so many ways, a game of cricket still unites us, makes us whisper a little prayer, and drown in ecstasy when the winning stroke is played, or the opponent's last wicket captured. If Shakib realised this, I doubt he could be as heartless as to say that these people have no right to expect much from the team they affectionately call the Tigers.

From packed stadiums and the late-night hangouts in the brightly-lit capital to CNG-drivers working lesser hours and the 'char chhokka hoi hoi' ring-tone blaring from innumerable mobile phones, the last three weeks proved exactly why Bangladesh deserved to host the ICC World Twenty20; for this was not just a cricket tournament but a festival that the people of this country ingrained into their lifestyle and celebrated with immense vigour. Whether it was dancing to the West Indian tune at the stadium or merely having a good time with friends and family, there was something in it for almost everyone.