The Surfer

"Viv's cricketing passion was his drug. Viv used to sleep with his bat and the only thing he used was something for his eyes.

Down the line, as the players get younger, the stories get worse. Every possible rival to the progeny or distant kin of the sports committee is simply not picked for fear of him outshining Rinku Rishtedaar or Bunty Bhaichaara in the under-16 and under-19s.

The problem with Nos 3, 4 and 5 is diffidence. In fact, the trouble with the England cricket team has almost always been diffidence, at least when they play Australia. Every now and then, diffidence is set aside, but in the three centuries in which the two nations have played each other at cricket, more often than not, when Australia have bumped into England, England have said sorry.

Each cricketing nation displays idiosyncratic conventions in terms of its crowd banners: the Poms focus on Union Jacks with obscure hamlets and football clubs emblazoned across them, the Australians are massive on the spray paint vs sheet combination, and in India there is artistic flair for the vivid marker on to A3 paper approach.

There is an interesting parallel in international cricket. In 2005 after a poor Ashes series, and without setting the one-day series that followed on fire, Matthew Hayden was dropped from Australia’s one-day squad while still averaging 40. A year later he had forced his way back and as if to prove a point, he scored at 54.1 till his retirement. Again, like with Dravid, the selectors didn’t have numbers in their mind, not even age, merely an assurance that he was hitting the ball well again.

In the red corner, we have nationalist grunts on a hair-trigger, for whom every criticism of the Indian cricket team is an alien conspiracy; in the blue corner, we have discriminating, non-chauvinist Indian commentators who are convinced that India’s perverse stars and their vulgar patron, the BCCI, have done this deliberately to embarrass people like them...

As for the batting, I would have made one change only: swap Ravi Bopara and Ian Bell. It was clear Bopara needed moving away from the frontline, and Bell bats at No3 for Warwickshire. I don't care that his Test record there is not what it might be: he should be comfortable at first drop. Instead the selectors have taken a huge gamble by handing a Test debut to Jonathan Trott in the most high-pressure situation imaginable. I just hope they weren't swayed by all the crazy talk leading up to this Test.