The Surfer

Ricky Ponting looked worried. It was early in the Ashes series; it had rained overnight and the ball appeared to be damp. Ponting and his team-mates stood in a huddle examining the suspect item, then someone gave it a good, long rub on his pants. More scrutiny followed. After another rub, and further inspection, play finally resumed. Test cricket is full of such arrested moments.

Ricky Ponting's team has improved as the series has gone along and now needs to hold its nerve for five more days. As much can be told from the form of the pacemen. Four years ago the speedsters were comprehensively out-bowled by a hostile quartet that moved the ball all day, every day, and hardly gave the batsmen a moment's peace - they took 75 wickets at an average cost of 27 runs (their Australian counterparts claimed 51 at 40 apiece).

It is difficult to describe Vaas as "maddening", a description which has been applied to many bowlers far less inconsistent than he. But when he is possibly your favourite bowler ever, it was sometimes difficult to not get a little frustrated with the extremes. A bowler who was capable of destroying most of the ideals typically associated with seam bowling - that the most effective perpetrators of all have to propel from considerable height and\or at substantial pace - was easy to love, however. Vaas' bag of tricks were a joy to watch when they were working.

Flintoff's proclamation was premature and self-centred, doing nothing for team spirit at a crucial time and, like his disastrous captaincy in the 2006-07 Ashes, marginally depleting the vast stock of public goodwill built up since his England debut in 1998. And it was mirrored in the way he celebrated his wickets during the victory at Lord's, with a Beckhamesque awareness of the gaze of a hundred lenses.

In recent times, we have heard a lot of Kaplish, thanks to the BCCI–ICL spat and television. He abolished prepositions (We are not expecting any recognise us), he was liberal with the indefinite article (The idea is to have a cricket in India), and sometimes, well, sometimes he said something like this: I never want to say that but today I am saying that. Today or ever cricket will go divide somewhere only one person to be blamed.

End one-day internationals This is a big call, but cricket evolves and the 50-over game has passed its sell-by date. It’s amazing to think that after the Ashes series England and Australia play seven one-day games, which take about a month. Sorry, but that’s just greed on the part of administrators. From now on, we should be playing Tests and Twenty20 internationals, with a Twenty20 World Cup every two years.

He has become maddening to supporters of his obvious talent and makes it too easy for those who question his character to succeed. Sometimes he has tried too hard to be hard when he should just be himself.

As a batsman, Bell was not meant to be one of life's nightclub bouncers but one of its computer nerds and he has never seemed quite able to come to terms with it. Hence the confused approach.

I was honoured to be asked to help with formulating game plans to combat the Sri Lankan threat and spent a good chunk of time with the team's video analyst. I've basically told them to "block the proverbial out of it".