The Surfer

The old country is in disarray in pursuit of those coveted Ashes. Their hero is injured but he is going to play anyway. The team are falling apart and our man has just one last game against the dastardly Australians, who have finally found their form. Limping from the physio's couch comes our beloved gentle giant from Preston, the one who likes nothing more than to "share a few pints with me mates". You know the rest: a century, five wickets, Ashes won, hobbling hero carried from Oval outfield by his team-mates. Tears all round. Beers all round. Knighthood.

It has been a trial of who might dissolve first. And in that respect it has cast a light on one of the funniest myths in team sports, which is that intimidation is achieved by flexing one's pecs, squeezing the enemy's airspace and boring into his eyes with a gaze that says: "You are entering a world of pain." "Not tonight, my man," says a character in Richard Price's Lush Life as a New York mugger instructs him to hand it over. Bam goes the gun, down goes our hero. This is what Stuart Broad was saying to Johnson, and others, as Australia's superiority with ball and bat at Leeds began to hurt. Not tonight, my man. But England, and Broad, will have to do a lot better than that, because this is not a staring competition. It is one in which five Australia batsmen have struck seven hundreds compared with England's one.

Q. Another intrepid batsman, Virender Sehwag, blossomed under you. You believed in his special ability.

A squat right-hander, he is aggressive with a penchant for big shots. For that reason, he is likely to bat at four or five depending on Paul Collingwood, the senior batsman in the middle order.

For those players this represents the opportunity of a lifetime—not just the IPL but all of Indian cricket. A lot of those players will be hungry, eager to cast off the tag of little league players and they would have grown substantially in two years. When doors are shutting on you and when darkness beckons even a sliver of light brings hope. These players have known what it is to contemplate life without cricket and with their lifeline within reach they will swim harder to get there. At any rate they should because you squander life’s lessons at your own peril.

But does cricket, a highly skill-based sport, need such drastic testing? Yes, says Ashok Ahuja, former head of the department of sports medicine, National Institute of Sports, Patiala. “The role of steroids has increased in cricket, especially among pace bowlers, to build up the muscles and recover from injuries,” he told Outlook. Ahuja also talks about the use of recreational drugs by sportspersons. “Some superstar athletes, moving in seven-star society, use recreational drugs,” he says, adding that the BCCI’s suggestion that it could produce a player for testing on a 24-hour notice won’t be acceptable because these drugs can be washed out of the system in that time.

Captain Kumar Sangakkara is one of the best batsmen going around on the world scene at the moment, and Craig McMillan picked him as the bloke he would have out there on the day to bat for his life. (It was Chanderpaul for me.) Having plundered 570 runs in his last five Tests (all against Pakistan), the lippy left-handed Lankan is not going to see too much to scare him in the New Zealand bowling attack sans Shane Bond. Plus he has scored unbeaten centuries against the Kiwis in his last two Test match outings..

I do not believe that Ramprakash’s age should count against him, nor his reputation as a victim of Test-match vertigo. There has been much talk recently about aura, and Ramprakash has acquired one. He is 39, very fit and has a hundred for England against Australia at the Oval to his name. When Denis Compton was brought back for the last Test against Australia in 1956 he was still recovering from the removal of a kneecap (now preserved in the archive at Lord’s) and was no fitness fanatic or avowed teetotaller. England, it is true, had already retained the Ashes, but, even then, Compton confessed to being as nervous as at any time in his career.

Yesterday, even the Guardian leader page had a go. That is more than it would do for Ian Bell. Geoff Miller, the national selector, refused to rule out Ramprakash on the grounds that he has never retired from Test cricket. He probably did so to stop being pestered, but it was not an endorsement. Ramprakash's own PR machine has cranked into action – he would "cherish" the opportunity.

It's the first Ashes battle in 18 years without Warne as a player, but much that we've lost in on-field spectacle is being made up for in commentary. His delivery from behind the microphone is proving to be almost as compelling as with the six-stitcher.

... the Members Forum is Cricket South Africa's 20-person committee that largely comprises the presidents of all its affiliates. They are a bunch of, shall we say, members, and apparently should not have been involved in the first place in CSA's fight with the Gauteng Cricket Board. In fact, there is a strong suspicion that some of these members couldn't organise a push-up in a gym, but there they were a month ago casting what Dr Nyoka calls the mecca of South African cricket into the wildnerness. On Wednesday, by all accounts, the Members Forum was nowhere to be seen when CSA announced that the issues with the GCB had been amicably resolved. It raises the question of the actual role of the Members Forum and, more precisely, of who pulls their strings.