The Surfer

There was a qualifying tournament for this World T20. Associate nations met and the top six made it through to play in Bangladesh. When they got there they had to qualify again. We were told that this was for the good of cricket. It wasn't, it was to guarantee TV revenue. The ICC said that one of the reasons that they were reducing the World Cup to a ten team event was because they would expand the World T20. This isn't expansion, it is tokenism. If growth of the game is an actual ambition of the governing body they need to unlock the doors, not just open them a crack so the odd team can sneak through.

Still there's the small issue of a young man who had been appointed captain and had to lead players who had a dozen years' worth of experience more than he did. There's the small issue of having left Sri Lanka as captain and having to watch the final from the dressing room. There's also the small issue of Dinesh Chandimal running around the ground after Sri Lanka won the match, carrying the man who put the final touches to the campaign on his shoulders. Dinesh Chandimal helped hold Kumar Sangakkara high. He couldn't stop smiling a schoolboyish smile. That delight was unadulterated. That admiration was unadulterated. And in this, there was as much 'team,' 'team-spirit,' and 'leadership' than anything we were privileged to watch unfold out there in the middle of the ground.

You remember 2007 when I returned to India from South Africa in the middle of the tour. I wasn't landing the ball where I wanted to. I wanted to acquire as much knowledge as I could to get better quickly. Perhaps I should have been a little patient and waited for a while. At the time I didn't make my game simple. There's nothing like excess information. Eventually, the knowledge did help me. Why me, it benefitted others as well.

Off the field, the Jayawardene-Sangakkara combine has had bigger battles than anything they faced on the field. The two had a vision for cricket in Sri Lanka, one that Sri Lanka Cricket did not always agree with. At different times they have had to negotiate, plead, insist, argue, cajole, even scheme without malice, to get things done. To use a cringe-worthy word that is so popular with the young of today, the Jayawardene-Sangakkara bromance is one with few parallels in cricket. And Sunday is important for it signifies the first step in the winding down of the careers of two modern greats.

This was the time of year when county players, on six-month contracts, returned from whatever winter employment (or, too often, unemployment) had brought them. A week's "training" perhaps, which would barely count as a warm-up these days, followed by nets, a university fixture maybe, or practice matches against another county, and then the first championship match of the summer right at the end of April. A personal check tells that in 13 seasons only five of my championship matches began in April, and none started earlier than the 28th of the month.

Some 20 years after I watched Karnataka defeat Bombay for the first time, I met Ajit Wadekar at a reception in New Delhi. I reminded him about the match and how he had got out, adding that had he not slipped he would still be batting at the Chinnaswamy Stadium. His answer, offered with a laconic shrug of the shoulders, was: "New shoes."

The only external cricket representative not to let security concerns keep him from visiting the ACB in Kabul during the past 12 years is former Pakistani player, and now ACC representative, Iqbal Sikander. He sits in Murad's office discussing the economic viability of different equipment providers while recounting tales of his time in Australia as part of Pakistan's victory in the 1992 World Cup. "Our only objective is that we want cricket bats in the hands of the youngsters instead of guns," says Sikander. "We want them to stay away from drugs and trouble."

Throughout the tournament in Bangladesh I kept watching Paul Collingwood who looks as though he wants to offer someone out to fight every minute of the day -- but he can also be affable -- and wondering if he might not be just what is needed. Make Collingwood the coach; make Kevin Pietersen the captain. Instead we will shortly hear just why it was necessary to sack Pietersen. Where will that get us?

Ferguson's notion of control was partly psychological. Being aggressive and dictatorial was only a temporary fix. His real authority came from the ongoing success of his methods, which he was clever enough to adapt to changing circumstance. Often - as with the cough in the corridor - his presence was enough.

The fact the IPL franchises have generally not ventured beyond the established markets for their players seems short-sighted. The NBA, which, in many ways, inspired the creation of the IPL, was enriched by the arrival of the likes of Manu Ginobli, Pau Gasol or Dirk Nowitzki from lesser-regarded basketball nations. Premier League football clubs are savvy to the value of recruiting players such as Junichi Inamato and Park Ji-Sung and expanding the league's footprint into far-off markets.

We concentrated solely on winning last summer and not producing a brand of cricket that would sell the game to the public. Cricket is always fighting other sports for attention so we have to win well but we have produced steady teams capable of boring average sides into submission. It has led the players to believe they are better than they are. As supporters we have been given a dose of reality too about the standard of this England team. We have good players but not great players. Now Graeme Swann and Kevin Pietersen have gone we need to fill the dressing room with attitude and character, and not pick players on stats-driven form in county cricket.

To fail to chase a low total against a modest Netherlands side highlighted not only the lack of skills in the English game in general when confronted with alien conditions, but also a lack of commitment and personal responsibility, the latter something that Giles has been trying to drum into players without obvious success.