The Surfer

This means the coach/dugout will tell the batsman he has to get 40 runs in the next three overs. His job is just to get those runs in that time. The bowler’s would be to prevent that, knowing fully well what the batsman has to get and execute his plan. So here’s the question that many will pose: Would this not kill the creativity and the natural instinct of a batsman/bowler and make him more robotic? Ramky believes that isn’t the point. “We’re not trying to kill their creativity but trying to help them win. We’re telling the player: ‘be creative in achieving your goals’. The route is up to him, how to get those 40 runs, not whether 40 or 60 is enough. Dynamic strategising is involved and the program does that based on proven fact and data.”

... an Australian wag in the press box joked under his breath: “The Hauricane will be licking his lips — he might even get two second-innings wickets.” Hauritz is self-aware enough to understand his unflattering image. “I would be shocked if they didn’t have a go at me,” he said before the Test. “If they can get on top of me early, it will be very hard to come back from that.” It was hardly the sort of declaration of intent that we have come to expect from Australian spinners, but times and personnel have changed. Hauritz is simply the latest man standing in a game of musical chairs that the Australian selectors have been playing with their spinners over the past 2.5 years since Shane Warne retired. They have tried seven specialist spinners since then; their combined efforts have yielded 51 wickets at an average of 54.

The most highly-paid players ever in the history of West Indies cricket and, arguably, the greatest underachievers, are again at loggerheads with the administrative managers of the game here with money once again being central to the dispute, the latest incarnation of the WICB seemingly unable to arrive at a series of systems that would have forestalled the kind of international embarrassment occasioned by a players' strike at the onset of what was supposed to have been a team-fortifying tournament.

I am at the point where I refuse to hold any one party responsible, as I believe that both sides have been withholding from us, thus making it easy for the members of the public to take sides without necessarily being fully informed.

True a Gautam Gambhir or a Rohit Sharma should not take their places in the team for granted. The whole world by now also knows that Suresh Raina has serious shortcomings when the ball climbs to his ribcage, but the return of Dravid, at best, can be a temporary solution. It can’t serve any useful long-term purpose and what Kris Srikkanth’s selection panel has done is take one step backward while trying to move ahead, especially when the same people never tire of reminding us that India has a vast reservoir of young talent. So, why not dip into that and find right answers to genuine problems, instead of recalling a man who himself may be finding it mystifying that he is back in the one-day squad.

Andrew Strauss, the England captain, looked like Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter books, trying the spell to open doors, but finding them for ever locked, no matter how he waved his wand or uttered the magic word: “Alohomora!” He tried with all his bowlers in turn, but hardly a door did he open all day.

And if one man has to go it will be Panesar, who can just about hold a bat, and whose fielding is barely junior house-match standard. Three years after his Test debut, his general lack of competence, which some find endearing, remains shocking.

Booed on to the field and then clapped back off 150 runs later, Ricky Ponting wore his most demonic game face. A smile may not crack the captain's features until he has avenged the 2005 outrage. "Punter" Ponting's tight, resentful countenance is a study in the uses of adversity.

Hughes disobeys most of the openers' rules. They are supposed to minimise risk at the start of an innings. The most common way to be dismissed against a new, hard ball is from an outside edge. So the received wisdom is to be wary outside the off stump, to make the bowlers come to you and then to clip them away on the leg-side. An inside edge usually goes nowhere; the outside edge is perilous. But Hughes does it the other way round. His back foot stays on leg stump and his eye is so good that he can hit anything slightly wide of off stump in an arc between extra cover and third man. It is tough for fielding captains to defend those areas square of the wicket.

"I. Don't. Think. They. Have bowled. To Hughes. That well," muttered Michael Holding, almost managing to convince you he really was cross. And as Andrew Flintoff finally beat Hughes' flailing bat David Lloyd erupted with: "Well bowled! That's a reminder of 2005!" Bumble, you felt like saying, it's OK. We understand. Times change.

To be honest, I did not have plenty of self-belief when I made my debut But I was optimistical- ly confident and maybe that helped me. The fact that I was an opening batsman from schooldays helped me enormously in developing a method to combat attacks.The fact that I had to wait so long to play for Mumbai in the Ranji Trophy made me determined, and I think determination and concentration were the key.