The Surfer

Pietersen has been bleeding lately and his blood has marked all our clothes. He has been bleeding since the start of the year, when the captaincy was torn from him. King Lear, who was mad, demanded love from his daughters; Pietersen, it seems, insists it is forthcoming from every­one and his performances feed from that affection.

The unprecedented internal assault on the values of the powerful 171-year-old blue-blood club is contained in a private letter to the MCC president from Colin Beames, son of Melbourne sporting icon Percy Beames. Mr Beames is a 40-year MCC member whose late father was a sporting journalist, footballer and cricketer and has a bar named after him inside the members' area of the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

Symonds is understood to be in a very bad head space and so are the playing group in England who started the push to sack him. They are uneasy because they know, cricketing-wise, they have handed down a life sentence. They know they were right, but it is still a heavy burden and it's a small wonder some of them have had trouble sleeping since and Australia have gone belly-up in their first World Twenty20 match against the West Indies.

Whilst there can be no such thing as complete security, surely the ICC should be able to take on the responsibility of ensuring that acceptable security is identified, planned and assured by the respective countries which should subsequently be monitored. The ICC should also examine the possibility of sourcing affordable insurance which could provide comfort to the cricketers and their families. Cricketers must also remember that being professionals, they will need to accept the hardships that added security might impose on some tours, for the greater good of cricket.

After the naps were powered there was a sense of disappointment in the Library. "Which Royal have we got?" asked one Member. "The Duke of Kent," replied another. "Jesus." The aura of low key persisted when it was announced: "The opening ceremony has been abandoned for safety reasons." This drew a few groans, but I think a useful precedent has been set for 2012.

In the Library, meanwhile, a Member, who had earlier opened a grand window, decided to sing along to the National Anthem. He got as far as "Gracious Queen" before heavy stares forced him to desist. It was agreed that the Dutch effort was "lovely".

Avinash Yadav’s family lived on the frugal earnings of his father, who grazed cattle and sold milk for a living. But with an ICL cheque of about Rs 70 lakh, the Yadavs now have their own house in Benaras and a gleaming SX4 to give company to the cows and buffaloes in the courtyard. “I’m from a lower-middle class family. They don’t know what the BCCI is or what the ICL means. All they know is that because of cricket our lives have become more comfortable,” says the left-arm spinner, who didn’t go beyond playing a few Ranji Trophy games because of Murali Kartik’s presence in the Central Zone side.

In fact India hold nearly all of the cards. The commercial success of the IPL has added another revenue stream to coffers that were already bulging with broadcasting cash, the Champions League will add more, and they lord over the "Asian bloc" that dominates the ICC voting. In scale, New Zealand rates as no more than a pimple on the BCCI's backside.

In 1936, he was on the horns of a dilemma having to choose between the cricket tour of England and a sure gold medal with the hockey team at the Berlin Olympics. Gopalan decided on the former and with the benefit of hindsight probably made the wrong decision for while India predictably won the gold medal at Berlin the cricket tour was an unhappy one marred by controversies.

Why is Zimbabwe, a cricketing nation with Full Member status, not out there, entertaining our 20/20 vision-endowed eyeballs with its brand of sl­am-bang cricket? Politics. Much as the question is thought-provoking, the answer, shorn of subtl­e­ty, is disappointingly clichéd.

It all adds to the appeal of the sport but it is accompanied by a general concern over the impact of such rapid expansion on Test cricket, for 132 years the bedrock of the game.