The Surfer

Andrew Flintoff, Stuart Broad and James Anderson are sure to be the first three senior England seam bowlers but, other than Stephen Harmison, there are few options for the fourth place and back-up. Harmison is probably head of the queue when, ideally, he would find his rhythm quietly with Durham over the next two months. Beyond Harmison, contenders are a group of walking wounded.

Such is the nature of England players and their counties that Flintoff has bowled at Pietersen only once in his career. It happened in 2003 and he did not get him out, but Pietersen did dismiss Flintoff when he was on 97. The rematch will mark the true start of the IPL after a troubled opening weekend. The wet weather and slow outfield at Newlands made for a staccato start rather than the extravaganza demanded by Modi.

A graph of Caddick’s career would resemble the FTSE index, a mountain range of boom and bust. His introverted character did not help and neither did his Antipodean tendency to say what he thought. Caddick came to England as an outsider, at a time when the national team was in its chop-and-change phase and young county players were expected to know their place.

But the thoughtful, thorough and likeable Flower is good. He had to be to make the impression he did after the departure of the coach Peter Moores and the captain Kevin Pietersen. He was hurt by that imbroglio, considered quitting even. But he felt an overwhelming loyalty towards the England cricket team. Having an English wife can do that.

What about your post-retirement plan?

Every innings will need its glue, its master craftsman around whom the hitters can bat and it was hardly surprising that Tendulkar and Dravid finished on top last night. In the space of ten days they have left behind the format that allows for the creation of the sweeping masterpiece and last night still found the space and time to paint the perfect miniature. No matter what the canvas, it is always the hand of the artist that matters.

But the signs of a potential slump did not last too long because of one “rag-tag” unit from the smallest of the IPL franchises. The Rajasthan Royals, dismissed as frugal also-rans, started writing their own script in one corner of India, defying the odds, hurling slingshots at Goliath after Goliath, highjacking the razzmatazz and replacing it with a feel-good, cricketing story of the rise of an underdog ... Now, as the second season gets ready to kick off in distant South Africa, this time from the high of last year, it will face challenges once again — some old and some very different.

So untrue, in fact, that by late Friday afternoon the Wanderers stadium was prepared to withdraw as a host venue rather than accede to requests (or demands, depending on your point of view) from the IPL which they believe to be excessive and unreasonable. “They can take their tournament somewhere else, they can hold the final somewhere else,” said one member of staff. “Unless they change their attitude then I can’t see a way forward. They are renting our facility, not buying it. We have protocols which we respect and expect them to do likewise.”

The board, alas, has a terrible record in taking conflicts of interest seriously. There is no transparency about the stakes its personnel have in cricket-related activity; with the IPL, those conflicts have become more pervasive. And when the going is as good for Indian cricket as it has been, these conflicting loyalties are too easily overlooked. But moments of reckoning do come. Were India to have a disastrous time at the T20 world championship, tolerance for these scandalous cross-holdings will dissipate. But need it come to that?