The Surfer

Kallis has been something of a genius at keeping his life outside of cricket private. The odd dalliance with a model has emerged in the press, but that would have had more to do with the lady’s agent seeking publicity. Kallis is not likely to open his heart to any biographer soon, so he remains a mystery. Even if he’d been the writing type, I suspect that he’d be more JD Salinger than JT Edson.

He was helped somewhat by England’s tactics. In his first 200 runs, there was one leg-side boundary: the rest, all 22 of them, came through the off side, an indication that England had bowled to his strengths for long periods. For the most part, England’s line should be straight to him, their length full. Sarwan is a beautiful player through the off side and England seemed happy to encourage the sight of him cutting and driving them to distraction. His technique is such that, by keeping his back foot on leg stump and moving his front foot across his crease, he positions himself to hit through cover, point and backward of point. He thrives on width, being as brutal on the cut as anyone.

Soon the captain becomes more of a foreman than a strategist. It is his job to ensure the punishment is handed out equably and that the part-timers bear some of the burden. Hence Paul Collingwood and Ravi Bopara were in tandem for much of the afternoon and there was some ugly off-spin from Kevin Pietersen and Owais Shah. The bowlers could hope only to keep their figures respectable and that the third new ball would do the trick.

Even in the late 70s and early 80s, when the Indian men’s team were starting to come into their own, cricket was popular amongst women, insists Behroze. But England captain Rachel Heyhoe-Flint, who averaged 45 and 58 in Tests and ODIs respectively, was the only real woman superstar to idolise. “We would pounce onto whatever records were available and hear tales about her achievements. Men’s cricket was always a fascination and we used to get complementary passes to go watch them play at the CCI or at Wankhede,” Behroze says. Politicians played a part in the development of women’s cricket, and former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was regarded as a promoter of the sport. “She told us that we were lucky to be among the top 11 cricketers to represent the country and that we should really value the India cap and blazer,” Behroze says about Gandhi.

If McCullum can take the same mentality he took in his two 60 not outs in the T20s into the ODIs then those scores would convert to possible 150s. Scores like that achieve wins. I was surprised at his comments of displeasure with his first match-winning effort in Christchurch. Sure, it was punctuated with mistimed shots and lacked the fluency he would desire, but he achieved something vitally important in one's development as a player in any sport. He won ugly.

Harper behaved as though he was an average Joe at home, six-pack by his side, watching the replays and going, “That’s out, mate!” And, “That’s not!” He thought his opinion more important than anyone else’s. We have all watched sport in that mindset. Not many of us have had the power to get our way.

The problem, as it was always going to be, was that Harper and all of his elite colleagues have to be guided by a picture that is two, not three, dimensional and by technology with which they are not familiar.

They lit the fuse at both ends in Christchurch, burning out before Suresh Raina and Harbhajan Singh rescued matters slightly. Here at the Westpac Stadium, they lost vital wickets in the middle, which, combined with Dhoni struggling to lay a vehement bat on ball, cost them the late surge that might have realised a total of 170 to 180. Even here, we must be wary of exaggeration. It’s impossible to know how much of the batting failure was brain fade, how much was influenced by the New Zealand bowlers.

Captains require major achievement for their regimes to be recorded as better than time-marking exercises. Under Allan Border, Australia climbed out of one of its deepest troughs. Mark Taylor took over and led the team to the mountain top. Steve Waugh's team embarked on the road less travelled. Earlier, Ian Chappell and Richie Benaud inspired their own eras. Bradman was Bradman.

Both give the impression they know what they are about in the middle and from what we have seen in these past two matches Shah has an in-your-face self-confidence that can make him seem self-absorbed, while Bopara has an air of bravado that allows him to give full rein to his attacking instincts.

Bopara is the most talented British Asian cricketer there has yet been, unless the term is anachronistically applied to the Jam Sahib of Nawanagar, Kumar Shri Ranjitsinhji. Although more than a century has passed since his time, the sense of wonder of the near-capacity crowd at Kensington Oval – English almost to a man – when Bopara leg-glanced straight balls, with a twist of his wrists, was much the same as when Ranji thrilled Sussex and England crowds with his invention of the stroke.