The Surfer

I guess Ashley Giles will have the first opportunity to stake his claim. I would get Paul Collingwood into the fold as soon as possible. He has too good a cricket brain to allow it to be put to service by someone else. If England have become a bit robotic, a bit dependent on computer information, than Colly is ideal to counter that. Sure he looks to technology, but he uses it as a guideline. Ultimately, he is a cricket man, who trusts instinct. And England need a bit of that right now. But, if they want the best - and only the best should be good enough for this job - I would be tempted to do whatever it takes to bring in Gary Kirsten.

If the players do opt for cricket over their jobs, and the cricket board is going to be compelled to cover the shortfall in wages, then the coffers will need a boost. International cricket is in flux at the moment, gripped by double-speak over who is going to be running it in the future. If the powers that be are to be believed, though, countries on the fringe of the Test game could be about to see their financial status improved.

The BCB boss deserves kudos for the way he fought against the two-tier Test concept at the just concluded ICC (International Cricket Council) meeting in Dubai. His uncompromising approach in the ICC board meeting compelled the Big Three to readjust their original draft position paper, with notable omissions of words like "two-tier", "promotion" and "relegation". But the game is yet to be won on the table.

Sportsweek and Lifestyle thrived on Gavaskar's goodwill. During West Indies' 1987-88 tour of India, Gavaskar not only interviewed Vivian Richards, but also got him to pose as a Maharaja and a boxer for photographer Rajeev Asgaonkar. Of course, Sportsweek was no stranger to Richards, who wrote for the magazine during his 1983 tour to India.

Most of the time though, 'JAK', the nickname he goes by, wears the mask of sobriety of a middle-aged cricket coach. On the Harley and showing off his tattoos, however, you could mistake him for a member of the Indian Hell's Angels. But what he likes to be known as is a coach, who has clocked the miles the hard way on the cricket field.

Those days, there was a rest day after three days of play and at a party the visitors were plied with many glasses of bhang, a local drink made from leaves and buds of the cannabis plant. "This bhang hit us very late and very hard. We simply could not stop laughing. Our manager Nagaraj was very angry because he thought we were laughing at him," recalled Jayaprakash.

Ryder should be back in, right now. The New Zealand selectors are reading both too much and not enough into the series win over the West Indies, who are not in the same league as the Indians. The Windies were weak-spirited. And the New Zealand openers were unconvincing yet again, especially Peter Fulton who tied himself in knots that he had no hope of unravelling. Ryder v Fulton for a test spot ... they are not even on the same planet. And while this should not be an overriding selection factor, Ryder has the added bonus of an x-factor appeal that draws fans.

"I try to do the diet 70-80 per cent, purely because I'm on the road all the time and it's quite hard to get exactly what I need," McClenaghan said. "It makes me feel less bloated and gives me more energy and it's helped me lose a lot of weight and get fit, and helped me get back to good health when I was injured." That means no hamburger and chips for dinner, but chicken, fish or steak with kumara mash and broccoli. Grain, sugar, dairy and carbohydrates are out, along with any processed food. The toughest to resist? "Definitely ice cream," he laughs.

Much has been written and said about Fallah's eccentric bowling where he does not mark his run-up, often putting to use his tennis ball cricket skills. Though he has 200 wickets, Fallah says that he has often heard snide comments about how he is not a very pleasing bowler to look at. "My head falls away from my body when I deliver the ball. I don't bowl at express pace and they say I can't field but at the end of the day I get wickets. Shouldn't that be enough? I guess, Maharashtra and my own performance in the quarters and the semis answered a lot of questions," he says.

Admittedly it's a bit of a leap from Ryan Gosling to N Srinivasan, but the point's the same: a body will obey its nature most of the time. The leak of the ICC's position paper simply suggests the logical conclusion of a direction that has been apparent for a long while. That the wealthy and powerful will exert their wealth and power is not really news in the wider sense.

"If you don't use the body, the ball will still fall in the same place (as when you are using the body) but see it's all about how the ball arrives at the other end." The phone crackles with Sunil's excitement.

"The parabola will make the batsman think. The arc of the ball - from down to up and then the dip - is what gets the batsman. He then can't just pick it off the hand - as batsmen are now doing it with Ashwin - and just get ready to smash. He has to clearly watch the trajectory of the ball and then there is the chance of getting out."

What is Ashwin doing now? "Now he is all about just Newton's law!"