The Surfer

Bond is a stand-up guy who wanted to secure his financial future for his family by playing for the Delhi Giants. Wow, what a bastard he turned out to be - well, that's the view of New Zealand Cricket, who threw him under the bus. Oh sure, they came up with all sorts of justifiable excuses to hide behind their cowardice: it's the rules, they said, it's the ICC regulations.

The guts of it was that Australia was embarking on an important lead-up to the Ashes. He said selectors sometimes get it right and sometimes they get it wrong.

I have been saying for a long time that England have not got their top three right. Matt Prior is a very average batsman to be going in first for England. Ian Bell is a touch player who needs to have runs behind him and for his confidence to be high if he is going to be successful up front at international level ...

Everybody wants you around till the 2011 World Cup... Come to think of it, 2009 is already at our doorstep...

His latest slap this week was to England's leading players, who fancy being involved in next season's IPL in April-May, having missed out first time round this year. Modi's message? Commit to the IPL, at the expense of their English early-season commitments, or forget it. Modi went further. The England and Wales Cricket Board should shunt back the start of their home season. That would allow the likes of Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff to play more IPL games, thus making them more attractive to franchise owners, and still be available for England.

The famous cases of Bill Edrich in the 50s and the recent cases of Andrew Symonds, Herschelle Gibbs and some of the Indian cricketers indicate that cricket is not as simple a game as it looks from beyond the boundary line.

To truly appreciate cricket's changing visage, you could do worse than share a drink with an Invincible in the hours leading up to a much-hyped Twenty20 encounter between Australia and a Cricket Australia All-Star XI. Clutching a schooner in the grand old Members Bar of the Sydney Cricket Ground yesterday, surrounded by sepia-toned photographs depicting a more dignified age, the 86-year-old Morris recounts with astonishment and humour the cricketing revolution he has witnessed.

Ponting often seemed to be captaining by formula as opposed to instinct. In his younger days he had a strong grasp of the mood of a match and an urgent desire to intervene. He was a leader, urging his players along, suggesting ruses to his captain. Moreover, his ideas were often astute. As a batsman, too, he hooked and clipped and seized the initiative. His only weak point was a hot temper and a fondness for grog, a combination that periodically put him in strife.

This is a labyrinth. Cricket authorities, transfixed by Twenty20, say international club competition is the great unexplored frontier. Lalit Modi, Indian board mover and shaker and the brains behind the Indian Premier League and the Champions League, says soccer comfortably divides its fixtures between club competitions and internationals, so cricket should.

When the clock winds down to 00:00, if the bowling team has not completed its quota, then it will be punished (in any number of reasonable ways - which will be discussed separately). There is a simple way to do this : if there is a delay caused by the bowling team, the clock continues to run. If the delay is caused by the batting team, the clock will be stopped. Similarly, for actions of umpires, fall of wickets, ball going out of the ground etc… the clock will be stopped. Seems simple enough, but there are a couple of twists here : once the clock is running, the bowling team is free to deliver the ball, the batsman’s readiness or otherwise be damned.