The Surfer

As he did with his leadership, Ganguly has set the tone among his peers. The most incendiary of Indians has admitted that the fires have gone conclusively cold. Cricket at 30-something is a struggle in which a player's peak mental awareness must manage the slow erosion of physical skills. Every day is a tussle between the will and the inexorable passage of time and it is not ever a fair contest.

Ricky Ponting missed Warne at the end of day two at Bangalore. Australia had posted 430. India needed to face 18 overs at the end of the day. In fading light. With chat-happy Australians in their ear. Fieldsmen crowding the bat. Warne would have come on almost immediately, taunting and teasing and turning the screws. White was not given a bowl.

My build-up to the first day of the second test, on May 8, 2002, started no differently from any other. We were staying at the Pearl Intercontinental Hotel, one of two hotels in central Karachi which were frequented largely by westerners. We had two buses that would take us to the ground, an early bus and a later bus. The early bus was always for Mark Richardson, who liked to go to the ground and have 1000 throw-downs before anyone turned up at the match venue. The rest of us, who liked to have more sleep, waited around for the later bus. The early bus was originally scheduled to leave at 7.45am and the second bus was set to leave at 8.15am.

This adage, that ‘everything is possible in Indian cricket’ was a sad truism until you took over. I thought you would take pride in having changed that, in having forged a team, and brought some consistency to team selection and planning. To hear you use that truism is particularly disheartening.

He says they aren't panicking over what will happen if things don't work out next week either. “We have no problem. We have plans to increase our cricketing days, a strategy that involves more teams from more countries, there have been players, state units and player associations that have shown interest — after all, the IPL only serves a limited number of foreign players.”

MacGill was then taken to the West Indies after minimal cricket and again proved to be horribly underdone for the task. In an unprecedented move that was an embarrassment for the entire selection panel, the feisty New South Welshman decided enough was enough and pulled stumps on his career mid-series.

"Working from home isn't the long- term plan but at the moment it is fine, even if the odd Hi-5 stick gets poked under the door," Fleming said yesterday. Fleming's in good form. Work is exercising his brain, golf gets the competitive juices flowing (he plays off a 6.8 handicap at Heretaunga), family is close and the cricket he plays in India is short and handsomely paid.

So there he was, the immovable object, holding the innings together, ensuring that the Australians did not squander their advantage. To that end he wore down the attack, thereby adding to the pressure on the home batsmen. Better than most, Hussey knows the value of secured runs. As usual he advanced unobtrusively and it took a glance at the board to realise that he had reached 24 and then 43 and the other posts along his route. He does not set out to collar the bowling, just to score as quickly and as safely as possible.

I still believe New Zealand deserve to be ranked second or third based on what we've seen in the past few seasons, but even if they win the series 2-1, which they should do with this rough start out of the way, it won't do the trick on the rankings list ... they'd be embarrassed at turning in a half-arsed performance when they'd have wanted to hit the ground running. They'll know there will be teams around the world chuckling at their slip-up, and that will sting.

"At night I'd lie there and go 's - - -, when am I going to see my kids? There were times I'd sit there and drink my mini bar until three in the morning just to get to sleep. Set the alarm, wake up and say here we go again. I cried a fair bit when I was by myself."