The Surfer

A lot of very fine players retire as bitter men; for the rest of their substantial life they carry the hurt of denial, believing they could have done more. It is one of the saddest things in the game and given the kind of career he has had, Ganguly must go out as a man at peace with himself.

Pybus could not cope with the irrationality and the uncertainty of Pakistan cricket. Using an unfortunate analogy, given the present situation, he said this of his time there: “They have an amazing capacity to ambush themselves ... you're always sitting there waiting for someone to lob a hand grenade and waiting for it to go off. You can never plan with such a team because you don't know what is happening tomorrow.” Dismissed twice, Pybus urged Pakistan to take a more scientific - meaning Western - approach to their cricket.

Truth to tell it was not the most exhilarating batting performance seen in the past few years, but then we have been richly entertained, perhaps spoilt. Certainly it lacked élan, not to mention panache, but the dogged willow wielders had more serious matters in mind. Australia has too much respect for these opponents to give them an inch.

'I was sat on the balcony at Lord's after we had gone four up in the one-day series against South Africa,' said relaxed and rejuvenated Flintoff.

The reader's unease is heightened by the repeated references to him in the third person and the fact that some of the anecdotes -- notably one by Moffet about Pakistani players pumping themselves up before play -- did not come from his pen. This is not hair-splitting. There is a legitimate suspicion that Woolmer essentially wrote a rather narrowly focused coaching manual and that, in a move to cash in on public rubbernecking in the wake of his sensational death, other people worked it up into a general-interest cricket book.

It was intriguing to discover, for example, that the human eye cannot track bowling of higher than 130km/h and that batsmen facing pace move their eyes off the ball to where they expect it to land on the wicket. This, the book points out, effectively debunks the hoariest of coaching maxims: "Watch the ball right on to the bat."

So far it looks rather less like a website devoted to cricket than to the BCCI. Top story yesterday was "Lalit Modi bags TV award", the IPL commissioner having won a coveted CNBC Awaaz Consumer Award - well, someone must covet them. Top comment piece was "In Praise of Sharad Pawar", a 1,685-word paean about the outgoing BCCI boss, "a statesman who is clear of thought, dispassionate and above all a true team leader" by his BCCI colleague IS Bindra.

There is no clarity as to why Sourav was dropped from the Irani Cup side and how he was selected thereafter. However, this has been in keeping with the way the selectors have gone back and forth on the Ganguly issue. Hopefully they will not have to pay for their indecision, because even though the elegant left-hander has made his announcement, nobody has been groomed and readied to take his place.

Here is why this issue is being handled most unjustly and unevenly: The players front up to questions about their retirements in front of cameras and mikes with varying degrees of composure and then go about the business of playing for India. The masterminds of the ‘scheme’ neither have to respond to public questioning nor do they bat, bowl or, perish the thought, field. They remain hidden, comfortable in the anonymity of being friendly sources to the more gullible among media watchdogs.

It was only a couple of years ago that you were watching these guys on television and, hopefully, one day you hope to get the opportunity to play with those guys, and it just happened to be. Now, I hope I can continue that for years to come.

We know what a great season Simon Katich had last season, breaking records left, right and centre, and I just happened to be in that side. It’s just the way he approaches the game, and his attitude to the game is nothing short of brilliant; no doubt I learnt a lot. Batting with those guys definitely lays off the pressure. It’s great to have a batsman at the other end like Simon Katich, Brad Haddin or Phil Jaques and, in the final, Michael Clarke; the list just keeps going on.

The sound of bat whacking ball would have Chandidas Ganguly waking up with a start in the middle of the night, only to find son Sourav batting in the drawing room with the domestic help bowling to him. “My son has gone mad,” the father would say and tell his wife to get her son to realise that there is life beyond cricket as well. But his mother never had the heart to tell her son that it was all over and “he could never make it back to the Indian team”.

While I didn’t think much of the shirt waving spectacle, he did bring the much-needed aggression and a will to win into the side. His leadership inculcated that focus of how everything should revolve around achieving victory and in that endeavour he backed the right horses and for the right reasons.

Some thought the Australians behaved like boofheads. Others were convinced the visitors had stirred the possum. Regardless, it cannot be repeated. Nor can the rude catcalls heard last time around in India.