The Surfer

My basic game is to attack than play for survival. I play according to the situation and the merit of the ball. I go with the same frame of mind - to give a good start to my team.

The IPL, concocted by the BCCI to eliminate the ICL, has done a magnificent job of lining the pockets of the privileged few but has done even more to deepen the division between the contracted haves and the have nots.

Asif Iqbal, former captain and now an ICC match referee, agrees that change in Pakistan cricketers’ attitude has affected the game.

I was there. Twenty years on after a momentous sporting event there are usually enough first-hand witnesses around to fill the relevant stadium five times over. But I was bloody there all right - along with about 1500 others - when Graeme Hick scored 405 not out. I have the bowling figures to prove it (50-6-141-1, since you ask).

Kirsten is also the highest paid member of the coaching establishment, at $30,000 per month (net of taxes) and with medical insurance, accommodation and local transport in Bangalore thrown in.

Hansie was a liar, a greedy liar, and a damned cheat, and that is why he was banned from cricket and abandoned.

Unlike British Conservative Party politician John Profumo, who resigned and repented by working as a volunteer cleaning toilets at a charity after he was involved in a sex scandal, Hansie banished himself to a sweet life of continued privilege at Fancourt in George with a wife whose devotion beatified him.

Of course, the film shows - as he tosses and turns, sweats and cries - that Cronje went through serious emotional pain. Of course, it was tough to accept isolation.

Both took up an absurdly difficult style of bowling, a style demanding a contortion of body and wrist so tricky that hardly anyone survives exposure to it.

Some people compare English cricket to a soap opera. Wrong. If you miss a soap for a few weeks you can turn it on again and within minutes you’re up to speed. I have turned my back for the briefest of whiles and I’ve missed Armageddon. No soap scriptwriter would dare to make all these changes at once.

Romanos profiles 100 of New Zealand's best cricketers and, while he is effusive in his praise of Sutcliffe, he does not select him in his top test side. He chooses Glenn Turner and Stewie Dempster as his opening batsmen and Andrew Jones as his No 3. The other specialist batsmen are Martin Crowe, Martin Donnelly and John Reid.