The Surfer

The allrounder spoke of his love for the game, desire to again reach its pinnacle and need to become a better team-mate. All positive signs. All that cricket fans wanted to hear.

It is difficult to overstate how bad Yorkshire cricket was until Gough came along. In the 1970s and 80s, the club was mired in the Boycott wars and an obsession with past glories. Nostalgics talked about charismatic characters like Fred Trueman and Brian Close and pointed to the obvious shortcomings of the brittle and diffident Chris Old and the enigmatic Jim Love. Every few years there would be a promising discovery, such as Paul Jarvis, whose youthful vigour and talent would be crushed by the weight of expectation.

The book is an out-and-out cricket manual for coaches and serious students of the game. It deals with the techniques of batting, bowling and fielding. It also has sub-sections on personalities like Don Bradman, Shane Warne and Gary Kirsten, the new India coach. It throws light on issues like ball-tampering, sledging, reverse swing, racial tensions, cricket relations between hostile India and Pakistan; almost every conceivable issue barring the ones in question.

"I remember how daunted I was getting from Heathrow to Worcester on my own. I got the train and I was met at the railway station by the club secretary. He dropped me off at the hotel near the cathedral and I spent the whole weekend on my own. It was early April and bitterly cold and all I did that weekend was walk into town, get a burger, walk back to my room, watch TV, and then walk down into town to get another burger in the evening."

In a system that churns out a huge number of participants, teenagers suffer from an expectation syndrome. The pressure of expectations pushes a player into a discomfort zone as the competition grows. Obviously performance tends to get affected. Now with IPL, huge sums have added to pressure, and players not used to such sums have lost focus. And when a player loses the focus, things go awry. This is where mentoring is very essential to guide the behaviour of a player.

At the ICL we have always maintained that the intention has been to help needy cricketers, those cricketers who have not been given a proper stage for them to showcase their talent. We have never tried to prove any point to the International Cricket Council or the Board of Control for Cricket in India but have only extended a helping hand to cricketers in need.

We lauded the Indian Premier League when it did well in its inaugural edition. After all, the IPL was also cricket but we have never sought any reactions from the IPL or the BCCI or the ICC. History, however, will document the fact that the IPL was born out of the immensely successful ICL. The initiative of launching this form of entertainment in cricket will always be credited to the ICL.

But at an age when Yuvraj should have been pushing for the India captaincy, it is all beginning to unravel for him. After five years and 23 Tests, he does not find a place in the Rest of India team for the Irani Trophy. With both the veterans and youngsters fighting for the middle order slots in the Indian team, Yuvraj seems to have been squeezed out. Neither senior enough to be protected, nor young enough to be given another chance.

The simple reason the counties want their players on twelve-month contracts is control. They do not want them signing up for so-called 'rebel' tournaments like the Indian Cricket League. They're not really sure what they're going to do with them all winter, but they want them only doing things of which they approve. They want them on extended contracts, but they do not want to pay them much more.