The Surfer

Rupert Murdoch's Australian, which can always be relied on for sober and dispassionate coverage of cricket issues, laid it out with typical restraint: "The secret behind the devastating swing bowling that took England to its historic 2005 Ashes win has been revealed. They cheated." What a relief for the country to be confirmed in its most deeply embedded prejudices - that any English ascendancy, however brief, must be an outcome of trickery or luck.

Here, on sluggish pitches, it is the spinners rather than wrecking balls such as Flintoff and Harmison who boss the middle overs, while the capacity of seamers to take the pace from the ball is also crucial ... Ultimately, success, particularly in one-day cricket, will come in the development of a squad capable of adapting to all conditions and circumstances. One size does not fit all.

To this day, Symonds has not forgiven Cricket Australia for what transpired in an Adelaide federal courtroom eight months ago. It was there that Symonds and three team-mates were convinced by CA to downgrade a charge of racial abuse against Harbhajan Singh to one of mere verbal abuse - a ploy the Australian players were advised would help ensure a lengthy suspension after the Monkeygate scandal, but one which eventually resulted in Harbhajan escaping sanction altogether.

China bends its knee to no one where individual pursuits such as diving, weightlifting and shooting are concerned, but it has not yet got the team thing. The Asian Cricket Council's website indicates where the mission to inculcate “shen shi yun dong” (“the noble game”) into the hearts and minds of the Chinese stands: against a population of 1,321,851,888, it lists zero turf pitches, zero cricket clubs, four cricket grounds and a blank next to the name of the national captain.

There was not much of a difference in bowling to most of the Indian batsmen. Their style was similar. But Virender Sehwag was the toughest to bowl to without doubt.

These days, hope is once again visible in his eyes as he gets ready to face Australia A in a three-day match starting on Wednesday. That’s why he can afford to joke about his perennial presence outside the door of the Indian dressing room. “I’m a veteran in the India A side now,” says the 25-year-old with a grin. Mishra’s mood symbolises the atmosphere at the India A practice session. This is the time of wishful thinking for the anxious fringe players of Indian cricket. “I have a gut feeling that if I perform against Australia A, I’ll have a chance to be in the Test team,” Mishra says.

Those of us privileged to watch him in his best years have marvelled at the risible ease with which he has played the game. At country level, he has made so many contemporaries look ordinary. His bat was broader than anyone else's. Nothing seemed to get past it. There was always a respect for orthodoxy; with an hypnotic efficiency he took on the bowlers in rotation. The strokes were always clean. For a big man, he was imposing rather than handsome in execution.

While their circumstances are different, Tait can relate to the pressure and stresses of international cricket which forced him to walk away from the game in January physically and mentally exhausted. "Symo has played a hell of a lot of cricket over the last few years and he's often played with injuries," Tait said.

Three games into his international one-day career, Hussey is already thinking three steps ahead towards a baggy green cap and is motivated by the perception he lacks the temperament for the longer form of the game. "Nothing is going to stop me playing Test cricket, and it doesn't matter what anybody says.”

You also have to laugh when someone such as Symonds, having broken his team's rules, then asks the world to "respect my privacy" as he contemplates walking away from the preposterous earnings and opportunities that elite sportsmen are granted. Teams require their members to respect each other, if no one else, and if you don't play by house rules then disharmony is sewn faster than onion weed.

The least the BCCI could do is have an inter-corporate tournament at the state level so that not only will employment opportunities for cricketers be generated, but also state associations will be prevented from ruining the cricketers’ careers.