The Surfer

Figures obtained by The Telegraph suggest the semi-final against New Zealand attracted an average audience of 632,000, with a peak of 1.2 million, which sounds decent until you know that the Premier League Darts in Cardiff managed 300,000 the following day. It would be interesting to know how many the final attracted because it felt like a big moment. #WT20 Final had been trending since about 8am and by 7.30pm on Sunday night had been the subject of as many tweets as Leicester City.

While cricket became the centre of his life as a young lad, big things began to unlock for him when he went for secondary school at Churchill High School. First, he made the Zimbabwe Under-14 team to tour Namibia in 2009 and at 16, he made the 2012 Zimbabwe Under-19 World Cup team hosted by Australia. This was the time he wrote on his bedroom wall that he was going to play for the national team before he turned 20.
"A lot of people thought I was crazy when I posted on Facebook that I was going to play for the national team at 19. I even wrote it on the wall in my bedroom in Glenview where I used to stay with my parents. I was more of a believer; I felt things would happen for me and even my coach used to tell me that I had no idea how talented I was and it encouraged me," the Matabeleland Tuskers player said.

I warmed to Cricket: The Game of Life because of its fine prose and its impressive research, but also because it confirmed my own prejudices. "In every Test-playing country," writes Berry, "the top batsmen are celebrated, but even more so in India. Merchant and Hazare, then Sunil Gavaskar in the 1970s, paved the way for the mass adulation of V.V.S. Laxman, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid and, above all, Sachin Tendulkar".

Cricketers, Don Bradman used to say, are temporary custodians of the game whose task is to leave it enhanced. Retirement is not a fight against age or fitness, it is about a battle with yourself. It's time to retire when you have nothing more to offer, when you cannot better yourself, nor the game. But it will be difficult to make that argument at a time when a player's presence in the national team has a great bearing on his fortunes.

Like it or not, our job is to ask you questions. Sure, the question of your retirement peeves you. It would, you're human after all and to be persistently reminded of it would get to anybody. But to mistake our wanting to know as personal - especially after the detached, cavalier manner you bade your farewell from Tests not long ago - gives away something that is not quite in sync with the aloofness you can bring to the game. To wonder out aloud whether we are happy or not that India has finally won, when you are asked to explain a close win over Bangladesh, is wielding that power you hold by sitting on the other side of the table, from a very, very high horse.

I have tried to keep him under my wing for a while because I love the way he plays and how he is a 360 degree player. I like his temperament. He is a bit of a loose head occasionally but I like the fact he cares so much and how aggressive he is. It is encouraging to see a youngster like Jason being given the freedom by England to make mistakes. He is enjoying the environment. All the players are loving it and that is being reflected in results.

Just before a match against Royal Challengers Bangalore, Bumrah found from the team sheet that he was picked. There hadn't been any preparation time but mentally he was ready. The start though wasn't as he would have hoped as Kohli went after him, smashing three fours. Watching from mid-off was Sachin Tendulkar , who had given him his debut cap, and who decided to put the youngster at ease, telling him, 'just one good ball, your match will change, don't worry'. Luckily for Bumrah, that happened in the same over, his first little big moment came when he trapped Virat Kohli lbw. And he let out a roar and pumped his fists but the scream of joy was actually anger. "He had hit me for three boundaries in that over and so I was angry," the teenager said later. The young boy caught the attention of cricket fans, and even made actor Amitabh Bachchan tweet.

Where to go? Maybe baseball, similar in length and format and now style, offers a clue. Probably the most influential baseball writer of recent times has been Bill James, who sought to use deep analysis of data alongside folksy, homespun prose to debunk myths and what he called "repeated legend and legerdemain". His writing might not be as lyrical as, say, Roger Angell's, but it changed the way people thought about the game and sparked a multibillion-dollar sports data/analytics industry. Help is on the way for cricket writers who want to get under the skin of T20 with analytical sites such as CricViz -- a free app that uses a combination of historical Hawk-Eye, Opta, ball-by-ball and scoreboard data, part founded and devised by Nathan Leamon, England's analyst.

On the face of it, there is a certain logic there. Give more, get more. The problem comes when you follow the logical thread through to the end. For instance: should the well-off get preferential access to public services, given that they pay far more in tax? Should they be able to jump the queue in hospitals? Perhaps we could take this a step further still. Given that a millionaire contributes more to the economy than the guy who serves your latte in the morning, should their vote count for more?

By 2020 (appropriately) we should see a city-based competition blocked into the middle of the summer, closer to the Australian Big Bash model in which Cricket Australia has overall control, rather than the Indian franchise system. This will not be straightforward: our grounds are not large enough to accommodate the sort of numbers that the Big Bash has seen, and in Australia the expansion has been from six state sides to eight, with Melbourne and Sydney sustaining two each. Here, it would be necessary to shrink it down, and almost forget the county divisions.

But herein comes the real problem. A city-based competition would preclude home games for those counties - Essex and Somerset in particular - who rely on a few days' T20 a year for a large proportion of their income.

Ben was driving a forklift truck in the stall and didn't notice Martin coming on his way. He rammed into him and the sharp forks gashed into his left foot. Blood was splayed all over and Martin writhed in pain. They rushed him to the hospital. "Even now a shiver goes down our spine when we think of that day. Martin was just 13. His toes were absolutely crushed. Initially, the doctors tried fix and realign them. But after two-three weeks when his toes showed no signs of healing, they decided to amputate the three outside toes. We were shattered, but poor Martin was brave enough to hide his tears," says Peter, his voice quavering.