The Surfer

Like all sportsmen we don't believe it is worth endangering our lives in order to compete but we are not qualified to make judgements on security issues which is why we leave that to the experts. Personally I feel extremely sorry for Pakistan's fans and cricketers that they will now miss out on seeing the best cricketers in the world.

Procter is one of the five men I submit for consideration. He gets in because English spectators saw him at his best over a decade, and best in his case means being one of the most supremely gifted - and watchable - all-round cricketers the world has known.

"You're always being judged as captain and as hard as you try not to read or listen to what people say, it eventually gets back to you. I tried to laugh everything off but it seeps through and hurts. But that is what being captain of the England cricket team is about. Along with being manager of the England football team it is the most scrutinised job a sportsman in this country can have."

"To be honest I feel like my batting's been a real battle for two years," he said. "I've just been sort of hanging in there and grinding away and it feels like every innings has been a real vigil and it didn't feel like I could play a lot of shots with a lot of power or conviction."

Freddie's back. And when you have Andrew Flintoff at the top of his game, you tend to look good if you are standing anywhere within shouting distance.

While I was President of the ICC, before an ICC Board meeting in Lahore in 2004, I took a number of directors including the then Chairmen of the Boards from Australia, West Indies, South Africa and Zimbabwe to Gilgit and Hunza. We drove up the KKH and flew back. It was an eye opener for them. It showed them a Pakistan very different from the perception they had. To this day they all consider it the highlight of their cricketing travels anywhere in the world. Each one of them would come back to Pakistan at the first opportunity.

With Symonds now contemplating his future in the wake of the embarrassing fishing fiasco in Darwin, Australia's national selectors will have to at least discuss other options ahead of naming the touring squad in a fortnight. Even if Symonds does make himself available, it's questionable whether he will be in the right frame of mind to deal with six strenuous weeks on the road.

"South Africa at Old Trafford in 1955," he recalls. "I scored nought and one, and caught three and dropped four at first slip. So when Godfrey Evans broke his finger in two places, Peter May said, 'You might as well keep wicket'. And the first ball I caught, down the leg side off Frank Tyson, that's what happened." Chuckling, Graveney shows me the little finger on his left hand, which he can bend back almost to the horizontal. "Can you see? The middle knuckle doesn't operate any more."

Rawalpindi had a number of grounds apart from the Pindi Club Ground on the Mall Road. Gradually these grounds have disappeared. The Army ground is now the parking lot for the GHQ, the T&T ground is now a housing estate; others have simply disappeared as commercial and residential developments took over the vacant spaces where children could just turn up and play. Regretfully, this has been the case throughout Pakistan ... Without investment in playing facilities a large pool of talent will be lost.