The Surfer

With an eye on the top job himself, Strauss may have offered only equivocal support to Pietersen's nomination. But in a team at times accused of lacking independent thinkers his common-sense advice in the months ahead could be crucial as Pietersen attempts to grow into the job.

Ntini links the Donald and Pollock era with the new one of Morkel and Steyn. The first black cricketer to play Test cricket for South Africa when he appeared against Sri Lanka in Cape Town in 1998, he has also greatly helped to ease the transition towards a multiracial team picked these days purely on merit. A little like the prolific Courtney Walsh, he is no one's idea of a thoroughbred - more a workhouse of extraordinary stamina - but he has more victims than the more highly rated Allan Donald.

Sri Lanka have done it, and the results are there to see. They have resisted the temptation of redrafting the in-form 39-year-old opener Sanath Jayasuriya in the Test side and he hasn’t been missed. The sight of opener Malinda Warnapura returning with a stump in one hand along with skipper Mahela Jayawardene showed that the Lankans had passed the uncomfortable transition stage.

In the years to come this cricket-crazy island will throw up more freaks, mavericks or audacious stroke makers but Kalu will retain his place in history as the man who changed the concept of opening batting — an innovation that resulted in Sri Lanka coming of age in the World Cup. In this slam-bang age, the Kalu-Jaya formula is worthy of making it to cricketing text books. Ask him about the early days of the new experiment and Kaluwitharana paints a vivid picture. “I was batting at No.7 but Arjuna Ranatunga, Duleep Mendis and coach Dav Whatmore suggested that I should open. We were both stroke players and our idea was to attack the bowlers”.

England have lost a Test series against South Africa and Panesar is among those attracting most opprobrium, largely because of his failure to bowl England to victory in helpful conditions at Edgbaston, the Test that turned the series ... Panesar's development has slowed, with his lack of an arm ball particularly mystifying, while his batting and fielding have degenerated again, inviting the suspicion that his focus has wavered.

Their unyielding professionalism on this tour have opened up the possibility that they could be top dogs before long, whatever the computer might say. Like Australia they lack a top-class spinner - Harris is no more than a tidy one - but their batting goes deep and their fast bowling is strong.

Of their batsmen only Jacques Kallis has faltered - this could be his least productive series for 11 years, although he still has one innings left to change that. Once Dale Steyn has recovered from his thumb injury South Africa have a side that can seriously challenge Australia in Australia this winter, their only obvious weakness being the lack of a quality spin bowler.

What is it about these Anglo-Australians? When Tim Ambrose dived away to his left soon after noon and failed to hold on to the ball which Hashim Amla had inside-edged, he paused prostrate – and on his face was written self-criticism and self-doubt. England do not play their next Test until December in India, but Ambrose's next Test isn't going to be for some time after that.

In a traumatic seven days for English cricket, a perversity remains. The most perilous position in the dressing room is not that of the captain but the man with the gloves. That will continue to be so until the selectors commit properly to a wicketkeeper who they believe can average more than 35 at No 7 and snaffle the vast majority of chances that come his way.

The BBC web commentator recently came up with a nickname for Michael Vaughan: Tinkerman. In last week's Observer Sport, Vic Marks noted that 'Vaughan must have made a record number of field changes - I made it 253 yesterday.' This says a lot about Vaughan (and something about Vic's capacity to keep counting). What had happened to make Vaughan tinker so frequently with the field? Was it a good thing? Had an inventive and exploratory trait become a compulsion to change for change's sake? Did Vaughan feel, desperately, that he had to do something all the time? And what did such tinkering do for the bowlers?

Preceding the arrival of Twenty20 cricket has been the explosive rise in cricket’s mass following. Although only a handful of countries play international cricket, the huge populations of South Asian countries — which are among the most devoted cricket strongholds — have given it prominence on the world stage. In his book Corner of a Foreign Field noted author Ramachandra Guha observes that whenever Wasim Akram bowled to Sachin Tendulkar, you could be sure that the collective television audience exceeded the population of Europe. The eccentric cousin, in other words, can no longer be ignored ... The challenge now is to satisfy the requirements of the International Olympic Committee and wait your place in the queue. In December 2007, the IOC finally recognised cricket as a sport, bringing an end — at least officially if not actually — to the upturned nose attitude that Olympics devotees have long maintained towards cricket.