The Surfer

Unfortunately, we're getting players that have only played a handful of games in some cases that have been playing not a lot of cricket and I've got to say that some of the stuff they're bringing to us, we need to change dramatically. One person or one management team at this level can't change that overnight. We can make changes along the way but it does take time. To say 'we want to be from there to there in two or three months, it is totally unrealistic. Mathematically you can't do it. To change the habits of the players once they get to this team, overnight, it's just not going to happen. They need to start working on things before they get there.

If Snape had been involved back then [1999 World Cup semi-final], he could have told [Allan] Donald that what he and [Lance] Klusener did was not choke but panic. The responses look similar to the untutored eye but, according to studies in America, they are actually poles apart. According to research, choking comes from thinking too much, panic from thinking too little. Ergo, if Klusener had thought about the broader context of his situation, that a World Cup final was as good as theirs (a big thought beyond the present), he might not have been able to hit the ball, which would have been a choke. But if he had thought a bit more about that over in hand, focusing on the fact there were still two balls left (a small thought very much in the present), then he might have averted the panic that saw him set off for that risky run.

The Australian government used it last year to help their national cricket team avoid a tour of Zimbabwe and the British government followed suit last month; issuing a ministerial communiqué that allowed the ECB to back out of their commitments. Far from proving controversial, both decisions received widespread support at home and abroad.Despite this, the New Zealand government continues to baulk at taking such action, arguing that interfering with ci tizens' freedom of movement was an extreme and draconian measure, and that it wasn't prepared to withhold passports in order to reinforce its feelings on Zimbabwe.

I've no doubt this attack came about due to the delicate balance an ex-team member faces when they step out of the dressing room and straight into the media. I believe the player involved would not have been motivated to approach the likes of a professional journalist in the same way they did me when they were angered by what was written. Within the group you see things similarly and, even when disagreements arise, the dynamics on the inside are vastly different than dealing with disagreements that arise between the team and outside media. When you leave that pack, I believe it is easier for the person leaving the group to sever ties than for those who remain to cut that person loose.

During the next five weeks it will be just such contests that dominate the sporting landscape here and it will be the ability of Alastair Cook, Andrew Strauss, Michael Vaughan, Kevin Pietersen, Ian Bell and Paul Collingwood to handle South Africa's hostile and much vaunted pace attack that will ultimately decide the result of the four-Test series. If England defeat the Proteas they can look forward to next summer's Ashes with confidence. Lose, and the international future of a couple of players in Michael Vaughan's side must be in doubt.

To observe this titanic clash unfold at the International Cricket Council's annual meeting was both enthralling and disturbing. Two bulls locked horns, suddenly aware of their own strength and unprepared to cede ground. The primary tussle, a narrow win in a bowl-out for England, concerned Zimbabwe. England wanted them out, India wanted them in: they are out of next year's World Twenty20 in England but still in (for now) the ICC.

A pace attack of Steyn, Makhaya Ntini, Morne Morkel and Jacques Kallis merits careful consideration. It not only has gas, but variety too: the skiddy, swinging Steyn; the wide-of-the-crease, hitting-the-pitch-hard Ntini; the unadulterated bounce of the 6ft 6in Morkel and the sparingly used Kallis, with know-how of when best to release an increasingly creaky handbrake.

Cogniscant of the British government's threat to ban Zimbabwe from the tournament, the ICC's executive committee moved to avoid a potentially fractious fall-out by leaning on the ZC to withdraw its team. The ZC's reward was to retain its current level of funding and full voting power, which will almost certainly ensure India's virtual hegemony on the council for years to come.

Certainly, it [the ICC] has decided that history can be undone and put together again in a new form. In a strange, and rather disturbing, precedent, it has said that the match between England and Pakistan at the Brit Oval in 2006 was not, after all, a win for England. It was a draw.