The Surfer

The statistics traditionally used in baseball weren't necessarily much use, and as such they were ripe for re-evaluation. It was [David] Barry who pointed me towards the work of one man who had been recalculating the measures applied to cricket statistics in an effort to find fresh, objective, information on the game, Charles Davis. His book, The Best of the Best, was published in 2000. In it Davis spends a chapter debunking "the myths of cricket".

It is fascinating reading (for a cricket fan). Amongst other things, Davis objectively proves that using a nightwatchman is fundamentally flawed (you can read his analysis here). Ultimately though the book led me to think that there is a third major factor hindering cricket sabermetrics. Cricket is excessively obsessed with its past, and the majority of Davis's book is spent comparing players from different eras and trying to determine who is best. Which is all good fun, but it means that the statistical innovations he makes - such as the calculation of an 'under-pressure average' for batsmen - are squandered on pub-table debate. What Billy Beane did - by contrast - was to take such stats and actually apply them to team training and selection.

The balance between bat and ball is fundamental to the game. Inevitably, there will be times when conditions allow batsmen to have a better time of it than bowlers, and vice versa, but it is not in the interests of the game for one component to dominate the other totally. It is meant to be an even contest. Golf has similar problems, although they do not concern one element suffering a disadvantage. Modern clubs and balls are reducing many of the world's greatest courses to nothing more than a pitch and putt, and in an effort to keep up with technology and preserve relatively high scores the game's administrators are having to amend courses. Holes are being lengthened and the layout changed by placing bunkers and water hazards in unfavourable positions. Cricket does not have such luxuries. Most grounds are arenas and the size of boundaries is limited by the presence of stands.

Test matches, in particular, are fine occasions at Lord's, where decorum reigns over the need to dress up as nuns or whatever, there is the buzz of conversation rather than raucous chanting and applause is polite and wholehearted. This, without being po-faced about it, is refreshing at times. But Lord's is also elitist, and hideously expensive. It caters too much for the corporate market and scarcely at all for the casual spectator, restricted as it is by size: it is too small for the demands of international sport. A day out for a family, say four people, will cost around £250 just for tickets, if you can get them, so well ahead do they tend to sell. You cannot blame them for cashing in, but it hardly goes out of its way to being accessible.

And what is the rush? England should beat New Zealand with the most frequently invoked relative in broadcasting - Geoffrey Boycott's mum - at the helm. Why not let Flintoff continue to bowl for Lancashire so he can take time to build confidence in his body and try to find some batting form before the tougher questions that South Africa will ask in the second half of the summer? Flintoff's bowling is rock solid, but his batting is flaky and he needs matches and runs under his belt before he takes Test-match examinations again.

Errors have at times changed the course of a match and a career. Ponting was given out lbw on 96 in his debut Test at Perth against Sri Lanka to a ball clearly going over the stumps.

"We're quite subtle and we'll give each other a high five and a bit of a hug. Generally speaking, our levels of celebration are quite subdued. From our point of view, we've always looked at the other side and thought 'that's a bit over the top'. But that's the melodramatic nature of their sport - the belief that they have in their culture - and they love success equally as much as Australia."

At the game between the Mumbai Indians and the Deccan Chargers, Ambani was in his box with his wife, Nita, and their three children. The whole family wore blue, the team color. Nita Ambani had slapped a Mumbai Indians sticker on the back of her flowing chiffon salwar kameez. The team logo, she pointed out, was a ball of fire, a divine weapon known as a chakra lifted from Hindu mythology.

Discipline is undoubtedly the root of his success. You can see it in the way he prepares to bowl, placing his feet meticulously on his bowling mark, planting his fingers carefully on the ball, standing tall and briefly contemplating his delivery before setting off. He idolises Glenn McGrath, and he seems also to have been born with McGrath's other major attribute - desire. There is a bristling, apparently unshakeable determination which has enabled him to leapfrog more experienced practitioners.

He did, and faced his mates early in the season, as all movers seem to. In truth he didn’t bowl that well, recording so-so figures of 6-0- 43-1 in a shortened game, but the more important pointer was that the venom appeared to be back. A couple of slippery bouncers to Glamorgan skipper David Hemp showed that. The accuracy will come, just as it suddenly appeared in 2004/05 after his wayward early years.

The law will state it must feature 90% cane, rubber and glue. However, Gray-Nicolls is already one step ahead and has developed a bat which replaces the rubber with 10% carbon. The company said it believed the handle for the Fusion II was within the proposed new law.