The Surfer

I have to live up to my own standards and my own expectations. And I'll make mistakes, but I hope over the course of my career and life, I won't make that many mistakes. We're all going to look at things we've done in our career and think 'I wish I had done that differently or behaved differently'. I just hope that over the length of a career, there are few of those moments and lots more of things that I can look back and say, 'I was actually quite okay there. What I did there was quite good.' It's also not only about me. I think people have bounced back and supported Rajasthan Royals also because there are other people on this team who they will not doubt.

The ICC has agreed to use only one new ball in case the match is reduced to 25 overs or less. Good news? Not really. It's commonsense that the match will get reduced that much only due to rain and if that's the case, the outfield is likely to remain reasonably wet for the entire duration of the game. Now, would you rather have two new balls that are likely to remain drier or only one that becomes a bar of soap after a few overs? Even spinners would happily take the new ball over a wet ball. So, the intention to help the spinner is actually going to work against them.

I also recognised that academic education is not just the only type of education. I think being street-smart, worldly-wise, understanding how the world works is equally important. Some are technically skilled, some are good mechanics or chefs. This is equally educational. It doesn't have to only come from schools or universities alone. Guys like Dhoni and Munaf Patel didn't have too much formal education but they were smart fellows.

I didn't misread it. I just didn't realise it would spin that much. As a player, you know it's going to spin a bit but that one just turned an enormous amount and managed to beat everything. There wasn't a great deal I could do about it. You do get balls like that even from seamers where you think you've got it covered and it seams off the pitch and there's nothing you can do about it. You just hope it doesn't take the outside edge or hit the stumps.

He said the game went on "a bit too long for my liking and I began to get a little absent-minded in the deep field after tea". He made one not out in defeat, and bowled a few overs. "It all felt like being back at school, especially the trestle tea with slabs of bread and butter, and that wicked-looking cheap cake." He went on to record the comment of the Double Crown captain Francis Meynell that his bowling was "of erratic length, but promising, and that I should have been put on before. Think of the honour and glory there."

Shortly before the series, Miandad was quoted by the press as saying that the senior players in the team were not co-operating with him. Majid Khan took offense and invited nine players to his home in Lahore and told them that he was going to refuse playing under Miandad. He said that Zaheer [Abbas] had agreed to do the same. The board decided to side with Miandad and he led a brand new team against the Lankans in the first Test of the series at Karachi's National Stadium.

I love India. In fact, I was here earlier this year for a couple of weeks at the MRF Pace Academy. I love the curry and naan man. If I stayed here for a year, I probably would be weighing 200 kilograms. Ahead of the 1987 World Cup, I would bowl continuously for hour-and-a-half stretches in training. It was sort of an acclimatisation to bowl when you got tired. I actually ran and did all my training in the steam room. I used to do a lot of outdoor running. I used to run with a raincoat on to acclimatise to the humidity. That got me a lot of strange looks back then.

The way Srinivasan mowed down his detractors was quite ruthless. Niranjan Shah and Sudhir Dabir were shown the door at the first hint of taking sides with the rival camp led by Sharad Pawar and Shashank Manohar. Lalit Modi, once his closest aide and now his strongest critic, has been banned for life from the activities of the BCCI. It's time then for Srinivasan to show the same diligence while reconstructing the battered image of BCCI.

Neesham had just shifted from Auckland in an attempt to kickstart his cricket career and the Southlanders let him know that just because he had attracted some interest from the Otago Volts decision-makers, the welcome mat wasn't about to be rolled out. Neesham looked handy enough in North East Valley's 13-run win without providing any sort of wow factor to suggest he was going to progress to be a superstar recruit for the Volts.

With no local manufacturers, cricket equipment is mostly imported in Zimbabwe. "Even an average imported bat will cost about $280," he says. And while [Kieran] Geyle and a number of his [(Zimbabwe Under-19) teammates play grade cricket in the UK, prices are prohibitively high there as well. Hence it's a no-brainer to buy them here. "Here, you can get a pretty good bat from around 75 dollars," he says.