The Surfer

For Smith, the WACA Ground is a very special place and flooded with memories of the feats of cricketers he has long admired, none more than his hero Graham "Garth" McKenzie. He was 12 when first taken to the ground by his grandfather for the Sheffield Shield match between Western Australia and South Australia in 1967-68. The previous year, his family had moved from Narrogin in the south of the state to Perth and his first sighting of some of the great names of Australian cricket is one of his most treasured memories. He carried with him not a modest sheet of paper but the book, the Rothmans Book of Ashes Cricket 1946-1963 edited by Ted Dexter, he had been awarded as dux of Grade VII at Christian Brothers School at Highgate. He was bursting with excitement and somehow hoped he could secure a signature or two.

Many psychologists will tell you that niceness is bad for you. Some psychologists even talk about the "tyranny of niceness", the urge that prevents you reaching your full potential. No psychologist is yet on record as saying that niceness can cost you Test matches but, if Australia lose in Perth, Ricky Ponting might well receive a cold call from one.

It is a fair question and one that must be asked in the wake of not just yesterday's collapse, but the startling themes of the past seven days of bare-knuckled Test combat between Australia and India. Even if Australia wriggles off the canvas and wins the third Test, it can be said with some surety that the mighty Australian aura is fading. Since the start of the Sydney Test, India has stood toe-to-toe and eyeball-to-eyeball with Australia, highlighting some deficiencies and cutting down some lofty reputations.

This was something of an unknown Australia, sapped, by circumstance and attrition, of much of its renowned hard-headedness. Missing were not only Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath and Justin Langer, but here, temporarily, Matthew Hayden; four stronger players in the mind Australia has not known. In their place were four players with a total of 13 Tests between them and already learning harsh lessons about how begrudging opponents, umpires and luck are in Test cricket.

Taunton is a small, relaxed town and Trescothick does not desire to live elsewhere. He spoke yesterday of his hopes of coaching Somerset after he retires - he is 32 and, ideally, would like to play until he is 40 - although he wants to do so in conjunction with running a business of some kind. He lives near the ground; Musgrove Hospital, where his second child will be born, is two miles away - “I don’t know whether it is a boy or a girl, but two children is probably enough” - and he can walk the streets unbothered even by the cider swillers.

Sharma widened the breach. Already he has captured the imagination of Australian supporters. The sight of any other fellow walking out to bat in Sydney with two left-handed gloves might have provoked suspicion. But the Delhi-ite has an air of innocence that discourages murky thoughts. Presumably his cricket bag works along the same lines as his hair. Even his catching is naive and the sight of him hovering under a skier counts among the game's amusements.

When you speak to people about Kumble certain words keep coming up. Commitment, discipline, hard work, introvert, perseverance. These are a nightmare for someone trying to conjure up an image of the person behind the steely glare, because their meaning is so well known but so rarely adhered to. Yet with Kumble there are enough instances, if the way a person plays his cricket is an accurate reflection of his personality, to highlight each of these traits.

It looked like the end of the match - not the beginning. As the Australian and Indian teams took the field for the third Test at the WACA Ground yesterday, each player shook the hand of their opponents, football-style. That's 72 handshakes, 73 if you include the extra pat Australian captain Ricky Ponting gave Indian spinner Harbhajan Singh. At any rate, as the gesture count goes, it was a day-one record.

Oh, there had been talk that the good old days were back. Talk that curator Cameron Sutherland had found a way for men to wear moustaches and open-neck shirts without looking like somebody on the way to a fancy dress party. The curator has applied a few centimetres of the old soil to the top of the deck, but it is not the elixir of youth that all had hoped for. You can sew the hair back on to a balding man's head but it does not give him back his vim or vigour. Alas, it is 2008, there is no way it will be 1976 again.

On the evidence before us, Ponting, Hilditch and the West Australians, have been duped. On Tuesday, former opener Justin Langer recommended Ponting bowl first. But after sighting the deck yesterday before presenting Chris Rogers with his baggy green cap, Langer abruptly changed his advice.

Darren Gough, as a current bowler, had been barred from playing after dominating the 2007 event and I was asked to replace him. It did not take me long to reach my decision – I had previously been paid a lot less to make a fool of myself in Australia, and that was when I was playing in the Ashes.