The Surfer

For almost four hours this teenager with the serene face, brought up on low, slow Indian wickets, had defied four bristling Australian pacemen on the fastest, bounciest pitch in the world with a mixture of grace and power his opponents found hard to fathom in one so young. Merv Hughes cracked open a beer and turned to his captain, Allan Border: "This little prick's going to get more runs than you, AB." Almost 16 years later, Sachin Tendulkar not only has more runs than the prolific Border, and fewer only than West Indian Brian Lara, but is about to come full circle by touring Australia for the last time. At 34, he is perhaps the summer's greatest drawcard.

When Anil Kumble scored that unlikely hundred at Lord’s, even he did not entertain thoughts of Test captaincy. His fellow townsman Rahul Dravid was firmly in command. However, at the end of the English summer, Dravid unexpectedly resigned. The selectors then approached Sachin Tendulkar and apparently got his consent to step in as leader. On second thoughts, Sachin turned down the job, and — after thinking long and hard — the post was offered by the selectors to Kumble instead ...

With all-time greats such as Ricky Ponting, Jacques Kallis and Sachin Tendulkar among the current generation, this is a debatable call by Simpson, 71, who began his first-class career for New South Wales in 1952-53. But his argument does have merit, given that Test nations Bangladesh, West Indies and New Zealand are among the weakest ever seen.

Bracken leaves home at 4.30am to be at Waters's place by five. By 6.30, he can barely walk. He'll invariably have a NSW training session later in the day in Sydney. He was unsure about the merits of working with Waters until he jumped on YouTube and watched the second round of Waters's epic WBC super-welterweight championship fight against Terry Norris: three minutes of pure courage. Bracken now hangs on Waters's every word.

He doesn't expect a return to the glory days of the 1970s and '80s. Consistency will suffice for now. But what Dyson will insist upon is personal accountability among the players, many of whom have established reputations for nocturnal profligacy that far outweighs anything they have achieved on the field.

Debate is raging about playing four fast bowlers and forgetting about the slow stuff altogether. After all, the West Indies followed this practice in its dominant years. But captaincy suffered, and once the supply of great pace bowlers ran out, the game was up. The idea also ignores the current emphasis on spin and the empty stands.

It is ridiculous to argue, as some fanciful commentators have done, that Bodyline threatened the Empire and that Australia might even have seceded to become an independent state. E. Rockley Wilson, the former England bowler who had taught Douglas Jardine at Winchester, forecast bleakly when his former pupil was made captain of the touring party: "We shall win the Ashes - but we may very well lose a dominion." But it was a philosophical rather than a political assessment.

As pale as a ghost, as fleet-footed as a dancer, as shy as a badger, as well-humoured as a skylark and blessed with a bulging heart, Michael Clarke has entered the most significant part of his cricket career. His rise was celebrated, his fall was regretted, and now comes a second, more sustained, surge - one that has brought a sense of stability and, with it, the responsibility of captaining the national team.