The Surfer

I am surprised by the reappearance of Irfan Pathan and Munaf Patel. I have been a huge fan of Pathan but you have to ask yourself if he has done enough to suggest he is on the path back. I am sure he would have been happier himself smashing the door down rather than hanging around and wondering if he should knock. So too with Munaf who must think that a place in the Indian team is as easy as becoming President of India. Maybe he is indeed fit, maybe he is indeed bowling well, maybe he is even bowling quick, but maybe the testing ground should have been elsewhere. And remember we are not talking about the likes of a Sourav Ganguly here, and even he had to wait longer. We are talking Munaf Patel; we don’t know enough and in fact, we don’t always like what we know.

Most of the important buzzwords were there. “We took positives out of the last defeat” — TICK; “You have to give India credit” — TICK; “It was played in the right spirit” — TICK; mention of npower, the sponsor, every 30 seconds — TICK. All that was missing was that irksome cliché “we bowled good areas”, which may earn Panesar a black mark.

"It's a lovely letter about how he loved coaching Pakistan, loved the people and she wished me all the best,'' Lawson said. "It comforted me in the fact [Woolmer's family] gave me their support and they don't have any concerns whatsoever.''

I was going to stress that this had nothing to do with jelly beans. Bell, it is alleged - and we must be careful here because The Observer can scarce afford a damaging court case on this issue - was the man who stationed the offending pair of beans on a good length when Zaheer came to the crease. You cannot drop a man for that. But if he is so bored with Test cricket that he has to resort to such silly japes to keep his spirits up....

Mirroring the ICC's misguided sense of priorities, there was little comment in the media about Sreesanth's 'delivery'. This is partly because only one man, Sreesanth himself, knows whether it was deliberate, partly because a coterie of former bowlers in the press box (Mike Selvey an exception) are inclined to take the charitable view that it was not, and partly because there was so much more, other than the cricket, to talk about. But I have no doubt that Sreesanth's rancorous spell, which included the beamer and the no-ball, was the most glaring example in the match of something that ran completely counter to the spirit of the game. Forget the jellybeans and inane chatter.

One of the many great things about the Ashes series of 2005 was the respect between the players. The ultimate image of the series was Andrew Flintoff’s moment of commiseration with Brett Lee after England’s narrow win at Edgbaston in the second Test. We liked that – that’s how we want cricket played.

Zimbabwe continues to enjoy the same constitutional power and authority over the running of the game as Australia. Indeed, in the politics of cricket, where the big games are really played, Zimbabwe can be said to be more powerful than Australia because it is part of the Afro-Asia bloc with India, South Africa, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh which ultimately controls the game.

"World cricket needs 10 very strong countries, it needs good governance," Merriman says. "[International Cricket Council chief executive] Malcolm Speed steps down next year. That is going to be a really testing time for world cricket."