The Surfer

But what if it [Arthur's comments] made some of le Roux's many, many friends really angry and they decided to defend his honour and integrity by providing some evidence of what le Roux observed at close quarters for four years?

Cameras will be set up to capture as nearly as possible a batsman's-eye view of the opposition bowlers, and relay the feed to a studio near the Australian dressing room.

It is hard to see why the left-arm quick bowler should be such a rarity. In any adversarial sport there are advantages to being a minority. Southpaw boxers, left-arm baseball pitchers like Tom Glavine of the New York Mets - who is seeking his 300th victory - and left-handed tennis players like John McEnroe and Martina Navratilova all present their opponents distinctive problems. For a cricket team rotating four or five bowlers, there are great advantages to having one or two who test batsmen from a different angle.

As most people know, there is pressure and pressure. To the best of our knowledge neither Prior nor Cook has saved somebody from a burning house, or a sinking boat, faced a gunman, delivered a baby, or talked a troubled soul out of taking their life. That is the pressure that thousands of our fellow citizens are paid to deal with on a daily basis, and not one of them is paid nearly so well as they.

What really offended during this match was the overt aggression, including chat designed to distract the batsman, chuntering at close quarters from disgruntled fast bowlers, and, in the case of Sreesanth, a beamer to Kevin Pietersen and a bouncer bowled by the same bowler to Paul Collingwood from round the wicket and a yard beyond the popping crease. Sreesanth lost half his match fee for a petty little tilt at Vaughan’s shoulder as he walked past him, but he should have lost the rest of it for that deliberate no-ball and if the senior India players believe the beamer to have been deliberate, he should not play any more Test cricket until they are sure that he has learnt the lesson.

After a Test in which both teams sought to exorcise the spirit of cricket - most notably when England fieldsmen threw jelly beans on the wicket while Zaheer Khan was taking strike - England and India have committed the very sins they have supposedly stood against

Disguise is everything. Neither changes his action or slants his wrist noticeably: for the batsmen looking for cues, few, if any, appear. Zaheer, at times, drags his fingers down the inside of the ball for the outswinger to the right-hander, but it’s done so fast, it’s barely detectable.

Has Tendulkar ‘not’ taken the pressure? Have these 18 years of staying sane and performing as a nation howls for runs been just, you know, a stroll in a Bandra park? Was all that rescuing of India, all those forgotten years ago, when opponents used to say, openly, “Get Tendu out and India’s shoulders droop”, no big deal? Damn, he ate a pressure for breakfast Tiger Woods would have choked on.

India used to be a deferential sort of team, and a soft touch on foreign soil. But that was before the arrival of Sourav Ganguly, the man with the thickest skin in cricket. He turned them into a more streetwise, self-confident crew, and in this series they have stood up to England's bullying tactics and then replied in kind.