The Surfer

"I've done my penance for that," he said as we crossed the Pennines with him at the wheel heading for an Asda Kwik Cricket final for children at Headingley, Leeds. They greeted him as if he was an amalgamation of Superman and Father Christmas.

It was the curmudgeonly counties who, in a conference call of chief executives during Twenty20, had voted against Worcestershire moving their match against Warwickshire to either Edgbaston or Derby. It was felt Warwickshire would have an unfair advantage; this in a competition which, with its unsymmetrical zonal stages, is inherently unfair anyway.

It [1983 World Cup triumph] definitely changed Indian cricket,' Kapil says. 'People started believing. It is hard to have belief when you are not winning anything. Cricket was the one game where we started winning. Sports is not our forte. If there was a gold medal at the Olympics for doctors, engineers, scientists, we'd pick it up every time. Our country is based on education and the middle-class education is very high. Sport is by the way. Whereas if you look at Europe, Australia and America, sport is very important. For us it is important to have three meals a day and then you can concentrate on the sports.'

There have been signs in recent Test appearances against the stronger teams, including during the home series with England last year, that he is less comfortable than he used to be with fast, short-pitched bowling.

Tendulkar has been bedevilled by injuries to his elbow and shoulder, three of his last four Test hundreds have come against Bangladesh and, more than that, he looks a little careworn and slower at the crease.

The arrival of Tendulkar, Dravid, Ganguly, and VVS Laxman - Sehwag is out of form and not on tour - even if they are all getting on a bit, should provide spectators with a series to savour. On what will undoubtedly be a final tour of England for each of them, victory for the first time since 1986 would help to alleviate some of the frustrations of the past decade.

The Falklands have been busy trying to raise their game. As part of that and in celebration of 25 years since the end of the Falklands conflict – and because they cannot really tour Argentina – they are in the middle of a whirlwind tour to England, with seven games in eight days.

Kevin Pietersen, who made 33, 9 and 0 in the three matches, was honest enough to admit it. "I'm just exhausted," he said yesterday, looking it. A few days' break in the South of France can't come fast enough. "The winter was so hard - the Champions Trophy, getting yourself pumped up for every day of the Ashes, then the World Cup rattling into the Test series against the West Indies just 10 days later. I got a hundred and a double hundred and all that and it's just finished me off."

In India Ganguly has an unmatched knack for dividing public opinion, but in England it is quite unanimous: the image is of a character so impossibly wealthy and spoilt that it is ultimately amusing. A classic instance is the story of him instructing Michael Atherton to run off for a sweater for him, an account so far from the actual event that Atherton himself dismissed it as apocryphal.

Where are the genuine pace aces? There is Lee certainly, Harmison when he can be roused and Shane Bond when fit. The three slingers - Edwards, Shaun Tait and Lasith Malinga - are rapid, but that is about it really, isn't it? Some would argue that the volume of cricket conspires against those who want to bowl on the very edge of physical exertion, but I don't buy that: if you can bowl fast, you do. Nor does the state of pitches around the world offer a clue, for the dullest surfaces of them all produced Imran Khan and, together, Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis, the most prolific pace bowling combination the game has seen.