The Surfer

In the Sky commentary box, Holding looks on aghast, or at least as aghast as his supremely unruffled demeanour will allow, as West Indies crumble to the heaviest Test defeat in their history, by an innings and 283 runs. When he has finished his stint at the microphone, I venture that quite such a steamrollering would not have happened had Brian Lara still been captain. Holding raises an elegant eyebrow. He sees the recently retired Lara as part of the problem. "The team needs leadership and I never rated Lara as a leader," he says. "You hear a lot about his selfishness. Ridley Jacobs said a lot about that when he retired, and people cursed him, saying he had no class. But Ridley Jacobs never did anything out of line as a cricketer, so I have no reason to doubt what he says. I have seen Lara's behaviour. And he was not good tactically. I saw him make a lot of mistakes."

Here's two statistics to consider when assessing Sinclair's test record. Up to 2001, when Sinclair started to be dropped and picked for the test team, he averaged 43.16. Since 2002, when he began to get mucked around, he has averaged just 23.06.

He resembles the rock star, one senses, he always wanted to be - and at 43 he is almost old enough to be one. The only ordinary thing about Smith is his name and he has just written an outrageous autobiography, Wasted?, which is at once badly written and compelling reading. It is shocking, maddening, scatological and - no pun intended - disjointed. It is not so much kiss and tell as kiss, have casual sex, get stoned, drunk, divorced, unemployed, homeless, and tell; and it would make Dorian Gray blush

In fact, as he says, his getting his first big break itself (making the eventually, World Cup-winning u-15 India squad), was by chance. “When you go for these age-group trials, luck plays a huge part. You have 700 (now about 2000) boys each facing about four balls each before someone decides if they move to the next round. One unplayable ball somewhere and you could be facing life as a lower division clerk somewhere instead of a cricketer.”

The highlights of their tour will be matches against a President's Italian cricket X1, Switzerland, Duke of Norfolk's X1 and the MCC at the Lord's Nursery Ground.

We collected cards of the players, as our dad dutifully visited every Texaco garage in Surrey to ensure four sets of dark green paper folders were filled. Desmond Haynes was particularly rare. It is hard to imagine the same fights going on today for a dog-eared card of Daren Ganga or Jerome Taylor.

There are only 10 official Test-playing nations and three of them now range from hopeless to utterly hopeless. What other major international sport has 30 per cent of its teams which are so uncompetitive they cannot win a single match between them in 24 months? The plight is so bad that while Zimbabwe remains on the gravy train of the International Cricket Council's board of Test countries which control the game, it is so weak it is not even playing Test cricket. Unfortunately the ICC is so utterly gutless and politically compromised that it fails to impose any minimum standards on its teams.

"When something is in your blood, like international cricket is to me, it can never be limited to five weeks or even five years. Working at cricket's very highest level is a lifetime passion for me and so this is a wonderful opportunity to get back where I belong. At this level of coaching you need to know how to manage your bowlers and, most of all, how to motivate and inspire them. I can do this with England."