The Surfer

Sthalekar says it's up to Osborne to fill the all-rounder spot. They've worked on making her bowling versatile. ''She's changed grips, going from being an under-cutter to now more a top-spinner, turning the ball a bit more,'' Sthalekar says. ''We worked well together because she was economical and I would throw it up more. With me going, she's taking over more what I did.''

As for selection? Heaven help us. Since Ricky Ponting shifted from first drop, nine other players have auditioned for that key role. In the past 14 matches, 12 players have come in and out of the top-six positions. Phil Hughes has batted in every spot but five. You can't blame selectors when there is nothing much to select from, but you do wonder about their reactionary approach. The spin-bowling role had been a quandary the former panel could not solve and this one appeared to have done so with Nathan Lyon, but then it has dropped him twice recently -- once after he took nine wickets in India. Argus also recommended that the captain should be a selector. That idea lasted as long as Arthur.

Senior statesmen of the game are concerned about the manner of Australia's losses in England. The chickens of the top-order batting, a weakness for several years in Australian first-class cricket, have come home to roost. Is it a symptom of a deeper malaise? Poor defensive batting and shallow back-up indicate a weak first-class scene; weak first-class cricket indicates poor pitches, poor coaching and poor grounding in the fundamentals; poor fundamentals indicate the incursion of Twenty20 cricket and so-called Gen Y attitudes; too much Twenty20 indicates a withering of the grassroots. Cricket itself is changing. John Benaud, the former Test player and selector, said this week that third-grade players were now playing first-grade. Generally bemoaned is the loss of players in their 30s, who once mentored younger cricketers but are now spending their Saturdays with their families, or cycling, surfing or bushwalking (culturally speaking, not necessarily a bad thing).

His team have leaned too heavily on him, he has every right to expect more support in return than he has been given. But they have refused to follow his lead. Clarke, one of the best on-the-field captains the game has seen in a generation, would be a great leader of a strong team. But right now Australia need a captain who can bring the best out of his team-mates as well as himself. He has a week to figure out how to do something he seems to be constitutionally incapable of. His method has been to load more and more on his own shoulders. He is such a good player that he has almost pulled it off. But it is not surprising that the strain is starting to show.

There are still some illuminating parallels between the Australian side that lost seven consecutive Tests against England and the current one under Michael Clarke that has so far lost four. Michael Clarke's nickname is 'Pup', while the Australian captain for three of those seven defeats was known as 'Tup'. When Henry Scott was supposed to be leading Australia on their 1886 tour of England, he spent so much time riding round London in the horse-drawn omnibuses on a two-penny ticket that he was nicknamed 'Tuppence', then 'Tup'. Both Pup and Tup have had their captaincy questioned. Clarke is wise in his changing of bowlers and setting of fields, but what about his off-field man-management? To lose one senior batsman in Ricky Ponting was inevitable, but to lose Mike Hussey - who could still have shown the youngsters how to bat all day - was more than careless.

Du Plessis, with the help of stump microphones, is able to describe the shot a batsman plays when the bat makes contact with the ball. "I can make out when a batsman plays a crisp cover drive and when he plays a yorker. These are different bat sounds that now I'm familiar with," says Du Plessis, making the bat sound with unbridled enthusiasm. He is also familiar with the players' exertions and their cries of elation or frustration and can gauge the capacity of the crowd by the noise they make.

Until the end of March 1959, Pakistan's first golden age, Fazal was a giant; 114 wickets in just 24 Tests, close to 40 per cent of all wickets taken by Pakistani bowlers. To that add the 36 wickets he took in seven unofficial Tests played in the run-up to Pakistan's first official Test. Few of those were freebies: 93 of his wickets were specialist batsmen. The men he dismissed most often? The cream of the age: Conrad Hunte, Polly Umrigar, Vijay Manjrekar, Gary Sobers, Neil Harvey, Denis Compton thrice in four Tests, Sir Len Hutton twice in two Tests. All this leaves as little doubt to his greatness as he carried within himself, and it led Pakistan to wins in India, England, West Indies, against Australia and New Zealand in their first eight years; at least one against every country they played. No full member has had as promising a start and no one did more than Fazal, with 65 wickets in the seven wins he played in.

Waugh, in any reasonable assessment, became a non-combatant after sustaining a serious calf injury in the third Test that settled the series. Yet while Australia suffered their one defeat, at Headingley, Waugh could be found running alone across the rugby league ground behind the cricket stand. It was painful rehabilitation beyond the call of any sportsman's duty, you had to suggest, but Waugh would have none of it. "Listen mate," he said, "If you are captain of the team you have to put a little bit extra in because how can you ask any of your players to do the same when it is needed? We've won the series but that's not the point. Every Test match is important."

I am all for talk of playing positive cricket - but as a batsman, that means being positive in attack AND in defence. While I used to love batting with the tail and taking it to bowlers, sometimes a pitch or a situation forces you to just hang in there. Ian Bell got this spot on at Lord's. He came in at 28-3 on the first morning of the Test and rebuilt through a solid, positive defence. Australia don't seem to have sussed this basic tactic out and England's bowlers are loving it.

"Let's get one thing clear. Australia cannot flick a switch and suddenly everything will be all right. We are not going to have a big group of young promising players all coming through to make things better. There are no better players outside this group who could come to the rescue but that doesn't mean there isn't a lot of talent in this Australia team. It is just that many of them are having to find their feet in the biggest series of them all."

"I still don't think we're performing particularly well as a bowling unit. Ryan Harris was a huge positive at Lord's and all the bowlers are bowling some good balls at stages but we're not putting England's batsmen under constant pressure. Is Jackson Bird going to come into the equation? I think he should."

Two others catchcries, siblings really, are that "you have to play your natural game", and "you have to be aggressive". They don't stand up. Steve Waugh's natural game cost him his place in the Test team, and looked likely to waste a wonderful natural talent. So he reincarnated himself as a Puritan and had a long, productive and successful career.

That rush of a World Cup semi-final five-for against India in India? Kaput, amid the hangover of a spell against them that read 4-0-50-0 a year later. His entire bowling persona can be defined in such extremities: potentially he is fantastic, but sometimes that potential is not just frittered away, it is blasted by a series of explosive breakdowns. If his career were lyrics, Kylie Minogue and Kurt Cobain would have to be the alternating writers, happy shiny, simple pop one day; dark, heavy brooding rock the next.

After a 4-0 defeat in India, Australia has now lost six Tests in a row for the first time since 1984. The worst losing streak is seven almost 130 years ago.