The Surfer

You'll not find an Australian cricketer criticising Broad for refusing to walk. Nothing would have been said to Broad out in the middle, and the truth is that probably 95 per cent of cricketers in the history of the game would have done what Broad did. I don't blame him at all -- though I had to admire his acting skills. Despite such an obvious nick, he just patted down the pitch, took guard again and went and talked to his mate at the other end. However, I can't understand why the focus was on whether Broad should have walked or not. For me, the issue was how such a terrible decision could have been made in the first place by Aleem Dar. I know that it was made to look worse because the ball ended up at first slip after cannoning off Haddin. But I can't remember a bigger deviation being missed in that way by a top-class official.

To me there's only one real issue with the current DRS system - lbw when it's hitting leg stump. At the moment if the umpire gives it out and the DRS shows the ball hitting any part of the stump, even just nicking the stump, then it's umpire's call - out. If the umpire says not out and HawkEye shows the same thing, then it's umpire's call - not out. You had a situation where Shane Watson and Chris Rogers were both given out when the ball was just clipping the stump and then Steven Finn given not out when the ball was hitting a lot more of the stump. So I don't like the umpire's call element - it creates a grey area and I think it's causing captains to call for the DRS when they shouldn't. I'd prefer it if it was clear cut. The way I would have it is that if more than half of the ball is hitting the stump then it's out - if less than 50% is hitting the stump then it's not out. It would draw a line in the sand.

It didn't feel right. It felt like settling a tumultuous fight by committee decision. A climax which promised to be every bit as dramatic as the one which carried England to victory in the Edgbaston Ashes Test of 2005 had been annexed, detached from the heart of action.

The DRS was originally introduced to get rid of the howler but in this match all matter of margin calls were judged by technology while the howler stayed. Until cricket finds a way of using technology to get rid of the howler then the game will continue to make a fool of itself.

"Hanif Mohammad batted in an era of fearsome fast bowlers. There were no fancy laboratories at Perth to decipher how much the fast bowler's elbow was bending on delivery. When you toured in a place like West Indies, there were home umpires who smiled at you when you were hit on the chest. Remember, there were no chest guards, wrist protectors and, would you believe it, no helmet; just a cotton cap that helped to shade the searing heat from burning your skin."

England 2000 was the most miserable tour. The discipline was gone and they had lost all five in South Africa. Having won the first Test in England, they were crushed in two days (in the second) and still the boys went to watch Dwight Yorke play for Manchester United. West Indies cricket had reached irrelevancy. Nobody wanted to play them anymore. Then four years ago, I was told that I would be taken off the commentary team if I didn't tone down my criticism of the board.

"When he's here, you can see Chris come up to the big balcony on the first floor overlooking Kingston. And he'll stand there in nothing but a towel and look down like a king surveying his kingdom," says Jeffrey. Surveying, perhaps, the city whose perils he overcame as a young man growing up in the crime-infested ghettos of East Kingston, where it would take nothing for a young boy to be sucked into drugs and gang wars.

Perhaps he is the Brian Smith of cricket, the rugby league coach who rebuilt an inexperienced team without necessarily taking them to the premiership. But whatever success Australia has during Lehmann's tenure, its foundations lie in what Arthur and Clarke achieved in the first half of this year. Among those building blocks are the introduction of Rogers and Agar, the drilling of bowlers in the fundamentals of reverse swing and patience, and the renewed focus on defence as the keystone of batsmanship. That Australia are giving England a genuine contest is due to their preparation over three months, not three weeks. Arthur won't get the credit for this, but he deserves at least a fair payout.

He has the ability to be incredibly destructive, but does not quite know how, or when, to use it. Real game changers, like Kevin Pietersen, seem to understand instinctively when to go for the jugular. Others gradually work it out. Some talents are destined to remain unfulfilled.

But Broad did not walk, and umpire Aleem Dar did not give him out, and colleague Kumar Dharmasena did not intervene, and TV umpire Marais Erasmus could not, and the Australians were flabbergasted, and the Test match came to a screaming halt, and when it started again, the edge had come off the charm of the opening two days of this series, and it will take much diplomacy and graciousness to restore it, and there wasn't much of either around on Friday night.

Your mind is full of those things. In that instant, adrenaline running, fielders appealing, something inside of the head can just say: stay. Then it is too late. Even if you regret it a few seconds later, even if you then change your mind, the die has been cast. You stay, you get away with it. You might have done your team a favour, but you must then deal with the slating that comes with it. These sorts of things can scar a player for years to come, change their reputations within the game. Broad's body language afterwards told you all you needed to know - head bowed, shoulders slumped. He knew he had done the wrong thing.

Into this Age of Batting Austerity steps Phillip Joel Hughes, the one genuine, old school exception to a pernicious modern-day trend. Hughes is 24. He has 21 first-class hundreds spread across four continents and a career average of 44.20. Two of his three Test hundreds were scored in a series win in South Africa against the world's finest pace battery when he became the youngest batsman in history to score centuries in both innings of a Test match; the third was scored in the second innings of the final Test of Michael Clarke's debut Test series as captain and clinched the series win by making safe the final match with Australia already 1-0 up. By the age of 22, Hughes had scored his second hundred in a Shield final. In the season just past, despite playing only six Shield games due to his national team duties, Hughes was one of only six batsmen who scored at least two Shield hundreds.

"I still get goosebumps when I recall Gavaskar asking Sunil about his name and when he found out that my son was actually named after him, on live television. I had twice chickened out from sharing a greeting with Gavaskar during his playing days. This though, was out of this world," adds Shahid.

One of cricket's enduring joys is that it is limited only by imagination, and so every now and then realises impossible dreams. In at least three ways - highest score by a No 11, highest by a No 11 on debut, highest last-wicket partnership - Agar's 98 was an innings that had never been played in the game's history. Its exotic element was gloriously self-evident, but in the way it suddenly balanced up a seemingly lost match, its consequences might prove as far-reaching as any of the most famous magnums opus.

The sinking feeling in the Australian dressing room was delayed, if not dispelled, in unprecedented and unforgettable fashion. But it was hard to tell if the Agar-Hughes happy hour was entirely good or bad news. Of course it was good. It was great. It was a joy to behold. Agar was astonishing, while Hughes's controlled, under-the-nose defence was probably more important for the long term stability of Australia's batting order. Yet there was a sneaking sense that this partnership was conducted in brilliant light when batting got easier and easier. It highlighted what an opportunity the earlier Australian batsmen had thrown away, and also what a benign surface England and its second-innings specialists were going to bat on, with endless time up their sleeves.