The Surfer

Harbhajan Singh still carries that maroon wallet. It's battered and torn, but it stays with him, reminding him of his humble beginning, his roots

After 14 mandatory overs were bowled, he {Zaheer} along with his team walked off the field without the umpires declaring the close of the play.We maintained that if his team did not complete six more overs, India would be declared as winners. The ruse worked. The Pakistani team returned to the field. Gavaskar duly completed his 28th Test hundred, but it was an inconsequential century. After the Pakistanis left the field, Gavaskar refused to leave the ground and dissuaded his partner Gaekwad from leaving the field, despite the repeated entreaties of his skipper Kapil Dev.

Australia’s elite players will be deprived of food, sleep and water and put under severe stress on a torturous military-style boot camp starting today to kick off their preparations for the Ashes series. Reputations will count for nothing, as some of the biggest names in world cricket are pushed to their physical and mental limits and beyond. The camp, which will operate for four to six days, will be run by a former member of the SAS regiment, Eben Jefford, who developed the punishing program in conjunction with Chris Haseman, a former tactical operations instructor with the Queensland police force.

Hair and Inzamam-ul-Haq should both be removed from their posts. A plague on both their houses. Actually, Hair should have been sacked years ago because he is an erratic and headstrong umpire whose time has passed. His conduct at The Oval was merely the latest episode in a notably contentious career. Once again, he chose the path of confrontation, throwing his weight around, asserting his authority without much thought about the consequences. Certainly, he did not hesitate to accuse a touring team of cheating. He is not so much a bull in a china shop as a dinosaur in a delicatessen.

"A few months ago NSW fast bowler Nathan Bracken was censured after his comments about ball tampering. But what he said was absolutely true. Bracken said that during his time in English county cricket, his team, Gloucestershire, loaded one side of the ball with saliva that was thickened and sugary after sucking on mints. The result was for the ball to start moving through the air in an unnatural manner. The sexy term for this is reverse swing. This practice and others go on in most matches around the world."

"What does it matter if the ball is thrown into the ground early to rough it up? Let the bowlers scratch the ball with their fingers if they wish; it is a skill that arguably adds to the game."

“No one is bigger than the game. Cricket if nothing else is a game built on rules, pages and pages of them. A player if feeling aggrieved about a ruling can sound off about it, but the game must go on. To withdraw from the contest is to abandon the principles of the game. It also achieves nothing in winning the contest against your opponent.”

So now we know it. Officials are more important than players, laws are more important than people, one man’s vanity is more important than the pleasure of millions, principles are more important than common sense, intransigence is better than decency, vindictiveness is better than compromise, trouble is much more fun than peaceful co-operation and a fat man’s dignity is more important than mutual understanding between nations.

Small wonder that three of England’s top umpires — Peter Willey, Neil Mallender and Jeremy Lloyds — have recently declined the invitation to join the elite list.

If it was established that England had indeed prompted the umpires' investigation, it would throw back Anglo-Pakistan relations by a decade. It might further draw comment on whether they themselves were speaking from the high moral ground when it was their mastery of reverse swing, often as early as the 30th over of an innings, which helped win the Ashes and drew admiration. Suggestions that this was aided by the use of sugar-infused saliva from sweets has not been proved, but it is a wonder that a number of England players still have their own teeth.