The Surfer

The Headingley Test of August 1981 was sporting alchemy as England turned three days of the meek and middling into a win that upset Australia, the applecart and Ladbrokes, who were taking bets at 500-1 on a home miracle by the fourth day. At least Dennis Lillee and Rod Marsh could take solace in their winnings. “I’ve met 500,000 people who were there that last day,” Botham says.

"He [Wright] has the right to say what he has said. He has not named anyone and I respect him for that. We had long meetings, but I never had a problem working or interacting with him. There were no major arguments."

Fact is, throughout his reign as Indian coach, Wright showed a sincerity and humility and restraint that was edifying. The man's no buddy of mine, and his monkish vows of silence used to annoy me, but he showed fine judgment and a notable control of ego in ensuring the focus was always on the team not on him. You could get to like a man like that.

John Wright, by focusing on this issue, has merely pointed out what is seriously wrong in Indian cricket. For us to react and say that this “foreigner was here to make money and is now going to make more money through his book” is a churlish reaction that misses the point completely.

"Those long flowery dresses of officers' wives have given way to bare midriffs of nubile wine-bar girls not long out of one of the local young ladies' colleges. In early evening, too, throaty male decibels increase - belonging more to Kingsholm than this ground's Gothic chapel."

Manjrekar doesn’t have a duty to check with Tendulkar before passing comment on the little maestro’s current mental state. He also doesn’t need to be in the dressing room to make this observation, as his years of playing cricket (many of them as a team-mate of Tendulkar) provide him with an insight into how a player’s mind works

"The Australians, in that endearingly smug way of theirs, have been so busy airbrushing history since last summer that half the population still think they hold the Ashes. Their opening batsman, Justin Langer, was recently floating the suggestion that his team had become so bored and complacent with constantly sticking it up the Poms that getting beaten was actually a brilliant idea."

He toured with Don Bradman's 1934 and 1938 teams to England and was in his prime upon the declaration of World War II, eventually leading Australia to a two-day victory in the first Test against New Zealand in Wellington before returning to England as a member of Bradman's unbeaten Ashes side in 1948.