The Surfer

The numbers tell the story. Ntini took 34% of all South Africa's wickets, and bowled 41 overs more than his nearest colleague, the apparently indefatigable Pollock. Most teams rely on spinners, whether specialists or part-timers, to wheel through overs while the speedsters rest. This summer six slow bowlers were tossed the ball. Ntini bowled 85 overs more than all of them combined.

Alastair Cook, who batted with extraordinary maturity in India and stepped into first slip as if to the manor born.Not so at third slip and then gully at Lord's, where he searched vainly for a hole in the estate to gobble him up.

'A' tours are effectively a series of trial matches and are, by definition, artificial in nature and unlikely to provide the competitive edge you get in domestic cricket.

In the next 10 years he could become the most prolific Test batsman England have had. Sir Len Hutton's 364 is within his range. So is Graham Gooch's career aggregate of 8,900 runs, given that Pietersen has scored 1,000 within his first year of Test cricket, after the hardest of all baptisms against Australia and in Asia. Pietersen can do it because, in addition to all his physical qualities, he has a cricket brain. At Lord's he worked Muralitharan to leg so much that seven fielders were posted legside, and then he helped himself on the off.

The mystique of Mushtaq Ali's batting wristiness, "Fergie" Gupte's prodigious powers of spin, Erapalli Prasanna's dipping loop, and Azharuddin's leg-glance — these are all waiting around the coaching corner, ready to be explained to Indians, by Indians!