The Surfer

This was the first sponsored event of its kind, and the story goes that the executives from Gillette charged with talking through the deal arrived at Lord's with a bottom-line figure in mind with which to start their negotiation and were astounded to discover they could pretty much pay for it out of petty cash. If cricket undersold itself, though, in an understandably introverted way, the competition, unlike its Midlands predecessor, was to prove a triumph. Crowds flocked to the matches and the Lord's final became an established full-house finale to the season.

"Everyone wants customised heavier bats for T20, bats that can hit sixes. Pollard wields the heaviest (1400gm). Yusuf also prefers a heavy bat. Other big names on this list are Tendulkar, MS Dhoni and Chris Gayle (around 1300gm)," says Paras Anand, owner of Sansparaeils Greenlands.

Kohli missed the point and had a pot-to-kettle kind of hypocritical exchange with the MI fans. Gambhir for him was a rival, not a Delhi or India team-mate. But when Mumbai treated him like a rival, he sulked. Wankhede, in the past, had booed Tendulkar, that too while he wore India's whites. Kohli should have known better.

As far as I am concerned, a sport exists because of the people who watch it. The crowd is an unempowered entity that can only do two things during a match - cheer and jeer - and only one more thing afterwards, which is to talk about the game, on street corners and on Twitter. An international sportsperson must be able to take all reactions in his stride, and know that he is who he is because of his fans. The fans don't exist because of him.

I ask myself if I should have spotted something. Should I have seen the signs that Tommy was taking drugs? But in a professional environment you just don't think that sort of thing happens. Just because someone is a different character, do you have to say, "You're a bit extrovert, do you take drugs?" Where do you draw the line?

The "best" retirees are from England, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand. The top batsmen in these countries have retired at around 75% of their peak. In contrast, players from the sub-continent retire further off their peak with average of 65%.

While 65 percent of peak may seem respectable, the average hides considerably more than it reveals. The best Indian retirees list is led by Mohinder Amarnath - he retired close to peak form, while the tail is brought up by Sehwag, Tendulkar, Vengsarkar and Gambhir. All four of these batmen have their last average less than half their peak value. In particular, Tendulkar's rank is a lowly 67 in our list of 74, just behind Sehwag who may have got the boot, and behind Ponting who was told to go? It does not get much lower than this - the last batsmen on the list, Gibbs, retired when his form average was just 42 percent of peak.

But most importantly of all, it is unnecessary. Test cricket needs some TLC but that should come from the administrators around the world who devise the schedules and who pay lip-service to the "primacy of Test cricket". It needs what marketing people and TV executives call "appointment to view". The places where such a thing exists - Melbourne or Durban on Boxing Day, Lord's in mid-July, The Oval last Test of the summer - are where Test cricket continues to be nourished. I am sympathetic to the argument that the very existence of a World Test Championship will force governing bodies to re-engage with the five-day game because ultimately they will want their teams to be in the final four. But I'm just not convinced that will really happen.

The selectors have done some odd things recently, most notably dropping Nathan Lyon for the second Test in India, but they deserve credit for picking the Ashes squad on form regardless of age. Plenty of players have been given opportunities and failed to grasp them. Matthew Wade is the latest, having been demoted to reserve keeper behind Haddin after being chosen a year ago as his replacement.

And if that Australia victory were to come early in the series, at 'the result ground' that is Trent Bridge, or at Lord's where they have lost only twice in the last hundred years (perhaps the most stunning team stat in cricket)… no, let's not go that way. England will retain the Ashes this summer, but it is going to be closer than it would have been if Australia had selected poorly.

Spectacle is the essence of the "best" here, and as we frown at yet another season that's affirmed that this beast called the IPL is here to stay -- if not as-is, then certainly in an avatar far morphed from the Test form -- it is time we began to apply ourselves to finding a way of appraising its worthiest participants. Because, if you drop the judgemental attitude of placing T20 (and especially IPL) beyond the pale of what you'd care to describe as real cricket, there are two attributes of this new form that alter traditional indices of determining what's exceptional and what is simply spectacle -- that is, good to watch but not really memorable