The coverage of grass on the Lord's pitch was beautifully even and provided a good surface for both batsmen and bowlers. In recent times grass has become a five-letter swear word to some players. Curators, too, need to be encouraged to restrict their shaving to what they do in front of the mirror in the morning. The part pitches play in maintaining the critical balance between bat and ball should never be overlooked.

Swing bowlers and wrist spinners are two of the most important attacking weapons in the game of cricket and both need to be encouraged. Mammoth first-innings totals lead to lop-sided contests but the swinging ball usually eradicates any such blights on the game.

Bouncy pitches are appreciated by every good player, but I'm also all for allowing bowlers one method of assisting the ball to swing, and making that method legal while outlawing every other form of ball-tampering. The teams could provide a list of their preferred methods of assisting the ball to swing and then the ICC would decide on the one to be legalised.

Ever since Adam Gilchrist hit the Test arena and international bowlers like a tornado, other teams have been trying to replicate his style of middle-order mayhem. England in particular have eschewed picking the best wicketkeepers in an attempt to get more runs from the lower order, and in doing so the selectors have ignored a couple of important factors.

Firstly, Gilchrist was always a wicketkeeper who just happened to also be a very destructive batsman. Secondly, an average of 40 runs from the wicketkeeper doesn't compensate for dropping catches off players of the calibre of Sachin Tendulkar and VVS Laxman.

The excuse that Matthew Prior, like everyone else, is entitled to a bad game overlooks a basic flaw in his game: his footwork is negligible and the practice drills he uses don't address this issue, making it highly unlikely there'll be any great improvement in his glove work. Once a keeper starts to cost a team in the field he should lose his Test place, and Prior has reached that point.

If England played four bowlers and used Paul Collingwood, Michael Vaughan and Kevin Pietersen to occasionally rest them they could bat Andrew Flintoff at No. 7 and then lower-order runs wouldn't be an issue. Good selection is about getting the right combination and England won't unearth that team while they continue to play poor wicketkeepers.

India did well to beat England 1-0, however they could easily have won the Oval Test if they'd enforced the follow-on. India were without a head coach on the tour but there was no shortage of advisors when it came time for the captain to decide on the follow-on. Captaincy by committee never works, because the responsibility for a poor decision falls squarely on the skipper's shoulders anyway.

The only question Rahul Dravid needed to ask at The Oval was: "Any injuries among the bowlers?" If there were no injuries then he should have enforced the follow-on, especially if he'd left the decision to the moment the tenth English first-innings wicket fell. By then it would have been obvious the overcast conditions favoured bowling. If England had followed-on, the game would have been all but over by the fourth evening.

However, being captain of India isn't as straightforward as leading, say, Australia. If Ricky Ponting makes a poor judgment, as he did during the 2005 Ashes series, his effigy isn't burned in the streets or his family threatened. This is why an Australian captain is able to challenge his team to become better, which gives him a considerable advantage over his Indian counterpart.

By the time the two teams meet in Australia later this year, India will have appointed a new coach, meaning there'll be an extra advisor adding to the long list already in Dravid's ear. This will make India's job of trying to beat Australia at home even more difficult - an extremely unpalatable thought for such a demanding cricket nation.

NO.. As an Indian supporter definitely not, given the fragile and whimsical batting form of our batsmen especially the fabulous four. Also traditionally speaking, India always has been a batting side, so it wont be good news to the Indian batsmen.

Allowing the bowlers, one method of choice to tamper with the ball is not the ideal way to go forward. By the same logic why not allow the batsmen a bat of their choice.. say made of aluminium as Dennis Lillee had used or say the kookaburra bat Ponting used for some time?

I don't think the answer is to provide a contrived method of assisting swing bowlers.Why not a law assisting wrist spinners (say, allowing leg spinners by permitting LBWs to balls pitching outside the leg stump, or not permitting leg byes in their case)? To me that smacks of the idiotic 5%/15% rule for arm flexion! Of course,what is feasible is to have balls with different characteristics for the fielding captain to choose from. As it stands, the fielding captain chooses a ball from the box provided to him. It is a fact that the Kookaburra, the Duke and the SG balls each have different characteristics. If you really wanted to tinker with things, the ICC could give the fielding side the option of choosing the brand of ball, just as the batting captain can specify the type of roller. What would happen, of course is that ball manufacturers would just manufacture different kinds of balls (a "swinger", a "bouncer", a "spinner" etc!). I say leave things alone, and keep a careful watch on curators, with stringent penalties for pitches that don't fall within reasonable parameters.

I completely agree with the contention that the ICC needs to come up with a way to help the bowlers cause. Batsmen putting up huge scores on dead wickets is complete nonsense. I certainly don't believe that it provides for the most entertaining cricket when even good balls go for runs because the wickets are flat. An even contest between bat and ball is what makes for interesting cricket and a higher chance of getting a result.

The flaw with legalizing ball tampering is that once the ball has been tampered with, the umpires will find it hard to determine what method was used to do it. So altering the condition of the ball in my opinion, might not be the best way forward. Instead the ICC should make it mandatory for all cricketing centres to have wickets that help the bowlers as well as batsmen.

For instance, the subcontinent should have tracks that turn a bit more and assist the spinners. Similarly tracks in Australia and South Africa should have tracks with more bounce in them.

These days more and more wickets around the world seem to have the same feel, especially in ODIs. That is also a reason why a lot more teams (including India) have started to win more abroad. This should go, and every country should provide the batsmen with a new challenge.

Hell No! This would open up avenues for "inventive" bowlers to try stuff and tamper with the basic essence of cricket. The batsmen clan will argue using a broader bat. Not good for the game Ian.

As the late/great Bob Woolmer said that the bowler should be allowed anything on the play field to help him with the ball. It could be his razor sharp nails, a little bit of sand... you get the point. I would also advocate a law requiring a certain cm of grass left on the pitch.

Forgive me, but as an old bowler I always thought the best way to get the ball to swing was to polish it, sometimes with the aid of a bit of sun-cream, but mostly with good old fashioned sweat. What other method(s) is Ian Chappell referring to?

Batsmen's primary concern ought not to be solely garnering more runs, 'survival' and batsmen trying to protect their team-wickets from falling makes for the most exciting cricket. Watching cricket Hitz packages of fours and sixes on ESPN-Star Sports is bad enough. Bowlers have to dominate for cricket to be exciting, that India does not have an attack for it just yet is a separate issue.

No ball tampering is permitted now, keep it that way. The issue is the pitch!

Address the issue!

Don't try to change the rules of the game because the pitch is batsman friendly.

I think bowlers should be able to use one method of that is currently restricted by the laws of the game to help them swing the ball. If you look at the last few great test series, the one just played in england, the Ashes of 05, swing played a huge part in making those so enjoyable. In the modern game batsmen have to much sway, as does the toss of the coin. I say give something back to the bowlers.

Yes absolutely. The game has tilted too much in favor of batsmen and something is required to balance it. Like it's said in this piece, great bowling performance makes a test more interesting, not Lahore (2004 Ind-Pak) like run riots.

the contest between bat and ball has been ruined, better bats,smaller grounds,faster stronger atheletes,20/20 50/50,covered wickets,fielding restrictions and better protective equipment.

this has made test cricket faster scoring and more appealing to cricket fans, but i think its gone too far, i would like to see the bowler be something more than the bloke who sends down balls
that the batsmen can hit as he pleases.

some rule changes i suggest are
1 thicker and more pronounced seams to help the ball spin,swing and jag around
2 harder balls that hold thier shine and shape for longer periods
3 protect the ball by getting rid of hard surfaces
like concrete drains and metal advertising signs and replace them with softer more ball friendly surfaces
4 allow 3 men behind square on the leg side as long as he is in a catching position(say inside the circle of a oneday game)
5 allow 3 bouncers an over,this will slow the runrate and game down, but the west indies in the 80s used to bowl 6 bouncers most overs and cricket
was still entertaining.

i think the key to consistently having the ball swing is to protect the ball from being wet or damaged(ie having 2 rough sides or 2 moist sides) and ball technology having harder,stronger balls that last longer and stay in shape.

as for spin and fast bowlers that jag the ball off
the seam, thicker more pronounced seams will allow greater grip off the pitch and spinners can obtain
greater revs through the air and off the pitch.

i dont think teams nominating thier method of ball tampering is the way foward in developing better bowlers(3 bowlers might have 3 different ways of ball tampering)plus ball tampering might wreck the ball after 20 overs meaning the ball will have to be replaced.

i do agree that bowlers need some rule changes in thier favour.