The Stanford circus has never enjoyed a high reputation in the English press, so the first hint of problems has caused the vultures to descend on it before it has even died. One report went so far as to say that it was hard to see any “positives” from the venture, and that is surely going too far.

First, there’s the venue. The Stanford Cricket Ground looks to be an excellent place for watching cricket, with comfortable stands, informal grassy banks, and pavilions and other buildings which please the eye. Transplant this to Worcester, below the magnificent cathedral, or even Taunton with the old church at the corner, and you would have a perfect English county ground.

But the playing surface is not ideal. Sir Allen has made clear that he does not think much of Test cricket: this is a pity, because the pitches used so far would have been ideal for the fourth day of a Test match. Crumbling, two-paced and bouncing unpredictably, it could provide a fascinating duel as batsmen attempt to grind it out – Test cricket at one of its bests.

As a stage for Twenty20, though, this is inadequate. I don’t like slogfests much: watching a team rattle up 220 in 20 overs gets monotonous. The ideal is a game where par is about 156, nudging eight an over, but on Stanford’s pitch par seems to be about 128, or barely above a run a ball, the kind of total which does not encourage the enterprise and invention which characterises the best Twenty20 batting.

Then there’s the umpiring scheme, in which the players do not appeal but the on-field umpires and the third umpire can consult on anything, with the third umpire having a responsibility to alert the on-field umpires if they make a mistake which he can pick up on the TV. There hasn’t yet been a third umpire override, but there have been two or three decisions where the on-field umpires have asked questions of the man with the replays to check things before giving out or not out, and it has worked well to my eyes at least. I hope that Simon Taufel and the others agree and tell ICC so.

And then there has been Trinidad & Tobago, who deservedly won their (relatively) big money game against my Middlesex boys. In the spirit of Ted Dexter, whose bizarre excuses for poor English performances entertained us so much 15 or so years ago, I shall hypothesise that Middlesex were put off by T&T’s strip, which gave them the appearance of having walked through a trough of whitewash on their way out to the middle.

In truth, though, Middlesex were undone by the money.

I have argued before that prize inflation a la Stanford does not pose an existential threat to civilisation; if he wants to offer vast prizes, then I don’t see why cricketers should not play for them if they are so inclined.

But at a practical level, the size of the prize may be counter-productive in terms of spectacle. Players terrified of errors are all the more likely to commit them – and the drops in the field this week have matched anything Wall St or the FTSE have had to offer this month. The danger is that jangling nerves will mean that the winning team is the one which makes the fewer dreadful mistakes rather than the one which plays the best, that it becomes a freak show rather than a vibrant cricket spectacle.

In theory, there are ways of fixing problems with the pitch or the fear factor. What is less easy to fix is Stanford himself, who seems the sort whose main topic of conversation is how awesome he is, which makes the timing of this event unfortunate, because this month the market in awesomeness has been cornered by Barack Obama.

	Stand your ground, let the umpire decide © AFP

One of the great ironies of last season was one of Cricket Australia’s biggest sponsors, a famous Scotch whiskey brand, continuing to remind us to “Keep walking”. At a time when the Andrew Symonds incident in the acrimonious Sydney Test caused so much controversy and debate over the issue of ‘walking’, the regular advertisements from this sponsor is an unfortunate reminder that cricketers themselves might prefer a clear universal policy on the issue.

After the Test Match in Mohali last week, one can only hope that this bone of contention is well and truly buried. Forever. Never to be exhumed.

When Virender Sehwag exercised his right to remain at the crease and leave the decision to the umpire, after clearly edging the ball to Brad Haddin, it brought the whole debate full circle. This time it was an indignant Australia at the receiving end of a poor decision and an Indian batsman who relinquished the moral high ground for the pragmatism of professional cricket.

What is patently clear now is cricket at this level should rid itself of the sentimental and hypocritical double-standards that threaten to seriously undermine the spirit of the game. All cricketers should simply acknowledge this is now a full-time job, played for high stakes and completely devoid of any sentimentality or chivalry. Nothing wrong with that.

Let’s just agree to leave all decisions to the umpires and accept the good and bad calls with equal grace. On that basis, things should even themselves out in the long run and we can hopefully avoid the hypocrisy and bad blood that usually occurs when different players (and different countries) get reputations for doing one or the other.

If this new philosophy is adopted by all players, we will avoid the ridiculous situation where players like Ricky Ponting start questioning the integrity of someone like Sehwag who chose to let the umpire make the decision. It’s laughable for Australia (or any country for that matter) to sledge a batsman for not walking. Australia have made it clear that walking is not part of their cricket culture so why the moral outrage?

Similarly, from India’s perspective (and all other countries), no one should find fault with Sehwag so long as they relinquish all pretences of occupying the moral high ground when an Australian player nicks one and doesn’t walk. It’s equally laughable to hear people still whining about the Symonds incident when it is now clear that Australians are not the only ones who leave it to the umpire. There will inevitably be the childish comments like “they started it, they did it first” etc but how far do you go back to work out who started what? It’s a pointless historical exercise, trying to figure out who did it first. We've all been guilty of it at various times in our cricketing history.

Crucial to this new agreement should be a more public respect for the umpire’s decision, good or bad. We’ll never lose that first flash of disappointment that is instinctive and human but we could do without the prolonged head-shaking and tantrums that are clearly meant to publicly undermine the umpire. Not unless we allow umpires to start high-fiving each other every time they make a correct decision.

Walking was an admirable trait in the gentleman’s game but it is no longer that. It is essentially (sadly) a business now and regrettably, there seems to be little room for such luxuries in cut-throat commerce. Especially when someone like Gilchrist is inevitably going to be accused for appealing for catches that are clearly not-out. Apart from the odd time when he was genuinely uncertain, what is the difference between always walking when you nick it (honesty) and opportunistic appealing when someone has missed the ball (dishonesty)? Selective honesty (or accusations of) just creates unnecessary tension.

As we saw in Sydney 2008, one such incident leads to bad blood and sledging that keeps escalating to the point where it becomes personal and triggers a major diplomatic war. Players seem to have the knack of putting on an instant poker face, devoid of emotion when they get a good decision so I'm sure they can do the same when they cop a bad one too. Then there will be no need for all the indignant ‘chat’ that accompanies a Symonds/Sehwag type moment. Instead of the “keep walking” slogan, we might one day find a sponsor with a theme of “no walk, no talk”.

	Andrew Symonds has joined a growing list of ‘problem players' © Getty Images

Kallis and Smith are not alone in believing that Mohali shows Australia going the way of Wall Street. A lot of commentators have jumped to the same conclusion. I’m not so sure that we can decide, after one bad match, that they are truly in decline. After all, just a week earlier in Bangalore, India had been in some difficulty. The difference between the two matches was perhaps the magnificent first innings centuries by Ponting and Hussey and Stuart Clark’s presence.

Yet, if we look a little deeper at Australia, there may well be grounds for ‘cautious optimism’. (An economist cannot be more positive than that right now.)

For years we’ve been told about Australia’s fantastic cricket structure, which spots talent young and raw, and brings it through to the national team, maturing technical skills in academies and inter-state cricket, and just as important, toughening players up emotionally to deal with the rigours of international cricket. This ‘machine’ has been the foundation, it is claimed, of their incredibly successful cricket culture andon-field dominance for 15 years and more. It’s not been down to luck – the coincidence of a ‘golden generation’ of players - but rather to ‘the system’. Replacements for Warne, McGrath and the rest would roll off the assembly line, ready to go.

For quite a while it looked like exactly that was happening, which is one reason why Mohali was such a shock – the size of the defeat, if not the defeat itself. But in fact the machine has been misfiring for some time – in a more conventional corporation, the human resources department would be under serious fire from the board. Let’s look at the list.

Andrew Symonds, a clear case of burnout as Fox’s humane piece showed, has joined a growing list of ‘problem players’. Not long ago, it was Shaun Tait – he was supposed to be coming back but we don’t hear much of him now. Before that, it was Damien Martyn, who cleared his No. 4 desk from one day to the next and is now relaxing in the ICL. Don’t get me wrong – I am totally sympathetic to these players and the pressures they have to face. But I think it’s pretty lousy management to have three star performers ‘hit the bottom’ within two or three years without apparently noticing, let alone doing anything about it.

Then there’s Ashley Noffke. He’d been moving along the assembly line for quite a while and apparently shaping up as a pretty nifty speedster, when suddenly he was, without notice, dumped on the trash heap. He looks pretty good (on paper at least), but is now also off to the ICL. Again, either really poor man-management, or (if he was deemed a ‘lemon’) the failure of the system to refine his talent into the finished article. And it seems that the two bowlers chosen ahead of him – Siddle and Bollinger – had not even been in ‘the system’, underlining that ‘the system’ ain’t working so good.

On the spin bowling front, mismanagement also abounds. The unfortunate career of Stuart MacGill had an appropriate denouement in his farcical retirement halfway through an away Test. Surely his problems in coming back from injury should have been recognised earlier, or he should have been persuaded to play one more game. Then poor Beau Casson is talked up as the great new hope, only to be dumped after a single match, in favour of two unknowns for the India tour. But when Tweedledum gets injured, he’s replaced not by Tweedledee, but by Cameron White, who was presumably no higher than fourth in line just 3 months back. As with Noffke and the fast bowlers, it’s hard to see a ‘system’ at work here: instead it carries a slight whiff of panic, of impulse rather than deliberation.

So, like all dynasties, Australian cricket may be re-discovering that nothing last forever. But like that other faltering global superpower, the US, it would be rash to assume that it is already entirely down and out.

The Ferozeshah Kotla in Delhi is an odd place. I first noticed it when watching John Lever rip the guts out of India's batting in the 1976 Test. Delhi's bright winter sunshine lit up the Kotla that day and emphasized several things which I would come to associate with the ground over the years: it was small, most of it was uncovered, and it had a slightly ramshackle feel to it.

That feeling only grew when I visited it for the first time to watch Clive Lloyd's West Indians in the 1983-84 series. It was the first and only day of Test cricket that I observed in India. The approach to the ground was over an unpaved road, the parking lot was a dusty, disused field, and the entrances to the ground similarly nondescript. A friend of mine had secured what were supposed to be very good tickets but the sight lines still weren't great. The crowds were raucous; their hardest hitting lines were reserved for the Indian players. I still blush when I think of some of the lines directed at Shastri, then often fielding close to the boundary line.

The Kotla already had a reputation as a dead pitch by then. One that had, in Lala Amarnath's immortal phrase, "taken an overdose of sleeping pills". But that day’s cricket turned out to be surprisingly competitive. Richards did hit a brilliant 67, including a first ball four that sped to the fence before I had processed his entry and taking guard. But otherwise the West Indians stuttered before Lloyd and Logie put together a fightback. That Test, like many other Kotla Tests seemed to, ended in a draw.

Later, I went on to watch more cricket at the Kotla, but almost always domestic fare. Something about the ground was discordant and didn't mesh with my imagined visions of what Test cricket grounds should look like. The Delhi team won many Ranji Trophy games there, and so it acquired some lustre by virtue of being home to a champion team. But it remained a small ground: legend was that some of Tom Moody's sixes, hit during his tour with the Aussie U-19 team in the mid-80s, had actually landed outside the ground next to the bus stops.

It was while watching a Wills Trophy game at the Kotla that I enjoyed one of my most pleasant Indian cricketing experiences. A bunch of us lads from the University had gone down to see a match-up between the Challengers and the Indian side in a one-day game. We showed up with little money in our pockets other than the odd rupee that would aid in the buying of cheap cigarettes and possibly a cup of tea later in the day. Food seemed like a minor detail at the time. The sun was out, cricket was on, what more could we need?

An elderly gentleman sat in front of us, and at lunchtime, proceeded to unpack what seemed like a gigantic lunch box. We looked on hungrily, our appetites suddenly aroused by this sight. Our friend, who had chatted gaily with us about matters cricketing before, proceeded to share his lunch with us, handing out delicious parathas left right and centre, all gratefully and ravenously consumed by us. He was generous to a fault, and he knew his cricket. It was a uniquely Indian moment.

The Kotla has improved over the years though some parts of it still look ugly. Its pitch has gone from being a dodo to a spinner's delight (or so people say). But my relationship with it is unique: looking at images of the Kotla from thousands of miles away is guaranteed to make me homesick, bringing back memories of radiant Delhi winters, bus rides to Delhi Gate, but most of all, memories of the university, chatting about cricket with mates, and deciding impromptu, to head down to the local ground to catch the cricket action.

As I watch the match, I'll be straining to catch glimpses of the city outside. More than any other ground in India, this one is "home", for better or worse.

New Zealand were embarrassingly scratchy in the first Test against Bangladesh at the magnificently named Bir Shreshtha Shaheed Ruhul Amin Stadium in Chittagong. Redemption can be achieved this week, assuming the rain abates at some point. How? Not by drubbing the "Bangla-Dashers", no, no, no.

Instead I have kicked out Lindsay Crocker and John Bracewell and personally chaired a brutally honest team meeting at the Black Caps’ Dhaka Hilton Hotel. Specific challenges have been issued to each and every player, demanding that they launch an assault on a particular world record and get their names embroidered onto a list somewhere in the Cricinfo archive. Each is a record they will be proud to talk about in the pub whenever they get the chance.

Aaron "Son of Rodney" Redmond: Takes gold in the "slow batting by runs scored" category. He makes it through the first session of the Test - 120 minutes - and goes for a sumptuous lunch of jet planes and pasta, pumped up and on 0*. In the process, Christchurch financier Geoff Allott is knocked off the top of the chart. Against South Africa in 98/99, Allott memorably failed to trouble the scorers for a staggering 101 minutes.

Jamie How: Becomes only the second New Zealander after the maestro Glenn Turner (who did it twice) to carry his bat through a completed Test match innings.

Jesse Ryder: Hits 118 and is the first New Zealander to ever make that score. He is tragically run out attempting the first single of his innings.

Ross Taylor: Most fours off consecutive balls. He bashes eight to eclipse the seven smoked by Jayasuriya, Sarwan and Gayle - all players that echo the KFC Kid's approach to batting. Father of Aaron, Rodney Redmond, holds the New Zealand record - blazing five in a row against Majid Khan at Eden Park during "that" innings of 107 on debut.

Brendon McCullum: It meant that just a la indoor cricket there are shattered stumps and vociferous appeals almost every ball, but that’s what Baz needed to do to effect seven stumpings and sneak past India's Kiran More who snared half a dozen back in 1988 against the West Indies.

Daniel Flynn: Becomes the first New Zealander to be out "handled the ball" as an instinctive move to protect his expensive Mancunian orthodontic work goes horribly awry.

Grant Elliott: Blazes 271 at No. 7 to mow down one of Bradman's remaining 1001 cricket records. He doesn't score them quite as elegantly or quite as quickly as the man he replaces on the list.

Daniel Vettori: Slashes backward of point, then delivers a series of top-spin forehands through mid-off to make it through to 202, relegating Jason Gillespie's incredible effort to second in the list of monstrous knocks by a nightwatchman.

Kyle Mills: Grabs 8 for 107 to surpass the best ever bowling effort against Bangladesh by Stuart MacGill (8 for 108) back in 2006. MacGill has a whinge when he hears news his record has been flushed away, saying Bangladesh were a lot weaker this year.

Jeetan Patel: Commonly referred to by the chaps on the Beige Brigade podcast - The BYC - as the world's greatest cricketer, Jeets miraculously joins Wasim Akram, Maurice Allom and Chris Old to become the fourth musketeer in the elite and obscure 5 balls/4 wickets club.

Iain O'Brien: Joins the list as the only New Zealander to bowl unchanged throughout a completed innings. Upon completion, Vettori shakes his hand forcefully and assures the Wellingtonian that he won’t be holding that record for long.

	Why are Indian stadiums empty? © AFP

While I am concerned about the future of Test cricket in a world that seems to be increasingly headed towards the moneyed pastures of the Twenty20 World, I disagree that Tests are on their way out in India. And furthermore, I believe the Mohali schoolchildren experiment provides a very good model for how Tests could be further bolstered in India.

First things first. I do not think Test cricket is fading in India. Television audiences still remain gigantic, and there is no shortage of discussion about the game whether on the street, at homes, at schools and colleges and so on. Yes, there is more competition for spectators (most notably from English Premier League Football) but if interest in Tests is measured by whether it is on people's minds, and by whether advertisers think people are watching, then its levels remain high.

But why are Indian stadiums empty? The reasons for this are manifold. Indian stadiums are not comfortable places (BCCI please note), and there is competition for a family's live-cricket-watching budget. Why not just go watch a Twenty20 or an ODI instead when you are guaranteed a result at the end of the day? And of course, television coverage is of high-quality and you can make more frequent trips to the kitchen for snacks and drinks at home (and pay less)

Still, the spectacle of a keenly contested Test being played in front of empty rows of seats rankles, and it does not comfort me too much to know that plenty of interest is being shown in people's living rooms. How can this problem be fixed?

Here is my solution (perhaps applicable only in the unique economic context of the BCCI and Indian cricket). Tickets are sold in order to make money for the local cricketing association. It also makes money from the advertising hoardings that line the ground, and presumably it picks up a piece of the action from the television rights deal. What I suggest is that admission to the ground be made free. Don't charge anything. Let people walk up to the gate, go through the security check, and walk right in.

In order to make up the associated loss of gate receipts, the BCCI and the local association should carry out a calculation of estimated revenues, and simply add that on to the television rights and ground advertising deals. The television company in question will not only get to show an Indian Test team at home, they will be able to show a reasonably packed stadium, which can only add to the spectacle. Advertising rates can also be adjusted upwards in order to reflect the reality of more eyeballs at the ground. And the state association will see increased revenues from sales of food and drink at the ground.

Or perhaps some other subsidy deal can be worked out. The details are not as important as the idea that Test entry should be made free. If it is a form of the game worth preserving (and hopefully the BCCI and the state association can agree on this), then it behooves them to come up with some other revenue model that lets the ground association make up their gate receipts.

Yes, I'm saying that attendance at the game should be subsidised. But this is not such a radical idea. Giving away something for free so that a larger customer base can be attracted, who might then go on to become bigger spenders on other forms of the game, is an idea that is present in many other forms of entertainment (most notably in the modern music industry where music might be given away for free so as to attract a larger fan base to live concerts who then spend money on T-shirts and the like). The BCCI could land up creating a whole new generation of cricket fans brought up on Test cricket.

I think some simple number crunching will show that this is a viable idea. I welcome reader suggestions on other possible subsidy arrangements to make Test entry free in India.

	Daniel Vettori: "The best No. 8 batsman and left-arm spinner in the history of Test cricket" © Getty Images

Greetings from Beige Brigade headquarters in deepest, darkest Karori - a part of New Zealand's capital city that is allegedly the largest suburb in the southern hemisphere. It’s lovely to be with you as the new bloke on Different Strokes.

I put my hairy neck on the line before a ball was bowled in the current battle between the team with a firm grip on the wooden spoon in the half-baked Reliance Mobile Test Championship, and another side in the doldrums of the pecking order and just two spots above.

I still honestly thought New Zealand would swagger across to the People's Republic of Bangladesh, a land of rice and reckless batsmen, and destroy them. And I put it in print, albeit masquerading as the intimate and unspoken thoughts of the New Zealand captain.

But the Bangladashis have played pretty well, and the Black Caps (who wear a uniform that might be dark blue) have been a little less than ordinary. The defeat in the one-dayer to start the series was certainly ignominious, and the win completed in the last 24 hours is my nomination for the most painful New Zealand victory in our history of Test cricket.

If I was fair and took off my Ray-Bans to run a few numbers through the abacus, comparing the Test records of the Tigers and the Kiwis man-for-man is a surprisingly sobering task, even for a Beige Brigadier surrounded by amber liquid of various sorts, and theoretically wallowing in a rare New Zealand Test victory.

Witness an analysis using HowSTAT's "team comparison" function, a lick of my own gut feel from watching the grinding series on the gogglebox, and a dash of jiggery pokery.

Redmond v Tamim: These forward defensive addicts have both had less than 10 innings in Test cricket – but Tamim averages 25.33 to Redmond's 19.00. Bangladesh 1, NZ 0.

How v Siddique: Jamie H has this one for New Zealand. The Bengali may have peaked in the one-dayers but with just six runs in the Test, and a total batting existence of just 14 balls. B 1, NZ 1.

Ryder v Saleh: The ‘Deshi is a veteran compared to the media magnet frame of Jesse Ryder. By the end of their respective careers, the Kiwi will have a greater impact on the cricket scene than his rival - but not yet. I'm copping out - this one's a draw. B 1, NZ 1.

Taylor v Ashraful: Another mismatch in size and appetite - Ashraful plays the million-dollar shot relentlessly, but it only comes off one in a million times. Taylor's been below-par with 21 runs in the test but that is 19 more than his rival. B 1, NZ 2.

Flynn vs Mehrab: Both have demonstrated more grit than the Sahara Desert at times during the series, but this one is Mehrab's at present - his average is a couple of lazy digits better than the young Kiwi left-hander and he scored more runs in the Test. B 2, NZ 2.

McCullum vs Mushfiqur: It is McCullum by miles on paper, but he appears to have been taking batting lessons from the Bangladesh captain over the past few weeks - and he received the worst lbw decision in the history of the game yesterday. The rumour this South Island property magnate is distracted by a looming real estate slump in NZ is probably unfair, but he's had his own little slump this week. B 3, NZ 2.

Oram vs Naeem: Big Jacob Oram should snare the allrounder war, although a quirk of statistics sees recent debutant Naeem with a better bowling average after snaring the scalp of Flynn this week. Both were less than effective with the bat. It's a painful draw. B 3, NZ 2.

Vettori vs Shakib: The best No. 8 batsman and left-arm spinner in the history of Test cricket grabs this one after an unbelievable performance, although the Tiger representative was on the hairy shoulder of the bespectacled Italian with both bat and ball in this match. B3, NZ 3.

Mills v Mortaza: Mortaza by a whisker - 1/50 vs 1/101 in the Test. The heat is obviously getting to the New Zealander who was in a permanent state of perspiration/exasperation at Chittagong. B4, NZ 3.

Patel vs Razzak: Razzak might have been the only Bangladeshi to make the IPL but his Test record is ordinary at best. Wellington's finest claims this one with his 4/120 trumping Razzak's 4/144 match figures. B 4, NZ 4.

O'Brien vs Shahadat: Unfashionable but reliable - the NZ skipper is using O'Brien (famous for looking like Dr Cox from the sit-com Scrubs) as his “banker” in Test matches these days. And he’s delivering with determination in spades. The Kiwi has the edge of the honest toilers here and tips the scales in the Black Caps’ favour by a freckle. B 4, NZ 5.

So Middlesex are jetting off to Antigua for a post-season jaunt during which they will play a game for the largest prize ever offered to an English county club – at least until next year, when the prize for winning the Championship goes up to £500K.

Things have changed a lot since Brian Brain recorded his month-by-month thoughts on his 1980 season with Gloucestershire and their post-season Caribbean excursion to Barbados for a few friendly one-day matches against club sides in “Another Day, Another Match”.

Brain was a pace bowler who made his debut for Worcestershire aged 18 in 1959 but did not get capped until 1966, which meant that he was a year short of qualifying for a benefit when they sacked him in 1975. Moving to Gloucestershire prolongs his career, but he spends much of 1980 worrying about his financial future, and there is a happy ending when the county grant him a testimonial for 1981.

He would therefore have approved of the increases in player salaries. As a senior professional in 1980, he was paid £4500. In the wider economy, salaries have roughly quadrupled for equivalent jobs over the period, but his successor is now paid more like 10-12 times as much, which in real terms means that he would be earning two to three times as much today.

Interestingly, it appears that the rewards for playing in high-profile media circuses have increased by the same factor: Brain could easily understand why his county colleagues Mike Procter and Zaheer Abbas had gone to play for Packer at £20,000 a year, which scales up to about $500,000 today, or what such players might reasonably expect for an IPL contract. (Those who think Procter would have been worth more may not realise that his powers were waning by 1980; he came off his full run in only three or four of Gloucester’s games and mostly bowled off-spin when using the old ball.)

On the other hand, Brain might not have appreciated the change in his after play routine. The hot bath followed by a trip down the pub for a few beers and a game of darts is now an ice bath and a quiet Powerade before an early night. Worse still, he is pictured waiting to go into bat against the touring West Indies: that he has on a then-new helmet with a perspex visor is merely nostalgic, but the caption exults in his ingenuity in managing to smoke a cigarette while wearing it. Brain would not have enjoyed today’s healthy asceticism.

But whatever has changed, I hope that today’s players still get wonderful invitations such as the one Brain received from the Indoor Corridor Cricket Association at St Andrew’s University. Indoor corridor cricket was apparently ‘a quasi-religion which involves a squash ball of gruesomely variable pace and bounce, a plastic beach mat, mega-long-hops, the occasional kitchenette, plenty of nicks and a perpetually humid atmosphere that favours the bowler who keeps plugging away there or thereabouts and is always looking to do a bit.’

The letter went on to say that the Association had elected him, by a 7-1 majority over Leicestershire’s Ken Higgs, their Honorary President, ‘a position which carries with it absolutely no responsibilities whatsoever except a letter of delighted acceptance and permission to use your name when recruiting new members. The term of office is one year, whereupon you will become a life member which will entitle you to absolutely nothing except our veneration, which you already possess.’

The difference is that today’s player might feel able to afford slightly more than the nil donation which Brain enclosed with his acceptance.

	Did Shane Watson face "friendly banter" or a "verbal barrage"? © Getty Images

The headline writer in The Australian today (20 October) is clearly on a mission to secure a posting as Chief Minister of Propaganda. An article by Malcolm Conn, describing the events of the third day’s play from Mohali was headlined as “India’s verbal barrage as Watson fights lone hand".

What makes this headline even more disgraceful is that Watson is later quoted in the piece as saying it was nothing more than “friendly banter”. How that sort of direct quote can be turned into a headline that talks about a ‘verbal barrage’ is laughable, especially from a newspaper that purports to be a serious broadsheet.

The online version of the same article has a much more sober heading, presumably because the international audience that might access the Internet would see through the shameful jingoism that the hard copy readers in Australia are expected to stomach. The full article can be seen here.

This is the sort of rubbish that is served up as intelligent fare for cricket followers in Australia, trying to follow a gripping Test match between two evenly matched teams. The hypocrisy is breath-taking. I have never seen a similar headline in the last 20 years when most of the verbal barrage, distinctly ‘unfriendly banter’, has been dished out by the Australians. Even when opposition players, clearly not as sanguine about it as Watson and Lee clearly were, complained about being verbally intimidated, no one ever really described it in such negative language.

Take for example this quote from today’s article: “That India felt it necessary to so strongly verbal the Australians when so far in front suggests how desperate they are to regain the Border-Gavaskar Trophy”.

Contrast this with everything Watson says in his interview and the actual footage from what took place. That little excerpt could well be re-written to say “that an Australian journalist felt it necessary to misrepresent the facts when so far behind suggests how desperate we are to find something negative to write about India when they are clearly on top”.

I watched every ball of that absorbing middle session when Lee and Watson battled it out against some high quality bowling and it was nothing more than competitive cricket between grown men who clearly knew where to draw the line. There were smiles all round and nothing appeared to get out of hand. Why Rudi Koetzen and Asad Rauf felt the need to intervene to calm things down remains a mystery. You don’t often see that sort of intervention when Australia is serving it up. Why intervene now? Watson himself actually said it was “enjoyable”.

Earlier in the Test, another news report made much of Koetzen’s umpiring blunder when he failed to call for the third umpire to rule on Sourav Ganguly’s stumping on the first day. No mention whatsoever of the Watson lbw yesterday off Ishant Sharma. Obviously umpiring errors that favour Australia are not worthy of mention. Tell the masses what they want to hear and don’t let the truth get in the way of a good propaganda story. That will ensure the loyal readers keep coming back for more!

The Australian cricketers themselves (Sydney 2008 notwithstanding) are usually more than happy to engage in friendly banter. They’re not the ones complaining about Test cricket that’s played hard and fair. As cricketers who are prepared to dish it out, they are equally capable of taking it on the chin when the tables are turned. In fact, I don’t think that tactic really works on Australian cricketers because it makes them fight even harder but that’s not a can of worms I want to open up again!

It will be interesting to see the local headlines in Australia if India wins this Test. Perhaps there won’t be any headlines at all – we might get full coverage of Bangladesh’s unlikely (probable) victory over New Zealand instead. After all, if the newspapers don’t report it, we can always pretend it never happened!

A couple of weeks ago when writing about the impact of the first live telecast from Australia to India (back in 1985), I commented on the immediacy of the action that Channel Nine's stump microphones introduced into the cricket watching experience. Over the years, I've come to regard the stump microphone as the single biggest change in that sphere (the varied angles for slow motion replays is a close second).

The stump microphone has done several things over the years. The most obvious effect is that it has made real two sounds that are part of cricketing lore and literature but which, before its advent, were not too clearly heard by those not at the ground: the "willow on leather" and the "death rattle". It also introduced us to the different sounds that bowlers make at the moment of delivery: the heavy thud of the fast bowler, the scraping and grinding of the spinner's pivot.

Most famously, it has let all of us become voyeurs as we listen to players sledging, chatting, complaining, joking and indulging in all of the little conversational moments that take place during the game. There are plenty of us that wish commentators wouldn't talk over the stump microphone!

And of course, players often aren't happy about the stump microphone for precisely the same reason: too much of what they say leaks into living rooms, a complaint most famously made by Shane Warne after the "f**king arsey c*nt" controversy.

In giving us access to these conversations, the stump microphone also performs one salutary function. It demystifies cricket by reminding us that it's just a game played by a bunch of men (in all their glorious imperfection). And often it does so by reminding us of the informality that lies behind the sometimes ponderous cricket analysis that accompanies each Test match.

I was reminded of this when watching the last over of the second day's play in the Mohali test when Amit Mishra, India's new leg-spinner trapped Michael Clarke with a googly on the penultimate ball of the day.

What made the last over even more enjoyable for me (besides getting the crucial wicket of Clarke) was picking up on the stump mics just how informally the entire cricketing conversation went. For Dhoni did not walk up to Mishra and go into a long conference, and gravely decide to implement the change. Instead Dhoni simply yelled out in Hindi "Try it from the other side" (note not, "Amit, I think you should try bowling around the wicket"). The interesting thing is that Mishra did not comply the first time this was suggested. It was almost as if Mishra shrugged off that directive, and went on bowling over the wicket. Dhoni persisted, calling out the same line again. Mishra finally complied and dismissed Clarke.

I found this little moment hugely entertaining. For one thing the conversation took place in Hindi, which provided a flashback to the games that I played as a youngster back in Delhi, with its particular slang and inflections. Secondly, it reminded me that I was watching a couple of cricket players trying something out on the spur of the moment, which is often how most games proceed. And lastly, the informality of it all was like a breath of fresh air for one subjected to several hours of television commentary.

Like most additions to media coverage of sports, the stump microphone has had mixed effects. But at moments like this, it delivers on what it promises: access to the sporting action in a way that changes the way you think about the game.

	Tendulkar and Lara: Two great sportsmen who are truly worthy of global admiration © Getty Images

The great thing about watching Sachin Tendulkar pass Brian Lara was the sense that both men transcend national loyalties. In a world full of false heroes, here are two great sportsmen who are truly worthy of global admiration.

Both great batsmen have enjoyed long careers based on quiet dignity and enormous respect from their own peers. In some senses, this is the real barometer because the only people who really know the full story tend to be those who watched them in battle - team-mates, opponents, umpires, media and support staff. In the case of Tendulkar and Lara, it’s hard to find examples of too many character assassinations from people who know them well.

The consistency of their character over a long career is what stands out. It’s often said that Reputation and Character are twin brothers who were separated at birth but will eventually meet up again sometime in their lives. And when they do reunite, they will be equal.

When genius is hailed so publicly at an early age, Reputation is always the older brother, shaping destinies even before careers begin. Character would naturally have to follow, judged by history and constant public scrutiny. Character is not what other people think about you – it is who you really are deep inside. Many people with great reputations haven’t got the character to match and when the two brothers eventually meet, Reputation is dragged down to the level of truth to where Character lives his real life. Not so for these two gentlemen.

Lara battled demons midway through his career but he finished off like any great champion, rarely embroiled in unseemly on-field altercations. It was almost like he refused to stoop down to that level. His consistency of behaviour over a long career cannot be faulted. He walked 100% of the time when he nicked it and rarely showed public displays of petulance when he got bad decisions. I cannot recall a genuine public tantrum.

Likewise Tendulkar – for a man who has carried the weight of a country for so long on his shoulders, for a man who has had to live most of his life in a goldfish bowl, his public persona is faultless. His on-field behaviour has always been dignified and classy. In life itself, I can’t recall a single incident when he lost his cool or put himself in a situation which he later regretted. For someone who has had to cope with that amount of public scrutiny, that is truly remarkable. How many other celebrities can claim that sort of public record? His celebrity status has gone far beyond Indian boundaries and yet, his global appeal defies the usual jingoistic prejudices.

On the bowling side of the record-breaking fence, Muttiah Muralidaran shares a similar pedigree. His constant smile and unblemished disciplinary record over a long career speaks volumes for the strength of his character. He has had to endure some very public humiliations that would have broken lesser men but somewhere, deep in his soul, he has found an inner-strength that has sustained him through the nightmares. Like Lara and Tendulkar, Murali too seems to be hugely respected by the cricketing community all over the world. How many other great international players can claim that? Adam Gilchrist is one name that instantly comes to mind.

The two brothers, Reputation and Character have indeed found each other in these remarkable men. In looking for reasons why, we may well discover that Dignity and Integrity were their common parents.

	Expect Matthew Hayden to bounce back © Getty Images

The just concluded first Test in Bangalore confirms a lot of my pre-series thoughts: the Australian batting line-up will not be pushovers; their bowling attack lacks some of the punch of old; the Indian batting line-up is still not firing on all cylinders; the Indian spinners have lost some zing; the Indian quicks will be more of a threat than the spinners; both sides' captains are inclined to let games drift and quickly go on the defensive, though Ricky Ponting outshone Anil Kumble in aggression; both captains can't seem to get a decent over-rate happening; India don't generally bat to win matches especially on fifth days; and lastly, injuries will do more to affect the 'Fab Five' than selections.

While Australia's first innings was uninspired at times, they did well to get themselves into a good position. 430 is always good batting first in a Test match. Ponting is likely to be very confident about his chances in the remaining games, which isn't good news for India, while Hussey showed that he is capable of succeeding just about anywhere thanks to his technique and temperament (I have a very hard time getting work done and thus tend to admire just about anybody with a serious work ethic!). Hayden failed but I don't think this will go on forever unless Zaheer sorts him out the way he did Graeme Smith last year in a one-day series. Katich looks solid but could also clog up Australia's attempts to force the pace unless he is willing to play out of character (I'm well aware of the fact that Katich has played some furious innings in Shield cricket). For my money the weak link lay in the trio of Watson, Haddin and White but it's too early to tell how they will do. Certainly Watson and Haddin did well on the fourth day but they were also let off by rather insipid captaincy from Kumble.

It's in the bowling front that Australia will continue to worry. This pace attack is 'McGrath-less', and it shows, especially when it is unable to knock a tail over. And White remains quite raw for now, but he will learn as the series goes along. Still, he will find it hard, and the quicks will have to be disciplined at all times.

On the Indian front, while the top-order didn't score heavily, there were some flashes of form from most of the top six. It isn't clear to me that Dravid, Tendulkar, Ganguly and Laxman are back in top form, but every single one of them had an extended knock out in the middle, and they'll be happy with that. However, I will say I did something on the second day that I would never, ever have done before: I went to sleep (at 1AM) when Sehwag and Gambhir were dismissed, and Dravid and Tendulkar were at the crease. Perhaps it was because I didn't expect them to take the game by the scruff of the neck.

Meanwhile the Indian spinners looked out of it: perhaps Kumble's shoulder is busted but he's looked ineffective for a few Tests now, and Harbhajan only seems to look dangerous on occasion (mind you, that Hussey dismissal was something else!). The most encouraging news for Indian fans is that we have a dangerous, penetrative pace attack. Zaheer and Ishant looked good, and provide a nice mix of right-n-left and swing-n-pace. They will trouble the Aussies in this series and hopefully, will get a chance to show that India can win Tests with pace at home.

This series also confirmed my suspicion that there will be a fair amount of sniping between the teams via the press. Ponting and Sehwag had their moments before the Test, and Zaheer has now stepped into the fray with his post-match comments. Much as I wish this would go away, it won't, so we'll just have to grit our teeth and bear it.

This Test resembled a boxing match in which each opponent landed a few punches, won a few rounds on points, and created headaches for the judges when it came to calling a winner. It was a draw and that was the fair result. But some of this probing will have some effect in the later tests: weaknesses and vulnerabilities will have been noted, and new strategies charted out. A Test series is a campaign. This encounter was merely the opening battle.

	Bangladesh stunned New Zealand in the first one-dayer on Thursday © AFP

Last week I predicted that Bangladesh would be massacred by New Zealand, so they promptly went ahead and recorded one of their rare wins against a major country.

Unfortunately, though, I cannot regard it as any great evidence that they have improved. As when India and Australia were beaten, it was the senior country’s first competitive outing in the tournament or series and they were caught on the hop. Normal service was rapidly resumed.

Bangladesh's performances recall those of the minor counties in the English Gillette/NatWest knockout cup, the first one-day competition in county cricket which has since been displaced by Twenty20. The first round of that pitted fifteen of the first-class counties against minor counties, the combined universities, Ireland or Scotland. Every couple of years one of the minor sides would win because they played very well and the first-class side played very badly, usually with the help of a difficult pitch, and everyone would have a good laugh at the first-class side’s expense.

Durham won two or three times in the Eighties, which bolstered their application to graduate to first-class level no end, but when they were promoted in 1992 they had to import a swathe of experienced old hands from Boon to Botham to be even semi-competitive on a regular basis rather than riding their one-off luck.

But Bangladesh do not have that option. They can’t go into the market to recruit Stuart Law, Graeme Hick, Shaun Pollock and the about-to-be-ex-international Sourav Ganguly to flesh their team out and coach the younger guys while they find their feet in international cricket.

And that consigns them to limbo for a generation if their schedule remains as at present. Playing only against national sides is futile since the gulf in ability is too great. There are plenty of teams who would provide very reasonable opposition, but they are called Warwickshire, Warriors or Western Australia rather than West Indies. But how to do it?

An obvious answer is to have them play in the Ranji Trophy and the Hazare one-day competition, but this could easily turn out to be rather embarrassing. Bangladesh would probably not win and questions would then be asked about why a team which ranks below an Indian state side is playing international cricket. So it will not be done, more’s the pity, and neither will anything similar in some other country, because it would not look good.

Bangladesh’s cricket is thus being stunted because it would mean a loss of face at the ICC’s top table. By insisting that Bangladesh are a fully-fledged international team they delay almost indefinitely the day when it will actually be true. Instead of helping Bangladesh develop, political horse-trading dictates that they shall be kept as pathetic pets to be taken round the world for ritual thrashings with the occasional reward of patronising comments about how well they did when a proper team falls over its bootlaces.

It’s hardly surprising that getting the chance to be taken seriously in the ICL proved an attractive prospect, and unless something constructive is done, more will be enticed there. Putting a few more Bangladesh players in the next IPL auction is mere tokenism: there is no guarantee that franchises will bid at all for players whose records are as unexciting as most of the Bangladesh team are, and those who are picked up will be support actors when they need to learn how to be the leading men.

Bangladesh’s cricketers deserve more respect than this. What is so sad is that I see no prospect of them getting anything else.

	Howzat for an answer, Virender? © Getty Images

Indians, more than anyone else, should know the dangers of pulling a tiger by the tail. It's predictable the reaction will be savage.

There’s a lot to like about Virender Sehwag. He seems to be someone who plays instinctively and with wonderful timing. He doesn’t seem overly weighed down by the pressures of being an Indian cricketer, revered (and sometimes reviled) by millions. His inflammatory comments about the 2008 Sydney Test may have been instinctive but for once, his timing let him down.

I say that for purely pragmatic reasons. I’m not going to debate that fateful Test because the wounds are still raw on all sides and I don;t see any point in exhuming that corpse. Which is why I’m surprised that Sehwag picked this week to prise open that coffin.

Anyone who thinks these mind games upset Australian cricketers, especially someone like Ricky Ponting, has not done their homework. Ponting is a good enough player without providing him with any extra motivation. Sehwag’s ill-timed barb virtually guaranteed Ponting would do what Aussies do best - grit their teeth and prove a point.

It’s hard to believe Sehwag didn’t stop to think about everything he has learned over the years about Australians in general and Ponting in particular. To make it to the top, they have learned to be incredibly mentally tough and resilient. They thrive on proving people wrong. Club cricket, even at junior level, is based on that culture. If you don’t survive that constant pressure, you simply don’t make it to the top. Simple as that.

Australians deliberately use that strategy for self-motivation. The famous story about Allan Border and Dean Jones in the Tied Test of 1986 is a classic example. Border goaded Jones into playing one of the most courageous innings in cricket history by telling him that if he wasn’t tough enough, he’d get a Queenslander (Greg Ritchie) to bat instead.

Even in his anger, Jones knew exactly why Border had made that comment and yet, he couldn’t help but prove his own captain wrong. Even though he adored Border. Even if it almost cost him his life. That’s so typical of the way Australian sport is played. It’s the easiest psychological trick in the book.

Border himself often used that weapon on himself. He often tells of instances when he would deliberately provoke a confrontation in order to get embroiled in a battle that helped him raise his game. It was a well known fact that if you wanted to get him cheaply, you didn’t sledge him.

I remember batting with him in an A-Grade club match. He was batting fairly loosely until a brash young fast bowler mouthed off at him and questioned his courage. Bad move – the transformation was instantaneous and AB even threatened me with dire consequences if I threw my wicket away. I saw a lazy pussycat become a snarling tiger in front of my eyes.

That’s why it’s difficult to understand what Sehwag was trying to achieve. It was exactly what Ponting and his team wanted to hear. Coming on top of his much celebrated poor record in India, this was all Ponting needed to seal the deal. Thank you Sehwag, thank you Indian media, thanks for coming. A Ponting century, gift wrapped and delivered to the team hotel in Bangalore!

The Aussies are too smart to fall for that sort of trick themselves. They rarely target Tendulkar, Lara or Dravid in this way. They understand their opponent and play the man accordingly. With Sourav Ganguly or Graeme Smith or Darryl Cullinan, they deliberately change their mode of attack. It is calculated, deliberate and individualised. It is a team plan that is executed down to the last detail. Even club cricket is played with these individual plans for different opponents. And no one deviates from the agreed strategy.

Perhaps Sehwag was merely executing an Indian team plan. Perhaps he was the nominated bait to flush the tiger into the open. If that was the case, it was stunningly naïve. Ponting has proven, time and again, that he thrives under pressure and performs when it matters most. His record in big games is immense and he prides himself on leading from the front. He said as much after the warm-up game in Hyderabad and perhaps he was trying hard to convince himself. Then along came Sehwag and pulled the tiger’s tail. The rest is history.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the hold that cricket photographs have on us fans. Besides the many genuinely aesthetic pleasures they make available to us, photographs play a central, historical function: they inform us of a time gone by.

Here is one difference that photographs reveal between the present and the past: the post-wicket celebration. Exhibit A: the famous photo of Jim Laker celebrating along with the rest of the team (or perhaps just noting) the end of an Ashes test in victory for England, a test in which Laker claimed 19 wickets of the 20 Australian wickets to fall. Laker and the rest of the English team seem to have wrapped up the win with as much visible display of emotion as one might make on receiving a receipt at a pawn shop.

Compare this with any photograph of the 1970s West Indian team celebrating. The exuberance on display is unmistakable. But this is not just a facile "Look at all the excitable non-white folk celebrating" or "White men can't party" point. For all teams now celebrate with the whooping exuberance of the West Indians. Some of them, the Indians for instance, take it even further: rumor has it that the famous slap heard round the world was actually just a congratulatory whack on the cheek. Some still display some reserve: Australians, for instance, pat each other's behinds in rather self-conscious fashion and shrink from the more affectionate hugs of their teammates. But in general there is no meekness on the cricket ground when it comes to celebrations: the English team is just as full of beans as anyone else. And almost all teams of the 1950s, even the West Indies, were relatively sedate in their on-field merry making.

Having observed this change we are now free to speculate on its causes. Is there too much coffee served in today's dressing rooms? Did other teams confuse the West Indian celebration as the cause, and not the effect, of the wicket falling? Is some of this put on for the television cameras? Is it, so to speak, part of the show, and the players know they are the actors?

The answer, as always, is somewhere in the middle of all the speculation. Players of years gone by grew up in environments that required considerably more conformism, and social manners were more reserved. Every one of the cricketing nations has recorded in its social histories, this change in the social demeanor. It was inevitable too, that the West Indians would serve as models; not just for their fast-bowling and batting, but also for their vibe.

The high-fives and its various variants were bound to be picked up by impressionable youngsters the world over. Are there any young sportsmen anywhere that don't copy the stars in all their mannerisms? And lastly, as media and cultural theorists, and perhaps particle physicists, never tire of pointing out, our observations rapidly turn into participation: the players are ever more conscious of photographs and video coverage of games, giant screens remind them of their mannerisms, sometimes in close-up, and the sensation of living in a parallel world, that of the television production or the glossy sports magazine can take hold quite quickly. On that razzle-dazzle stage, there is no prize for sedateness and plenty of temptation to turn up the demonstrativeness a notch. The worst aspect of all this is the obnoxious, unprovoked, send-off.

But I'm not complaining. The excitement of the players is infectious; and watching a team celebrate a hard earned wicket in tests is enough inspiration to keep us watching a bit longer, hoping for another vanquished foe whose grave we can dance over. And that gives us a clue to what might be the *purpose* of the celebration: a warning to those in the pavilion of the fate that awaits them, and a signal to the friendlies that all is well. When all is said and done, sport somehow manages to turn us back to battlefield metaphors. More on that later.

	Bangladesh had a tough time even against a depleted Australia © AFP

Are you ready for the historic series which starts on Thursday? No, not that one, the other one. The ODI series between Bangladesh and New Zealand will be the first in which the batsmen can disrupt the fielding captain’s plans by demanding a Powerplay.

This rule change opens up tactical challenges for both sides. Fielding captains will have to at least consider holding certain bowlers in reserve until the batsmen’s Powerplay is taken, and the batsmen will be seeking to take the Powerplay at the most advantageous point. It remains to be seen whether it will make much difference.

Under the previous dispensation, it was uncommon for fielding captains to deviate from using the first 20 overs as Powerplay. It is entirely possible that batsmen will decide that the best time to take the Powerplay is almost always going to be immediately following the mandatory ball change, with the consequence that ODIs adopt a different but still predictable rhythm.

Even so, we are unlikely to get any useful intelligence about it from Bangladesh v New Zealand.

When Bangladesh visited Australia last month, the Australians looked short of cricket and were weakened by the absence of two or three key players, yet Bangladesh were incinerated. Even when they bowled well enough to restrict Australia to a sub-200 total, a feat which would give most teams a pretty fair chance of winning, they lost by a huge margin. Against the Black Caps, another massacre is extremely likely.

Daniel Vettori made more than the usual ritual noises about taking Bangladesh seriously as his team left NZ. He knows enough history to sympathise with Bangladesh’s plight, recalling that it had taken 26 years for New Zealand to register their first Test win, and saying that the experience of playing against better opposition was central to a team’s development.

The trouble is that this is a partial reading of history.

The value of New Zealand’s early tours to England was not to be found in three gala Test matches where the tourists could sometimes scrape a draw in the allotted three days but in nearly thirty matches against the counties and invitational sides like MCC or HDG Leveson Gower’s XI, which were usually genuinely competitive.

Though counties might rest their premier fast bowler, especially in the later stages of the season when his energy was better preserved for the Championship, they would generally be at full strength. Top teams like Yorkshire and Lancashire would beat them while weak ones like Somerset and Northants would usually lose; thus the tourists would be able, in the modern jargon, to take plenty of positives from the tour even though they had largely failed in the Tests.

No such educational opportunity now exists for Bangladesh, but without one, they seemed doomed to wander the international circuit getting thrashed, thereby acquiring the dubious skill of losing cricket matches and having it drummed into them that they are not good enough to compete at the international level.

One could open up, though, if the various promoters of Twenty20 competitions had the imagination. I think I would back Middlesex to beat them, but I’d only make that a 60% chance compared to the 99.5% chance of a major national team winning. A three-way between the Stanford 20/20 winners, the English Twenty20 winners and Bangladesh would be unpredictable, nor do we really know how well Bangladesh would do if invited to the Champions League when it expands.

Admittedly, this would not give them the experience of competitive first-class cricket I believe they require if they are ever to make a decent fist of Test cricket, but it would be a start.

	Australia will no longer have the luxury of attack, attack, attack. Ricky Ponting will be forced to employ defensive fields with sweepers in place from the outset © AFP

Finally, a look at what Australia’s world will look like after Warne, McGrath and Gilchrist. All three men were ‘once-in-a-generation’ players. Australia were indeed blessed to have them all playing together. Especially when you add the other great names of that period.

That golden era is about to end I’m afraid. The two alpha predators of the jungle are about to face off and that aura of invincibility is no longer the birthright of the next generation of players to don the famous baggy green. Don’t get me wrong – they will be competitive of course and they will probably win more matches than they lose. But they will need to change their hunting style to suit their strengths. There will be change.

The biggest change we’re likely to see is a more defensive and more pragmatic approach in the field. Australia used to pride itself on entering every single Test match with the sole intention of winning it. Playing for the draw was the fallback position, employed as a last resort when every avenue of winning had been exhausted. It was this sort of attitude, combined with a powerful talent pool that revolutionised modern cricket. The only teams that occasionally beat Australia during this period were the ones prepared to adopt similar tactics. England’s Ashes triumph in 2005 was the blueprint that other teams will now need to follow.

South Africa – for some inexplicable reason, they went into each series against Australia with a plan to first secure a safe position and then press on for a win if the opportunity presented itself. Against the top predator, such timidity rarely brought rewards. In very simplistic National Geographic terms, the Aussies were like a pride of lions, taking on prey head-on and making big kills. The rewards were worth the odd botched hunt. The South Africans reminded me of hyenas, highly efficient and tireless, nipping away at the heels, waiting for a moment of weakness and then darting in for a slow kill if the opportunity presented itself.

In India next week, I suspect that analogy will no longer apply. With arguably one of the weakest spin attacks in world cricket at the moment, Australia will no longer have the luxury of attack, attack, attack. Ponting will be forced to employ defensive fields with sweepers in place from the outset. It will be fascinating to see how the team reacts to this new philosophy and to see if affects their natural aggression in the field. It’s going to be a lot harder to mentally dominate the inner-circle when half the fielders are in the deep and someone like Sehwag or Tendulkar are in full flow on home pitches.

It is this facet of the game that will provide some riveting viewing. It will give Australia a glimpse of what the next decade is going to be like until they find another Warne or McGrath. They have been so used to dominating the opposition and creating an aura around the crease which resulted in a ‘bubble’ that simultaneously hypnotised and intimidated. The combined pressure of accurate bowling, great catching and constant ‘chat’ around the bat was a powerful cocktail that had a crippling effect. It’s a lot harder to sustain that pressure in searing Indian heat with the score on 4-320, four fielders in the deep, no close-in catcher and a passionate home crowd egging Tendulkar on with Jason Krezja and Cameron White bowling in tandem.

The Australian batting still looks deep enough to match India’s class but will their psyche be affected by the knowledge that the bowlers don’t have the firepower? It’s easy to bat freely and aggressively when you know you’ve got 700+ Test wickets in the bowling arsenal. The current attack, Brett Lee apart, looks decidedly vulnerable to a blistering counter-attack from someone like Sehwag or Dhoni. Or liable to be worn down by a Dravid epic.

The big question of course is whether India will be comfortable with being the team that has to now make the running instead of reacting to it. Will that affect their mindset? If Australia sense that India are not quite ready to storm the fortress, they might just live to fight another day. Like any lion pride, there comes a moment when the challenger senses a genuine opportunity and this may be one such moment in history. That moment will arrive when the Aussie spinners come on to bowl – India’s reaction will tell us all if they are lions or hyenas.

	A dejected Michael Vaughan stands down as captain © Getty Images

In the early 90s, rumours circulated among the Yorkshire faithful of a schoolboy in Sheffield, said to be the best batting prospect seen in the Broad Acres since the young Len Hutton sixty years earlier. In 1995, soon after he made his Yorkshire debut, I saw him play against Gloucestershire. He made 74 runs with an elegance and class which bore out the rumours, so I became a devoted fan of Michael Vaughan.

After establishing himself as a Test player, in 2002 he embarked on a year playing as regally as anyone I have ever seen. He was my idea of batting perfection apart from a tendency to throw things away in the nervous 190s, and at the start of 2003 the ICC rankings briefly agreed that he was the best batsman in the world. Had he carried on like that, the phrase “the great Michael …” would not today inevitably end in “Phelps”.

But he took on the England captaincy and the spell was broken. His batting descended to the mortal plane, then he got. Following physical rehab and his resumption of the captaincy - a mistake about which I have written before - his batting continued to deteriorate until his resignation this summer.

That this would happen was unknowable in advance: batsmen take captaincy in different ways, as Vaughan and his predecessors and contemporaries show. It adversely affected Vaughan, as it did Rahul Dravid, but had no discernible effect on the batting of Mike Atherton or Ricky Ponting while propelling Graham Gooch and Mahela Jayawardene to performances at your favourite level of the upper atmosphere. Ever the contrarian, Nasser Hussain began by finding captaincy a burden but went on to perform above his average level.

Giving up a burdensome captaincy can work wonders. Paul Collingwood recovered his batting form within 24 hours of deciding to resign as ODI captain. But since he quickly found that he was not much good at being captain and began to dislike it not much later, giving it up was clearly liberating.

Vaughan, though, was a brilliant captain in his dream job. The feeling that he would have to give it up grew over months and when the end came it was heartbreaking. Being driven to resignation like that cannot be far different from seeing a parent slip into terminal illness or realising that your marriage is on an inevitable course to shipwreck. He is bound to need considerable time to recover his equilibrium.

Awarding Vaughan a central contract but leaving him out of the squad to tour India is thus a signal that the selectors believe that he will be able to bat at a level somewhere near his old standards once he has recovered his mental fitness, although rehab for the soul will take quite some time.

There being nothing I enjoy more in cricket than seeing Michael Vaughan score Test centuries, I fervently hope they are right.

A lot of the press reaction, though, has implied that they are either nuts or ridiculously sentimental. Since I can weep at the end of “The Return of the King”, I’ll plead guilty to sentimentality, but I will also pose a question.

If it had emerged that a player had been batting in considerable pain and had had surgery to remove the problem, but that it would take three months’ rehab and he would therefore miss the tour of India, it seems unlikely that anyone would bat an eyelid at the award of a 12-month contract. Why is it different when the pain has been in his mind rather than his right shoulder?

	The India-Australia rivalry matches the hype surrounding it © AFP

Much is made of the India-Australia rivalry these days: that it rivals the Ashes, that it supersedes the India-Pakistan series, and so on. But I live in a city where one sporting rivalry - the New York Yankees versus the Red Sox - sets the standards, and so I must evaluate this hype accordingly.

I’ve done the needful examination and I’m glad to report that this rivalry matches the hype. For what mattes in a true blue sporting rivalry is squabbling and nastiness, completely divorced from reality, and plenty of it. And that’s something this particular match-up has in plenty.

The Ashes hype is a bit silly. The English love the Aussies and vice-versa. I'm not taken in by all the "Pommie bastard" and "convict thug" lines. The Australians let in approximately two million English backpackers into Bondi Beach every year, and the London police has to be called out periodically to quell stampeding Aussie expatriates at Heathrow. They happily drink each others beer, eat each others food, and praise each other. Heck, some of them - Warne and Pietersen for instance - would marry if the laws allowed it.

Aussies play in county cricket, hand out their wisdom, and are revered. Tell an English cricketer he played like an Aussie, and he'll blush. Tell an Aussie Freddie Flintoff wants a date with his missus, and he'll hand her over. True, the 2005 Ashes victory parade was something to behold. But does anyone think it was about the cricket? No, folks just came out to cheer at the news that their cricketers were also prone to all-night drinking binges like them.

The India-Pakistan thing is even more silly. All we have now is one big love-fest. Gushing Indians write about the kababs, the free cab rides in Pakistan, the hospitality, and how "Pakistanis are just like us." Pakistanis lap up Bollywood, the ICL, the IPL, the BCCI, heck, anything with an I in it. The players check out each other's iPods, and go to parties together. And some fans even hold up giant India-Pakistan flags at games. It’s all enough to make you barf a bit. Why can't we have Shoaib and Sourav going at each other any more?

But India-Australia, now that’s a piece of work. Everything comes to the fore here. “Your mama wears handcuffs!” “Yours is a curry-cooking Ganguly groupie!” And this is just the more mature stuff. Senior journalists are not immune to this fever. Gideon Haigh has succumbed to the bug and now refuses to order Indian takeout. Sunil Gavaskar has been placed on the No-Fly list at Qantas. History, dietary preferences, accents, everything is up for ridicule in this particular flame-fest.

No rivalry works without a good dose of sanctimoniousness to underwrite it. (For instance, the Red Sox, that poor, struggling, high-school team, frequently complain about how rich the Yankees are). Thus Australia, that impoverished sporting power, complains about the riches in Indian cricket. And so it goes. There are exceptions of course. Australian cricketers manfully trudge off to the obligatory charity photo-ops; Brett Lee tries to learn love songs in six different Indian languages; Laxman expresses his desire to have his ashes scattered in the Yarra; and everyone on both sides agree that the other side is so tough, so competitive. But really, what these guys want to do more than anything is settle down with a cold one, and watch Harbhajan do Hayden impersonations (or vice-versa). And then break wicker chairs over each other's heads. (The fans too).

But what you really need to get a rivalry all stoked up is a nutty media corps. And that’s what India and Australia have in ample measure. The Indian side gives us conspiracy theories about Greg Chappell. The Australian side gives us half-baked social commentary on the caste system. This series might lack fast pitches, attacking captaincy and a legspinner that can actually turn the ball. The one thing it won't be missing is stories on, about, over, and under the game.