The most striking thing to me about India’s performance in the pair of Tests against England was that they have finally solved their opening batsman problem.

From the time Sunil Gavaskar retired until very recently, opening India’s batting was as thankless as batting at three for England. Around the turn of the millennium, Indian opening batsmen were rather like Indian opening bowlers of the Seventies, mere hors d’oeuvres before the introduction of the Fab Four – spinners or batsmen, depending on decade.

Eventually Virender Sehwag, a promising middle order bat, realised that he could either wait seven years to get a chance in his preferred position or have a go at opening. For those raised on the cautious principles which Gavaskar followed as an opener, Sehwag was either a shock or an abomination, since caution was a concept entirely unknown to him.

It took some time for India to be happy with this; wise men would shake their heads and murmur about the need for solidity at the top of the order, but gradually his value came to be recognised.

That value is not so much in the runs he scores as in the fear he has implanted in every opposition. Sometimes he hardly disturbs them, sometimes he is but a few violent gusts, but he is as closely observed as the weather systems in the western Atlantic because of the danger that an unstoppable Hurricane Viru will lay waste to them. Until Sehwag is out, every captain and every bowling attack is on edge. Unless they get him quickly their nerves fray and their confidence saps, making life for those who follow him that much easier.

Even better, it allows his partner to play himself in unnoticed. Several batsmen were offered this opportunity, but until Gautam Gambhir came along, none had really made very much of it.

Gambhir looks to me to be the true heir of Sunil Gavaskar, a Gavaskar for the twenty-first century.

Batsmen are of their time. In the Seventies and Eighties, the adhesive caution which characterised Gavaskar or Boycott was highly esteemed. Spectators understood that although it was very dull to watch, this was how Test cricket was played.

A generation on, teams start every match trying to win it rather than insuring against loss, so more enterprise is required in opening batsmen. The great thing about Gambhir is that he seems perfectly equipped for today’s strategies.

21st-century engineering makes shifting gears in the Gambi much smoother than in the older Sunny. Today’s model effortlessly spots the bad ball on the wrong length from a pace bowler and walks down the track to caress it over long on for six, changing back down to low gear for the next ball without the passengers noticing a thing, while the earlier version tended to have to get into a particular gear and stay there for a period. One could wish for a little more elegance in the external styling, but the power unit and transmission have a silky flexibility usually absent from twentieth-century vehicles.

The next Indian middle order may not be up to the standard set by the Fab Four, but the new opening partnership is now the most fearsome in world cricket.

PS: As spoilsports posted the answers to the puzzle within a few hours, reposting them seems superfluous – though I’m obviously very pleased that so many seemed to enjoy it. This blog will not be turning into Puzzle Corner, but I hope to offer the odd similar amusement from time to time. See you all in the New Year.

When you get used to driving a Rolls Royce on an Autobahn, it sometimes takes awhile to adjust to driving a normal family sedan on a suburban street. Whilst the Rolls was powered by engines of the calibre of McGrath, Warne, Gilchrist, the Waugh twins, Langer and Gillespie, it makes the transition to a four cylinder compact, fuelled by Siddle, Lee, Symonds and Hauritz/Krezja an even harder psychological vehicle to drive.

Australia’s batting performance in the second innings at the MCG reflects the above analogy perfectly. For so long, perhaps a decade or so, Australia batted like princes, comfortable in the knowledge that they had the depth and class to ride out any minor hiccups. Most situations were treated the same way – back your ability and those of your brilliant mates to smash your way out of trouble. If all of the top order failed, rare as that was, there was always Gilchrist to come.

In the very early days of a crumbling empire, the first sign is usually a refusal to accept that some things have changed and the world will never be the same again. Throughout this series, and especially in the second innings in Melbourne, Australia batted like royalty but failed to realise that the kingdom, whilst not yet relinquished, was certainly not theirs to take for granted.

It called for some old-fashioned grit, some dogged resistance, the sort of boring, negative cricket that went against everything the Rolls Royce brigade stood for. Someone forgot to tell them that the Rolls had been traded in for the family wagon, complete with passengers, some of them out of form, some of them injured, some of them inexperienced and some of them still living in the past.

Hayden’s innings was a mixture of desperation, courage and ultimately, false bravado. When it comes off, that sort of arrogance is applauded for its audacity and fearlessness. He has played so many of those great innings and it would be churlish to forget those many moments during this short period of poor form. Today, when Australia needed a sober innings, Hayden refused to accept that role. The South Africans, mindful of that mindset, set their trap and got their man, as they have done all series.

Katich, and Haddin too were in the same frame of mind. None of this boring match-saving stuff for them. Driving expansively, they nicked balls that should have been left alone if sensible survival were the team orders. Perhaps Ponting was still harbouring hopes of a win – his dismissal was not that of a timid man looking to scrap for a draw. Likewise the vice-captain Clarke - three players caught in the short-cover region. There’s only one way to crash a Rolls Royce and that’s to do it in style!

The fat lady has yet to sing so I’m being cautious about writing off the Aussies with a lead of 180+ on a last day pitch. Regardless of whether SA chase down this total or not, one cannot help but wonder whether the modes of dismissal today were part of a team plan to keep attacking, regardless of the match situation or whether it was a case of some batsmen just refusing to accept the new reality of an army without the big guns.

Australia will not become a poor team overnight. There’s too much depth and too much pride to allow that to happen. They will continue to be competitive and will probably win more than they lose. The big difference now is that other countries have lost their fear of the mighty Aussie machine. The Proteas have proved that you can fight back against them and not just survive but thrive. It’s a credit to the SA think-tank that they have understood the psychology so well and given the Aussie batsmen enough rope to hang themselves. Their field settings and the line they bowled today relied heavily on the home team refusing to play out maiden overs or let too many go through to the wicketkeeper. In some senses, it was an ego thing.

The champagne days are over for the time being. No shame in that. The sooner this Australian team comes to terms with the new reality of their own mortality, the sooner they will learn to stop batting like millionaires. It’s been great entertainment and we’ve enjoyed the ride but it’s time to start playing ‘ugly’ again. The Australian cricket fan is knowledgeable enough to appreciate that and allow this new generation to find their feet without holding them ransom to the Rolls Royce legacy that we’ve been treated to since the early 1990’s.

What a day! I don’t remember enjoying a day’s cricket as much since Laxman and Dravid stuck it to Australia at Eden Gardens in 2001.

In South Africa, we tend to exaggerate both the lows and the highs (and not just on the sports field). After last week’s fantastic chase at Perth, many here indulged in typical hyperbole, calling it South Africa’s ‘best ever’ Test win. That’s way over the top – what about the series-clinching Day 5 at Edgbaston only 6 months ago? Or Sydney 1994? Or Faisalabad in 1997, our first series win in Asia? Not to mention quite a few matches in the 1960s and earlier.

If we win this Melbourne Test (or next week’s at Sydney), it will instantly become our best ever win - our first series win in Australia. If Melbourne and Sydney both turn out to be draws, then I’ll agree - Perth is our best ever. And today went an awfully long way to making a Melbourne draw possible, indeed likely.

As everybody knows, Australia is South Africa’s bete noire. I won’t rehearse our losses here (nor our ties….). That’s why the ‘438’ ODI was our best cricket moment of the decade, at least up to 2008. Our repeated losses to Australia are so painful partly because they are usually better at being South African than we ourselves are. That is, they’re better at the ‘braaivleis, rugby, sunny skies and Chevrolet’ thing, the sports-mad outdoor life produced by our mix of Anglo-American colonial influence and pioneer-farmer mythology. It may be just one way to be South African, but it’s still a very popular one.

In this culture, prowess on the field far outweighs anything in the lab, at the theatre or on the bestseller lists. So being second best to Australia in cricket and rugby has been hugely disappointing. We couldn’t even beat them at football, our most popular sport but probably only number nine or ten over there. (We managed a draw.) Australia even exports more proteas than we do. That’s our national flower, dammit!!

So day 3 was fantastic. Everything went right for South Africa, everything went wrong for Australia. Okay, everything but one - they didn’t lose a wicket in their short batting stint. But never has Australia looked so thoroughly disorganised, so hang-dog and so shell-shocked on a cricket field, certainly never against South Africa.

It was all the sweeter because of where we started the day. South African cricket is famous for never giving up without a fight to the last ball, and for batting deep into the tail. And it’s also famous for doing what happened yesterday - digging itself deep into the sort of hole that creates opportunities to display these two qualities. So today wasn’t a total surprise.

But there was also a sense today of something different, something new.

Partly it’s because the star today was a black player in only his second test, and in the side unquestionably on merit. Even though black players have performed superbly for South Africa for more than a decade, it’s still argued by some that affirmative action helped them into the side in the first place. Not Duminy.

Partly it’s because none of the four players who added 261 runs today came entirely out of the South African cricket establishment. Harris and Steyn had the advantages of growing up white but went to middle-ranking schools, as did Duminy, while Ntini emerged from a remote poverty-stricken area before his bowling won him a scholarship to an elite school.

But in the end it felt different because we were the ones with a ‘system’, replacing a stalwart like Prince with a reserve like Duminy while Andrew Symonds hopped about and Shane Watson fielded for Lee but couldn’t bowl for him. We were the ones with skills, scoring at a good rate while the Aussies dropped catches and conceded overthrows. And we were the ones with confidence, taking advantage of Aussie disarray to bat them right out of the match and probably the series, while they (dare I say it?) ‘choked’, unable to ram home the huge edge they started with this morning.

In fact, we were the Australians out there today. And perhaps, maybe, possibly, in a little more than a week South Africa will be the new Australia – number one in the world, on merit.

Footnote: braaivleis = barbeque, and 'Braaivleis, rugby, sunny skies and chevrolet' was a very popular advertising jingle in South Africa in the 1980s, which captured a certain ethos....

Recent series’ involving New Zealand have done little to spark interest either side of the Tasman whilst at the same time, Chennai and Perth produced two of the finest Tests ever witnessed. All of a sudden, everyone was buzzing again. Then along came the Mohali Test and killed off that brief excitement. That last day was a knife through the heart of Test cricket.

What is clear to Blind Freddy though (although not quite as obvious to the ICC) is that we have a major problem with over-rates. It’s almost taken for granted now that we will use up the extra half hour each evening and even then, the 90 overs are often not completed. Even with spinners operating, this problem remains constant.

Cricket now operates in the ‘entertainment’ industry. If you keep cheating the public of value for money, they will vote with their feet (or remote controls). Cricketers keep talking about the value of Test cricket but their actions sometime belie the rhetoric.

There are a number of reasons why this should not be happening.

1. Cricketers are fitter now than they have ever been. They have no other job except cricket. Why are they not fit enough to get through 90 overs in six hours without dragging their feet? They expect to be treated (and paid) like professionals but they do not seem capable of fulfilling their jobs in the allotted time. Remember, 90 overs in a day is the minimum. They're not even meeting minimum workplace standards!

2. Most field placings and strategies are worked out well in advance. Each team has an army of computer boffins and coaches who justify their existence by planning everything down to the last detail. Why then do captains waste time discussing minor field alterations with the bowler? Surely most of this has already been mapped out?

3. Umpires and match referees seem to wait until the last hour to start chivvying the fielding team into catching up. Do they not realise that it’s a day-long exercise that is best managed throughout the day? Some suggest the answer lies in the fielding team having one less fielder for each over that they failed to bowl in the previous session. Unfortunately, that will corrupt the integrity of the contest and is a brave but ultimately futile suggestion.

I’ve been watching Ricky Ponting these last few weeks and his captaincy style contributes to this malaise. Instead of making changes from second slip, he trots over to the bowler, has long discussions, makes minor alterations and trots back. Was this not already discussed at the team meeting? Was it something different to the print-out provided by the coaching staff?

Particularly galling is when captains waste long minutes, setting the field at the start of the session. Surely they knew which batsman was on strike? They must have known the plan of attack before they walked out on the field. Why was this not discussed in the dressing room?

Most international captains have similar tendencies. In an era where the computers make more decisions than the on-field captain, it is hard to understand why they take so long to set a field to a batsman whose every shot has been dissected to the nth degree in the team meeting.

Why is it that it takes repeated breaches before the ICC will take any action on the matter? Think about a speedtrap or speed camera – no warnings – if you break the law, you pay the penalty. No multiple warnings.

When they eventually get punished, the ICC levies small fines, relative to their millionaire salaries. It is a pointless exercise and it does not work. The only language they understand is suspension. The Nagpur Test proved that – faced with suspension, Ponting was prepared to compromise the result for a new-found conscience. Dhoni was no better – on that last day in Nagpur, when Hayden was mounting an unlikely chase, they bowled just 23 overs in the entire first session.

In wildlife conservation, gamekeepers turned poachers can be the most destructive enemies of the beasts they were meant to protect. Test cricket faces a similar challenge to the majestic tiger - both need protection from greed.

Here’s a little amusement to while away a dull half-hour over the holiday.

The main answer is a well-known cricketing name, which is spelled out by the initials of the answers to the eight clues. If the first two clues led to Mohammed Azharuddin and Rob Key, we would be looking for someone called MARK…..

The answers to the eight clues are all Test cricketers, one from each of the eight main Test-playing countries (ie not Bangladesh or Zimbabwe). Most of them are recent and at least reasonably well-known, though a couple are one-Test wonders of older vintage who just happen to be the only Test players I could find with the relevant initials.

1. A wicket keeper who played his only Test against New Zealand in the 1970s. He scored 7*, took two catches and conceded 16 byes.

2. A modern great with 26 Test centuries to his name, but an average of only 36 against South Africa.

3. A between-wars bowler whose only Test was the match before the one in which the main answer made his debut. He took no wickets, returning 0-60 and 0-12, but scored 8 and 44 with the bat.

4. A 1980s batsman who scored over 4000 Test runs, including centuries against West Indies when the rest of his team kept folding, and memorably won an ODI with a lot of runs off the last over.

5. A current all-rounder who has a century and a six-wicket haul in different matches on tour in Australia, but has yet to reach 100 wickets and 2000 runs.

6. A batsman and part-time bowler more usually thought of as an ODI player, he only averaged 28 with the bat, though he made three Test centuries, the highest being 123 against Pakistan.

7. A 1990s pace bowler who took 160 wickets but is more usually remembered for some lengthy stonewalling innings at number 11, including 14* in a last-wicket partnership of 106 against England.

8. A current bowler who has 123 Test wickets to his name – although he says his name changes to something German when he gets out on the field.

Have fun, and I’ll post the answers after Christmas. If you celebrate either the birth of Jesus or the passing of the winter solstice, may I wish you the compliments of the season. If you don’t, please just tolerate my wintry whimsies.

Spare a thought this Christmas for poor Ian Bell. Unless he manages a hundred in the second innings at Mohali, he will spend the festive period wondering anxiously about his future.

There has always been an air of impermanence about Bell. He is one of those players who fails to inspire confidence even when he scores runs by the cartload. A couple of years ago, he was getting hundreds for fun at number six but there was still a general reluctance to acknowledge him as having arrived as a fixture in the Test team. When he got 199 against South Africa at Lord’s this summer, it looked for a week or two as though he had achieved acceptance but as soon as Paul Collingwood also got runs, the murmurings about him restarted.

And then came the fatal blow. He was “promoted” to bat at number three.

The main function of an England number three is to serve as the focus of the complaints about the fragile batting for a decent period before being dropped or moved to somewhere more congenial. In the last forty years, only one batsman has occupied the spot without anyone railing against him: Mike Gatting – and he only got the position because he had failed multiple times in every other slot from one to eight.

David Gower was the best batsman to try the role but it was not long before we stopped praising him for his brilliant strokeplay and started laying into him for giving third slip catching practice by feebly waving his bat at balls outside off stump. Apparently such behaviour is more acceptable in a number four, which was where Gower batted as often as he got the chance, such as when he was captain and could insist, the escape route also taken by Nasser Hussain.

Mark Butcher spent four years in the job expecting to be dropped after just about every game. If he got a hundred he reckoned he could feel safe for a game or two, but otherwise he was relieved when the team was announced for each match and he was still in it. Like Bell, he was a very pretty player to watch but he always seemed too skittish for the gravely serious position of coming in first wicket down.

But seriousness is no guarantee of public or selectorial affection. Chris Tavare was certainly grave – indeed, some even maintained that his scorelessness was because he was in fact already dead – but he simply became the butt of jokes about statues.

The only ones to escape regular opprobrium were those who were clearly only batting at three because they were not opening. One way round the eternal problem has been to pick three openers, so people like Alec Stewart, Mike Atherton, Graham Gooch, David Steele, Tim Robinson, Kim Barnett, Rob Bailey and even, heaven help us, Mike Brearley have played there, but no-one holds it against them. (There may be other reasons to recall some of them with derision, but their performances at three do not feature high on the list.)

Ian Bell is not an opener, though, so he is the latest recruit to the club most famous for including Mark Ramprakash, Graeme Hick, John Crawley and Bill Athey – batsmen reckoned to be supremely talented who somehow just didn’t cut it in Test cricket.

If England fans want a mystery to on the long winter evenings until the Caribbean trip, why we cannot unearth someone who can bat convincingly at three in our Test side seems like a good one. Answers to Geoff Miller, please.

Can it really be true? Two record-breaking run chases in the same week, in venues and on pitches that could not be more different to each other. The MA Chidambaram Stadium and the WACA have little in common apart from this magnificent week of Test cricket.

Both games had incredible swings of fortune. Betting agencies around the world must have been tearing their hair out, trying to frame markets that kept swinging from one extreme to another. In Perth, South Africa went from being rank outsiders before the start to a brief stint as favourites in the first few overs of the match to level pegging before Mitchell Johnson’s devastating burst. After that, their share price plummeted again until it started looking a bit healthier when they bowled well in the second innings. Brad Haddin’s innings effectively blew the price out again to unbackable odds, Graeme Smith and Hashim Amla briefly brought South African money back into the reckoning until two late wickets on the fourth evening restored Australian supremacy. The rest is now amazing history!

How do I know all this? Well, apart from being a keen punter myself, I was constantly kept abreast of the betting fluctuations with the Channel 9 commentary team’s regular advertorials for an Internet betting agency. To legitimise it even more, we were reminded, nay comforted, by the reassurance that this mob were official partners of Cricket Australia. Oh, that’s a relief!.

It is astounding the governing body of a national sport so openly aligns itself with an Internet betting agency to the extent that it is now part of the television broadcast. One would not expect anything better from a commercial television station - no one really believes that ethics have any place in their corporate jungle but for Cricket Australia to so publicly sell itself to gambling makes a mockery of their so-called charter to sell cricket as the custodian of a sport that is supposed to be about grassroots, families and young children.

As if cricket didn’t already have a slight problem with gambling - anyone recall incidents involving certain high-profile international cricket captains? Was it just my imagination or did the ICC appoint Sir Paul Condon to take a forensic look at the betting cancer that was gripping cricket a few years ago? Perhaps Hansie Cronje finally backed the South Africans today and was able to exert a bit of divine intervention.

Just yesterday, three A-League soccer players in Australia were fined for betting on games in their own league. The Football Federation of Australia was forced to publicly admonish these players who were apparently unaware of the seriousness of their misdemeanour! Oh really? They expect us to believe that?

And in this sort of climate, we have a national sporting body and a national broadcaster encouraging prime-time audiences, including children, to get involved with betting in a Test match in progress. How do the men in suits, who cash the cheques, keep a straight face when warning their employees (the athletes) to stay completely away from gambling on the sport while quickly checking that the next commentary stint has the latest odds available for an on-air plug?

Would any responsible sporting body allow themselves to publicly encourage viewers to drink XYZ Whisky, Bourbon or Rum? I’m not talking about an advertisement that is clearly packaged as such – I’m talking about something that is subtly woven into the actual commentary itself so it becomes part of the analysis of the cricket, from the expert commentators whose job it is to educate the viewers.

Of course it’s much more effective than a pure advertisement. That’s why Cricket Australia has probably pocketed a tidy little sum to be the ‘official partner’ of this betting agency. Perhaps some of that money will go back into grassroots cricket or junior development or towards player welfare to help the next cricketer who falls off the rails and has a drinking or gambling problem.

I’ve got nothing against sports betting per se. I’m one of the most avid punters going around. I love having a bet on the cricket or the footy or on two flies crawling up a wall. It’s an adult pursuit that is probably best done in private, away from the inquiring minds of the innocent, the young and the vulnerable. It’s hard enough explaining some overt advertising messages to young children without them hearing it legitimised by the commentators and the game’s governors.

P.S. My young son may just have sensed that something was amiss anyway when I started cheering every South African run this afternoon. I didn’t really know how to tell him that daddy had backed the Proteas at ridiculous odds when they began their chase and that Santa Claus would now be quite generous this year!

Somewhere out there in bittorrent land is the video of Sehwag's debut innings against South Africa in the 2001 test series. I watched that innings, live on a large screen television, at the Crown Hotel on Cleveland Street in Surry Hills, Sydney, on 3rd November 2001. This past weekend, just because I felt like reliving one of my favorite cricketing memories, I decided to view it again.

I didn't regret that decision and have played the 22-minute long video again and again reminding myself this was someone playing his first Test innings. As far as debut tons go, it is hard to imagine another innings which so definitively sounded an advance warning to the rest of the world that a bright new talent was on the world's stage.

Earlier that day I'd played cricket with my Northern Sydney team, the Centrals, and had enjoyed a good, hard day in the sun. We won our match and shortly afterwards, a friend and I were dropped back in the City center before beginning the walk back home. I knew the Test started in the late afternoon, so we decided to stop off at the Crown for a couple of beers (the atmosphere was all skank, but they had several large televisions). When I checked the score, I was taken aback. India had already slumped to 68-4, and a young debutant was batting at #6, heading out to face the music, to join Sachin Tendulkar in the middle. The partnership that followed was worth 220 runs, and it took all of 46 overs. South Africa did not know what hit them. But fans like us were equally gobsmacked.

I have one abiding memory of that evening. Which was that of sitting in the pub, still wearing my sweaty cricket whites, sore all over from bowling and fielding, drinking my cold beers, stunned by the audacity and brilliance of the Tendulkar-Sehwag partnership. It was hard to believe Sehwag was making his Test debut, hard to believe this lad was playing away from home, dealing with a collapse, and a South African pace attack, at home, in their element. That he survived was not such a mystery. The manner of his survival was the truly revelatory feature: he batted with the solidity of a Mumbai opener, the flair of a Napoleonic hussar, the power of a Bajan middle-order bat. His shot-making was precise and powerful, his demeanor utterly relaxed. He looked like someone playing his 20th Test, playing a role familiar to him.

I should have known more about Virender Sehwag; he is from Delhi, and I followed all Delhi hopefuls' careers with great interest. But all I knew about him was his reputation as a power hitter. I had thought of him as a one-day type. But this innings convinced me he was radically different. Seven years on, he's already done enough to convince me he is moving into the pantheon of Indian greats. If the Indian team had not wasted so many of his stellar efforts over the years, his place would have been assured a few years ago.

There are plenty of writers in the cricket world that love to dismiss Sehwag as a slogger, a mere stand-n-hit type. These slaves of technique, of the cold logic of the cricketing manual, of the merely conventional, are denied the pleasure of being able to appreciate this man's talent. That is their loss.

For all of us, the rest, those that enjoy the contact of bat and ball, and the changing of games' fortunes by singular talents, Viru is a delight. May he continue to entertain and astonish for years to come.

This was the stuff of which dreams are made. If it had been made up, it would have seemed unbelievably mawkish. As reality, it was intoxicating.

While England were still debating whether to come back to India, Andrew Strauss was the one who said that they had to make every effort to come back because they owed it to the game of cricket. Whatever debt he was referring to, it was paid back with massive interest in Chennai.

Instead of cricket doing duty in the war on terror, terror was unceremoniously dismissed as cricket pursued its own sense of history. All the horror in Mumbai achieved was to make it that much more exquisite that in this match it would be Mumbaikar Sachin Tendulkar who hit the boundary to simultaneously post his own century and top off the fourth-highest run chase in Test history, thus wiping away the pain of January 1999 when at the same ground he scored 136 in what many think of as his greatest innings but India fell so agonisingly short. This game was due to be remembered as the one which defied the terrorists, but that will now be but background colour adding extra lustre to the tapestry which should be woven in commemoration of one of Test cricket’s greatest epics.

There will be time enough tomorrow to strip down the engines and see which parts functioned according to specification and which failed – and the pit crews are no doubt already embarking on that given that the next match starts on Friday – but today we can but revel in such a glorious affirmation of our infinitely resilient sport.

India won the first and fourth days, England days two and three, so it was dead even as the last day began. That is roughly the ideal for Test cricket, which is at its best when four days of intense struggle get thrown out of the window and it’s down to a bowling attack and a batting order and may the best team win. Of course I’m disappointed that the best wasn’t the team I support, but a match like this needs both a euphoric winner and a dignified loser – and to be honest, no-one does dignified losing better than the English, so perhaps it’s for the best that it was this way round.

As I write, the game has been over for an hour. Usually when England have lost a Test, I want to kick the cats and I’m difficult to talk to until at least the next day; strangling seems too good for the incompetent bunglers responsible for throwing the game away and the opposition team can go and burn in the nearest waste incinerators for all I care.

But today, well, apparently we drew the short straw and had to play the losers’ parts not because we particularly deserved to but because someone had to if the game were to have a fitting conclusion. Today I just want to get on a cloud and float, happily burbling about what a fantastic game Test cricket is.

Tomorrow, though, the cats had better not annoy me….

I write this piece on the morning of the last day of an absorbing Test in Chennai. Rahul Dravid, the focus of this essay, is not out overnight and possibly facing the last great challenge in an admirable career. The scene is set for a Dravid epic – obdurate, unflinching and the perfect time to live up to his nickname of The Wall.

I have to wonder though if the modern game will allow someone like Dravid the opportunity to defend his way back into form. With high scoring rates and an expectation that batsmen will always play shots, Dravid may not have the arsenal to be able to fight back with a big score at this late stage of his career. His game is largely built around a rock solid defensive technique and the ability to concentrate for long periods of time, wearing down opposition bowlers. He may not have the luxury of time to resurrect his career unless the selectors can see beyond the strokemakers and recognise an old fashioned jewel in the new Indian crown.

When Dravid really shone in the 2003/04 series in Australia, he did that by being much more aggressive than the Aussies expected him to be. All of a sudden, the longer he remained at the crease, not only was he occupying time but the scoreboard was scooting along too. With Sehwag, Tendulkar and Laxman at the other end, Dravid’s batting was now a real threat because the bowlers could not block up one end by bowling short of a length to him.

On the other side of the world, Matthew Hayden faces a similar minor slump. His style of batting though seems more likely to emerge from that low period for the simple reason that he has the capacity to play big shots. Which brings me to my question: is it easier to hit your way out of a form slump in the modern game (Hayden) than to graft (Dravid)?

For what it’s worth, I don’t think international cricket will allow someone like Dravid to find form again with a slow, painstaking century. He will need to play shots and be bold if he is to survive this series. Even if he saves this Test in Chennai!

Virender Sehwag epitomises this modern trend of hitting your way back into form. Left out of the Indian side 12 months ago, he is again arguably the most feared opening batsman in world cricket because of his ability to score runs quickly. Most batsmen who resurrect their careers in contemporary cricket are almost forced to do it in an aggressive fashion. Justin Langer’s second coming was a far cry from his early days as a tough, no-nonsense accumulator. Langer Mark II often out-scored Hayden in those opening partnerships.

Mahela Jayawardene had a dreadful period during the 2003 World Cup in South Africa but he crafted his renaissance on getting big scores and getting them quickly. Saurav Ganguly and VVS Laxman fought their way back into the Indian team by backing their attacking instincts. Andrew Symonds, on the verge of being dropped when the South Africans were here last, launched a spectacular counter-offensive (in partnership with Hayden) to hang on to his spot, a feat he repeated a year later against England when his form was again a bit patchy, once more in partnership with Hayden. In contrast, Andrew Strauss seems to have saved his career by sticking to his steady game plan, accumulating rather than thrashing away frenetically.

Ironically Hayden himself adopted a much more conservative, disciplined approach when he saved his career in the Oval Test of the 2005 Ashes Series but he soon returned to his swashbuckling best once the axe had stopped hovering. I can’t see him repeating this conservatism against South Africa though – if he goes down, it will be in flames!

I’ve always been a big fan of Dravid, not just for his perfect batting technique but also for the absolute gentleman that he has always been throughout a long career. Here is a cricketer who has developed a reputation for being tough without having to resort to being boorish. I daresay he is widely respected and well-liked by most of his opponents. Whether he is now feared by them, in a cricketing sense, I doubt.

As soon as a player loses the ability to win a Test match and relies on being selected solely for his ability to save one, I suspect the modern game will spit him out. I hope Dravid can find an extra gear today and play the sort of innings that will convince the selectors that this Rolls Royce is not yet ready for the museum. Sadly, I can’t see it happening.

Sometime ago on Different Strokes, I questioned the value of the national cricket coach. I accused them of being redundant in international context. Now, to make my point, here comes Mickey Arthur, with his ten tips for succeeding in the subcontinent.

"Deal with pressure", "adjust to the game's pace", "make the first innings count", all sound like prize contenders for, as I like to call them, Outstanding Missives from the Department of the Bleeding Obvious.

"Stay leg-side of the ball" sounds interestingly different but it's also interestingly useless, in that it is so over-theorised that I have a hard time believing any cricketer would take it seriously. But bully for Mickey's wards if they did so. So let us give him this one.

Then there is "plan against spin". Imagine that, going to India, and you need to be told to "plan against spin". Brilliant, innit?

"Handle reverse swing" comes next. Yes, indeed, one must handle reverse swing, given that most potent quick bowling attacks in the world employ it. Very good, coach, very good. Now, what next? "Use your bouncer". Not the big man outside the pub but the short-pitched delivery. Do quicks really need to be told this is a good strategy to stop batsmen getting onto the front foot? And to be told to "bowl reverse swing"? Which quick out there in the world doesn't think that that is a worthwhile addition to his armory?

But more interesting is "Role definition: You have to be able to take 20 wickets, so you need to allow certain bowlers freedom to attack" This is truly devious stuff. And of course, teams touring India must "play with field settings". Like most captains do, sometimes to the detriment of over-rates.

Perhaps I'm being too catty but I think this is very silly stuff, and I remain unconvinced. South Africa's drawn series result the last time they were in India came about largely because of a spectacular collapse they induced in the Indian batting line-up on the first day of the second test. Perhaps it was because they played with field settings and allowed certain bowlers the freedom to attack. But then they lost on a turner, a result which Arthur described as a "hijacking". Perhaps they forgot to plan against spin.

In any case, I'm going to announce my ten tips for success in Australia. If any team likes these, could I please be appointed coach? Come to think of it, isn't South Africa touring Australia? Why won't they have me instead?

1. Watch out for the Australian media.

2. Be prepared for the Australian captain to sledge you in the press.

3. Adjust to the extra bounce at the WACA.

4. Hold your catches (the Australians will hold theirs).

5. Keep your cool when getting sledged.

6. Don't go on the defensive too quickly.

7. Don't put your emotionally fragile players on the boundaries.

8. Wear sunscreen at all times.

9. Maintain line and length; the Australians' aggressive batting could play into your hands.

10. Make the fourth-innings count.

Or, you could just take Mickey's list, change "plan against spin" to "plan against pace", and change "stay leg-side of the ball" to "play horizontal bat shots" and you would have a perfectly good list for Australia.

Nice work if you can get it.

In recent times, as cricket has now become a full-time job for most professional cricketers, it beggars belief that some cricketers still cannot improve their batting skills to the extent that they can at least have a basic defensive technique. For the less defensive types like Stuart Clark or Zaheer Khan, at least find a few lusty attacking shots that can be honed to some level of competency.

They do very little else with their lives apart from practicing cricket. The bowlers do increasingly less bowling at training these days, wrapped in cotton wool and constantly having massages, ice baths and visualisation sessions. With an army of support staff around them who need to justify their jobs within the team structure, surely it is not asking too much to spend a few hours each week improving their batting skills.

Glenn McGrath proved that if you are serious enough about it, you can transform yourself from an absolute bunny to someone capable of scoring a Test fifty. Jason Gillespie went even further, starting off with a completely dead bat technique and eventually expanding his repertoire to score a Test double-hundred. Mind you, he never played another Test again so that’ll teach him to score runs instead of taking wickets. Daniel Vettori is in a similar category.

The Indian tail is now learning the value of taking their batting seriously. They might even have lost the Border-Gavaskar Trophy if not for telling contributions from Harbajhan Singh, Zaheer Khan and Ishant Sharma. You can see that it’s not just a case of swinging blind and hoping for the best. They clearly devote time to improving their skills.

On the other side of the coin, we had someone like Courtney Walsh who actually got worse as his career went on. All that time playing county cricket and Test cricket – if he had devoted even two hours a week facing the bowling machine, it would have shown. Muttiah Muralitharan has a good eye and hits the ball hard but his efforts at the batting crease are almost comical. Almost twenty years of first-class cricket and his improvement is nil.

It can be done. Jimmy Anderson and Matthew Hoggard were pretty poor batsmen when they first started but they’ve both made huge leaps in terms of their technique. Steve Harmison favours the aggressive approach but is now more than nuisance value. Even Monty Panesar is starting to value his wicket, especially against the spinners. The Devon Malcolm/Alan Mullally era seems to be well and truly over for England.

The South Africans have always prided themselves on not giving away cheap wickets. Makhaya Ntini is agricultural but at least he watches the ball and looks disappointed when he gets out. Shoaib Akhtar can hit big sixes. Lasith Malinga has also become a useful ally to a top order batsmen – Kumar Sangakkara played a great innings in Hobart last year with his support.

In the modern game, where coaches are looking for those ‘one percenters’ in every aspect of the game, it’s hard to believe that both coach and cricketer can’t find the time to work on their batting to find at least another 10%. With cricketers now more skilled at hitting big boundaries and scoring quickly, a tail-ender who can stick around with an established batsman can win a game for his team. Just ask Mike Hussey – he owes a few of his Test centuries to partners who refused to throw in the towel. Steve Waugh was also another brilliant tactician when it came to batting with so-called bunnies.

This is my list of some of the worst batsmen in recent memory. Feel free to throw in names of people I may have missed. In no particular order: Chris Martin, Ian O’Brien, Devon Malcolm, Alan Mullally, Courtney Walsh, Stuart MacGill, Muttiah Muralitharan, Amit Mishra, Shane Bond and most of the current West Indian tail. Who have I forgotten?

The England player I shall be keeping the closest eye on in this two-parter (you can’t call two matches a “series” with a straight face) is Jimmy Anderson, who could show that he is at last coming into his own.

His performances in the ODIs may make this seem far-fetched, but he has always been fairly poor in limited-overs cricket whereas his Test performances this year have been in a different league to those which went before.

How poor an ODI bowler he is was not apparent until he was partnered by someone who isn’t. In the 20 ODIs in which they opened England’s bowling this year, both Anderson and Stuart Broad conceded 747 runs. The difference is that Anderson took 10 wickets and went for 5.66 an over while Broad took 31 and went for 4.78.

In nine Tests this year, on the other hand, Anderson has taken 42 wickets at 27.60. Where one struggles to find ODIs in which he has even performed acceptably, in Tests he has had only two poor innings this year, the worst being at Old Trafford when Ross Taylor climbed into him. But he responded in the next game at Trent Bridge with the best spell of bowling by an England bowler since 2005 (at least), the figures a career-best 7 for 43.

Blowing away the 2008 New Zealand top order is admittedly not all that difficult – a light breeze would usually suffice – but Anderson’s spell of late swing at speed would have accounted for at least four of any top order you care to name.

The big difference for Anderson between the two forms comes in the field settings. When not bowling his victims or having them caught by the keeper, first slip catches off him are comparatively rare. In Tests, Anderson’s chief collaborators stand in the arc from third slip to gully. In ODIs, batsmen hit him through that arc with great regularity but no-one is around to catch them.

It was not ever thus. For four years from his England debut while Duncan Fletcher still headed the coaching staff, constant efforts were made to get him to change his bizarre action. In particular, they wanted him to look down the wicket at the stumps or batsman when releasing the ball rather than gazing at the bowler’s end umpire’s shoes. Very occasionally during this purgatorial period there would be a gem of a searing spell to remind us that there was a talented bowler lurking somewhere in the neighbourhood, but we would wait months for a repeat.

But since Fletcher moved on and Ottis Gibson has taken over the bowling coach’s job, Anderson has been allowed to revert to his natural action and the results have been dramatically better.

The fascinating question is whether he will be able to continue his Test success streak in conditions rather different to those encountered in England and New Zealand. It ought to be possible: both Ishant Sharma and Zaheer Khan bowl the same general sort of stuff and do well in India, but then they’ve been doing it forever whereas Anderson still has a lot of learning to do about Indian pitches.

If England are to do well, there will need to be big contributions from several players. If Anderson does to Sehwag what Matthew Hoggard did to Matt Hayden in the 2005 Ashes, he will have taken another big step forward as well as giving underdogs England a fighting chance.

In a city which endured 25 years of an IRA bombing campaign as well as the bus bombs of 7/7, I know what it is to live with the shadow of terrorism over one’s home town.

We carried on playing cricket even in London despite explosions, and India is a vast country compared to ours. A bomb in London is an unlikely pretext for calling off an event in Rome, though Rome is nearer London than Chennai to Mumbai. On the other hand, none of our atrocities were on the scale of the Mumbai massacre, nor were they targeted at a specific group of foreign visitors.

Whether the Indian authorities, let alone the British Foreign Office or the ECB’s security advisor, would consider the India v England cricket matches to be safe to continue with, I could not know from thousands of miles away. I somewhat envy those who were able to sound off on air and in print with the certainty so many arguing both for staying at home and flying back to India displayed, but I did not feel able to post. It’s a relief that a revised series is going ahead: it’s what I had hoped for, but galumphing on people’s sensibilities by saying so without any worthwhile understanding of the circumstances just seemed tasteless or downright rude.

It’s hard to remember in the immediate aftermath of an atrocity, but a billion Indians and the entire English cricket touring party survived the Mumbai massacre completely unharmed. While one square mile was the scene of death and destruction, nothing out of the ordinary happened in over three million other square miles in the country.

The evil is impossible to ignore but, coldly looked at, it really is extremely unlikely that the next attack will hit an India v England Test match, of all the possible targets available.

What 9/11 did to us all was make it clear that nowhere can be completely safe. Whether we are going on holiday or business (and you can choose for yourself which category playing Test cricket comes into), we have a non-zero chance of arriving at the scene of a terrorist incident wherever we go. There is also a non-zero chance that the plane will crash, but we don’t stop flying because plane crashes are unpredictable as to where they will strike and usually cause enormous loss of life.

India is a riskier place than it was. There will probably be a next attack in India, just as there is almost certain to be one in Britain because London especially is an outrage venue currently fashionable in terrorist circles.

But we now live in an age where risk has to be assessed and managed since it cannot be eliminated. It’s unfortunate that men like Reg Dickason are the crucial decision-makers on whether tours should proceed, but it is inevitable. Sometimes trouble-spots will be too hot to go to, but it will always depend on the exact circumstances pertaining at the time. And even if the security consultants give their blessing, the caveats that they will inevitably attach to some reports will fail to persuade the odd player, which will be regrettable but not a cause for derision or condemnation.

We do not yet know whether the original party England selected will go. I shall not be surprised if one or two opt out, whether because they themselves are scared or they cannot bear inflicting heartache and worry on their families by being away in a dangerous place. Having lived through years of bombs in my home city, I would have few qualms about going, but if others do not share such a robust attitude, well, so be it. Cricketers are only required to show the courage to withstand a few hours of hostile fast bowling, not to be in fear of losing their lives by the hands of persons unknown.

It’s a pity about the disruption, because England will be far less well-prepared than they should have been. The one-day outfit are pretty clueless, but the England team knows how to play five-day cricket. While the batting is weaker than Australia’s, the bowling attack is better balanced because it will contain at least one and probably two serious specialist spinners, and if Flintoff, Harmison and Anderson continue with the form they showed during the English summer, they make a better pace attack than Australia had – so India’s batsmen might be challenged rather more than they were by the Aussies.

If that doesn’t happen, either because they don’t turn up at all or because they do but bowl badly, we can pick up the comfort blanket of the disturbing circumstances as a catch-all excuse – but let’s hope that won’t be necessary.

The day after the Mumbai bombings, an Australian friend of mine who had read my piece on Australia not touring Pakistan (which provoked many flames despite my pointing out that terrorist violence in India hardly received any international attention), wrote to me and said, "See, Chop? All it took was a few dead Englishmen and Americans. The Mumbai attacks are all over the news". There is a huge dollop of cynicism in that email, one that I partially share, as I've not failed to notice that fact myself.

But cynicism is not what I intend to traffic in today. I'd simply like to offer some skepticism about the constant refrain that cricket can act as a healing balm. For the fact of the matter is that cricket can be a good and a bad distraction. And right now, cricket seems like a bad distraction.

India has been attacked, and I'd rather the country, its people, its leaders, its intellectuals get down to the business of figuring out how it is that every year, due to planned acts of murderous violence, hundreds of Indian citizens die, of all religions and socio-economic orders, and yet, nothing concrete seems to happen on either the security, planning, or domestic and foreign policy fronts. It's a great thing to talk about getting back to day-to-day life. But getting back to normality can be overrated, especially if that return involves a dangerous forgetting of the fact that a sovereign nation is seemingly helpless to protect the lives of its innocent citizens.

If the absence of cricket forces a remembering of why the cricket is not on the television, then so be it. Let's watch images of the burning Taj instead, or perhaps some more shots of the dead, their limbs grotesquely askew, at the Mumbai railway station, and ask ourselves, what can we do to make sure this does not happen again? What will it take?

This rush to want to get back to watching cricket has a slight undertone of "Can something be done to get my mind off this disaster, please?" That emotion is understandable, but it should not turn into the dangerous complacency that seems to settle over all and sundry a few days after the site of the latest atrocity is cleaned up and all the bodies are consigned to the flames.

Indian cricket fans won't be starved of cricket. ESPN or Star Sports will show Australia vs. South Africa, and the Ranji Trophy is on. And of course, on any Indian sports channel, you can watch endless highlights shows, famous centuries, great bowling performances or whatever. The suspension of cricket is not going to be indefinite. We will get back to playing cricket soon enough. No test cricket was played anywhere in the world between 1939 and 1946. When the war ended, cricket resumed. We are not in the same situation, but would a temporary suspension for a couple of months hurt people so much?

The skeptics will say that complacency will return anyway, that the suspension of cricket will not bring the dead to life, that this is a problem too big to be fixed by suspending normal life, that the suspension will be counterproductive. But perhaps some of that skepticism might be dispelled by thinking of this as a mourning period instead. No one pretends mourning will bring the dead back to life; but it enables reflection, a sizing up of the world and our place in it, and it does not last forever. That's all I'm asking for now.

PS: In my blog, a couple of days ago, I'd written that I didn't care whether the English tour went ahead or not. But my feelings have changed. Right now, I don't think it'd be a good idea. Given my addiction to cricket, I'd land up paying attention if the games were played. But I'll be pretty distracted.

I cannot bring myself to discuss the pain and suffering induced by Australia (and New South Wales too) after their dismantling of the Black Caps over the past month. So, in order to divert attention, I’ll focus on a completely unrelated debate.

Why isn't there a ranking/rating for wicketkeepers from the ICC? They've got plenty of other areas covered, including the all-rounders, date-specific ratings, best-ever ratings and for the truly obsessed, even women's ODI rankings.

But poor old wicketkeepers (and pub debaters like me) are left to wonder who is the best, and how they rank against their fellow glovemen. In New Zealand, here at Beige Brigade HQ we enjoy winding-up the South Africans by claiming that our own Baz "The Pirate" McCullum is the best wicketkeeper in the world. In India, the wicketkeeping skills of MSD appear to be overshadowed by at least three other areas of significant impact: captaincy, captivating batting, and the cult of celebrity.

In Australia, the best in the world is always the current Australian wicketkeeper - or that is what Ian Healy will be droning on about in the Channel Nine commentary box anyway. Healy was arguably the best wicketkeeper of all-time so his views are highly relevant, but his sycophantic commentary and cycloptic view of Brad Haddin during the recent Test series Down Under against New Zealand was vomit-inducing.

Strangely, outside the TV commentary box he was much less of a cheerleader and made far more thought-provoking comments such as this one to The Australian: "[Haddin's wicketkeeping] hasn't improved since he got into the Australian team. I would actually say it has declined...We are all about trying to get his standards back to where they were when he was playing with New South Wales."

So, enough about Australians already. Who is actually the best as of right now, today? It's easy to have an argument about it, as nobody reputable appears to be counting and analysing the catches, byes, shelled chances, and stumpings that comprise a Test match day in the sun for a wicketkeeper. I'm sure as hell not going to break out my abacus, but in the absence of anything else more concrete, the current ICC Test rankings of each of the incumbent wicketkeepers seems a reasonable starting point, despite only rating batting performance:

Kamran Akmal, Pakistan #35
Mahendra Singh Dhoni, India #36
Brendon McCullum, New Zealand #39
Mark Boucher, South Africa #43
Brad Haddin, Australia #50
Denesh Ramdin, West Indies #68
Prasanna Jayawardene, Sri Lanka #72
Tim Ambrose, England #77
Mushfiqur Rahim, Bangladesh #79

It is surprising to find Akmal as top dog amongst the wicketkeepers on this “batting only” assessment. His name is not one heard bandied about in our pub arguments about the best keeper on the planet. Perhaps that is a function of visibility, given that Pakistan has not played a Test match for close to a year. He has five Test tons to his name, and aside from world record-holder Boucher, more dismissals than any of the others on the list. Perhaps I am being unfair.

I’d reluctantly have Boucher at number one. It pains me to overcome my personal demons and select him there, having witnessed his humourless reprimanding of the Eden Park ground announcer one day in 2004: “Don’t take the piss out of my players,” he demanded. The announcer had passed some light-hearted comments about the South Africans’ excruciating batting and red hair as they came and went (with some regularity during that match) from the middle. He had a pretty good Test with the gloves that week – 595 runs conceded and nary a bye to be seen. Note too that “c Boucher b Ntini” is the most successful keeper/bowler wicket-taking combination in Test cricket at present (80 scalps).

Taking silver for mine would be Dhoni – let’s assume the 28 byes he conceded at Delhi in October was an aberration and that he will end his career with a hell of a lot more than one Test century to his name. Indeed, his flamboyant captaincy and destructive batsmanship will be tasted first-hand from the grassy embankments around New Zealand in 2009. Presumably he will hate the conditions as much as the rest of the Indian batsmen did last time they were blindsided by our conveniently seaming wickets.

McCullum is in line for the bronze medal - and upper cuts for anyone who dares suggest that he is “the next Adam Gilchrist”. There won’t be another Gilchrist. At Test level, the Kiwi vice-captain still has a lot to prove, as his batting statistics against “proper” Test teams do not yet do justice to his undoubted talents.

The also-rans in order: Akmal the all but invisible achiever; Jayawardene, who must have the toughest gig of anyone looking after Murali and Mendis; Ramdin who is yet to score a Test ton; the two Australians Haddin and Ambrose, who have dined out on the NZ bowling attack to orchestrate Test wins for Australia and England respectively; and the Bangladeshi Tiger, Rahim.