My gut reaction to India's losing the two T20s against New Zealand was disappointment. Not because a couple T20 internationals had been lost. In the larger scheme of things, these still rank third behind Tests and ODIs. But because, these days, every time India loses a match overseas, I instinctively sense a lost opportunity to give the "boys overseas" - the large, vocal, Indian diaspora--something to cheer about. It's yet another burden for the Indian team to bear but it is one they should be familiar with.

When the Indian team first played in the West Indies in 1953, they provided plenty of joy for the Indo-Caribbean spectators that came out in throngs to see them play (the best description of this reaction can be found in Mihir Bose's A History of Indian Cricket. And when India won the World Cup in 1983, an Indian expat living in London on a visit to India, said to an uncle of mine, "World Cup jeetne ke baad hum mahinon tak chati nikaal ke chalte te London mein". [For months after India won the World Cup, we walked around with our chests stuck out in London]. Like it or not, when the Indian team plays overseas, they do duty of a sort very different from that when they play at home.

When they play at home, they provide entertainment, razzle-dazzle, and a display of sporting skills. When they play overseas, they provide ammunition for bragging rights, comeback lines and a cushion of respect (which might help, for instance, in making sure you get picked up early in a pickup game).

Back in 2004, shortly after Amit Varma had started his now-defunct blog 23 Yards, and had written a post wondering why Indian fans treated their teams so harshly, I wrote to him, offering a tongue-in-cheek explanation:

Lots of Indian fans that write to you are writing from the great diaspora, and part of the frustration expressed in those emails comes from the team's perceived failure at backing them up in those edgy conversations they seem to be perpetually having with other expats about cricket...by far the most vocal is the Indian expat who gets to work and has to listen to his English, Aussie, South African or Kiwi office-mate ask him, "Say, Vijay, what about your boys last night?" The Indian, used to endless jokes about his accent, his country's poverty, the weird movies with the actors that run around trees in saris singing songs, seethes internally and curses himself for having been born in a country whose cricket players do not provide him sufficient rhetorical ammunition for these encounters. When he gets home, he fires off his emails.

But speaking more seriously and from a broader perspective than just jousting with the locals, Indians overseas are aware they are slowly settling into societies not fully adjusted to all the differences between their respective cultures. The Indian cricket team gives them a point of contact with the local culture. They want that point of contract to be one they can take pride in, one that is not to be hidden away or disowned, but to be highlighted and bragged about. Like it or not, their expectations, even more heightened than when they lived back in India, add to the Indian team's already heavy baggage.

From personal experience I can tell you that after Kolkata 2001, the best place in the world to be an Indian fan was Australia. Nothing will quite match the feeling of walking out on Cleveland Street in Sydney's Surry Hills, hearing the hooping and hollering of all the "locals" that had turned out at the Crown Hotel to watch the dramatic final moments of that game. And nothing will quite match the pleasure I took in all the conversations over morning coffee the next day at work.

The question is: why were they rusty and is that acceptable in modern sport? They are professional athletes and this is their chosen, highly-paid profession. It is their professional responsibility to turn up to work ready to perform at their best (barring illness, injury or bad luck).

Imagine if a surgeon was operating on you and said "well, I've been on sabbatical for a few weeks so I'm feeling a bit rusty. Haven't really kept up with the latest surgical techniques. Hope you don't mind".

Or a pilot announcing on the intercom "Ladies and gentlemen, please fasten your seat belts as we approach the runway. I've been using the autopilot for a few months now so haven't really practised my own landings and am feeling a bit rusty so please forgive me if we don't quite make this landing".

Jokes aside, the point I'm trying to make is that professional athletes now have an obligation to prepare themselves so that this "rustiness" should never happen again. It's not like they live tough lives, working down coal mines or breaking rocks in the hot sun. On one hand they keep talking about fatigue and workload and the need for plenty of rest. They cite the fact that it's not just the playing days but also the arduous training regime they follow which justifies their incessant calls for more rest time by the beach (despite the fact that they work a lot less days per year than the average salaried worker).

Fair enough but if that's the case, make sure you do enough work in the nets to ensure there's no rustiness when the time comes for you to perform on the big day. Like any other employee turning up to work, you should be ready to perform at your optimum. Have your holidays and rest time if you like but make sure you prepare yourself to be 100% tuned by the time your working day begins.

It's like those bowlers who waste the first few overs of a game "easing into their work" or warming up. Why didn't they do that before the game started? Those first few balls are when they are most likely to get the batsman out. With all the support staff around them, they should treat their profession like any other job and be ready to work at maximum efficiency from the first ball. We wouldn't accept a poor quality meal from a restaurant just because this was first meal of the night and the chef hadn't quite got into his stride.

It's hardly the crime of the century but it really amuses me when professional athletes (not just cricketers) keep justifying their earnings by claiming to be highly-tuned professionals but then act like casual amateurs. If it's a job, treat it like one and be ready to fire at the start of the shift.

In fairness to Steyn though, he didn't really hide behind any mystery illness or lame excuse. He just admitted that they probably weren't quite as prepared as they should have been for one of the biggest Tests of their careers. His old-fashioned honesty and the way he plays the game makes him very hard to dislike. From the outside looking in, he seems like a helluva nice bloke, albeit a tad rusty.

	Phillip Hughes is the latest in a long line of left-hand openers for Australia © Getty Images

What is it about Australia's love affair with left-hand opening batsmen? Phillip Hughes is about to join that list in Johannesburg tomorrow. It makes me wonder if there is some sort of natural advantage in being a left-hander against the new ball. The proportion of left-handers who open the batting seems to be much higher than the total numbers of batsmen who make up the rest of the batting order. Is this some sort of Darwinian ‘natural selection’ at work, where left-handed opening batsmen seem to have evolved to have an advantage over right-handers?

Australia have a particularly rich heritage when it comes to left-handers at the top of the order. In recent times, I can think of Hayden, Langer, Jaques, Rogers, Katich, Gilchrist, Shaun Marsh and Warner. Going back a few years, we had Wessels, Wood, Wayne Phillips (the keeper), Mark Taylor and Elliott. I can only think of Slater, Geoff Marsh, Boon and Mark Waugh (in ODIs) who were regular right-hand openers. Just about every first-class team in Australia is top-heavy with lefties. Can it be pure coincidence or is there a theory worth exploring?

It can’t just be attributed to Australian-style pitches because around the world, left-handers still take up a high proportion of opening slots (relative to their total representation in the game). Sri Lanka has Jayasuriya, Tharanga, Vandort and Warnapura. Their latest opener, Paranavitana is also a left-hander but he must be wondering if there are any ‘advantages’ after he was dismissed for a first-ball duck on debut!

England have two of them at the top of the order now, Strauss and Cook. Trescothick enjoyed a long career flying that flag too. West Indies currently have Gayle and Devon Smith with Chanderpaul, Wavell Hinds and Lambert regularly opening in ODI cricket. New Zealand have Ryder and they’ve previously had Fleming, Richardson, Wright, Edgar and Greatbatch to add to that list.

The South Africans have always had left-handers at the top of their order. Going back to their re-admission to international cricket in 1992, Wessels, Gary Kirsten, Graeme Smith and even Klusener opened the batting in the shorter form of the game. Bangladesh have had a relatively short time in the game but I can recall a few left-handers opening the batting for them. In fact, their current openers are both left-handers, Iqbal and Kayes.

Curiously Pakistan and India have not had that many left-handed openers. Wonder why? Butt and Farhat are recent openers and we can go back to the Anwar-Sohail partnership for the next regular pairing. Gambhir leads the Indian list now but I can’t think of too many more recent examples other than Sadagoppan Ramesh earlier in the decade. Both countries’ left-handers also seem to be less wristy than the right-handers, preferring to flay the ball through the offside. Is this because the ball may not swing back into them in the subcontinent and therefore they have to learn to play square of the wicket through the off-side? I’m just guessing here so perhaps those who know local conditions a bit better can suggest why that may appear to be the case. It may just be perception.

Back to the issue though about why left-handers may be more successful at the top of the order: is it because most bowlers are encouraged to bowl right-arm outswing or legcutters (to be more effective against right-hand batsmen) and are therefore more prone to straying on to the pads of lefties? As a medium pace bowler myself (albeit, not a very good one!), I find it difficult to bowl to left-handers because my natural ball curves back into them and gets tucked away quite easily. With my action, as soon as I adjust my line to just outside off stump, the blasted thing stops swinging and it disappears through point or cover! The lbw law makes it harder to trap a left-hander too unless I can pitch in line and get late movement back in (note: this requires skill and therefore automatically discriminates against me).

It will be interesting to see if left-handers get more or less lbw verdicts (proportionately)? Perhaps some clever boffin who can crunch statistics can run a report on this question? On the flip side, left-handers will complain that they usually have to deal with more rough outside off-stump due to the higher proportion of right-armers bowling over the wicket.

I’m no closer to answering the original question about why it is that there seems to be more left-handed openers at the highest level of the game but there’s no doubt that they are over-represented. Australia has by far the highest ratio of any country and it’s too high to put it down to mere coincidence.

Any thoughts or theories as to why this might be the case? Perhaps some coaches can provide an insight – do they deliberately promote left-handers to open the innings to counter outswing bowling? Or is it just a case of natural evolution where only the fittest survive? Whatever the reason, they should be banned for life. I just hate bowling to them!

	Mark Richardson believes India will get favourable batting conditions on this tour © Getty Images

1. The primary motivation in December 2002 was not to stitch India up. No, no, no: it wasn’t about you, it was about us. NZ was aiming to stitch up whoever happened to have the misfortune to touch down in the Land of the Long White Cloud that sorry, soggy summer. The New Zealand team was blessed with one of our best ever fast bowlers at that time, Shane Bond. It wasn't an anti-Indian move as much as it was an attempt to deploy the one genuine match-winning weapon in our arsenal. Rest assured, if we had been playing England, Zimbabwe or Nepal, the pitches in would have been exactly the same.

2. Mark Richardson points the finger at the green tops and New Zealand's moves to make the most of favourable conditions - but humbly leaves out the fact that he averaged 48 in the two-Test series. That was a full 15 runs more than The Wall and almost double that of Tendulkar: India's two best batsmen in the series.

3. I dearly hope Rigor is wrong when he says the Indian batsmen can "rest easy this time round...because New Zealanders and New Zealand cricket understand who pays the wages nowadays". That should never come into it, and I don't think it will. Most New Zealanders couldn’t give a rat’s posterior about where the “financial power” of world cricket resides. The most important difference between 2002 and now is that we do not have a world-class fast bowler to prepare pitches for, thanks to the boning of Bond via administrative interference and a plethora of cock-ups.

4. "In cricket terms what New Zealand really need to achieve from this tour is a sense of goodwill towards New Zealand cricket from Indian cricket once the tour is over." Richardson's words - and I think they are complete and utter bollocks. If the New Zealand team is out there doing business development and relationship-building rather than playing to win, the whole thing is a waste of time. Sure, cricket in the right spirit and all that chaps, but on the field there's no expectation for the Kiwi team to treat the Indian XI as anything other than its equal. This idea that we have to be fawning and over the top in dealing with India to make sure the BCCI is nice to us down the track is half-embarrassing, half-patronising, and 100% wrong.

5. Hopefully the Indian players have been terrified by some of the tales written about in the lead-in to the tour. Tinu Yohannan telling the Indian Express that "at times it was so cold that I would be running up to bowl with tears streaming down my face. I couldn't even see what was in front of me." The guy only bowled 25 overs in the Test at Hamilton which is hardly the Antarctic of Aotearoa. For a sad, blind man he did pretty well all things considered - cricket writer Lynn McConnell said he was "accurate and unrelenting in his control".

6. If we were to doctor the pitches to suit the "strengths" of the current New Zealand Test team, what would we do? Settle for draws and prepare flat, lifeless highways, hoping like hell Ross Taylor goes absolutely berserk while Tim McIntosh and Daniel Flynn pitch tents at the other end? The issue is that India's current pace bowling has proven to be more than useful on foreign soil - and their batting on flat (and bumpy) decks is pretty handy too. The other conspiratorial theory in favour of preparing bat-athon wickets is that having the Test matches go the distance would be useful from a "keep the sponsors happy" perspective.

7. Harbhajan Singh shouldn't even be here - his fine for dirty boots last time around saw him declare that he would not return to New Zealand ever again. See footage of a cranky 2002 Turbanator in this story focusing on the Indian team's arrival last week. Of course, we're glad he went back on his word and made it to our shores this time around. Anyone who thinks Andrew Symonds is a muppet is anchored in a safe harbour here in New Zealand.

8. My favourite comment on Richardson's article was this one from Da_punjabi: "In India, we have a story of swan, and a fox, who treat dinner at each other's home. Fox serves food in a plat, which swan couldn't bow down enough to digest. She gets mad, and thinks of a revenge. When the Fox arrives at her house, she serves him the food in a bottle neck pot. So you can all imagine where this story is going..." Just so wonderfully odd.

9. For advice on how to make a successful Indo-Kiwi business deal on the banks of The Basin Reserve, Seddon Park or Maclean Park, New Zealanders should check the opportunistically timed advice just released by New Zealand's international trade agency, NZTE. How’s this for a hot tip? “Indians seem to think Australians are more fun to deal with when it comes to business negotiations. This suggests New Zealanders need to take time to build long-term relationships in India and share a bit of laughter while doing so.”

10. Gagging for the cricket to begin so we can all stop banging on about paymasters, financial windfalls, and record revenues? Me too. Just have to get through these twenny-twennys and one-dayers first…

This is the day after the Oscars so it's only natural that I would write about Slumdog Millionaire. My central critique of the movie has already been made, much more eloquently than I ever could, by Mukul Kesavan in the Telegraph. I have, however, as a fan of cricket and the Indian fan, another complaint about the movie, which centers on roughly the same complaint that Kesavan made: the movie does not make the suspension of disbelief easy.

For a crucial question in the movie, the one which catapults Jamal into the realm of the big bucks involves a question about cricket. Right off the bat (pun intended), this is a mistake. Why would a question about cricket, and cricket statistics at that, be placed in such a crucial moneyed category of the quiz? Especially when that quiz is taking place in India, home to obsessive statisticians and numerologists, trained for years by the brutal alphabet soup of school exams like the ICSE, CBSE, NTSE, ISC, IIT-JEE, AFMC, and all of the rest, to be the world's best crammers and memorizers?

But that's not the worst part. The true indicator that the film-makers thought so poorly of Indian fans and their cricketing knowledge is that the question asked is (no, not how many centuries Don Bradman made - that's printed on each Indian child's janampatri), wait for it, "Who made the most centuries in first-class cricket?" I was watching this movie at a large suburban movieplex, and I'm afraid my loud guffaws and chortles at this point might have made me a bit unpopular. It certainly earned me a dig in the ribs from my wife.

Oh, sure, I'll acknowledge the film-makers were clever enough to make this question one that Jamal struggles with. See, they seem to be saying, this is one question that every Indian would know, and that precisely is the question that our Slumdog seems to be ignorant about. Doesn't this show his disconnection from the mainstream? Yes, but what the heck is it doing as the 10-lakh rupee question? In the pantheon of cricket statistics questions, this one is not even a minor deity. Rather than the police torturing Jamal, they should have hauled the show's question-devisers off to the brig for a well-deserved thrashing.

However, Slumdog has done well with regards to cricket in another regard. It dutifully includes a scene in which cricket is being shown on the television, as a vital encounter between the movie's central protagonists takes place. And that little bit of cricket captures a painful moment for Indian fans. Not as painful as say, losing to Pakistan in the 1999 Chennai Test, but reasonably heart-ache inducing. The frustration it induces in Javed the Ganglord is palpable and quite likely to evoke sympathetic reactions in those viewers who watched the incident in question.

So, perhaps Slumdog's best contribution to the role of cricket in future editions of Kaun Banega Crorepati (er, sorry, Who Wants to be a Millionaire) will be two questions.

Question 1: In the movie Slumdog Millionaire, which ridiculously easy question about cricket was masqueraded as a challenging one?

a) Who made the most centuries in Test cricket
b) Which cricketer was nicknamed "The Don"
c) Which country did Donald Bradman play for
d) Who made the most centuries in first-class cricket

Question 2: In Slumdog Millionaire which cricketing incident serves to induce a fit in the gangster Javed?

a) Tendulkar being run out for 99
b) Steve Bucknor giving Tendulkar out LBW
c) Mark Benson giving Ganguly out in the Sydney test
d) Andrew Symonds speaking

While cricket has produced some of the finest sporting literature there is, it has not been served well in the domain of the documentary. Sure, telling a compelling a story about a sporting event that runs for fivedays can be difficult (and this is compounded when dealing with Test series or entire careers). But even accounting for that, the lack of the definitive cricket commentary is still mysterious. After all, skilled film-makers find a way to bring dramatic stories to life on the screen even when dealing with long, complex events like wars or political crises.

Most cricket documentaries tend to be poorly put together highlight clips, interspersed with a few interviews with the dramatis personae and a couple of journalists. Cricket documentaries are stuck in the "Lets-get-this-DVD-out-for-Christmas-shopping" mode. Once in a while, the sheer quality of the cricket action on display makes one remember one of those productions. "Botham's Ashes", the DVD of Australia's conquest of the West Indies in 1995, or the hour-long summation of the 2005 Ashes come to mind.

Or sometimes the weight of including enough historical footage is impressive in its own right. The DVD titled "A History of Cricket" (presented by David Gower, and put out by Marks and Spencer) was a fair stab in this regard, but it still left me cold at the end. I didn't think justice had been done to the rich history of the game (Of course, Ken Burns' Baseball series ran for 9 DVDs, and even then, not everyone was happy with the seemingly excessive time spent on the Red Sox and the Yankees).

So, for me, what seems to be lacking is the kind of documentary, that by a judicious combination of the action on the ground and television news clippings, behind the scenes reportage, and powerful narration and interviews, makes for compelling drama, and in the best cases, truly transports the viewer and leaves him experiencing a complex welter of emotions. And long after the cricket fan has finished his viewing he comes away with the feeling that he has understood the game just a bit better. No Ken Burns or Berlinger & Sinofsky seem to have turned their attention to cricket.

I find this state of affairs genuinely puzzling. This game brings out the literary best in its writers. But it seems to have provoked no such inspiration amongst its fans in the film-making world. Cricket provides plenty of subjects in this regard: the story of a historic, dramatic, or controversial tour; great innings or bowling performances; the politics of cricket; player biographies; the list goes on. Is the problem lack of access to archival footage? That can't be the problem when it comes to modern series (indeed, there is a wealth of high-quality material covering cricket from the 80s onwards). Or is it that cricketers tend to make for poor interviewees? That could be tackled by good interviewers and good editing. The mystery only deepens.

So this post is partly an expression of wishful thinking and I'd like to think, partly a throwing down of the gauntlet. The definitive cricket documentary has yet to be made; the eager documentarian has the field left open for him.

PS: Please send on your recommendations for your favourite cricket features.

It’s not that Twenty20 isn’t very good, just that it gets rather samey. Our local kebab shop does some wonderful variations on grilled lamb and chicken but man cannot live by shish alone – there is also a time and place for lobster thermidor, sweet and sour pork or macaroni cheese.

And what you cannot get at your local Twenty20 outlet is cricket reduced to its primal essence, as occurs in a last hour when the batting side has no chance of winning and only a couple of wickets left. The outfield is empty and irrelevant, the only figures on the scoreboard which matter are the wickets and the overs remaining, and the only point of each ball is to see whether the batsman can prevent it hitting his stumps without giving a catch to one of the ravenous mob surrounding him.

The electricity in the crowd has the crackle of static, the batsmen’s fans squawking their approval as a ball is safely fended away and yelping their fear at misses or miscues while those supporting the fielders catch their breaths at each run-up and snort their disappointment at each survival. And at the end, whichever way it goes, there is overwhelming relief for those who succeeded and agonising disappointment for those who failed to reach their objective.

That is the cricket of pure emotion, not played or watched with the brain, but felt through the heart.

At the end of the ARG Test, I felt both the disappointment and the relief, since I have realised that I want this series to be drawn.

I don’t want England to lose, mostly because it will unleash a torrent of tedious doom and gloom articles which we will be swimming through for months – and all of them will drone on and on about the internal workings of the ECB and none will acknowledge that West Indies played well. But I don’t particularly want them to win either because I want West Indies back as a major power.

Every country has their own style. A good Australian team is ruthlessly tough, a good English team displays the virtues of classicism while a good Indian team does the same for the baroque, a Pakistani team will be furiously aggressive, good South Africans functionally efficient and good New Zealanders will be patronised for punching above their weight and given a lollipop. But the West Indies on song bring joy, the pure joy of exulting in excellence, the feeling that nothing can be so much fun as being good at cricket, and that is a joy we need in these otherwise depressing days. It’s no surprise that Usain Bolt played cricket in Jamaica before taking up sprinting: showboating to the world record in the Olympic 100m final is something only a West Indian cricketer could do. (I apologise if Sri Lankans feel left out of the above, but the only thing that has so far characterised good Sri Lankan teams is Murali taking hatfuls of wickets – they need some more history yet.)

As every team which has had to pick itself from the floor has discovered, the first step is becoming hard to beat. Allen Stanford may affect indifference, but right now even he ought to be able to see the pleasures in getting out of jail as Chris Gayle’s men did at the ARG. They have probably gained more from this whole-team backs to the wall effort than they did from the win at Sabina - which came off a once-in-a-lifetime performance from a single bowler and an English batting order in outright panic, a recurrence of which one can dream about but not plan for.

Test cricket’s image has suffered because too many recent games have been mismatches, the eventual result predictable by tea on day one. Yet though the boards are doing their best to distract us by ostentatiously sacking coaches, captains, stadiums and financiers, this series is advertising why Test cricket remains the game’s most fascinating form.

They are probably making omelettes with the egg being scraped off the collective face of the ECB following the collapse of the Stanford venture. Whether it was a blunder of such incompetence that resignations would be appropriate, though, is quite another matter.

The main criticism appears to be that their inquiries into Stanford’s business were not adequate, because all they really sought to establish was whether Stanford would be able to cough up the cash that he was promising and did not seek to penetrate the convoluted structure of his financial vehicles in as much detail as the US SEC.

Arguably they should have delved a bit deeper than they did, but it grates more than somewhat having this criticism levelled by counties whose teams paraded round the cricket grounds of England in 2008 sporting the logos of financial institutions which are now largely owned by the government because the perpetrators of what amounts to institutionalised fraud are being propped up rather than prosecuted. What due diligence did those counties undertake before accepting the cash of bankers whose declared wealth was based on loans which would not be repaid, and why are they so different from Stanford whose declared wealth was based on deposits he allegedly did not make?

It is easy after the fact to say that the ECB should have seen through statements about fantastic rates of return on investments as being impossible, but a year ago the press were still running gosh-wow stories about hedge fund managers who made millions every day through aggressive betting on stock market gyrations. By the standards operative in the business world of early 2008, it’s hard to see how the ECB are exceptionally culpable.

But it provides another useful soapbox for the Get Rid Of Giles (GROG) brigade to shout from, and they have been predictably vociferous.

Clarke does himself few favours. Charm is not a trait one readily associates with him. Courting Stanford has been a bad mistake, but its inspiration was of a piece with the TV rights saga. Clarke is identified as the chief architect of the deal which took live Test cricket off free-to-air – which has doubled the amount of money coming into English cricket from that source at the cost of annoying a lot of people. Stanford’s dismissive view of Test cricket compared with populist Twenty20 would never endear him to English traditionalists, but Clarke saw a potentially lucrative business opportunity and went for it.

In both, the aim was to bring more money in so as to allow more money to be spent within an English game constituted roughly as at present.

The GROG supporters, though, want to demolish the present structure. They are the prime movers behind the schemes for scrapping the counties and setting up city-based commercial franchises whose object would be to make money for their owners. Their real beef with the present ECB direction as led by Giles Clarke is that all the money the ECB raises gets ploughed back into cricket rather than handed out as dividends for the owners of the property companies which will own the multi-purpose stadia.

Clarke’s county, Somerset, have thrived commercially by building on their traditional strengths and assiduous marketing in their catchment area. Writ large, Clarke has sought to pursue the same strategy at the ECB. His opponents, at bottom, invite us to believe that there are huge as yet untapped reserves of potential punters in a few large cities who can easily be wooed away from their football obsession, thus replacing the troublesome public which currently provides the majority of support for the game. As a model, it may well work in India where cricket can generate far more income than it can usefully reinvest, thus allowing the promoters to take profits without detriment to the sport, but hoping that something similar could be achieved in England is the sort of wild optimism which would have been difficult to sustain in the boom times but is unthinkable in the present recessionary climate. Were they to get their way only for the whole thing to collapse because their optimism was ill-founded, English cricket would be devastated, quite possibly beyond salvaging.

The ECB is far from perfect, and Giles Clarke is one of its more imperfect manifestations, but I am far more sympathetic to their general approach than to that of the revolutionaries who put Viscount Marland up as their figurehead.

At the end of a long summer of international cricket that began in Bangalore and finished in Sydney, one could be forgiven for thinking that it’s all doom and gloom for the average Australian cricket fan. Beaten comfortably by a resurgent India, ambushed in their own backyard by the resilient South Africans and then mugged by the Kiwi’s, it hasn’t been the sort of summer that we’ve been used to since … well since ... the early days of Border’s captaincy in the 1980s.

Despite that, I get the feeling that this summer brought with it a genuine sense of enjoyment, perhaps brought upon by the realisation that each and every match was a genuine 50/50 contest. Speaking to members of my local cricket club, knowledgeable without necessarily being experts, patriotic without necessarily being one-eyed, disappointed at the losses without necessarily being distraught, it strikes me that many Aussies are philosophical about the see-sawing fortunes of the national team.

There is almost an inevitability about their acceptance of the current state of affairs, almost as if it is only fair that we too must now learn the art of occasionally losing games of cricket with equanimity and grace. No great gnashing of teeth or looking for excuses – most of the people I spoke to were prepared to accept that winning can no longer be taken for granted. What’s more, there was even a grudging acceptance that it might actually be the best thing for the game.

I must confess to being a tad surprised by this relatively sanguine attitude until I realised that even the cricketers themselves might have sensed, deep in their souls, that the great era of dominance was soon to be no more. Watching their on-field behaviour this summer, there was none of the snarling and boorishness that characterised previous teams. They played it hard, they played it fair and they accepted the triumphs and disappointments with good grace. The series in India was perhaps a bit testy (both teams were guilty at times) but both South Africa and New Zealand played the game in the sort of spirit that made it easy for all three teams to play uncompromising cricket without crossing that invisible line.

There seems to be a general acceptance that the much vaunted depth in Australian domestic cricket proved to be somewhat of a false promise. For many years, Australian cricket prided itself on the belief that it could turn out two or three XI's that would beat most other countries. The performance of the new kids on the block this summer has laid that theory to rest. Our depth is solid without being spectacular, certainly no hint of a genuine world-class cricketer in the Warne, McGrath, Gilchrist mould. That realisation has been sobering but it hasn’t been depressing. It’s almost as if we’ve been relieved of that burden.

The middle part of Australia’s game, in both Tests and ODI’s remain the biggest area of concern amongst the average cricket follower. They point to an unconvincing middle order and the lack of a genuine spin bowler as the main reasons for some tame performances midway through an innings, batting or bowling. In ODI cricket especially, Australia looked very vulnerable in that 20-40 over stage of the match. When you compare David Hussey and Michael Clarke’s bowling to the likes of Vettori, Botha, Harbajhan, Muralidaran and Mendis, it is easy to see why we miss the class of Warne and Hogg in the middle part of our bowling innings. With the bat, the current middle order is a far cry from the Martyn, Waugh, Lehman, Bevan, Symonds heyday. Admittedly, without Gilchrist and Hayden to set the innings alight, everything else that follows must work with less credit in the bank. The credit crunch has hit Australia hard!

Credit where credit’s due though – there’s great admiration for some classy opposition players too. Gambhir, Laxman and Zaheer Khan were outstanding in India. Duminy, De Villiers, Steyn, Smith and Kallis were given due credit for their talents whilst Vettori commands enormous respect for his craft. This summer, Australians really appreciated the skill of the opposition teams instead of merely looking for someone to blame. Many people merely said "we were outplayed".

The confusion and angst lies with the selectors – most Aussie fans confess to being a bit bemused by the logic of some selections. Who is the best spin bowler in the country? How does someone who has never played a first-class game get an Australian cap (Warner)? Why are the two form (best?) batsmen, Brad Hodge and Lee Carseldine, ignored by the selectors? If Cameron White is not going to get a bowl, is he amongst the top 5 pure batsmen in the country? Our selection panel are discovering that it’s not quite a bed of roses when you haven’t got ‘all-time greats’ in the mix. Those teams virtually picked themselves.

Don’t get me wrong. This is not a lament for the dead, nor is it a denial of the bleeding obvious. It’s not panic stations and it's not hiding from the truth either. Most people accept that we’re a pretty good team playing against other very good teams who have the weaponry to put us away if we have a bad day. No shame in being competitive, no shame in occasionally coming second in a tight contest. In fact, this summer of cricket has actually brought a lot of people back to the game. It just goes to show that winning isn’t everything – a genuine contest, played hard and fair, without any of the 'silly stuff' has everyone buzzing about cricket again.

Can’t wait for the South African series. And the Ashes…

With the WI-England series only four completed innings old, both Andrew Strauss and Chris Gayle had produced uncharacteristic centuries of considerable stature. Neither were the traditional “captain’s innings” played when the side is in big trouble, but they were important innings for them as captains. As one of the ex-England skippers in the Sky commentary box observed, it is one thing to stand up in front of a team meeting and say how you want people to play, and quite another to go out in the middle and give a practical demonstration.

Pre-captaincy, Gayle had a one-track mind. He would go out and hit the ball as hard as he could until he was out, which could be anything from five minutes to five hours later, depending on the skill or luck of the bowlers. Since acceding to the captaincy, however, his batting has become more richly-textured and better attuned to the situation his team is in.

England’s first innings in Jamaica raised only a moderate challenge on an uninteresting pitch. There was no need to hurry in reply; what mattered was achieving a first innings lead and Gayle was perfectly content to reach it at whatever time it arrived, just so long as it eventually did. He only broke from patient accumulation for a calculated thwacking of Panesar’s fragile composure, and was dismissed by an awkward ball which snaked through his defence rather than holing out. Of those who followed him, only Xavier Marshall failed to hang around and chisel out hard-won runs.

The horrors of England’s collapse in the second innings required immediate exorcism to arrest the downward spiral. Strauss’s centuries in 2008 had been measured exercises, exuding calmness and responsibility, but the team now needed more than reassurance. He responded by playing in the bellicose style of Graham Smith, giving his most rousingly watchable display for years. He normally plays almost entirely off the back foot, with the odd drive thrown in by way of variation. He only comes forward regularly when he is seriously confident, so his assertive off-driving at the ARG not only spoke volumes about his own state of mind but sent a powerful message to the team. In their turn, they were enterprising in the push to a declaration total, in marked contrast to the neuralgic scratching they had employed before Christmas at Chennai.

A captain establishes his right to lead his players by doing important things which merit his players’ respect. Without achievements on the field, authority dissipates. An ability to play conjuring tricks with bowling attacks and field settings can do it, but agenda-setting hundreds are much more reliable.

Gayle’s century at Sabina extended his register of significant deeds and thus augmented his leadership credentials. England have been in need of stable leadership for some time, so it does Strauss no end of good to have played such an authoritative innings so early in his reign.

Neither were first choices as captains. The WICB did everything they could to prevent Gayle getting the job until passing over him would have been excessively bizarre even by their own high standards. England chose passionate superstars in the hope of fireworks only to have them explode prematurely or fly off in the wrong directions.

Maybe the convulsions which preceded their appointments were necessary to clear their passage. Maybe if they had been appointed earlier, almost nothing could have quelled the rumblings in favour of one of those who failed. But now both of them look as secure in their jobs as anyone can reasonably be in international sport, for their times have (finally) come.

	Andrew Strauss departs ... and the Sabina Park crowd are delighted © AFP

One of the oft-repeated lines in the aftermath of the English defeat in Kingston has been (no, not the business about how it's all the IPL's fault, and no, not the KP-Flintoff Mutual Dislike Society) a mention of the crowd at Sabina Park. To a man, correspondents reporting on the fourth day's play noted the electric atmosphere, the hooping and hollering, the dancing, the egging on, or quite literally, the willing, of the players to bigger and better things.

I knew exactly what the correspondents were talking about and it wasn't just because I had watched the 51 Debacle live on my 19-inch flat screen monitor at home with the speakers turned up (well, the one good one). It was because I had once sat in the middle of a Sabina Park crowd that had gotten pumped up similarly. On that occasion, another West Indian quick had triggered a collapse in an opponent's batting line-up. The collapse was not so spectacular, and the opponents recovered, but the experience was enough to let me know what an opposition side could feel like when confronted with that famous combination: a hyped-up fast bowler and an excited West Indian crowd.

On the third day of the first Test (in Kingston) during India's tour of the West Indies in 1997, the visitors resumed at 108 for 1 facing a West Indian total of 427. VVS Laxman, on 54, and Rahul Dravid, on 28, walked out to do duty. All was well as they took the score to 127. Then, a young debutant called Franklyn Rose bowled Laxman. The crowd celebrated vociferously; it was the first wicket of the day, cause for celebration, but still, it wasn't that big a deal. Laxman was a relative unknown. But Sachin Tendulkar was now out in the middle, and he was the man for whom, as a beer vendor at the ground had assured me, the crowd had "respeck".

Dravid went next at 140, caught behind off Rose. Now, the crowd was up and about, getting louder and louder. There was a stir around me, the chatter had gotten louder, I could see folks dancing in the upper stands. Perhaps the folks rolling those fatties up in the nose-bleeds had put their rolling papers away.

And then, at 145, Rose bowled Tendulkar with a ball that kept slightly low. To make things worse, Tendulkar made that familiar exaggerated squatting move which he employs when balls keep low. He gave the impression of being utterly defeated.

The Sabina Park crowd went ballistic, in all the ways that Saturday's correspondents reported. And at that moment, the sound levels threatened to deafen me, while simultaneously evoking a curious emotion: I think I genuinely felt scared. I saw a young Indian fan walk past me, his face stricken. I knew how he felt. I felt like a force of nature had been cut loose and that no one, not the Indian fans in the stands, and certainly not the Indian team out in the middle, could resist it. Azhar fell at 153, again to Rose, and it seemed our worst fears were confirmed.

India survived that day. First Ganguly and [Nayan Mongia, and then later, Mongia and Sunil Joshi, put on useful, dogged stands, to bail out their team. But for that magic hour, I had been able to experience what many, many teams and batsmen before me, had felt and not enjoyed. And probably never will.

Ouch! In fact, ouch and double ouch! That hurt.

Stuart Broad managed his first Michelle in Tests, which is a useful milestone on the way to a successful career, but otherwise the only England player who had a good match was Owais Shah.

But let us not get too carried away.

Tempting though it is to blame the off-field shenanigans and distractions, my view is that far too much is being made of them.

Most of the England players were in the team for at least one of the comprehensive series thrashings which England have administered to WI these last five years, and WI’s ICC ranking remains stubbornly poor. All the pre-series talk, both in England and in the Caribbean, was of how England were expected to win, as the form book would predict. It is asking an awful lot of the England players not to have gone into this game with a general attitude that they ought to be able to win it with something to spare.

They were not expecting to find a West Indies side full of fight and determination, nor were they expecting that Jerome Taylor would bowl by far the best spell of his life. Some of the batsmen played injudicious shots but the ball which dismissed Pietersen was as near to perfection as you can get, and when you couple it to all the other surprises the Windies had sprung, it’s almost understandable that England just fell apart.

As wake-up calls go, this Test was the equivalent of thirty churches pealing the summons to matins while forty roosters crow themselves hoarse and the hotel management sends in SWAT teams to roust people out of bed.

It is early, though, to be deciding that England are in complete disarray and will probably lose the rest of the matches – at least until they’ve had their orange juice and a good strong cup of coffee. Most of this team played in New Zealand a year ago, looking like lemons in the first Test but coming back and duffing up the Black Caps for most of the next five games. And last time England were rolled over in the Caribbean, when Curtly Ambrose scythed them down to 46 all out, the same XI went into the next game and became the first visitors to win in Barbados for 59 years.

England are more likely to repeat what they did after Hamilton than after Port of Spain: surely nobody is going to fall for the idea that the people who dug the hole should be told to dig out of it. If they aren’t going to give Owais Shah a go after that debacle, then he might as well pack his bags and go home – although the appalling weather we are having in England might make him hesitate before booking the plane ticket. Whether the bowlers should be changed will partly depend on what the Antigua pitch looks like, but Swann and Anderson did their chances of selection for the second Test no harm at all by not playing in Jamaica.

But it is also early to be elevating Jerome Taylor to the WI pantheon of great fast bowlers. I’ve had my eye on him as a much-improved bowler for a year or so now, and he could yet make it to the pinnacle, but there is a long way to go yet. After all, look where the bloke who took 7-12 last time these two sides met at Sabina has got to. The whole attack is certainly not as potent as the 1983 edition, but there is no longer any need for West Indians to be ashamed of their bowlers because they now have a group who are as good as anyone else’s bar South Africa for sure and maybe India.

And while the batting leaves something to be desired, it can no longer be said that collectively they lack grit. I don’t remember ever seeing West Indies make 392 in such stupefyingly dull fashion, especially with the Rock of Guyana only making 20 of them – but I’m certainly not complaining. Turgid though the cricket was as spectacle, it did the heart good to see that this West Indies side is prepared to buckle down when the situation and tightness of the bowling demand it.

The terms of trade for this series have been radically altered. Being 1-0 down, England are now technically the underdogs, but their paper superiority is such that it is more realistic to see this series as being between equals. However you choose to view the prospects, though, this will be a much more interesting series than most people thought two weeks ago.

Timing is a strange beast though. Sometimes, inexplicably, it deserts you. Everything else seems perfectly normal and the bat swing is exactly the same as it always has been but the magic just disappears.

Ricky Ponting understands this better than most. For a man whose greatness as a batsman can never be questioned, his timing has deserted him lately. On the field, he has struggled to find fluency in his last few innings, mistimed a second run on the bullet arm of Neil Broom and then completed a day of poor timing by falling horribly behind the over-rate. These things happen sometimes. It’s hardly a hanging offence, this temporary lack of timing.

Off the field though, whoever decided that Ponting was going to be rested for the rest of the ODI series against NZ needs to have a long think about their timing. To be fair to Ponting, it may not have been his decision. Cricket Australia may have insisted on it. For all we know, Ponting may have questioned the timing of this ‘rest’ but may have been overruled by the men in suits.

This is not the time to be seen to be deserting the sinking ship. It may only be a matter of perception but as we all know, perception is reality. Here we have a team in complete disarray, beaten twice in Perth (usually a fortress), going through an enormous period of change and uncertainty and the skipper takes a break at the height of the crisis. It just doesn’t look good. It's all about timing.

If this break had been scheduled all along and communicated to the public, Ponting’s absence from the frontline would not be questioned. After all, Cricket Australia has known the itinerary for months now and they must have foreseen Ponting’s workload issues. Why didn’t they plan a break for him and announce it a week ago? Ponting has every right to a break from the game but it could have been handled better. To take an unscheduled break at this particular point of the season when they have just lost four games on the trot and are crying out for leadership is just poor timing.

Cricket is not war. It’s merely a game. Let’s not get too carried away with military analogies. But for a team and a system that thrives on talking in military-style jargon to justify their take-no-prisoners attitude, the comparisons are worth noting. Would an army general have picked this moment to leave the trenches and spend some time with the wife and kids? Would someone like Allan Border have allowed himself to be rested at this moment in time? He spent a large part of his career in trench warfare, back to the wall, finger in the dyke, leading from the front, bruised, bloodied but unbowed. It was impossible not to follow him into battle because his mates knew that he was always leading the way when things got tough. We’re only guessing but I daresay AB would have point blank refused to leave the team under these circumstances. “Over my dead body” and all that.

In this case, perhaps a white lie might have been a better PR strategy. A mystery virus or a sore hamstring or a flare-up of the wrist injury – it would have achieved the same purpose without the inevitable questions about deserting the troops.

There will be people who live normal lives and work 60+ hour weeks on a standard wage who will question why an athlete needs a rest when they essentially ‘work’ every few days anyway. They will question whether these same athletes will rediscover their freshness when IPL time comes around. Perhaps these ‘normal’ folk don’t understand the demands of modern sport. Perhaps they’re too busy working to need a rest. The general public are certainly starting to question the whole 'poor, weary, overworked athlete' thing now. Especially in a recession when money is tight and jobs are under threat at the same time as IPL auctions are being held. It's all about timing.

If Ponting was forced into taking this rest, Cricket Australia has done his reputation a disservice. If Ponting requested it, his management or the corporate PR machine should have suggested a press release that will see him taking a break after the next game, win, lose or tie. It looks better that way. As Ponting knows full well, it’s all about timing.