Test match victories come along often enough to keep us interested. One-day success, in any sustained sense — or any significant trophy sense — eludes Our Boys. Perhaps it’s a bit like the Eurovision Song Contest: we’d be more likely to win if we all took it seriously.

Today even the die-hard Tendulkar acolyte is willing to wait, for he knows that Dravid getting out early usually spells disaster. At 32 for four against Sri Lanka, not even Sehwag, Tendulkar and Laxman carried back into the pavilion with them all the hopes of a nation. Dravid was still batting, and that was reason enough to go about the normal business of living a life. He did not disappoint, guiding India past 400. While a Sehwag or a Tendulkar cry halt to life in the nation, with fans dropping whatever they are doing to watch the action, Dravid lets life go on. It is as if his countrymen are saying, adapting Robert Browning, ‘Rahul’s at the crease, All’s right with the world.’

Instead of making the fiveday game more viewer-friendly it is a shame that the richest board in the world chooses to roll out a featherbed which will only strengthen the argument of those who say Test cricket has no future. That is why one almost sees the board's complicity in ignoring these vital aspects of the game. They call themselves marketing wizards, but when it comes to Tests, they just treat it like an orphaned child whom no one wants to own.

In Outlook, Rahul Mahajan says pitches like the one that dulled the cricket at Ahmedabad can only also dull the ardour of Test cricket’s aficionados.

At some point Nehra left his dream world, put aside his laziness and decided to apply himself. As much could be gleaned from his efforts in a Ranji Trophy match staged in Delhi. It was a hot day but the beanpole did not flag, rushing to the crease in his energetic way, whirling over his arm and causing all sorts of difficulties. He may resemble a giraffe but with ball in hand he becomes a gazelle.

"Unfortunately when you get to a certain age and you're still playing, people ask when you're going to stop, which is a little bit offensive at times. You keep playing while you're good enough. If people are constantly asking if you're out of time you start to think maybe that's how they are perceiving you."

Michael Clarke pauses when asked the question. "I could sit here and lie and say I don't think about it," he tells Iain Payten of the Daily Telegraph.

When it comes to it, ambition is a tricky animal. There are those who say overtly coveting this particular job questions if you are the best man for it. Hence the pause. "The truth is I hope I continue to get opportunities, whether it be one-day cricket, now with Twenty20 cricket or hopefully one day I get the chance to captain in Test cricket," Clarke admits. "But it is all so far away. Right now, I am over the moon and stoked I have been given the chance to captain the Twenty20. My leader, still, is Ricky Ponting.”

Malcolm Conn, writing in the Weekend Australian, says Matthew Hayden’s passion has moved from playing cricket to saving it.

Less than a year out of the game and already a Cricket Australia board member, Hayden fears that the sport he dedicated decades to is being overplayed and undervalued. "I don't buy this 'more is better' mentality," Hayden said. "We should have an obsession with perfection."

In the same paper Ricky Ponting talks about what he has been doing during some rare time off.

Jamie Pandaram, in the Sydney Morning Herald, looks at the task of Denesh Ramdin, who has the job of outwitting Ricky Ponting in his backyard with a crew of under-rated, under-achieving players who've known mostly failure for a decade.

Peter Roebuck, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, reminds everyone Australia have lost three of their past five Test series.

Amid all the backslapping, it is a point worth pondering. Ricky Ponting's side has slipped to fourth place in the rankings. Along the way, captain and selectors have blundered, with the wrong teams chosen, pitches misread and puzzling tactics pursued at critical moments.

Admittedly, it has not all been bad. Australia performed admirably throughout a long stint overseas. The one-day side surpassed itself. But Test cricket is the real deal, and in that arena Australia have fallen back.

Australia’s first Test squad was named on Thursday and there was no spot for Phillip Hughes. In the Australian Malcolm Conn says Hughes will have to repeat his prolific form of the past two seasons to get back into the top team.

Hughes’ coach Neil D’Costa tells Will Swanton of the Sydney Morning Herald why he is relaxed about his charge’s future.

The advent of protection for batsmen from the late 1970s has been the biggest change to the game since the introduction of overarm bowling. It has altered profoundly the balance between bat and ball ... Nobody, bar Richards probably, is crazy enough to suggest that helmets should be banned. Nobody wants to see people dying for their sport. But to suggest that Tendulkar — or, indeed, any modern, armoured or, to use Richards’s phrase, “pampered” player — is the best ever is demeaning to those former greats who stood at the crease in the knowledge that their next ball could be their last.

They are trying to pick a fight with Andrew Strauss and Andy Flower. You have to admire them for this. It's the equivalent of trying to goad a right hook from a Carmelite nun. England's cricket captain, who has the impeccable manners and smiling geniality of Lord Peter Wimsey and Boris Johnson combined, is generally acknowledged to be the nicest man in sport. The mild-mannered Flower, meanwhile, he who made the stand of his life against Robert Mugabe's wicked rule in Zimbabwe, is presumably rather beyond such trivialities as what Arthur thinks of his coaching style.

At a rough estimate, Paul Collingwood's career has consisted of 10% talent and 90% perspiration. He could not have done it without the sweat, writes Stephen Brenkley in the Independent.

No player of any sport anywhere has so epitomised the notion of making the most of the ability at his disposal. In its way it has been a miracle because when the well, never full, has run dry, he has somehow been able to re-stock it. Sometimes he has needed a dowsing rod as much as a bat.

Lord's is just the perfect mix of new and old. There are some historic places that you respect but they just seem run down, perhaps in need of a lick of paint. But all the new stands at Lord's complement the splendour of the pavilion perfectly and the proposed new structures at the Nursery End look to be perhaps the best yet.

Plans to redevelop the ground are exciting but there are fears the debt could compromise the MCC's position, writes Angus Fraser in the Independent.

Lord's is not known as the home of the sport because it's prepared to sell its soul to the highest bidder. It has its reputation because it's an arena where everyone who enters – player or spectator – feels a sense of tradition and history. Even now, 30 years after first entering the ground, I feel privileged when I drive through the Grace Gates or walk through the Long Room. Renaming such areas of the ground, which would be inevitable should rights be sold, would cheapen the experience. Looking at the dressing-room honours boards that represent those who have scored hundreds or taken five-wicket hauls at the ground, would become like reading the menu at a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise.

Alone of the three forms, alone also among major sports, Test cricket is exclusively a daylight game. In its heyday that did not matter because all sport was played in the daytime. But for 25 years sport has been moving into the night. The biggest football fixtures are played after dark, the biggest tennis matches, too. At the Olympics, the biggest days are nights.

In some countries, a Test match is staged and no one turns up. The Kiwis play on oddly shaped grounds before a smattering of spectators. Stands in Sri Lanka and Pakistan echo as a five-day match unfolds. South Africa offers free tickets to busloads of schoolchildren. Bear in mind that only nine supposedly cricket-mad nations play Test matches. Their teams contain all the dynamic and glamorous performers around and still the matches are played to almost empty houses. If they cannot hold an audience, what price the rising nations?

This is a huge scam and even the governing body of the PCB, which is supposed to bring some sort of transparency in the working of the board, has so far failed to make their presence felt. The few voices of dissent from a couple of members from time to time in the meetings did little but not enough to go past the deaf ears of the PCB chairman who could have done the game some service had he not so far resorted to arbitrary decisions.

The baton has passed from Brett Lee to the next generation, writes Peter Roebuck in the Sydney Morning Herald.

It does not seem long ago that Brett Lee was a teenager playing for Campbelltown in the under-21 comp, and scaring the wits out of batsmen. Now his four- and five-day career seems to be over. Plain and simple, he can no longer last the pace. Cricket is not a sentimental game. Choosing him is too risky.

In the same paper Jamie Pandaram speaks to Josh Hazlewood, an 18-year-old fast bowler with a big future. In Queensland Robert Craddock looks at Alister McDermott, another teenager on debut, in the Courier-Mail.

Strauss, 32, plays a straight bat. “No, not at all. It surprises me that people even say that. Cricket boils down to crucial periods of play. In a five-day Test match there will probably be two sessions that define which way the game goes. In three games, we won those crucial sessions.”