Players show off their skills during a press launch earlier this week © PA Photos

Playing a cricket match on the slopes of Mount Everest is no joke, warns a doctor in Nepal. Dr Buddha Basnyat, who specialises in high altitude health, said the lack of oxygen – which is only half of what it is at sea level – could lead to illness and even death, even for those not chasing a ball. Basnyat said the players from England, who will play the highest field sport match - a Twenty20 on April 21 - will have to be extremely careful not to over-exert themselves.

"The important thing is, if people aren't feeling well and yet push themselves to play, especially if they exert themselves, that can predispose them to altitude sickness," Basnyat told the BBC. "Basically the players should listen to their own bodies."

The tour party comprises 51 people which includes two squads of 15, two umpires and a support crew of cameramen, photographers, medics, lawyers and environmental experts. The match is a fund-raiser for the Lord's Taverners and Himalayan Trust UK charities. They practised in London's Trafalgar Square on a windy and chilly afternoon in December, much to the curiosity of the public.

Richard Kirtley, the organiser of the match, said the whole ambitious exercise of playing a game at 5100 meters above sea level is a "quintessentially British thing to do".

Signatures on Indian Cricket League contracts continue to have lasting effects in Australia. First Jason Gillespie was banned from coaching at the Australian Centre of Excellence and the same thing has happened to Stuart Law.

Law, a former Queensland captain, has not played first-class cricket in Australia since 2004, but was told he could accept a position as batting coach at the Academy only if he stopped playing in the ICL. "I can't see what the problem is,” Law said in the Courier-Mail. “If the ICL was pinching young players like Alister McDermott to play then I could understand Cricket Australia getting upset about it.

“But guys who haven't played Shield cricket for a number of years ... what's the problem? The ICC are trying to sort this out and the ICL is happy to talk, but the IPL are making us lepers in the community."

London might be the litigation capital of the world these days, but America isn't far behind. Straight out of the texbook Lawsuits For Fun comes this particular gem: Sharon Anderson from Georgia is suing the mayor of her home town, Fort Oglethorpe, for laying a concrete cricket pitch in the middle of a polo field.

She claims that she the city isn't abiding by a 1996 charter which states that the grounds “shall be preserved in its present condition for the use and benefit of the general public and no further construction or obstruction of any sort is allowed in the said circle". Ron Goulart, the city's manager, defended the cricket pitch and clearly finds the issue supremely dull. “It simply helps the people who use the field for recreation,” he said. “You really couldn’t find it unless it was pointed out to you.”

Holding the lawsuit, an inch thick, he said: "This is being stubbornly litigious." Still, she might have a point: concrete pitches are bowlers' graveyards.

	The heatwave hits Melbourne as a family enjoy beach cricket © Getty Images

Club cricketers the world over – especially those in England – are used to playing in the cold and the wet, but the current heatwave blasting parts of Australia has proved too much for even the hardy locals.

A day after the organisers defending men’s champion Novak Djokovic had to pull out of the Australian Open in Melbourne with heat cramps, South Australia took the decision to scrap most of the state’s men’s and women’s grade cricket because of the abnormal conditions.
With temperatures well into the 40s – so hot that insects were dropping dead in their thousands at the Melbourne tennis – the news might be seen as a sign that Australians are going as soft as their national team’s bowling attack.

But Cricket Victoria showed that the old hard approach remains. A senior CV official, sitting in his air conditioned office no doubt, dismissively brushed aside a request from South Australia that the start time of the Sheffield Shield game at the MCG be brought forward to 9am to try to avoid the worst of the day’s heat. More drinks, less whinging was the gist of his reply as he took another ice-cold can from his desk-side fridge.

An email plopped into our inboxes this afternoon from the Indian Premier League, excitedly announcing no less than 114 players for the forthcoming auction. But which names have been included?

Well, alongside the expected ones – Michael Clarke, Andrew Flintoff, JP Duminy and the like – were the lesser-known Kevin Peterson, that nobody from Australia, Doug Bowler, and the South African Neil McKanzee.

England’s lot included the ageless Dominic Cork and, err, Tyron Henderson. Woops.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu can’t stop gushing about South Africa’s stunning Test and ODI victories in Australia, saying the multi-cultural team has set a shining example by performing as a unit.

Tutu said two pictures from the tour had particularly impressed him. "The first, following the captain's brave effort in the third Test at Sydney, captured Graeme Smith and Makhaya Ntini together, arm in arm, brothers in arms,” he said. "The second, following the one-day series-clinching victory this week, featured batting heroes Hashim Amla and AB de Villiers in a similar embrace."

The most remarkable aspect, however, was the fact that Tutu was able to see any photos at all from a historic series, after Cricket Australia's decision to deny accreditation to most of the agencies that supply pictures to the world's media.

With the tour to Pakistan called off, most of the Indian team had a month’s break from international cricket and they used the precious time to pursue some personal interests. Sachin Tendulkar looked for real estate in the north Indian hill station of Mussoorie and Mahendra Singh Dhoni trained with the National Security Guards.

Always the intellectual, Rahul Dravid decided to lend his voice to a talking book on cricket for children, Cricketmatics, which will be brought out by the Karadi Tales company, a Chennai-based group which publishes books on Indian heritage. Dravid said he was keen to involve himself in such a project because his three-year-old son, Samit, wanted his parents to read stories to him. And so, as quick as he is to hop across and keep the ball away from his off stump, loving papa opted to offer junior a fun way of learning. The son is father to the man.

It remains to be seen if Dravid explains how to tuck bat behind pad to avoid the lbw.

Shane Warne has helped revive the art of leg spin, sell millions of copies of News of the World and make ‘blond and overweight’ a combination irresistible to women. Now he is luring men – the beer-drinking, sports-loving kind – to Melbourne theatres through the smash hit musical based on his life.

Eddie Perfect, the actor playing Warne in ‘Shane Warne – The Musical’, says Warne is someone who has fascinated Australia, and come to typify the best and worst of the country. "We're getting guys dragging their girlfriends to the theatre, which is the opposite of how it usually works," Perfect told AFP. "You see young blokes making their way to their seats carrying armfuls of beers for their mates, just like they do at the cricket.”

Perfect said the new faces in the audience had upset some in the traditional group but it was for the best. “It's like Reformation theatre when people were buying oranges to throw at the actors - why shouldn't they have fun?"

There have been suggestions of taking the production to London and even India and Perfect is keen to go international. He said not much would have to be changed in the current musical to suit the English audience since Warne was as popular in England as he was in Australia. But the chance to play in India excited him. "It'd be a blast. We could turn every number into a huge Bollywood production."

	An unusual sight at London's Trafalgar Square © PA Photos

Two teams from England are planning to play the world’s highest game of Twenty20 on a plateau halfway up Mount Everest. Expedition leader Richard Kirtley dreamed up the idea two years ago during a trip to the region. He saw the Gorak Shep plateau, which is 5165 metres above sea level, and instantly thought it resembled The Oval.

“I wasn't confident that I'd find enough people nuts enough to try it, but in the end I got over 100 applications,” he said. “I'm proud of the tradition of British eccentricity. The most important thing for me was that it wasn't just going to be a bunch of blokes going up there for a bit of a knock-around.”

South Africa's series-clinching win over Australia on January 26 - Australia Day - was special for the country's cricket fans, for it followed the historic Test win on what has been an epic tour Down Under. But for one family, being at the Adelaide Oval and witnessing South Africa beat Australia was bittersweet, for they had only a few hours before switched over to the other side.

The Fasts, formerly of Johannesburg, chose the national holiday to become Australians, a few of among about 13,000 people from 120 countries to do likewise. They had only moved to Australia five years ago, bowled over by the openness and sociability of Adelaide.

Before the match, the Fasts walked out in front of a full house and spoke a few words. "We fell so in love with the country and decided it would be a good move for us," Cathryn Fast told The Australian."We had to think long-term for our three beautiful children, what would be best for our family. We thought about it long and hard and decided it would be wonderful to be part of the Australian life here."

Her husband, Ralph, said the family hadn't expected to become citizens at the venue, and certainly not when South Africa played Australia.

The internet can do wonders in helping to promote a place to the world, but it also has a down side – just ask Hastings, the south coast town in England.

A cricket team cancelled their tour after finding a guide online that pinpointed Hastings local drug hotspots under a map entitled: ‘Map to show hotspots for discarded injecting paraphenlia' (sic).

Fleckney Village Cricket Club, in Leicestershire, instead opted for a five-day tour of the West Country after studying the map, but local officials said it didn’t paint a true picture.

Hastings MP Michael Foster told the Argus: "I will contact the cricket club and invite them to Hastings and I'm sure they will be impressed when they get here."

And Kevin Boorman, head of marketing at Hastings Borough Council, added: "It doesn't help tourism."

	No language issues here © Getty Images

Mahendra Singh Dhoni is surely not of the ilk to be flustered easily, nor the kind to shy away from a challenge, and the India captain seems to have found an ingenious way to handle a few language issues.

"In countries like Australia or England, people speak English in such an accent that it is very hard to understand. So, at parties when locals come to us and start talking, even if we are not getting anything, we say yeah,” Dhoni joked during a show on NDTV. "Or if I have a drink in hand, I excuse myself by saying, 'I'll just get a drink' but never show up in front of that person again.”

The expectations were also high when he was signed for US$1.5 million by the Chennai Super Kings. "I played for Chennai but didn't know any Tamil [what most people would speak in Chennai]. But people there thought that since I was part of the team, I had learnt it. So I just picked up a few words and for the one-and-a-half months I played there, I relied on those to break the language barrier.”

Two hat-tricks are taken by team-mates in the same game and the match ends in a tie. Sounds like a quirky cricket tale but that was exactly the scenario when South Launceston's Under-16 side played the North-East Bushrangers at Scottsdale recently. Shaun Field, 15, and Ben Jackson, 16, opened the bowling for their club, and each took their first-ever hat-tricks in the game, as well as their maiden five-fors.

While both boys were elated by their hat-tricks, South Launceston U-16 coach Peter Linger, who has played cricket for 35, said he had never seen anything like it. South Launceston were set a target of 169, and the match went down to the wire with two runs required off the last ball. However, they could only manage a single. The stuff of dreams. Well sort of.

Virender Sehwag, arguably the modern era's most unorthodox and audacious batsman, has credited Sunil Gavaskar, one of the most composed and technically correct batsmen ever, for opening up more methods to attack.

"Once Sunil Gavaskar asked me look to take middle-or-off-stump guard. And I think it has suited me," he told PTI. "With a leg-stump guard, you could be chasing a wide delivery. Or leaving a gap. With a middle-and-off stump guard, the bowler doesn't know where to pitch his stuff.

"If it is on [the] stumps, you could whip it to [the] onside. If it is outside the off stump, he is allowing you to play your favourite shots. I always take a middle-stump guard." if In 2008, Sehwag scored 1462 runs (of which 856 were in fours and sixes) in 1703 balls for a strike rate of 85.84.

Glenn McGrath's playing engagements are becoming increasingly rare, but the honours don't seem to trail far behind the former Australian fast bowler. In 2008, 18 months after he finished his Test career, McGrath was awarded life membership of Cricket New South Wales. And he now finds himself a finalist for this year's Australian of the Year, a "huge honour" according to the legend himself, for his fund raising efforts for the McGrath foundation.

Since retiring from Tests at the end of the 2006-07 Ashes, McGrath has bravely promoted his late wife Jane's cancer awareness campaign since her death in June, while raising their two children. "To be acknowledged in this way, it's something very special," McGrath told reporters ahead of the announcement. "I'm sure there's a lot of other people out there who probably deserve it more than me."

The McGrath Foundation is a charity that raises awareness of breast cancer and lobby to fund specialist breast care nurses. Publicity for the foundation was boosted earlier this year during the third Test between Australia and South Africa in Sydney when the ground was bathed in a sea of pink.

"The foundation's growing, the support we've had from everyone in Australia is great, so that's growing by the day so my involvement will become a lot more there," said McGrath.

	Greg Matthews, who is now 49, still has his tricks © Getty Images

Greg Matthews, the former Test offspinner, talks a great game – and still bowls one. In the lead-up to Phil Jaques’ return from back surgery, Matthews, 49, let the Test opener know he would be in for a tough time during Sutherland’s first grade match against Sydney University.

“Phil is a great batsman," Matthews said. "I'll give him an hour to get a feel for things, but that's it. If Stuart Clark or Mitch Cook don't roll him, hopefully the old man can come on and get lucky."

Matthews didn’t give Jaques a chance to get his eye in. After one over from Clark late in the day, Matthews arrived and had Jaques lbw with his first ball, which he said was a skidder.

Did Matthews, who now has a grey beard and round figure, feel sorry for Jaques? "Not for one millisecond do I feel anything other than elation,'' Matthews said in the Sunday Telegraph. "Phil is going to play 50 more Tests. He's got it all in front of him.”

So sometimes it’s a bit hard to make sense of Andrew Symonds, but his radio interview with Australian comedians Roy and HG on Triple M on Friday was particularly hard to work out. He was talking about New South Wales’ decision to hire Brendon McCullum for their Twenty20 final and Cricket Australia will decipher the recording to determine whether Symonds should be punished.

“They're trying to use him [McCullum] as the out because he's a Kiwi,” Symonds said. "Yep, we love to hate them, but he's the lump of s..., sorry, lump of cow dirt, that people are thinking of. Now to get away from that, the actual topic is about playing cricket and getting into a final.

"To get yourself to that position and if you haven't brought anybody in, personally I wouldn't be changing a winning team. It doesn't matter about McCullum, mate, he could have been Irish, he still would have got it.” Are you keeping up?

“It's not his fault, he's doing his job and trying to earn a wage. But what happened here is an injustice. I said Daniel Smith, his opposite number, was going to miss out. But they said this morning that Daniel Smith is going to play, but at the end of day somebody is still going to miss out.'' Something is definitely missing.

So cricket won't be India's national sport - not for the moment, at least. Populism be damned, India's sports minister, MS Gill, a highly respected former bureaucrat and Himalayan mountaineer, not only batted for hockey but also took swipes at cricket and Sachin Tendulkar. "Hockey is a spiritual sport in India and is directly related to one's heart," he said, drawing a distinction. "Let cricket be as it is."

He was evoking that spirit when he pointed to how cricket had changed. "Those players [of the past] would face balls at 90mph with very little protection - there would just be a thin cap and cotton clothes. Now, however, there is all sort of protection, head gear, shoulder gear and things like that. In fact, a batsman is so covered with protective gear that if I go into the middle to bat one might say (Sachin) Tendulkar is playing."

	© Getty Images

In October the paper announced that Michael Vaughan had joined their ranks. "He will be a real asset to our cricket coverage," gushed Mark Skipworth, the executive sport editor. “His experience of captaining the England cricket team and being one of the best batsmen in the world puts him in a remarkably strong position to comment on cricket.”

In December Private Eye noted that Vaughan had produced only one article – on golf – but it seemed that the departure of his successor, Kevin Pietersen, would allow him to spill all and offer a unique insight into captaincy alongside also-sacked coach Peter Moores. Vaughan had, after all, worked with Moores for the majority of his time as coach.

Remarkably, Vaughan, has remained silent on the matter, raising the question that if this is not something he feels able to comment on, what on earth is.

However late it is, and however many post-match beers you might have had, it might be best to avoid popping into the Mandarin House in Knighton, Wales where the owner showed his love for the game by using a rat-gnawed cricket bat to stir a pan of curry. That, and the presence of rats in the kitchen itself, led to owner Chun-Hung Cheun being fined £2000 by Brecon magistrates.

It’s not quite the equivalent of convincing Merv Hughes to shave off his moustache but it’s close. For five years dreadlocks have been a key part of Andrew Symonds’ image but now he is gearing up to them chopped off for charity.

As part of the World’s Greatest Shave, which raises money for the Leukaemia Foundation, Symonds will get rid of the locks on live TV on February 14.

It remains to be seen whether it will be akin to Samson losing his hair, although the publicity shy Symonds sees at least one benefit. "I am looking forward to it,” he said. “I will be able to sneak around a little bit more.”

	© Getty Images

The passengers apparently had no clue about the detour, and the flight crew did not know its purpose until the pre-flight briefing. "It's very exciting isn't it – the England players on board and all that?" one of the crew told the Guardian. "It reminds me of the time we had the James Bond lot on board and we went to Panama."

To mollify the passengers for the two-hour delay, they were given England-branded cuff-links and an autographed picture of the Test squad that played the home series against South Africa in 2008. Not everyone was happy. "I think it's a bloody cheek, I do," said one passenger. "I found out last week that we were going via St Kitts, and then only because I phoned Virgin to confirm my flight. They didn't phone me. I would rather give up the cuff-links and arrive on time."

What does an allrounder do after he retires? Tries for a career in golf. It was something Kapil Dev thought about and Shaun Pollock, who stood down last year after a decorated career, is considering the move by entering some amateur tournaments in South Africa.

“Having been a professional sportsman for all those years, you have those competitive juices in you and they are not going to vanish overnight, so you need an outlet,” Pollock told the Courier-Mail. “I have always enjoyed my golf and I think that’s where I can put all my competitive energy at the moment.”

Pollock’s handicap is now down to one and he is no longer held back by long tours affecting his form and focus. However, he will also spend some time over the next month playing beach cricket in Australia.

	© Getty Images

“They knew he wasn't going to be a yes man, no man, three-bagsful man,” Botham wrote in the Mirror. “They knew he was single-minded, they knew he wanted to do the job his way … I thought he was showing a lot of promise as captain, and even though England lost in Chennai, he deserved a lot of credit both for leading the team back to India after the Mumbai massacre.”

Private Eye then points out Botham fails to mention that he is chairman of the sports agency that manages Pietersen. “In the previous three years in which he has opined [on Pietersen] he has never seen fit to mention this conflict of interests,” the article concludes.

As if there weren’t enough statisticians in the world, someone, somewhere, has calculated that when China played Maldives in the Asian Cricket Council Challenge this week the population differential was around 3300. Still awake? Ok, China’s population is roughly 1.30 billion and the Maldives 386,000, so China is 3368 times as populous.

Within minutes the anoraks had come flooding out of the cupboards in bedsits across the world. The net result was the 2007 World Cup match between India (1.15 billion) and Bermuda (66,000) was identified as producing an even greater disparity, around 17,420.

Baring any major improvements, this record seems to set to stay unless Cayman Islands (52,000, with more registered businesses than people) storm into a World Cup. The Falkland Islands, an Affiliate member of the ICC, has only 3000 inhabitants of the non-penguin variety and is a good long-term bet.

And for the record books, outpopulated or not, Maldives cracked 376 for 7 from their 50 overs before China were dismissed for 61.

Monty Panesar is forever talking about the right areas - well, while on holiday in South Africa after England's tour of India he found himself in the wrong area.

Walking near the Wanderers ground in Johannesburg he was stopped by two 'police officers' who claimed they were searching for drugs. The men asked for Panesar's mobile phone, and the ever-obliging left-arm spinner handed it over after being told he would get it back at the top of the hill. Lo and behold his phone was never returned.

"They took our mobile phones and stuff and said they were would meet us at the top of the hill," he told the Guardian. "They didn't appear in view. We weren't surprised. It wasn't particularly terrifying. We didn't get roughed up or anything."

Australia are currently clinging on to the No. 1 ranking in Tests and will be dethroned only if they lose the upcoming three-Test series in South Africa. The ICC, however, have taken the Test Championship trophy away from Australia to their headquarters in Dubai in anticipation that it could change hands.

Australia have held the trophy ever since it was introduced in 2001 apart from a few months in 2003 when South Africa were briefly No 1. "We have held it ever since the ICC Test rankings were introduced in May 2001, so apart from the four months in 2003 it's been with us," CA spokesman Peter Young was quoted as saying by Sydney Morning Herald. "Our building [Cricket Australia’s office in Melbourne] was designed around the trophy. We are most certainly planning to bring it back with us from South Africa. If that does not eventuate we may have to get some Polyfilla and fill the space in our foyer."

The ICC will present the trophy to the No 1 Test team at the end of Australia’s Test tour to South Africa.

Greg Chappell didn't make too many friends during his rough tenure as India's coach. And he definitely didn't impress Virender Sehwag, who has said he lost trust for the Australian legend.

"The thing with him was that whatever you shared with him, it was promptly disclosed to media and selectors," Sehwag told PTI. "He talked and that hurt the trust. I wasn't comfortable with him."

Neither was Sehwag pleased with the psychologist Rudi Webster, whom Chappell employed for sessions with the players. "I never went alone to Webster. In a session with Webster, we all had our chunk of time," said Sehwag. "I am one who believes that if you open up your thoughts to someone you trust, you feel lighter and thus better. But I found out that Webster couldn't keep things confidential."

According to Sehwag, the current coach Gary Kirsten was the "best" he had seen. "He doesn't force things on you," said Sehwag. "His basic premise is: you all are international cricketers and you know how to succeed and how important it is to succeed. So I won't thrust myself on you. But whenever you need me, for practice, throwing balls, sharing ideas, worries, I am always there."

Martin Crowe is shifting to Sky TV's rugby channel, and has rubbished reports that he was ousted from his cricket commentator position because of a clash with New Zealand Cricket. Crowe said he was "flabbergasted" at a comment from NZC chief executive Justin Vaughan in a weekend newspaper that some members of the national team would like to see the back of him.

"Ninety-nine percent of the time I'm incredibly positive about the players, I certainly wasn't that way about the former coach but I felt some of the things he did were very odd," Crowe told the Sunday News."The only time I've been critical of a player was with Aaron Redmond recently and that just didn't come out right and I quickly retracted what I said."

Crowe will continue to commentate on cricket this summer. "I've just found 10 years [as executive producer] a year too long," he told the Dominion Post. "In a new post within Sky Sport I will look to resurrect The Chosen Ones documentary series and also look to increase numbers watching the Rugby Channel among other new initiatives. I couldn’t be happier."

Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA) president Sharad Pawar will award Rs 60 lakh to the Mumbai team which won the Ranji Trophy, an amount equal to the winner's purse. He met all the team members at the MCA office ahead of the special AGM on Saturday.

“Mumbai dominated the games right through the season, except for a one-off bad game against Saurashtra at Rajkot,” said Dilip Vengsarkar, former chairman of the Mumbai selection committee and vice-president of the MCA.

New Zealand Cricket (NZC) chief executive Justin Vaughan is likely to talk to his counterparts at the New Zealand Rugby Union (NZRU) as he explores ways to deal with Jesse Ryder's alcohol problem.

The move comes after the NZRU fronted the All Blacks player Jimmy Cowan and fined him after a series of incidents involving excess alcohol consumption, which helped him cut the booze. NZC took a similar approach with Ryder, dropping him from a one-dayer and fining him after his drinking session in Wellington.

"I would like to speak to the NZRU to understand the protocols the All Blacks had around Jimmy Cowan's publicised problems," Vaughan told New Zealand-based daily, the Sunday Star Times. "I think we can share ideas with each other, although we have to remember every case is different."

Matthew Hayden and Harbhajan Singh have had a few spats and Hayden revealed after his retirement when it all began.

“I loved playing the people who geed me up, tell me I can't do something - that's what he [Harbhajan] told me the first time we met,” Hayden told the Sun-Herald. Australia was playing a practice match and he said, 'I hope you get picked for Australia.' He didn't know, but in that game I was trying to rotate the strike really defensively so I didn't show him any of my key strategies before the Test. I was batting rubbish and he had every right to say what he did. My comeback to him was saying, 'We'll see.' That's all I said.

“First ball he bowled in the Test, I ran down and hit him over the top of mid-off. I said, 'OK, there's my answer.' Because there's a language barrier, I think it may have sounded to him more offensive than it really was. There was always a real tension between us, but I respect what he's done in his career. And in his life, he has looked after his entire family. I respect that.”

The double-sided bat used by New South Wales batsman David Warner in a domestic match against South Australia was not the first experiment with such an innovation. Double-sided bats were trialled in India in 1982 to enable batsmen to play unconventional shots as forcefully as possible. The bat, first made in Meerut, was compressed from both sides, while its handle was built thin to provide balance.

“There was a lot of demand for special bats even later for Sixes tournaments. There was a craze for six-a-side tournaments held in Hong Kong, Singapore and Bangkok, and we made the bat specifically for those tournaments,” Rakesh Mahajan, the owner of bat-maker BDM told the Indian Express. “Before going for mass production, we gave away bats to players for practice. In fact, during the Singapore tournament, players like Kapil Dev, Arjuna Ranatunga, Joel Garner, Rumesh Ratnayake used those bats at the nets.”

However, the bats fell out of favour with players. “It wasn’t liked by players because they wanted something more conventional. There was very little scope for experimentation back then.

“These bats have one major drawback — there’s no meat on them. It’s good for players who prefer to time the ball, but this version of cricket [Twenty20] is all about force. In fact, these days players come to us with the demand of increasing the meat on the bat to 15 inches - which is not easy because the imported willow doesn’t have that much width.”

Sachin Tendulkar, though not worried about the survival of Test cricket in the wake of Twenty20 and ODIs, has said the declining attendance for Tests in India is an area of concern. “Test cricket has its own place. There is no threat to Test cricket from IPL or T20 World Cup or even 50-over matches. But I am only concerned about the falling attendance for Test matches in India,” he said.

However, he had a potential solution for the problem. "I have a suggestion for the BCCI. Whenever Test cricket is played, local school and college students should be allowed free entry on weekends so that 10 years down the line these children will become lovers of Test cricket,” Tendulkar said. "I remember when I was a 10-year old, I went to the Wankhede stadium and watched the West Indies in action. I still remember Michael Holding's bowling in that match."

Most reverse-sweeps still come off the front of the bat - Andrew Symonds' version of the stroke being an exception - but batsmen could soon have the option of using the back of their blade. A double-sided bat will be trialled during two Australian domestic Twenty20 games this week.

David Warner, the New South Wales batsman who has just signed up for the IPL, will use the bat against South Australia at the Adelaide Oval on Tuesday and Victoria's Aiden Blizzard will test it against Western Australia at the MCG on Thursday. Warner had a hit with the new-style bat in the SCG nets on Sunday and he said he didn't think it would significantly change the game.

"Generally when I'm playing the reverse I'm swapping hands, and now I don't really have to so it's going to be better. It gives you a couple of extra seconds," Warner told the Age. "If people think it's going to be an advantage to batsmen, I have to disagree.

"The person who is using the timber is in control, so I just see it as another shot for other people to try as well. Everyone is trying it these days, especially in Twenty20, so why not have the back of the bat flat as well? It makes it easier, but it's not a real advantage. You've still got to play the shot."