Two days after I write something on Tendulkar and 20 years at the top, he reiterates one of my points about the true definition of greatness – how you perform against the very best. You can read it here.

After the Thrilla in Manila, Muhammad Ali was to say: “Joe Frazier, I’ll tell the world right now, brings out the best in me.” The cricketers of India and Australia appear to operate on the same principle. India, such a disappointment at the Champions Trophy in South Africa, have rediscovered their spirit. Australia, with an injury list that makes Rafael Benítez’s woes at Liverpool look trivial, have shown the same fortitude that Frazier did on that long-ago night when he was reduced to fighting from memory.

After falling four runs short in Vadodara, India were markedly superior in both Nagpur and Delhi. When they then produced their best fielding and bowling display of the series – four run-outs included – to restrict Australia to 250 on a beautiful batting pitch in Mohali, it seemed as though the series tide was about to turn decisively their way.

You can read the full article here.

He feels so unlike everybody else, alone

In spite of the fact that some people still think that they know him

But **** ‘em, he knows the code

It’s not about the salary

It’s all about reality and making some noise

The noise associated with Afridi’s batting ever since he exploded on to the scene 13 years ago has been Boom Boom. Virender Sehwag destroys attacks with far greater consistency, and Albie Morkel can hit the ball further, but when it comes to reducing batsmanship to its most primal form, no one does it quite like Afridi. In doing so, he often brings out the Neanderthal in the fans too.

I recall a game at Kanpur in April 2005. Pakistan had come from two down to square the series, and with President Musharraf and Manmohan Singh to be part of the audience for the final game in Delhi, the match at Green Park had real significance. It was hardly a batting paradise either. The sluggish pitch and accurate bowling had stymied India’s top order, but with Rahul Dravid and Mohammad Kaif finding form, Pakistan needed to score at exactly five an over to win.

Enter Afridi and Salman Butt, and two quiet overs to start. Then carnage. Lakshmipathy Balaji clipped off the pads for a six and a four. Then a straighter ball met with a booming drive. Caught, but only by one of the groundstaff down at long-off. And to finish the over, a cut so withering it could have come from Gordon Greenidge’s bat.

With red lights flashing, Dravid turned to an old hand, Anil Kumble. It wasn’t an auspicious start. A full toss to Afridi is like wearing a red shirt during the running of the bulls in Pamplona. Six over square leg. The next delivery was well outside off stump and pretty full. From a legspinner. Afridi though doesn’t do conventional. Smeared over midwicket for six. Change of plan from Kumble, round the wicket. Muscled over mid-off for four more. And then some nifty footwork the precursor to a mighty heave for six. Kumble would concede 54 in 10 overs, 22 of them in those six balls to Afridi.

He needed 20 balls for his half-century and by the time Harbhajan Singh sneaked one past him, he had made 102 from 46 balls. In the 15th over, Pakistan had stormed to 131. They won with eight overs to spare. All applause is usually frowned upon in the press box, but on that particular day, I was one of several that stood up and clapped when he reached his century.

It was an open-air enclosure, and in the stand adjacent to us, there was several lumpen elements who jeered each stroke and constantly chanted anti-Pakistan slogans. Judging by the bandanas and other paraphernalia that many of them wore, they owed allegiance to a Hindu nationalist party that isn’t fond of Pakistan or Muslims in general. Unknown to me, I had been spotted.

Later that afternoon, as I made my way out of the ground, two of them were still loitering. Both were drunk – some effort, since alcohol certainly isn’t allowed into the cheap seats at Indian grounds – and the mood was distinctly hostile. One of them approached me, as full of menace as Afridi had been earlier in the day, and hissed: “Sharam nahin aati [Don't you feel any shame]?” The presence of a couple of cops nearby gave me the confidence to sweetly say: “No. Should I?” and saunter off. It could have been ugly though.

Those fans were an exception. By and large, supporters of all nationalities love to see an Afridi-like character in action. In Pakistan, he enjoys a status that far outstrips his modest record. And it’s been that way ever since the boy who was allegedly 16 clubbed a 37-ball hundred against Muttiah Muralitharan, Chaminda Vaas and friends at a Nairobi Gymkhana Ground that was way too small to contain his exuberant hitting.

“My brother-in-law was at the ground in Kenya that day,” says Sajid Sadiq, who runs the hugely popular Pakpassion website. “He told me: ‘We were all saying Shahid Who? when his name was announced, but left the stadium at the end of the game shouting ‘Afridi, Afridi’. ‘We certainly knew his name after that innings’.”

The adoration from the crowd has been a double-edged sword in some ways. In a television interview a few years ago, he admitted as much. “While in the dressing room, I try to remain calm and think about building my innings,” he said. “But when I go out there, it’s like hitting a wall of sound and I forget whatever we had discussed minutes earlier. I just try and smash every ball.”

There have been few batsmen who fill, and empty, seats in quite the same way. Rizwan Ehsan Ali, who writes for the Associated Press in Pakistan, remembers a game against South Africa two years ago. “It was at the Gaddafi Stadium and Pakistan had lost a few wickets early in the run chase. There was a huge crowd of around 28 or 30,000 at the stadium and to a man, woman and child, they were hoping that Afridi would play a matchwinning knock. However, as usual, he was caught while trying to clear the fence. Within minutes, the stadium was empty. Whether he scores 0 or 100, he is for sure a big crowd puller. These days, even if he nudges a ball for a single, he gets huge applause, as if he has completed a century.”

After 276 games though, Afridi has only four hundreds to his name, the last of them that whirlwind effort in Kanpur that dismayed the fundamentalist fringe near me. In recent seasons, he has been picked mainly for his bowling. Ostensibly a legspinner, he wreaks most devastation with a quicker delivery that has been timed at speeds in excess of 80 miles an hour. In fact, he started out as a fast bowler , a young man idolising Imran Khan, and he says that he switched to spin only because “people told me that I was chucking the ball”.

Though he last played a Test three years ago, Afridi can also boast of one of the great innings of our age. The Chennai Test of 1999 is destined to be remembered for Sachin Tendulkar’s epic, if ultimately futile 136, but it was Afridi that broke the game open for Pakistan. On a pitch where the run-rate was around three an over, he thumped 21 fours and three sixes on his way to 141 from 191 balls. It was only his second Test, and it hasn’t been forgotten. “It’s an innings that I remember vividly to this day,” he said in an interview to Pakpassion. India were at the receiving end of two other centuries [Lahore and Faisalabad] in 2006, and his constant baiting of Irfan Pathan and refusal to take a backward step had the crowds baying for more.

But it’s when he dons the dark green one-day outfit that Afridi becomes a Superman in spectators’ eyes. Opposing teams had presumably found some Kryptonite though, because his form in the build-up to the World Twenty20 in England was dismal. Instead of Boom Boom, it was Whimper Whimper, and you had to go back more than a year to find a half-century. When he promptly holed out for 0 during a warm-up game where India handed out an embarrassing nine-wicket drubbing, it seemed that Afridi was playing his way out of the team.

But the man who says he would have joined the army but for his cricketing talent refused to go quietly. Younis Khan, a fellow Pathan, kept faith, and Afridi’s miserly bowling was crucial as the Netherlands, surprise conquerers of England, were overwhelmed in a game that Pakistan simply had to win to progress. He then came good with both bat and ball against New Zealand and Ireland as a semi-final place was clinched.

I was at Trent Bridge when Pakistan took on South Africa, and the atmosphere was such that it could easily have been a home game. First, he batted with unusual restraint while making 51 from 34 balls. There were no sixes, just a steely-eyed stare each time the bowlers got too close. Then, with the ball, he took 2 for 16, ripping deliveries through the defences of Herschelle Gibbs and AB de Villiers, two of the better players of spin in the side. Pakistan won by seven runs, and Afridi had his date with destiny at Lord’s. Outside the ground, fans celebrated with a cacophony of car horns, chants of “Pakistan zindabad” and “Afridi, Afridi”.

A decade earlier, he had played a 50-over World Cup final, part of a Pakistan side defeated in Twenty20 time by Steve Waugh’s rampant Australians. Given a shot at redemption, he grabbed it with the ferocity with which he greets you – “I thought my hand was going to fall off after I shook hands with Afridi,” said Ian Chappell once.

First, the Sri Lankans were kept to 138, with Afridi taking 1 for 20, and then he came out and batted in a fashion that made you wonder if an imposter was at the crease. His unbeaten 54 contained just two fours and two sixes, and was as mature and calculated an innings as you could hope to see. After more than a decade, the Boy Wonder of Nairobi had finally grown up.

*This article was first published in SA Cricket magazine.

After missing out on Kieron Pollard, New South Wales are said to have their eyes on Rohit Sharma and Dinesh Karthik. If something comes of it, both players – currently out of India’s 50-over picture – would benefit hugely from the experience. Karthik has impressed me each time I’ve seen him play for the Delhi Daredevils, and Rohit seems to revel in the format. Australian pitches are nowhere near as pace-and-bounce friendly as they used to be, and I can see both men making a mark if given the chance. They’ll certainly become better players as a result.

Clumsy dives over the ball, with a lack of elegance that would make Jürgen Klinsmann cringe. Batsmen marooned in the crease admiring strokes that don’t make it to the boundary. Catches grassed, run-out chances squandered. Made-for-TV throws at the stumps when a simple lob to the wicketkeeper would do. The fielding coach sacked before a game had been played. If India do go on to defeat Australia in the ongoing seven-match one-day series, it’s almost certainly going to be despite their fielding and not because of it. That they’re even considered one of the top teams in the world when nearly half the squad are a liability in the field is a miracle in itself.

Some, though, are beginning to lose patience. In his column for the Mumbai Mirror, Suresh Menon, one of India’s most experienced cricket writers, harked back to a forgettable past. “In the early days of Indian cricket, the Maharajahs thought nothing of actually having their servants fielding for them,” he wrote. “Not even a Test captain — the Maharajkumar of Vizianagaram — was above this.

You can read the full article here.

Around half an hour after the India-Australia series began in Vadodara, Huma Akram passed away in a Chennai hospital. The World Cup final at the MCG apart, Chennai was probably the scene of Wasim Akram’s finest hour, as his Pakistan team won a thrilling Test by 12 runs a decade ago. More important than the result though was the standing ovation that they got from the crowd at Chepauk. There’ll be plenty of people who were in the stands that day who’ll shed a tear for the Pakistan legend today. Australia may have won a close game on Sunday, but it was one of those occasions when sport ceased to matter. Compared to matters of life and death, what’s a game of cricket?

The eventual margin of defeat flattered India. But for Shane Watson’s predictable full tosses outside off stump and Peter Siddle bizarrely opting to go round the wicket, they wouldn’t have got so close, and an undeserved victory would have brushed under the carpet shoddy attention to basics. Credit to Harbhajan Singh and Praveen Kumar for taking India close, but when you make so many mistakes, you don’t deserve to cross the line.

Ishant Sharma showed signs of returning to something like form with a decent spell, but that was offset by pretty awful bowling from Praveen and Harbhajan. At the pace that he bowls, Praveen can’t afford to drop the ball short or stray both sides of the wicket. If he gets carried away thinking that he’s a fast bowler, he’ll get pasted like he did today. When he keeps it tight and full and swings it away, he’s far more of a threat.

Harbhajan could watch how Nathan Hauritz bowled today. On surfaces like this that are full of runs, sticking to the basics is a far better option. Until he went for a few at the end, Hauritz’s first eight overs cost just 21. Most importantly though, India simply must field better to give Australia a game. Some of the outfielding was just wretched, and the trend of batsmen standing back to admire shots instead of running full pelt needs to be addressed immediately. India played out 162 dot balls to Australia’s 139. The role model in that regard was Michael Hussey, whose 54-ball 73 included just nine balls that he didn’t score from.

With Yuvraj Singh due to return, both India’s batting and bowling will improve, and they can take heart from the fact that they got so close despite being so sloppy. On the flip side, Siddle and Brett Lee will surely improve after their Champions League exertions, and Watson’s likely to think twice before floating full tosses outside off stump. It should be an interesting series.

Once they know that they’re driving you to a cricket ground, cabbies in India can be loquacious company, some with views so trenchant that they’d make the loons on the 606 phone-ins blush. Over the last fortnight, though, there’s been barely any cricket chat, despite the stadiums in Delhi and Hyderabad being far from the madding crowd.

One cabbie in Delhi even asked if I was going to watch India play Australia [there is a one-day game on 31 October]. When I told him I was about to watch the Daredevils, he just shook his head. At the next traffic light, he turned to me and said: “How can you watch these games? The [Indian] players are all split up. I wouldn’t even know who to cheer for.”

Unlike many fellow journalists who see the event as an unwelcome addition to an overcrowded calendar, I’m not a Champions League cynic. I’ve watched more than a dozen matches live, and seen some great performances.

You can read the full article here.

A little over a week ago, in an interview with a news magazine, Manoj Prabhakar referred to Venkatesh Prasad, India’s bowling coach, as a baggage handler. He blamed Prasad for the downturn in fortunes of India’s pace bowlers, especially Ishant Sharma.

Now, the Board of Control for Cricket in India has sacked Prasad, and Robin Singh, the fielding coach. There was no courtesy call first to inform either man. Prasad got the news from the media. Baggage-handler, eh? I bet they aren’t treated so shabbily after two and a half years of service.

As for young bowlers losing the plot, maybe the board would do well to listen to one of their own. “One of the senior players called up after the Champions Trophy and said other players [youngsters] did not feel it [the loss as much as him], said Ratnakar Shetty, the chief administrative officer in a recent interview with PTI. “He said there was no feeling whether we won or not. There is no sadness [after losing].”

“You can see the change in attitude and focus which seems to have gone to things other than cricket. They are attracted by the different style of entertainment that is part of these events. This is worrisome. Some of these youngsters have become very big. Some of them feel that playing in Ranji Trophy is not as important as playing in the IPL.”

Didn’t anyone see this coming, when young men with not even one consistent season behind them went for twice the money that Glenn McGrath, Ricky Ponting and Shane Warne did? As you sow…