Andrew Strauss will captain England in the first Test against Pakistan. It has also been confirmed that Andrew Flintoff will take over when he returns from injury. That makes Flintoff THE England captain, right?

We’re fairly ambivalent about the captaincy pretensions of both Strauss and Flintoff. Strauss is rumoured to be ‘very astute’ or something, but he just lost a one-day series 5-0. If it were possible to lose a five match series by a greater margin, England would have done. It would have been about 8-0 we reckon. That would have been a fair reflection on the five matches played.

I’ve now watched live India’s winning moment at Headingley, Adelaide, Multan, Rawalpindi and Jamaica. No prizes for guessing who’s been man of the match in four of those five tests!

After a disastrous opening day, I then decided to turn to superstition. Like I mentioned in a post during India’s tour to Pakistan, superstition has a huge part to play while watching cricket.

On Saturday, I somehow chanced upon the formula. It was that I would not watch the game live for more than five minutes at a stretch. It worked like magic! West Indies folded up in barely two hours.

People who retire from work aged 60 have trouble adjusting to their new life. A life where everyday isn’t filled with spending time going to/from work, spending 8-10 hours at the workplace and being busy with work most of the time. A life probably spent reading the newspaper, watching TV, gardening, solving Sudoku puzzles, meeting up with other retired friends, being around with grandchildren occasionally, etc.

Imagine you’re 32, as some of you who’re reading this right now possibly are, and you’re told by your doctor that you can’t even think of working for the rest of the year. What’s more, in case the surgery doesn’t work out, you can kiss your career goodbye!

As India attempt to vanquish the demons that prevent them from winning a test series outside the sub continent, it would be worthwhile to look back at the tour on the whole and wonder how the Indians failed to live up to their expectations after beginning the tour on a winning note.

When they left the Indian shores, victory it seemed was almost a forgone conclusion against a struggling West Indian side that after an unlikely triumph at the champions trophy had sunk back to the outskirts of the cricketing fraternity. The Indians began their tour in fine style, with a resounding win over a rather hapless Jamaican XI. The batsmen had found their groove quickly and it seemed they had laid the foundation for run feasts in the ODI’s to come, but what was to follow was something not meant for weak hearts!