I am flabbergasted. If I was Rahul Dravid I would have bowed and said “excuse me sir, I play for India. Whose side are you on?” I suspect Dravid is trying harder to win in Australia than the secretary! India are in Australia for more than seventy days and it is difficult to keep the intensity up for so long (talking of which, how come Australia don’t come to India for seventy days?). If they lose the first Test, it will be a very very long tour.

Hopefully that will change. Meanwhile, there are other cricketing matters to look to. Like the future of four good cricketers who find themselves at home while their colleagues play in England. Virender Sehwag, Harbhajan Singh, Munaf Patel and Irfan Pathan can either be hurt and disappointed or look at it very positively since they have a lot of cricket in them still.

I actually believe the selectors have done Patel a good turn by leaving him out. He now has four months in which to become genuinely fit and strong. If he uses these four months well, he will return to the Indian team twice the player he has been. And using these months well means not listening to anybody who tells him anything to the contrary.

He will find people who tell him that he deserved to be in the side, maybe even that he has been sinned against, they will calculate his income lost. Such people will do him harm and the only reason I bring this up is that far too many young Indian cricketers have petty people around them. If Patel accepts the real reason he has been left out, and makes his comeback a challenge, he will play a lot of cricket. Otherwise he will watch a lot.

... contd.