Observers of the game have been worried about the growing importance of Twenty 20 and how it could adversely affect batting skills. But the format could add value to the game, writes Daryll Cullinan in Businessday.

A prime example was Duminy’s lap over the keeper’s head off Australian quickie Shaun Tait during the recent Twenty 20 series. It was one of the most amazing shots I have ever seen. The ball is going to new places in the field.

The new kids on the block have fresh minds and seem less paranoid about adapting between limited-overs cricket and Test cricket. Fifty-over cricket affected scoring rates in Test cricket for the better. Fielding also drastically improved and the need for athleticism, strength and power quickly became paramount. Can Twenty 20 take it even further, and is i ... Read more »

Australian cricket is in a pickle. Fingers have been pointed at a wide range of suspects - management, selectors, coach, captain and senior players - and all of them are partly to blame, writes Peter Roebuck in the Sydney Morning Herald.

The board must take responsibility for complacent appointments made and uninspired decisions taken over the past 18 months. In success mistakes can be buried, but once things start to go wrong they stand out like a night fire. Errors can become entrenched, eating into the culture.

Consider the decisions taken on the coaching side. Although the team has been struggling, another two years have been added to Tim Nielsen's contract. Nielsen is a fine fellow but unproven at this level ...

Nor did it seem sensible to ask Greg Chappell to lead the high p ... Read more »

Is cricket played as much with the head as with bat and ball? Though essentially a physical pastime, David Foot in his blog on the Guardian website tries to reason why the game in particular has appealed so much to men of letters, the poets, those with sensitive, philosophical natures.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle loved the game's swaying statistics with one theory superseding another as entrenched batsmen were ground down and then outwitted. His friends believed that the capture of a wicket was to him as fulfilling as the villain's nadir in the final chapter.

Michael Vaughan is very bad at singing - well music in general really. By his own admission, he's an awful singer but it doesn't stop him from belting them out from time to time. It gets more interesting in The Five Minute Interview with John Ma ... Read more »