Toughness and a lack of nervousness are key for a keeper. One suspects they aren't a vital part of Haddin's make-up

For over a decade his best was saved for Australia, thrilling prime ministers and lesser folk - until this tour

What's the purpose of cricket commentary? To entertain and enlighten or to exaggerate and aggravate?

Lloyd's West Indians kept coming to Australia because they played good cricket and everyone made money from it. India and Australia keep playing because everyone makes money from it

We don't yet know what Virat Kohli will be, but he might have played the off-drive of the summer

In Melbourne he began both innings serenely, before losing form a bit. He now seems to need to think where once he barely had to

Eight years after he astonished Melbourne with 195 in a day, Sehwag is back. What will he produce this time?

From one-trick slog pony to Test cricketer - and, as always, the children knew first

Do slow left-armers lack something other spinners have?

The season's begun in Australia, and there's plenty of talk about the game

McCabe at the crease was the personification of batting with haste yet no hate. On his birth centenary, we remember the batting genius

Could a man with such a poor record in matters of Aboriginal rights have made a good president of the ICC?

The general public antipathy for Shane Watson may have more than a little to do with the ancient, hazy balance between the team and the individual

John Howard's one and only contribution has been to put paid to any hope of Muttiah Muralitharan touring Australia

A WACA innings where the batsman should, by rights, have gone on to make 400

In the drabbest hours of the game came a contest that breathed life back into it and gave birth to one of cricket's great rivalries

Cricket's greatest batsman was a colossal contradiction: a young visionary and an old reactionary; and he triggered the sport's first two great cataclysms

Commentary began in the early 1920s, but it really got going with "synthetic reports" by four men in a Sydney studio during the 1938 Ashes

Twelve years ago, Abdul Qadir, still good enough to turn out for Pakistan, spent a summer playing club cricket in Melbourne. The few who saw him remember it like it was yesterday

From a burnt bail to the biggest crowds, the highest ratings and the tallest hoopla