Print Wrap: Daily dose of headlines

Every morning Cricketnirvana brings you a roundup of headlines from the leading national dailies across the cricketing nations. Here's what some of the newspapers are talking about…

Liposuction rules Shoaib out of tour

The controversial Pakistan fast bowler Shoaib Akhtar is out of the national reckoning in the near future after he opted to go for liposuction surgery to get into shape, writes Australian daily, The Sydney Morning Herald…

A SECRET attempt to lose weight through liposuction will keep Pakistani paceman Shoaib Akhtar out of the tour to Australia this summer.

Previously one of the world's most feared fast bowlers, Akhtar had grown so out of shape in recent months that he decided to have fat sucked from his midriff in a bid to return to the game slimmer and faster. Due to the operation, he will be sidelined for up to five months, which rules him out of Pakistan's three-Test and five-match one-day series in Australia starting Boxing Day.

The operation, conducted by a cosmetic surgeon in Islamabad, has not been received well by the Pakistan Cricket Board. It was unaware Akhtar was undergoing the procedure. But it seems his efforts might have been in vain, with the deputy director general of the Pakistan Sports Board, Dr Waqar Ahmad, saying the operation would help the bowler's appearance but would have no bearing on his future performance.

''The liposuction is a kind of cosmetic procedure and has nothing to do with the fitness of a player,'' Ahmad said. ''Mostly it is done for improving the figure and other cosmetic reasons whereas the shedding of weight of more than 12 kilograms might help him only when he will improve his muscle strength and stamina.

''Considering his age, I don't think he will be able to show any kind of improvement as compared to his last previous performance.
''The surgery took about three hours, and fat was removed from his abdomen, hip and back. As a sports medicine specialist, I can say that it will take around four to five months to come back in cricket.''

The PCB is refusing to cover any of Akhtar's expenses.

''He is a centrally contracted player, and he is supposed to consult our medical panel and inform us before undergoing any medical treatment but he didn't do this before opting for the liposuction,''

a PCB official said. Former Pakistan Test paceman Sarfraz Nawaz was disappointed in Akhtar, 34, after hearing of the procedure.
''He definitely has taken a wrong step,'' Nawaz told The News.

''It is like taking a shortcut to make your body trim and ready. He should have instead tried to reduce the weight and trim his physique through workouts.''

It is the second bizarre health story related to Akhtar this year. The 46-Test veteran threatened to sue his national board when it released a stunning media release in May revealing he would not play in the Twenty20 World Cup because he had contracted a sexually transmitted condition. ''The medical board has reported that Akhtar was suffering from genital viral warts,'' the PCB statement read….

No turning back to those lidless, fearless days of Sir Vivian Richards

British newspaper The Guardian writes about the intimidating and fearless sir Vivian Richards who thought helmets are a tool of the weak…

The great Sir Viv (no surname needed) has been sounding off. Modern batsmen, he feels, are namby-pambies, donning their armour as if preparing for the tilting yard, human frailties cocooned and camouflaged behind all the padding and helmet. How can you test a man's mettle if it doesn't at least smart a bit when he gets hit?

We need to take this with a pinch of salt. He is being mischievous, for once World Series cricket got under way and the first real helmets were introduced things were never going to be the same again. It was Viv himself and his protege Richie Richardson, the rim of whose marvellous sun hat appeared to grow in circumference year on year, like the rings on a tree, who were the last bastions of lidless batting against the quicks.

Viv was exceptional, of course, in my estimation quite the scariest batsman who ever lived, and I doubt ever wore anything more robust than his pads, box, thigh pad and gloves. He relied on reflex, quickness of eye, and technique to keep him out of trouble and I recall him telling me that only once did he get hit on the head and that a flea bite from the medium pace of Greg Chappell. 
Helmets, he felt ( and he did experiment with them in practice and I believe carried one in his case) unbalanced him, made him sluggish, encouraged complacency with the security and conveyed a message of fallibility. Nothing Viv did ever gave that impression, and it is hard to eyeball a bowler through a grille.

This is in no way to countenance a return to the helmetless days, which would be foolhardy and very probably illegal under health and safety regulations. But the evolution of protective headgear and padding has had an effect beyond simply the idea that very few now get any more than a mild wake-up call when hit on the head. For a start, the incidence of head strikes is much greater than it was pre helmets….

Everyone wants the Windies to be back to their funky best

Another Australian daily, The Age talks about the former West Indies greats and the need for the revival of West Indies Cricket for the future of Tests…

THE West Indies - who are famous for discovering drooby names from forgotten times, such as Vivian, Gordon, Garfield and Clive, and rejuvenating them with an essence of cool - will start the first Test against a B-grade Australian team as a sad and pathetic $10.50 outsider next week.

It is enough to make Viv turn in his grave - if he had one.

I worry about the West Indies, and I worry about cricket.

Writer Greg Baum says cricket needs ''night'' Tests to guarantee the survival of the long version of the game. Cricket commentator Peter Roebuck wants hulking, hairy-chested bowlers in chunky necklaces to pound them down on pitches made of venom and glass.

I agree; cricket is at its best when there's the possibility of carnage and having a bloke bowling 160ks on a hostile wicket, in the dark, is sure to drag the people in.

But cricket also needs the real West Indies back for it is only they who can name a child Collis or Desmond and get away with it.
In fact, when my first child was in the womb I presented to my wife every single West Indian cricketer's appellation I could think of (except Larry - sorry Leaping) as an option for our son's name: Alvin, Eldine, Curtly, Joel, Andy, Colin, Deryk, Vanburn, Viv, etc, and my wife looked at me like I had gone insane. And she was right.

No white parents could possibly call their son Vivian and expect that child not to be the plaything of the school-yard bully and grow up mentally and physically scarred.

Even names like Malcolm and Michael have whiffs of hip about them when they are the title of a West Indian fast bowler. And only the West Indians could do this. No matter how good Shane Warne, Adam Gilchrist and Glenn McGrath were, they could not turn their snore-fest Christian names into anything remotely funky.

Of course, the whole thing - like cricket - only works when the Windies are winning. And this is the real problem of cricket; too many sub-standard teams, too many meaningless matches, and players have conflicting interests which are tearing at Test cricket.
Even at $10.50, the West Indies are unwanted by punters, which is a tragic thing for cricket….

Andrew Strauss does not feel free to air a view on TV debate

The free to air coverage of the Ashes debate continues with England skipper Audrew Strauss expressing his views on the issue, writes The Times of england…

Andrew Strauss has declined to support the ECB’s campaign to continue being allowed to sell broadcast coverage of the Ashes in the free market after the recommendation that home Test matches against Australia should be part of television’s “crown jewels”, reserved for free-to-air coverage. 

The England captain preferred to cite both sides of the argument rather than explicitly back his employer, which has claimed that returning live Ashes matches to terrestrial broadcasters from 2016 would lead to significant cuts in funding for grassroots cricket, a reduction in central contracts and half the players in the county game being made redundant. 

Ben Bradshaw, the Minister for Culture, Media and Sport, is considering the recommendation of a working group led by David Davies, which suggested that the Ashes, shown exclusively live on Sky Sports in the summer, deserve the widest possible audience. 

Strauss described the case for a return to terrestrial television as “very important and very valid”, adding: “If more people watching a cricket match means that more people play, that is a huge benefit, but if you have more funding to allow people to play the game then that is important as well. There are two sides.” 

Despite being an economics graduate with an interest in current affairs, Strauss adopts a diplomatic line when political issues crop up. In this case, however, he hinted that the ECB and the Government may be able to find a compromise, without saying what that might be.