Parents getting involved in pro sport

There's loads of them from Lewis Hamilton's father going everywhere with him to the father of Venus and Serena Williams. But the fact that Yuvraj had his mother tell the media what was wrong with him still made me smile - clearly his lung complaint has stopped Yuvraj from speaking or releasing statements on his own behalf. Hopefully his mother has him tucked up in bed with a mug of chicken soup.

And in another sport I see that Emmanuel Harinordoquy's father has got involved in a club game in France. Harinoroquy Senior went on to the pitch and tried to strike one of his son's opponents (although he missed) before being tackled to the ground by the opposition's fly-half. Fly-halves don't often get in the way of marauding number 8s, but apparently 61 year-old members of the public are more to their liking! It reminds me of Andrew Symonds taking out a streaker.

Of course, it can get worse than your mother having to tell the media about your ailments. Shoaib Akhtar had to put up with the Pakistan Cricket Board going public with his genital warts!

Disecting India's performance

Where do I begin?

1) Poor preparation - the wrong balance between rest and play for the West Indies series

2) Lack of warm-up fixtures for the rested players

3) Inconsistent selection - where was Murali Vijay, a like-for-like (almost) replacement for Sehwag, who would have taken the attack to England and possibly force them to change their initial bowling plans.

Where was Virat Kohli? He had a good tour of the West Indies but was jettisoned for Yuvraj Singh, a nothing bowler, a flat track bully of a batsman and a shadow of his old fielding self (before injuries).

4) Poor bowling - if the pitch is not doing anything and if the ball is not doing anything then you dry up the runs by bowling a consistent line outside off-stump and force the batsmen to make the mistake. This is something that England and South Africa have done, and something that India should have yesterday.

5) Abject field placings - that said consistent bowling needs the captain to set the right field. Dhoni not having a third-man for a large part of the innings gave England far too many cheap runs. Not having an orthodox fine leg didn't help either as the bowlers sprayed it. Also even for part-time spinners, you need to have an attacking field to create mistakes, yesterday it was like being at a dairy with all the milking that was going on.

That's just a few areas for development. The last two can be remedied for Edgbaston, but I'm not holding my breath that they will.

Indian Selectors confuse with Yuvraj Singh

I can't understand what they're up to in India with Yuvraj Singh who I've always thought was talented but inconsistent, which has meant (in my view at least) he's more of a one-day and Twenty20 player than a Test player. And yet India drop him from their ODI team but select him for their Test team.

Confusing....

India aim to recover from Zimbabwe losses

India have accepted a request from Sachin Tendulkar to spend more time at home rather than play in the Asia Cup and have tweaked their squad considerably having been humbled by Zimbabwe twice recently. Great to see that Zimbabwe are competing well, even considering the weakened teams that India and Sri Lanka selected. But India will need to get back to winning ways quickly to satify their public and it seems Yuvraj has been jettisoned by the BCCI following a series of insipid performances.

There seems great disappointment that India won't be sending a cricket team to the Olympics - perhaps Yuvraj can lead a second string team if he isn't playing in the 1st team.

England missing a trick

The Observer Sports Monthly magazine yesterday featured a small article talking about some of the "Bolly Wags" - girlfriends of some of the Indian cricket team currently doing so brilliantly against England. It appears from the article that MS Dhoni's girlfriend, Deepika Padukone, has previously gone out with Yuvraj Singh. So given that all else seems to have failed, I hope that England have at least tried to rile Yuvraj about this - perhaps they have and that's why they've only got him out once in four innings!

If reports are to be believed, KP's not averse to the odd comment to try to get under opponents skin with relationship comments - he famously told Shane Watson "you're just upset because no one loves you any more" when he'd just been dumped by his girlfriend.

Given how India are performing at the moment, a few comments to Yuvraj about how Miss Padukone considers MS to be a superior partner surely wouldn't go amiss. And, again if media stories are to be believed, when Dhoni comes in there's scope to rile him too, as various commentators have described it as "difficult to keep up" with who she's seeing.

Some are worried about sledging and it's role in cricket. But, in my opinion, anything none-physical goes and if England aren't having a few words when Yuvraj and MS are batting then they're missing a trick....after all, things can't go any worse, can they?