Volatility

With the players coming out at Lord's, one's thoughts switch back to the latest drama of the volatile, episodic, unfulfilled career of Shoaib Akhtar, sent home from South Africa before the Twenty20 World Cup has even started after a 'fight' in the dressing room with Mohammad Asif. Of course, it's hard to determine the truth at this stage, but it appears that Shoaib hit Asif with a bat, leaving him with a 'bruised thigh'.

It doesn't sound much, but, with Shoaib's record it might not take much to render the damage to his career terminal. It'll be interesting to see how Geoff Lawson tries to tackle a problem which many of his predecessors have failed to solve.

Meanwhile, at Lord's, India, toss won, are batting. Game on.

Pakistan

You can always trust Pakistan cricket to surprise you, and today we had the decisions to appoint Geoff Lawson as coach and to leave Inzamam out of their new list of centrally contracted players.

I was always a great fan of Lawson's commitment on the field and it's good to see someone such as him taking a conscious decision to step away from the commentary box comfort zone to take on one of the toughest jobs in world cricket.

Apparently the Inzamam decision wasn't unexpected for those who follow the Pakistan scene more closely than I do, but it seems, on the face of it, to be a bit ill-judged. Despite the advancing years, his form at Test level has remained quite solid and one wonders if it isn't a simply the product of a desire on the part of the PCB to move on from an era in which Inzamam was perhaps too closely identified with the late Bob Woolmer.

When a new coach begins working with Pakistan (and it seems to happen quite a lot) it's always interesting to see if they can succeed where their predecessors have failed. Lawson will be no exception.