I felt honoured to have been a member of the panel that selected the ICC awards and without betraying how I voted, the awards went to the right players. I was particularly happy to see that Irfan Pathan was named as the emerging player of the year.

This is a young man of relatively humble origins who has made the big time and he is still learning and improving. Already he is being compared to Wasim Akram and there are calls that he should be batting higher in the order. The last genuine all-rounder that India had was Kapil Dev.

Pathan seems destined to be the next. But he will have to make sure that both his feet are firmly planted on the ground. Many a talented player has lost his way lured by sponsors who market the stars as they are commercial products.

There is a lot of money to be made in cricket, particularly in India where cricket stars have replaced Bollywood actors as the heart-throbs. Every other television commercial seems to feature Sachin Tendulkar. I am not sure that Sachin endorsing a product helps to sell it but it has certainly made him a rich man.

Nothing would please me more if Pathan could also become a rich man but for the moment he must not allow himself to be distracted and his main focus must be his cricket. By comparison, Pakistan television channels are poor cousins and though one sees Pakistan cricketers in television commercials and on hoardings. Financial limitations have made the practice limited.

Television is beginning to control cricket and the day can't be far when a selection committee is ordered to choose only those players who are photogenic. The team selected by Richie Benaud and company does not have Muttiah Muralitharan. Clearly this particular selection committee has been influenced by the controversy over his bowling action.

Murali has been one of the greatest spinners the game has known and as matters stand, he is not banned from bowling. He is nursing a shoulder injury and will be back in action soon, one hopes. Benaud was being judgmental and reflecting the prejudice of Australians in particular. He exceeded his authority.

Arjuna Ranatunga is perfectly right to call the selection a 'farce'. Since this selection committee was picked by the ICC, it has a sort of official validity. In his present form Kumar Sanggakara gets into the team. The Sri Lankans have been twice penalized.

I get a certain amount of feedback on my columns but I have received more than my share on the column I wrote last week on the 'confidential' letter that Malcom Speed wrote to Wasim Bari. Many felt that I had not been tough enough on the ICC CEO.

Wasim Bari telephoned me from London. He had read the column on the web and so too had Ehsan Mani. Bari did not tell me what Mani's reaction was. The PCB has maintained a silence, which is probably a good thing.

I just wanted to make a point and my only regret is that I failed to mention the insulting tone of Malcolm Speed's letter and failed to mention the lack of any sort of action against Ali Bacher, who had accused the Pakistan team of match-fixing in the 1999 World Cup in their game against Bangladesh, and had also accused the umpire Javed Akhtar of being in the pay of bookies in the England-South Africa Test series which South Africa lost. Bacher got have scot-free.

I wonder what Bacher's reaction would have been if a PCB official had accused a South African umpire of cheating or incompetence? Would the ICC have kept quiet? I doubt it very much.

My mind goes back to the Shakoor Rana-Mike Gatting slanging-match at Faisalabad. A two-man team of the then TCCB, Alan Smith and Raman Subba Row, had come to Pakistan and had held meetings with our then BCCP officials as well as members of the England team.

The England team was rewarded with a bonus of a thousand pounds (sterling) each and to add insult to injury this was called "hardship allowance". As far as I know there was no expression of regret for the loutish behaviour of the England captain.

I would have said that this is all in the past but this state of mind still persists. I doubt that Speed would have written such an insulting letter to the chairman of the selection committee of even the Indian Cricket Board, what to say of Australia, England, South Africa or New Zealand.

The ICC Champions Trophy has got off to a slow start and the minnows are being weeded out. Playing cricket in the middle of September in England is dicey. September is a month that heralds the autumn, when the leaves start to turn brown and the air begins to get nippy.

September marks the end of the England cricket season. Kipling wrote of mad dogs and Englishmen going out in India's midday sun. It seems a little daft to schedule such an important cricket tournament in weather that is so un-cricket.