Cyprus - Treasure Island Trauma

Paul Krugman in The New York Times

A couple of years ago, the journalist Nicholas Shaxson published a fascinating, chilling book titled “Treasure Islands,” which explained how international tax havens — which are also, as the author pointed out, “secrecy jurisdictions” where many rules don’t apply — undermine economies around the world. Not only do they bleed revenues from cash-strapped governments and enable corruption; they distort the flow of capital, helping to feed ever-bigger financial crises.

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Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Paul Krugman

 

 

One question Mr. Shaxson didn’t get into much, however, is what happens when a secrecy jurisdiction itself goes bust. That’s the story of Cyprus right now. And whatever the outcome for Cyprus itself (hint: it’s not likely to be happy), the Cyprus mess shows just how unreformed the world banking system remains, almost five years after the global financial crisis began.

So, about Cyprus: You might wonder why anyone cares about a tiny nation with an economy not much biggerthan that of metropolitan Scranton, Pa. Cyprus is, however, a member of the euro zone, so events there could trigger contagion (for example, bank runs) in larger nations. And there’s something else: While the Cypriot economy may be tiny, it’s a surprisingly large financial player, with a banking sector four or five times as big as you might expect given the size of its economy.

Why are Cypriot banks so big? Because the country is a tax haven where corporations and wealthy foreigners stash their money. Officially, 37 percent of the deposits in Cypriot banks come from nonresidents; the true number, once you take into account wealthy expatriates and people who are only nominally resident in Cyprus, is surely much higher. Basically, Cyprus is a place where people, especially but not only Russians, hide their wealth from both the taxmen and the regulators. Whatever gloss you put on it, it’s basically about money-laundering.

And the truth is that much of the wealth never moved at all; it just became invisible. On paper, for example, Cyprus became a huge investor in Russia — much bigger than Germany, whose economy is hundreds of times larger. In reality, of course, this was just “roundtripping” by Russians using the island as a tax shelter.

Unfortunately for the Cypriots, enough real money came in to finance some seriously bad investments, as their banks bought Greek debt and lent into a vast real estate bubble. Sooner or later, things were bound to go wrong. And now they have.

Now what? There are some strong similarities between Cyprus now and Iceland (a similar-size economy) a few years back. Like Cyprus now, Iceland had a huge banking sector, swollen by foreign deposits, that was simply too big to bail out. Iceland’s response was essentially to let its banks go bust, wiping out those foreign investors, while protecting domestic depositors — and the results weren’t too bad. Indeed, Iceland, with a far lower unemployment rate than most of Europe, has weathered the crisis surprisingly well.

Unfortunately, Cyprus’s response to its crisis has been a hopeless muddle. In part, this reflects the fact that it no longer has its own currency, which makes it dependent on decision makers in Brussels and Berlin — decision makers who haven’t been willing to let banks openly fail.

But it also reflects Cyprus’s own reluctance to accept the end of its money-laundering business; its leaders are still trying to limit losses to foreign depositors in the vain hope that business as usual can resume, and they were so anxious to protect the big money that they tried to limit foreigners’ losses by expropriating small domestic depositors. As it turned out, however, ordinary Cypriots were outraged, the plan was rejected, and, at this point, nobody knows what will happen.

My guess is that, in the end, Cyprus will adopt something like the Icelandic solution, but unless it ends up being forced off the euro in the next few days — a real possibility — it may first waste a lot of time and money on half-measures, trying to avoid facing up to reality while running up huge debts to wealthier nations. We’ll see.

But step back for a minute and consider the incredible fact that tax havens like Cyprus, the Cayman Islands, and many more are still operating pretty much the same way that they did before the global financial crisis. Everyone has seen the damage that runaway bankers can inflict, yet much of the world’s financial business is still routed through jurisdictions that let bankers sidestep even the mild regulations we’ve put in place. Everyone is crying about budget deficits, yet corporations and the wealthy are still freely using tax havens to avoid paying taxes like the little people.

So don’t cry for Cyprus; cry for all of us, living in a world whose leaders seem determined not to learn from disaster.

Why Ukip, the Tea party and Beppe Grillo pose a threat to the mainstream

These populists are asking the right questions, but they don't have the answers. Mainstream parties must revitalise and respond

• 
• • Anthony Painter
  • guardian.co.uk, Sunday 24 March 2013 14.13 GMT

Ukip supporters with 'Thank you' leaflets in Eastleigh, where the party came second in the recent byelection. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

The rise of populism across western Europe and the US – especially in its radical right form – poses more fundamental questions for democrats than has been acknowledged. Whether we are talking about Ukip, Beppe Grillo's Five Star Movement or the Tea Party, populists of all kinds are exposing old and hidden fault lines in democracy, and mainstream democrats need a greater alertness to the nature of the threat. Modern democracy, like a hot-air balloon untethered from the ground, is suddenly floating free and its destination is not yet known.

Populists pose a basic question: why is democracy not run as the true expression of a morally pure "will of the people" against a self-serving and corrupt political, bureaucratic, plutocratic or legal elite? This is a forceful question as old as democracy itself and it reveals what has become liberal democracy's unspoken compromise – democracy is bounded by institutions, laws and constitutional limits. It is democracy through pluralism and compromise; "minorities rule" as the American democratic theorist, Robert Dahl, described it. For populists, the problem with this notion is that they have their eyes on what they perceive as the majority (it usually isn't, in fact) against constitutional, legal or international constraints that have been placed on the "general will".

Mainstream democrats take their cue from American republican democracy with its checks and balances and self-restraint. This is an impediment to the true democracy for populists. They wish to sweep away any barrier to their desired ends – whether of the left or the right.

So the Tea Party proposes a radical reduction of the role of the federal government in the US political system. The FPÖ challenged the authority of Austrian courts with respect to upholding minority rights. Ukip demands a UK withdrawal from the EU. The Front National drives an anti-Islamic and anti-Gypsy agenda in France. Geert Wilders' PVV – following in the footsteps of Pim Fortuyn – also confronts fears over the growth of Islam and its purported incompatibility with Dutch values. Venezuela's Hugo Chavez created a parallel state and augmented his own constitutional power. Viktor Orbán's Fidesz rewrote the Hungarian constitution to give the executive more authority over the courts and to safeguard "traditional family values".

The binding element to all of these movements and parties is that they are not simply seeking to compete for ideas, policies and power but want to change the rules of the democratic game in favour of executive, majority rule. They are democrats but majority rule is their guiding force rather than a legally enshrined pluralism with minority protection. As my new Policy Network report, Democratic Stress, the Populist Signal and Extremist Threat shows, the upshot is modern (liberal) democracy in a state of stress.

Underlying the growth of these populist movements is a series of stressors that come to bear on liberal democracy and its mainstream party systems. They are socioeconomic, cultural and political in nature.

As the economy has moved away from mass production and many have lost out, socioeconomic change has loosened the ties of parties. Austerity looms large but is one factor among many. The rise of a politics of plural cultural identities catalysed by modern technology, transport, communications and media has further loosened the grip of mainstream parties on a solid and predictable base. Finally, political changes such as the expansion of the EU's acquis communautaire and the increasing comfort of mainstream parties within the system has created an opening for political challenger brands. Those challenger brands are the populists – more so than the green movement and even nationalists.

Mainstream parties have to prove that republican, pluralistic democracy, despite its frustrations and complexities, can be navigated through the trade-offs that all societies face better than populism can. More often than not, populists have simplistic and, in the worst case, highly damaging policies which if ever enacted, could cause significant harm. The desire for a return to economic growth, a sustainable welfare state or reducing debts is just as great as controlling immigration more tightly or seizing significant powers back from the EU. Mainstream parties can cope with these trade-offs between these demands and needs better than populists can – as long as they craft a viable statecraft.

Just maybe there is some truth in the populist critique of political elites – in Brussels, Washington and right through western democracies – and the way they have embedded their own self-interest in the system. Mainstream parties have lost their edge. They have grown comfortable, closed and politically nepotistic – relying on voters having nowhere else to go. That works for a while but becomes progressively more difficult to sustain. Mainstream democracy needs to become a contact sport again – with greater openness and engagement between the people and those who seek to represent them. Parties need to open up to real change and diversity.

Populism doesn't have the answers – you don't need to be Thomas Jefferson, James Madison or even Edmund Burke to see that. In many ways, however, it is posing some of the right questions. New policy approaches are necessary but not sufficient. The political mainstream needs to ask more fundamental questions of itself and its ability to govern with real legitimacy. That is if they are not to continue to age as the societies around them age. People will be left with a choice between a tired political mainstream elite and populists with all of the answers but few solutions. It's not a choice many will savour.

The placebo effect is present in every medical intervention

The western concept of an autonomous self does not account for how a doctor's beliefs can influence the patient's health

• 
• • Philippa Perry
  • guardian.co.uk, Thursday 21 March 2013 14.32 GMT

'A contributing factor of the effectiveness of the placebo is the reputation, charisma and convictions of the doctor administrating it.' Photograph: Stockbyte/Getty Images

A recently published study declared that 97% of 783 GPs admitted that they had recommended a sugar pill or a treatment with no established efficacy. This is not a scandal because a placebo is an effective, proven intervention that stimulates our bodies' own capacity to heal itself.

The placebo effect is present in every medical intervention, not just those procedures, such as sugar pills, where the placebo effect is the only known agent at work. To understand exactly how it works would be the equivalent of understanding in full how our mind influences our physical heath, and I expect we still have plenty more to discover in that area.

The concept of the self being an autonomous being is a deeply held belief in western civilisation, but we affect each other all the time. If our doctors wholeheartedly believe that the treatments they are giving us have every chance of working, we are more likely to believe it too. I don't know if this is the effect of mirror neurons or quantum physics, but it happens. It's not that the doctor is just a technician treating our disease, but is also a person who influences us. Bedside manner is more than an optional add-on luxury. If a doctor's influence makes us feel more positive about our health, it will make us more optimistic, and our optimism has a direct effect on our health. For example, research has shown our expectations about recuperation or complications significantly serve as self-fulfilling prophecies for how we recover after surgery.

In 1955, the inventor of the double-blind design form of testing, Henry K Beecher, discovered that 35% of patients found satisfactory relief from a placebo. It is thought that a contributing factor of the effectiveness of the placebo is the reputation, charisma and convictions of the doctor administrating it, as these affect a patient's belief system. In Beecher's study, this might have been missing, because the dispenser of the drug would have known that the drug might just be a sugar pill – so this 35% may be a conservative estimate of the efficacy of placebo.

These days, when testing the placebo effect, we can get the MRI scanner in on the act. Tor D Wager conducted a study in 2004 with a placebo cream he told the subjects would take away pain. He then inflicted pain on them and watched them in the scanner. Those who had been given the cream (the control group had nothing) showed "placebo effect patterns" in the prefrontal cortex. This part of the brain activates when anticipating pain relief and triggers a reduction of activity in pain-sensing areas of the brain. Wager suggests that this interplay within the prefrontal cortex may also trigger a release of pain-relieving opioids in the midbrain.

So when you look your toddler in the eye and kiss his boo boo better, you are probably setting this process into play. You could say, "let me trigger a reduction in your pain sensing brain activity", but "mummy kiss it better" works fine.

Cricket - Imran Khan on Pataudi

  

PTI  

 

Former Pakistan skipper Imran Khan revealed that during his formative years he looked up to Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi for inspiration.

Addressing a gathering at the Tiger Pataudi Memorial Lecture here on Monday, Imran said there was certain enigma about Tiger Pataudi whose academic qualification was equally noteworthy as his cricketing exploits.

“I grew up admiring two persons. One was my first cousin Javed Burki and the other being Mansoor Ali Khan... The duo played together at the Oxford University about a decade before me.”

“My idol (Burki) would tell me if Mansoor Ali Khan had not lost vision in one eye, he would have broken all the records. The quality of strokes he could play with one eye, mere mortals cannot play...”

He further said that what made Pataudi different was he had quality education along with playing international cricket, something that had helped on the field.

“I had always looked up to him. Excelling in education and playing international sport is the most difficult thing to. It takes incredible willpower. But once you do it you have huge advantage,” he said.

“We were in awe of Tiger. He was so casual. Cricket was not his bread and butter. If it become your profession, you would never take the risk to achieve great heights. You would always try to play safe. You aim high, take risks and develop this fearlessness. What makes you invincible is self-belief.”

Imran believes that Tiger Pataudi's on-field flamboyance had a lot to do with the fact that he believed that cricket was a game which should be enjoyed.

“Tiger treated cricket as something which was to be enjoyed. That's why he was so flamboyant and had the charisma.”

Cricket - Pataudi on field placings for Prasanna

 

 

S. DINAKAR

   

The Hindu ArchivesVIGNETTES FROM THE PAST: From left: Bishan Singh Bedi, Abid Ali, Mayor of Melborune R.T. Talbot, Erapalli Prasanna and skipper Tiger Pataudi during India’s tour of Australia in 1967-68.

 

Technically and strategically brilliant, Tiger Pataudi was a path-breaking captain for India; he was always a move ahead of his adversary.

An aggressive skipper required an equally attacking bowler as his sword arm. In this context, off-spinning wizard Erapalli Prasanna and Pataudi were kindred spirits.

In the historic clash of 1968 in New Zealand, where India registered its first overseas series triumph, Prasanna claimed 24 wickets in four Tests at 18.79.

In the earlier leg of the tour against a strong Australia team, Prasanna grabbed 25 wickets in four Tests at 27.44.

Pataudi, as Prasanna revealed to The Hindu, was a huge influence on him. The off-spinning great provided us with a fascinating insight into how Pataudi discussed field placings with him.

“His logic was that a right-handed batsman must play a leg-spinner on the off-side and an off-spinner on the on-side. He also used to say that unless I turned the ball too much, which would allow the batsman to play me fine, there was no need for a fine-leg.”

Scientific reasoning

Prasanna elaborated, “Initially I had a deep fine-leg and he modified it into a deep square-leg to the right of the umpire.

“If you draw a straight line between the two short-legs, forward and backward which he stationed for me, you would reach the deep square-leg which Tiger had suggested. Everything he said had a scientific reasoning. Then I had a squarish mid-on in the 30-yard circle and a mid-on.

“By making the batsmen reach out for the ball on the off-side with flight, he told me I could have them caught on the on-side if I imparted the right amount of spin,” the off-spinning great said.

Coming up with an example, Prasanna recalled how a silly point was removed for all-rounder Bernard Julien in the dramatic Test at Chepauk in the 1974-75 series. “This was done to provide the batsman a sense of space on the off-side since there was no silly point. Julien reached out and I got him caught and bowled on the on-side.”

Prasanna said, “Tiger made me visualise the field. I asked him why he was not having a long-on for me.

“He answered, ‘if the batsmen try to hit you from down the pitch, the ball, because of the revolutions on it, would travel at a 30-degree angle to be picked up near the 30-yard line at the squarish mid-on. And he said if the batsmen attempted to scoop me out of the park, the drift on the ball would see them play too early and force them to sky it between mid-on and mid-wicket.”

Tiger and Prasanna relished hunting down batsmen. The illustrious off-spinner remembers, “He would have four fielders on the off-side and rarely had a point for me. He would tell me that if the batsmen tried to cut me then I could get them.

“Tiger usually posted a silly mid-off, almost in line with the popping crease, a slip, an extra-cover and a short third-man or a gully for me. He would attempt to lure the batsmen with the large gap to the left of extra cover.”

Bold customer

Pataudi and Prasanna came across an equally bold customer in Ian Chappell during India's tour of Australia in 1967-68.

“Tiger told me that Chappell would jump out to smother the spin. We thought about it and decided on a short mid-on since I could make the ball hang in the air. Chappell had his moments but we also had him picked up at short mid-on on the uppish drive.”

Prasanna recollects how Pataudi made him aware of a batsman's blind spot.

“I was bowling round the wicket to the left-handed Australian Bill Lawry. Tiger asked me to come over the wicket and enlightened me about a batsman's blind spot, between the leg and the middle stumps. From a bowler's angle, it would appear to be on the right of the leg-stump. I pitched it in the right spot and the obdurate Lawry was finally dismissed.”

On another occasion, during the 1975 Test against the West Indies in Madras, Pataudi anticipated that Clive Lloyd would come after the bowling. “He still implored me to flight the ball. Lloyd thundered down the track, I got the ball to dip, and the batsman was stumped by a mile,” said Prasanna.

The gifted off-spinner had only one word to describe Pataudi. “He was a ‘genius',” he said in admiration.

Press regulation: a victory for the rich, the celebrated and the powerful

This new press regulator is all about revenge, not justice. It's hard to imagine a more chilling deterrent to serious investigation

• 
• • Simon Jenkins
  • The Guardian, Tuesday 19 March 2013 20.30 GMT

Illustration by Matt Kenyon

We can agree that the press had it coming. The victims needed revenge. Celebrities wanted redress. A few tabloid moguls got a bloody nose, and Ed Miliband got to meet Hugh Grant.But what happened on Monday in Westminster was a ludicrous way to engineer a more disciplined press. We do not have an independent regulator, but the agency of a political stitch-up. Any MP who claims this is not statutory regulation is a liar, and should be forced to retract and apologise, or face a million pound fine.

Press laws should not be written in the dead of night by a coalition of those worsted by newspapers. They have produced not just a royal charter, which might be no big deal, but a detailed remit of how a press regulator should operate, down to the prominence of apologies and the size of fines. MPs on Monday were salivating with regulatory power. The truth is that parliament was drinking deep from the well of disgust and revenge. As the veteran MP Peter Lilley bravely remarked, whenever parliament gloats over such deals "we invariably make our worst blunders".

Last month the distinguished US journalist Lawrence Wright came over to seek British publication of Going Clear, his detailed exposé of Scientology already published in America. He was told by publishers to forget it. His book was not reckless or inaccurate, but the Scientologists would make defending its publication in a London court prohibitively expensive. He went home empty-handed. As Chinese communists can attest, there are many ways to kill free speech short of murder.

Any regulation of the press should pass the Wright test. Will it make publishing what someone, somewhere does not want to see in print more or less likely? This week's legislation patently means less. A few innocent victims of press unfairness may gain redress. But the cheering across town this week is from the rich, the celebrated and the powerful, with parliamentarians in the van.

This debate has been dominated by the crime of phone hacking, largely at News International. Not a news report fails to mention it. This is an illegal activity that, under existing law, has seen dozens of journalists and police officers arrested and massive compensation paid. A paper has been closed, and exemplary punishment meted out. It needed no royal charter or late-night deal.

Certainly, those who complain if papers break statute or common law deserve a better route to justice. Britain is already tough on libel, defamation and privacy, as the Wright case illustrates, but the law tends to be for the rich. The appropriate reform is for these cases, if not resolved voluntarily, to come before a small claims court, to avoid the present deterrent of legal fees. That is the solution.

This week's proposals have no bearing on this at all, any more than did the tedious Leveson report. They are not about press illegality but something mysteriously called "misdemeanour" – that is scurrility, intrusion and unfairness. No one might complain here about a tougher monitoring of a code, to reprimand and seek apology. The existing complaints procedure works without fines and compensation, and merits strengthening. But we have to accept that sometimes there will be mavericks who are beyond reprimand. Free speech within the law is their entitlement.

The new regulator allows no time for this. Parliament sees no role for mavericks. Its target is not just celebrity intrusion but bias, unfairness and gossip in the style of Private Eye and the "off Fleet Street" plethora of news-and-comment websites. The regulator is obliged to offer a free arbitration service to anyone who feels traduced or unfairly treated by the press, imposing fines and compensation. Indeed, the service will have a vested interest in fines as it will be financed by "fine farming", like traffic wardens.

Parliament on Monday proposed no safeguards against this becoming a PPI-style stampede for anyone – including lobbyists – trying to grab a compulsory correction plus aquick payoff. Fining journalists for unethical deeds is a charter for the vexatious. It is madness. Fines and compensation at the arbitration stage will put editors in thrall to chief executives and nervous publishers.

Worse ensues if editors reject the new regulator and, because a matter of law is at stake, the case goes to a proper court. They there face punitive "million-pound" fines. Smaller publications and many in the provinces could be forced into closure. Almost by definition, such matters are likely to be seen by journalists as ones of principle. It is hard to imagine a more "chilling" deterrent to serious press investigation than this.

This is blatantly one-sided justice. It is as if the BBC charter were drafted by victims of Jimmy Savile, or church law drawn up by those abused by priests. It will certainly make some sections of the press more careful in their handling of the private lives of public people. But the baby's gone out with the bathwater. Northcliffe's maxim was that "news is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising". The advantage today is with the advertisers, who will find it that much easier to stifle criticism and deter journalistic risk.

This is not the end of the world, and any such suggestion will sound self-serving from British papers. But, unlike the supine press so common abroad, they still have the irreverent vigour and diversity of a true political safeguard. This has been a grim, vengeful saga. The press faces tough times anyway, and must now do so wearing a ball and chain.

Cricket - Were the good old days really better?

Let's break it down to a few parameters and try to make an objective analysis

Rob Steen

March 20, 2013

Comments: 6 | Login via  | Text size: A | A

	The stakes might be higher these days, but the DRS has struck a blow for honesty © Getty Images  Enlarge

Technology or human eyesight? Helmets or bare bonces? Covered or uncovered pitches? Back-foot no-ball law or front? Arlott or Bumble? Does any breed of sporting spectator spend quite so much time as we cricket folk when it comes to debating the merits of the way we were and the way we are? Granted, our baseball and boxing counterparts in particular might scoff at such a suggestion, but they haven't seen their game repackaged as three distinct products.

"Before the Fall? Reflections on cricket in England during the 1950s" is that sagacious social historian David Kynaston's contribution to an annual lecture series at Lord's. A prolific author and academic whose books range from Austerity Britain to W.G.'s Birthday Party, Kynaston uses ten criteria to compare past with present: aesthetic, meritocratic, competitive, craft, excitement, personalities, sportsmanship, walking, crowd behaviour, "mattering", and coverage. Overall, he concludes, "it comes out pretty even".

Loath as I am to take issue with such an esteemed chronicler - and bearing in mind that I had yet to celebrate my third birthday when the 1950s ended - this strikes me as a perfect case of nostalgia overshadowing, if not fact, then assuredly common sense.

Given that we are six weeks away from the 50th anniversary of the most far-reaching of cricket's innovations,the limited-overs game (90 years, it should be noted, after the first knockout cup event was abandoned after a solitary match), now seems an apt moment to stand back and reflect on how far we have come and whether, on balance, we have advanced. Most of Kynaston's categories will do nicely, although it feels reasonable to merge walking and sportsmanship (is the former not an intrinsic, if extreme, aspect of the latter?).

Before we begin, let's reel back to a revealing Daily Express survey from that summer of '63: the "Better Cricket Competition". Readers were invited to make five suggestions to improve the County Championship, then the planet's lone competition for full-time pros. The judges - Alec Bedser, Doug Insole and Norman Preston, editor of Wisden - assessed 2000-plus entries, from whence came sundry proposals: overseas players, Sunday play, promotion and relegation, over-restricted first innings, more overs per hour, 15-pace run-ups, rewards for faster scoring, leg-before decisions to dissuade pad-play, and eight- or even ten-ball overs.

The more sensible of these would soon be woven into the first-class fabric, though it is intriguing to note that the judges were unanimous in insisting that the most pressing need was the elimination of time-wasting. In this respect, at least, it seems fair to say that cricket in 2013 lags a vast way behind 1963, though whether this matters is another kettle of cod entirely. It certainly didn't seem terribly important to those who completed the recent public surveys conducted by the ECB and Cricket Australia.

And so to the Kynaston Test. Not unnaturally, some of his sub-divisions permit more objective analysis than others. So, for all that he rightly deems it to be "somewhere near the core pleasure", let's dispense with the aesthetic, the "sensory aspect". The way he sees it, much has been lost through the arrival of "helmets, garish-coloured clothing, umpires no longer in white coats, sponsors' markings on the playing arena" and the "continual noise and exaggerated celebrations" of the players; such preoccupations will strike younger generations as profoundly old hat, not to say downright petty and daft.

Meritocratic
Fifty Aprils ago marked the start of the first English season to be unencumbered by the distinction between shamateurs and professionals: all hail the new meritocracy. Now, thanks to the multiplicity of formats, the ultimate meritocracy is with us: not only can even an Afghan earn a penny or two, you can have a disobedient body, like Shaun Tait does, and still put in a fruitful day's work by bowling four overs. Today: 2pts

Competitive
In the 1960s the average Test total was 323; over the past ten years it has been 350. Yet before we get too carried away with this apparent widening of the gap between bat and ball, the rise in scoring rates (from 2.49 runs per over to 3.27) has compensated handsomely for the reduction in the number of overs per day, the upshot being that the ratio of conclusive results has soared from to 53% to 74%. Throw in the fact that standards are far more uniform - while only England, Australia and West Indies were regular winners in the first period, this year alone has seen New Zealand take a one-day rubber against South Africa and force England to follow on, India all but reverse 2011-12's 4-0 loss to Australia, and Bangladesh trade 600s with Sri Lanka - and it's another no-contest. Today: 2pts

Craft
Uncovered pitches might have asked more of batsmen (and commensurately less of bowlers) but immeasurably more is demanded of today's practitioner. Who knows whether undimmable titans such as WG, Bradman or SF Barnes would have been so adaptable, but there is no question that Hashim Amla, Marlon Samuels and Graeme Swann are as effective over 20 overs and 50 overs as over five days. 1pt apiece

Excitement
Two words should suffice: "Virender" and "Sehwag". Or "Kevin" and "Pietersen". Or "De" and "Villiers". Or, if we're being thoroughly modern, "Shikhar" and "Dhawan". Or, if we're being meritocratic, "Lasith" and "Malinga" or "Saeed" and "Ajmal". Put it another way: when those of us who can remember that far back try to recall feeling excited while watching the game half a century ago, the options are generally confined to "Garry" and "Sobers". It helps, of course, that we can now trust our own eyes rather than parrot the word of others. Today: 2pts

	Does cricket matter more than it did? In numerical terms, given growth in population, communication technology, access to games and ICC membership and funding, of course it does. But is it healthy for an essentially trivial pursuit to matter more?

Personalities
Comparing characters from different eras is even more ludicrous than comparing Jonathan Trott and his distant ancestor Albert (though we can at least claim with some confidence that Albert, the only batsman to clear the Lord's pavilion with a single blow, was the more aggressive). Again, greater visibility predisposes us to favour the likes of Shane Warne, but this is counterbalanced by largely unpublicised stories from an era when sportsfolk were less closely monitored and hence able to get away with more.

Hugh "Toey" Tayfield is justly celebrated as the greatest of South African spinners, but it was a complete revelation to me to learn, this very week, not only that he was a rampant womaniser who died penniless and largely forgotten in a hospice, but that during the 1960 Old Trafford Test he had been due to appear in court for allegedly failing to repay a £230 loan ("He was a slow bowler and even a slower payer" quipped the prosecution lawyer). We know Sobers and Ted Dexter would have been "personalities" in any era, but given the greater rewards for notoriety today, Tayfield might have met a very different end. 1pt apiece

Sportsmanship
You could be forgiven, here, for concluding that higher stakes and more frequent fixtures have left today lagging miles behind yesterday, but is that truly the case? "Long after the unenterprising cricket of this Test is forgotten, people will talk of two incidents which brought to a head the question of whether batsmen should 'walk'." So attested Basil Easterbrook in Wisden of the 1965 Newlands Test, referring to Eddie Barlow's decision to ignore two appeals for catches (both rejected) and Ken Barrington's self-ordered exit following a thin nick that eluded detection - arguably the least profitable act of vengeance in the game's history. On the other hand, the capacity of the DRS to expose the truth economists has sired, if not a revival of this most honest (if class-ist) of sporting customs, then certainly a few more incidences than I can recollect witnessing in previous decades. 1pt apiece

Crowd behaviour
Of the 11 riotous contests Ray Robinson analysed in The Wildest Tests, one was played in 1933, the others in the first quarter-century after the Second World War. Had he completed the book in 2002 rather than 1972, he would not have had many to add. Sure, there may be less inclination to applaud the opposition, but add comfier seats, more efficient policing of drunkenness and better protection from the elements to the joie de vivre of the Barmy and Swami armies, and there seems little reason not to believe things have improved.Today: 2pts

Mattering
Much the trickiest category. Does cricket matter more than it did? In numerical terms, given growth in population, communication technology, access to games and ICC membership and funding, of course it does. Kynaston disagrees, citing the rise in matches, freedom of player movement and alternative leisure activities alongside a decline in the ritual nature of the fixture list and a tighter focus on city-centre venues. But is it healthy for an essentially trivial pursuit to matter more? How often in days of yore did a bad result convince Indians or Sri Lankans to kill themselves? Yesterday: 2pts

Coverage
There is, of course, no comparison here whatsoever, whether in depth or breadth or even - because we see and know and understand more - quality (literary worth, again, is strictly a matter of taste). At the risk of sounding as disinterested as a mongoose pronouncing judgement on a drunk and disorderly cobra, the range and geographical sources of the voices on this site surely supply incontrovertible proof that we've never had it so good. Hell, if the residents of the Tower of Babel had co-existed this peacefully, we'd all be speaking Hebrew now. Today: 2pts

Final score: Today 13, Yesterday 5

Let's face it: nostalgia simply ain't what it used to be.