People who buy expensive cars enjoy killing pedestrians

Bridget Christie in The Guardian

Illustration: Nishant Choksi for the Guardian

 

As a standup comedian, I have a heightened sense of other people’s behaviour. In a room of 500 people, I can sniff out the one checking their watch, yawning and stretching their arms above their head. There are a myriad ways an audience member can display their apathy towards you. One standup friend, Joe Wilkinson, saw a piece of chewing gum fall out of a man’s open, dribbling mouth while he was doing his best stuff. I’ve had a man in the front row order himself a takeaway.

-----Watch video

-----

I think society is ruder than it used to be, and I’m not alone in thinking this. Paul Piff is an assistant professor in the department of psychology and social behaviour at the University of California. Last year, he wrote a paper titled Higher Social Class Predicts Increased Unethical Behaviour. In layman’s terms, what Prof Piff is saying is, rich people are more likely to behave like twats than poor people are.

Piff proved his suspicions in a number of ways, many of them involving the use of hidden cameras. One of his experiments, which he shared during an unintentionally hilarious TEDx talk, meant getting some of his mates to stand at pedestrian crossings and monitor which cars stopped and which didn’t. Normal cars (ie ones that look like their sole purpose is to transport people safely from A to B without exploding) stopped – which, incidentally, they were legally obliged to do. “Status cars”, such as 4x4s, convertibles, sports cars, chariots and the Diamond Jubilee State Coach, did not. Piff had proved, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that people who buy expensive cars enjoy killing pedestrians, which definitely qualifies as unethical behaviour.

Another of Piff’s films showed two young men playing a rigged game of Monopoly. One player was given an unfair advantage: more money, two dice, a crash course in Received Pronunciation, a massive throne to sit on, an ermine cloak and the Sovereign’s Orb. The behaviour of this player changed rapidly. He started playing in an incredibly annoying, obnoxious way.

The most fascinating part, for me, was that, even though he knew he was at an unfair advantage, the player still believed he had won the game through personal skill. I thought immediately of George Osborne cutting the maintenance grant for Monopoly players from low-income families, and how this meant that working-class kids would now always lose at Monopoly, so won’t even bother trying to play any more.

Piff believes that being wealthy can make people less ethical, more selfish and less compassionate. “The rich are way more likely to prioritise their own self-interests above the interests of other people,” he says. “It makes them more likely to exhibit characteristics that we would stereotypically associate with, say, assholes.” Yes, that’s right. There is a professor, called Piff, who used the word asshole in an academic study.

I’ve encountered a lot of assholes recently. And I have noticed, with alarmingly regularity, that when I call people out for, say, walking into the road in front of my car without looking because they were on their phone, I am verbally abused in return. The man who ordered his takeaway during my show seemed genuinely baffled as to why I even brought it up. He was hungry and needed to eat. What the hell was my problem?

We are living in an age of narcissistic entitlement, and I don’t think this is purely down to wealth or privilege. Technological advances, easy credit, bad parenting and pizza restaurants’ willingness to stock every conceivable topping has created a world in which everything is possible and available, where there is immediate and unlimited choice – except in the case of the Labour leadership, where our options have been severely limited.

In a recent documentary about the police, a female officer said she’d noticed a big change in young people’s behaviour, which she put down to bad parenting, a lack of discipline and contempt for authority figures. She said that because we don’t say “no” to our children, and instead use tantrum-averting language (“Well, I’d rather you didn’t punch me in the face repeatedly, darling, because it makes mummy upset”), young people don’t know how to respond to being reprimanded: they go into meltdown.

We interact with each other less and less. We shop online, communicate online, we watch bands and sunsets through our iPads and don’t care about the people standing behind us. We’re forgetting how to behave in the physical world. I don’t know how we address this. But a good place to start might be to call our children assholes when they’re being assholes. I’d also suggest arresting anyone who orders a takeaway during the punchline of a show.

Currency wars in emerging markets hammer global stocks

 Ben Chu in The Independent

Developing world devaluations have sent global stock markets into a funk and stoked fears of an intensifying global currency war.

In response to China’s surprise devaluation of the yuan last week, several emerging market economies have slashed the value of their own currencies to retain their competitiveness.

Kazakhstan’s tenge lost 24 per cent of its value against the dollar after the country’s central bank announced that it would allow the currency to float freely. Meanwhile, South Africa’s rand slid to its weakest level against the dollar in 14 years and Malaysia’s ringgit fell to its lowest level against the greenback in 17 years. Turkey’s lira and the Russian rouble also dropped.

This followed the decision by Vietnam on Wednesday to cut the value of the dong against the dollar by 1 per cent, the country’s third devaluation of the year. Since Beijing’s yuan devaluation last week, an index of 20 developing-nation exchange rates has been falling fast.

The ructions depressed the FTSE100, pushing the index down into technical “correction” territory, more than 10 per cent below its April peak. Year-to-date, the benchmark index of UK-listed shares, is down 2.9 per cent. The S&P 500 also quickly fell 1.2 per cent after trading opened in America, wiping out all of the US index’s gains made this year.

Last week, the People’s Bank of China caught markets napping by allowing the yuan to fall in value against the dollar by 4 per cent in two days. The perception that the world’s single biggest customer for raw materials is in economic difficulties has stoked fear over the prospects of big commodity producing economies like Kazakhstan, Russia, Brazil, South Africa and Malaysia. The slumping global oil price has also hammered investor confidence in the prospects of the big energy exporters.


“The appearance of China weakening its exchange rate to boost growth has added urgency for policymakers elsewhere to do what they can to grab more export revenue” said Koon Chow, of Union Bancaire Privée.

Many analysts expect further global devaluations if the US Federal Reserve, as expected, increases interest rates for the first time since the financial crisis later this year. “Emerging market currencies, in general, still have high devaluation risks” said analysts at CrossBorder Capital. Analysts predicted the likes of Egypt and Nigeria could be next to devalue their currencies.

Per Hammarlund, of Sweden’s SEB, said Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan could allow their currencies to depreciate by between 10 and 20 per cent. “They simply don’t have much of a choice but to follow Russia and emerging markets more generally,” he said.

Capital has been flowing out of emerging markets at a rapid rate this year, as fears rise of a sharp slowdown in the former stars of the global economy. Over the past 13 months $1 trillion is estimated to have flowed out of the 19 largest emerging countries.
The International Monetary Fund expects global growth among emerging markets and developing economies to be just 4.2 per cent this year, the weakest output growth since 2009.

Nariman Behravesh, of IHS Global Insight, said emerging markets are arguably facing “the toughest environment since the Asia Crisis of the late 1990s” and predicted that they will drag on global growth into next year.

The Ashley Madison hack: What to do if you suspect your partner is having an affair

Following the hack of Ashley Madison, the dating site for extra-marital affairs, many people are looking to find out if their partner was signed up. So if you suspect your partner is cheating on you, should you confront them? Does revenge ever make you feel better? And can relationships survive an affair?

 Ammanda Major in The Independent

There are no two ways about it – affairs can be hugely painful. Feelings of shock, anger and resentment can quickly set in and knowing what to do about them can seem torturous. The mere thought that your partner may be attracted to someone else or actively involved with them is tough enough, but knowing what to say or do about it is usually tougher.Perhaps a starting point is to focus on what has made you suspicious. Do you have ‘facts’? Has someone said something to you? Has your partner become withdrawn or started making more of an effort with their appearance? Have things between you been difficult recently and you have noticed that they are talking more about a specific person, perhaps a friend or work colleague? Perhaps you are concerned about what they are up to online or have discovered unusual texts or emails. Any or all of these are likely to throw most people into panic.

Often, fears about affairs arise when there may be other problems. As a Relate counsellor, I see how family life stages like looking after young children, older children leaving home (or not leaving home), redundancy, ill health, becoming carers or extra work pressures can all wear down our resources and make us feel vulnerable and insecure. It is important to remember this, because any of them might lead to a partner being less attentive or available than before, but that does not mean they are having an affair.

 But what do you do if you still suspect something is going on? Firstly, try and get clear what it is you actually do suspect. Is it sex, an emotional attachment, a cyber relationship or a friendship? Do not be tempted to go down the route of bugging your partner’s devices or using similar methods to track their whereabouts. This is unhelpful, possibly criminal and very unlikely to assist you to recover what you most want, i.e your partner.

Whilst it is true that it is good to talk, beware of telling all your friends and family about your suspicions. Remember, the more people who become involved, take sides and offer often conflicting advice, the more difficult it may be to start thinking about what the two of you want to do, if and when it turns out there has been an affair. Confiding in a trusted friend or family member can be useful to help you get your thoughts straighter and work out how to best tackle your partner about your worries.

Secondly, decide if you actually want to raise it with your partner. It is probably fair to say that many relationships continue for years with the suspicion of an affair, with nothing ever being said. Long term though, this is often a really painful option with years of resentment and feelings of abandonment building up that eat into your confidence and self-esteem. But fearing confirmation of any suspicion is powerful and it is understandable that we may try to put concerns to one side for as long as possible.

Thirdly, if you decide to raise it, choose a good time. Don’t raise it in the middle of a row about something else or when one of you is about to go out. Try and make sure you will not be interrupted. Most importantly, try and stay calm and tell your partner exactly why you are worried. Give them a chance to explain themselves but be prepared for the answer. Usually, we are hoping for reassurance that will reduce our anxieties about being left for someone else and you may not get this. The reality of having a suspicion confirmed by a ‘confession’ may come as a relief for some people but for most, it’s devastating.

However much you ask for information, your partner may not give you what you want. They may deny it outright, or tell you ‘it’s just a friend’. Either way you may be left feeling the matter is unresolved. Once it has been raised though there is often the overwhelming urge to come back to it time and time again, usually with the same outcome. Getting to this point is exhausting for both of you so it could be useful to get some professional help to try to find a way forward – whether that’s together or apart. Ultimately, if you keep suspecting and they keep denying, you may need support to help you make decisions about what to do next.

It is not uncommon for people to consider some form of revenge when they feel they have been betrayed by their partner. Some people might think it is a good idea to have an affair themselves for example, to damage the person’s property, or to name and shame the guilty party. While this may make them feel better at the time, in the long term not only do they end up having to deal with the hurt if it turns out there was an affair, but also the consequences of the revenge. If you find yourself wanting to seek revenge and even more so if you have not got all your facts straight, take a step back to recognise this is because of the level of hurt you are feeling at the time.

People tend to be pessimistic about whether their relationship can recover – indeed, Relate’s 2014 The Way We Are Now survey of over 5000 people found that only 33% thought a relationship could survive an affair. However, this was in stark contrast to the optimism of our counsellors, 94% of whom believed that a relationship can survive and potentially thrive after a partner has cheated.

So the good news is that many relationships recover from suspicions or confirmation of an affair. Despite the pain and anxiety, some couples say that an affair has given them the opportunity to examine all sorts of relationship issues and they feel stronger as a partnership afterwards. But this usually comes after a lot of soul searching and acknowledgement that no one has made your partner have an affair and that by doing so they have turned your world upside down.
Ammanda Major is a Relate Counsellor and Sex Therapist

Jeremy Corbyn is the curator of the future. His rivals are chasing an impossible dream

 

‘To imagine that Labour could overcome such odds by becoming bland, blurred and craven is to succumb to thinking that is magical and despairing.’ Photograph: H Armstrong Roberts/Getty Images


GeorgeMonbiot in The Guardian


On one point I agree with his opponents: Jeremy Corbyn has little chance of winning the 2020 general election. But the same applies to the other three candidates. Either Labour must win back the seats it once held in Scotland (surely impossible without veering to the left) or it must beat the Conservatives by 12 points in England and Wales to form an overall majority. The impending boundary changes could mean that it has to win back 106 seats. If you think that is likely, I respectfully suggest that you are living in a dreamworld.

In fact, in this contest of improbabilities, Corbyn might stand the better chance. Only a disruptive political movement, that can ignite, mesmerise and mobilise, that can raise an army of volunteers – as the SNP did in Scotland – could smash the political concrete.

To imagine that Labour could overcome such odds by becoming bland, blurred and craven is to succumb to thinking that is simultaneously magical and despairing. Such dreamers argue that Labour has to recapture the middle ground. But there is no such place; no fixed political geography. The middle ground is a magic mountain that retreats as you approach. The more you chase it from the left, the further to the right it moves.

As the social philosopher Karl Polanyi pointed out towards the end of the second world war, when politics offers little choice and little prospect of solving their problems, people seek extreme solutions. Labour’s inability to provide a loud and proud alternative to Conservative policies explains why so much of its base switched to Ukip at the last election. Corbyn’s political clarity explains why the same people are flocking back to him.

Are they returning because he has tailored his policies to appeal to the hard right? Certainly not. They are returning because he stands for something, something that could help them, something that was not devised by a row of spadbot mannikins in suits, consulting their clipboards on Douglas Alexander’s sofa.

Nothing was more politically inept than Labour’s attempt before the election to win back Ukip supporters by hardening its stance on immigration. Why vote for the echo when you can vote for the shout? What is attractive about a party prepared to abandon its core values for the prospect of electoral gain? What is inspiring about a party that grovels, offering itself as a political doormat for any powerful interest or passing fad to wipe its feet on?

In an openDemocracy article, Ian Sinclair compares Labour’s attempts to stop Corbyn with those by the Tories in 1974-75 to stop Margaret Thatcher. Divisive, hated by the press, seen by her own party as an extremist, she was widely dismissed as unelectable. The Tory establishment, convinced that the party could win only from the centre, did everything it could to stop her.

Who should I vote for in the Labour leadership election?


Across three decades New Labour strategists have overlooked a crucial reality: politicians reinforce the values they espouse. The harder you try to win by adopting your opponents’ values, the more you legitimise and promote them, making your task – and that of your successors – more difficult. Tony Blair won three elections, but in doing so he made future Labour victories less likely. By adopting conservative values, conservative framing and conservative language, he shifted the nation to the right, even when he pursued leftwing policies such as the minimum wage, tax credits and freedom of information. You can sustain policies without values for a while but then, like plants without soil, the movement wilts and dies.

The Labour mainstream likes to pretend that Blair’s only breach of faith was the Iraq war. The marketisation of the NHS, the private finance initiative, the criminalisation of peaceful protest, collusion in the kidnap and torture of dissidents from other nations, the collapse of social housing – I could fill this page with a list of such capitulations to greed and tyranny. Blair’s purges, stripping all but courtiers from the lists of potential candidates, explain why the party now struggles to find anyone under 50 who looks like a leader.

The capitulations continued under Ed Miliband, who allowed the Conservative obsession with the deficit and austerity to frame Labour politics. As Paul Krugman explains, austerity is a con that does nothing but harm to the wealth of this nation. It has been discredited everywhere else: only in Britain do we cling to the myth. Yet Miliband walked willingly into the trap. His manifesto promised to “cut the deficit every year” and to adopt such cruel Tory policies as the household benefits cap.
You can choose, if you wish, to believe that this clapped-out, alienating politics – compounded by such gobsmacking acts of cowardice as the failure to oppose the welfare bill – can capture the mood of the nation, reverse Labour’s decline and secure an extra hundred seats. But please stop calling yourself a realist.

Rebuilding a political movement means espousing what is desirable, then finding ways to make it feasible. The hopeless realists propose the opposite. They assemble a threadbare list of policies they consider feasible, then seek to persuade us that this package is desirable. If they retain core values, they’ve become so muddled by tacking and triangulation as to be almost indecipherable.

So great has the damage been to a party lost for 21 years in Blair’s Bermuda triangulation that it might take many years until it becomes electable again. That is a frightening prospect, but the longer Labour keeps repeating the same mistakes – reinforcing the values it should be contesting – the further to the right it will push the nation, and the more remote its chances of election will become. The task is to rebuild the party’s values, reclaim the democratic debate, pull the centre back towards the left and change – as Clement Attlee and Thatcher did in different ways – the soul of the nation.

Because Labour’s immediate prospects are so remote, regardless of who wins this contest, the successful candidate is likely to be a caretaker, a curator of the future. His or her task must be to breathe life back into politics, to recharge democracy with choice, to ignite the hope that will make Labour electable again. Only one candidate proposes to do that.

Hope for mature women?

'Female Viagra' approved by US drug agency 

• From the sectionBBC News

Experts have said the effects of the libido-enhancing drug are "modest"

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a libido-enhancing drug for women that has been dubbed "Female Viagra".

Flibanserin, a drug produced by Sprout Pharmaceuticals, recently passed an FDA advisory committee meeting.

The pill is designed to assist premenopausal women regain their sex drive by boosting levels of certain brain chemicals.

The drug has been criticised as having marginal effects.

Versions of the pill, which will be marketed as "Addyi", have been submitted for approval in the past but never passed.

It was rejected by the FDA twice for lack of effectiveness and side effects like nausea, dizziness and fainting.

Women taking the drug reported between half and one more sexually satisfying event per month - results experts admitted were "modest".

Originally the drug was produced by German company Boehringer Ingelheim. Sprout bought the drug from that company after it was turned down by the FDA.

Sprout CEO Cindy Whitehead gains approval for the first drug to boost sexual desire in women

Documents from the 4 June FDA advisory meeting describe the drug's purpose as "treatment of hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD) in premenopausal women".

Women would take it each night.

A doctor would have to determine whether a woman seeking the pill was suffering from a disorder characterised by a lack of sexual fantasies and desire, causing the woman distress.

Currently, there is nothing on the US market approved for treatment of HSDD or another condition, female sexual interest/arousal disorder (FSIAD).

"This condition is clearly an area of unmet medical need," the FDA documents said.

A brain-shaped stress ball at a Sprout employee's desk at their headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina

Sprout only has 25 employees. Large pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer, Bayer and Proctor & Gamble have all studied female sexual desire disorder treatment but abandoned plans to pursue it.

Sprout's CEO, Cindy Whitehead, told AP they would promote Addyi carefully.

"We would never want a patient who's not going to see a benefit to take it and tell everyone it doesn't work," she said.

Lobbying by Sprout Pharmaceuticals was backed by the women's rights group Even the Score, which has accused the FDA of gender bias by approving a number of drugs treating erectile dysfunction in men without passing an equivalent for women.

Doomsday clock for global market crash strikes one minute to midnight as central banks lose control

China currency devaluation signals endgame leaving equity markets free to collapse under the weight of impossible expectations

 

It is only a matter of time before stock markets collapse under the weight of their lofty expectations and record valuations. Photo: Reuters

By John Ficenec in The Telegraph
 

When the banking crisis crippled global markets seven years ago, central bankers stepped in as lenders of last resort. Profligate private-sector loans were moved on to the public-sector balance sheet and vast money-printing gave the global economy room to heal.


Time is now rapidly running out. From China to Brazil, the central banks have lost control and at the same time the global economy is grinding to a halt. It is only a matter of time before stock markets collapse under the weight of their lofty expectations and record valuations.


The FTSE 100 has now erased its gains for the year, but there are signs things could get a whole lot worse.



1 - China slowdown


China was the great saviour of the world economy in 2008. The launching of an unprecedented stimulus package sparked an infrastructure investment boom. The voracious demand for commodities to fuel its construction boom dragged along oil- and resource-rich emerging markets.


The Chinese economy has now hit a brick wall. Economic growth has dipped below 7pc for the first time in a quarter of a century, according to official data. That probably means the real economy is far weaker.


The People’s Bank of China has pursued several measures to boost the flagging economy. The rate of borrowing has been slashed during the past 12 months from 6pc to 4.85pc. Opting to devalue the currency was a last resort and signalled the great era of Chinese growth is rapidly approaching its endgame.

Data for exports showed an 8.9pc slump in July from the same period a year before. Analysts expected exports to fall only 0.3pc, so this was a huge miss.

The Chinese housing market is also in a perilous state. House prices have fallen sharply after decades of steady growth. For the millions who stored their wealth in property, it makes for unsettling times.


2 - Commodity collapse

The China slowdown has sent shock waves through commodity markets. The Bloomberg Global Commodity index, which tracks the prices of 22 commodity prices, fell to levels last seen at the beginning of this century.


The oil price is the purest barometer of world growth as it is the fuel that drives nearly all industry and production around the globe.

Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, has begun falling once again after a brief rally earlier in the year. It is now hovering above multi-year lows at about $50 per barrel.


Iron ore is an essential raw material needed to feed China’s steel mills, and as such is a good gauge of the construction boom.

The benchmark iron ore price has fallen to $56 per tonne, less than half its $140 per tonne level in January 2014.


3 - Resource sector credit crisis

Billions of dollars in loans were raised on global capital markets to fund new mines and oil exploration that was only ever profitable at previous elevated prices.

With oil and metals prices having collapsed, many of these projects are now loss-making. The loans raised to back the projects are now under water and investors may never see any returns.



Nowhere has this been felt more acutely than shale oil and gas drilling in the US. Tumbling oil prices have squeezed the finances of US drillers. Two of the biggest issuers of junk bonds in the past five years, Chesapeake and California Resources, have seen the value of their bonds tumble as panic grips capital markets.


As more debt needs refinancing in future years, there is a risk the contagion will spread rapidly.


4 - Dominoes begin to fall

The great props to the world economy are now beginning to fall. China is going into reverse. And the emerging markets that consumed so many of our products are crippled by currency devaluation. The famed Brics of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, to whom the West was supposed to pass on the torch of economic growth, are in varying states of disarray.

The central banks are rapidly losing control. The Chinese stock market has already crashed and disaster was only averted by the government buying billions of shares. Stock markets in Greece are in turmoil as the economy grinds to a halt and the country flirts with ejection from the eurozone.

Earlier this year, investors flocked to the safe-haven currency of the Swiss franc but as a €1.1 trillion quantitative easing programme devalued the euro, the Swiss central bank was forced to abandon its four-year peg to the euro.


5 - Credit markets roll over

As central banks run out of silver bullets then, credit markets are desperately seeking to reprice risk. The London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor), a guide to how worried UK banks are about lending to each other, has been steadily rising during the past 12 months. Part of this process is a healthy return to normal pricing of risk after six years of extraordinary monetary stimulus. However, as the essential transmission systems of lending between banks begin to take the strain, it is quite possible that six years of reliance on central banks for funds has left the credit system unable to cope.



Credit investors are often far better at pricing risk than optimistic equity investors. In the US while the S&P 500 (orange line) continues to soar, the high yield debt market has already begun to fall sharply (white line).




6 - Interest rate shock

Interest rates have been held at emergency lows in the UK and US for around six years. The US is expected to move first, with rates starting to rise from today’s 0pc-0.25pc around the end of the year. Investors have already starting buying dollars in anticipation of a strengthening US currency. UK rate rises are expected to follow shortly after.




7 - Bull market third longest on record

The UK stock market is in its 77th month of a bull market, which began in March 2009. On only two other occasions in history has the market risen for longer. One is in the lead-up to the Great Crash in 1929 and the other before the bursting of the dotcom bubble in the early 2000s.



UK markets have been a beneficiary of the huge balance-sheet expansion in the US. US monetary base, a measure of notes and coins in circulation plus reserves held at the central bank, has more than quadrupled from around $800m to more than $4 trillion since 2008. The stock market has been a direct beneficiary of this money and will struggle now that QE3 has ended.


8 - Overvalued US market

In the US, Professor Robert Shiller’s cyclically adjusted price earnings ratio – or Shiller CAPE – for the S&P 500 stands at 27.2, some 64pc above its historic average of 16.6. On only three occasions since 1882 has it been higher – in 1929, 2000 and 2007.

Rahul Dravid and Sanjay Manjrekar on Batting

S Dinakar in The Hindu

Rahul Dravid.


Batting legend Rahul Dravid shared his thoughts on India’s troubles with spin and the dynamics of technique in an exclusive conversation with The Hindu.

Here is the first part of excerpts from the interview.



Q. Indian batting has become increasingly vulnerable to spinners over the last few years.

Playing spin was one of our big strengths. What can happen is that when you are with an international team you are not getting to play a lot of spin bowling in matches. Perhaps the pitches in India have changed.



Q. Does it boil down to the use of feet?

Good footwork certainly helps, but different players can play spin differently. Even in the team that I played, Laxman for example, would use his feet, but not that much. He had great reach and used the depth of the crease well. He didn’t have a sweep shot, but had a great on-drive.

Sehwag used his feet against spin a lot more than some of us.

Ganguly stepped down to the left-arm spinner whenever he could.

It always helps to have a sweep shot.



Q. The present day batsmen are playing too many shots too early against spin?

You need to be a bit more patient against spin. People now want to dominate the spinner from the beginning.

Sometimes we need to give the ball the respect it deserves.



Q. Batsmen rarely come across worthy spinners in domestic cricket these days.

You still have the odd good spinner in domestic cricket, but the numbers have dipped. The top four spinners are good but we had a lot more spinners in the domestic scene then.

Maybe, domestically, our batsmen are not getting exposed to quality spin bowling. Wickets have improved in India too. I have played on some absolute turners.



Q. International line-ups have become increasingly vulnerable on pitches doing a bit.

You are seeing a lot of results in Tests. People are playing more aggressively.

The flip side of that is, sometimes, on tricky wickets where there is seam and swing or turn, you get found out.

Generally, very rarely do you get seaming or turning wickets in international cricket these days. Most wickets are flat.

If you see a difficult wicket, you should have a certain level of personal pride to perform. If you have that you will practice for it.

To succeed in any form of the game, your game has to be built around your defence. It then expands from there.



Q. Do you believe the cash-rich T20 format has taken the cricketers’ focus away from Tests?

To be a successful Test cricketer was our primary focus then. Now you can easily make a living without being a Test cricketer. Maybe the incentive is not there anymore.

Then it boils down to personal pride, getting satisfaction in succeeding in all and the most difficult of conditions.



Q. What, in your mind, is good footwork?

Good footwork is being able to pick the length of the ball early, get to it as quickly as possible and get yourself into a good position. Good footwork is really about using the depth of the crease when you need to go back, and getting a good stride forward when you need to go forward.

You need to ensure that you are not stuck in the crease.



Q. As we saw with the Aussies in England recently, batsmen are increasingly vulnerable on or outside the off-stump.

The key is being balanced and knowing your head position. You need to be going towards the ball than across the wicket. The body weight is going down the wicket than across the wicket.

Once your head starts falling over and goes across the wicket, you lose [sense of] where your off-stump is. Your head has to be in the right position to know where your off-stump is.



Q. Sunil Gavaskar recently spoke about the alignment of right eye with the off-stump.

I thought that was a brilliant technical suggestion. If you are balanced, with your right eye guiding where your off-stump is, then there is a good chance that you go down the wicket, the weight is going towards the ball, and your head is still and in a good position. Anything outside the right eye-line you could leave.

But if you are going across the stumps, your right eye actually loses where your off-stump is. And you end up playing balls that are wide outside the off-stump.



Q. Do you believe the wide and excessive back-lifts are an issue too?

Typically, you want the bat to come from second slip, swing around and come down straight.

Hashim Amla picks up his bat, almost towards gully, but when it comes down it does so really straight. That’s what really matters.

The ideal way to pick it up will be between first and second slip. But there are cases of people who pick it up slightly wider but are able to align it straight.

I used to pick it up a lot wider than first or second slip, but generally I was able to get into good positions to bring the willow straighter.

When I was not playing well, that was an area that bothered me. If I wasn’t able to get the timing right of bringing the bat down, then balls, especially those coming back in, got me bowled or lbw, which happened towards the end of my career.

------

Sanjay Manjrekar on Playing Spin (from Cricinfo)



I think batsmen around the world are not playing spin too well these days.

We have seen it in the Ashes, seen Sri Lankan batsmen struggle against the legspin of Yasir Shah, and now India disintegrate against Rangana Herath to lose a Test match that was firmly in their grasp. All this is suggestive of the fact that international batsmen are not playing spin too well at the moment.

The focus is so much on playing pace and seam well that it seems there is no headspace left for them to try to be adept at spin too. Before India went to England last summer, how many of their batsmen tried to hone their skills against offspin? I am sure James Anderson and Stuart Broad would have been on their minds, not Moeen Ali. No wonder Moeen ended up getting 19 wickets in that series.

Historically, Indian batsmen have tended to take spin lightly. You just have to watch them bat in the nets - they bat with caution and respect against fast bowlers, but when they see a spinner come in to bowl they dance down the pitch to hit the ball for a six. They are not fussed if they miss a few; they basically look to have fun against the spinners before they put their heads down and get serious against the fast bowlers.

Then, in a tense match situation, when the ball is turning square and the batsman sees four fielders around the bat, dancing down the pitch and hitting the ball into the stands is not an option any more, but they do not know what to do instead. Now the batsman has to do something he has never done before: try and defend the spinner from the crease and make sure the ball rolls safely along the ground off the defensive bat, away from the close-in catchers.

This is a highly specialised skill, to defend confidently against the spinning ball, using only the bat, with catchers hovering four feet away. (With the DRS and umpires willing to give batsmen out lbw on the front foot, thrusting the pad at the ball is not an option any more, as it used to be in my time.)

It is a skill no one practises enough these days, and that is why you see a Rohit Sharma in defence planting his front foot on leg stump, to a turning ball from Herath that has pitched on middle and off stump.

The other critical defensive technique that has practically vanished from the game is a batsman trying to play a good-length ball and then letting it go at the very last minute, when he realises it has changed direction and is not going to hit the stumps any more. It's amazing to see how many batsmen get out - to seamers and spinners alike - while playing defensive shots to balls that are going to miss the stumps.

Mind you, in my time too, spinners were treated no differently in the nets. The advantage we had, though, was that we still played a decent amount of domestic first-class cricket as international players, so our skills against spin had not become dormant. But I remember, every time I came home to domestic cricket after travelling the world playing international cricket, it took some time getting used to playing spin well again.

In the first innings in Galle it was evident that the Indian batsmen were treating the Sri Lankan spinners with respect - they did not want to make the same mistakes they made against Moeen. But their defensive game against spinners is far from perfect.



VVS Laxman set a worthy example of how to play on a pitch that takes turn: by scoring more off the back foot than off the front © Getty Images

Every time an Indian batsman decides to get on to the front foot to defend against spin, I cringe. They leave far too much distance between the bat and the spot where the ball has pitched. This is a recipe for disaster on a turning pitch. By leaving this space between the bat and the spot where the ball has pitched, you are allowing the ball to spin and bounce or straighten. You are giving the ball the space to behave mischievously. This is how Ajinkya Rahane got out in the first innings and Virat Kohli in the second - two big wickets.

The golden rule of playing spin is judging the length early, and then, when choosing to play on the front foot, getting right on top of the ball to smother its spin and whatever venom it carries.

If you think you can't reach the pitch of the ball with the front foot, go right back in the crease and watch the ball closely off the pitch. In fact, on turning pitches you should look to score more off the back foot than off the front, just as VVS Laxman used to do. When you are on the back foot, because the ball is turning so much, you get the width to play the cut and the pull or play it away for a single safely. Catchers around the bat are placed there mostly for errors arising out of front-foot defensive shots.

With all good intentions, domestic pitches have changed in India. There is more grass on the pitches now, and spinners don't rule the roost any more. The flip side is, this means less good practice against spin for Indian domestic batsmen. KL Rahul, very much a recent product of Indian domestic cricket, looked far more assured against pace than he did against spin in Galle. That is telling.

The fact is quite simple: your chances of surviving against spin increase if you practise for hours in the nets what you need to do in the match.