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The crowning achievement of self-styled sports fanatic and Australian Prime Minister John Howard in 2003 came at the final of the Rugby World Cup in November. After the Wallabies lost an exhilarating game on an extra-time field goal, JH looked like he was going to burst into tears as he handed out the winners’ medals to a seemingly endless line of England players and staff.

A surly-faced JH put on an extraordinary display for a worldwide TV audience as he grumpily hurled medals over English players’ heads, occasionally remembering that he should shake hands. He even spoke to one or two of them towards the end. And then he handed the Webb Ellis Trophy to England captain Martin Johnson as hurriedly as possible, disappearing into the background as his pre-ordained photo moment with Wallabies captain George Gregan became a wasted dream.

All this from a Prime Minister who chose to usurp the ceremonial roles normally performed by the Governor-General. JH did the official opening of the Rugby World Cup in October, and became the first non-head of state to hand over the Webb Ellis Trophy at the conclusion since 1987. Queen Elizabeth II was head of state of England (RWC 1991) and Wales (1999), Nelson Mandela of South Africa (1995). Major-General (Retd) Michael Jeffrey would surely have handled the prize-giving duties with more grace and cheer than JH.

While yet another of John Howard’s great moments in sport in 2003 happened to involve a Governor-General (JH was at the Sydney Cricket Ground watching a rugby league game with Russell Crowe while Jeffrey’s predecessor, Archbishop Peter Hollingworth, was announcing his resignation), most of the best incidents involved, as usual, cricket.

JH’s cricketing 2003 began with the spectre of Zimbabwe looming over the Cricket World Cup. England were well advanced down the tortuous path to boycotting their World Cup fixture in Zimbabwe, and all the major political parties in Australia were telling the ACB not to send their team there.

Howard, who was a chair of a committee dealing with Zimbabwe’s status as a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, made a fabulous “follow me” pronouncement in an interview on ABC radio while attending the Sydney Test against England. JH said the Australia should not send its team to Zimbabwe “as long as everyone else did the same”.

And of course, that didn’t happen. The ICC and the World Cup organising body put their hefty financial contracts first and retained the matches in Harare and Bulawayo, but it was the apathy of the other participating nations that turned England’s boycott into a unilateral exercise that gave the perception of patronising colonialism. India turned up for their game, so did Pakistan, so did Mugabe’s closest ally Namibia, so did Holland. And so did Australia.

Yes, John Howard’s hard line on Mugabe and Zimbabwe softened so that Australia wouldn’t jeopardise its chances of winning the World Cup.

JH said sorry to aborigines in March. Sorry that the Prime Minister could not attend the annual game between the Prime Minister’s XI and the ATSIC Chairman’s XI in Adelaide for the Johnny Mullagh Trophy. Australia, you see, had just invaded its near neighbour Iraq with the help of its good friends in the Coalition of the Willing, thereby ridding the world of those Weapons of Mass Destruction that would be deployed in 45 minutes but which no one had ever actually seen (and still haven’t).

Too busy, sorry, but here’s an able replacement to present the trophy. And when the PM’s XI defeated the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander team by eight wickets, the Johnny Mullagh Trophy was handed over to PM XI captain Justin Langer by Chris Gallus. She’s the parliamentary secretary to the Minister for Foreign Affairs and her electorate almost, but not quite, includes Adelaide Oval.

JH ignored hundreds of thousands of ordinary Australians in 2000 marching for reconciliation with aborigines, and he ignored even more Australians in February 2003 who marched in opposition to war with Iraq. Maybe he’ll do something decent and ask the Governor-General to go to the Johnny Mullagh game next year.

In May, there was the sledging episode in the Fourth Test in Antigua between Glenn McGrath and Ramnaresh Sarwan. The West Indian batsman had said something to McGrath about his wife, Jane, who is currently fighting cancer. McGrath was seen on television to become quite aggressive, pointing his finger at Sarwan, and then storming off to umpire David Shepherd to complain.

JH, speaking during an interview on Melbourne radio station 3AW a few hours later, said that McGrath had done “a very natural Australian thing” in defending his wife.

The complete dialogue between McGrath and Sarwan went, however, something like this, as it was about to be widely reported in the media:

GM: What’s Lara like in bed, mate?
RS: Why don’t you ask your wife.
GM: [waves finger aggressively] If you ever fucking mention my wife again, I will fucking rip your fucking throat out. [charges away towards umpire]

McGrath had done “a very natural Australian thing”, and sports pages in the following day’s papers around the world carried the headline “PM defends McGrath outburst”. Sarwan went on to score a match-winning 105, and McGrath took no further wickets in the Test to finish with 1/50.

August saw the cricket event that wasn’t for JH. Darwin played host to the Bangladesh team for one Test match and a one-day international. Howard was busy overseas while the Test was on, but he dropped into Darwin on August 4 - two days before the ODI - to attend the annual running of the Darwin Cup horserace, and then headed off again the following day. Yes, it wasn’t England, or South Africa, or New Zealand, or even the West Indies. Bradman never batted against Bangladesh, nor did Bob Menzies watch them play. They can’t be too important then.

And there was another non-event, in October, which capped off JH’s great moments in cricket for 2003. GW Bush was in the country, at JH’s request. Unfortunately they couldn’t squeeze a visit to a Rugby World Cup game into Dubya’s tight schedule. (The former Yale rugby player was probably bemused because Georgia had a team in the tournament, but Texas didn’t.) The next best thing was a barbie at The Lodge - you know, the official Prime Ministerial residence in Canberra that JH refuses to live in.

A guest list predominantly consisting of male white anglo-saxon conservatives, a microcosm of JH’s dream world, had lunch over the barbeque with the Prime Minister and the President, but someone was missing. The occupant of the position the PM has often claimed is just as important as his own, that of Australian Test captain.

Steve Waugh was invited to the presidential barbeque, but he had another function on the same day, in the shape of the official launch of the Cricket New South Wales state season, being held at Bradman Oval, Bowral, less than two hours drive from Canberra.

Waugh chose to be with his state team-mates over Bush and Howard.

It was Mark Taylor (the only past or present cricketer to turn up to the Bush barbie) who dubbed JH several years ago with the description “cricket tragic”. No one can really be sure what the term means, but Howard has dined out on it ever since, and no doubt it got a few laughs over the snags with GWB. We can be sure, however, that JH’s contributions to the world of cricket are lesser than many other Prime Ministers.

Unlike Edmund Barton (PM 1901-03), JH has never been a first-class umpire. Unlike George Reid (1904-05), he was never a leading cricket administrator (president of the New South Wales Cricket Association). Unlike Bob Hawke (1983-91), he wasn’t a talented club cricketer who played for Oxford University whilst studying on a Rhodes Scholarship. Unlike Ben Chifley (1945-49), he didn’t get to oversight the knighting of the game’s greatest player - though if Australia still had knighthoods, I am sure JH would have arranged a few. Unlike the late Jamaican prime minister Michael Manley, he hasn’t written a scholarly history of the sport, and don’t hold you breath waiting for one when he eventually retires.

Tragic indeed.

Adelaide has seen some remarkable finishes to Australia-India Test matches, but this year’s was a beauty. It’s not often a team can give away 556 runs in the first innings of the match and come back to win. Congratulations Saurav and the gang.

In February 1978, the last six-day Test to be played in Australia (under the condition at the time that a sixth day would be scheduled in the final Test if a series was still in the balance) saw India set 493 for victory. India ploughed away for 141 eight-ball overs before getting all out for a remarkable 445 on the sixth morning - still better that the highest winning target in Test history.

In January 1981, a Test which produced absolutely splendid innings from Kim Hughes (213) and Sandeep Patil (174) saw India left an impractical target of 331 to win with insufficient time. They slumped to eight wickets down for 135 before scrambling through to a draw. Shivlal Yadav remained 0 not out after 31 minutes at the crease, an unlikely Indian hero in what can only be described as an exciting draw.

In January 1992, India were left with 372 to win, and despite a blistering 106 by Mohammad Azharuddin, they fell short at 333 late on the fifth day. This game, however, marked probably the first time that the umpiring of Darrell Hair would rankle partisan overseas TV audiences.

Back to December 2003, and Ricky Ponting’s 242, arguably the most mature innings of his Test career to date, looked set to place Australia in a dominant position yet again. Dravid and Laxman put paid to that with their second triple-century stand against Australia inside three years.

Agarkar’s six-fer put Australia in disarray in the second innings and left them without a target that they could comfortably bowl to. It was perhaps Aggie’s finest Test performance with the ball, but it’s fair to say that the Aussies lost it on the fourth day with some unsound batting. Even Steve “Final Farewell Tour” Waugh was not immune from criticism.

But Australia’s greatest weakness in this Test was the one which had been blaring out the warning message ever since the Perth Test against Zimbabwe. That is, Australia lack quality bowling depth.

No McGrath, no Warne, no Lee, and Gillespie breaking down yet again. Brad Williams is raw, Andy Bichel is tireless but not necessarily penetrative, Stuart MacGill bowls too many bad balls. (Am I the only one who thinks it a travesty that MacGill is three wickets away from equalling Bill O’Reilly’s Test career total?)

Lee will be back for the Boxing Day Test at the MCG, but he will be taking the injured Gillespie’s place. The left-handed Nathan Bracken would, in my opinion, be a better bet than Williams, though that would fuel Williams’ not-in-breach-of-the-code-of-conduct-but-say-you’re-sorry-anyway conspiracy theories. Anyway, there’s also a good leftie called Matthew Inness from Victoria, but he’s currently getting over glandular fever.

Australia, and Steve “The Last Goodbye” Waugh, need to win both the final two Tests to recover the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. A one-all draw is enough for India to retain the Big Bauble. Write down the names Matthew Nicholson, Mike Kasprowicz, Ashley Noffke and Paul Rofe, then put on a blindfold and stick in a pin. You might be duplicating the NSP’s choice for the final bowling spot in Tests Three and Four.

The honours finished fairly even in the Brisbane Test between Australia and India. If anything, Australia had slightly the upper hand.. but much less so than most people were predicting.

Just to be certain, Steve Waugh made sure he had the final word by setting India an impossible target with an hour to play, and unsettling them by taking two quick wickets. A last-minute sledge (sorry, mental disintegration) before Adelaide?

It was one of those games which started with Australia making India look like they were Bangladesh or Zimbabwe in disguise, until it was turned on its ear during the rain-sodden second day.

Steve Waugh has been involved in 27 run outs in Test cricket, only four of those himself. Mark Waugh at the WACA in 1995 (when Steve was 99 not out) is the most infamous of the remaining 23, but the cockup with Damien Martyn after some lacklustre outfielding is at least worthy of an honourable mention.

Waugh’s first innings duck, when his pad brushed the stumps while he was balancing to take off for a single, is not the most memorable hit-wicket in history - Roy Fredericks in the 1975 World Cup final, or Joe Solomon on the 1960-61 West Indies tour of Australia be battling out that honour for mine. But with this Test being really the start of the Stephen Waugh Farewell Tour, it was a bizarre moment of anticlimax akin to being bowled around your legs on a sticky with four needed to bring up a 100 average (hmm, where have I heard that one before?).

Sobering stat moment: Steve Waugh has made four ducks in eight first-class innings since the start of November. That’s one duck in each Pura Cup game or Test that he has played in that time. (He’s got a couple of centuries in among that lot, however.) Thank goodness he was able to bat on in the second innings and make 56 not out to keep his average up.

That one other anticlimax of the Gabba Test concerned one Tendulkar comma S full stop. Yes, Steve Bucknor got it wrong when he adjudged Tendulkar lbw for a duck with the ball apparently sailing well over the stumps. But one can only imagine what the group dynamics were like in the Gabba press box on Sunday if the utter drivel that spewed out of Monday’s papers was anything to go by. Hilariously, there were those who pointed to Tendulkar’s muted, but understandable dumbfoundedness at being given out as a shining example of the Spirit of Cricket. (But does it make him a “clone of Don Bradman”? Oh, please!)

This brings us to sobering stat moment number two: In his last three Test appearances, Tendulkar has failed to reach double figures in four out of five innings.

The positives of the Test? A fine 144 by Saurav Ganguly under the shadow of a possible suspension for a technical breach which thankfully never eventuated. Some great bowling by Zaheer Khan who, alas, might not be fit for Adelaide. And Matty Hayden can add “Out for 99 in a Test innings” to his CV. 99 in 98 balls, it’s not a bad way to go.

Almost a full two days’ play were lost in the First Test, which makes the amount of entertainment arising from this game even more remarkable. Harbhajan Singh did not have a good game, and might find himself replaced by Anil Kumble for the Adelaide Oval on Friday. Likewise Andy Bichel might give way to Brad Williams, though I suspect the status quo will prevail here.

We can be a little more confident now that this Test series will not be a one-sided drubbing. Those thousands who have bought their tickets for the SCG in the first week of January might just have a good game to witness as well as Stevie’s farewell.

Dumped, not just as captain but as a player, after Pakistan’s first-round exit from the World Cup. One of the world’s finest fast bowlers of the last fifteen years, Waqar Younis has come to Sydney to ply his wares over the 2003-04 summer.

Officially 32 years of age, maybe 36, maybe somehere in between, the veteran of 87 Tests and 262 one-day internationals with almost 800 wickets for Pakistan in both forms of the game put together, Waqar is currently rolling the arm over for the North Sydney Bears in the Sydney Cricket Association first grade. North Sydney was the home, at one time or another, of such Australian greats as Don Bradman, Bill O’Reilly, Sid Barnes, and currently the home club of Stuart MacGill.

If Waqar was hoping for a resurgence of form on the pitches of suburban Sydney, it hasn’t happened yet. These are his performances to date for North Sydney in the First Grade competition:

Oct 11-18 versus University of New South Wales: 2/58 and 1/42.
Oct 12: versus Eastern Suburbs: 0/46.
Oct 25-Nov 1: versus Sutherland: 3/49.
Nov 15-22: versus Parramatta: 4/33.
Nov 29-Dec 6: versus Blacktown: 0/22 (match unfinished).

Ten wickets at 25.00, by grade standards that’s a modest return for an international cricketer. We’ll watch this space, but it may need more than one of the regular political shifts in Pakistani cricket before we see Waqar Younis bowl for his country again.

There is no more important international crisis in the world today than the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Forty million people are infected with the virus, including five million new cases in the past year. Three million people have died in the last twelve months.

We’ve seen a lot of ignorance and hatred expressed over HIV/AIDS in the past twenty years, with the “gay plague” epithet still being bandied about by a bigoted few. We’ve seen friends, acquaintances or friends who know friends who have died because of the virus. We’ve seen many celebrities, mostly in show business, lose their lives to the disease. And we’ve seen the instance of new cases coming under control in many “Western” countries. But this is all just a small part of a massive tragedy that is wrecking societies and undermining humanity on a global scale.

Monday 1 December 2003 is World AIDS Day, and it’s a day when we should all reflect on the magnitude of this calamity and ask whether enough is being done. (The answer to which is a resounding No.)

Say what you will about the International Cricket Council, but the ICC is to be commended for entering a strategic alliance with UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, to publicise the fight against HIV/AIDS in cricket-playing countries.

Curiously, the ICC is the only international sporting body in the world engaged in a major alliance with UNAIDS this year, but the impact of HIV/AIDS in the cricketing world is most severe. Some twelve million people in nations that have full membership of the ICC are living with the HIV virus.

In South Africa alone, the number is a staggering five million in a country of 45 million population. In India, there are about 4.5 million. The increase in HIV prevalence is reaching alarming levels in the Caribbean, where eleven countries form the cricketing alliance that we know as the West Indies.

Education, the availability of the appropriate drugs, and the elimination of poverty are all important factors in fighting the war against this massive epidemic. As a cricketing community, it may seem that we can’t do much, but ensuring awareness and solidarity is a significant step.

Players at three international matches this week - Zimbabwe v West Indies on Sunday, Pakistan v New Zealand on Monday and Sri Lanka v England on Tuesday - will be wearing red ribbons on the field. (It would be nice to see Australia and India join in at The Gabba on Thursday.) And the ICC is conducting an internet auction of cricket bats signed at the last World Cup, with proceeds going towards an AIDS project in India.

The main players in the war against HIV/AIDS are the governments of the world, the major non-governmental organisations and the multinational corporations with the capacity to help alleviate the suffering of the millions worldwide. Humanity must come before politics, parochial ideologies and profits. We need to ask questions to ensure that action is being taken.