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It’s not exactly in the same league as selling mail order Via*gra, X[a]nax or p3nis enlargements, but the Zimbabwe Cricket Union’s unsolicited email to the eighteen first-class English counties on Monday will go down as one of the daftest acts by a cricket administration in recent times.

The Zimbabwe Cricket Union, stretched for funds in a deteriorating economy and suffering on the field from a drain of most of its best players, is desperate for every scheduled international tour to its country to proceed. And with October’s tour by England in serious danger of cancellation, ZCU chairman Peter Chingoka and chief executive Vince Hogg were desperate enough to decide to bypass the ECB and appeal directly to the county administrations.

As if the counties, as such, had a direct say in the matter. They don’t, and Hogg later admitted to the UK’s Daily Telegraph that he didn’t know who was on the ECB’s management board.

The full text of the email was published by the Telegraph on Tuesday (http://sport.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.jhtml?xml=/sport/2004/01/27/scziml27.xml - free registration required). While it raises a number of salient points, it is scaremongering to suggest, as Chingoka does in his closing paragraph, that “the consequences for cricket in Zimbabwe are very real but the long term damage to the ECB and the game in the UK could be even greater.” And of course there is no acknowledgement of any political or social problems within Zimbabwe in Chingoka’s letter. (After all, would there be?)

The ZCU’s attempt to bypass the ECB and appeal directly to the counties is simply daft diplomacy, not matter how strong their arguments, and may have done more damage to their cause. The Guardian on Wednesday reported suggestions that the ECB would offer one million US dollars to the ZCU as compensation for the loss of the tour. It seems compromise may be the only way out of this mess, and that could be one way to achieve it.

Meanwhile, a question du jour: Would the British Government be more decisive in ordering the ECB to cancel the tour if London were not bidding for the 2012 Olympics?

On to Australia, where Canberra hosted two annual cricketing events on Wednesday - the Prime Minister’s XI match (won by India by one run in the compulsory close finish), and the Federal Government applying pressure to Cricket Australia to cancel a Zimbabwe tour.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said on radio yesterday (transcript) that he doesn’t want Australia’s tour, scheduled for May and June, to go ahead. Downer told interviewer Neil Mitchell that the decision was Cricket Australia’s, and that the government wouldn’t try and force them. A bit like Jack Straw’s attitude to the ECB.

The difference in Australia, however, is that there is not the intense swell of public opinion over the Zimbabwe issue. Cricket followers watching them get flogged in the VB Series are generally blissfully ignorant of the situation in Zimbabwe, and there is little heard from the pollies and academics in the media about the matter.

Which makes it easier for Cricket Australia, as they did over the past two years, to tell the government to “bugger off”. Australia did cancel its tour to Zimbabwe in April 2002 on security grounds, just one month after the controversial presidential election, and they also had their tour to Pakistan that October relocated to neutral territory for similar reasons. Last February, they went ahead and played their World Cup fixture in Bulawayo, and went through the tournament undefeated.

Cricket Australia CEO James Sutherland is on strong ground when he says, for the third year running, that the board will make its own decision based on professional advice on security. Ricky Ponting, whose media skills are still maturing, may regret the unsubtle remark at a press conference yesterday when he said “Moral issues don’t come into the equation”.

My view is that both the England and Australian tours to Zimbabwe should proceed, provided there are no serious doubts about security. If either government feels strongly that the cricket teams should not go for political or “moral” reasons, then they should direct them not to go, and take responsibility for any payment of compensation for breach of contract.

Meanwhile, the world cricketing community as a whole, as represented by the ICC executive, should decide whether it is morally just for teams to continue to visit Zimbabwe while current political and humanitarian crises prevail. Their decision should then be applied consistently, and respected universally.

Bangladesh has just announced its touring team to play two Tests and five one-day internationals in Zimbabwe next month. Namibia has just completed a series of five matches in Zimbabwe against the national under-19 and A teams. Meanwhile, England is fretting over the prospects of touring Zimbabwe in October.

The Zimbabwean cricket team is currently in Australia for the VB Series, making its second trip to that country in three months. The Zimbabwean soccer team is currently in Tunisia for the African Cup of Nations, and lost their opening game to Egypt on Sunday. They had to change their travel plans from Harare to Tunis when the British Government refused to give them transit visas to make a stopover at Heathrow en route.

The same British Government is currently leaning heavily on the England & Wales Cricket Board to cancel the October tour of Zimbabwe, refusing to force them to withdraw, but telling them that the decision is theirs. So long as it is the correct decision.

The British Government’s treatment of the ECB, far from being democratic, is at once cowardly and bullying. Traits that can be seen - albeit in much more brutal fashion - in Robert Mugabe’s administration.

The government, the opposition parties, expert opinion and a broad public consensus in the UK all lean towards taking a strong moral stand against Mugabe’s despotic rule over Zimbabwe. The ECB has contractual obligations to the ICC and the Zimbabwe Cricket Union and the responsibility to conduct its business - that of administering the game of cricket in England and Wales - in a financially sound manner. But the question that needs to be asked here is: Why does the question of sporting ties with Zimbabwe seem to be an uniquely British problem?

Since the March 2002 presidential elections, when Mugabe was re-elected in dubious circumstances, two international cricket teams have cancelled visits to Zimbabwe. Australia cancelled its tour scheduled for April 2002 on security grounds, before England’s forfeiture of its World Cup game in Harare in February 2003. Australia did honour its World Cup fixture in Bulawayo.

Other national cricket teams that have visited Zimbabwe since March 2002 are: Namibia (Oct 2002, World Cup and Jan 2004), Pakistan (Nov/Dec 2002 and in the World Cup), Kenya (December 2002), South Africa (’A’ team, Jan 2003), India (World Cup), Netherlands (World Cup), and the West Indies (Nov 2003). In none of these countries was there any significant concern about sending sporting teams to compete in Zimbabwe.

Namibia, whose path to independence mirrored that of Zimbabwe, is one of its closest allies. President Sam Nujoma has publicly supported Mugabe’s land seizure policies and famously berated Tony Blair publicly at the World Summit in Johannesburg in September 2002, accusing Britain of creating the problems in Zimbabwe. The perception that Britain is being paternalistic towards a former colony is one that is shared in many countries.

Following the Bangladesh tour of Zimbabwe next month, the Sri Lankan team will visit in April. The Australians are scheduled to return in May and June to complete the two-Test, three-ODI tour that they called off in 2002. The next visitors after that are due to be the English, in October to fulfill their committments to the ICC Test Championship.

Cricket Australia has already announced that the sole consideration for calling off their coming visit to Zimbabwe will be the security of the touring party - exactly as it was when they visited for the 2003 World Cup, and when they did not visit in 2002. Despite bipartisan support in Australia’s federal parliament for not sending sporting teams there, Cricket Australia has remained focussed on the issues of security and contractual obligations as factors in completing their tours.

No matter how indifferent the rest of the cricketing world is to the humanitarian situation in Zimbabwe, feelings are so strong and widespread in the UK that it seems that England’s tour in October is now untenable. The legal implications for the ECB could, however, be devastating. There is a school of thought that the ECB has already made a binding agreement with the ZCU to make the tour as part of deal ensuring that Zimbabwe toured England in May-June 2003.

The possible scenario that the ECB faces is that they will be forced to pay substantial compensation to the ZCU for cancelling the tour, and that this financial loss would reduce the amount of money paid out to the counties and grassroots development programs in England. The ICC, under a protocol thrashed out by its executive last year, allows for cancellations for security reasons where its own security experts support that recommendation. It also allows for cancellations due to government intervention - this allows India an escape hatch over its past inability to play against Pakistan. It doesn’t allow for boards to withdraw without mutual agreement of their opponents for any other reason.

And this is an issue critical to the way in which the ECB finds a resolution to its problem. If they go ahead with their tour of Zimbabwe they will face widespread condemnation in England, possible ongoing demonstrations, and the possibility of the loss of Vodafone’s sponsorship once their current contract expires. If they choose to cancel the tour, they face the prospect of a crippling compensation bill and possible reprisal from other ICC member countries.

If the British Government directs them to cancel the tour, then the ECB’s liability to the ICC and ZCU will have been removed. In my view this is the course of action that should take place. The execution of foreign policy is the government’s business. The ECB’s business is to administer the game. The government should not use coercion to force anyone into making its own “correct” decision.

If the government does not intervene, and the ECB’s management board does decide next month to proceed with the tour, then it is time for everyone to respect that decision and get on with things. Under no circumstances should Michael Vaughan or any other of the England players have to become involved in the decision-making process.

Government intervention could, however, have other implications for cricket in England. If the Foreign Office has recently refused transit visas to the soccer team, will they allow the cricket team to visit England in September for the ICC Champions Trophy? And if they don’t, will pressure be made to bear within the ICC to move the tournament elsewhere?

Last Thursday night, I was watching David Hookes on Fox Sports hosting the one-hour “Inside Cricket” program as he did every week. On Sunday, Hookesy was coach of Victoria as they won their ING Cup game against his old state South Australia. Now, he’s gone.

David Hookes died on Monday at the age of 48 after suffering massive head injuries, apparently the result of an assault outside a pub in St Kilda on Sunday night. He’d been out celebrating the ING Cup win with some of his team. It’s not yet clear what happened that resulted in Hookes’ fatal injury, but a 21 year-old hotel bouncer has been charged with assault.

Hookes had a magnificent career as a batsman for South Australia and Australia, but was blossoming as a coach and a broadcaster at the time of his death. The fact that he was riding high as a celebrity, almost two decades after the end of his international playing days, has heightened the shock and national grief felt with the news of his violent death.

The first time that I can recall seeing David Hookes in a televised cricket match was the Adelaide Test between Australia and Pakistan at Christmas 1976, when he acted as a substitute fielder (this was the Test where Jeff Thomson dislocated his shoulder in an outfield collision with Alan Turner on the first morning).

Already a promising young batsman for South Australia, he made his mark when he hit five Sheffield Shield centuries in six innings in February 1977, including twin tons in two consecutive games. This was enough for the national selectors to give him a place in the team for the Centenary Test at the MCG in the following month, where he replaced the discarded Turner.

It was in the second innings of that magnificent game - in my opinion the finest Test match that I have ever seen - that Hookes hit five consecutive fours off the bowling of England captain Tony Greig to take his score from 36 to 56. Already he was being compared to the great left-handed batsmen such as Graeme Pollock.

Hookes was the youngest member of the Australian contingent signed up for the breakaway World Series Cricket later that year, and at 22 was being touted as the golden-haired boy of the side, much younger than most of the aging stars of the troupe. He was on 81 at the Sydney Showground (now part of Fox Studios) in a “supertest” against the WSC West Indians when he tried to hook Andy Roberts and got struck in the jaw - no helmets then. The fracture kept him out of the game for a while and is said to have affected his confidence against fast bowling.

Chosen in the first Australian Test side following reconciliation of the warring factions in 1979-80, Hookes was part of a middle-order foursome that included Greg Chappell, Allan Border and Kim Hughes, however a hamstring injury forced him to miss the rest of the series. His next recall to the Test team - at Karachi in February 1980 - ended when he bagged a pair.

Hookes was dropped from the South Australian team for a short while in 1980-81, but rebounded to score an incredible 34-ball century against Victoria in October 1982. Recalled once more to the Test team for the 1982-83 Ashes, injuries and form meant that subsequent appearances for Australia were intermittent. Hookes managed to score just one Test century, and that against an inexperienced Sri Lankan side at Kandy in April 1983. He played all five Tests in the West Indies in 1984 as a part of probably the worst Australian team of the post-Packer era.

What turned out to be his last of his 23 Test appearances was the 1985 Boxing Day Test against India (Steve Waugh’s debut). Hookes had previously turned down an offer to captain a rebel Australian side in South Africa that summer.

Hookes played 39 one-day internationals for Australia at a time when these games were confined mainly to the annual World Series Cup triseries and the World Cup. Though his dashing style of play may have seemed well suited to the limited over game, his highest ODI score for Australia was just 76, and only once did he pass 100 for South Australia in one-dayers.

The 1983 World Cup did give him the opportunity to captain Australia for one game, when Kim Hughes was injured for the final group match against India. The eventual champions of that tournament beat Australia by 118 runs, with Madan Lal and Roger Binny taking four wickets apiece.

It was for South Australia that Hookes played his most memorable cricket. His highest score was 306 not out against Tasmania in March 1987, sharing an unbeaten fourth-wicket partnership of 462 with Wayne Phillips (213*). As state captain he brought attacking flair to the game, and was at the helm when SA won the Sheffield Shield in 1981-82.

Hookes branched out into the media after his retirement as a player in 1992. As well as regularly doing television commentary on Australia’s overseas tours, he was a successful broadcaster on radio 3AW in Melbourne, doing a nightly sports talk show with AFL legend Gerald Healy. They should have been doing the show this week from the Australian Open tennis. He often made quite outspoken and even abrasive comments on radio, but this was part of the showmanship that he had learned from some of the other stablemates at the station such as Steve Price and Derryn Hinch.

Hookes added coaching to his repertoire in 2002 when he took on the struggling Victorian side. He was in the process of turning them around into Pura Cup contenders at the time of his death. Earlier this year Victoria had won their first shield game at The Gabba against Queensland for twenty years, and just last week had beaten New South Wales in Newcastle by scoring 445 in the last innings to win.

David Hookes was an energetic, popular individual, and while occasionally a loose cannon at the microphone it was very very hard to dislike him. It is staggering that his life could have ended this way, this suddenly. My sympathies to his family, his friends, and to his team-mates.

David William Hookes was born on 3 May 1955 and died on 19 January 2004. He played 23 Tests for Australia, scoring 1306 runs at 34.36; 39 one-day internationals (captain in one), scoring 826 runs at 24.29; 13 WSC supertests, scoring 789 runs at 35.86; 120 Sheffield Shield matches for South Australia, scoring a then-record 9364 runs at 47.77; and 178 first-class matches in all (which doesn’t count the WSC supertests), scoring 12671 runs at 43.39.

Not since Marcus Trescothick spilled his minties at short extra cover in the Trent Bridge Test of 2001 has cricket seen a lolly scandal such as that which engulfed Rahul Dravid at The Gabba on Tuesday night.

Dravid, fielding for India against Zimbabwe in the VB Series match, was caught on camera polishing the ball with saliva. Nothing illegal in itself with that, but the saliva was noticeably green, because Dravid had also been sucking on an “energy sweet” at the same time. Oops, let rub that off there. Oh, hello worldwide TV audience. No I’m not really doing anything nasty to that cricket ball.

Match referee Clive Lloyd wasn’t too amused, charging Dravid with a Level Two offence under the ICC Code of Conduct relating to “changing the condition of the ball” and giving him the lowest available penalty, namely 50 percent of his match fee (whatever that amounts to in reality in his case).

Poor Rahul. It seems like he has done something either inadvertent or clumsy, and been caught out for it. It doesn’t in itself make for a heinous crime, although I’ve suggestions in the Australian press this morning that an explanation may have been uncovered for some unusual swing obtained by the Indian bowlers.

On the other side of the ledger are the comments in the Indian media comparing this to the punishment of Sachin Tendulkar by referee Mike Denness for “ball-tampering” in 2001. Others correllate Dravid’s punishment to the failure to cite Brad Williams for apparent sledging in Sunday’s game between Australia and India. I don’t think you can draw a line between those two.

Dravid did something you can’t do to a cricket ball, whether deliberate or accidental. He’s been punished. He still has an excellent reputation as a cricketer and a gentleman. Let’s move on.

I would, however, like to know more about the purpose and composition of those energy sweets.

There were 26,190 people at Telstra Stadium at Sydney’s Olympic Park for a Saturday night interstate cricket match. In an arena of 80,000 capacity, this was the biggest crowd to see a day’s play of a New South Wales home game in more than forty years.

They didn’t get a win - Queensland won the ING Cup game with two balls to spare and two wickets in hand - but the popular success of the evening suggests that we will see more such games taken to the former Stadium Australia in future.

It was a bold move by Cricket New South Wales to take the game away from the SCG to a venue that poses a serious commercial threat as a rival, but there is no doubt that the ground has a place as a host of the occasional one-day international, and perhaps indeed become home base for NSW one-day competition. With the olympic site being closer to the demographic centre of the Sydney metropolitan area than is the Sydney Cricket Ground, the opportunities are better for bringing families to state games at affordable prices maybe two or three times a season.

Another argument for Stadium Australia’s future as a cricket venue is the likelihood (though not officially discussed yet) that Australia and/or New Zealand will host the 2011 World Cup. Despite all this, it would, in my opinion, be wrong to shift Tests and shield games away from the SCG.

The venue is not totally ideal for cricket at this stage. The square boundaries are rather short, of similar dimensions to Adelaide Oval, and while this is good for six-hitting in the pyjama game, it is not really the optimum for first-class or Test cricket (Adelaide makes up for it with its long boundaries at each end.) Also, the surface was very sandy for yesterday’s game, the bowler’s run-ups required lots of sand filling, and the turf on the perimeters outside where the rugby rectangle is situated looked uneven and full of hastily-inserted divots.

The issues with the playing surface would, I am sure, be able to addressed in the long term if the venue became a more regular cricketing venue. In winter, the ground also hosts rugby league, rugby union and Australian rules matches, and concerts and other special events are also held there from time to time.

As for last night’s game, despite the close finish it didn’t rise to any huge heights. New South Wales captain Steve Waugh elected to bat first and the Blues made 246 all out in their fifty overs. They always gave the impression that they should have scored more. Waugh himself top scored with 48, sharing yet another valuable partnership with Simon Katich (46) worth 97 in 19 overs. Matthew Nicholson lent some excitement himself for the crowd by hitting a six which struck one of the ING logo signs on the boundary on the full, earning $50,000 for the team prize pool.

Queensland openers Jimmy Maher (48) and Stuart Law (57) got the Bulls off to a blazing start, and looked set to steer their side to a bonus-point win (ie, inside 40 overs instead of 50), but after they were both dismissed, the NSW spin duo of Stuart MacGill and Aaron O’Brien tied the scoring down dramatically. O’Brien’s left-arm spin was especially tidy as he gave up just 1/21 from his ten overs. The pace bowlers, however, were expensive for NSW, and when they returned to the attack the scoring picked up again.

It was a close thing for the last three or four overs. After the runout of Clinton Perren (75), Queensland needed 20 to win from 19 balls, but Noffke and Kasprowicz steered them to safety, requiring three in the final over.

New South Wales, who have won the last three limited-over competitions running, squandered the chance to move to second place on the competition ladder with that loss. After the game, all six teams had played six games each out of a final total of ten. The points are: Western Australia 23, Victoria 15, New South Wales 14, Queensland 13, South Australia 13, Tasmania 0.

(A crowd of 28259 saw the second day of the NSW v MCC game at the Sydney Cricket Ground on 17 November 1962.)

It’s that time of year again, as I choose my annual World Under-25 XI, my selection of the best players in the world at Test level born on or after 1 January 1979.

My selections, in batting order and including nationality and date of birth:

1  Graeme Smith      SAF  01/02/81 capt
2  Taufeeq Umar      PAK  20/06/81
3  Chris Gayle       WI   21/09/79
4  Ramnaresh Sarwan  WI   23/06/80
5  Jacques Rudolph   SAF  04/05/81
6  Abdul Razzaq      PAK  02/12/79
7  Tatenda Taibu     ZIM  14/05/83 wk
8  Daniel Vettori    NZ   27/01/79
9  Harbhajan Singh   IND  03/07/80
10 Mohammad Sami     PAK  24/02/81
11 James Anderson    ENG  30/07/82

12  Mark Vermuelen    ZIM  02/03/79

Smith is the obvious choice for captain of this group, having bolted out of the blue to captain South Africa in 2003. It should be noted that no Australian within this age category played Test cricket in 2003, although Michael Clarke’s time cannot be far away.

Honourable mentions include: Danish Kaneria, Ashish Nehra, Parthiv Patel, Alok Kapali, Mohammad Ashraful, Fidel Edwards, Daren Ganga, Douglas Hondo.

Players from my 2003 eleven reappearing in this year’s team: Gayle, Sarwan, Razzaq, Vettori, Harbhajan. (Of the other players from the 2003 team, Virender Sehwag, Daryl Tuffey and Zaheer Khan are too old, while Robert Key, Marlon Samuels and James Foster did not reappear.)

Vettori first appeared in my World Under-25 XI in 1998. Six years later, he appears for the last time, as he turns 25 on January 27.

Previous World Under-25 XIs:

2003: Chris Gayle, Virender Sehwag, Ramnaresh Sarwan (capt), Robert Key, Marlon Samuels, Abdul Razzaq, James Foster (wk), Daniel Vettori, Harbhajan Singh, Daryl Tuffey, Zaheer Khan. (Shahid Afridi 12th)

1999-2002: no teams selected

1998: Adam Bacher, Jacques Kallis, Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Ricky Ponting, Shaun Pollock, Mark Boucher, Saqlain Mushtaq, Daniel Vettori, Jason Gillespie. (Herschelle Gibbs 12th)

1997: Sachin Tendulkar (capt), Saurav Ganguly, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Stephen Fleming, Ricky Ponting, Pankaj Dharmani (wk), Shaun Pollock, Heath Streak, Chaminda Vaas, Saqlain Mushtaq, Muttiah Muralitharan. (Nixon McLean 12th)

1996: Ajay Jadeja, Sachin Tendulkar (capt), Vinod Kambli, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Ricky Ponting, Adam Parore (wk), Dominic Cork, Chaminda Vaas, Heath Streak, Muttiah Muralitharan, Waqar Younis.

1995: Michael Slater, Vinod Kambli, Sachin Tendulkar (capt), Alistair Campbell, Imzamam ul-Haq, Michael Bevan, Adam Parore (wk), Darren Gough, Muttiah Muralitharan, Anil Kumble, Waqar Younis. (Basit Ali 12th).

A little later than intended, my apologies, but here is my selection of the top ten cricket news stories in the 2003 calendar year, presented in reverse order.

As some of you would know, I compiled an annual list along these lines for CricInfo a few years ago in consultation with CricInfo workers and correspondents around the world. This year’s list I have done myself.

10. THE RISE OF GRAEME SMITH:

Twenty-two years of age and with no first-class captaincy experience, Graeme Smith was elevated to the leadership of the South African team when Shaun Pollock was dumped after the World Cup. He was younger than every other member of the team. After taking on the captaincy his own batting blossomed, as he scored 277 against England at Edgbaston to score the highest individual Test innings by a South African. He followed this in the next Test at Lord’s with 259, and found himself compared by many to another South African left-handed batsman called Graeme Pollock. South Africa has yet to prosper under his captaincy - they drew a five-Test series with England 2-2 before losing 1-0 in Pakistan.

9. SUSSEX WINS THEIR FIRST COUNTY CHAMPIONSHIP:

Surrey choked and Sussex prospered as the 2003 county season drew to a close. Sussex, a club with enormous heritage and founded in 1839, had been runners-up in the Championship on seven occasions. On September 18, Sussex amassed 614 for 4 against Leicestershire in their first innings, accumulating the points which sealed the title - Murray Goodwin compiling 335 not out. (It wasn’t actually the first county championship to go to Sussex - the women’s team scored their first county title just six weeks earlier.)

8. THE CLASH BETWEEN THE ICC AND THE BCCI OVER THE RELEASE OF WORLD CUP PROCEEDS:

A dispute over sponsorship of Indian players at the World Cup led to claims and counter-claims for compensation between the ICC, its television rights holders Global Cricket Corporation, and the BCCI. At one point the BCCI threatened to sue the World Cup organisers for not marketing the tournament well enough. As the year ended, all proceeds from the World Cup were being withheld by the ICC until the compensation claim by the GCC was settled.

7. DARREN LEHMANN’S RACIAL VILIFICATION SUSPENSION

It was almost swept under the carpet, but Darren Lehmann’s racially-charged epithet directed at the Sri Lankan dressing room earned him the indignity of becoming the first player to be suspended under the ICC’s Code of Conduct for racial vilification. He was forced to sit out five one-day internationals, including the start of the World Cup.

6. WEST INDIES’ WORLD RECORD FOURTH-INNINGS RUN-CHASE AGAINST AUSTRALIA;

Late on the third day of the Fourth Test at the Antigua Recreation Ground, Australia was dismissed in its second innings for 417, leaving the West Indies an unprecedented 418 for victory. The world record stood at 406, scored by India in 1976. Early on the fifth day, they did it with three wickets in hand, helped along by centuries to Chanderpaul and Sarwan - and an infamous and ill-fated sledging exchange between Sarwan and Glenn McGrath.

5. MATTHEW HAYDEN’S WORLD RECORD 380:

It didn’t matter that it was against the pedestrian bowling attack of Zimbabwe, Matthew Hayden’s 622-minute onslaught on October 9 and 10 was an exercise in concentration, endurance and sheer brutality, and, for a short while at least, stole the back pages of the newspapers away from the Rugby World Cup.

4. THE ICC WORLD CUP:

Amid all the sub-plots arising from the 2003 ICC World Cup, there was the tournament itself. Big - surely too long - disappointing for teams such as South Africa and Pakistan, thrilling for Kenya, who managed to find themselves in the semis. At the end of the day, however, the best team won. Ricky Ponting’s Australians demolished India in the final after a dramatic comeback against England in the first round provided the match of the tournament.

3. ENGLAND’S BOYCOTT OF ZIMBABWE AT THE WORLD CUP:

The treatment of white farmers, the rigging of elections, the civil unrest in Zimbabwe were all reasons why the British government, and most of its public, did not want the English team to play there. No one, however, wanted to take the responsibility to actually stop them from going. On top of this, the rest of the cricketing world (with the possible exception of Australia) didn’t really care - some accusing the British of post-colonial paternalism. It took a huge toll on Nasser Hussain before the decision not to play was finally made.

2. SHANE WARNE’S DRUG BAN:

The bombshell was dropped on the morning of Australia’s first game in the World Cup - Shane Warne had tested positive and was heading home to clear his name. Far from being cleared, further tests reinforced the original finding, and he was suspended from all cricket for one year. The excuses put forward were hilarious - it was a tablet given to his by his mum, he couldn’t read the warning on the pack because the flap was torn, and so on… You could almost make up a list of “Top Ten Shane Warne Stories of 2003″, but this one finishes head and shoulders above all the others.

1. ANDY FLOWER AND HENRY OLONGA’S BLACK ARMBAND PROTEST:

The protests by Flower and Olonga during Zimbabwe’s opening World Cup game against Namibia brought an end to their international careers, put their lives in danger, and forced them to leave the country as soon as possible. It was one of the bravest, and most moving, acts of individual expression in the history of sport.

Kumble bowls. Waugh sweeps. He lofts it high in the air. Tendulkar waits just inside the square leg rope and takes the catch. And it’s all over.

After 18 years, 168 Tests, 260 innings, 82 scores of fifty or better and 10,927 runs, Steve Waugh had played his last innings for Australia. He scored 80 and helped Australia draw the Fourth Test against India.

It’s not often that 27000 people cram the Sydney Cricket Ground to see a game peter out into a draw. But that’s not what they were there for. They were there to give a rousing, emotional farewell to one of the sport’s greatest modern legends, finally giving the international game away at the age of 38.

Not everything went the way the crowd, egged on to some extent by a hysterical local media, would have liked. Australia didn’t win the Test - they gave up 705 runs in the first innings and were fortunate to be spared the embarrassment of following on. They didn’t win the series - it finished 1-1 with India retaining the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. And Waugh didn’t get a final hundred, though he came closer than should realistically have been expected on that amazing final day.

We’ve seen hyperactive scoring in the Test series in both Australia and South Africa in the past few weeks, and the final day in Sydney began with Australia 0/10 in their second innings, needing another 433 to win in 90 overs. An utterly unprecedented task at Test level, but the presence of such explosive batsmen as Hayden, Ponting and Gilchrist in the lineup meant that the dream was still not entirely unbelievable.

Matthew Hayden and Justin Langer played the first hour of the day as if victory was still within their sights. Hayden (30), however, fell to the first ball after the drinks break, driving a Kumble googly to Dravid at slip. Soon afterwards, Langer (47) lashed out to Murali Kartik, driving uppishly to Sehwag at long-off. At 2/92, Ricky Ponting and Damien Martyn started rolling down the shutters.

As the pair began blocking ball after ball, a crowd fed on four and a half days of overcharged batting began the slow hand claps. But when Martyn (40) popped a Kumble delivery to substitute fielder Yuvraj Singh at leg slip, the crowd immediately ignored the action on the field to stand and watch the players’ entrance, as Stephen Rodger Waugh took to the field.

He began slowly but patiently, waiting for the bad ball to put away to the off-side boundary. The partnership between the present and future captains ended when Ponting (47) hit a return catch to Irfan Pathan. Australia was 4/196 with 38 overs still to play.

Simon Katich, who has shared some outstanding partnerships with Waugh for New South Wales this season, played a confident, though not entirely chanceless innings, and the pair took the score to 4/322 with eight overs remaining - the point where the two captains could agree to call the game off if they wished. With Waugh on 69, Ganguly still going for a win, and a big crowd loving the action, they played on.

Waugh’s strokeplay became more loose as the crowd’s expectations rose that he might just have enough time to squeeze in one final century. No such luck, as he holed out to one of the more uncharacteristic shots of his career in the fifth-last over of the game. The partnership with Katich was worth 142.

We thought the draw might be called at that point, but instead Adam Gilchrist came to the crease. Three balls later, Gilchrist returned to the pavillion, the victim of a very scrappy stumping by Parthiv Patel, having played just one scoring shot for four. Kumble’s twelfth wicket for the match, it brought Jason Gillespie to the crease.

Ganguly was still gunning for the victory, and still taking an interminable amount of time over his field settings, but Katich took control of proceedings and the match ended with Australia on 6/357. In the end, they finished just 86 short. It’s not often that 347 runs are scored on the fifth day of a Test match, but the truth is that the pitch had not worn much at all. Only 25 wickets fell over the five days for 1757 runs.

Katich finished on 77 not out and unquestionably played the best innings of the day. He scored 202 runs for the match, but still well behind Tendulkar’s 301 (241* and 60*). Kumble took 12/279 to equal the most wickets taken in a Test at the SCG (8/141 and 4/139).

With a couple of thousand more spectators coming to the ground during Waugh’s innings, there was much emotion at the end of the day as the Australian captain said his farewells to the crowd and did a lap of honour hoisted on the shoulders of his team-mates. Curiously, among all the thanks he gave in his farewell speech, there was no acknowledgement of Ricky Ponting or the future. One other disappointment was that the Indian team left the field with the Border-Gavaskar Trophy without taking the chance to thank their many fans at the ground.

While this day and this moment belonged to Steve Waugh, the series was a memorable one for India. They couldn’t quite take the series, but a 1-1 away result was much better than many were expecting. Their bowling ranks are still brittle but the star batsmen performed, one after another. Ganguly led it off at the Gabba, Laxman was excellent at Adelaide and Sydney, Tendulkar came good with the highest score of his adult career after it seemed his form was deserting him. And Rahul Dravid scored 619 runs to be named Man of the Series.

Australia looked that little bit more mortal, and with due respect to them, that is good for the world game. They’ll find it tough in Sri Lanka in March, and even tougher when they meet India next in October. It’s a tough challenge for Ricky Ponting without a Waugh, let alone two, in his eleven. But he’s already a World Cup winner, and the future is his.

With one day remaining in the Sydney Test, Australia needs 433 runs to win with ten wickets in hand. It shouldn’t be possible. Shouldn’t.

But this Test - and indeed many Test matches lately - have been so unusual that it can’t be absolutely ruled out.

We’ve seen an exhilirating four days of batting at the SCG. Australia made 474 in their first innings, yet it wasn’t enough to avoid giving Indian captain Ganguly the option of enforcing the follow-on (which, as it happened, he elected not to do).

Alongside a dazzling innings by VVS Laxman, we’ve seen Sachin Tendulkar produce the highest score of his adult career, before going on to surpass 300 runs for the match. Quickfire centuries by Justin Langer and Simon Katich have been dwarfed by comparison, and lost in the media hype alongside the departing Steve Waugh’s tradesmanlike 40.

And in the midst of all this batting hyperactivity, we have had Anil Kumble taking 8/141 in the Australian first innings - the first eight-fer at the Sydney Cricket Ground since the 19th century! (Tom Richardson took 8/94 for England in March 1898 in the last Test of his career.)

A target of 433 in 90 overs on a fifth day wicket should be ludicrous, but we have seen so many powerful performances by this Australian battery over the past couple of years. The sentimentalists would have Steve Waugh playing a rearguard knock to win the game, or slightly more realistically, to draw it. It would be a shame, however, if Australia turned the match into a tame finish rather than go down in a kaleidoscopic heap.

If we’re looking for history on day five of this Sydney Test, we should keep an eye on Anil Kumble. No one else in this Indian side looks quite the match-winner in this situation, although nineteen year-old Irfan Pathan is clearly a player of the future. No one has taken thirteen wickets in a Test at the SCG. So far.

One passing point as we await the start of the final day of this quite breathtaking Test series. Has Sachin Tendulkar played his last Test innings on Australian soil? Amidst all the wildly excessive hysteria over Steve Waugh, is there another farewell that Sydney cricket fans are overlooking?

It was nineteen years ago - January 1985 - when Clive Lloyd played his 110th and last Test, his 74th as captain, leading the West Indies against Australia at the Sydney Cricket Ground. A world-beating team at the peak of its form, the West Indies was expected to trounce Australia as they had done throughout that series, sending Lloyd out on a high. Instead, the Aussies won by an innings and 55 runs.

It’s now January 2004, the venue is again the Sydney Cricket Ground, and Steve Waugh is playing his 168th Test, already announced a couple of months ago as his last. It is his 57th as captain, of which he was won a staggering forty-one. The hype around Sydney has been incredible, with the first three days of the Test sold out in advance in anticipation of giving Waugh a rousing farewell.

However, like Lloyd, it seems that Waugh will walk off the SCG as a last-time loser. With two days’ play remaining in the 2004 Test against India, Australia are 164 runs short of avoiding the follow-on, with four wickets in hand. They have already become, in this game, the first Australian side to give up 700 runs in an innings on home soil.

This is, to be sure, a rustier Australian team than we have seen in recent times. The bowling is weak, Brett Lee is below (and possibly past) his best, and Stuart MacGill is not consistent enough. (And, yes, MacGill does now have more career Test wickets than Bill O’Reilly. What a travesty.) The fielding looks below par at times, and neither Damien Martyn nor Adam Gilchrist have fired with the bat in this series. Nor, really, has Waugh himself, and one has to wonder how badly the whole farewell thing has interfered with the performance of the Australian team.

India, however, deserve to be on top at this stage. They have now surely retained the Border-Gavaskar Trophy as it would take some rank recklessness for them to hand Australia a victory in this game. While their bowling in this series is probably little better, if at all, than Australia’s, the difference has been in the ability of their top batsmen to fire at one time or another. Now that Tendulkar has exploded back into form with his career best 241 not out, all of the Indian top six with the exception of Akash Chopra have contributed at least one big hundred to the team cause during the series. In Laxman’s case, he has done so twice.

Only Hayden, Langer and Ponting can be said to have fired for Australia. Even the tail-enders, one or more of whom can often be expected to pitch in with the odd 60 or 70, have not delivered any extra runs for the Aussies this time.

Despite an extraordinary record as Australian captain, Waugh won’t be going out on top. But that sure didn’t do the reputation of Clive Lloyd any harm.