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Is there a message in this somewhere? Something along the lines of “try sacking me now you bastards”…

The question has to be asked: If Andrew Symonds stayed off the turps last Friday night, would Australia be undefeated in the NatWest Series today?

To quote John Howard’s favourite answer in parliamentary question time:

No.

I kept to my policy of not losing sleep over the NatWest Series, and thus copped out before the end of the Australian innings. Ball-by-ball commentary on the game from The Cricket Site, and Rob Smyth’s fabulous OBO at The Guardian - Australian innings, then England innings.

In the Great Tradition That Never Was, Australia now leads England 45-34-1 in limited-over internationals (and I include England’s win in the twenty-over-a-side limited-over game last week in those stats).

Cricket Australia has a 1.5 Meg MP3 of Symonds talking about his past week.

In my BBC interview on Tuesday, Rhod Sharp described me as “following the NatWest Series avidly”. I have no idea how he arrived at that conclusion. I went to bed on Saturday when Bangladesh were crawling along at 3.0 runs per over against Australia. I was asleep when Kevin Pietersen went berko on Sunday and I’ll probably be snoring through his three-ball duck later tonight. And I don’t have Fox Sports these days so I can’t see the England-Bangladesh games.

Australia 92 for 2 against England at Dynamo Durham Stadium as I speak. Wheelie bin Giles has just caught a skied shot off Ponting at deep third man after Pietersen let a similar ball bounce in front of him in the previous over. Oh, erm, it’s 92 for 3. Hayden’s caught behind.

But don’t expect any running commentary from me tonight. Rob Smyth is in fine form at The Guardian today. Memories of what CricInfo was like in the good old days before Travis was barred from doing comms…

Rupert Murdoch’s flagship random word generator doctoring photographs and dredging up sexist, homophobic stereotypes yet again. Yes, it’s all good clean honest sledging, isn’t it?

I was interviewed by BBC Radio Five Live earlier today as part of their weekly Pods and Blogs program during their overnight shift. It’s a program where they discuss current events through the eyes of bloggers and podcasters, and this morning they devoted a segment to cricket, with particular focus on Australia’s woes in the NatWest Series.

The audio (in realmedia format) of the program is online at the BBC website for the next seven days. Go to Five Live’s Up All Night website and select the archive of Tuesday’s program. The pods and blogs program starts an hour into the audio, and my segment is about 99 minutes in. (Update June 28: The program archive has been replaced on BBC Online.)

The BBC’s Chris Vallance in Los Angeles was the interviewer, and also taking part was Zunaid Kazi, who is a participant in Banglacricket.com. The segment is introduced by the program’s host in London, Rhod Sharp.

Update: For a limited time only, click here to stream the MP3 of the interview (approx 4 minutes).

The Discovery Channel in the US is set to announce its choice of the all-time Greatest American next Sunday. Despite my campaign on this website earlier in the year, Bart King is, disgracefully, not among the final five nominees. Indeed he wasn’t chosen in the top 100.

The greatest cricketer the United States ever produced, and thus the greatest sportsperson in American history, King was snubbed by Discovery Channel viewers whose choices for the top 100 included Hugh Hefner, Martha Stewart, Mel Gibson, Michael Jackson and FOUR members of the Bush family.

Just two sportspeople made the top 25: Muhammad Ali and Lance Armstrong. (Other sporting figures in the top 100 were Brett Favre, Michael Jordan, Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth and Tiger Woods. Yes that Brett Favre.) Neither Ali nor Armstrong could make it to the Top 5.

Surely Bart had the credentials to top them all. Consider some of his achievements:

• In a first-class career spanning nineteen years (1893-1912) he took 413 wickets at 15.65 and scored 2134 runs at 20.51 - achievements no other American has matched;
• He topped the bowling averages in the 1908 English season whilst on tour with the Philadelphia side, taking 87 wickets at 11.01;
• He took 10-53 in the first innings of Philadelphia’s crushing innings victory over Ireland in September 1909;
• He scored 98 and 113 not out for Philadelphia against Surrey at The Oval in August 1903 (as well as taking six wickets for the match);
• He was a member of the last team to beat Australia in a first-class match on American soil, taking nine wickets in the match for Philadelphia in September 1912;
• He played in Philadelphia teams which defeated Australia on three separate occasions. Not even Bangladesh has done that.

Surely a great American who could stand alongside the likes of the official final five nominees, Benjamin Franklin, Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan and George Washington.

Well, certainly alongside Ronald Reagan.

Shane’s Shame: Married Aussie cricket ace begged me for sex, but it was OWZAT! in seconds
(Mike Duffy/Sunday Mirror, 19.6.05)

On a weekend when Australia’s finest were no match for the class and experience of Bangladesh, leading random word generator, the Sunday Mirror, splashed their front page with the devastating news:

Exclusive! £20 to spend at Boots

followed by a comedy piece on the purported antics of the Bill Clinton of world cricket, Shane Warne. Curious that the Mirror office’s Saturday night wordlotto also spewed out the consecutive words “Kevin” and “Pietersen” when composing that article.

Caught Behind
(Soumya Bhattacharya/The Guardian, 18.6.05)
Book review of “Worth the Wait: An autobiography” by Darren Lehmann.

Launching my Cricket Oggcast, a podcast of downloadble audio files encoded in the Ogg Vorbis format.

I’m starting with a short piece taken from a press conference held in New Delhi on 15 March 2005, when US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice promised to Indian Foreign Minister Natwar Singh that she would learn to understand cricket. We’re going to hold her to that promise.

It’s only a small file, 36kb in size and approx 5 seconds in duration. Winamp and VLC can play ogg vorbis files without any trouble. Real Player, Windows Media Player, Quicktime Player and iTunes can with the aid of additional software. Portable media players are starting to add OGG support in addition to the royalty-protected MP3, WMA and AAC formats.

Feedback is most welcome (not the audio kind )

Download http://noise.rickeyre.com/2005/06/condicricket.ogg.

Coverage from the British Sunday papers of Australia’s humiliation by Bangladesh at Sophia Gardens on Saturday:

Simon Wilde in the Sunday Times:

Bangladesh yesterday pulled off one of the greatest upsets in cricket, and possibly all sport

Vic Marks in the Observer:

At the start of the day we wondered whether the Aussie juggernaut was spluttering. By the end, it seemed to be missing several wheels.

Geoff Lawson in the Observer:

The surprise in the success of the chase should lie not in Australia’s failure to defend a total twice in four days but in the mature and disciplined fashion in which Bangladesh pursued.

Scyld Berry in the Sunday Telegraph:

Australia’s amazingly demoralised mood stems from some combination of their two defeats last week, the disciplinary action which had to be taken against Andrew Symonds and may have to be taken against Hussey, and perhaps the realisation that their empire is finally in decline.

Mike Atherton in the Sunday Telegraph:

Their [Australia’s] hegemony over the last decade has been largely based on better bowling and out cricket than their opponents. And it is precisely these two areas where they have looked most out-of-sorts.

Worst headline of the match, however, goes to Sydney’s Sun-Herald. Going to press before the match was finished, they headlined Chloe Saltau’s report on the Australian innings with the title:

Bangers mash top order

A couple of MP3s on the ABC website: some post-match interviews by Jim Maxwell (12:13, 2.8megs) and the audio of the winning runs (1:12, 285k).