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Thank goodness for the wellbeing of the Australian media that Shane Warne is back on our shores. After all, Aussie politics has been so darn boring over the last couple of weeks…

Warne, who unlike his Hampshire team-mate Kevin Pietersen is a respectable father of three, flew back into Melbourne early this morning. Here’s a three-minute MP3 report on Warne’s press conference at Tullamarine Airport from the ABC’s AM program (the first few seconds sound like the product of sloppy editing).

Just what on Earth is Pietermaritzberg’s own Ashes hero, Kevin Pietersen, doing rubbing the proverbial shoulders with the World’s Greatest Argument for a 100% Inheritance Tax Herself?

Anyway, it’s in People so it must be true.

“…he just didn’t quite get his leg over…”
- J Agnew to B Johnston, The Oval, 9 August 1991

Three items about cricket on America’s NPR (National Public Radio) over the past couple of weeks.

A couple of brief post-Ashes mentions on September 17: one on Weekend Edition Saturday (links to RA and WMA clips), and one on WBUR’s Only A Game (direct link to the RA clip). Neither are terribly complementary about the length of Test matches. However, neither makes the observation that your average PGA tournament is almost as long.

More positive is the report on Tuesday evening’s All Things Considered about cricket in northern California. (Link to page containing RA and WMA clips.)

My thanks to Robert for pointing some of these out for me.

Congratulations to Geoff, who won our Ashes and More Test Cricket Tipping Competition, having selected 10 correct results out of the 12 Tests played since mid-July.

Runners-up were: Stu (9), Andrew (8), Ubersportingpundit (6). The final results are here.

Thanks to all who took part. This will be my last tipping competition under the present format, at least until I can source some better software.

It’s the feud so big that Australia’s home of cricket, SBS Television, made it the subject of their daily poll on tonight’s sports news program. And it reached the only probable conclusion in Mumbai this afternoon. A huge rug has been dragged out, and thrown on top of the whole mess. It must look a real sight in the foyer at Maison de BCCI, as well as being a candidate for the World’s Lumpiest Carpet.

Saurav Ganguly and Greg Chappell have kissed, made up, and are now living happily ever after. Till the next time.

Here is PTI’s report on the outcome of today’s meeting of the BCCI Review Committee. But let’s step back to an event earlier in the day, as reported by Indian Express and Indo-Asian News Service. Why, pray tell, is one of the parties under review having a private discussion with one of the members of the committee conducting said review an hour before the Review Committee is due to meet?

Well, no… the question is not why Ganguly and Dalmiya were having a pre-meeting meeting. The question is how the hell are they allowed to get away with it again and again?

I don’t think there are any good guys in this fracas, but I do have three questions to ask:

1. Will Chappell, or any future Indian coach, ever be able to make frank assessments of his players in confidence without having them cast into the public domain?
2. What is the relationship between Chappell and Rahul Dravid?
3. How was Greg Chappell appointed as Indian national team coach on the strength of his experience, the pinnacle of which was a couple of unspectacular years in charge of the South Australian team?

The third and final one-dayer between Pakistan A and Australia A is in progress. Live scores at The Cricket Site. Phil Jaques has already scored a run-a-ball 114, and must surely be opening for his country before much longer.

“Darren Gough asked the selectors not to consider him for the one-day squad’s tour to Pakistan this winter. Darren would like to make clear that he has not decided to retire from one-day international cricket and the selectors fully understand his reasons for making himself unavailable to tour.”
- David Graveney, ECB media release, 20.9.05

Err no David, you weren’t told the full reason.

“I have played a lot of cricket over the last 12 months and I feel that a rest would be beneficial for me at this stage of my career.”
- Darren Gough, same ECB media release.

And what better way to rest after a tough year of cricket than to take part in a celebrity ballroom dancing TV show?

While Liam Plunkett, the Jones boys and the rest of the England team prepare for their trip to Pakistan, Gough will be turning out in BBC One’s Strictly Come Dancing. This is the British franchise of Dancing with the Stars, which is seen on ABC in the US and Seven in Australia.

I think it’s going to be well worth tracking the Dazzler’s progress in parallel with the Pakistan tour. The weekly series starts on Saturday October 15, with a daily behind-the-scenes show on BBC Two. Thankfully I’ll be in the wrong part of the world to see any of it. Bruce Forsyth is the compere, a role that would have been tailor made for the late cricket commentator/Come Dancing host Peter West.

Current market at Paddypower.com has Gough and dancing partner Lilia Topylova.. er, Kopylova as 12-1 outsiders.

I think I’ll cheer for Dennis Taylor.

Woah! I would have thought that county cricket in late September would have favoured the bowlers, but in the eight matches of the final week of the 2005 championship, two teams passed 700, one declared not far short, another passed 500 and four more topped 400. What gives?

I need to start by mourning the relegation of Surrey to the second division next year. Pity we don’t have the soccer euphemisms, of passing from the Premiership to the Championship. Surrey scored 686 for 5 and beat Middlesex by an innings and 39 runs at The Oval. All this after Middlesex had doomed them to relegation on the first day.

I have to love the way Nottinghamshire celebrated winning the county championship. Stephen Fleming won the toss, put Hampshire into bat, and duly conceded 714 for 5 (John Crawley knocking up a career best 311 not out). From there, Notts lost by an innings and 38 in three days.

It gets loopier when Division Two wooden-spooners Derbyshire knocked up 707 for 7 against second-last Somerset before going on to their only championship win of the season, by an innings and 18. But why did Derbyshire captain Luke Sutton declare as soon as he got out when his partner, Graeme Welch, was on 99 not out?

Then there was the Essex innings of 574 at the appropriately named New Road. Ronnie Irani was out for 99, South African-born Dutch international Ryan ten Doeschate went for 98, and seven Essex batsmen hit at least one six! Nineteen wickets fell in four days, but at least the Worcestershire season did not end until the doyen of flat-track bullies, Graeme Hick, swatted his 128th first-class century.

It would be remiss of me not to mention that Mushtaq Ahmed notched a career-best 90 not out for Sussex against Kent, while, harking back to Surrey, Azhar Mahmood’s 204 not out was his first-class best. He shared a fifth-wicket stand of 328 with Mark Ramprakash, who took 12 hours and 40 minutes to score 252.

And so ends four years of the Frizzell County Championships, as we see that most annoying form of naming rights abuse - the sponsor doesn’t change but they impose a different brand on the event. Hence, in 2006, we will have the Liverpool Victoria County Championship.

I’ve only just stumbled onto this, but today’s one-day game between Australia A and Pakistan A at the Gaddafi Stadium, Lahore is being scored live by The Cricket Site. Apparently they covered Friday’s game as well, which was won convincingly by the Australians.

Today’s game was originally set down for the Bagh-e-Jinnah Stadium, but was shifted to Gaddafi Stadium after two fatal bomb blasts in Lahore on Thursday.

Cameron White scored 106 not out for Aus-A in their total of 204 all out earlier today, but I notice that he has since been substituted by Mitchell Johnson eight overs into the Pak-A innings.

There’s one more one-dayer on tour, also at the Gaddafi on Tuesday.

Breathless excitement as the ICC announced on Friday that the Johnnie Walker Super Series telecasts will be seen live on 3G mobile phones.

Well, not all 3G mobile phones. It helps if the major sponsor of the home team has exclusive rights to the 3G telecast in its territory of coverage. Here’s the ICC press release and the Sydney Morning Herald’s report, the only one I have seen to date which is not a blatant rehash of the ICC copy.

No indication yet of how out of pocket this latest cash cow will leave the punters. Let the Digital Divide rock!

(NB: I do not own a 3G mobile phone and have no plans to get one, even following this announcement.)