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Buried beneath the Commonwealth Games, the start of the football (oops, rugby league and Aussie rules) seasons, and the Test series in South Africa, Victoria and Queensland are playing off at The Gabba for the 2005-06 Pura Cup.

Yesterday, Queensland completed its response to Victoria’s first innings of 344 by declaring at 6 for 900. Yes, nine hundred. You’d barely know anything about it from the media coverage. Even CricInfo, whose home page is little more than an overcrowded advertising hoarding these days, doesn’t regard it as one of its top cricket stories less than 24 hours after the event.

At least Brisbane’s Murdoch chip-wrapper The Courier-Mail squeezed a photo onto its back page today. In post-Games Melbourne, The Herald-Sun’s lead sports story is about the AFL umpire who has been suspended for having some late nights out after the game.

The Pura Cup hasn’t been televised nationally since the end of the 2001-02 season, collateral damage inflicted when the C7 pay-TV sports channel shut down after losing the telecast rights to NRL and AFL, and thus its financial lifeline. The monopoly pay-TV sports broadcaster in this country, Fox Sports Australia, has shown no interest in picking up domestic cricket at all.

I’ve been providing some cheap entertainment for CricInfo readers on the 23 Yards blog over the past week.

Now Amit Varma is one of India’s better known bloggers - I often enjoy reading India Uncut - but his socio-economic world view is, well, a tad different to mine.

Anyway, have a read of the thread in question… I’d love to know if anyone thinks I was barking up the wrong tree.

Australia 434 for 4 lost to South Africa 438 for 9.

Having not followed the game last night, I awoke with horror at the scoreline on the 7am news on the radio. As Tourism Australia would say, “bloody hell”.

The hyperbole has already started, but I’d like to sit back and think about the long-term ramifications for the sport that this debacle has triggered. Do we accept this day-long home-run derby as the future of the sport, or is it time to alter the rules to give bowlers decent career incentives once more?

Congratulations to South Africa on deservedly winning the five-match ODI series. But I do feel for Mick Lewis.

http://sport.guardian.co.uk/cricket/story/0,,1728691,00.html

Freedom of expression came at a high price for a teenager sent home from school for styling his hair like his cricketing hero Kevin Pietersen. Although Pietersen has now shaved off his trademark hairdo, its punk spirit lives on in 15-year-old Carl Ferris, right, who refused to go back to class after being ordered by teachers to get rid of his “extreme” style.

continued at The Guardian

Congratulations to Andrew and Rachael Flintoff on the birth on Wednesday of their 6lb 14oz baby boy, National Public Radio newsreader and Alaskan mafiosi Corey Flintoff.
With the distinguished American broadcaster’s birth coming thirteen days early, His Freddiness celebrated at Mohali on Thursday by winning the toss and scoring 4 not out.

The Marylebone Cricket Club has announced on Thursday the dates and venues for the Ashes tour of Australia in 2006-07:

• Museum of Sydney, Saturday October 21 - Wednesday November 8
• Queensland Museum, Brisbane, Sunday November 12 - Wednesday November 22
• South Australian Museum, Adelaide, Sunday November 26 - Wednesday December 6
• Western Australian Museum, Perth, Sunday December 10 - Wednesday December 20
• Melbourne Museum, Monday December 26 - Sunday January 7 2007
• Melbourne Cricket Club Museum, Tuesday January 9 - Sunday January 14

Tasmania misses out again. No word on when tickets will go on sale to Barmy Army operatives, or whether the cast of How Long Have You Had It, Madam will be the Urn’s support act on tour.

http://sport.guardian.co.uk/cricket/story/0,,1720845,00.html

At least I’m not flying the flag solo for cricket podcasting any more!

Robert Harvey (who is a great supporter of The Net Sessions) has started The Cover Drive Podcast. One edition so far, an interview with Rediff’s (and Sight Screen’s) Prem Panicker, recorded during the Third Test between Pakistan and India. An interesting interview, even if some of the current events are now dated. I trust there will be more of The Cover Drive. The website is www.coverdrivepodcast.blogspot.com.

Two cricket podcasts to report from professional media outlets. As previously noted, Sunil Gavaskar is podcasting end-of-day summaries of India’s international matches through Yahoo! India. Currently, he’s covering the First Test against England at Nagpur.

In England, the Telegraph has sent former Middlesex pie-wrangler Simon Hughes to India to give daily “analysis” of the Test series via MP3. I haven’t reviewed his first two despatches (preview and day one summary) yet, but the podcast feed can be found here.

I promised when The Net Sessions began that I would try to keep to a minimum of one podcast a month. I didn’t do a podcast in February. Sorry.

Busy, and frankly, a bit uninspired. Some of it has already been recorded, including a response to some of the feedback I have received. So maybe I’ll get around to post-production next week.

I’m rather surprised, actually, that I’ve had more than 800 accesses to the podcasts in February, despite the fact that I haven’t put out a new one since the beginning of January. (The podcast accesses for January totalled 1731, by far the busiest month to date).

Of course, if you haven’t listened to any of the podcasts of The Net Sessions yet, please do so at www.thenetsessions.net

If anyone’s interested in providing sponsorship for a weekly or fortnightly podcast on cricket, including interviews and features and aimed at an international audience - ie, what I’d like The Net Sessions to be - please drop me a message via the feedback page. It’s amazing what can be achieved when you have the resources to achieve them.