http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/ausveng/content/current/story/260411.html

Successful Australian former captain says Poms have picked right skipper (and implies that his own side have picked the wrong one) – so why pretend it’s about Steve Harmison? Some people don’t know a news story when it pokes them in the eye…

Is Auvergne related to Bishop Odo.Anyway,great place for a hols.

My point about the wager is that I think the Aussies will not be put under sustained pressure, and will run out easy winners. Certainly, Ponting can spit the dummy (but he’s always had a different temperament from Flintoff – and his batting seems to thrive on it), but I don’t think he’ll have sufficient cause to do so on home soil.

I don’t underestimate that ability of the B.A. to get under skins, but I think their success in doing that in this series depends on the team’s success on the field, and it’s this I’m not sanguine about.

But I think you underestimate the macho desire of your traditional Aussie to dominate; and the frustration that comes from the failure to do so.

My Tenner remains on a big Ponting wind-up before Jan 5th 2007.

It came as a relief and a joy to read an article in The Telegraph that actually reflects what is the norm in sport – the vigorous, and often foul-mouthed, exchanges that sportsmen typically have in the heat of the moment, and, more importantly, the “players’ code” that enshrines this as a necessary, even an honourable, thing:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.jhtml;jsessionid=D45O1DUT3RI4FQFIQMGCFGGAVCBQUIV0?xml=/sport/2006/09/19/srnort19.xml

As I’ve written before, problems do occur in interethnic matches, but much less so than team managements with an eye on the broader political picture would have us believe. Players of most professional sports, from whatever background, will “test” and “target” the opposition, especially the top performers and the perceived weak individuals, in an attempt at mental disintegration. The same goes for sport at semi-professional and at a decent amateur level too.

The challenge as exposed by the Telegraph’s commendably unedited (i.e. true) insight into the sporting mind is how this kind of “para-sporting” activity should be accommodated. Burying one’s head in the sand, and pretending it doesn’t exist, or drawing up ever more, and ever more complex and unenforceable, “Codes of Conduct” or “Spirits of…”, is not the way forward, in my opinion. (The whole concept of a written “Spirit” is bizarre when you think about it.) But it is surprising how rare it is to find sports administrators who are willing to attend to what actually happens in their sport, rather than allowing themselves to be collectively led into buying into a state of affairs that doesn’t exist in reality, as they construct their Missions and Values, and drive forward their careers.

Normally its the nonchalance of Aussie confidence that is remarkable – now its the unity of the Barmy Army (and the England team) that has got to them… Call it the Gary Pratt effect.

I’ll lay a tenner that before the series is over Ricky Ponting throws an dummy-spitting wobbly.