Riposte

Well lift up our skirts, tickle our biff and call us Mystic Susan. Yesterday - in a rare outbreak of Sunday posting - we actually picked in reverse order ie. Adlington, Hamilton and Hoy, the exact finishing order of BBC Spurts Personality of the Year.

Naturally we didn’t have the foresight to put any money on it, oh no, that would be far too rewarding an outcome for the way this Christmas is shaping up.

However solace has come in the form of the return of Test cricket to our DAB radio and after all the drama, trauma and debate surrounding whether England should go back (something we again predicted – have we got a direct line to the spurting future or what?), it has been simply marvellous to wake up in this bleak English midwinter and be greeted by Test cricket's gentle cadences, immense subtleties and moments of tension and excitement.

And for a game which nearly never happened, it has been quite scintillating cricket and has almost had everything ... Straussy’s two centuries, Collingwood’s one, Swann’s double strike and a daunting total for India to chase on the final day. Sehwag’s blitz, Yuvraj’s defiance and then a match-winning century with the return of the Little Master.

The script has been perfect and we don’t even feel too disappointed by England’s loss, hell, we’re even a little exhilarated by India’s epic chase.

A return to proper Test match cricket has produced not only a magnificent game but the perfect cricketing riposte to the horrors of Mumbai.

Family Fortunes

Watching events unfold in Mumbai through the fish eye of the news reels last week filled us with sufficient horror to momentarily forget our usual sense of spurting joy.

We hesitate to use the drab old saw about giving a real sense of perspective, but those pictures from India delivered it like a Curtly Ambrose bouncer to the temple.

Naturally enough England’s last two one-dayers were cancelled and the side scampered home, to contemplate revised itineraries and debate safety reports and when - indeed, if - they should go back.

Well they should.

Yup easy for us to say, with no WAGs or kids tugging at the heartstrings. But here’s why we think England must return to play the Test series.

The players’ safety is almost guaranteed now; these attacks succeeded mainly because of their surprise nature, that won’t happen again. England’s players will be safe.

There’s certainly an argument too about not letting the terrorists win and making sure their tactics don’t disrupt the normal rhythms of life.

Yet the most compelling reason of all why England should go back is to simply show solidarity and sympathy with the Indian team and its amazing supporters, even if means we end up being beaten hollow (which seems likely).

England and India have had their differences as the power struggle in modern cricket plays out, but events like this remind us that ultimately we’re all part of the same cricketing family. In times like these, the family should look after its own.

Ashes to Ashes: The Countdown begins

That’s it, we can’t put it off any longer, consider our stopwatch officially checked, wound and the button on top depressed as the official World of Spurt countdown to next year’s Ashes finally and totally begins.

This is it people, there’s no turning back now, prepare yourself for a winter of Aussie-baiting and a summer of Aussie-thrashing as next summer’s Cric-pocalypse, the mother of all series hoves into view.

We promise to license that poodle rock theme tune by Europe, produce our own merchandise and well pretty much everything you’d expect, to give our coverage the edge over the likes of Sky etc.

Hm, too much? Yet we needed something to cheer us up on this bleak Monday afternoon with the rain coming down outside like so many gallons of piss, and there it was... the Aussie’s losing 2-0 to India.

While It’s way too early to call for the moment, we remain as optimistic as a polygamist who thinks ‘third time lucky’, urged on by the biggest and most important factor of all: no Warne and McGrath.

Our spurting second hand can’t tick around quick enough.

The old order changeth?

A rare blast of cricket today in the bleak mid erm autumn, where a right of old shoeing for the Aussies results in them being on the wrong end of a 320-run spanking from India in the second test at Mohali.

Now normally we’d bow to no-one in our enjoyment of watching the Aussies squirm on the rack, but strangely we didn’t get as much pleasure out of the result as we thought we might.

Now India’s a tough place to tour and it’s a fool who bets the farm on any single result, even one as statistically massive as this, but we’re suddenly wondering if this signals the start of a shift in the game’s playing as well as its financial power base?

The sheep worriers are still a great side, but no team can survive simultaneously losing the best spin bowler in history as well as one of its finest pacemen and it looks as this might finally be starting to filter through into where it counts - out on the field.

There's still great players there: Ponting, Lee and Hussey, but there's plenty of new and emerging talents too and its not stuffed to the gills with the of champions of old.

The Aussies' dominance has been unchallenged for so long, it seems almost inconceivable that anyone else could take the number one slot, but this result indicates they might just be mortal after all and the first rays of the dawn of a new world order may just be peeping over the horizon.

Now if there’s one thing that cricketing history has taught us it’s that you write off the Aussies at your peril, but it makes the prospect of the Ashes next year seriously interesting.