Pre-race tension

Okay last chance to post this workaday week since we’re off at an industry awards show. Don’t worry we’re not nominated (but organising bizarrely) and any interruptions to the all day drinking even for a quick spurt would be about as welcome as an answer machine message from Russell Brand and Jonathon Ross.

Just a quick one then to preview this weekend’s big event – nope not the latest episode of the Standford wives – but Sunday’s big race which we’re looking forward to more than we can say.


Anyway we speak of course of Lewis’s triumphant ascension to the F1 title. He can’t screw it up two years in a row can he? Course not. There’s been a lot of talk of tactical races, keeping his foot off the gas and playing it safe and driving a 'safe' race.

Pure tosh of course Lewis is a pure born racer and any attempt to do things even slightly differently will take the edge off his natural advantage.

So here’s our piece of shit advice for the tuppence fuck all it’s worth. Put your foot down, qualify first and win it from the front.

Oh and don’t blow it! We'll be watching...

Indecent Proposal

And so to Tuesday and our contemplation of Cricket’s latest attempt to prostitute itself like a five quid hooker with Saturday’s forthcoming Stanford Twenty20 match between England and West Indies XIs.

In danger of making the over-the-top gaudiness of the IPL look classy and refined, Stanford’s winner takes all greed fest tag line ‘One night, one shot, $20 million’ also borrows a Highlander-style ‘There can be only one’ to add to its patent ridiculousness.

So what’s next? A live Kurgen-style beheading for the bowler who concedes the million dollar boundary? Why not? That’s bound to get the crowds in and seems tailor made for the attention span of a modern audience.

The Stanford series was supposed to be the ECB’s sweetener to distract the England players from the lure of the IPL in February. But now the whole cricket world’s in hock to India anyway (including both the Aussies and Sri Lanka), it’s become just another cash cow appetiser, before Freddie and KP etc. inevitably depart for Lalit land anyway.

Could it get any more ridiculous? Of course it could! How about Sir Allen allegedly ‘getting close to’ as the BBC put it (or ‘copping a feel of’ as we’d say) of some of the England players WAGs while the players themselves were busy out in the field on Sunday?

It’s cricket’s very own Indecent Proposal and just the kind of story to underline the game’s credibility as it goes galloping over the horizon in a welter of black bats and ridiculous pyjamas.

Famine to Feast

From famine to feast today as a weekend’s spurting action leaves us quite literally breathless (well it’s either that or all that crystal meth we’ve been smoking).

Everywhere you turned this weekend there was spurting goodness to appreciate, from Andy Murray retaining his tennis title, to Yank football at Wembley (a much underrated game in our humble...) or even the Scousers finally storming fortress Stamford Bridge to leave the title race wide open.

Yet amidst all this spurting headlines, easily the biggest story was Uncle Harry Redknapp who went to bed Portsmouth manager on Saturday and woke up as Spurs boss on Sunday morning.

Always one of the game’s more ahem colourful characters, Redknapp is nevertheless an intriguing appointment and certainly knows his managerial onions - the effect on the previously hapless Spurs was immediate as they conjured a 2-0 win over Bolton.

Only Southampton have survived such a poor start to the Premiership without going down but with Redknapp at the helm, you have to figure Spurs’ chances of pulling a Houdini have suddenly and dramatically increased.

Becks to Milano

Well there we desperate for a story like a crack whore scrabbling for pennies when up pops the boy David to rescue us from our pre-postural tension.

Beckham is the footballer (or ‘th’uh soccer bomb’ as our US brethren would have it) who just keeps on giving, providing more interest, sensation and sheer column inches than an Osama Bin Laden-Madonna love child.

So now Becks has packed his designer luggage and is off the old folks home at AC Milan where he’s signed a loan deal from January to April while the MLS shuts down for its winter slumber.

It’ll be a rare old time for the former England skipper, sitting around in a bath chair with the likes of Ronaldhino and the ever-green Paulo Maldini and swapping tales of the heady old days when they played for sheer enjoyment, weekly wage weren't a major contributor to the credit crunch and ordinary fans could still afford to go to a game.

Still Becks and Milan seem a perfect fit, both are more about style than substance nowadays, they’ll be plenty of shopping for Posh and it’ll certainly keep the old warhorse fit if Senor Fabio’s England continue to call for the last five minutes.

So hoorah for Becks, not only will it be good to catch the occasional glimpse of the world’s greatest deliverer of a ball, writing about his continuing adventures certainly makes work for our idle hands, which when you look at it in the cold harsh light of day, can only be a good thing.

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.

Chinese Grand Prix: So boring it was exciting

And so to Sunday where we were up at the previously un-discovered hour of eight bells to catch the Chinese Grand Prix. Not ever really a natural environment for a sports hack (except to nab a couple of headache pills before going back to sleep), it’s a cold grey murky world at that time of the day, only enlivened by a warming cup of char with a decently sized snifter nestling in it.

Still, following last weekend’s dismal showing from Lewis in Japan, we felt we had to be there live to see the drama unfold and we weren’t disappointed.

We say drama, what we actually mean is procession and as a race, this was deeply deeply tedious stuff, with Master Hamilton making a perfect start, disappearing into the middle distance and giving the trailing Ferraris a huge metaphorical finger.

The victory was as tedious as it was inevitable, so boring it was perversely exciting, as Lewis simply ate up the laps and took the chequered flag by a distance.

Hamilton’s been (wrongly) criticised in the past (and even the past two weeks) for being too aggressive, too arrogant, too much of a risk taker, but they’re exactly the qualities which make him such a great racing driver.

However on this occasion he was just glad to be grey and we’re extremely happy he was made it that way.

Enger-land versus Belarus: post-match analysis

It’s our best ever start we’ve had to a competition and we don’t mean that tenner we’ve just spunked on lucky dips for tomorrow night’s Euro Millions.

Last night Minsk was the arena for another splendid showing from Senor Fabio’s new look ie. actually pretty good Enger-land as they negotiated a tough away fixture against technically tidy opposition, eventually putting Belarus to the sword 3-1.

The old England would have been lucky to scrape a draw in a game like this not even six months ago.

A decent start capped by Gerrard's virtuoso strike was marred by a deserved equaliser for Belarus, who played us off the park for perhaps 20 minutes to pull the scores level at half-time.

Senor Fabio continued to show he’s worth every one of the millions he’s paid and possibly even a few more by turning the game completely around in the second half. Don’t know what he puts in their half-time tea, or whether he gives them the hairdryer, but whatever it’s working.

Upping the work to deny Belarus time to weave their magic worked a treat, Heskey pounded the centre backs, Rooney’s on fire and hell even Wayne Bridge looked like he knew one end of a touchline from the other. Heartening stuff.

We’ve had more false starts than Ussain Bolt’s rivals, but finally, for long suffering Enger-land fans ottimismo is no longer an untranslatable word .