England hero Freddie Flintoff drunk out of his mind flapping and flopping hopelessly adrift on a runaway pedalo at 4a.m. The tragic, Agatha Christie styled murder of Bob Woolmer the Pakistan coach. And not much else.
By the time you read this the 2007 Cricket World Cup will be over. Did you even notice it was on? Aside from the two events above – one a fittingly comic reflection of the professionalism of the England team and the other a chilling glimpse into the probably rife world of gangsterism and manipulation that stalks the back rooms of world cricket – nothing really happened.
There were around 50 games. Three of these were entertaining (though of those, two were in effect meaningless due to other results) the rest were either hopelessly one-sided non events or grotesquely non-sided displays of cricketing incompetence the likes of which I hadn’t seen since hanging up my own wicket-keeping gloves aged 12.
Even the most cricket-literate of my associates has found it difficult to make a conversation about this competition amount to more than a couple of banal sentences concerning half empty grounds and pitch side swimming pools (a novel addition to the architecture of sports grounds that in these increasingly milder winters could perhaps take the place of the much missed football terraces).
Though its 24 hours before the final I am predicting that the Australian’s will have won. Aside from long-haired garage rock (and I’ll include Nick Cave in that genre) the Aussies aren’t much cop at anything other than sport so we may as well concede the World Cup to them forever. This will be three in a row. Like Brazil with the Jules Rimet trophy, let them keep it now. For as long as they like.
