There's no honour in any Test team conceding 450 runs in an innings. The West Indians pushed on to 451 in their first innings, with some admirable work at the end by Brendan Nash (92) and Ravi Rampaul (40*). The feeling in recent years is that anything the visiting team could do, Australia can do better and in spades.

When it comes to stats and trivia about cricket, I've been hooked since I was a teenager. It's easy to get seduced by the numbers and the mathematical comparisons, but I figure it's ok so long as the sport itself remains more important. I draw a line, however, when statistical "milestones" become playthings of the media industry, a raison d'etre of the sports desk at the 24/7 news outlet, the honeytrap for mindless SMS fodder.

And so it was on Friday that for about two hours we had the exhilaration of simultaneously following: Day Three, India v Sri Lanka at Mumbai; Day Two, New Zealand v Pakistan at Wellington; Day One, Australia v West Indies at Adelaide. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Just exhausting. Three games of wildly varying textures, each one with that joyous "Let's See You Do That In The IPL" feel about them.

Umar Akmal and Adrian Barath. Cricket's players of the week. Both scored centuries on their Test debut. Both in losing causes. And significantly, both at the age of 19.

One would have to wonder about the tactics of both captains in the half-hour or so before tea. Ponting gave a rather surprising declaration with the total at 480 as soon as Nathan Hauritz brought up his fifty. Such an odd total at which to declare...

Amid the dog's breakfast that is the international cricket schedule these days, I still get a thrill at the arrival of the Australian Test cricket season, heralded every year since 1974 by the opening day of the Test match at Woolloongabba, Queensland. It's an even greater thrill to see Australia facing the West Indies - or at least it used to be.

"Australia does not have a national sports policy or vision. We have no agreed definition of success and what it is we want to achieve. We lack a national policy framework within which objectives for government funding can be set and evaluated."

- from "The Future of Sport In Australia" (AKA the Crawford Report), Chapter 1.1

The complete text of Kevin Rudd's apology, delivered in Canberra yesterday morning, follows (on the "read more" link). It can also be found on the Prime Ministerial website. Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull's speech of apology is also noteworthy and can be read in full at malcolmturnbull.com

Debate on the motion carried in the House of Representatives, led by Jenny Macklin and Tony Abbott, can be read at openaustralia.org, with further debate later that day in the House of Reps and the Senate.

You can just imagine the joy in the hearts of the average (non Mets-following) New Yorker at their beloved Yankees' victory in the World Series for only the twenty-seventh time in their history. But when it came time for the street parade, there was a dilemma for your average GFC-disabled reveller. In the era of live stock prices online and on live television, what to do for ticker tape?

No problem. Just throw paper out the window. Shredded? Nah, waste of time. Just throw paper. Any paper. Waste paper, personal documents, sensitive commercial papers, anything.

It's been a long time coming, but finally "Today In Cricket" is a book. That's right, the book of the website is out. To give its full title, Today In Cricket: Events on this day in cricket history