What follows is a collection of live blog posts I conducted on the opening day of the 2009 Indian Premier League:

We're hours away from the opening of the 2009 Not-So-IPL. Australia has, shock horror, won an ODI against South Africa, and will choof off to the Home Of World Cricket which will host its first official one-day international next Wednesday.

The New South Wales government is a walking, talking, collective schemozzle. A government that refuses to listen to, or at times even acknowledge, the voters who put them there. A government that is happy to coast incompetently knowing they they have the security blanket of a fixed four-year term of office that it is nigh on impossible to cut short. And the brashness of mind to think they they can be re-elected in 2011 because the Libs would be even worse.

Mitchell Johnson. A devastating display with the bat in a losing cause was enough to have him breezing past Dale Steyn to break the ribbon first at the end of the six-Test reciprocal series between Australia and South Africa, conducted over the past three months.

Thanks to Yahoo Slurp, this website has been off the air for the last 24 hours because the search engine had slurped up five gigabytes of bandwidth since the beginning of March.

Although I have put in a quick fix (and denied Slurp access on robots.txt), it is likely that this site will run out of bandwidth again before the end of the month. If that be the case, see you again on April 1.

Follow rickeyre.wordpress.com for emergency updates.

South African organisers for next year's World Cup had set up a peace conference for this weekend as part of the buildup to the 2010 event. The government, however, has decided that the Dalai Lama should not be given a visa to entry the country to attend.

The reason? His visit would "overshadow the country's preparations for the 2010 FIFA World Cup". In protest, two former Nobel Peace laureates who don't require entry visas, namely Desmond Tutu and FW de Klerk, have decided not to attend.

Congratulations to Newcastle Knights fullback Kurt Gidley for being an ambassador for this year's Earth Hour.

Today's Newcastle Herald has more.

Meanwhile, it's business as usual for the NRL on Earth Hour evening, unless they intend to play Parramatta against Canberra and North Queensland versus Melbourne in the dark for sixty minutes.

Congratulations to England on their victory in the Women's Cricket World Cup final today. They were, without doubt, the best team in the tournament, and probably have the best organisation behind them. It's a far cry from their nadir in 2000.

The disappointments of the tournament? Australia, who finished fourth, are in a rebuilding phase. South Africa's seventh placing was a big shock.

No it's not the refereeing in the Broncs' win over the Strom last night, nor is it Anna Bligh's foolish and needless bid to forfeit government to the Borg later today.

Today's Courier-Mail reports that Netball Queensland has banned the eating of oranges at half-time, arguing that the high acid levels in citrus is damaging to the enamel on players' teeth, especially when they are dehydrated.

For the sixth and final Test of the reciprocal Australia-South Africa dual Test series, I will be posting my daily best-on-ground (BoG) votes to Twitter, and posting a final roundup to this blog after the conclusion of the game. Suffice to say that Dale Steyn is now in the box seat.

A reminder that the Midwinter-Midwinter will be back in the Ashes of 2009 coming this July. Maybe I can be encouraged to dream up some other stupid award in the meantime...