Has Australia blown its best chance of regaining the Ashes?
I'm serious.
Honestly, what was the point of batting on just long enough on Sunday morning to allow Justin Langer to get his hundred? Apart from allowing Ricky to strain his back while taking a run and thus keeping him off the field for the rest of the day... and possibly for the Second Test.
It all makes sense, you know...
Shane, you may be, as you told the world in 1998, "naive and stupid", but we're not. Even if that is all there is to the remark, how utterly dopey was it to use the word "Blackman" to a black South African opponent in any context?
Warne should have been disciplined for disrepute for the sheer insensivity of the remark, and it reflects poorly on all those in the Australian camp who condoned it.
Anyway, take a look at this article in the Sunday Herald Sun for a startling revelation about the real Dickie Knee.
Thank goodness for the wellbeing of the Australian media that Shane Warne is back on our shores. After all, Aussie politics has been so darn boring over the last couple of weeks...
Warne, who unlike his Hampshire team-mate Kevin Pietersen is a respectable father of three, flew back into Melbourne early this morning. Here's a three-minute MP3 report on Warne's press conference at Tullamarine Airport from the ABC's AM program (the first few seconds sound like the product of sloppy editing).
I have just witnessed what can only be described as Test cricket's equivalent of the lowering of the Olympic flag, folding it up and carrying it away. After players left the field for bad light with Australia requiring 337 to win from 18.2 overs, umpires Rudi Koertzen and Billy Bowden returned to the field, marched down the pitch, turned around, looked at the sky, looked at each other, marched down to each wicket and lifted the bails.
Shane's Shame: Married Aussie cricket ace begged me for sex, but it was OWZAT! in seconds
(Mike Duffy/Sunday Mirror, 19.6.05)
Tuesday December 3, 1996: I visited the Sydney Cricket Ground and witnessed a great day's cricket, but I have also witnessed the demise of a cricketing power that I have known and loved for over two decades.
