Mike Hussey didn’t walk. The first thing England supporters need to do is get over it and move on. Job’s done, it’s tomorrow’s fishwrap. This is the way the game is played today, I don’t remember seeing too many England players walking, and Mike Hussey is with the vast majority of current international players and is not deserving of any criticism at all. But that doesn’t mean that, after you have tickled one, the act of tucking your bat under your arm, starting to peel off your gloves and head back to the pavilion, without a backward glance to the umpire, is not seen in the current game; I give you Mr Adam Gilchrist. Not only does he seem to be a genuinely nice bloke, extraordinarily talented, committed and enthusiastic about Australian cricket but he walks and he walks whatever the circumstances. For what it’s worth, you have my unqualified respect Mr G.

But let’s not yearn for times past when everyone walked because those times never existed. There may have been a time when more walked but never all.

To ruminate on whether we would have won if Hussey had walked is futile, the result of little consequence one way or the other. The question for this series still remains ‘are we able to put together performances that ensure the game is still alive into the second innings and get some steers on who should be in the team for the World Cup?’ We have at least another 5 ODIs, maybe more, to play in this series and I think we are going to need every one before being able to conclude that meaningful progress has been made.

Despite performances today I still remain unconvinced by both Lewis and Anderson, no one is approaching a consistent output of 30+ runs or giving up around 4 runs per over. Fletcher could still be pondering the names of as many as 7 starters less than two months from the start of the tournament. This doesn’t bode well.

But will someone get this puerile Big Brother shit out of my face. I don’t watch it, I don’t want to watch it, shouldn’t that be an end to it? So why is it that I can’t escape it, if there are people who want to watch it, fine, I know there are people who would do their own appendectomy with a rusty spoon but I wouldn’t and I don’t want to hear about the people who would. If these people miss something on Big Brother they can catch up perfectly easily via Channel 4’s recaps or the net so why is it all over all brands of radio and TV?

I understand that there are a lot of opinions and complaints about the program, they want it pulled but they are all missing the point, the quickest way to get it pulled is to ignore it. Don’t talk about it, don’t express any sort of view, just utter negation. It will be gone faster than shit off a shovel.

Heading towards 30000 complaints I understand. How many of the complainants actually watched it, maybe more pertinently, how many are continuing to watch it?

The only debate that has been started is whether some of the, all but incoherent, abuse flying about is racist, because if it is then that’s bad, if it’s not then that’s entertainment.

Do them all a favour, lobotomise them and increase their I.Q.

I don’t recall my exact disposition on returning home from work, I don’t think I was anymore inclined than usual towards brain liquefying irritation, but I might be wrong. Sat down at the PC desk, to try to resurrect the distinctly flakey Sky broadband connection, to be presented with a photo of a family I don’t know, but I do now know that it is a picture of a family I don’t want to know. This picture is on the front page of a flyer for the local greeny, blue, pinkish Conservative party candidate, doesn’t really matter what party, my reaction would have been the same I think. As a response to this unsolicited self aggrandisement, we should all take a photo of our families and ourselves and trot round to this twat’s home and post them through his letterbox with a little message on the back, along the lines ‘here’s a photo of me and my family, you don’t know any of us and this proves exactly what about us?’. What sort of chucklehead parades his family as some sort of spurious validation of his political credentials? Because he is capable of procreation he should be elected local busybody, councillor, dog warden, 2nd semi-assistant sponge lifter or whatever it is he’s standing for?

I absolutely have not read the verbiage of the flyer because I just know that being a patronising, intellectual bankrupt, he will refer to ‘decent, hardworking people’ which may just cause me to go postal and the boys in the white coats told me that the rubber room needs refurbishment following my last visit.

Twat.

I’m deeply worried, here we are, middle of January, spring all but round the corner, unseasonably warm weather but……….

Still no rabid demands from the parasitic water companies for a hose pipe ban, no whispered, scaremongering rumours of stand pipes and bowsers in the streets, no requests for yet another brick to be added to the cistern!

The shareholders must act, time for these lackadaisical CEOs to get their marching papers, but not before passing go and collecting unfeasibly large and unwarranted pay offs of course.

Initial capitalisation; US$250m, principle stockholder; P Anschutz, location; a football galaxy far, far away, primary business activity; creation of empty media frenzy, subordinate business activity; Association Football.

Good luck Dave, rest assured we all know that this deal isn’t about the money, it’s about the kids, it’s about a new challenge, it’s about opening up a new market, it’s about demonstrating to the Hispanic population that you are inarticulate in two languages, it’s about branding, it’s about positioning, it’s about being a big fish in a small pond, it’s about life after football, it’s about the maintenance of Ms. P Spice, the renown talent vacuums’, continued celebrity status contrary to any perceptible ability. It can be about all these things and many, many more but don’t tell me it’s not about the fucking money!

The largest sports contract in the US prior to this was Alex Rodriguez I believe, $252m over 10 years, he’s a baseball player and was considered, at the time the contract was signed with the Texas Rangers, to be the best player in the world, not by all but probably by most and he was paid to make a difference whilst playing amongst the games elite. On the other hand, David Beckham, who has never been considered the best player in the world, at any stage of his career, is being paid virtually the same amount, over half the time, to make a difference playing against League 1 standard opposition. What is Anschutz thinking about, he could have bought the whole of the Chelsea squad and had change!

Wouldn’t be naïve enough to suggest he should knock back the offer but MLS ought to be asking itself if it’s smart to set the bar at this level? How much of the leagues’ revenue is going to be sucked up in salaries, not only by Beckham but those who will follow, when it still needs reinvesting if they expect to build the game up to being a world class product?

Still, it does keep Ms Spice even further away than Spain.

When NASN (North American Sports Network) was first launched in the UK, about 4 years ago it was one of the happiest of days, I had been hoping for such a channel to make an appearance ever since I had swallowed my distaste for Murdoch and all his acts and put my hard earned in his pocket for Sky. I never considered it cheap, a stand alone product for £8 p.m. at the outset I think, which was in addition to the Sky subscription, but it provided just what I wanted. Their focus was on Major League Baseball and National Hockey League (because they were both in a bit of a slump and the rights were cheap), my two favourite American sports and college American Football and Basketball, in addition to this they also aired Pardon The Interruption and Around the Horn from ESPN and other ESPN output such as Baseball Tonight and College Gameday. They also carried the excellent Hockey Night in Canada which is without peer in sports broadcasting. It was almost as if I were choosing the content, I couldn’t have asked for more and, of course, it couldn’t last. The channel owners, Setanta Sports, there was some venture capital mob involved as well I believe, started getting seduced by the overblown and over hyped NFL & NBA but they couldn’t get live games from the NFL, Sky & C5 had that all wrapped up, they did get a couple of NBA games a week, which was OK as they were generally on in the early hours of the morning, so they started trotting out the talking heads analysing games that had not or would not been shown on NASN and taking prime time away from the live action from NHL & MLB. I’m not saying that I don’t need the analysis but I want it in the context of a full, live game, look no further than the erudite Mike Carlson on C5. And Todd Macklin, if you’re listening, please come back, I just know it’s got to be getting cold over in Canada around this time of year!!

But none of this downside was going to put me off in itself; eventually it came down to money. Setanta had hiked the price every year until it stood at £11 p.m. this time last year and then they decided it would be £13.50 p.m. but I would have the benefit of being able to watch horse racing, Scottish football, golf, hurling, Gaelic football and a plethora of other crap that they had decided, arbitrarily, that I was in need of viewing. No option to take NASN on it’s own. It was clear what was going on, Setanta was squeezing everyone ‘til their pips squeaked in order to fill their warchest and bang heads with Sky for piece of the Premiership pie. So I told them to fuck right off and walked away. It wasn’t easy, but it was made a little easier when I found out that they had pulled PTI, ATH and Hockey Night in Canada, I can still remember the nausea, cold sweats and general angst of withdrawal but it was all worth it because I won!! Yes it was the lack of my £13.50 p.m. and the vitriolic email that was sent when I cancelled which has now forced the bastards to see the manifest error of their ways and sell to ESPN. It can only be a matter of time before you hear of Setanta circling the drain as a consequence of their Premiershit commitment. Result.

ESPN’s plans for NASN don’t seem to have been released as yet so I may be jumping the gun but surely they have to come in with an improvement in content or price or both don’t they? Please, pretty please.

If ESPN would like to pay me a fortune as a programming consultant, I’m available.

Can’t kick seven shades of shit out of them and listen to them scream. Frankly the one doing the screaming is usually me, well always me. Everyone else using it has it fall over and goes ‘ho hum’ reboots and tries again, whereas I would like it not to fall over in the first place. ‘Is this reasonable?’ I ask myself on a regular basis, after all it is a MS driven piece of kit. My car, my bike, my TV, my sat nav, come to think of it pretty much everything goes on working as advertised for months, if not years, on end without needing to be started again from the beginning, we wouldn’t tolerate anything else, but PCs seem to exist in a world outside of these expectations. Macs have been and gone, despite what a few die hards would have you believe, UNIX and Solaris are not practical for home users, Linux hasn’t made the impact that it’s proponents expected and MS feared, so we are left MS firmly gripping the cojones of the manufacturers who feel, understandably, obliged to punt out hardware compromised by the operating system. Knowing that the OS is going to spit the dummy on a regular basis, then what incentive is there for the manufacturers to strive for the most reliable of hardware to be in their PCs when they know that most users will be unable to distinguish between crashes caused by hardware or software? Clearly I don’t know what the answer is otherwise all my time would be taken up spending my fortune, the proportions of which would make Croesus blanche, but I do know what the problem is; the protection of the bottom line in Redmond. Maybe I’m not up to date with what is going on in the computer industry but it looks like the DoJ in the U.S. and the EU have given up trying to pressurise MS, maybe it was futile from the start as they would drag out the hearings for years so that, in many cases, by the time a conclusion was reached, it was no longer relevant as the industry had moved on. Looks to me like the DoJ and EU’s bluff has been called and they’ve folded.

La tristesse durera.