Ricky Ponting's Unbelievable Rant

The pressure is clearly getting to Ricky Ponting.  He knows that he will probably be out of a job in the next few weeks and (if the test match keeps on going like this) he knows that he will be remembered as the man who lost the Ashes both at home and abroad.

The pressure seemed to get to him in yesterday's play.  The review of a decision against Kevin Pietersen showed that KP was clearly not out.  'Punter', in that bizarre parallel universe that only tends to exist on the sporting field in the midst of the action didn't quite see things that way.  And he told the umpire about it... at length... before also informing KP of his displeasure.  Check it out here:



Maybe Ricky needs to borrow Tevez's dummy.  He certainly spat it out yesterday.  Ponting was always the cricketer England fans loved to hate and its hard to see how yesterday's antics will be making things any better.

It may not have been quite as bad as Mike Gatting's effort a few years ago, but Ricky should know that he was standing on VERY thin ice.



Ponting has been fined 40% of his match fee.  Quite right too.  Hopefully now England can finish the job in the next few days.

The Ashes and Sleep Avoidance

The Ashes are certainly likely to play havoc with people's sleep patterns over the next few months as we look to keep that little urn from out of the Aussie's clutches.

The BBC kindly put together a piece about how you could watch plenty of the action without becoming a zombie for the following day.

They reckon that, "carefully-timed naps, caffeinated drinks, avoiding certain foods and keeping yourself stimulated" are key to the whole thing."

The whole article is here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11814630

Hopefully England's performance will be worth staying up for.

Another Test Match - More Empty Seats. We Should Make Test Matches Affordable For All

Another test match. Some more great cricket for England and yet more empty seats at what should be a big ticket test match.

It has been a fantastic day for England's cricketers, who are looking in really sharp form ahead of the Ashes series.



But, as Jonathan Agnew pointed out on TMS today, there are plenty of empty seats around the ground.  I made the same point about the first test last week.  There is very little reason for that to be the case.  The football season hasn't yet started.  The national team is in great form.  The opponents are a top flight team who beat Australia a few months ago.  Even the English summer weather is, by and large, playing ball.

Sadly, cricketing authorities seem to have been overcome by a bout of rapaciousness following two home Ashes victories.  Test match tickets have shot up in price.  Tickets for Lords are as high as £90 and they go up to £60 for this series.  That means a father to take his kids along to the Test will cost hundreds.

Test match authorities are turning what used to be an affordable day out into something that is out of the reach of many people in economically straitened times.  The more prices go up, the more test matches will be attended by the corporate crowd and not the great social mix that makes test match cricket so special.

The authorities should look beyond the short term bottom line and think about what is going to attract a new generation of fans to the game and to the unique pleasure of a day at a test match.  Cricket has chosen to hit the jackpot in the past few years by selling TV rights to Sky and minimising its audience at TV level.  The very least they could do with this TV rights jackpot would be to make test match cricket affordable for all.

What Might Have Been For Sunderland and England If They Had Made Clough Manager

What might have been.  Four of the most important words in the lexicon of sport, or politics, or any other walk of life you might want to mention.

They are the four words that and England fan or Sunderland fan might utter after hearing the name Brian Clough.

Up until Kevin Phillips came along, he was our top all time goal scorer.  He scored 61 goals in 54 appearances before his career was cut short by injury.  He coached Sunderland's youth team and said that he learned so much about managing from his manager at Sunderland, Alan Brown.  

There was a time when Brian Clough, a born and bred North Easterner and manager of true and rare genius, would have done anything to manage Sunderland.  Needless to say, we didn't appoint him when we should have done and he went on to win the European Cup with both Derby and Nottingham Forest.  The board members who were so memorably lampooned by another Sunderland great, Len Shackleton, thought him too much of a risk.  In the years after Clough and Sunderland parted company, Sunderland's history has been that of one trophy and too much under achievement with glimmers of daylight.  Thanks to Niall Quinn and Steve Bruce, the future looks brighter now.  But, if Brian Clough had become Sunderland manager when he should have done.  What might have been...

And then there is England.  Since 1966, we haven't beaten a top flight footballing nation in a knock out round of the World Cup.  Of course, Clough was interviewed for the England job in 1977 but the job went to Ron Greenwood and the years of hurt were condemned to continue for much longer.  The people who ran the England football team wanted somebody safe.  They turned down genius and they got failure.  As Clough said about not getting the England job:

"I'm sure the England selectors thought if they took me on and gave me the job, I'd want to run the show. They were shrewd because that's exactly what I would have done"

What might have been?  The question again comes to mind from tonight's evening of programmes on BBC2.  Always an impossible question to answer.  But, surely Sunderland and England would have both had a much more successful time if their boards had the courage to have appointed Brian Clough a few decades ago.