I'm happy, hope you're happy too....

I've been watching cricket for a long time now. I have been unlucky enough to actually be present in the ground to watch Australia retain the Ashes three times at Trent Bridge: 1993, 1997 and 2001*. I've seen Shane Warne dancing with a stump on the pavilion roof twice. It's a good job we won the game there in 2005 as I'm not sure the old timbers of the building could take any more of that kind of strain.



There was no Trent Bridge test this time around, and no Shane Warne, but I was lucky enough to get hold of a pair of tickets for the fourth day of the last Test match at the Oval. The series was nicely poised at 1-1 going into the game, and the England selectors resisted the calls to give Mark Ramprakash one last hurrah at his home ground. Having seen him charging down the wicket in Nottingham towards the close of play on the Friday Ashes Test in 2001, completely ruining my Saturday by his inability to resist Shane Warne's taunts, I was pleased I wouldn't be seeing him playing in a game of this importance. I wasn't sure about Jonathan Trott, making his debut in this game, but surely he couldn't be as catastrophic and negative selection as the 39-year old Ramps.

The terracotta urn containing the Ashes is only 6 inches tall, but England and Australia have been fighting over them since 1882, and it remains the single greatest prize for an English cricketer.


When England finally won it in 2005, for the first time since 1986/7, it was a cause for national celebration. Over-celebration, many would say, but after such a long period of Australian dominance, it was simply joyous not only to win the Ashes, but to win them in such an incredible series.

After a 5-0 thumping in Australia in 2006/7, there can't have been too many people who gave England much of a chance this summer.... but we did it. We went into Sunday needing ten wickets to win. That was all we needed to do to bring the Ashes home. It wasn't exactly plain sailing, and the Aussies fought like...well.... Australians, but at a little after 6pm, when Graham Swann took the wicket of the superb Mike Hussey it was all over.

We had regained the Ashes.



And I was there. I saw every ball bowled; every wicket fall and -- best of all -- I saw the England captain, Andrew Strauss, lift that famous old urn.

I've been lucky enough to have seen some brilliant sport: Allan Donald and Michael Atherton at Trent Bridge in 1998; the amazing Ashes test in 2005. I've seen Europe winning the Ryder Cup at the Belfry in 2002 and at the K-Club in 2006. I was in the Olympic Stadium in Athens when Kelly Holmes won the 800m. I was at the rowing lake at Schinias in Athens when the Men's Coxless Fours, led by Matthew Pinsent, won the gold medal by the tiniest of margins.

How does this day compare to those? I'm not sure. All of those were fantastic in their own way. As a big cricket fan though, and having suffered through 20-odd years of awful, heartbreaking England performances, actually being present in the ground when we won the Ashes was pretty bloody special.

Let's hope we can enjoy the win without gloating, eh? There's little less attractive than winning without dignity and then wallowing in that win instead of looking forwards. For what it's worth, my favourite moment of the day (winning aside) was when the crowd gave Ricky Ponting a massive standing ovation both to and from the wicket. He was booed at Edgbaston, but he was shown an awful lot more respect here for what he's achieved. It's no less than a champion like him deserves.



It was a very good day.

*actually, Australia held on for a draw in 1993 - the first test match I ever went to go and watch live - to keep the series score at two up with three to play. Needless to say the Aussies won the remaining tests that mattered to win the series 4-1. It just felt like they retained the Ashes that day when we failed to get Steve Waugh and Brendon Julian out. I had a nice day though, eh?

.... and what you're looking at is the master plan

The football season is already upon us, and the Premier League kicks off this weekend. I've just spent hours and hours pulling together an almost completely hopeless and ill-informed preview of the season over on Cheer Up Alan Shearer. Mystic Meg I am not, so do go and amuse yourselves at the implausibility of my predictions. Besides, I haven't the energy to write anything else after that marathon.

Before you scoff, do please try to remember that it's actually a lot harder than it looks. Just so I can get my excuses in some ten months early, I might also add that the Premier League looks very, very average this year - outside the top four or five clubs anywhere. I reckon there are three distinct tiers:

1-5
6-14
15-20

within those pockets, I reckon anyone could finish almost anywhere... and actually the bottom two tiers are pretty much up for grabs too - you could almost as easily finish 6th as 16th.

Who'd be a pundit, eh?

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to have a long lie down and to think about the make-up of my Fantasy League Team (which oddly, given my predictions for the league, I'm usually quite good at).

...and lest we forget it's still summer, I've some pondering about the make-up of England's top order for The Oval too. Ramprakash? What short memories people have. In what way does Ramps' track record make you think that he stands up to pressure any better than Ian Bell or Ravi Bopara? In 50-odd tests, he averages 27..... If I was a selector, I'd be beating my way down to Somerset, cap in hand and hoping that Banger will consider a one-off appearance.

But enough sport, eh?

forget it brother, you can go it alone....

No sooner did Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, receive the Olympic flag at the Ceremony to close the Beijing games, than the carping began. Or rather continued, for even though there was widespread delight when the games of the XXX Olympiad were awarded to London in July 2005, the sniping and cynicism was never very far behind. I listened to a phone-in radio programme over the weekend where caller after caller was ringing in saying what a disgraceful waste of money the Olympics was, how vast and unjustified sums were being invested in white elephant stadia and on the athletes themselves, how we were going to embarrass ourselves before the eyes of the world.... On the back of a games that has been notable for the success of the British team, it takes a special kind of pessimism to think like that. A very British kind, you might say.

As the Olympic Torch was extinguished in the Birds Nest Stadium in Beijing, London officially became the Olympic city, and the countdown to the games really began: 1431 days and counting. A modest eight minute segment amidst the fuss and fireworks of the closing ceremony even granted us a glimpse of how London will attempt to follow the conspicuous expenditure and ruthless efficiency that so marked the Games in China. We saw a slightly scruffy and bumbling mayor chuckling to himself at the enormity of the expectation, a queue of conspicuously ethnically diverse commuters with umbrellas waiting for a (presumably late) red London bus, we saw our Olympic gold medal winning cyclists dressed in suits riding on bikes with their briefcases, we saw the winner of a reality TV singing contest performing with an extremely sweaty rock legend and, praise be, we saw David Beckham in a horrible black leisure suit hoofing a football into the crowd. It was quirky, a touch chaotic, but it felt warm, humourous and welcoming and was a very welcome contrast to the drilled, military precision of the Chinese. We certainly won't match the Chinese for conspicuous expenditure, but hopefully we can deliver a games with a soul and an awareness of their own absurdity. Besides, I'd take "Whole Lotta Love" over over choreographed nonsense any day of the week.

I fear there's a whole lot more moaning to come yet. I watched a bit of the celebration party in London that took place after the closing ceremony. It was all a bit overly sponsored (it was a "Visa Party" apparently) and low rent, hosted as it was by the broadcasting collosus that is Claudia Winkelman and featuring as it did acts as stellar as the cast of "We Will Rock You", Sophie Ellis Bextor, the Feeling and Scouting for Girls. Ah, Scouting for Girls, bless them, decided that this was the perfect opportunity to unleash onto the unsuspecting world their triumphant cover of "London Calling" by the Clash. Superficially, it's a great choice for a party to celebrate London's invitation for the world to join them for the games in 2012.... sadly, it's actually a very political song about social unrest and nuclear attack, presumably something that the London Games will be very keen to avoid. Changing some of the lyrics to celebrate our gold medal winners instead of referencing "yellowy eyes" probably didn't help improve the temper of those outraged Clash fans watching either. Yes, it was naff and yes, perhaps it was inappropriate.... but you can take this kind of thing too seriously, if you ask me. I'm sure this isn't exactly what Joe Strummer had in mind for the song, but I rather think he'd find it more funny than insulting. I know I did. How about we stop wasting energy moaning and fretting about how disastrous the 2012 games are going to be, and focus instead upon how good they could be, how they could be a glorious celebration of sport and of life and of Britain.

The games could be brilliant, if only we give them a chance to be.

My final thought on how the Olympic Games is about so much more than winning, comes from the experiences of a swimmer who finished 16th out of 24 in the 10km swim. Natalie Du Toit was ony 1m 22s off the gold medal winner's time, but if winning was everything, then she might as well have been a million miles behind and not have bothered at all. The thing is though, that Natalie Du Toit had her left leg amputated below the knee after a road accident in 2001. That she was there and competing at all is nothing short of remarkable, a fact recognised when she was chosen by South Africa to carry their flag at the opening ceremony

L'important n'est pas de gagner, mais de participer.

Britain seems to be breeding a harder type of athlete for whom a medal is not good enough unless it's gold: for every Bryony Shaw, delighted with a bronze there's a Kath Grainger, inconsolable after winning a silver. That kind of winning mentality is fantastic and a huge step forwards for a nation who revere plucky losers and who sometimes seem to find winning to be a touch vulgar. It's worth remembering that sometimes, as with the case of Natalie du Toit, winning really isn't just about finishing first.

happy and glorious....

I won't bore you with the true depths of my Olympic obsession*, but I just wanted to share two of the things that have really tickled me so far:

1) Great Britain is having the most incredibly successful games, with a veritable golden shower [ahem] of medals that are really setting the bar high for London 2012. You would probably think that all of those medals are a cause for celebration, but we Brits are unaccustomed to this kind of thing, and I was delighted to see that we were quick to revert to type: the British team have now won 7 gold medals in the velodrome from a possible 10 in track cycling. Amazing. Or is it simply the trigger for a debate about how this level of British success is bad for the sport? Being good is bad and Team GB are the Chelsea of world cycling, apparently....

which brings me to.....

2) The philological debate that has been triggered by the Olympics. People seem to be getting very upset that the British team is being called "Team GB" and many are also rather hot under the collar that the word "medal" is being used as a verb. To medal. Our athletes are medalling in many events. Now, I'm a stickler for accuracy myself, but I really do struggle to see this as something to get especially irritated by. Can't we just be happy to have the winningest team we've had at an Olympic Games for 100 years?

People can be such nuggets, can't they?

---

* Want an insight into my world at the moment? Ok. Well, there's a lot of talk that Usain Bolt is in with a real shout at Michael Johnson's incredible 200m World Record at the moment... but I was interested to see that Johnson ran 19.32s in 1996 and Bolt's best time over the distance is 19.67. That's one of the most amazing records. When Johnson set that time in the Atlanta Olympic games, he broke his own mark of 19.66s. To take more than 3/10 of a second off in a sprint event was nothing short of phenomenal, and the next quickest time that anyone has ever run is Tyson Gay's 19.62 last year. If Bolt beats that World Record tomorrow, then that's a race I want to see. All the stats you will ever need on this are to be found here. I've been spending a lot of time there.... See what I mean? And don't get me started on whether Michael Phelps is the greatest Olympian that ever lived, or if he's simply the one with the most medals... by my books, you could have competed in a single event in a single Games and failed to win a medal and still be the greatest Olympian, because it's not simply about winning, is it? What's so hard to understand about that? What was it that de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympics said? "L'important n'est pas de gagner, mais de participer..." [with apologies to the Ultimate Olympian, who I stole that line from. He also came up with this as evidence that you don't have to win to be the greatest Olympian.....case closed, I should say]

Actually, double gold medal winning swimmer, Rebecca Adlington is from Mansfield and trains at the Nottingham University pool. One of my colleagues, who swims there before work, was telling me how he recognised her on the telly as he sees her down there quite a lot. About four times a length, I should think.....

That's more than enough of me not boring you about the Olympics, eh?

Before I go though, I have a question for you....... Why do men run the hurdles over 110m, but it's only 100m for women?? Answers in the comments box below, and no prizes whatsoever for the winner, except the certain knowledge that you are probably as much of a nerd as me.