You wait ages for one, then three turn up at once

Brisbane City Council buses? Star Wars prequels? Yet more dead hookers in Ipswich? (What, too soon?) No, The Weak In Sport (for December 19, 2006) is talking Test matches. (We're also talking bollocks, but after all that's what it says on the tin). In a year dominated by the looming ODI and Twenty20 World Cups, it's not that surprising that bugger-all Test cricket has been scheduled this summer - after the current series, most countries won't be busting out the flannels until this time next year. However, in the space of twelve hours, three Test matches have concluded in three different timezones (not that I've visited Timezone since the days when they used to have Sega Rally Championship).
















That Martini Lancia Integrale was the shizzle, m'nizzle

Test match #1821 between Australia and England began on December 14 in Perth. Next morning in Wellytron, Test #1822 kicked off between the BlackCaps™ and the touring Sri Lankans, the second in a two-match series (and if anyone can illustrate the point of a two-match series, can they please let us know c/ the usual channels.) Later that day GMT, at the Wanderers (sorry, Liberty Life® Wanderers™), India and South Africa entered the fray in Test #1823.

Now I say there were three test matches played when in reality there was only one - it was the same match played three times, the same way, for the same result.

Your IKEA flat pack furniture style step-by-step guide to winning a Test match (valid for any Test match between December 14-19, 2006):

Step 1. If you're going to be a tosser, be a successful tosser.
Win the toss and bat. For the purposes of this exercise you are any of Australia, Sri Lanka or India. Congratulations, you are not England.

Step 2. My old man, he told me, your team will not bat till tea.
In your first innings, aim for mediocrity. Mid-200s will do. Bat like arseholes, lose a bunch of wickets, don't even make the second day. Don't worry, one of your guys will bat through, get a few and prevent you looking like total choads.
Australia all out 244 in 71 overs (MEK Hussey 74 n.o.)
Sri Lanka all out 268 in 65 overs (KC Sangakkara 156 n.o.)
India all out 249 in 79.5 overs (SC Ganguly 51 n.o.)

Step 3. Anything you can do, they can do shitter.
Your opponents will come out blazing, only to fold up like a cheap Taiwanese deckchair and end up all out for even less than you pathetically managed to scrape together on a perfectly good deck. It will now be mid-to-late day 2 and half the game will already be over.
England all out 215 in 64.1 overs
New Zealand all out 130 in 39.1 overs
South Africa all out 84 in 25.1 overs
Christ those Saffers are taking this 'following the program' thing seriously aren't they

Step 4. Install a Rheem.
Go out in your second dig, bat for MORE than a day this time, cut absolutely sick, and score an arseload of runs. At least one of your boys will rack up some preposterous score that rightly proves you're playing on a pitch laid by the Department of Main Roads. You will end up with a 400-plus lead by an hour before stumps on day 3.
Australia 5 dec/527 in 112 overs (MJ Clarke 135 n.o., et al.), lead of 556
Sri Lanka all out 365 in 109.3 overs (LPC Silva 152 n.o.), lead of 503
India all out 236 in 64.4 overs (VVS Laxman 73), lead of 402
...Well it's an arseload by comparison to the Saffers' first dig anyway. Work with me here.

Step 5. Endgame.
Despite the hopeless task ahead of them of needing to bat for at least two days to avoid getting pounded, your opponents will make a valiant effort to hold on. For a fleeting moment, there will be a lower-order partnership, an old-fashioned rearguard salvage job which threatens to save the day for their lot and prevent your lot claiming the Big Cheese On Offer. Then someone who should know better, one of the opposition's talismanic players, will do something stupider than stupid (stupider even than the stupid stupidhead who figured Sarah O'Hare-Murdoch was born to host breakfast television) and will stupidly get themselves out in truly stupid fashion. The partnership will be broken, the rest of the tail will crumple for bugger-all, your team will win by 200 plus, and you'll be in the winners circle clutching your TAB slip and braying like a yeehaw at the Kyogle Rodeo.

That's the plan anyway.

England 2nd innings, chasing 557 to win
Fall of the fifth wicket: Eng 5/261 in 93.4 overs
Sixth wicket partnership: A Flintoff and KP Pietersen, 75 runs (21.1 ov)
Ended by: A Flintoff, b SK Warne getting stupidly yorked by a flipper, 51 (96m 67b 8x4 1x6), Eng 6/336
England all out 350 in 122.2 overs
Australia win by 206 runs

New Zealand 2nd innings, chasing 504 to win
Fall of the seventh wicket: NZ 7/163 in 54.5 overs
Eighth wicket partnership: DL Vettori and JEC Franklin, 96 runs (22.2 ov)
Ended by: DL Vettori, lbw b Murali stupidly padding-up to the offbreak when it was clearly the doosra, 51 (101m 68b 7x4 0x6), NZ 8/259
New Zealand all out 286 in 85.1 overs
Sri Lanka win by 217 runs

South Africa 2nd innings, chasing 403 to win
Fall of the sixth wicket: SA 6/164 in 60.3 overs
Seventh wicket partnership: SM Pollock and AG Prince, 67 (14.0 ov)
Ended by: SM Pollock, b Kumble stupidly slog-swiping across a straight one for no fathomable reason, 40 (67m 41b 6x4 1x6), SA 7/231
South Africa all out 278 in 86.5 overs
India win by 123 runs
and would have won by 200+ as per program, had it not been for Ashwell Prince, definitely non-token black guy, deserved a century, didn't get it, b Kumble 97

Gil: Christ
The second fastest hundred in Test match history, scored in an astonishing 57 balls, was recorded late on day 3 at the WACA Ground by England bowlers Steve Harmison, Monty Panesar and Matthew Hoggard. The trio's bid for Wisden immortality was assisted by the batting machine which the locals had kindly installed for them at the ground, commonly known as Adam Gilchrist. Despite their gallant efforts, the record for the fastest test hundred ever is still held by fellow English bowlers Ian Botham and John Emburey, who combined to score a century from 56 balls in the Fifth Test against the West Indies in Antigua in April 1986, with the help of local batting machine Vivian Richards. This marked the finest achievement by a bloke with a girl's name since Andrea de Cesaris claimed pole position at the 1982 United States Grand Prix.





















Some of de Crasheris' more recognisable work

New Zealand are pants
The BlackCaps™ capitulated in time-honoured fashion in both of their innings at the Basin Reserve (named because of the home side's prophensity for their batting to go down the pan), courtesy the not-in-any-way-dubious spin of Muntedtyre Whaddyadoin, and the equally-dodgy-looking slingshot action of Thingo Malinga. The Malingera bowls with a slinging action that recalls Jeff Thomson - if Thommo was listing to starboard by about 30 degrees in the middle of his delivery stride - and looks for all the world to be Dodgy As.

The result of Malinga's round-arm action is that the ball appears to be coming out of the dark background of the umpire's trousers, rather than the white of the sightscreen. This makes Malinga's slingas the most unnerving thing to appear out of an umpires trousers since... [Steve Randell reference deleted for legal reasons] New Zealand attempted to remedy this situation by persuading Simon 'Tufty' Taufel at Malinga's end to tie a cricket jumper around his waist like a butcher's apron, to provide some sort of makeshift sightscreen. Did it work? Did it bollocks. Malinga took seven for the match, i.e. almost all of the wickets Murali didn't get around to taking.

Doesn't it just make you want to chuck?


Meanwhile, elsewhere in the sportosphere...

Craig Lowndes, his toys and his pram have announced their separation. Make The Most Of Lnowdes has declared publically that he is somehow the 'moral champion' of this year's V8 Supercar season, in the most sanctimonious, self-deluded and childish statement since the All Blacks declared "Well if you won't let us do our haka after the anthems like we wanna do it, we'll just stay in the changing rooms and do it in there, so nyaahh."















Did the ABs Welsh on their deal with the Wales RFU?
"Nah bro, it's not cuz we're pussed off eh, ut's just the ucoustucs are bitter un here. They're choice eh bro."

Sepp Blatter is talking bollocks. Again. He's come up with the idea of moving the football season to February through November, and claims that 'most of the major clubs' support the move. Most of the major rugby clubs presumably. This is the latest in a long line of Seppisms, including apologising to Australia for Italy's dodgy penalty in the round-of-16 at Germany 2006, then being surprised that anyone would interpret this as a slur against the Italians, such as the Italians; pledging wholeheartedly that Oceania would get direct qualification to Germany, then straight-facedly unpledging it again; and declaring that women's football would be better if all female football players had to wear skimpy lycra shorts like the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders (this is not as good an idea as you might think, go have a look at your average female national team and get back to me) - to which Norwegian captain Lise Klaveness replied: “If the crowd only wants to come and watch models then they should go and buy a copy of Playboy.” Which would presumably make them just as big a wanker as Sepp himself. Of course, on top of incessantly talking bollocks, Sepp's also as bent as a dog's hind leg, taking million dollar kickbacks from sponsors and rigging FIFA and member confederation elections to get him and his cronies into power - but that's another issue altogether.

Time waits for no man. Or person(s). This has fuck all to do with sport, but that's why we changed the name of the column. Time magazine have announced their 2006 Person of the Year to be... you. "Yes, you," they breathlessly state. "You control the Information Age. Welcome to your world." To which 'You, Yes You' will likely have the response: "Oh, for Jesus H. Fucking Christ on an inflatable ocean-going tricycle's sake. What is this, one of those unbearably fucking smug iMac commercials?"

This, the lamest cop-out in the history of Time (see what we did there?), is the latest in a long line of appalling choices for the shambolic glossy rag's once prestigious award, including George W. Bush, and... shit, do we really need to say anything more? They gave the thing to George Dubyafuckin' Bush, people! The Time editorial board are a shower of 'tards who should be strung up from a tree in a hessian sack and hit with a length of copper pipe until they promise never to dump such a massive steamer on the world's collective doorstep again.

OK. We're calm.

The World of Weak Sporting Bollocks will say no more on the topic, other than to point its reader(s) in the direction of a much more deserving winner of the Man of the Year, as identified by The Onion several years ago: The Man. You the man!

Just a thought: when this article originally came out, it was actually intended as satire...

The Doctor is OUT.