I was wondering what to write this month, then I got home and turned the cricket on. It’s Day Five of the first Test, and England have set us three hundred and change in two sessions. In between ads for A Current Affair, I’m watching something that could turn out to be interesting in the way cricket should be interesting. That is, the biggest betting scandal likely to eventuate from this Ashes tour is taking bets on how much work Warnie’s had done on his head.

Katich just edged one to slip and some little bloke named Ponting is scampering out to the crease. He exchanges pleasantries with short square leg, does some gardening, and takes guard. We’re one wicket down for five on the Gabba road, after gifting the English bastards one for five hundred.

I remember when I used to structure my holidays around the cricket, and keep a radio at my desk for when I’d run out of leave. I remember not missing a Boxing Day at the G for four years running, and wiping the tears away for Slater’s maiden ton, and Steve’s farewell. I was thinking about all this on the way home today, and I started to wonder where my passion went, if I ever had it, and is it merely misplaced, or actually gone?

I saw Warne’s Ball Of The Century when it happened, from my couch. I’ve sat up til 4 in the morning watching The Ashes, listened to every ball when it was radio only. I listened to Dean Jones nearly die of dysentery on his way to making history in the tied test. I remember Alan McGilvray, I remember Carl Rackemann. I remember when the West Indies used to play. I sat with my uncle in front of the Test Pattern for three hours waiting for the rain to stop. I watched that one-dayer Michael Bevan won off his own bat, and I was there the day John Safran sent a radio-control seagull with a cigarette in its mouth to Warnie at the MCG.

All those moments, with apologies to Ridley Scott, will be lost in time, like tears in rain.

I wish I knew the exact moment, or could even point roughly in its direction, that I lost the passion. I’m listening to Ian Healey yammer during the tea break, and it’s starting to come to me. I remember that time he appealed, and replays showed he clearly didn’t have the ball in glove, and it could’ve just been an honest mistake, except he went on to give three different explanations.

Then Darrell Hair was sacked from umpiring because he had the gall to question Murali’s action, and when they looked at the action they realised Hair was right but they wouldn’t say so, they just changed the rules so the action was legal. That was when the rot set in; cricket wasn’t about cricket any more, it was about the sub-continent doing whatever it wanted, and screaming racist whenever England or Australia or South Africa questioned anything. Andrew Symonds copped racial abuse from Harbajanh Singh, and when we complained about it, somehow we were the racists.

There was Hansie Cronje, one of his country’s best ever, befouling the game and one of its most promising youngsters by taking bribes. There was the Waugh/Warne “we just gave him a weather report” thing, and Cricket Australia pretending it didn’t happen until it was made public, and oh yes, there was Warne taking banned substances and finally settling on “my Mum gave them to me and I’d like to apologise for everyone finding out”.

I thought it was silly but kind of nice that Zimbabwe and Bangladesh were allowed to play tests, but I realised the game was screwed when the ICC wouldn’t stand up for something even remotely resembling a principle of some kind and kick Zimbabwe out for what Mugabe’s cronies were doing. Twenty-twenty has taken over because there’s a lot of quick bucks to be made; it’s killing the real one-day game, even more so than the World Cup the West Indies hosted, and unlike its fifty-over cousin it brings exactly nothing to cricket except millions of dollars to be siphoned off by bookmakers with the blessing of the ICC.

Channel 9’s coverage has always shat me, but their latest “innovation”, the “Earl of Twirl” is just. Fucking. Hideous. I won’t bother to describe it, because I like my Mac and it’s very afraid of being thrown out the window if I continue. The stupid is just so stupid it insults the concept of stupidity.

Then, when I think the stupid couldn’t get any stupider, there’s @theashes hoo-haa. A woman in Boston for some reason has that twitter name, and she got snakey that she kept getting mentioned by Aussies and Poms. So QANTAS are flying her over, vodafone are providing accommodation, and Ford are lending her a car. For fuck sake, maybe these three sponsors could do something worthwhile? I’m sure there are thousands of Australian, or even English, kids who can’t get to The Ashes to see their heroes play?

One day the Sultan’s Chancellor gave him a golden ring, and told his lord to read its inscription every day, in good times and bad. It said “This too shall pass”.

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Enough Malthouse-isms for one column, I think. This being the last Sports for the year, I’d better just cover the Summer until we’re back, huge and sexy and profitable in February.

The Tour Down Under will feature Lance Armstrong’s final ever race, but will not feature Cadel Evans. His BMC team having been granted Pro Tour status, Mr Whiney-Voice is guaranteed a start in the Tour De France and so will be concentrating all his efforts on getting into a good position then being betrayed by a team-mate, snapping a chain and some bones, or catching a dose of 24-hour Bubonic Plague so he can give interviews where it sounds like he’s vomiting and crying at the same time, which he usually is.

There will be some golf, which will be spoiled by rain, or wind, or too-hard greens, or an official who can’t make up his mind on a ruling, and an anonymous semi-pro from Goosefuck Alabama will walk away with some ugly silverware and no idea who Craig Willis is.

Everyone will get tired of the Barmy Army, but no one will get tired of saying “gee, aren’t they clever with all those songs they make up, it’s so much better than Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi, innit?”.

I’m having difficulty thinking of something to say about the Australian Open tennis. Well that’s not entirely true, it’s just that all the things I’m thinking of start with fuckingwanker.

By the time you read this, we’ll all know whether that forty-eight million bucks we gave to Frank Lowy was well-spent, and if we’ll have to spend another couple of billion on stadia and first class flights and coming good on all the bribes we promised. The winning bidders for the 2022 World Cup will be announced in the wee hours of Friday December 3rd, and won’t there be much clapping and squealing and lining up for snout-time in the gargantuan trough of taxpayers’ money that will be up for grabs, should we somehow get the gig. Which we won’t.

We really really won’t. Because our bid team made a video. And then they played the video. And the video had a kangaroo in it, and it had Sydney Harbour and the MCG and some hand-picked “multicultural” kiddies, and I just can’t keep reeling off every unimaginative stereotypical Australiana image contained in it or I will vomit into my lap again like I did last night watching it live.

I’ve always hated Bernie Ecclestone, but you have to admit there’s some value in the way he runs his Formula One fiefdom; in order to be allowed to stage a Grand Prix, you only have to throw loads of money at him, and he’s pretty honest about his price. There’s no schlepping all over the world sucking up to oleaginous tin-pot officials from second and third world shitholes who start off asking very nicely for a swimming pool then before you know it you’re paying school fees for all his kids and buying him an island and he’s such an accomplished parasite that you just know four other countries are doing exactly the same thing and it will all come down to who holds a gun to his head the night before the final vote anyway (we are up against Russia, by the way).

Which, despite the dead-pan denials from FIFA and everyone involved, is exactly what happens and everyone knows it, and they might as well just get the UN to vote on it because they do influence-peddling and denial of same like no one else on Earth. I’ll probably get up to watch the announcement anyway, just for the pleasure of watching one of Australia’s richest men miss out on a billion dollars of taxpayers’ money.

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I guess that’s it for 2010, sports fans. Fear not, we will not be employing a professional sports writer in 2011, or an ex-cricketer.

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