Ashes Flashes

Amid the carnage that was the second Ashes test was a great line from Ian Healey: 'The Aussies will be saying, "We've got them right where they want us".'

As the 3rd one starts with spinner Beer drafted ( see what I did there?) into the team, headlines featuring the words "Beer and Skittles" surely await.

Words Of A Thousand Men

Amidst all of the many remarkably non-revelatory WikiLeaks stories, it was heartening to see the word "feckless" still in use, having been used to describe Silvio Berlusconi.

I last heard it in Nick Lowe's Rose of England, where "for her feckless boy she did weep and wail".

It brings to mind the image of everyone scurrying for their dictionaries to look up "recalcitrant" after Paul Keating famously dismissed Mahatir, the Malaysian Prime Minister, for so being.

While My Qatar Gently Weeps

Actually Qatar must be laughing uproariously. Well I must say, I never picked that one.

If nothing else it did serve to show the truly Byzantine nature of the voting process. In the second round Qatar's vote count actually went backwards. After all those months of assessments, one guy changed his mind in the middle of the vote. Ridiculous! As no doubt will be the heat.

Funnily enough, we now have Sepp Blatter proposing to change the scheduling of the tournament. Surely, the heat and the scheduling requirements should have been part of the assessment but logic appears to have little to do with it.

2018,2022...2026?

The World Cup venues for the next 2 tournaments will be decided very shortly. Local pundits have been talking up Australia's chances for the 2022 tournament but in the last few weeks I've heard two analysts say that we've got no chance.

Firstly, there's money. Put simply, the USA outstrips everybody when it comes to size of venues and the TV revenue they can generate. The latter is particularly dependent on which timezone the event is held on. In contrast, according to the latest reports, Australia will generate the least income.

Secondly, and this is the one not often mentioned as everyone fixates on 2018 and 2022, China is apparently bidding for the 2026 World Cup. If that's so, it's hard to see FIFA not awarding it to them and therefore means that there is no way that two World Cups in succession will be awarded to the Asian zone. QED as my maths teacher used to say. For you young folks that's Latin for Quite Easily Done.

But let's see if something other than money calls the shots. I for one, am not holding my breath. England and the USA are my tips.