A recent story in the Sydney Morning Herald referred to a new development in cricket bats, with about a quarter of the back of it flattened and rolled so that a batsman, especially in Twenty-20 cricket, could use both sides of it as a switch hitter.

If the development is a success, it will represent the first new conceptual breakthrough in the art of bat-making for over 100 years.

The fact is that bats used by, say, Victor Trumper, are not greatly different than those used by modern players. Both are made of English willow.

Dennis Lillee tried to introduce an aluminium bat, but this was outlawed.

The width of the bats are about the same. The modern bat generally is much heavier and has thicker edges. But these are marginal differences.

The two-sided bat, though, is an interesting concept.

Peter Roebuck tells the story of his days teaching cricket at Cranbrook to the likes of Jamie Packer. A German teacher at the school, who was a German and had no idea about cricket, encouraged the players in the team he had to coach to use the back of the bat at all times to ensure that no one could predict where the ball would go after it hit the sloped back of the bat.

There have been experiments with taking the sloped back off bats and spreading the thickness of the wood to other areas of the bat, thereby creating a larger sweet spot for hitters.

When I was being coached, along with a number of other likely youngsters, in the late 1950s in Wellington by an old English pro by the name of Charlie Barnett (a former Test player), he ruined my season and that of a number of the other boys by flogging off bats to us, at a great price, that had no shoulders on them.

Later, Lance Cairns used a similar bat with some success.

But the shoulder-less bat never really caught on.

Sachin Tendulkar, apparently, uses a specially made bat with a longer blade than usual, and very wide edges and an extremely short handle. The bat is significantly heavier than the bat used by Don Bradman but, as I’ve mentioned, it is not significantly different to the Bradman model made by Sykes.

One other thought about bats.

It is only in the last 30 years or so that young players and those not playing in the first class arena had their own bats. You would get your bat from the team’s kit, even first grade players.

One of the incentives for being an opening batsman was that you had the chance to grab one of the better bats in the bag.

Now even kids starting out have their own bat. Or bats.

It’s only a matter of time before there is a craze for the two-faced bat, especially among youngsters. The good players will be able to use the bat effectively, one would imagine.

And the ordinary players will remain ordinary players, no matter how good their bat is.

The sad truth about cricket is that, at the end of the day, it is the player who hits, snicks or misses the ball, not the bat.

At the end of the enthralling, emotion-charged Munster 16-All Blacks 18 match, one of the commentators claimed that it was the greatest night of rugby he’d ever experienced. He was not far far off the mark.

Like the famous Randwick-All Black encounter at Coogee Oval some decades earlier, this match will live in the collective memories of Munster rugby people and New Zealanders as long as rugby is played in Ireland.

The highly- charged atmosphere received further ignition before the match when the four New Zealanders playing for Munster did their Haka before their team stood in a solid line, arms locking the line in tight, to confront the All Blacks Haka.

Again, the commentators noted how splendid the challenge was, and the stoic, strong way it was confronted by the Munster players. Just an hour or so before this happened, I read a column in The Guardian by Frank Keating saying that it was time to drop the Haka, that it was a hysterical nonsense.

Keating is one my heroes as a sports writer.

I sat beside him when Wales played the All Blacks in 1978 at Cardiff while he puffed his pipe and watched and didn’t take notes. On the Monday, there was a scintillating piece on the Test.

But on the Haka issue he is totally wrong.

He seems to think, incidentally, that in 1905 and on other tours when the Haka was performed, that the All Blacks were an all-white Pakeha team. Someone should tell him that the vice-captain of the 1905 All Blacks, Billy Stead (the co-author with Dave Gallaher of the best rugby book ever written, The New Zealand System of Rugby) was Maori.

I’d be surprised if there has ever been an All Blacks touring side without some Maori players in it, except, of course, on those tours to South Africa up to 1976.

The match itself was a terrific contest, with the red-shirted Munster players pouring into the rucks and mauls like giant spurts of red blood smothering their black opponents.

And with Paul Warwick, the five-eighths, kicking his goals and running the backline far more competently than Ronan O’Gara, the first choice Munster distributor, Munster kept the New Zealand defence under constant pressure.

At half-time the scoreline was Munster 16-New Zealand 10, and Munster fully deserved their strong lead.

Then, for the fourth successive time, the All Blacks held their opponents scoreless in the the second half, kicked a penalty early on (after Stephen Donald had missed four reasonably easy kicks at goal) and with minutes left to play, Joe Rokocovo burst through two tackles to score wide out.

Munster had one more chance to win the bragging rights for the next 30 years when they forced a turnover on the halfway with time up. But Warwick, for reasons that remain inexplicable, though perhaps sheer, overwhelming tiredness is the answer, kicked the ball into touch.

A fascinating aspect of the All Blacks try was that it followed a tremendous rolling maul.

The All Blacks marched forward something like 20 metres before putting the ball wide. A couple of phases later, Rokocovo was making his dash for the tryline.

The point here is that because the maul can now be pulled down under the ELVs, a well-constructed, reasonably fast-moving maul can still be very effective.

The All Blacks seem to be the only team in the world right now that has twigged to this.

The other, perhaps more important observation from the match, is that mid-week games against touring international sides provide a wonderful chance for local heroes to emerge. The members of that winning 1978 Munster side are legends in their province and were lined in the best seats of the grandstand for the crowd to admire.

I covered that 1978 tour of Graham Mourie’s All Blacks for a New Zealand magazine.

It was the first All Blacks side to win the Grand Slam. But my abiding memory, which I wrote about at length in my first rugby book, After The Final Whistle, was those mid-week matches through England, Wales and Ireland, including a memorable match at Belfast where the players and the journalists had to be taken to and from the ground in armoured buses.

Those Wallaby tours, too, when the team was away for months, provided so many memorable moments and stories.

In 1984, on Australia’s first Grand Slam tour, the Wallabies played a night match at Swansea. This dour, dinghy Welsh town has been immortalised in the full-lipped, sensuous prose of Dylan Thomas.

But it is really the a**hole of the earth.

The Wallabies were so reluctant to spend any more time than necessary in this awful place that they booked a bus to take them back to London after the match. The small contingent of Australian journalists covering the tour were told they could come back with the team on the bus.

So in the bitter cold, with slanting rain like hard nails pelting into anyone not under cover, the players and the scribes made their way quickly into the bus, past the coach Alan Jones, who was standing by the driver.

Jones was having a feud at the time with arguably Australia’s best rugby-writer and multiple Walkey winner, Evan Whitton.

Saturated and pleased to finally get inside the warm bus, Whitton was told curtly by Jones: “Not you. Out.”

Other journalists on the bus told me that it was so cold and miserable outside, any thoughts of supporting Whitton by joining him by way of a protest at the callousness of Jones were quickly eliminated by the sight of the indomitable reporter trudging his way though the dark and sleety rain back into town.

Bring back touring, I say, for the local and international players, for the supporters, and for the reporters, even if there are sometimes hardships that have to be endured when things are written that the powers don’t like to read.

During the recent India-Australia, I watched virtually all the Tests on television. The hours of play were conveniently in Australian day-time. As the generally enthralling series made it way to the climactic last two days, with the Border-Gavaskar trophy clearly going to be lost by Australia, I became increasingly disenchanted with the television commentary team.

Like the Channel 9 commentary system, former Test players, Indian and Australian, made up the broadcasting contingent.

It’s an unfortunate fact of life that great batsmen and bowlers don’t generally make great commentators. Just as great commentators generally don’t necessarily make great batsmen and bowlers.

The skill of the player and the broadcaster are not complementary.

There are exceptions, and the obvious example is Richie Benaud, who was a working journalist during his cricket career and then studied television production at the BBC while he was a player in preparation for a career as a broadcaster.

There are a few other TV commentators who I enjoy listening too because they are able to tell us something about the conditions, tactics and flow of the game that is informed by their knowledge of the craft of the game.

Ian Chappell is one of these commentators.

But there was no Ian Chappell or Richie Benaud in India, and the television commentary was generally pathetic.

On the second-to-last day of the series, I turned on the radio and listened to the ABC cricket commentators. What a delight!

The chatter, shared expertise, insights, yarns, and good humour made compelling listening. I loved the story of the great coffee the radio commentary team was served by pleasant waiters.

One of them, on being complimented on the strong steaming brew, told Maxwell with a great grin, “Petrol, sir. Petrol for the commentators.”

Gold, too, in the telling.

It was far more informative and interesting listening to Jim Maxwell, Mike Coward, Peter Roebuck, and the others on the broadcasting team than enduring the TV commentary.

Radio has advantage over television in the broadcasting of a game like cricket because what happens is more than what see at the ground or on a television screen. Someone once said that cricket is a game of inches, “the inches between your ears.”

It is a game played with a bat and ball, and in the minds of the players, as well.

The television commentators rarely involved the viewers in this third dimension of the game. They tell us what they see and that’s about it.

The radio commentators have to “paint the picture” and then fill in the details because we have to see in our mind, not our eyes, what is happening.

There is also the power of the radio medium at work, too.

Spike Milligan said that he loved radio because you can do anything with it. He gave the example of creating a situation of a huge lava flow of hot chocolate pouring down a mountain. You can do this, paint the picture of the chocolate flow, on radio much easier than on television.

The imagination is more powerful in creating images for the mind than the eye is. Shakespeare knew this. There was no scenery on the Elizabethan stage. So in the opening of Hamlet, for instance, he creates the scene with words: “See how the dawn in russet mantle clad/Creeps over the brow of yon hill.”

Of course, radio only works if the commentators are wordsmiths. And Maxwell, Coward and Roebuck are that, and others that share the booth, including former players like Geoff Lawson and Kerry O’Keefe, are very good value, too.

The worldwide CEO of Saatchi and Saatchi, Kevin Roberts, the president of RugbyUSA as it happens, has coined the word LOVEMARKS to describe brands that have endeared themselves to customers by involving them in an emotional reaction to the product, as well as a commercial reaction.

For me, the ABC’s cricket commentary team is a Lovemark brand.

I’ll be watching the pictures of the Tests between Australia-New Zealand on Channel 9 and listening to the ABC commentary, even if it is slightly ahead of the pictures. 

The pictures are the visual, but the commentary has the real story and drama, as far as I’m concerned.

There are certain sentences a rugby writer believes he will never write, and one them was (notice the past tense): “Al Baxter monsters Andrew Sheridan, reducing him to a limping wreck wandering off Twickenham with all the dejection of a whipped schoolyard bully.”

But this is what happened on Saturday night when the Wallabies humbled and outplayed England by a convincing 28 to 14.

By my count there were 16 scrums in the Test. The first scrum went down twice before the Wallabies won a penalty. It was noticeable that Luke Burgess was feeding the ball as soon as the engagement was made, a sign that the Wallabies feared being driven off their ball if the scrum contest lasted more than a few seconds.

Then the Wallabies were penalised. This was interesting because this was the same pattern of scrum penalties that occurred at Marseilles in the 2007 RWC quarter final.

I was expecting, and no doubt the England pack, its supporters and the assembled rugby journalists were too, that the referee had twigged to Al Baxter and the scrum games were up for the Wallabies. And with the scrums going backwards, there was the virtual certainty that the Wallabies would be scrummed off the field.

But as the scrums continued it became obvious that a different script was being written. The Wallaby scrum was clearly dominant, even on its own ball when England could put on an 8-man shove. And then we had four memorable: ‘Well, I’ll be scrummed moments.’

First, just after half-time, with the Wallabies holding a precarious and slightly against the run-of-play 1-point lead, the Australian pack won a tight head.

Then in the 63rd minute of play the Wallabies smashed the England pack rather like a car being pulverised into a small square of metal.

With 13 minutes of play left, and the game still in the balance, Andrew Sheridan limped off the field. He was a broken and diminished figure and any claims he might have to be England’s iconic wrecking ball were now wrecked.

Finally, with minutes of play left and England 13 points down, they forced a short-arm penalty only a few metres from the Wallaby tryline.  The much-feted great scrummagers, the masters of the destructive shove, the destroyers of airy-fairy southern hemisphere packs, opted to take a tap and run.

As the Bible might have said: ‘Those who live by the scrum will also perish by it.’

The knives are already being poised behind the massive back of Martin Johnson, the saviour-coach the UK rugby journalists demanded after the curiously successful 2007 RWC campaign. The argument is being made that the wrong forwards were selected. But when the other players were on the field the Wallaby pack became so dominant one thought that somehow the jerseys of the teams had been swapped.

What did stand out in England’s approach was that there did not seem to be a coherent game plan. What were England trying to do? 

They had a very quick back three but the outside centre did not get the ball in a passing movement until the last quarter of the match. There didn’t seem to be a system to run the ball back from the inevitable kicks. The forwards had a primitive one-up barging game but where were the run-arounds? Where were the incursions from deep positions after a couple of phases?

We are beginning to see, I believe, the foolishness of English rugby, which has 500,000 players, allowing its premiership sides to be loaded with foreigners to make the clever plays, the breaks and the hard yards. What has happened in English soccer will probably happen to England rugby. The national side is being sacrificed in the name of club owners trying to establish the best club championship in the world.

How can a generation of good young players develop into Test players, as they do in Australia, NZ and South Africa, when access to first class rugby is blocked off for most of them when they are in their early 20s?

There needs to be more informed analysis about rugby, too, from officials, coaches, players and rugby journalists in the UK. My ancestors, the ancient Greeks, had a saying: ‘Whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first grant them their wishes.’

For over 100 years there has been a resistance in England to thinking deeply about rugby tactics, innovations, the laws and the organisation and practices of the game. It was typical of this attitude that when the IRB embarked on the most rigorously documented and thought-out revision of the laws of any major sports with its Experimental Law Variations project, the reaction from the English rugby establishment was to reject the idea of the ELVs on the spurious ground that the ARU (which did NOT even initiate the project) was trying to protect the Wallabies from their inability to scrum properly.

As a Roar blogger points out on another thread, the stupidity of this argument was revealed at Twickenham with the Wallabies scrumming England out of the Test. Moreover, any one who had even the slightest understanding of the ELVs would recognise that the change from long-arm penalties to short-arm penalties actually allows more opportunity for sides to have more scrums, if they want to.

The last England coach to actually think deeply about rugby tactics and strategy was Clive Woodward. Woodward was booted out of his job, after winning the 2004 RWC, by officials who are still in place. Under Woodward, particularly in 2003, England developed the kick-pass to ‘widen’ the field and a running, abrasive pack that fitted the traditional England approach of direct, confrontational rugby on attack and defence.

That 2003 side was probably England’s best-ever side. And the performance at Melbourne before the 2003 RWC against the Wallabies was one of the great displays any rugby side has put on. Instead of being given anything he wanted to continue the success, Frances Baron and the other nabobs of English rugby denied Woodward the training facilities and back-up he wanted to create an English hegemony.

Woodward told me that he learnt to think deeply about the art of coaching when he had a stint as a player at Manly in the era of Alan Jones.

Martin Johnson’s rugby improved significantly when he spent a year in NZ in the King Country, Colin Meads territory, and played for the Junior All Blacks.

My guess is that England, particularly, with its vast resources of players would be a perpetual top-three rugby nation if its rugby establishment had the nous to do what Woodward did at Manly to develop his coaching skills and what Johnston did as player to become one of rugby greatest ever second-rowers.

The bottom line on the Wallabies marvellous victory was that it was built on competitions at the provincial and international level between South Africa, NZ and Australia that continually test the physical and mental skills of the local players.

Would Matt Giteau have developed so quickly as an international star if he was blocked from playing Super 14 Rugby by an overseas player?

Al Baxter has had years of battling and being beaten by outstanding southern hemisphere props and their coaches forever trying to get an edge by developing a higher skill factor than the opposition to reach the stage where he can monster Andrew Sheridan.

With the stunning victory over England suddenly what looked like being a tour from hell for the Wallabies and Robbie Deans, with a run of hard matches against NZ, Italy, England, France, Wales and an All-Star Barbarians sides, now looks like it could result in a triumphant Grand Slam march through Europe, at least.

The Test against France next week will be interesting as France are the only unbeaten northern hemisphere team in the current round of international matches.

More importantly, there appears to be a great improvement in the French scrum from the past couple of years. More heroics might be needed from Baxter if this is the case.

France defeated Argentina in a tough, abrasive contest, with bodies flying around the slippery field. But this was the only victory by a Northern Hemisphere team over the Sourthern Hemisphere invaders. The Pacific Islander side is not counted in this context as it’s a pick-up side that is generic rather than specific.

South Africa defeated Wales in a pulsating match in which both sides showed that they should have strong showings at the next RWC in 2011. Australia had to pull off a spectacular try by Quade Cooper to get in front of a persistent Italy. And New Zealand defeated Scotland reasonably comfortably.

France were quite impressive, especially in the forwards.

They seem to have found a scrum that has been lacking for several years. They seemed less brittle, too, under the intense physical play of the Pumas.

For their part, the Pumas merely replicated the up-and-under game they did so well at the 2007 RWC. But without the licence to mount continual waves of rolling mauls, they lacked a way of going through and over their opponents.

Wales were very impressive, and have unearthed a devastating number 8 in Andy Powell. The backs, especially Shane Williams, were sharp. But against the aggressive defence of the Springboks, Wales seemed to lack an organiser to exploit the overlaps that were created with some dynamic loose forward play.

The Springboks seem to have found, at last, a decent five-eighths in Rian Pienaar. His kicking game, particularly, turned Wales around time after time. Curiously, after establishing a handy lead that was never really going to be overtaken, the Springboks went into their shell and played the narrowest of games.

At one time they had the entire fifteen players gathered around the ruck, like a tired rugby league side.

So we had the rare experience of a Northern Hemisphere team, Wales, playing Southern Hemisphere rugby and a Southern Hemisphere team, South Africa, playing Northern Hemisphere rugby.

One of the features of the Wales-South Africa Test was the excellent refereeing of the Irishman Alain Rolland. He refereed the 2007 RWC final, and with his exact and sympathetic rulings, which you’d expect from a former international player who understands the game at every level, you’d hope that he is going to be allowed to do the RWC 2011 finals, too.

This brings us to Wayne Barnes and the Scotland-New Zealand Test.

Scotland, to its credit, tried to move the ball around. But like virtually all the major teams with the exception of the All Blacks, they do not seem to have systems in place to run the ball successfully from turnovers and broken play.

To my mind, it’s all about the positioning of the first-receiver in these situations. All the teams, again with the exception of New Zealand, tend to stand the first-receiver in broken play in the pocket, often behind the ruck or maul. There is only one play from this sort of positioning, and that is a kick.

New Zealand stands the receiver flat and he can then pass another flat pass to an outside back and the attack is behind the defence in a flash.

Back to Wayne Barnes, the 29 year-old barrister who penalised France twice in the entire 2007 RWC quarter-final against New Zealand.

Paddy O’Brien is clearly grooming him - unfortunately - for great things in the ranks of the leading referees. I say unfortunately because he referees like a prosecuting attorney forever trying to establish quilt.

There were four penalties in the first four minutes of the Test, and one sending off of a Scots player. Thereafter, Barnes found fault at virtually every ruck and maul, even though he sympathetically thanked players when they did something right, in his eyes

Unfortunately, too, Barnes is quite inaccurate in many of his calls, despite his certitude.

He also, in the last 20 minutes, allowed Scotland to infringe with impunity with and without the ball in all the rucks and mauls while penalising New Zealand, with or without the ball. The All Blacks turned down a penalty kick under the posts to take a scrum, to the delight of the crowd, only to be penalised for ‘going early.’

W.G.Grace is supposed to have said in his high-pitched voice to an umpire who gave him out: “The crowd has come to see me bat, not to see you umpire.”

Someone in authority should make the same point to Barnes.

As the Sunday Times writer Mark Palmer noted: “Barnes was evidently keen to be in the vanguard of the IRB’s new policy of zero tolerance towards breakdown excesses that were previously indulged.”

Matthew Alverez. the statistician of the ARU, says that in the Tests played this year by the Wallabies under the regular laws of rugby there were, on average, 18 long arms penalties a match. Under the fullish ELVs, there were 8 long arm penalties a Test on average. And under the reduced ELVs the average has become 18 long arm penalties again.

Moreover, under the long arm penalty regime, we are having all sorts of problems with the scrums with referees reluctant to give a full-arm penalty for a perceived misdeamour when they would have sorted things out quickly with a short-arm penalty under the full ELVs.

The argument for players winning Tests rather than officious referees like Barnes and Lewis at al has already been made quite convincingly in this first series of Northern Hemisphere-Southern Hemisphere Tests.

If only the commentators and the officials could see this obvious truth.

Here is the Boy’s Own scenario facing Cooper. He has had a flightly first-class rugby career since coming into the Queensland Reds as a brilliant youngster. There are suspicions that he got his call to the Wallaby colours because he was born in New Zealand, and therefore eligible to play, if selected of course, for the All Blacks.

Sitting on the reserves bench he had watched the Wallabies try unsuccessfully for 71 minutes to shake off the persistent, well-coached (the South African master Nick Mallett) Azzurri. A few minutes before the Azzurri had missed an eminently kickable penalty to go into a 23 - 20 lead. Then the call comes from the coach, Robbie Deans, to take the field and make something happen.

The Wallabies get field position about 30m out from their opponent’s tryline. Matt Giteau, who played as if he hasn’t really recovered from his hammering in Hong Kong, set up an old Crusaders move involving a pass behind two forwards standing flat to an elusive running back.

Cooper broke wide, found a gap, raced through it, and then like a downhill skier swerving through the poles speed around and inside the mass covering defence. Try! Under the posts! Test saved.

Another penalty goal by Giteau gave the flattering scoreline of 30 -20. But it was a close-run thing, which raises the question: What went wrong with the Wallabies?

There is, of course, the matter of travelling from Hong Kong to Italy and having to play a Test against a strong and skillful Italian pack, one of the strongest in Test rugby, within seven days.

But this can hardly be offered as an excuse. We have to look at the Wallaby pack. They were frequently beaten to the ruck and maul by the Italians. This raises the matter of Phil Waugh as a starter. My feeling that whatever use he has now for the Wallabies, if any, must be off the bench as a type of closer-player.

The Wallaby scrum that the British scribes are pointing to as the weakness that will give England a victory at Twickenham had a mixed day, good at times and at other times it was overpowered.

The pack in general again conceded too many penalties for going off their feet. This time a northern hemisphere referee could not be blamed. Bryce Lawrence is a NZer and he found the same faults as Alan Lewis did last week.

The backs, especially early on when Berrick Barnes was at first five-eights, made a number of gaps with Stirling Mortlock, Timana Tahu and Digby Ioane smashing through the strong Italian defence. But there did not seem to be any fluency in converting the line-breaks to tries.

And once again, the back three (perhaps Ioane was an exception) showed a reluctance to run the ball back at the Azzurri, a team that defends solidly from set pieces but can be exposed when play fractures and the defensive line.

Talking about Tahu, who went off injured, there were problems once again with his defence against seemingly simple attacks down his defensive channel. The first Italian try was scored when a straightforward backline attack went right through Tahu’s sector with the centre shaking his head in bewilderment, rather like Al Baxter does when he picks himself off the ground after conceding another scrum penalty.

Waugh and Tahu won’t be playing against England, which leaves the set pieces for the Wallabies to worry about. The British rugby writers are adamant that a scrum-led England attack will demolish the Wallabies, despite the fact that England’s scrum and general forward play was less than impressive against a poor but game Pacific Islands side.

‘Unless England can add hard-core forwards in all three rows,’ Stephen Jones writes in The Sunday Times, ‘then they will simply be over-powered by at least two of the three South Hemisphere teams lying in wait for them.’

You don’t have to be a genius to work out who is the odd southern hemisphere team out of three: the Wallabies.

The best things about winning in an unattractive and unconvincing way as the Wallabies did against the Azzurri is that a win is a win as far as the records are concerned, and the team gets a chance to start again next week and play to a better potential than what it revealed on Saturday.

Hopefully Cooper won’t be required to produce another flash of winning magic. But I suppose there is some comfort in the fact that having done this once, he should be able to do it again.

The British rugby establishment is awaiting the annual Southern Hemisphere rugby invasion of the Northern Hemisphere nations with a similar awe and puffed up defiance as the Romans adopted when they tried - unsuccessfully - to confront the barbarian hordes.

There will be the usual accusations of too much overtly brutal play, intimidation and of foul cheating tactics from the British rugby establishment after the Southern Hemisphere wins.

The occasional Northern Hemisphere victory will be acclaimed as an indicator that the rugby culture of the Northern Hemisphere, and its determination to keep the laws of the game as constipated as possible, has been triumphantly and perhaps even majestically (if one of these victories is by more than ten points) justified.

After the Hong Kong Bledisloe Cup Test, The Sunday Telegraph’s (UK) Paul Ackford, a rugby writer I admire, felt impelled to put the boot in by claiming, rather bizarrely, that the unpopularity of local Bledisloe Cup Tests was the reason why the series was moved offshore.

Sorry Paul, the exact opposite is the case.

The popularity of the series was the reason why another Test was added to the series and played in Hong Kong, to a full house, too.

The Usual Suspect insisted that the Wallabies and the All Blacks showed “nothing to terrify the European teams … although there was enough to show any victory will be hard-won.”

Brian Moore in his Daily Telegraph (UK) column reckoned that if England win two out of the four Tests, it will play against Southern Hemisphere teams that “will be an acceptable target, any more will be a real bonus.”

As England are playing the Pacific Islanders, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand, with the Pacific Islanders game generally accepted as an England win, Moore expects the home side to win only one Test against the three top Southern Hemisphere teams.

This is hardly a ringing endorsement of the strength and virtues of the English approach to playing rugby.

Lawrence Dallaglio, again in the Daily Telegraph, has indicated that he doesn’t believe England players are fit enough to really feel confident in knocking over all, or some, of their Southern Hemisphere opponents. He also made the point that since the 2003 RWC, the Six Nations sides had played the SANZAR nations 76 times, and won a paltry 13 of these contests (France winning 5, England 4, Ireland 3, Wales 1).

The Six Nations establishment likes to think that their ideas about how rugby should be played (the laws and so on, including refereeing interpretations) and the structure of the game (the various tournaments and world season) should be run entirely according to their dictates. This sort of arrogance would be, almost acceptable, if it were matched by successful practice on and off the field.

How many European coaches, for instance, are being chased to coach in Southern Hemisphere nations?

Another indication of the alarming lack of rugby intellectual and playing property comes from some statistics produced by Shaun Edwards, the rugby league great, who is the defence coach for Wales.

Since professionalism in 1996, Wales has played the Southern Hemisphere super-powers 31 times. Wales is the reigning Six Nations champions, but in that thirteen year period they have recorded just two victories against the Southern Hemisphere powers: against South Africa in 1999 (when Graham Henry was coach) and against the Wallabies in 2006 (when Scott Johnson was involved in the coaching staff).

Wales plays the Springboks at the start of the Southern Hemisphere invasion. The Springboks are coming off a stunning 53 - 8 massacre of the Wallabies.

They have an outstanding side, except for the five-eighth position, and a coach who seems to be rather unfocused. Earl Rose, a slight, flighty and occasionally brilliant player, and Rian Pienaar are being groomed to solve the five-eighths problem.

If this works, you’d have to fancy the Springboks going through their three Test tour undefeated.

This presumes that their long-time inability to win away from home has been resolved after their 2007 RWC victory and the win this year against the All Blacks at Dunedin.

The All Blacks have an incredibly hard tour involving (if one includes the Hong Kong Test) five Tests and a mid-week match against Munster in 28 days.

They start their Grand Slam quest against Scotland, a side they often have difficulty running over.

Scotland has not won a Test against New Zealand ever. But they are the masters of dirty tricks to unsettle opponents. Against the Wallabies a few years ago, they played on the narrowest field possible. Against the All Blacks in the 2007 RWC, they lied to the IRB about their jerseys and the All Blacks found themselves playing in an away kit that was virtually the same as Scotland’s.

And last year, too, they presented a forward pack that was incredibly bulked up. The recent accusation of illegal drug-taking by a Scottish forward has raised some eyebrows.

The Wallabies have, seemingly, the easiest opening match of the Southern Hemisphere invasion with a Test against Italy at Padova. I say seemingly because the last time the teams played, the Italian pack monstered the Wallabies and it was a close-run victory for the Australians.

After Hong Kong, I am not terribly confident about the quality of the Wallaby pack, especially the front row. Italy are coached by Nick Mallett, a sophisticated rugby thinker who took the Springboks to a record sequence of seventeen Test wins.

If the Wallabies can get enough ball and move it around using the width of the field, they should be able to record a strong victory.

If the Southern Hemisphere nations win their matches, I would not expect any praise from the British rugby establishment. There will be the usual accusations and recriminations.

If there are losses by the Southern Hemisphere teams, the boot will be put in about how airy-fairy Super 14 rugby is, how the Southern Hemisphere teams are chokers, and so on.

Unfortunately, the bleatings of the British rugby establishment are as predictable and as boring as the play of their major teams, with the exception of Wales.

Memo to the Wallabies after their gut-wrenching defeat at Hong Kong against the All Blacks 19 - 14: remember that rugby is an 80 minute game. As Sean Fitzpatrick might have said, the historic Hong Kong Bledisloe Cup Test was a game of two halves, with the Wallabies on top and in front in the first half, and the All Blacks on top and in front at full-time, 19 -14.

After being so dominant in the first half, when they should have scored more points than they did, the Wallabies virtually collapsed as soon as they ran on to the slippery field in the second half and were outscored 10 - 0, with the All Blacks bombing several other scoring chances.

At the end of the Test, which was an enthralling encounter, with the ball like a slippery piece of soap and a greasy field making purposeful running difficult, I wrote in my notebook that three factors had undone the Wallabies.

1. A falling of the fitness levels, both physical and mental, the longer the Test went on.
Matt Giteau should never have missed that penalty about 35m out and almost in line with less than 20 minutes to go to bring the score line back to 19 - 17. At the end of the Test, too, the Wallabies were inside the All Blacks 22 several times, and stupid decisions were made, passes were fumbled, and so on.

2. Gamesmanship with the scrums and rucks and mauls was continued for too long.
It was clear from the beginning of the Test that referee Alan Lewis didn’t want much of a contest at the rucks. He penalised Richie McCaw at the first breakdown. From then on, he penalised the Wallabies, and rightly so. They continued to dive in, even when Lewis made it clear that he wasn’t going to allow this. The three penalties Dan Carter kicked for the All Blacks in the first half kept them in a game they were being shut out of.

The same comment applies to the scrums.

It was clear that the Wallabies were touching when asked to ‘touch’, but were engaging before the call. Then Luke Burgess was feeding quickly before the referee had worked out the con. When the referee did work it out, the Wallabies continued to offend, and were penalised. And when the scrums were set properly, the All Blacks, on the Wallaby feed, were able to monster the Wallaby pack. Were the second-rowers pushing properly? Have Al Baxter and Matt Dunning finally reached their used-by date?

As an aside, except in the scrums and rucks, the Wallabies showed a lot of enterprise on attack and defence. Although, as Rod Kafer pointed out, they should have run back more kicks and spread the ball more from turnovers. But they are going to struggle even against teams like Italy if they get bogged down in a forward-attrition match. If they can clear the ball, there is an enterprise and skill level, as they showed with their two tries in the first half, that any team in the world, and particularly Northern Hemisphere teams, are going to find difficult to contain.

One further aside.

I watched the Foxtel commentary. Channel 7 has been a poor sponsor of rugby and I’m not going to support them in any way. This means, however, that I have to listen to the rantings of Greg Martin and Phil Kearns, both Wallabies, with Kearns being one of the all-time greats.

But not all-time greats, or remotely near it, as analysts. Time and time again, they would berate the referee for a poor decision and when the replay showed that he was right (and I am no fan of Alan Lewis, either), there was silence on their part.

I’ve had this out with Martin, an amiable fellow.

He says that everyone knows he’s biased towards Queensland and the Wallabies. But my response is that he (and Kearns) let their bias get in the way of a proper reading of what is happening in the match. Wallaby supporters listening to the Martin-Kearns show find it difficult to work out how the Wallabies lose any Tests.

And a final aside, Robbie Deans made the valid point that the plethora of scrum penalties, particularly, were a good advertisement for the full ELVs in that the referee should not be deciding the outcome of Tests.

3. Graham Henry used his bench well by bringing on Piri Weepu, who had played a lot of rugby in the last couple of months, to replace Jimmy Cowan, who was match-rusty very early in the second half.
Ma Nonu, also a player who has played some rugby recently, was brought on at the same time. These two players, Nonu particularly, provided a lot of energy to the All Blacks, which lifted the play of the rest of the side.

The team also benefited from Carter running things at first five-eighths.

Can anyone explain why Henry seems to be determined never to play his best starting 15?

The statistics of the Test told the tale: possession New Zealand 55 - Australia 45. Time in opposition 22 New Zealand 5.46 minutes - Australia 3.26. Missed tackles New Zealand 12 - Australia 26.

Good points for the Wallabies were the first 40 minutes, when they looked like a champion side, a side capable of defeating any side in the world; the energy Luke Burgess brought to the halfback position; the attacking defence, especially in the first half; the outstanding ensemble play that led to the first try; a couple of strong scrums; some good lineout work; and the sharp play of Matt Giteau.

What supporters want now is for all this good work to be played out for the entire game.

Rugby, after all, is an 80 minute game, and being ahead at half-time as the Wallabies have been in the last two Tests against the All Blacks, does not secure a victory.

So now on to Europe.

The Chinese have a saying: “For a journey of a thousand miles, it is necessary to make the first step.” In terms of the Wallabies attempt to capture a third Rugby World Cup in 2011, the tour that is starting in Hong Kong on Saturday and then travels on to Padova, Twickenham, Paris, Cardiff and Wembley, is, in sports parlance, the first hard yards to a successful RWC journey.

In the lead-up to the tour, three factors have revealed the thinking of Robbie Deans on the difficult nature of the tour, and in mounting a successful RWC challenge.

First:
Deans tried to prepare for a future frontrow that will not include Matt Dunning and Al Baxter. This is a crucial element in the success of the Wallabies in years to come. Unless a competitive frontrow can be created, Test after Test and not just for the occasional match, the Wallabies will always be vulnerable to losses in one-off, special Tests.

Incidentally, this is a problem that the All Blacks selectors recognise in the Wallabies.

Some rugby people might have wondered at the name Ben Franks in the All Blacks touring squad. Franks is a useful prop for the Crusaders, but not as dynamic as, say, Wayne Crockett, who was not selected. But Franks was born in Australia, and therefore eligible to play for the Wallabies and to undoubtedly strengthen the propping options.

But not now, although he has a younger brother who is also a sound prop.

The All Black selectors, therefore, have effectively warehoused Franks the way Deans has warehoused Quade Cooper (previously eligible for New Zealand) and James O’Connor (eligible for South Africa and New Zealand).

The odd player out in all of this was Kurtley Beale, who is eligible to play for Australia only, for the next three years.

Second:
The policy of the players “playing what is in front of them” foundered during the Test season with the revelation that the players as a group (with the exception of Matt Giteau and George Smith) did not have the skills or rugby nous to make effective decisions on the run.

Third:
As a consequence of this, Deans organised no fewer than four training camps to try and get the playing skills up and the improve the understanding of how to launch counter-attacks to exploit breakdowns in the play of the opposition. I once asked Deans why the Crusaders were so adept and accurate in launching dangerous counter-attacks. He looked at me quizzically, thought about the answer, and said: “I can tell you it doesn’t happen by accident. It takes endless practice.”

The other deficiency with the Wallabies Deans discovered was that they weren’t really fit.

Greg Growden recently pointed out that this Test season the Wallabies scored 24 tries and conceded 25. Of those 25 tries, 15 were scored in the second half, and 10 were scored in the last quarter of the Test.

So much of the work at the four training sessions was brutal fitness stuff.

This full-on training resulted in a list of casualties, including James Horwill, who I believe was being groomed to be the captain of the 2011 RWC campaign.

Deans concedes that his strategy of opting for training camps rather than getting the players to play matches might tell against the Wallabies at Hong Kong where they come up against an All Blacks for whom many of the players have been playing regularly over the last two months.

The other problem with the Hong Kong match, as well as the other Tests, is that it is an away game.

This is true for the All Blacks too. But the All Blacks are much better both currently and historically winning away from home than the Wallabies.

Two factors might work for the Wallabies, however,

The first is that it’s likely to be very hot in Hong Kong. The Wallabies have done most of their training in Sydney under much hotter conditions than in New Zealand. 

The second is that the New Zealand players have been playing under a new scrum call of  ‘crouch, touch, en-gage!, rather than elongated ‘crouch, touch, pause, en-gage’!

The timing of the All Blacks front row may well be off for most of this Test.

Also, the New Zealand players have been playing under the short-arm sanction for most infringements at the ruck and maul.

Against this is the fact that with more full-arm penalties, Daniel Carter’s longer and more accurate goal-kicking over Stirling Mortlock and Matt Giteau could be an advantage for the All Blacks.

Once the Wallabies get to Europe they will probably encounter cold, slippery and wet conditions. Traditionally, the Wallabies don’t play well in these sorts of conditions.

The Wallabies have had only one unbeaten European tour since the professional era. That was in 1996 when Greg Smith was the coach. It will be a tremendous achievement if Robbie Dean’s team could win all the Tests on this tour.

Being realistic you would think that of the four Tests, an excellent result would be three Test wins out of the four.

And a two out of four wins in the Tests would be at the lowest level of a pass mark result.

All this, of course, is conjecture.

The ‘blood and iron’ creator of modern Germany, Count Otto Bismarck, once wrote in his journal: “He goest furtherest who knows not where he is going.”

For now, therefore, it’s game on for the Wallabies before journey’s end in 2011.

The common feature of the matches was the ferocious mauling, counter-rucking, tackling and running of all four sides.

Despite plenty of wide-ranging attacks, only three tries were scored in all. But two of the tries (one by Canterbury and other by the Sharks) were the result of high-quality passing, running and handling by backs and forwards to break down some strong defensive lines.

Wellington Lions 6 - Canterbury Lambs 7
The Wellington match revealed once again the inability of NZ teams, in this case the Lions, to close out a tight match with a dropped goal. Wellington had numerous opportunities late into the match to set up the drop goal. They had a skilled kicker in Piri Weepu (who had slotted over several such kicks in the warm-ups). But no one had the nous to actually set up the play.

KwaZulu-Natal Sharks 14 - Blue Bulls 9
The Durban match revealed the South African weakness at first five-eighth. Some magic by the Frenchman Frederic Michalak set up the Shark’s second and match-winning try. Michalak is not eligible to play for the Springboks. His replacement Francois Steyn, late in the match, did not have the deftness or craft of the clever French player. And playing for the Bulls, the other Steyn, Morne, was ponderous moving the ball along the line and stood too deep to get the Bulls’ backline moving.

Against this, however, all four sides showed tremendous energy and determination. The intensity of the forward exchanges would have delighted the crusty British journalists who think that rugby is about dockyard brawls in the lineouts and scrums - if these journalists could ever bring themselves to see anything good about southern hemisphere rugby.

There is a warning in these matches for the European teams that face the Springboks, All Blacks and the Wallabies in a couple of weeks time.

That warning is this: the southern hemisphere teams have learnt from the 2007 RWC (especially NZ sides and hopefully the Wallabies, too) that toughness and abrasiveness in the forwards over-rides even skill in the forward exchanges. The Springboks and the All Blacks, particularly, are going to extremely powerful in the set pieces which does not augur well for the Six Nations sides that they are going to face.

One final point, as well, but closer to home. Seven new All Blacks have been picked for what Graham Henry correctly describes as ‘an exciting squad’. These players (the likes of Corey Janes, Scott Waldromand Hosea Gear) distinguished themselves in the NPC, more than the Super 14 tournament.

Once again, the very limited amount of tough rugby Australian players are confronted with, particularly early on in their careers, exposes a weakness in the local schedule.

How much more ready for big time rugby would the likes of James O’Connor and Quade Cooper and the other rising stars be if there was the Australian equivalent of the Currie Cup or the NPC?

There is always the possibility of something going wrong when someone’s name is used as part of a trophy. The person could commit a crime or disgrace himself in some way that indicates he is unworthy to be given the honour of having his name up in lights.

The time has come in my opinion to reconsider the naming of the Border-Gavaskar trophy for cricket Tests between Australia and India.

Allan Border is not the problem.

He has been an exemplary sportsman, on and off the field, throughout his career. By nature and temperament a slightly dour character, Border has never said or done anything that has demeaned himself or cricket.

But the case of Sunil Gavaskar is another matter.

He has been a controversial and inaccurate commentator on the game, often making comments that are inflammatory and bordering on racist in their implications.

Example: he had to resign as ICC cricket chairman committee in May over conflict of interest concerns with his other job as a media commentator.

Example: earlier in January he claimed the ‘white’ ICC match referee Mike Proctor was biased against Indian players because of the colour of their skin.

Example: a couple of days ago he criticised ICC referees of being biased against Asian players after Zaheer Khan was correctly fined for a code of conduct breach. “Let’s not mince words here,” Gavaskar said: “Every time, it is always an Indian or a sub-continent player who gets hauled up, never the Australians.”

Cricket Australia needs to rethink the Border-Gavaskar trophy concept as a matter of urgency.

With Gavaskar showing no signs of letting up on his relentless campaign to trash Australian cricket, it’s time to take his name off the trophy.

The rot has set in for the new-look Australian cricket team with a disastrous defeat in the second Test of a four-Test series. The only way to stop the rot is for heads to roll when the team gets back to Australia.

The first lot of heads to go should be the selection panel.

They have not managed the admittedly difficult transition of the side with the loss of two of the greatest bowlers in the history of cricket, Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne. They have mucked about with a batting order and picked players who may be good ODI players, but who lack the class for Test cricket.

Simon Katich is a good example.

He has scored a huge amount of runs in the last couple of seasons, but not as an opening bat. So Phil Jaques, who was making a promising start to a Langer-like career as an Australian opener, was dropped and Katich promoted.

One of the justifying arguments for this move was that Katich could provide some cover for the pathetic Australian spin attack with his left-arm chinaman stuff.

But he has not been bowled, even when Cameron White was so rattled that he bowled a four wide in India’s second innings.

White seems to be a very pleasant, likeable and enthusiatic player, but neither his bowling nor his batting is up to Test standard.

He does a little bit of both, but not much of anything - a bit like those nondescript English all-rounders who we’ve derided so much in the past.

It’s difficult to work out the logic behind the thinking that saw him placed in the impossible position of being Australia’s main spinner in a Test.

Brad Haddin is another example of a player who is not up to Test standard as a wicket-keeper, nor as a batsman. Ian Healey’s batting was ordinary, but his keeping was exemplary.

Haddin’s keeping is average, to say the least of it.

The selectors (or a new group of selectors, in my view) have to find someone who can either keep wickets up to the standard of Healy, can hold his place in the side as a batsman, or, preferably, can do both.

Haddin is not this player.

Now we get to the issue of captaincy.

I wrote a post after the first day of the Test complaining about Ricky Ponting’s negative captaincy and how he seemed to be looking to play for a draw after losing the toss. I made the point that playing for a draw and not trying to get the Indian batsmen out with aggressive fields and well-directed bowling allowed India to get into a position where they could win the Test, which they did comprehensively.

It’s clear now that Ponting is a great batsman and a mediocre captain, rather like Sachin Tendulkar.

Michael Clarke, on the other hand, has the personality and cricket nous to be an outstanding captain in the Ian Chappell mode.

This is a change that needs to be made before the Ashes series to rejunevate the side and give it some dynamic leadership that Ponting clearly cannot give it.

Without the burdens of captaincty, Ponting might be able to take his batting to a higher level than what he has achieved now, which would be a bonus for the side.

One of the noticeable aspects of the Test, something that was picked up on by the television commentators, was the inability of the Australian quick bowlers to move the ball in the air or off the pitch.

The Indian bowlers had no such difficulties.

An answer to this curiosity was provided at one stage when pictures of the ball being bowled by the Indians was matched with the Australian ball after a similar number of overs. The Australian ball was scuffed on both sides. The Indian ball was scuffed on one side and shiny on the other side.

The difference between the scuffed side and shiny side allows for reverse swing, provided the ball is released with the seam in an upright position.

Why didn’t the Australian fieldsmen and bowlers look after their ball in the way the Indians did? What is the coaching staff doing?

And what advice are they giving Ponting about field-setting and what bowlers to use in particular situations?

On the third day of the Test, for instance, Brett Lee did not bowl for the first two hours. What is this all about? Where is the coaching staff in all of this?

Great teams, even good teams, don’t come about by chance. Decisions made by selectors are crucial.

My argument is that the current selectors have not performed well in their task of putting together the best side Australian cricket can produce right now. Cricket Australia needs to acknowledge this and put in place a new group to do what needs to be done.

Just for starters, someone like Geoff Lawson, an outstanding captain for NSW, a good Test player, a very good coach, and a thoughtful and informed man about the history and practices of cricket, might be an excellent choice as a coach or as Chairman of selectors to start the now urgent process of restoring the Australian cricket team to its proper place as the top cricketing nation.

The thought that came to me most of the first day of the second India-Australia Test was the extremely defensive fields set by Ricky Ponting virtually from the first ball of the day. It was as if, on losing the toss on an even-paced pitch, Ponting was accepting that a draw was about the best result his side could hope for.

From the start of play, right through to the last over, Ponting refused to put pressure on the batsmen with aggressive and imaginative field-placings.

There was no one at short-forward positions on the leg and off sides. The batsmen could safely pop up the occasional rearing delivery (Peter Siddle’s first ball was a helmet-crasher) and know that they wouldn’t be caught.

Instead of being confronted with fieldsmen within eye-contact of them, the batsmen had to contend with players at sweeping positions on both sides of the wicket.

Sachin Tendulkar, who has struggled to get to 50 in his last ten Test innings, was allowed to push and stroke his way through to 88.

He was finally dismissed by Siddle, with the second new ball, when he tickled a delivery outside his off-stump and Matthew Hayden snaffled a very good catch.

Two times previously Tendulkar had almost chopped a ball onto his stumps.

My theory is that he uses a bat that is too heavy, and when he has to make adjustments to balls short of length outside his off-stump, he is often a fraction too late on the ball, either chopping it near his stumps with an inside edge or, on his dismissal ball, edging a ball away to the slips.

Aside from the defensive fields he set, Ponting did not reveal during the first day, at least, any sort of plan to dismiss the various batsmen.

The field seemed to be the same whoever was on strike and whatever the circumstances of the play, whether quick wickets had been taken or if the Indian batsmen were on top.

The book on Ponting, I think, is that he is a great batsman - Australia’s greatest, in my opinion, since Don Bradman - but a very ordinary captain well away from the first-rate status of someone like Mark Taylor, Ian Chappell or Richie Benaud.

At 311 for 5 India are well-placed on the first day. Any side that scores over 300 runs on the first day of a Test has put itself in a winning position.

The Indian batsmen, especially Tendulkar, were able to score their runs quite quickly and without taking risks because the defensive field placings allowed them to poach runs off virtually every ball.

One final point.

By playing for a draw from day one, Ponting has actually given India a great chance of snatching a victory.

The New York Yankees are apparently having few difficulties in selling off the hugely expensive corporate boxes in their new ballpark. But as the world credit crisis deepens this might change.

However, there are so many billionaires in the USA that the couple of hundred boxes should be safe enough for the Yankees to bank on.

I’m reminded of the Hunt family, the Texas millionaires who bought the Dallas Cowboys in the 1960s. When they were told by some journalists that the team lost a $1 million the year before, one of the family mused for a while and then replied: ‘In that case we’ll be bankrupt in a couple of hundred years times.’

Right now the suggestions from people who should know is that while there will be some problems, in general the huge sponsorships of big-time sport will continue.

The UK Telegraph, for instance, has looked into most of the world sports and has concluded that right now the sponsorships will carry on. The Texas billionaire, Sir Alan Stanford, for instance, is intent on pushing ahead with his $20 million Twenty20 series in England next year.

There will be some spectacular failures, though, given the steep dive in the profits of financial institutions and the collapse of share prices around the world. The US market is at a 10-year low, with all the gains made in the decade wiped out. Some of the big bank sponsorships will now disappear.

So too will once-wealthy club owners like West Ham United’s Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson who has lost his fortune with the banking crash in Iceland.

Incidentally, this case points to the way that clubs in a number of sports in Europe have made themselves vulnerable by being taken over by wealthy individuals. This raises the issue of how some of the A-League clubs in Australia are going to get on if the crisis hit their owners.

Also, one would think that the franchise idea put forward by the ARU’s John O’Neill might have to be put on the back-burner. Macquarie Bank which is one of the strongest supporters of rugby had its share price down to $28 on Friday, after being as high as the $80 a year ago.

Rugby League has its TV contracts established for the next year or so and with the relative strength of the Australian economy, the localised nature of the sport has an advantage, for once.

Cricket has the Twenty20 game’s popularity and the vast numbers of Indian fans to keep the game afloat with money for years to come.

One benefit for Australian rugby is that its contracts with News Ltd are written in US dollars. With the Australian dollars plunging from almost parity a year ago with the US dollar to below 70c recently, the ARU has had a bit of windfall.

The days of gratuitous expenditures and outlays on players and their trips and training camps, though, is probably over. One would think that player contracts in sports like rugby will be pruned and that the excessive amounts of money offered to southern hemisphere players to play in the northern hemisphere will be cut back.

Michael Hussey has the second best batting average of batsmen playing more than a handful of Tests. And he is one of only four Test players with more than 20 innings who has averaged a century every five times he has batted.

These statistics confirm that Hussey must now be rated as one of the great batsmen in the history of the game.

Sir Donald Bradman averaged a century just on every third Test innings.

George Headley, ‘The Black Bradman,’ averaged a century every four Test innings.

While Clyde Walcott, another West Indian star, one of the Three Ws who were so devastating in the 1950s and 60s, and now Hussey, stand alone from the other hundreds of Test players over the years with their ratio of a century every five Test innings.

Bradman and Headley were before my time, but I once saw Walcott smash 160 or so against a strongish Wellington bowling attack.

The Wellington wicket-keeper, Frank Mooney, told me that Walcott occasionally relaxed from belting balls out of the Basin Reserve by asking him: “Mr Mooney, Sir, where would you like the next ball to go?”

Frank said that if there was an out-swing bowler on who was pitching the ball feet outside the off-stump, he’d nominate the ball going down to fine-leg.

Invariably Walcott did the impossible and hit the ball down to the nominated spot.

Although their Test century strike rates are the same, Walcott and Hussey have used very different batting styles.

Walcott was tall and beefy, hooked viciously and smashed the ball away to the boundary with a genius that was irresistible when he was in full flight.

Hussey is an artisan who has made himself into a great craftsman.

As Peter Roebuck pointed out recently in the Herald, Hussey spent years being regarded as a journeyman player in Australia and England.

Unlike other players of a similar limited talent or genius, Hussey always believed that he had it in him to be a very good Test player.

His triumphs since the selectors picked him for the Test side are a tribute to his force of character, which has tempered a limited genius into one of cricket’s most dominant, in terms of run-scoring, batsmen in the history of the game.

He has done this with application, determination, courage and a strong cricket intelligence.

I have a theory that batsmen excel when they have the courage of their restrictions to limit themselves to a couple of scoring areas and perfect their ability to score runs when the ball is in the slot for them.

So Hussey pulls short balls in front of mid-wicket, he drives with a full blade anything pitched up to him, and then he dabbles singles around the wicket, some of which are converted into twos by his energetic and speedy running.

More than anything else, though, there is a concentration to make as many runs as possible every time he bats.

As the bowler comes into bowl you can see Hussey mouthing the words to himself, “watch the ball.”

He has very soft hands, too, which enable him to negate balls that should have led to his dismissal.

He scores efficiently rather than quickly. But like Ken Barrington, whose approach to batting (although right-handed for Barrington) he has adopted - in that you can’t score runs back in the pavillon - he spends great chunks of time out in the middle.

Hussey has made a virtue out of not having a genius for batting.

Someone like Michael Clarke, for instance, has a dozen shots he can play to each ball. He often dismisses himself, rather than the bowler gaining his wicket by making a wrong choice of shot.

Hussey never does this. He plays the correct Hussey shot to every ball.

I love watching Clarke bat and I admire Hussey’s batting.

When you watch Clarke, you know you could never bat like that. But watching Hussey, the Everyman at bat, you have the feeling that you may just have batted the way he does if you’d worked harder and been more thoughtful about your play.

But if you had to have a contemporary player to bat for you to save your life, Hussey would be your man every day.

The Wall Street Journal has called Josh Martin, an eleven year-old with a “butter-smooth swing” that he can repeat exactly every stroke, “the best golfer in the world at his age.”

This summer young Martiin, a fair-haired, skinny kid, is averaging 69.9 strokes every round he plays at the tough Pinehurst course, which is 5,614 yards long.

Professional courses are 7000/7500 long.

His lowest round is 62. And in the past four years, Martin has won nearly every major junior golf tournament he has entered.

This statistic reveals the real story behind the Josh Martin story.

His father, Bowie Martin, is determined to ensure that his sons (older brother Zach 13 is also an excellent golfer) have the chance to become golf greats. So both boys have been subjected to an intense coaching, tutoring and playing regime that is intended to make them champion players.

Josh has responded better than Zach to the seemingly brutal golf regime regime imposed by their father. Zach has already dropped out twice. But he is apparently back on the golf treadmill.

I’ve seen clips of Tiger Woods on the Bob Hope show beating the star at a putting competition. Tiger was about four years old at the time the TV show was filmed. He is a case of a prodigy, coached and mentored relentlessly by his father, who has achieved greatness.

There are few other cases in golf where this sort of success has followed a single-minded determination by a parent to force a child into sporting stardom.

And when the occasional force-fed athlete actually makes it into the big-time, they often have very short careers. The example of a number of young female tennis stars come to mind.

In about ten years time we’ll know if Josh Martin is going to fulfill his father’s ambitions.

It’s all about creating a dynasty. For reasons that lie deep within my sub-conscious (the underdog status of being the son of a fish-and chip shop owner, perhaps?), I’ve always loved sports dynasties and sportsmen who have been unrivalled for years in their particular sport.

This the reason, presumably, why I’ll stop watching one of the golf major tournaments when Tiger Woods is out of contention of winning it. Or why I won’t watch a tennis final if Roger Federer isn’t playing in it.

Or why I’m like a little kid when Ricky Ponting is batting, counting virtually every run until he reaches his average score in Tests of just over 50. Sachin Tendulkar gets the same treatment, too, for the same reasons.

This brings me in, a roundabout way, to expressing the hope that the Storm win the NRL grand final against Manly.

Despite Roy Masters condemning all Manly sides to a ’silvertail’ abyss, this current Des Hasler coached side is a team of honest battlers, with no player of genius in its ranks. Manly, the team, plays with exactly the same boring pragmatism and honest endeavour that its coach displayed throughout his own splendid career.

But great competitions like the NRL premiership shouldn’t be won by teams of journeymen players.

The Storm have lost their inspirational captain, and arguably the best rugby league player currently going around, for stupidly indulging in a grapple tackle when he knew that the NRL was bound to try and put a stop to it.

I’ve railed against the grapple tackle for a couple of years now, arguing that it is only a matter of time before someone is permanently injured and the NRL faces a massive compensation case.

But aside from the i