I'm Greg

They all sat around waiting for the powers-that-be to decide their fate. And then, one of them spoke. He said "I'm Greg." And then, another one got up and said "I'm Greg." And then, another one got up and said "I'm Greg." One by one, all the good men in the room got up and said "I'm Greg." And then, they said it together "We're the new Team India. We're under, around and firmly behind our leader, the one and only Coach Extraordinnaire and Emeritus rolled into one, Greg Sir Chappell. Heil Hitler. (And there will be positively no whistling in the room.) In the face of such team spirit and an inspiringly brave front, the Ganguly-Dalmiya front stood no chance of breaking the chakravhyu Dadaji finds himself in.

More bluster from the Master

He's honed the art of pre-match talk to a fine, fine game. From the man who worked with the Master of match-fixing or, maybe, from the man who mastered the art of match-fixing comes this piece of pre-match drivel being passed off as tactical talk. It's just anoher tamasha yaar. So let's all try and have some fun, can we? Let's not bore the people who've come for an entertainment show with serious talk about how deeply scarred the losers of this 'desert jamboree' might be. The fact is, two matches in the middle of summer in a cricketing outpost like Abu Dhabi do not matter, will not matter and will end up being little more than nothing a few weeks after they've been done and over with. Remember those matches played in...doesn't matter where. Do we remember? No, we don't. so, please, please Mr. Woolmer, we know you're having a great time with all this pre-match talk. Thank you for doing your bit of 'promotion'.

Tit byte

A word of advice if you're planning to watch football in Italy: buy a TV. Not just because Italian highlights shows are fronted by buxom sirens who make Gary Lineker and Mark Lawrenson look like smug civil servants coining it in for tickling each other's egos and peddling puns that only wastards and bankers find amusing. But also because actually going to a game could result in you being beaten up, set on fire, hurled from the top tier of a bloody big stadium or turned inside out and pushed like a human rolling pin over tracts of broken glass. Because many Italian football followers are, like illiterate Nigel Kennedy fans, into violence

Quoterie # 6

"The game could have been played and the situation could have been avoided, but the umpires made the wrong decision" - PK Deb, the vice-president of the Assam Cricket Association, transparently tries to shift the blame for the riot at Guwahati onto the umpires for refusing to allow the fifth one-day international between India and
England to be played on a waterlogged pitch.

Quoterie # 5

"If players are exciting themselves quite a few times then it's going to have an effect on their physical condition. We've done a lot of work with a few guys who were completely addicted to it - they can't let it go" - while warning of the perils of pay-per-view Bongo flicks in footballers' hotel rooms, Sporting Chance founder Tony Adams explains why you often see players holding their todgers in defensive walls.

Brazil will not win

Some might call it a crisis. Brazil, clear favourites to retain the World Cup in Germany this summer, have several key players out of form and under fire from the media. They have problems in goal, central defence, midfield and attack - and their manager is even worried about the world's best footballer, Ronaldinho, being over-played. Can they put everything right in the next two months? Amy Lawrence reports.

Why palmistry is a load of crap

Sanath Jayasuriya's Test career ended in defeat and a dislocated thumb. And while he remains eager to play at the World Cup, it's unlikely that he'll be consulting the palm reader at the Mahaweli Reach Hotel. On Monday, Jayasuriya, one of Sri Lanka's most superstitious cricketers, had sat before her wanting to know about his future, a world without Test cricket. As Charlie Austin wrote on Cricinfo, "She'd confidently predicted a successful future. But she'd not seen his tragically sad injury the following day. Needless to say, business was not swift on Tuesday night." Ouch.

When The Guardian spoke to soon...

Before the tour of South Africa, The Guardian wrote that they "won't be asking the Australian side for birth certificates, they'll want carbon dating". With Glenn McGrath missing, the other fossils haven't done too badly.

Why India loves its ODIs

Thursday was a world-record-breaking 15th successful one-day run-chase in a row - has helped the nation forget their surrender in the third Test at Mumbai. ODIs are like intoxicants; they help India forget the miserableness that is life in India.

The Hmm lounge

"It takes two people to win a game of one-day cricket. In five-day cricket, it's team against team and it takes a lot more than two people to win it." Thus spake our Dear Dear friend Mathew Hoggard

It is about the bike

Day job: Seven-times Tour de France champion
Day off: Harley-Davidson biker

'Stick a motor on it!' As a cyclist you hear it so often, bawled from passing cars as you labour up a hill, that you wonder whether the word combinations available to humanity are running out. Having spent more time speeding up hills on a bike than most of us, Lance Armstrong must have heard it more, too, and it may have got to him. Something, anyway, has to explain his passion for big motorbikes.

Armstrong's fascination with fast machines is a lifelong passion. At the age of 16 he was already earning $20,000 a year as a triathlon prodigy. The money bought his first car - a Fiat, used and red - which he used to drag-race home from his nightshift at Toys 'R' Us. Lance traded in the Fiat for a Camaro Iroc Z28 (Iroc is short for International Race of the Champions, a Nascar-like motorsport series). The Camaro went when his cycling sponsor, the owner of a bike shop in Texas, who was Lance's credit guarantor, found out about the midnight races and stripped him of his prize motor. Lance was still only 17.

Fast forward to spring 1998, when he was beginning his comeback after cancer. During the Paris-Nice race, in cold, wet conditions, he coasted to a halt at the roadside, abandoned the race and decided he would never cycle again. On the flight back to his French home in Cap Ferrat, he saw a Harley-Davidson advertisement in the in-flight magazine. The slogan was a quotation from the poem 'If I could live my life again, I'd ... ?' One of the things was, 'see more sunsets'. He tore the page out and showed it to his then wife, Kristin. 'This is what's wrong with cycling,' he said, reflecting on the ad's message. 'It's not what my life should be.'

But Armstrong didn't take the Harley-Davidson route out of professional sport, and the following year, he won the first of his seven Tours de France. Even so, the Californian motorbike manufacturer has still been part of his life. The entrance to his home in Austin, Texas, has long been guarded by two Harley Davidsons, while viewers of Discovery channel's American Chopper series will have seen the engineers of Orange County Choppers create a mean machine for the Lance Armstrong Foundation, which he dutifully collected in the presence of his then significant other, Sheryl Crow.

That relationship has now been consigned to history; so too, has Armstrong's cycling career, despite intermittent comeback threats delivered to annoy the French. Now, when he's not appearing on the media as the nation's chief cancer pundit on occasions such as the death of Christopher Reeves's wife Dana, working with the Discovery Channel cycling team (of which he's part-owner), tending to the various court cases he's involved with, and generally managing the millions his career earned him, he can be seen low-riding the Texas hill country - this time, with motor attached.

Cheat smart

It is a long time ago now but the moment is seared into our hearts. Replay it. That high ball into the area, the floundering keeper, then the fist, palm, punch, call it what you will. Most call it a sporting outrage. When the ball went smirking into the net, the World Cup dreams of a nation were crushed. Nicky Campbell has more.

Direction less

Every successful captain is saying this. Pointing said it after beating the South Africans. Dravid says it after every ODI win. And we're sure more people will say it in the days to come. What? "We're heading in the right direction." All of which makes us wonder where this place they all seem to be heading is? Hmm.

Fresh Spin

If you were to compare Tony Greig to a flower - a pastime which the Spin can confirm helps while away the hours spent in Indian airports - then shrinking violet would not be top of the list. A dangerous liaison with Kerry Packer; the running-out of Alvin Kallicharran at Port of Spain in 1973-74 as the batsman headed off to the pavilion following the last ball of the day; the promise to make West Indies "grovel" in 1976 (England lost 3-0); and any number of ear-splitting announcements that the batsman has hit the ball for six seconds before he is caught on the boundary. Yes, pansy would not quite do the job either.

So the Spin was surprised to hear Greig complaining about the ferocity of Australia's sledging during their second-Test win over South Africa at Durban recently. "I have never $*&!GBP@# heard anything like it," he said, give or take a few asterisks and ampersands, at a formal lunch in Johannesburg. "We turned that stump mic up and we could hear every word out in the centre and it was unbelievable. It really was absolutely unbelievable. The Aussies love it."

While the Spin wondered whether Greig, a notorious Aussie-baiter who likes nothing better than to wind up his co-commentator Bill Lawry, had been listening when Andre Nel got stuck into Adam Gilchrist because Gilchrist was taking him to the cleaners, Greig continued: "The whole thing is getting out of hand. The time has seriously come for the authorities in the game to start to rethink the question of what players are allowed to say on the field." Just imagine! Five penalty runs added to the opposition's score for the f-word, 10 for the c-word, and runs added to your own team's total if you are overheard complimenting a fine stroke or a capital piece of fielding, sir.

There is little question that this will catch on in Australia, even if Mike Hussey reacted to Greig's comments by complaining the stump mikes should never have been turned up in the first place. "It is difficult, because you do get emotional on the field and there are going to be things said and done," he said with an almost audible wink. "Some things certainly aren't appropriate for young listeners."
Whether he was referring to Greig's commentary is another matter. With love from our Dear, dear friend Lawrence 'Very funny' Booth.

Quoterie # 4

"Sometimes people just need disciplining" - Faridabad's district commissioner defends the strong-arm tactics of the local police after a seven-year-old girl is admitted to hospital following scuffles outside the Nawar Singh Stadium during the second one-day international between India and England.

Can Openers?

During the second ODI, Javagal Srinath had an interesting statistic to share with fellow commentator, Ian Botham. In the last 5 series, India has gone in with 8 (or was it 9?) different opening combinations.

In the latest spin on this situation, Gambhir finds himself out in cold, while the welcome mat is being laid out for young Robin Utthappa. The lad has been an attacking and moderately consistent No.1 for the Karnataka Ranji side. It seems like eons ago that he used to be ushered in to play with us big boys in long gone club clashes, as he is now one of the big boys himself(other than India under-19 appearances he also cracked that 93 for India B in the last challenger series).

Nothing replaces hard performance and as Gambhir painfully dissects each miss-timed shot and every poke at the corridor of uncertainty, this fact must be glaringly obvious. I can only wonder why Sehwag has been retained, despite his overtly generous ploy of gifting the opposition his wicket, time after time, in an agonisingly similar fashion. Perhaps Tendulkar's absence has played a large part in this; perhaps the Chappell-Dravid syndicate refuses to let go of the Sultan of Multan based on pure potential and the proverbial 'what if'. We can only speculate while accepting that he has had plenty of starts but few conversions. Like them, and a billion other Indians, I would love to see the marauder thrash Freddie and co., with characteristic impunity.

Another surprise has been persisting with Kaif, his phenomenal fielding nonwithstanding. Even Dravid has rubbished rumours that the pigeon toed right hander is woefully out of form. The numbers, when crunched, reveal a different story. In his last 15 ODIs, he has managed 224 runs at an unimpressive 25 (far below his career 33) with a lone half century against New Zealand and his last 7 scores read like a telephone number (8,5,0,0,4,0,0). I'm just baffled that batsmen like Venugopal Rao(also a brilliant fielder and part time offie) are carrying drinks, while Kaif gets repeated nods and consecutive ducks. Give them both a break.

The pace bowling and wicket-keeping departments, once India's bone of contention have matured nicely, brimming with a talented pool to chose from. Add Dravid, Yuvraj and Raina to the party and you've got an enviable one day force. Provided of course, the 'perform or else' dictum holds good for all, in equal measures.

Americans are better at handjobs

Millions of children grow up in America playing football. But they all give up by the age of 10. Award-winning writer Dave Eggers explains just why his country will never understand the sport they insist on calling soccer.

Drogbawl

Clearly Drogba seems to spending way too much time with Jose Mourinho. Allow me to point you in the direction of someone who'll tell you why in his own inimitable style. Check out Paul Wilson's take on the Drogbawl.

Welcome back Jugraj Singh

This is the man who showed the world that Indian hockey had hope.This is the man who showed Indians how to score off penalty corners. This is the man who got smashed out of the sport by an unfortunate accident. Indian hockey has never been the same since his departure. He's back. We'll have to wait and see how he performs.

Not another tragic boxing story

Lennox Lewis was the greatest heavyweight of his generation - and, unlike Mike Tyson, whom he demolished in the ring, he got out with his reputation intact. In New York, he speaks exclusively to Thomas Hauser, America's leading boxing writer, about his toughest fights, the sport's decline, his new family - and his first big movie role. Enjoy.