HARD GRAFT

So far I have refrained from commenting on the England cricket team`s Ashes win over the Australians last weekend, partly because I have been `otherwise engaged` but also out of a sense of not wishing to offend the sensitivities of my antipodean correspondent, who I am sure has contracted the parrot sickness just as I have flown over the moon.

So I won`t go on about it. Instead, I just want to mention one particular aspect of the really beautiful game which applies to both teams. It is the sheer commitement that is required to play test cricket. Here we have a game that lasts for five days, each day lasting six hours or for a minimum of 90 overs and for all of that time, the requirement for physical fitness, raw talent, courage, determination and intense concentration is absolute. It`s not an easy game and it sure ain`t quick, unless you discount the split second timing needed to deal with a ball being hurled at you at 90 mph from a distance of 22 yards. Is it still 22 yards - the old `chain` - or has it gone metric yet? Shows you how long since I played the game.

Compare all that with the 90 minutes it takes for a Premiership footballer like, say, Glen Johnson now of Liverpool to `earn` £139,000 a week - allegedly. Okay, he has to be physically fit, talented at what he does, determined and has to concentrate for 90 minutes, but the commitment isn`t in the same league as that needed for test cricket. The cricketers earn their money, but I doubt that many of them earn £139,000 a year just from playing the game. Somehow it just doesn`t seem right, by which I suggest that it`s the madcap parallel universe of football that is out of step rather than the more reasoned arena of professional cricket. Nothing new there then.

But I do wonder how long before the unreal world of Premiership football self destructs, either by spontaneous combustion or by the customers simply having had enough of all the excess and the unfathomable `culture` that now and again shows itself in places like the Boleyn Ground or the New Den on a dark Tuesday evening. If they do, then there is a more beautiful game to be entranced by, where the yakka is hard, the rewards modest, the culture more benign and where it never rains, for if the heavens open, the game simply pauses until the sun shines once more.