How do you even begin to get your
head around not only our failure to win any of our opening games of
the Ashes tour, but the aftershocks from an Australian team not only under
siege on the field, but off it as well?

First, prior to our opening ODI against
Bangladesh on Saturday, we were treated to an
Australian team management falsely informing the media that key all-rounder Andrew
Symonds was a last minute withdrawal due to a cold or injury when it was no such
thing. He was unfit to play
all right, but that’s because he was still feeling the effects of an alcohol
fueled all-nighter, so he was in no fit condition to play.

Symonds’s two-match ban is nothing compared with the message his
ill discipline sends. The Australian team is starting to fray at the
edges as it not only loses games it is expected to win, but loaded
questions are now being thrown up by gloating former England players
who arte asking whether Dad’s Army has gone off the boil in its old age.

Earlier this morning in Bristol,
our 252-9 was overhauled in the 47th over by England’s 253-7. We
had better start getting used to the fact that batsman Kevin Pietersen (who threatens
to be the smash hit of this one-day series) and gun quick Steve Harmison
(5-33) including three wickets in four balls, are the real deal

But the UK
media was the biggest winner on the weekend. No sooner were the papers gloating over
our failure against lowly Bangladesh and Symonds’s drinking suspension, than the
Sunday Mirror enters the picture with the latest alleged Shane Warne sex
scandal. The paper quotes one Laura
Sayers in some detail alleging she and a friend were on a double date with Warne
and Hampshire teammate, Kevin Pietersen – that’s right the very same man who
just belted us to all parts of the field today – and ended up having sex with
the married Warne.

Under the banner headline and
with impeccable timing, the paper predictably runs with “Shane’s shame,” and
quotes Sayers as alleging: “Married Aussie cricket ace begged me for sex – it
was OWZAT! in seconds.”