FOOTBALL Second round. Barrow v Brentford.
Setanta Sports, 6.30-9am. FA Cup.
CRICKET In his autobiographical essay Mars , published posthumously in 1976 under the pseudonym Fritz Horn, the Swiss author Fritz Angst wrote: "If we accept the definition of a neurotic as a person who can never live in the present and always seeks refuge either in the future or in the past, then I fulfilled all the requirements by the time I was a university student. On the one hand, I still saw myself as a 'little boy' who had fallen behind and was still not capable of doing anything. On the other hand, I kept hoping constantly that at some far and indeterminate point in the future I would find the fulfilment I could not find in the present. I kept telling myself that I just couldn't get in the swing of things here in Zurich, where it rained all the time, but that I would really start living on my summer vacation in Spain." Applying this logic to sport, Australian cricket at the moment is irredeemably neurotic: it seeks refuge only in the past or the future. The argument is always arranged along two lines. On the one hand, there's nostalgia: "Well, we did just lose the greatest spinner, most successful pace bowler and greatest wicketkeeper-batsman of all time, you know." On the other, there's some vaguely defined hope for a future that is years, generations, possibly even centuries away: "Moises Henriques looks a better prospect at 20 than Steve Waugh was at 12, and on current grade form, Greg Matthews still reckons he will hit his peak in his late 90s." Some see this as a bad thing. We disagree. The hope part may be pointless (throwing a lifeline to some bloke who tanked on his only previous Test outing, or casting into the depths of grade cricket for a 16-year-old who can "fair dinkum turn it as much as Cameron White", will always end in tears), but the nostalgia is to be applauded. The problem, however, is that much of the nostalgia seems misdirected: calls to bring back Shane Warne are silly not because they represent a lack of faith in our current spin-bowling crop - indeed, that lack of faith is painfully and obviously well-founded - but because they assume we are somehow capable of maintaining a position of prestige in world cricket, when the inevitability of our decline becomes more apparent by the day. If we, as a cricket-playing nation, are to embrace this mediocrity that suddenly, thrillingly appears to be ours by right of birth, if we are to inhabit this hopelessness, then we must do everything in our power to ensure we bring back not those cricketers who represented us in our pomp, but those who provided fodder for the cannons of England, the West Indies and Pakistan during the era most comparable to the one we are now living through - the mid-1980s. In short, we must see to it that instead of bringing Warne back to the national side, we bring back Greg Ritchie instead. What better player to represent a crumbling superpower than a man who played 30 Tests, scored three centuries and finished up with an average of 35, before going on to an illustrious career in racial impersonation-based TV comedy? This country doesn't need a saviour; we need someone who can teach us how to suck faster. Ritchie, with his gut and his talent for scratchy, go-nowhere innings that usually stopped around the 25-30 mark and never looked like going much further anyway, is just that person. The campaign to get Mahatma Cote into the first XI starts today - and it starts here. Please send expressions of support to the email address above and we will arrange for a petition to be drawn up and sent to Chairman Hilditch ASAP.
Channel Nine, 10.30am-6pm. Australia v New Zealand. Second Test. Day two.
GOLF Third round.
Channel Seven, noon-5.30pm. Australian Masters.
BASKETBALL Adelaide v Canberra. ESPN, 2.30-5pm. NBA. Dallas Mavericks v Los Angeles Lakers.
ABC1, 2.30-4pm. WNBL.
GOLF The Lexus Cup. Day two.
Ten HD, 2.30-7.30pm. World Cup. Fox Sports 3, 3-7pm. LPGA Tour.
FOOTBALL Queensland v Sydney.
ABC1, 4-6pm. W-League.
MOTOR SPORT Perth v Central Coast. English Championship from 11.30. Wolves v Birmingham. English Premier League from 2. Middlesbrough v Newcastle, Aston Villa v Fulham, Stoke v Hull, Sunderland v Bolton or Wigan v West Bromwich Albion (viewer's choice). Setanta Sports, 11.30pm-1am. Scottish Premier League. Hearts v Rangers.
Fox Sports 2, 7.30-9.30pm. Super X Series Brisbane.
FOOTBALL
Fox Sports 1, 8pm-3.30am. A-League.
RUGBY It's been a week for getting all uppity about the rise of the Wallabies, wildly predicting this will be the first unbeaten European tour since 1996, giving slightly unjustified big-ups to Al Baxter for finally doing what he should have started doing 60 Tests ago, and glorying in the rare spectacle of Alan Jones's public acclaim of a former rival (according to one report this week, Jones thinks Robbie Deans is doing "an OK job"). Mainly, however, it's been a week to reflect on the legend that was born 24 years ago (almost) to the day, when Jones, sans kerchief, coached the Wallabies to a famous 37-12 victory over Scotland to secure the Grand Slam. In light of the recent resurgence of the Australian forward pack, much of the reminiscence has centred on the fabled pushover try the Wallabies scored against the Welsh on that tour. On The Box has been subjected to at least three misty-eyed recollections of that try over the last few days. "Oh yeah, the pushover try against Wales - just beautiful." "The way they just … pushed. Incredible." And so on. They're a particular breed, the pushover-try lovers - these are the same people who get all teary over the high-stakes dot ball ("Flemmo in the final over of the 1996 World Cup semi-final - amazing") or the defensive century ("Oh man, Ricky Ponting at Old Trafford in 2005 - best ever") in cricket, the scoreless draw in football ("Have you ever seen a better match than the AP Leamington-Southend United nil-all draw in the second round of the 1978 FA Cup?"), and the painfully low-scoring grand final in league ("The 6-4 Bulldogs-Eels grand final of 1984 was the defining moment of my childhood"). It's admirable, but at the same slightly pathetic. That said, not a day goes by during which we aren't nourished by the memory of Mick Cronin's minimalist kicking effort in the 1986 grand final. And then there was the time the Wallabies played France in a meaningless Test in the late 1990s, scoring a try early before spending the rest of the game camped in their own half, defending their slender and otherwise unmerited lead …
Channel Ten, 1-3.30am; Fox Sports 2, 1.30-3.30am. Wales v Australia. Setanta Sports, 1.30-3.30am. England v New Zealand.
AND ON RADIO …
2KY, noon-midnight. Racing.
702 ABC, 10am-6pm. Australia v New Zealand cricket. SUNDAY FOOTBALL
ESPN, 4-6am. Serie A.
CRICKET Day three. With all the questions swirling around the world of cricket - What is the future of the game? Will Kevin Pietersen ever realise he's not quite as good as he thinks he is? And now that at least half of Zimbabwe's government is OK, does that mean Australia should play half a Test series with them, with half-length overs and mini bats? - it's sometimes easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. And this week the bigger picture is causing On The Box to wonder: should Brett Lee ditch his Rudi Koertzen routine? We speak, of course, of the habit Lee has developed of slowly raising his hand in imitation of Koertzen each time the South African grants him an appeal. Some umpires are completely inoffensive: Simon Taufel gets the job done, in his efficient, slightly earnest way, and Steve Bucknor has always managed to seem like a good bloke, despite spending much of the 2005 Ashes series not looking at the pitch. On the other hand, some umpires are extremely annoying. New Zealander Billy Bowden, for instance, with his idiotically contrived boundary singles and his drinks break jazz hands (you know the gesture - the one where he raises both hands and violently shakes a pair of imaginary drinks bottles over his head), would have to rank as one of the most grating figures in world sport. Koertzen sits somewhere in between: his almost total non-use of facial muscles over the course of a day's play means he appears to lack the humanity to be truly popular, but at the same time, they're hardly grounds for disliking the guy. Now, this column has always stood up for the dignity of smart-arsery, but there's something slightly nauseous about the frippery of Lee's routine. It's as if he's saying: "Hey, look at the silly old bloke and his slow-moving arm!" If he was a bowler at the absolute peak of his game, then a display of mockery and hubris on that scale might be tolerable. But when you've spent the last two months sending down no-variation tripe at 135 kmh, a jig like that has a different message. It's more like: "Hey, I just took my second wicket in 20 Tests! That brings my average back below 70! Woohoo!" (Please note: this statement has NOT been checked for statistical accuracy.) Besides, it's not as if there are reciprocal impersonation rights on offer. It's not as if Koertzen gets to charge onto the field like an over-pumped, sandy-haired schmuck at the start of each day's play. And, anyway, there are plenty of other ways to celebrate a wicket, as Lee has so vividly demonstrated during his career. You can jump wildly while screaming, "Woo!", you can pretend you're starting up a mower, you can have a series of awkwardly mistimed high-fives with your teammates. The sooner Lee returns to the wicket-celebrating ways of the past, the sooner Australian cricket will return to the path of rectitude. On The Box : neurotic, Fritz Zorn-influenced sporting nostalgia at its finest.
Channel Nine, 10.30am-6pm. Australia v New Zealand. Second Test.
AMERICAN FOOTBALL Oklahoma v Oklahoma State.
ESPN, noon-3.30pm. US college football.
GOLF Final round.
Channel Seven, noon-5.30pm. Australian Masters.
GOLF Day three.
Ten HD, 2.30-7.30pm. World Cup. Fox Sports 3, 3-7pm. The Lexus Cup.
FOOTBALL Newcastle v Adelaide.
Fox Sports 1, 5-7.30pm. A-League.
FOOTBALL Swansea v Cardiff. Setanta Sports, 11pm-2am. FA Cup. Histon v Leeds. FA Cup third round draw live from 1. Fox Sports 2, 12.30-5am. English Premier League. Manchester City v Manchester United. Chelsea v Arsenal from 3. ESPN, 1-3am. Serie A. Inter v Napoli.
Fox Sports 1, 10.30pm-1am. English Championship.
AND ON RADIO … Second Test from Adelaide.
702 ABC, 10am-6pm. Australia v New Zealand cricket. Catania v Lecce. Fox Sports 1, 4-6.30am. English Championship. Preston North End v Bristol City. Setanta Sports, 4.30-9am. FA Cup. Bournemouth v Blyth Spartans. French Championship from 7. Sochaux v Bordeaux. ESPN, 6.30-8.30am. Juventus v Reggina.