The next best thing?

I think I have changed my mind. After years of neglecting those porcelain, dog-pictured plates on the back of magazines, there is now a suitable replacement for worst tack award.

The ABC blog reports that Cricket Australia has come up with a new marketing baby. Literally.

'Steve, the Little Aussie Supersub' apparently feels just like the real thing thanks to its 'Realtouch vinyl skin'.

And like ABC, I've got the creeps. It links to the Sydney Morning Herald, where it says "for the likes of Michael Clarke and Mitchell Johnson, who do not yet have any children, it may be just the thing to ward off the loneliness on tour."

However, Steve is still not able to solve Ricky Ponting's current bowling problems.

Cricket and awards

The Golden Globes have been won and the Oscars nominations imminent but voting started this week for the UK's Sports Journalists' Association broadcast awards.

And cricket could well feature heavily this year. Peter Baxter, the long-serving Test Match Special producer, is leaving this year while Jonathan Agnew is another who could run close.

Aggers was in great voice Down Under and his contribution to ABC radio - especially in sharing the microphone with Kerry O'Keefe - was full of insightful banter.

Read the SJA's blog entry on the awards and why not peruse what is clearly an old school website Aggers set up back in the day.

Ending on a b@ll@cks

One joy of this Ashes series has been the co-commentating of ABC Radio's Kerry O'Keefe and Jonathan Agnew. O'Keefe has gently mocked his colleague's Englishness this summer, while Aggers's own use of English would surely have got him sacked from the BBC if he had kept to his word during one afternoon at the Sydney Test.

The pair had got onto the subject of "bollocks" with Aggers announcing that if he had uttered the word on the BBC he would have landed in big trouble. O'Keefe remarked that he could happily talk bollocks all day on ABC. Aggers then suggested that he might end his last session "with a big" bollocks, just so he could get it out on the Australian airwaves. In hindsight, Aggers would have aptly summed up England's 5-0 defeat.

In Australia, "bollocks" means absurd or an absurdity while "bollock naked" is naval slang for spaghetti bolognese.
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There's none of the above when it comes to Nasser Hussain. There's a fifth Ashes podcast up, where Nasser talks on the series defeat, the retirees and the one-day jamboree. Listen to it here.