It's a lock out

The Australian writers who were locked out of the ground in Brisbane need not worry if the media dispute over images and online use makes it to parliament. Old John Howard will surely sort it out. Cricket has a funny habit of making the headlines when it comes to disputes such as this. Perhaps it is the slow pace of the game that allows the splash, as opposed to the Rugby and Soccer World Cups when governing bodies relent and everyone is happy.

The bottom image is Aggers famously reporting from Galle.

Genuine Mexican?

A pearler from yesterday's Test Match Special, the last produced by outgoing Peter Baxter. The legendary Tony Cozier had his colleagues in hysterics after being conned by a spoof letter from a Mexican calling himself Juan Carr.

Cozier was reading out emails during the lunch break in Durham, and when the team is usually at its best when they make it up as they go along. He said: "One listener says he is trying to introduce cricket to Mexico but is finding it hard as it's very mountainous and there are no flat areas at all. That's from a Mr Juan Carr."

There can't be too many better places to be than on live radio in the TMS box when genuine laughter takes place. Viv, Aggers and Blowers lost it before Aggers eventually told Cozier, who didn't get the joke: "I think you've been done there Tony."

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.

Sounding out a spot

Chandigarh is reputed to have one of the largest rose gardens in Asia. There are road lanes, speed limits (of sorts) and the PCA stadium here resembles Hampshire's Rose Bowl. Even Jerusalem rang out over the tannoy before play today; all sweet memories of England. So it was even more of a comfort when I passed a local whose mobile ringtone rang out the BBC's Rugby Special theme tune.

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While colleagues back home are having trouble sending material to the office from Cardiff and Dublin, life couldn't be much easier when it comes to filing in India. Expecting the usual trouble of forgotten leads and connection problems, it has been a revelation that each ground's press box has been equipped with wi-fi internet speeds. I'm sure the England and Wales Cricket Board could learn a thing or two from this, especially when told at Nagpur that these initiatives were first planned four years ago.

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"Right, whose up for doing some radio commentary for the next five days?" This was the BBC's Jonathan Agnew's line when he walked into the press box minutes before play was due to begin. TMS were having technical difficulties among other problems in their box and Aggers could be heard muttering that it was the worst he'd seen in 15 years.

The former Leicestershire and England bowler is not new to these experiences. In 2001 he was locked out of the Galle cricket ground over a radio dispute and had to commentate from the Galle fort during the England-Sri Lanka Test. It also got worse for Five Live's Kevin Howells. Filing his first radio report of the day from the press box, the scorer couldn't have timed his moment better to inform us of the runs total over his loud microphone.

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So Geoff Boycott had to be content with a press box viewing until the troubles were ironed out. It wasn't the first time the written media had heard his voice on this tour. Freddie Flintoff was giving his post-match conference in Nagpur when his comments were suddenly drowned out by the Yorkshireman's voice a full two partitioned walls away.