Travel & Tour Nowhere

Has cricket tourism reached its saturation point? The news that Travel & Tours Anywhere, the Barmy Army's licensed operator, has ceased trading with its membership revoked last month by ABTA will surely change the way travel groups do business in the future.

Poor World Cup sales forced TTA to close, but the Ashes Down Under also proved to be a loser. This also applied to the many travel groups who sold packages to Australia. The prices were simply too extreme to follow all five Tests. The initial mass demand for tickets never materialised and individual travellers from the UK cottoned on to this after touts were left holding batches of tickets for the 2003 Rugby World Cup Final. For those wise independent fans, it was the same for the first four Tests in Australia where it was more than easy to obtain face value tickets for every day of the Tests.

Tourism industry insiders have revealed to this blogger that saturation point has already hit tour companies and the news that cricket's biggest army has just lost its tour arm only proves that.

*It remains to be seen if the ICC see sense, too, in making the group stages of the 2011 World Cup free entry. Only then will fans afford the 40-day jamboree proclaimed by Malcolm Speed for the Asia tournament.

Loving a good Ashes omen

I've arrived in Sydney, 49 hours after setting off on a nightmare journey from London. Can't complain and hopefully this will be the start of a memorable trip, which will take in four cities, Christmas and an almighty New Years Eve party.

The airport cabbie had a local Sydney station on this morning and the 7am weather news took in all of Australia's major cities, ending with London as "a paltry 14 degrees". Surely this wouldn't happen outside an Ashes series?

The station's London man came on next. Russian spies and Prince Harry both took preference over his thoughts on the Ashes, but it was worth the wait; dig out those 1955 Wisden's because the reporter consulted one himself and came out with a cracker.

The 1954/55 Ashes series started at Brisbane, where the home side racked up a familiar 600+ before England subsided with two low innings. Three months later, England had won the series 3-1.

During last summer, I somehow got the call-up to appear a couple of times on Sky News to talk about the Ashes. I was bricking it both times. The first one was a link up from its Westminster Studio and I was sparring against an Aussie journo who was with the presenters. It was quite trying too, as being told to look down the camera when replying to a question, while all the time trying to remember your key points, was pretty demanding in my book.

This took place the day before the final Test and I had researched a decent Oval omen - England racking up a huge 900 total to take the game away from Australia in 1938. Because of the elements, this was the only thing I could remember and, as a result, mates still take the piss for me saying 'good omens' about ten times over the course of the debate.

Familiar outcome; busy in Mohali

Glenn McGrath looked back to his probing best today. If only Vettori and Oram had taken the Kiwis to victory after a great fightback then England might have taken an early Ashes advantage, for what it's worth.

It's been a busy day in Mohali for one Indian media colleague. The ICC handed out some serious paperwork to the media today, so why not delve into several governing body-related pieces Harish has also written: Drugs, Umpire Hair and BCCI all covered. Then there's the Mohali match report.

Blowers, exclamation mark!

A great story reaches Nutley concerning the indefatigable Henry Blofeld, Test Match Special's commentator. Now I've watched countless James Bond movies in my time but never thought of linking evil, piranha-keeping Blofeld with cricket's own version.

According to this month's OSM, Bond creator Ian Fleming named the villain after Henry's dear-old dad. Says Blowers:

"My Papa and Ian had known each other at Eton. When Ian was working on the novel that would become Thunderball in the early Sixties, he wrote to Papa telling him that he had come up with a new villain, that he wanted to name him Blofeld and would he mind. Exclamation mark, exclamation mark! Papa thought it mildly amusing and wasn't in the least bit worried. Mind you, that was before any of the films had been made, so he had no idea how notorious Blofeld would become."

The days when England players cajoled around Australia (late night casinos with Kerry Packer, flying Tiger Moths) may be long gone, but what are the chances of Kevin Pietersen reliving the good times of Beefy, Gower and Lamby with some spear diving on the Gold Coast as pictured above?