Wrong clowns, Greg!

Two England innings now of complete ineptitude (230 off 72 overs) hasn't even resulted in what Australia would consider a decent 50-over total.

At least it gives me space to link in two stories which didn't make this week's blogging.

Firstly, Greg Blewett was fined AUS$1000 this week after he recently called the state selectors "clowns" on an Adelaide radio station. Apparently he breached Cricket Australia's code of behaviour ruling after he referred to the region's state selectors as "basically volunteers". I'm just thinking whether Blewett might have got away with it if he had said he was actually referring to England as "clowns".

At least the hapless tourists are not the only team to suffer in world cricket. Check out the start of Mumbai's second innings score in their game against Baroda this week. Five ducks might even make Duncan Fletcher sleep easier if he knew about it.

Podcast: Beefy v Lillee

A great cricketing duel on the pitch, for one evening only it actually continued off it - in front of 20-odd thousand punters at Adelaide Globe Derby Raceway, 23 years ago.

Someone told me about a Botham v Lillee Trotting Challenge in 1983 and it sounded like a good story to pursue. It appears that cricketers always did these kind of things back then to pull in the crowds, so I went along to the track to find out more; and although the atmosphere seemed a touch backward at first, I couldn't get enough by the end. I first spoke to 80-year-old Jack, a former pro-Harness Racing trainer, who then told me to go to the bistro where there was a guy called Barry Norman "whose lived behind the track for 30 years, so if anyone should know it's him."

With some okay stuff in the bag, it was time to leave. "Oi, are you the Pom wanting to know about this Lillee thing?" Jackpot. I was taken to see Pete, president of South Australian Harness Racing who gave me the lowdown on how Beefy "was shitting it". Anyway, listen to the podcast I did for Nobok Sports here. Scroll down to 'Beefy gets the trots'.

*I was phoned up by a local Adelaide station today to speak about my plight on finding racegoers from that night. Low and behold, somone got in touch to say they had a signed programme from that night. I'll do anything to see Botham in jockey silks.