The week in numbers: w/e 16/5/10

56 - The number of people who died in the Bradford City fire, 25 years ago last week.

0 - After six races of the F1 season, we have yet to see any car other than the two Red Bulls start from pole position. (Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber have three each.)

0 - The FA Cup has never been won by a team relegated from the top flight of English football in the same season.

2 - The number of missed penalties in Saturday's FA Cup final, the first time this had ever happened.

4 - The number of times the leader's pink jersey has changed hands so far during the first eight stages of the Giro d'Italia. Bradley Wiggins claimed it on stage one, since when it has gone to Cadel Evans (stage two), Alexandre Vinokourov (stage three), Vincenzo Nibali (stage four) and Vinokourov again (stage seven).

2 - Last Wednesday's Europa League final was the second time goalkeeper Mark Schwarzer had played in the final of Europe's second cup competition, with two different clubs. On both occasions he has lost to a Spanish side.

1 - Yesterday was the England men's cricket team first win in five attempts in a world final. They beat Australia by seven wickets in the final of the World Twenty20.

17 - Runs required by Australia off the last five balls of their World Twenty20 semi-final against Pakistan. Mike Hussey then hit 22 off the next four.

99 - Final points total for Barcelona, who clinched the Primera Liga title last night. Runners-up Real Madrid finished on 96, which also surpassed the previous record total.

4 - The number of seasons Oxford United spent in the Conference before earning promotion back to League 2 yesterday with a victory over York City. Oxford had been the first winner of a major trophy to be relegated from the Football League in 2006.

120,000 - Pounds per week reportedly demanded by 33 year old William Gallas during his contract talks with Arsenal. Bye bye.

The week in numbers: w/e 9/5/10

138 - In millions of pounds, the current debt of Portsmouth FC, about double what it was when the club went into administration at the end of February.

0 - The number of Grand Tour stage wins for both Team Sky and Bradley Wiggins before his two second victory in the opening time trial at the Giro d'Italia on Saturday.

103 - The final tally of Premier League goals for Chelsea, who hammered eight past Wigan yesterday. It is the highest total for a season in 47 years.

18 – Yesterday was the 18th consecutive league game without a win for Wigan in London, underlining quite how remote Man U's chances of securing the title really were.

1 - Mark Webber became the first F1 driver in five races this season to convert pole position into a race win at Barcelona yesterday.

85 not out - Runs scored by Cameron White off just 49 balls (including six sixes and six fours) in Australia's World Twenty20 win over Sri Lanka last night. The entire Sri Lankan side managed just two runs more than White.

31 - The number of league wins (from 37 matches) for Real Madrid after their 5-1 thumping of Athletic Bilbao. This is one more than Barcelona, who still lead Spain's Primera Liga by a point with one game remaining. The previous record for wins in a season was 28, jointly held by ... Real Madrid and Barcelona.

92 - The previous points record for a Primera Liga season (set by Real Madrid in 1997), already broken by both Barcelona (96) and Real Madrid (95).

00:54 - The time on Tuesday morning at which Australia’s Neil Robertson finally overcame Graeme Dott to win the World Snooker Championship.

Shane Warne’s ‘ball of the century’

An occasional series looking at the defining moments which explain why sport captivates us so much ...

Sport’s superstars often arrive on the scene in a blaze of youthful glory, producing outstanding debut games or seasons. Football has given us teenage sensations such as Wayne Rooney and Lionel Messi, cricket the likes of Sachin Tendulkar (Test debut at 16, a centurion at 17, captain at 23), and women’s tennis a production line of prodigies from Tracy Austin to the Williams sisters.

Some, like Austin, have departed almost before they have arrived, but many have gone on to be dominant figures in their sport for many years.

The sporting annals are littered with examples of great debuts. Few, however, can claim to have had such a profound impact - not just on a match, but on his entire sport - as the showman fittingly nicknamed ‘Hollywood’.

England v Australia, 1st Ashes Test, Old Trafford, June 1993

MW Gatting b SK Warne 4

These are the bare facts as recorded by the match scorecard. In cricketing circles, though, it is referred to in hushed tones as “the ball of the century”. No other ball is as well remembered as Shane Warne’s first ever delivery in an Ashes Test match.

It’s the second day of the first Test. England have started well in their attempt to regain the Ashes – 80 for 1 in response to Australia’s modest 289. The blond-haired wrist spinner is brought into the attack for the first time. Warne measures out his run-up for his debut over against England and measures up the opposing batsman.

The pugnacious, bulldog-like face of Mike Gatting stares back at him. The former England captain is an excellent player of spin bowling and is hugely experienced. This is his 73rd Test, two days short of his 36th birthday, and he has seen pretty much everything there is to see in cricket.

But he has never seen anything like this. Warne’s first ball pitches well outside leg stump, then darts sharply back like a spherical stump-seeking missile to clip the outside of off stump. Bowled!

Gatting stands aghast, unwilling to believe the evidence of his own eyes, before finally acknowledging the umpire’s signal and trudging off the pitch, still shaking his head in bewilderment.

Just in case there are any thoughts that the ‘Gatting ball’ is a one-in-a-million fluke, Warne wastes little time in proving otherwise. The first ball of his second over is a carbon copy. Robin Smith misjudges the ball and edges to slip. Seven balls, two wickets! In the space of less than ten minutes, Shane Warne has set the tone for the match, indeed for the entire series. England’s batsmen will never really get to grips with his magician’s tricks throughout the summer, and the Ashes are as good as lost already.

Warne finishes the match with eight wickets, and goes on to claim a total of 34 victims and the Man of the Series award as Australia romp away with the series.

Ashes Tests are supposed to be intimidating affairs for the uninitiated; after all, this is one of the oldest and most intense of all sporting rivalries, dating back to 1877. An Ashes debutant isn’t supposed to march brashly in and destroy the opposition on their home turf. But that’s exactly what Shane Warne did in 1993, and it all started with one ball.

Not bad for a beginner.

Warne’s legacy

It’s all too easy to attach clichéd labels to Shane Warne such as ‘prodigious’, ‘phenomenon’ and ‘reinventing the art of spin bowling’, but then to look at Warne is to see something of a cliché anyway. He resembles not so much a modern, professional cricketer as a stereotypical Aussie who has wandered into the SCG after catching the morning surf at Bondi, with his burly frame, bottle-blond hair and macho, fun-loving brashness. So let’s work with the clichés.

In all honesty, there are few words that describe Warne’s ability to spin the ball so extravagantly as well as ‘prodigious’. He produced the equivalent of the ‘Gatting ball’ – no more than an extreme version of his standard leg break - repeatedly in his career. Warne frequently left batsmen bamboozled, groping futilely at thin air as the ball spun past the bat. What was particularly impressive was his ability to bowl long, tiring spells with sustained control, accuracy and aggression.

Was he a phenomenon? Unquestionably. To announce your arrival on the Ashes stage in the way that Warne did at Old Trafford and sustain that level of success for more than a decade showed that he is no flash in the pan. He stands second on the all-time wicket takers list (708 in 145 Tests), was voted fourth in Wisden’s Player of the 20th Century poll (being both the highest placed bowler and contemporary player), and has been described by no less an authority than Richie Benaud as “the best leg spinner I’ve ever seen”. Glowing praise, indeed.

Did he reinvent the art of spin bowling? Perhaps not, but he certainly changed people’s perceptions of it. Prior to his arrival, spin was becoming an increasingly rare and largely defensive art outside of the Asian nations. Warne turned that on its head by presenting spin bowling as a genuinely attacking – and, in cricketing terms, positively sexy - option. You need only look now – virtually every leading Test nation has a spin bowler who is single-handedly capable of turning (if you will forgive the pun) a match. Shane Warne’s legacy extends far beyond the Australian coastline or the time defined by the length of his career.

I was fortunate enough to see the 1993 Old Trafford Test live on television, and I can vividly remember my reaction to the moment Warne delivered that ball. I empathised with Gatting’s disbelief, then, watching the replay, I found myself quietly applauding in the solitude of my own living room as it began to dawn on me that I had just witnessed something truly special. It didn’t matter that it had cost my side a key wicket; such moments of sporting genius transcend something as petty as mere competition. I just knew that I had witnessed, as it happened, one of those precious moments that people would talk about for years to come.

More than a trophy

The Australian cricket team will have woken up this morning to the confirmation that they are officially no longer the best Test side in the world. After a run of six years, not only have they lost the top spot in the ICC Test rankings to South Africa, but they have also slipped to fourth behind Sri Lanka and India, and just ahead of England.

In that light, an observer might wonder exactly why the Ashes are such a big deal. After all it's just a trophy contested by two countries - and two middle-ranking ones at that.

Well, the Ashes are to English and Australian cricket supporters what the North London derby is to Arsenal and Tottenham fans, or what the University Boat Race is to students of Oxford and Cambridge, or what England versus Scotland at pretty much any sport is. It doesn't matter whether it is a contest between the two best teams or two distinctly mediocre ones; it is important simply because it is representative of a historic rivalry which carries just a soupçon of enmity (and frequently a lot more) about it.

With the Ashes, this rivalry is magnified because it is only conducted (in Test form, at least) twice every four years, and because each series unfolds over the course of an entire summer and not a matter of minutes. There is ample opportunity for the story to ebb and flow; for stars to emerge and for the stories of supporting characters to be fleshed out; for raised hopes and false dawns, and for the tension to be slowly cranked up to a final, dramatic denouement. This is what makes the Ashes so special: it combines the adrenalin rush of a one-off derby match with the slow-burn, emotional investment of a league season.

This summer's series has been an exceptional one not because of the quality of the play, but because of the quality of the narrative, with the advantage swinging wildly from one team to another, and culminating in a fifth and final Test where England needed to win to regain the Ashes - and promptly delivered.

In a series between two well-matched sides, but which the visitors dominated in terms of individual statistics, Australia could be excused for wondering how this series slipped away from them. Their batsmen scored eight centuries to England's two; three of their bowlers took at least 20 wickets, whereas Stuart Broad led for England with just 18.

But, in hindsight, the series turned on three key passages of play, all of which went in England's favour. In Cardiff, Australia's bowlers failed to dislodge England's last wicket pair of Jimmy Anderson and Monty Panesar, as unlikely a pair of batting heroes as you will ever find, who saw out the final 69 balls of the first Test to preserve a draw. In the second Test at Lord's, with Australia chasing a target of 522 to win, the talismanic Andrew Flintoff took 5/92, breaking a 185-run partnership between Michael Clarke and Brad Haddin which had been turning the match in the tourists' favour. Finally, at the Oval on Friday, Flintoff's heir apparent Broad took five wickets in a devastating spell which reduced Australia from 73/0 to 111/7 and swung the pendulum decisively in England's favour.

In the final analysis, although the Aussies performed more consistently than England, they were found lacking inspiration at crucial junctures. And perhaps no single moment was more inspiring than Flintoff's match-turning intervention yesterday, breaking a burgeoning 127-run partnership between Ricky Ponting and Michael Hussey with a glorious pick-up, throw and direct hit from mid-on to run out the Aussie captain by nearly a full yard. Somehow, despite providing little more than the odd crowd-pleasing cameo with bat and ball in his final Test, it was inevitable that 'Freddie' would provide the defining image of the day: standing statuesque, both arms thrust aloft in celebration, drinking in the adulation of a capacity Oval crowd.

And so ends a rollercoaster series in which England veered from near-disaster in Cardiff to momentum-turning triumph at Lord's; from being in command of a weather-affected draw at Edgbaston to the humiliation of an innings defeat at Headingley, and finally to four dramatic, nail-biting days in the must-win finale at the Oval. The overall quality may have been a notch or two down on the benchmark 2005 Ashes series; the spectacle, however, has been equally magnificent.

England will now travel to South Africa this winter for a series against the world's new number one Test side; however, the one truly important battle of the year has already been won.

After all, to paraphrase the words of the late Bill Shankly, the Ashes are not a matter of life and death; they are much more important than that.

Biff, bash, bosh

The inaugural Twenty20 World Cup started only last night, but already we've seen two explosive and memorable games which underline the thrill-a-minute excitement which is the format's raison d'etre.

The hosts, South Africa, got proceedings under way at the Wanderers against the West Indies. And what a match it was. Batting first, the Windies laid down the benchmark for others to follow, scoring 205 runs in their 20 overs. Opener Chris Gayle led the way, peppering sixes (ten in all) to all corners of the ground en route to a destructive 117 from just 57 balls. Quite possibly, we have already witnessed THE batting performance of the tournament.

If the West Indies had shown their best side with the bat, they then showed their worst side in the field. In defending their impressive total, they contributed 28 runs in extras - a record in Twenty20 - to South Africa's total, and added three dropped catches for good measure. Herschelle Gibbs was twice reprieved by butter-fingered fielders and needed no further invitation to build an innings which was almost the equal of Gayle's, accelerating to an unbeaten 90 off 55 balls and striking the winning blow himself as South Africa cruised home with 14 balls to spare.

As a match, it was a shining example of what the Twenty20 format has to offer: 413 runs in less than three hours, 36 fours, 18 sixes. Many purists disown Twenty20 as an abhorrent creation for an attention-deficient world; as far removed from Test cricket as 5-a-side is from 'proper' football. But that is to totally miss the point. Twenty20 is not supposed to be Test cricket on speed; in terms of tactics and technique it cannot even be regarded as an abbreviated version of its 50-over cousin (which, lest we forget, was similarly derided when it was first introduced to the international arena in 1971). It is simply a different form of the game which taps into the needs and expectations of a global TV audience which demands bite-sized chunks of intense action and has immense viewing choice when it comes to sport.

And to underline the point that Twenty20 need not be all about the biff-bash-bosh of batting pyrotechnics, tonight's prime-time match-up between the minnows of Zimbabwe and the all-conquering might of one-day world champions Australia produced a game every bit as exciting and compelling as what we saw last night.

Against all expectations, a rusty Australia laboured to an underwhelming 138-9 in damp conditions as Zimbabwe produced an impressive containing performance in the field. In response, Zimbabwe got off to a flyer, stalled horribly mid-innings as wickets and heavy rain fell to the point where, had the teams been unable to continue following a brief interruption for rain, Australia would have been declared the winners under the ever-mysterious Duckworth-Lewis method. As things transpired, however, they were able to resume, and a match which had been ebbing away from Zimbabwe before the stoppage gradually flowed back to them thanks to Brendan Taylor's well-paced 60. Even so, they found themselves still requiring 12 off the final over, and then four off the last two balls, but Taylor flicked the penultimate ball off his pads down to the fine leg boundary and one of the most dramatic and unexpected victories ever seen in limited overs cricket ensured that this World Cup will remain firmly imprinted on my memory.

I hadn't paid much attention to Twenty20 before this World Cup, and only really tuned in last night out of curiosity. The fact that I then switched on again tonight and will do so for the rest of the tournament is testament to the game's TV-friendly potential. It's easy to dismiss Twenty20 as cricket for the Playstation generation, but that is no bad thing if the spectacle and excitement succeeds in drawing a new generation of kids to the sport. It's certainly good enough for this bluff old traditionalist.

You know summer's coming to an end when ...

... The TV schedules are filled wall-to-wall with major sporting events. Everywhere you look, a major tournament is under way (or about to start).

In cricket, there is the excitement of the inaugural Twenty20 World Cup and its relentless biff-bash-bosh, thrill-a-minute format. England will go into the tournament on a high, having recorded their first major one-day series win since Lions versus Christians (possibly even longer ago than that). The talismanic Andrew Flintoff returned, just about fit - as good as we can expect these days - to take three vital wickets as England roared home on Saturday to edge the series against India 4-3. And, having invented the format, you would have to hope that we would be quite good at it. Certainly we should have a better chance to put in a good showing than in the recent 'proper' World Cup - not that that's particularly difficult ...

In rugby union, the World Cup got off to an attention-grabbing start as the hosts France wilted under a testing examination from Argentina's rugged, physical defence, crashing to a 17-12 defeat. It was a shock, and yet not a shock; it was the Pumas' fifth win in their last six encounters with Les Bleus, although the first time they had won a match of such importance. And the rest of the opening weekend hinted at a clear North/South divide, with England, Ireland and Wales labouring against the USA, Namibia and Canada respectively, while the southern hemisphere triumvirate of New Zealand, Australia and South Africa ran up cricket scores in their respective openers.

The F1 season continues to speed towards what promises to be a thrilling climax, with Fernando Alonso leading Lewis Hamilton home in Italy, despite the British rookie executing spectacular overtaking moves on both Ferrari drivers. It was McLaren's first ever one-two finish at Monza, made doubly sweet in the light of the continuing 'Spygate' scandal which threatens to engulf the sport in political acrimony. With four races remaining, Alonso has cut Hamilton's lead to just three points. Expect more fireworks at Spa-Francorchamps this weekend, assuming the World Motor Sport Council does not decide to take drastic action against McLaren this Thursday.

Across the pond, it was the start of the new NFL season, which is particularly tantalising with the first ever regular season game in the UK coming to the new Wembley next month. Kickoff weekend didn't disappoint, wth six games being decided by seven points or less. In New York, New England's Ellis Hobbs fielded a kickoff eight yards deep in his own endzone and ran it back, untouched, 108 yards for a touchdown - an NFL record. In Dallas, the Cowboys beat the New York Giants by a crazy 45-35 score. (In football terms, think of the 5-4 North London derby game from a few years back.) And in San Francisco, my beloved 49ers squeezed out a 20-17 win over the Arizona Cardinals, scoring the go-ahead touchdown with just 26 seconds remaining, having nearly fumbled the ball away at the goalline the previous play. My heart is still recovering from that one.

The World Athletics Championships have been and gone already, but that didn't stop Asafa Powell stealing headlines on Sunday with a searing run to shatter the 100 metres world record. In setting a new mark of 9.74 seconds, he shaved three hundredths of a second off the previous best time he had jointly held with the now-banned Justin Gatlin. A blink of an eye to some, but equivalent to a gap of nearly one-third of a metre compared to the previous record - as good as a mile in an event which frequently requires freeze-frame images to determine the winner. The only shame was that he had not produced this run on the grand stage of the World Championships only weeks previously.

And then there's the small matter of Euro 2008 qualifying, with the home nations experiencing mixed fortunes: Wales battered by Germany, Northern Ireland losing disappointingly in Latvia, the Republic of Ireland only earning a draw in Slovakia, Scotland easing past Lithuania, and an injury-ravaged England neatly side-stepping the banana skin that was Israel at Wembley (and looking surprisingly decent in doing so). Next up is Russsia - by far the harder of the two games - tomorrow.

Last but by no means least, the women's football World Cup kicked off in China yesterday with the defending champions Germany administering an old-fashioned shellacking - 11-0 - to Argentina. Hope Powell's England squad, a modest 12th in the world rankings and with the misfortune to be drawn in Germany's group, face an uphill battle to qualify for the knockout stages, but if they can beat Japan today in what is to all intents and purposes a winner-takes-all eliminator, who knows? If you've never watched the women's game before, you should give it a try. You might be surprised at the level of skill and strength on show - and pleased at the lack of professional cynicism which we have come to accept as part and parcel of the men's game.

All that in the space of a five day span, Friday to Tuesday. Not bad!

So, while it's a shame summer is coming to an end, if you like your sports it's really not so bad. Roll on winter!

3-0 - so what?

England wrapped up the 4th and final Test against the West Indies yesterday afternoon with a 7-wicket victory. The record books will reflect a 3-0 series win - but I found it hard to get excited about an England team who repeatedly made hard work of besting a team which, with the honourable exception of new captain Shivnarine Chanderpaul, lacks players of the highest class.

3-0 suggests a near-total dominance on England's part, but the reality was anything but. Sure, there were some fantastic individual performances - Monty Panesar's 10-wicket match performance at Old Trafford (and 23 overall), Alastair Cook's two centuries, Kevin Pietersen's powerful double hundred at Headingley - and there were genuine purple patches of play by the team as a whole. But for every great session where England put their foot firmly on the Windies' jugular, there was another where they let a distinctly average opponent get back onto their feet.

Let's look at the evidence.

1st Test (match drawn): England open up the series with a pile-driving 553 for 5 declared. But, having taken the first five West Indies wickets for 187, they allowed the last five to add a further 250, crucially eating into both England's lead and their time - the latter being crucial on a final day on which rain and bad light allowed only 20 overs to be bowled.

2nd Test (England won by an innings and 283 runs): A crushing victory; England's one truly overwhelming performance of the series, with Pietersen's double hundred fuelling another 500-plus declaration, with the Windies being skittled out for less than 150 in both innings. This was the one match where it all came together consistently for England and demonstrated just how good this team can be, but it's also frustrating to see how far short of this potential the team fell during the rest of the series.

3rd Test (England won by 60 runs): England at their most frustrating, in full 'rollercoaster' mode. Several times in this match they built strong positions, only to concede ground almost immediately. First up, they converted a precarious 166 for 5 into a decent first-innings total of 370. Then they skittled out the Windies' tail - the last six wickets for just 13 runs - to build a handy 141-run lead which served as a springboard to setting up a target of 455 runs. To then watch as England's bowlers laboured to deliver the seemingly inevitable was painful in the extreme. At one stage, with the West Indies still with five wickets intact and closing to within 150 runs of what had initially seemed a purely academic target, it even looked like England might just conspire to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. But, thankfully - belatedly - they arose from their slumber, and Panesar, aided and abetted by Steve Harmison, returned to finish the job and complete a 60-run victory which was far more nail-biting than it should ever have been.

4th Test (England won by 7 wickets): This was better by England, and ultimately this was a comfortable victory, but it was not without its alarms. England scored a round 400 in response to the West Indies' 287, but it was built on a 169-run, seventh-wicket stand between Paul Collingwood and wicketkeeper Matt Prior which compensated for failures higher up the order. At the point at which the pair first came together, England had limped to 165 for 6 - what eventually became a 100-plus lead could easily have been a similar-sized deficit. And this time, the bowlers were efficient enough in bowling out a by now dispirited Windies side, with only the partnership of Chanderpaul (who else?) and Dwayne Bravo showing any significant resistance.

So, I guess the end analysis is this. Three wins - one supremely dominant, one ultimately comfortable after a faltering start, and one which should have been routine but wasn't - against a distinctly average and rebuilding side. Sure, we can point at Flintoff's injury and some fine individual performances. And definitely, England did generally show the killer instinct when it really mattered. But I can't help but feel there is a lack of cohesion in this team - is the team less than the sum of its parts? - and for all the talk about the great spirit in the side, it is clear we are still a long way from repeating that glorious Ashes summer of 2005. And yet we have seen all too brief glimpses of it over the past few weeks of this series - the ability and the potential are there, if we can just tap into it often enough and eradicate the "one good session, one bad session" inconsistency that seems to be part of this team's psyche.

This side genuinely could be world-beaters (at least in the Test match format), but they don't do it consistently enough. And it's that which annoys me more than if this was just a middling side struggling to get by. For me, unfulfilled potential is more of a crime than no potential at all.

To the loser, the spoils

Isn’t it funny how sometimes in sport all the plaudits can go to a member of the losing team?

And rightly so.

In a winning effort, most players’ performances will be looked on more positively than they might otherwise have been, thanks to the halo effect of victory. But for an individual effort in a losing cause to lodge itself in the memory, it needs to be truly outstanding.

We’ve seen two such performances at the cricket World Cup in this past week, both in games involving Sri Lanka.

A week ago, South Africa were cruising to victory against the Sri Lankans, reaching the point where they needed just five runs off 30 balls with five wickets to spare – a mere formality in any normal circumstance.

Lasith Malinga, however, is not a normal bowler. In many ways, he is Sri Lanka’s Shane Warne. With crazy blond highlights in his hair and earrings everywhere, he will always attract attention. But it his low, almost side-arm release – which has earned him the notorious nickname ‘Malinga the Slinger’ – and his ability to bowl viciously swinging yorkers at speeds beyond 90mph which most unnerves opposing batsmen.

And so it was against South Africa. In the space of four balls, Malinga turned the match on its head, dismissing Shaun Pollock, Andrew Hall, Jacques Kallis and Makhaya Ntini. Never before in international cricket had a bowler taken wickets with four consecutive balls. It may never happen again.

The only thing missing from the fairy-tale was the happy ending. Defying a cauldron of expectation, South Africa’s last wicket pairing of Peterson and Langeveldt managed to scramble the necessary five runs, leaving Malinga with a unique but ultimately futile achievement.

The boot was on the other foot last night, however.

Having reduced England from a solid 101/2 to a desperate 133/6, Sri Lanka were themselves cruising to an apparently facile win as England’s seventh wicket pair of wicket-keeper Paul Nixon and all-rounder Ravi Bopara faced the prospect of a daunting 103-run chase on what had already proven to be a tricky pitch.

And, as the overs ticked down and the run-rate ticked inexorably up from a run a ball to nearly ten an over – 59 runs required off the last six overs – it was increasingly obvious that, while Bopara and Nixon were doing an admirable job prolonging the innings and avoiding a total rout, that it was too much to expect a miracle from two batsmen with a combined total of just 20 appearances and 234 runs in ODIs.

Experience, after all, is everything in these pressure-cooker situations, as the experts are so fond of saying.

Fortunately, no one had told Nixon and Bopara. With a combination of a wise old head (the 36-yeard-old Nixon) and youthful but calm optimism (the 21-year-old Bopara), they unleashed an assault which was probably as shocking to the Sri Lankans as it was to me.

The single highlight was undoubtedly Nixon’s remarkable reverse sweep of Muttiah Muralitharan for six, but there was no hiding the fact that Bopara was the star of the show. Mixing the orthodox with the ugly-but-effective, he accumulated 52 runs off as many balls and steered England – despite the late loss of Nixon – to the brink of an unthinkable victory.

Sadly, as with Malinga a week earlier, Bopara couldn’t deliver the final knockout blow. His 53rd ball – the last of the innings with England needing three to win – saw Dilhara Fernando flatten his stumps. England had fallen three runs short.

But there was no question who the man of the match was. It wasn’t a five-for, and it wasn’t a swashbuckling century, but it was a performance of great maturity and effectiveness from an inexperienced 21-year-old which will linger in the memory of this England fan long after the tournament has finished.

Winning is the biggest thing, but it doesn’t have to be the only thing. Or even the best thing.

And rightly so.

The show must go on

Even now, I'm not sure it has sunk in.

Jamaican police have confirmed that Pakistan cricket coach Bob Woolmer was murdered by "manual strangulation" on Sunday. Links to match-fixing rings have been the focus of much of the speculation over the past five days; in addition to any allegations surrounding Pakistan, Woomler was also the coach of South Africa at the time of the Hansie Cronje scandal.

Woolmer's death was already a tragedy when the world believed he had died of natural causes; now, it is something altogether more sinister.

The ICC have confirmed the competition will continue. On Wednesday, Pakistan completed their formalities, defeating Zimbabwe in emotional circumstances. And the wider match schedule continues uninterrupted.

Some commentators, such as Allan Donald (who played for South Africa under Woolmer), have called into question whether the World Cup should continue under the circumstances: not just a death, but a murder; not just a murder, but one linked to that most unsporting of crimes, match-fixing.

"I just don't know how this World Cup can continue under the shadow of what's happened," Donald told the BBC. "World Cup 2007 will be forever remembered for this."

Sad, but true.

No matter what great performances we see on the field of play over the next five weeks - and we have seen some truly memorable ones already - this World Cup will forever be remembered for Woolmer's murder, just as the Munich Olympics of 1972 is associated as much with the massacre of 11 Israeli team members (and one policeman) by Black September terrorists, as it is with Mark Spitz's seven swimming golds or the spellbinding grace of Olga Korbut.

Should the show go on in such circumstances, or should it pause or even stop altogether? It's hard to say. Certainly, there are massive complications - both logistical and commercial - in rescheduling any major sporting tournament: TV rights, ticketing, teams' and fans' travel arrangements, and the million and one other things that go on behind the scenes to make an event like this just happen. But it can be done: competition in the Munich Olympics was suspended for a day, and in the wake of the 9/11 bombings the Ryder Cup was pushed back twelve months.

So it can be stopped, but should it be?

For me, if the Pakistan team were happy to fulfil their obligations and play what was (for them at least) a meaningless game in circumstances where suspicion was already rife, then there is no reason why the tournament as a whole cannot continue. The growing rumour about links to match-fixing is neither here nor there: it is a spectre which has never gone away and will probably never do so.

The show must go on. Not because of commercial interests, not even because it is the right thing to do for the fans who have travelled thousands of miles to see it, but because it's what I'm sure Woolmer, a cricketing man through and through, would have wanted. The World Cup should be a celebration of cricket. The time for mourning and criminal proceedings will come later.

Eighteen sixes and a post-mortem

After all the thrills and upsets of the previous few days at the cricket World Cup, it was back to business as usual yesterday as the West Indies eked out a win over Zimbabwe in a match they were generally - but never quite totally - in control of. And India re-established the true gulf in class between the big boys and the minnows, blasting the Bermuda attack to the tune of 413 runs, including eighteen sixes, en route to a resounding 257-run victory. Both totals represented new World Cup records, and it was the first time any side has ever passed 400 in the tournament.

However, the abiding memory of the India/Bermuda game was not Virender Sehwag's 87-ball 114, or even Yuvraj Singh's explosive 83 from 46 balls. It was Bermuda's 19-stone spinner Dwayne Leverock’s instinctive one-handed slip catch which accounted for Robin Uthappa in the second over of India's innings - and then the mad run-around celebration which followed it. Even before the tournament, Leverock was already being feted as one of the World Cup's cult heroes; he cemented that yesterday.

It was a joyful moment to watch, one which reminds you that sport is about so much more than simply winning and losing.

But, sadly, not as much as life and death.

Much has already been said about Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer's saddening death on Sunday morning at the age of 58. At the time of writing, the cause of death is still unconfirmed pending the outcome of a post-mortem; a heart attack is a possibility, and stress has also been cited as a potential contributor.

In accepting the role of Pakistan cricket coach, Woolmer took on a task similar to that of Sven-Goran Eriksson managing the England football team: a stranger in a strange land where they have great passion for the sport and even greater expectations, and a team with players of great ability, but never quite a dominant world force. By all accounts, Woolmer had grown to love Pakistan, its people and its culture. And, despite a seemingly never-ending stream of ball-tampering rows, drug bans, personality clashes with star bowler Shoaib Akhtar and former coach Javed Miandad, and a moody captain in Inzamam-ul-Haq, he had moulded a team capable of challenging the very best. Ranking third in the ICC test championship and fourth in the ODI ratings, Pakistan had entered the World Cup with realistic hopes of winning the tournament, so the fact they were the first team to be eliminated from the tournament was a major surprise, notwithstanding their historic tendency for spectacular implosion.

All that, however, seems irrelevant now.

The world of cricket has lost a great coach, and a good man. And a fine player in his time as well, one who registered more than a thousand test runs and three centuries in a 19-match England career.

Robert Andrew Woolmer (1948-2007). RIP.

For an inside perspective, I would recommend Ivo Tennant's article in today's Times. Tennant was working with Woolmer on a book, and offers a unique insight into the man behind the tragedy. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/cricket/article1539817.ece

The benefit of hindsight

In my last blog on Thursday, I commented on the excessive length of the cricket World Cup, and in particular the predictability and one-sidedness of many of the initial group matches.

How wrong I was!

Ireland set the ball rolling on Thursday evening with a thrilling tie against Zimbabwe in a match which had seemed all but lost. Chasing 222 to win, Zimbabwe appeared to be easing to what would only have been their second win in 15 ODIs, only for three wickets to fall in the final two overs, the last on the final ball as they desperately tried to complete a winning run.

An amazing result, but that was just the warm-up act for yesterday's day of double drama. Ireland - on St Patrick's day, of course - skittled out Pakistan for 132, and then held their nerve to complete the job after sliding to 113 for 7. And Bangladesh did a similar demolition job on India, bowling them out for 191 before comfortably completing their run chase.

In a word: wow!

I said on Thursday that we could already confidently predict who the qualifying teams for the "Super 8" would be. Already Pakistan are out - and this is with most teams still to play their second game.

It's at times like this I wish I stopped making such sweeping predictions. But then, where's the fun in not sticking your neck out? And if sport was so predictable, then we wouldn't all be so captivated by it.

I look forward to seeing more shocks and being proven wrong again in the coming days. Mind you, if you think that means I'm going to predict a Netherlands victory over Australia this afternoon, you've got another think coming ...

Have we started yet?

So, the cricket World Cup is under way at last. Or is it?

I’ve been looking forward to the tournament immensely, but somehow it feels like we’re still watching the warm-ups. Don’t get me wrong, there have been some notable individual performances already – Dwayne Smith’s rapid-fire 32 and three wickets in the West Indies’ opening win over Pakistan, Ricky Ponting’s belligerent, 93-ball 113 – but, aside from the Windies/Pakistan game, the opening days of the tournament are very much a case of men against boys.

Yesterday, for instance, we had Australia demolishing Scotland by 203 runs; a result as one-sided and predictable as Man Utd versus a pub team who are being forced to play blindfold the morning after the night before. Similarly, Kenya v Canada was only ever going to end one way. (Kenya strolled to a seven-wicket win with seven overs to spare.)

Today we have the enthusiastic but talent-deficient Bermuda taking on Sri Lanka, while Ireland will fancy their better-than-slim chances of upsetting Zimbabwe, but even that is about as likely as the Italian rugby team winning twice in a single Six Nations. (Oh, hang on a minute, they just have.)

Either way, neither is a match to quicken the pulse.

In fact, the odds have to be better than 50:50 that the eight qualifiers from this initial group stage will be the eight “major” test-playing nations: the West Indies, Australia, South Africa, England, New Zealand, India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

There’s something not quite right about that.

While it’s true that a World Cup in any sport is always going to have its share of makeweights who have no realistic chance of avoiding the first plane home, you always expect at least one or two surprises. For instance, who would have predicted the Czech Republic’s early exit at last summer’s football World Cup, or Ukraine battling Switzerland for a place in the quarter-finals? It’s hard to picture Kenya or Bangladesh making a similar impression over the next few weeks in the Caribbean.

Which begs the question: why does the tournament have to take so long? Here’s some statistics to ponder.

The cricket World Cup involves just 16 teams but requires a total of 47 days – seven weeks, pretty much - to determine its winner.

By comparison, football’s World Cup is contested by twice as many teams (32), but is done and dusted in a month: last summer’s tournament in Germany lasted 31 days. And even the forthcoming World Cup for rugby union, a sport whose players require extended recovery time between matches due to its physical intensity, requires only 44 days to sort out its 20 entrants.

Yes, I know the length of a one-day cricket match means the qualifying group phase cannot be crammed into a three-a-day TV schedule as happens in football or rugby. Yes, it is good to include too many, rather than too few, teams for the good of developing the sport. And yes, it is important to ensure everyone gets a fair crack in the tournament, for both sporting and commercial reasons.

But my point is this: seven weeks is a long time – too long – for even the most passionate of fans to follow any sporting event. Quantity does not necessarily equal quantity; indeed, the opposite can often be true, which is why many casual followers will probably not bother tuning in for anything other than England matches until we reach the business end of proceedings. Which is a real shame for a tournament which is intended to highlight and celebrate the global reach of the sport.

Something is not quite right. To my mind, we would be better off with a World Cup that could be completed within a calendar month, benefiting from more concentrated excitement and media focus, rather than one which, like Shaun Wright-Phillips, spends a disproportionate amount of time on the bench or warming up before finally producing a short burst of action at the very end.

To that end, I hope to be proven wrong today and that either Bermuda or Ireland can upset the odds and give the World Cup the kick-start it needs and deserves. But somehow I doubt it will happen.

Hopelessly optimistic?

Cricket’s World Cup kicks off this afternoon at Sabina Park in Jamaica, and I’m looking forward to it with equal measures of excitement and hope.

Excitement because World Cups in cricket, as in football, only come around once every four years. Not to mention the fact the event is being staged in the cricket-mad tropical paradise that is the West Indies, where the sport is still followed with undiluted passion.

And hope because I genuinely believe England have a chance of winning the whole shebang. Yes, that’s right: they can.

Am I mad?

Possibly. Notwithstanding the recent 2-0 series win against Australia, the defending World Cup holders, there is little logical evidence to support an English triumph.

After all, England are ranked a lowly seventh in the ICC one-day rankings; of the major cricketing nations, only the West Indies are below them, and they at least have the advantage of playing at home.

Injuries, retirements and other problems have deprived the squad of veteran campaigners such as Steve Harmison and Marcus Trescothick, and their replacements lack experience. The form of those who remain, such as captain Michael Vaughan, Andrew Strauss and the talismanic Andrew Flintoff, has been patchy at best over the past year.

And, apart from Flintoff and Kevin Pietersen, there aren’t any obvious examples of England players who are capable of consistently dominating in the limited overs format. The statistics bear this out: England has just one of the top 20-ranked ODI batsmen (Pietersen, 4th), and only one entry among the top 20 bowlers (Flintoff, 15th).

In short, pretty much any way you choose to analyse the squad, England simply aren’t good enough to win the tournament.

So why am I still optimistic?

In truth, there are plenty of good reasons. Pietersen has been in tremendous form for the past 18 months, and he is one of a tiny handful of players in world cricket who is genuinely capable of single-handedly transforming a match. Flintoff can do likewise with both bat and ball, and the return of Vaughan to release him from the burden of captaincy may be all that is required to unleash the man who dominated the Ashes series in 2005. The squad is full of great team men like Paul Collingwood and Monty Panesar, who will lift spirits and make telling contributions. And last, but by no means least, a World Cup tournament is all about establishing a head of steam early on and riding the momentum that creates. England’s qualifying group is by no means the toughest. If they can defeat New Zealand in their opening match on Friday, their subsequent games against Canada and Kenya should be relatively straightforward, and after that who knows? If Vaughan, Strauss and Ian Bell can manage some confidence-building knocks, if Panesar, Liam Plunkett and Saj Mahmood can bowl with both threat and discipline, if Pietersen and Flintoff can just meet expectations, then 28th April 2007 might just become one of those dates that becomes etched in the collective national consciousness, like 22nd November 2003 or 30th July 1966.

I’m not saying it will happen. I’m not saying even saying it’s a high probability. But can it happen, and do I have hope? You betcha. Only time will tell whether or not my optimism is hopelessly misplaced, but for now I’m keeping April 28th clear in my diary – you never know.