The Circus

Stop me if you've heard this one
As great comedians know, it is all a matter of timing, and Australia's Ashes campaign certainly came to a somewhat comical end last night when it was shellacked by England by 197 runs. Andrew Flintoff provided the punchline when he moved his hulking, lumbering frame quickly enough to run out Ricky Ponting and end any crazy hopes the tourists may have been harbouring of victory.

In this series, Australian bowlers have taken more wickets, the batsman have scored more centuries – if pure statistics decided the contest, last rites would have been read, bails cremated, and the remnants handed to Ponting by a white-clad woman with modestly rouge lips and a well-practiced understanding in her eyes.

But (and dare we also add, alas) it isn't just how many, it's when. England won the sessions that mattered, wresting back the urn in the process and sending yesterday's heroes of the antipodean persuasion into analyses of apoplectic proportions.

Questions will certainly arise from the Aussies' second failure in the old dart in as many trips, questions relating to selection, captaincy and, why it took Mike Hussey five Tests and a series loss to remember what a bat is and how to use it to hit the ball.
 
And to top it all off, Australia is now ranked the fourth best cricket team in the world . . . . it's funny 'cause it's true.

It's an opinion business
College football is a sport Americans actually care a lot about, which makes the Associated Press pre-season poll of the best teams quite the water cooler topic in the land of the free.

But polls of this sort are not just mere fat-chewing exercises. In a system only slightly less complicated than quantum physics, various polls, computer rankings and chicken innards will end up determining which two teams ultimately play off for the championship.  

Garnishing the good opinion of the fourth estate, therefore, can be handy for colleges with title aspirations and perhaps explains brewer Budweiser's move to market their famous light beer in college colours.

'Fan Cans' are causing a stir, what with the young-uns and the binge drinking and the unwanted pregnancies and all. But The Circus contends this is a maelstrom of espresso proportions; this is, after all, light beer and American light beer at that. Quite a few brewskis would need to be consumed to make the average University student any more hedonistic, by which time he or she would almost have certainly been put off by Bud's god-awful taste.

And the idea of low-alcohol beer making journalists drunk enough to alter their opinion is plain laughable. College-coloured absinthe on the other hand . . .

Big ambition
When it comes to the philosophy of "bigger is better", Americans take the cake and Texans eat it and come back for seconds. Not content with the impressive proportions of its hats and cigars, Texas has installed the world's largest high-definition screens in Dallas' newly redeveloped football stadium.

Make no mistake, these screens are BIG – so big, they make the actual action happening underneath them somewhat of a sideshow until of course they are hit by footballs.
 
Yes, it seems the dynamics of the actual sport the screens were installed for in the first place were forgotten about during design, as punters from the Tennessee Titans successfully used them for target practice during a pre-season match.

Who was it that said in America, the bigger the state, the stupider the people?

Numbers game
3 – jumps attempted in the entire competition by pole-vaulter Steve Hooker in winning gold at the World Athletics Championships
3 – matches won by EPL club Tottenham Hotspur to equal its best start to the season since 1960
3 – place of Australia's 4x400m relay team at the World Athletics Championships
3 – number of games lost by the Wallabies in the 2009 tri-nation series following Saturday's one-point defeat by the All Blacks.

Quote of the day
"I was told by a psychoanalyst that had I not been so beautiful I would not have attracted so much malice."
– Former model Lady Colin Campbell empathises with 800m world champion Caster Semenya, who is attracting malice for altogether different reasons

Headline we'd like to read
Outcome of Ashes decided by press poll, Australia still loses


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