Jenson Button - Brawn GP

It’s been a cracker of a day. The sun was shining and I spent the day cruising around Port Phillip Bay on a yacht listening to the high pitched whine coming from the Albert Park area, contemplating the fun I will have tomorrow, when I attend in person.

My hopes were high for defending Champion Lewis Hamilton this season. There was a part of me that assumed all this talk about MacLaren lacking pace was no more then clever mind games. Yesterday’s practice worried me a little, but then Kovalainen did ok, so I assumed that once MacLaren ironed out the kinks, Lewis would be on Pole for tomorrow.

Oh Dear.

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Ireland win The Grand Slam

It’s been a while. 61 years in fact. In 1948 the world was still recovering from war when Jack Kyle masterminded Ireland’s last Grand Slam. We English football fans can begin to understand what that feels like, seeing as it’s been 43 years since we won the football World Cup. But there’s a key difference, 43 is definitely not 61. I thought they’d blown it. As we were watching the Golden Generation of Irish rugby players start to age, I honestly thought they’d missed their chance, and it could well have been another 61 years before it came around again.

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Twitter

I’ve just created a twitter site for The Commentary Box, so for those people up to date with their social networking, you can follow us there. Here’s the link: http://twitter.com/SportAtPKHT.

Twitter is a new thing for me, I’ve been resisting the call to sign up for a while, but I have finally relented. I think it will prove to be a good way to spread our sporting message!

Bike Buller

For those who don’t know, I am a keen mountain biker, and have recently started attending some organised races. Although, I technically can’t claim to be a serious racer, for me it’s more about the experience and the atmosphere at a race meet. Last weekend, I attended the Mt Buller Mountain Bike Festival at Mt Buller, Victoria. This is all part of our training towards the BMC 100km. It was an enourmously enjoyable event, even though the courses were pretty brutal. The event consisted of a 20km ride on the Saturday, followed by a 6km downhill race (which I didn’t take part in) and then a 50km race on the sunday.

The 20km course was very technical. Being a mountain, the course relief was pretty much straight up and straight down again. Long, twisting climbs (some with up to 15 switchbacks) followed by bone jarring and very technical singletrack descents. It was what my old friend Tom would describe as “darn technegol”.

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Sir Clive Woodward

Sir Clive Woodward, the former England rugby union coach and manager, and now working with the British Olympic Association, is famed for taking ideas from the business world and seeking to apply them to sport. Some of them seem utterly counterintuitive at first, such as his assertion that after a loss the team should go out and get drunk, but after a win, the team should have an 8am meeting. But after a pause for thought, maybe they’re not so mad after all. What is worth analysing more: why something worked, or why it didn’t? A scientist may say both, but I know I would enjoy reviewing tape of a win more than tape of a loss, and I concentrate better when I’m having fun. So maybe Sir Clive’s not such a mad hatter after all.

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Close, but no cigar.

The anger of Sky’s commentary team following the drawn fifth test at Port-of-Spain was something to behold. Andrew Strauss, who, like every England cricket and rugby captain of the last five years (or so it seems), managed to talk about “taking the positives” from an abject failure, was the target of much of their ire; his ill-timed declarations in Antigua and Trinidad apparently his most heinous crimes.

There is no doubt that the test series in the West Indies has been an enormous disappointment from England’s point of view. Knowledgable cricket afficionados around the world confidently predicted a comfortable series win for England, dismissing the horror of the Stanford 20/20 as an ill-judged freak show. A 2-0 or 3-0 win would have been nothing more than “job done”.

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Rob Key, Ian Bell, Michael Vaughan

It really annoys me when England lose a test match, and indeed a test series, when they should have won it. You could argue that we should have won that series 2-1. I don’t lay much blame on Andrew Strauss though. I think he will mature into a fine captain, and is the right man to lead us going forward (I was never a fan of KP). I agree that maybe he should have declared before lunch on the final day in Trinidad, but cricket is always full of ifs and maybes. I think Strauss has been too afraid to make a mistake on this tour, but I think his captaincy will improve as he learns what risks he can and can’t take. Still, it’s not all doom and gloom and we must start to look forward to the Ashes.

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