Dear Johnners,

Well, it’s that time of the year again when the cricket season has faded to a distant memory, and we are all waiting with bated-breath to see just which celebrity-endorsed cricket DVD’s our clueless family buy for us for Christmas. Between the DVD’s and deodorant packages from Boots I can hardly wait. Anyway, it’s also about time I fill you in on developments in the cricket world and our wee club in particular.

Now unless you have moved to Alaska you will know by now that England have regained the Ashes. I can still hardly believe that sentence is true . . . having watched the Australian and England teams extensively over the preceding few years, I was utterly convinced that England would be thrashed out of sight. I took the eventual defeat well, needing just six months’ off work to get over my resulting depression. Who says I take cricket too seriously?

My abiding memory of the summer will be of myself screaming at the TV as Ponting threw again threw the ball to the hapless Brett Lee toward the end of the Fifth test. “NO! Don’t give HIM another over, Please!” Everything Lee bowled all summer was either a half-tracker or a half-volley. Lee’s effort was magnificent; his impact was immense. Sadly though, his every spell benefited England. The pressure that the Aussie attack could build with four economical bowlers was shattered when Lee finally got into the test side.

His presence, allied with Ponting’s total lack of imagination and clueless decision making at Edgbaston (combined with the stray Brad Hodge rugby-pass that caused McGrath’s injury) to lead to the biggest sporting upset since Tyson lost to Buster Douglas. To see McGill and Hussey crushing the West Indies now and think that they sat and watched the Ashes makes me feel slightly nauseous, as does the thought of Ponting leading the Aussies in the next Ashes series. He is a fine batsman, but has no tactical nous at all.

Warne is clearly the brains of the side, and the greatest bowler of all time should be given the captaincy unless Australia wants a repeat of the summer shambles we have just witnessed. Of course, the next Ashes series is sold out already, so it is not all bad news for the Australians. I have two other complaints about the series - Firstly, the boundaries were ridiculously small, allowing miss-hits to easily carry over the boundary. And secondly, why on earth where the test-sides of these two supposedly multi-cultural societies comprised entirely of Caucasians?

Something is clearly wrong here either in the coaching or selection of the young players, for there is no cricketing reason why non-whites cannot reach the top level of the game. A cynic could claim that everything possible was done to maximize the revenue from this and future Ashes’ series. Certainly Wasim Akram was not far from the truth when he recently complained that the 'goras' are in charge of the international game.

Not so in Larne, where my own little 4ths team won the league again, of course. That makes four in a row for myself - Division 3, Section 3 with first the 3rds and then this year with the Fourths, with Division 4, Section 1 and two titles in between. Really, it gets quite boring sometimes: I wish they would send someone with equal strategical genius to myself, but they keep saying there is no-one. I am rapidly running out of room for trophies, so it’s probably a good job that we have been promoted into the Thirds’ league. Perhaps we have we finally found a league that is not too easy for us.

That means it will be Larne 3rds versus Larne 4ths in the league next year. The club has dug out some old man who used to play for the Firsts’ to be captain of the Thirds. His name is Wylie McKinty, but you are probably not old enough to remember him playing. He was a much better player than I ever was, but he is a complete novice though when it comes to captaincy. You simply cannot compare my record to his. He has been doing the Firsts’ book for four years while I have been racking up the league titles, so I am super-confident that the Fourths will emerge victoriously from both encounters with the Third Eleven, no matter who they have in their team.

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