I was totally gobsmacked by this story in the Guardian today.

Lets see if I have got this right… the entertainment at a cricket match included a song parody which accused us Brits of whingeing, so we (or our representatives out there in the ‘Barmy Army’) whinged about it, and got an apology.

I though the ‘insult’ itself was quite funny – The Lion Sleeps Tonight, but instead of “wimoweh wimoweh” it was “They whinge away, they whinge away” – and hardly a million miles from the truth. While I was out there I met a fair few ex-pats and they didn’t stop moaning about the place!

I’m a bit suspicious of the fans’ threat to boycott the rest of the tour though. Would they have carried out their threat? They have travelled to the other side of the world to follow a sports team, to enjoy the atmosphere. Would they really then go to watch the game in the nearest pub?

But its not all persecution of the Brits. Local supporters had their headgear (home-made from watermelons) confiscated in case they got used as weapons. Brilliant. You just could not make that sort of thing up could you? The icing on the cake was the quote from the authorities, a masterpiece of Aussie straight talking:

We are not setting out to be killjoys but we don’t want some dill spoiling the day because he’s hopelessly inebriated

At least everybody involved is doing their bit to try and make an intrinsically dull sport at least a bit interesting.