Law enforcement catches up with Brad Hodge for his role in a cartoon cricket match © Cricinfo Ltd

What the Jimmy Anderson was that?

I had cleared my schedule for this clash of the blue Titans. I accumulated several road traffic violations whilst dashing back from my daughter’s school in order not to miss the opening exchanges, and in the face of considerable protest I vetoed her proposal that she be allowed to watch some cartoons. Top-class sport is all about sacrifices, I told her and in any case, the misadventures of Mr Squarepants couldn’t possibly compare with the tough, gristly contest that was about to ensue at 1530 BST on Eurosport UK.

I will admit that there was more at stake than just the chance to watch some all-Aussie action. For many long years I have been boring people senseless with my theories on the inadequacy of the English domestic game versus its Australian counterpart. Aussie cricket is tougher, I would explain to the nearest set of ears, because there are fewer teams, so the talent is more concentrated, you see. I would then elaborate on the Academy, annual rainfall in the Australasian region, the administrative methodology of Cricket Australia, the teachings of Master Langer and so on and so forth until their eyes glazed over and I once more found myself checking the wine list on my own.

So the Champions League was the perfect test and when Somerset and Sussex crashed out while Victoria and New South Wales strolled to the semi-finals, I could savour the warm glow of unbearable smugness. All that was needed for my theory to be proven and my self-satisfaction to be engraved in stone was an epic tussle between these Australian giants, a no-holds-barred, no-mercy sledgefest, a battering of limbs and wills that would have us wincing and hiding behind the sofa at the sheer unrelenting ferocious professionalism of it all.

Part one was bang on. The Bushrangers snarled, scrambled and shouted, but the Hughes blade hummed, Warner walloped the leather off the white ball, and after a spirited 20 overs worth of entertainment, a hefty target was raised for the Victorians to tackle. Looking at their line-up, I thought this was going to be one hell of a run-chase: David Hussey. Cameron White. Brad Hodge. Aiden Blizzard. Some others. Hell, Billy Doctrove was so excited, he started to get a little jiggy on the sidelines (surely those long delays during referrals to the third umpire are crying out for a contemporary dance interlude).

But then something strange happened. Perhaps they were trying to retain the interest of bored five-year-olds or perhaps the Bushrangers just aren’t very good, but they appeared to be acting out a classic Spongebob episode. Specifically, episode seven of series eight, in which our inept invertebrate hero takes up Twenty20 but is hilariously unable to score at faster than three-and-a-half runs an over. They swung. They missed. They lost a wicket. They swung. They missed. And so on. Watching Victoria’s innings was like sitting staring at an acorn, waiting for it to turn into a tree. No, it was worse than that. It was like watching Worcestershire.

So now I have a new theory. Fifty per cent of Australian cricketers are useless under pressure, and Cameron White clearly belongs to the species Felis Catus. Someone email it to the Times and we can call it a dossier.

	The scoop: when it finally came, it didn’t come off © Getty Images

Jimi Hendrix first set light to his guitar at the end of a gig in March 1967. The crowd loved it so much he started to do it regularly. It soon became such a part of his act that if he didn’t take a cigarette lighter to his Stratocaster, the paying public felt short-changed. Now maybe it is the wild hair, the earring or the outrageous talent, but Tillakaratne Dilshan is starting to remind me of Hendrix. Yes, yes, yes, we were all thinking, as he nudged and tapped his first few balls around today, that’s all very well, but when’s he going to do the funny down-on-one-knee scoopy thingy? That’s what we’ve paid our money for. But when he finally pulled out the party piece, it proved his undoing. So is he going to feel obliged to do it every time? Or could he come up with another gimmick to trump the Scoop? Maybe he could set fire to his bat?

Dilshan couldn’t save Delhi yesterday and nor could Virender Sehwag, despite some trademark carnage, which, as ever, was either going to end in a new batting record or a catch on the boundary. After 47 effortless runs, he holed out, and so the sole remaining IPL franchise crashed out of the Champions League.

In fact, the evening game was something of a cricketing Götterdämmerung in which the last two Indian teams failed to do the sensible thing, instead taking one another down like two stubborn elephants squabbling over a bag of peanuts whilst the rope bridge they are both standing on starts to fray.

It may have come as a surprise to the cynically minded, but it appeared that Bangalore really wanted to win, despite having been effectively dumped out of the tournament by Victoria’s defeat earlier in the day. Little Roelof van der Merwe spent most of his time in the field either covering his face with his hands in disbelief or roaring like a 10-year-old doing his fiercest African lion impression. A made-up team? Only in it for the money? Don’t you believe it.

The afternoon match was a more frenetic event. Maybe it was the delayed start, the fewer overs, the doubts over the team line-ups, or the two wickets in the first over, but I soon felt exhausted. It was like one of those mornings when you are late for work, the phone is ringing, you can’t find your keys and everything is a rush. For three-quarters of the 33 overs it was a thunderous, ugly but exhilarating tussle. The Cobras won and were the better team, but somehow Victoria made more of an impression. There is nothing half-hearted about them. They bat like butchers playing golf and in Peter Siddle and Shane Harwood they have two red-blooded and slightly frightening grunters.

And a word about the crowd. The warmth, excitement and sheer noise generated by those attending at the Chinnaswamy Stadium made this the best day’s viewing of the tournament thus far for the armchair cricket connoisseur. The festival exuberance, the fireworks and the chanting for Sehwag and for birthday boy Kumble turned the occasion into an intoxicating blend of carnival and political rally. It was quite a show. Let’s hope next Friday’s final can match it.

Happy Diwali. And Happy Birthday Jumbo.

	Mike Hussey demonstrates a 98%-effort dive © Getty Images

So, the Sharks of Sussex are out of the world’s finest international-club-versus-franchise jamboree. Their elimination on Tuesday night raised many questions. What were they doing there? What time is the flight home? When will they get their money? Additionally, the manner of their exit led some to question the legitimacy of the super over as a method of settling a match. Surely, it was a violation of Rory Hamilton-Brown’s human rights for him to be embarrassed twice in the same match. Isn’t there a better way? Indeed there is. Here, for your thoughtful consideration are four proposals for ensuring a swift and compassionate end to proceedings on those occasions when the participants have been too inept to sort it out for themselves.

The Coin Toss
Before we consider the ridiculous, let us contemplate the sublime. The coin is, in fact, an elegant and unimpeachable arbiter and many of us have made some of our most important life decisions after flinging a bit of currency into the air. Indeed, I know of one particular High Court judge who would simply be unable to dispense justice as efficiently as he does without recourse to the coin toss. If it is good enough to decide upon prison sentences, marriage proposals, job offers and where to go for lunch, it ought to be good enough to settle the outcome of a Twenty20 game.

The Percentometer
Cricketers love statistics but are notoriously unreliable. When Ravi Bopara says he gave it 110%, how can we be sure that this is an accurate estimate? For all we know, he might only have given it 106% or 99%. Fortunately, scientists at the Adelaide Institute of Silly Studies have developed the Percentometer, a device that can measure how hard a team have tried in percentage terms by correlating sweat volumes, profanity output and steely glares. In the event of a tie, the team with the highest Percentometer readings will win the game.

The Bank-Off
These days, business goes with cricket like parasitic green algae with an ornamental pond. So why not bring some of the features of the corporate world into our great sport? In the event of a stalemate, accountants dressed in team colours will make their way to the middle of the pitch, and at specially built desks will proceed to audit the opposition team’s accounts. The franchise with the fewest accounting errors will be declared the winner. The only disadvantage with this suggestion is that it could take several hours, but this will allow plenty of time for television commercials.

The Dance-Off
For reasons that are not immediately apparent, watching people dance badly on television has become very popular in certain parts of the world. What better way to cash in on this trend than by introducing a ballroom-dance competition to settle tied cricket matches? Each team will choose one pair of players to dress up in spangly suits and silly grins and perform in front of a celebrity panel of dance-floor dynamos, including Ravi “Rumba” Shastri and Sunny “Samba” Gavaskar. Watch out for Kolkata’s fabulous couple of captivating captains, Sourav Ganguly and Brendon McCullum. Their foxtrot is something to behold.

	Richie Benaud: “There was only thish much in it” © Getty Images

It all started at breakfast. I had just poured out my customary bowl of chocolate googlies and was about to add a dash of the semi-skimmed when I noticed that the cocoa-flavoured shapes had formed themselves into the image of Richie Benaud gazing sadly into the middle distance.

Now, students of cricket-lore will know that the breakfast-time manifestation of a former Australian cricketer is a portent of some significance. For example, if your egg yolk takes on the shape of David Boon, your health check-up is overdue; if your buttered toast looks a bit like Kim Hughes, you should keep an eye on your work colleagues, and if you see Glenn McGrath in your tea leaves, you are probably Mike Atherton.

But what, I wondered, could Richie be trying to tell me? The answer became clear at a little after 6.45 this evening. As Rory Hamilton-Brown failed utterly to defend his wooden castle, I finally understood. Besides being everyone’s favourite decommissioned Australian captain, retired wrist-swiveller and microphone jockey, Benaud is a betting shaman. He had taken on cereal form in order to warn me.

For I am afraid dear reader, I had succumbed to the gambler’s curse. I couldn’t let a tournament like this go by without a modest wager, and I had chosen to place my money on the Sharks of Sussex. My reasons were plentiful, if not particularly convincing. They are, it must be said, the best hit-and-giggle troupe in England. They wear a particularly fetching shade of sky blue. And they are called the Sharks. Powerful, swift, killing machines, always on the move. How could they lose? Easily, it transpired.

Under the Delhi floodlights, Sussex toyed with the emotions of the desperate gambler as though they didn’t even care that I had backed them at 16-1 in the upstairs back room of a discrete Soho establishment a week last Wednesday. Like a tedious relative who tells the same joke at every family gathering, Luke Wright ran through his usual repertoire of boundary-boundary-boundary-oopsy daisy, and the subsequent exhibition of recklessness by his batting chums was more reminiscent of lemmings than sharks.

But all hope was not extinguished. Piyush Chawla, my favourite promising spinner of the pre-Mendis era, spun a web of silken subtlety to tie the Eagles down. A dozen to get off the last over and a glorious penultimate yorker from Yasir Arafat – surely the game was won? Alas, no. A heartless, clubbing blow from Ryan McLaren and we were into a super-duper-sudden-death-knock-out eliminator. By the time Rory of the Hamilton-Browns failed, I was spent, a limp rag of a man lying stretched out on the chaise longue, with a bottle of gin in my hand and a wet flannel over my face.

The moral of the story should be obvious by now, dear reader. Clearly, the game was fixed. I have already written a letter to Sussex County Council asking them to instigate an immediate enquiry, and I expect to be reading of the resignation of Michael Yardy in Sunday’s Times. In the circumstances, it is the least he could do.

	Here we are now, entertain us © Getty Images

“Make some noise!” screamed the DJ, although from where I was sitting, the Hyderabad crowd needed no instructions in the etiquette of din-making. A raucous, joyful racket seems to come naturally to an Indian cricket audience, as does its counterpart: complete and utter silence. And the passing from one state to the other can be disconcerting to the non-Indian, sofa-bound viewer. In the time it took the white ball bowled by Peter Trego to pass VVS Laxman’s bat and crash into the stripe-y stumps, the deafening nightclub atmosphere of the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium was replaced by a quiet so complete and so eerie that we could have been watching a county game at Taunton. At first, I thought I’d pressed the mute button by mistake.

“I want rainy sixes”, read one banner in the crowd, clearly fashioned by a Somerset fan pining for the dampness of old Blighty. There was no rain, but there were sixes, my favourite ones being those dished up by Venugopal Rao, who for his first effort seemed barely to touch bat on ball but managed to send it crashing into the Deccan-blue plastic chairs beyond the long-on boundary. And, mercy of mercies, these big hits were entirely unsponsored. They were sixes in their natural state, as God intended them, with just a comforting cliché or two (“Oh that’s gone a long way!”) to mark their passing.

Some IPL innovations are hard to shake off, though. For some reason, Marcus Trescothick was miked up, and halfway through the Deccan innings Harsha Bhogle engaged him in a meandering conversation that redefined the word “interminable”. Eventually, poor Trescothick was allowed to concentrate on the game, although not before an edge from Rohit Sharma went flying past his left hand as he stood at slip. Bhogle speculated excitedly what it would have been like if Trescothick had been talking to them as he took the catch. More pertinently, we wondered what it would have been like if the incessant prattling of the studio-jockey had caused him to drop it.

And alongside the irrepressible Harsha was one time fast bowler and Atherton-baiter, Allan Donald, in his new incarnation as commentator-cum-expert. It’s early days but I am pleased to report that he is already showing the skills you need to ascend to the punditry pantheon. For example, as the Somerset run-chase faltered, Craig Kieswetter lofted a ball from Pragyan Ojha high towards long-on. Donald seized his moment. “Shot!” he exclaimed, confidently, “And this could be out as well… it is! Not a good shot!” With such admirable verbal dexterity, Donald could be a fixture in the commentary box for many years to come.

	Jamelia, as not seen by your correspondent (sob) © Getty Images

It has been a trying day, cricket chums.

On the way home to my country estate, I popped into Mr Border’s Newsagent and Tucker Shop for an Evening Standard and a little refreshment. “Good evening, sir, I’d like to purchase a bottle of mineral water,” I offered, politely. The gruff, bearded custodian glowered at me from behind his counter. “Mineral water?” he growled, “What do you think this is, a f***** tea party?” A few minutes later, I emerged, somewhat shaken, with two tins of dog food and a packet of firelighters. I must confess, I do sometimes wonder whether poor old Mr Border is quite cut out for the service industry.

Never mind, I thought, at least I have Jamelia to look forward to. Not being able to witness the opening extravaganza of the Champions League first hand, I had entrusted the task of recording said festival of jollity to an electronic device, a device that, it transpired, was incapable of performing the one task that justified its existence; a device that is currently residing amidst the azaleas in an upside-down position.

As the horror of the situation dawned upon me, I didn’t panic. The modern armchair cricketer must have the mind of a nuclear physicist, the reflexes of a panther and the manual dexterity of a concert pianist. I did some quick mental arithmetic, realised that the broadcast hadn’t quite finished, and after playing a rapid arpeggio on the remote control, managed to catch the last 20 seconds live from Bangalore.

I saw blue-and-yellow-shirted players celebrating (these, I learned, were Cobras). I smiled wistfully as I recognised the tireless enthusiasm of Harsha Bhogle, who always sounds as though he has just discovered the game of cricket that very day and can’t wait to tell everyone about it. I even saw Mr Modi, keeping up his proud record of ensuring not a single televised cricket minute can pass without the benefit of his immaculately coiffured presence.

Then, alas, the credits rolled and it was all gone; a brief glimpse of Bangalore under floodlights snatched away. Life, for an armchair cricket fan with a malfunctioning hard-disk recorder, can be so cruel. I am left with a 40-over-and-opening-ceremony-with-singing-and-dancing-sized hole in the precious-memories section of my brain. An evening that had promised much thwackery and a pulsing Bollywood soundtrack will now be passed solemnly, with only the clink of the port decanter, the polite cough of my butler and the cries of the peacocks on the lawn to break the mournful silence.

Of course, I could try to reconstruct the day’s events from the scorecard, but that is rather like trying to relive your wedding by reading the guest list. And how could I possibly recreate the wonders of the opening ceremony? What joys have I been denied? What splendours have passed me by? So I ask you, dear Cricinfo readers, can you come to the aid of a man in distress? Just answer me this: what was Jamelia wearing? And please, tell me, were there men on stilts? At least I could sleep happily tonight knowing that there were men on stilts.

	Deccan: they charge quite bit for their services, you know © Associated Press

So the big one is almost upon us. Over the next day or so, you can expect to be bombarded with Champions League previews, but frankly, you might as well ignore all of them, because this is the only appetite-whetter you’ll need. Armed with the Long Handle Dummies’ Guide to the Champions League, you will be able to bluff your way through those tricky CL conversations that will soon be taking place in offices, nightclubs, brothels and places of worship around the globe.

How Does It Work?
The format is simplicity itself. A dozen teams play one another approximately 117 times in the first Super Eliminator Knock-Out Round. The squad with the most hamstring injuries will then drop out before we enter the Extra Special Decider Mini-League, from which the 10 least exhausted teams will progress, and so on. Eventually, after just 7102 pulsating matches, we will reach the Ultimate Supreme Champion Play-Off World Series Final, at the end of which the Indian team with the highest number of points will be declared the winner and will be named Supreme Overlords and Rulers of the Universe (2009), although they will have to defend their title almost immediately.

What Should We Look Out For?
Some of the world’s finest commentators and Mark Nicholas have been polishing their adjectives in preparation for this feast of cricket, so you can expect some innovative and daring use of sponsors’ names during the long, long days ahead. Viewers should also be on the lookout for the early signs of Twenty20 fatigue, the first symptoms of which are an inability to remember which teams are playing, and a nagging feeling that Ravi Shastri is hiding in your wardrobe.

Teams To Watch

Deccan Chargers
The reigning IPL champions, they got their name thanks to their habit of asking for exorbitant fees for getting out of bed, practising and smiling. In preparation for the Champions League, Deccan recently unveiled their new team logo: an enormous golden wheelbarrow full of currency notes.

Delhi Daredevils
Qualified by virtue of not being the worst semi-finalists at IPL 2009, the Daredevils have been boosted by the absence of Paul Collingwood and have warmed up for this tournament with a team-bonding visit to the Bank of India.

Somerset Peasants/Sussex Nobodies
May struggle to adapt to the heat, the travel and the presence of large numbers of spectators. Although they aren’t very good, all the English lads have brought their bank details with them and are hopeful of getting a result.

New South Wales Meat Pies
The only serious challengers from outside India, the Meat Pies are planning a big celebration if they win the thing. To thank the folks of New South Wales, Simon Katich will be letting fans catch a glimpse of the yacht he hopes to buy with his winnings, and Brett Lee has promised not to sing.

Cape Chokers
The current South African Twenty20 Champions, the Chokers only won their final playoff against the Border Bottlers when the other team got so nervous about the big day that they forgot to turn up. The Chokers still somehow managed to find themselves 10 for 2 after five overs, but then thankfully rain intervened and they scraped through under the Duckworth-Lewis system.