Fun police missing the real offenders

One of the draconian rules in Australia's

Test arenas could stop some locals singing:

'I'd rather be a Paki than a Pom' in Brisbane or the English legions taunting Brett

Lee with: 'Does your boyfriend know you're here?'

This Ashes series is turning into a war between political correctness and the anarchist tendencies of modern cricket crowds.

I thought I was hearing things when the 'Paki' chant emanated from the Vulture Street end at The Gabba. Some reports say there were also chants of: 'Where's your Paki gone?' — an abominable

reference to England's Monty Panesar, a Sikh of Indian origin.

Too dumb even to get their insults right, these dimwits have given us something more important to worry about than the fun police banning the

Mexican wave and throwing the Barmy Army's bugler out of the ground.

Sajid Mahmood says he was also abused during a drinks interval.

Most of us can take the cultural hand grenades. In fact, hyper-sensitivity plumbed new depths when a band called The Coodabeen Champions

were sacked during the Brisbane Test for adapting the chorus of 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' from 'wimoweh, wimoweh' to 'they whinge-away, they

whinge-away' at the expense of the supposedly querulous Poms.

The word is that the Barmy Army complained about the two Crocodile Dundees with guitars, which is a bit rich coming from an organisation who serenaded Shane Warne last summer

with: 'Where's your missus gone?'

Across the five Test venues, the authorities here are trying to locate the line between badinage and abuse, which is why they flash up a message

warning against behaviour that is likely to 'offend, insult, humiliate, intimidate, threaten or vilify' — which, you would think, just about covers it.

But the ransacking of the thesaurus did not save Panesar as he watched England lose by 277 runs or Mahmood as he carried drinks. Call me touchy,

but I'd say that intoning: 'Where's your Paki gone' contravenes all the variations on 'humiliate' and 'vilify'.

The sledging of Panesar by a lone moron in the build-up to this series acquires a far more sinister hue when it becomes a grandstand chant.

Meanwhile, organisers busy themselves with an authoritarian onslaught against backpacks, 'rubber thongs' (whatever they are), shirts without collars and 'torn or frayed' jeans. Visit Australia every couple of years and

you see increasing friction between the beach-and-barbie heritage and the illiberal tendencies of those who want to ban absolutely everything.

Two fellow English travellers on a ferry to the ground said the Brisbane stewards had ordered them to empty their backpacks and put sandwiches

and drinks in plastic bags. That much they could tolerate, but despair set in when they were told to fold the empty backpack and put it inside the carrier bag. As an exercise in futility it

sounded hard to beat.

A Barmy Army trick, meanwhile, is to smuggle in bottles that look like water and cola. Except that the water is really vodka, which they then mix with the cola.

A record Test attendance for The Gabba is a good defence against my personal suspicion that excessive security is ruining the experience of

watching live sport, not just here but

across much of the world. But for the intrepid English, the world champions of sports tourism, there is the added hardship of incoming ridicule, the endless rain of scorn.

The Vietcong had it easy. All they had to deal with in jungle hide-outs were leaflet flurries and American choppers blaring out propaganda.

Every second of an Ashes tour is a psychological assault on the Poms. They open their papers to see a Weet-bix ad declaring: 'Yesterday we

also had the English for breakfast.'

When it's quiz time at the stadium, they ask which disease tormented the English batsman Wally Hammond. 'Syphilis!' is the answer, and they send

it booming round the ground. 'Tonka Pom' is an advertising slogan sure to delight the hordes now the lunchtime entertainment no longer features an

event called 'Chase the Sheila'.

As an Englishman, you hunker down, take your blows, and hope for a Freddie Flintoff hat-trick or Kevin Pietersen century to buy you some

relief. Then you turn to the local papers with their 'pathetic Pom' headlines.

Yesterday's was a real bullseye: 'The Aussies — 804 runs, 20 wickets; The Poms — 527 runs, 10 wickets.'

Entertaining, most of it. But nobody

will convince me that Panesar and Mahmood should have to listen to vile racial chants, while the authorities expend their energy suppressing the

Mexican wave.

The FA, remember, were fined by UEFA when some home fans sang 'I'd rather be a Paki than a

Turk' at an England v Turkey match. It's not banter, of course. It's dehumanising.

England have to dish out the GBH again in Adelaide

The Battle of Adelaide still

resonates for England fans

making their way to this

week’s second Test and not

just because Australia’s

captain, Bill Woodfull, said

during the infamous

Bodyline Tour: ‘There are

two teams out there on the

oval. One is playing cricket,

the other is not.’

This perfect moral

condemnation was

delivered on a day when

Douglas Jardine’s team

were lucky to escape being lynched in the third Test in

January, 1933.

No, the reason England’s

supporters will have cause

to recall the GBH of the

Jardine years is that fast

bowling tends to determine

the course of the Ashes.

Batting, yes, Fielding, yes.

But the difference tends to

be made by the seamers

and ‘quicks’.

Shane Warne is the leading

Ashes wicket-taker, which

slightly compromises the

argument, yet the names of

Dennis Lillee, Glenn

McGrath, Bob Willis, Ray

Lindwall, Terry Alderman

and Jeff Thomson point to a

wider truth about the

business of taking 20

wickets in a match.

Put another way, teams do

not win the Ashes with

mediocre quick bowling

attacks. And you know

what’s coming next.

England’s is a shadow of the

wolf pack that hunted down

Australia last summer.

Flintoff, Jones, Hoggard and

Harmison was one of the

great English quartets,

however briefly. They

allowed Ricky Ponting’s

men no respite. This time,

though, Jones is missing,

Flintoff over-burdened,

Hoggard less suited by the

conditions and Harmison off

with the fairies.

Every expert I consulted

after the Brisbane Test

thought a shortage of

firepower in the seam

bowling department was to

blame for Australia running up such a humongous

first-innings total.

Not Monty Panesar’s

omission, not lack of

preparation. They all

thought too many of the

faster bowlers were below

par. Part of the solution

would be for Flintoff to

enter the attack sooner,

rather than when

Australia’s batsmen are

already on the march, but

he shows no sign of wanting

to snatch the new ball from

Hoggard or Harmison.

Would he still feel that way

if he shed the extra burden

of the captaincy?

Australia are spoilt for

choice. Stuart Clark was a

revelation on his Ashes

debut and Mitchell Johnson

is itching to come in. Brett

Lee’s critics forget that he

took the wickets of Flintoff

and Pietersen.

Bodyline might be England’s

only answer. Except that

Ponting would probably

belt them out of the

ground.

Late night Ben caught in the web

Among the more eccentric

chroniclers of this Ashes

series are the insomniacs who

file ball-by-ball commentary

for their websites.

The BBC’s is called Ben Dirs

and his digressions about

music, history and family life

are masterful, though it’s

amazing he gets away with

them.

At one especially sombre

moment in the first Test,

he wrote: 'My God, I’m

turning into my nan, who was

so pessimistic she was

genuinely shocked to find

herself still alive every

morning.'