Aussies’ hell just hilarious

BASEBALL is as close to the hearts and souls of most Americans as cricket is to the hearts and souls of most Australians, or Englishmen and women for that matter.

Those who love it, run it, play it, follow it, are just not as pious.

Cheating is reprehensible. Pre-meditated cheating even worse.

That is why, for example, New York Yankees pitcher Michael Pineda received a 10-game ban for having pine tar on his neck (rubbed into the ball to ‘juice’ it up) during a match against the Boston Red Sox a few years back.

Bear in mind, each Major League Baseball team plays 162 games in a regular season. That sort of punishment is seen as appropriate for ball-tampering in baseball.

Unlike the ones dished out in Sandpapergate.

As Steve Smith (above) dissolves into a puddle of tears in front of the world’s media and Darren Lehmann resigns, this scandal has got the sport of cricket at its sanctimonious worst.

Just imagine trying to explain its severity 30 years down the line.

‘Dad, mum, how come Australia once had to strip a bloke of the captaincy, suspend him and his mate for a year and another for nine months, accept the resignation of the coach and lose their sponsors and became global sporting pariahs at the same time?’

Well, son, there was this bit of sandpaper …

Your kids will laugh at you.

BOXING – probably more than any other sport and that’s saying something – sells to the highest bidder.

That is why you will have to pay £20 to watch tomorrow’s fight between Anthony Joshua and

Joseph Parker.

That is why the fight is not even being broadcast on BBC radio.

The commercial, TV and radio deals will make a lot of people very rich. But maybe Joshua is missing a trick. Imagine if, in his next agreement with a promoter, he insists on one of his fights being freeto-air. Imagine the viewing figures.

Joshua would become a national treasure, in an instant.

That has got to be worth as much as being a pay-per-view phenomenon.