All sport in the column this week I’m afraid. As you may know I am a great cricket fan, but this week I was somewhat disturbed by events on the other side of the world, when the umpire was changed for a Test match between Australia and India after the Indian team objected to him.
Now I am not having a go at the Indian team, more the ICC, to be honest, for allowing this to happen. This, I feel, sets a very dangerous precedent, in that any team can now object to a certain umpire and get him dropped from the game.
Umpires make mistakes, as Mr Bucknor appeared to in the last test between the two teams, but if those mistakes had been in favour of the losing team (India), and they had won instead, would there have been an outcry?
I suspect that this is a problem that goes deeper as politics start to appear in the game.
The phrase “It’s not cricket” is used when fair play is absent, but it may have a different connotation in years to come.
I nipped down to watch Malvern play Litchfield on Saturday, and to be honest I haven’t seen too much rugby at that level of late, and was surprised at how, I feel, the standard has improved.
It was an excellent game, with Malvern romping home, and here we had a referee who yellow-carded two Litchfield players for slowing down the game.
The players didn’t like it but accepted the referee’s decision and off they went. I suspect Litchfield will not be contacting the RFU to stop the referee doing any more of their games.
Well done to the Grandads For Acorns, who managed to ride their bikes all the way from Worcester to Newcastle for the rugby on Sunday.
A great achievement and I think they are heading for something like £8,000 for their efforts, I drove up there on Sunday and it seemed a long way!
Mind they weren’t the only people in Newcastle on their bikes this week. Sam Allardyce didn’t have his safety helmet on, though.
Warriors in France tonight, and I will not be there.
Grandson Joshua George is visiting this weekend, so it’s telly sport and nappy changing, I suspect.
It’s amazing – he isn’t one year old yet, but insists on having all that sport on telly...
lDave Bradley is the BBC Hereford & Worcester sports correspondent.