Ponting-proof sanitary padding for men

1. Call-hold for fielders miked-up live to commentators
The message most requested by fielders has been a variation of the following: "Thank you for calling me in the middle of the game. Your call is important to me. I apologise that due to the fact that I am currently running backwards under the ball in the hopes of, oh, I don't know, maybe catching it, I am unable to answer your call. Here at the King's XI Punjab, we value your remarkable persistence. Your call has moved two places up the order in which it was received, even if at the expense of our position in the league having fallen four.

2. New, improved Shane Warne replicas
After the success of the delightful, almost life-like android built by a Chinese cybernetics corporation (Japanese cybernetics corporations are so passé) to approximate the looks and bowling of Shane Warne in this year's IPL, emerging Twenty20 leagues the world over are scrambling to order one. "Sure, the synthetic skin has some issues: the colour tone is perhaps a shade too orange, and the plastic-to-imitation-human-tissue ratio a little too high to pass off as even reasonably human, but the rare legbreak the machine produces is alone worth the price," said Lalit Modi, the new commissioner of the IPL - the Icelandic Premier League.

3. Ponting-proof sanitary padding for hands
Interestingly, a request made by the players' associations of all Test-playing nations bar Australia. The proposed napkin will protect cringing opposition players in post-match handshake situations from germs collected in Ponting's hands from his repeated spitting into them while fielding. "We've had so many requests for it over the years," said a spokesman for Always, the company most likely to start producing the hand pads, "but we didn't believe the market was as huge as it is until our VP shook the man's hand once and was bedridden for weeks.

"As a humanitarian gesture, we are now ready to rush into production a discreet, easy-to-carry product. You can dive for catches, sprint between wickets, or gambol playfully with your team-mate as you both go in for that missed catch. Heck, go horse-riding in slow motion if you must. You won't know it's on you, and neither will Ponting. When the time comes, just take the pad out of your pocket, peel the protective strip away and slap it onto your hands before having to touch him," he advised, before turning away with an involuntary shudder.

4. No Mo Ultra Slo Mo
Another request, but this time for the banning of an existing technology, with the Society for the Preservation of Deceptive Elegance in Batsmanship coming out strongly against the use of Ultra Slow Motion cameras. "Until these cameras came along, not many people, least of all the paying public, knew just how much the bat actually turns in our hands once the ball has hit it," said Michael Clarke on condition of anonymity. "It makes us look like such amateurs. Girly amateurs," he seethed.

Geoffrey Boycott, another member of the hitherto secret society, which has apparently been around since the very inception of the game, concurred. "Batsmen like to think they have strong hands. I have strong hands. Honestly, I do. You have to believe me. Please? But seeing the bat turn as much as it does in these replays compromises the illusion of apparent artistry our kind have taken centuries to build. I know because I've been around for most of them."

"The videos are a little disturbing," confided Wanda B Hemingway, self-professed cricket historian and author of the book Where Have All the Moustaches Gone? "It's sort of like the first time you heard Mike Tyson speak. Disturbing." Meanwhile, Herschelle Gibbs has thus far been the only batsman to come out and, well, bat for the cameras. "One word: cheerleaders," was all he had to say when asked for comment.