Tickets, sunshine and albino monks

A bad week for Cricket Australia CEO James Sutherland © Getty Images

Anything but the ticket Cricket Australia made a strong bid for the Cock-up-of-the-Year award with its dire handling of the sale of tickets for the Ashes. Demand was always going to be huge, but that seemed to catch the administrators on the hop as telephone and internet lines went into meltdown. Some were fortunate - but with so many punters wanting tickets, why could each applicant buy up to ten? - but thousands were left hanging in cyberspace for hours. Given that this had been in the planning stage for nine months, one idea might have been to give people who attended last season's matches priority, or even to sell tickets for each Test on different days. Instead, Cricket Australia managed to create massive ill feeling among the very people it should be nurturing - the genuine cricket fans, as the almost unprecedented flood of emails to Cricinfo highlighted. The main - and understandable - aim of the whole farrago appears to have been to stop Brits getting all the tickets at the expense of home supporters. I spoke to five UK-based friends on Thursday who had all asked people they knew in Australia to apply on their behalf. All five will now be at the SCG in January as their Australian contacts got lucky in the free-for-all. So it seems CA has failed in almost everything it set out to achieve.

I don't like cricket There is a general assumption that people who play cricket, like cricket. But being good at something does not mean that you have to enjoy it, as former West Indies fast bowler Curtly Ambrose revealed this week. "Cricket gave me an identity but it wasn't my first love," he said. "I did it as a job, for me basketball and music were my true passions. I felt happy to be out of it." And even though the last Test at the Recreation Ground is taking place at the moment, one of Antigua's greatest isn't bothered. "Now I don't even watch the game," Ambrose explained. "I have hardly watched a full game since I retired. I sometimes see a few snatches of play on television and that's about it. I might not even come to watch the Test."

King for a day On Thursday the ICC trumpeted the re-launch of its player rankings with the revelation that the top batsman and bowler of all time were Don Bradman and Joel Garner. No one queried The Don, but Garner? As the Barbados press ran articles in praise of their man being la crème de la crème, the pundits pondered quite how that had come about. A day later and another look at the rankings showed that Garner had overnight slipped down to No. 30. An ICC spokesman admitted that a "technical glitch" had led to Test and one-day bowlers being mixed up before the site was launched. The absence of local heroes Sachin Tendulkar and Brian Lara from the top 20 all-time Test batsmen might not be so easy to explain.

Crusts and cobblers The ICC have acted to ban anything remotely throwable being brought into international grounds - as well as anything that the authorities can make a killing on - but it seems they might have to have a rethink on the list of permitted items after Lancashire fielders were subjected to things being chucked at them during last Sunday's match against Yorkshire at Headingley. "Whoever was on the boundary within earshot of the Western Terrace came in for some fearful abuse," explained Mark Chilton, Lancashire's captain. "Mal Loye suffered the brunt of it and even had things thrown at him, including a sandwich and a shoe." Expect a ruling shortly that spectators will need to wear slippers and cut the crusts of their sandwiches before being allowed into grounds. Mind you, anyone who has lifted one of my wife's sandwiches will vouch for their potential as a weapon of mass destruction.

Changing maan One of the key factors in staging next year's World Cup in the Caribbean has to be the local colour and unique atmosphere inside the grounds. But there are concerns that the locals, who are generally not accustomed to booking and paying in advance, are being priced out of the market, and now it seems that the local governments are considering legislation banning flags, musical instruments and other traditional fare from being brought into venues, with fines of several thousand dollars being mentioned. At the moment, the sound systems which are an integral part of many grounds are untouched, but unless the authorities employ some common sense, there is a danger that the event will be as Caribbean as Lord's in July, albeit without the rain.

No sunny delight Spectators are used to bad light curtailing their enjoyment, but it's not normally an issue in day-night floodlit matches and even then, it's rarely good light which is a factor. At Derby on Friday, unamused fans watched bewildered as in warm evening sunshine, the umpires and players trooped off midway through the Derbyshire innings. It turned out the reason was that the setting sun was blinding the players. "You couldn't see anything," chirped Graeme Swann, who bowled the last over before the stoppage. "If the guy had hit it back at me then it would have hit me in the face. So we went off and listened to some crazy tunes on the radio and watched the X-Factor." Unless Derbyshire turn their pitch by 90 degrees or have a word with the Almighty, it's hard to see how they can prevent this problem recurring.

A creature of habit Most players' nicknames are fairly mundane, a few are inspirational. Surrey's Ally Brown used to be called "Ghost" because he is permanently pale despite being outdoors all summer, but he now has a new nickname after a few team-mates went to see the dire Da Vinci Code - "Silas" after the albino monk in the film.

Tell it as it is Two former England captains tie for the quote of the week. On Thursday, Michael Atherton, who led the side during some fairly dark times, picked up an award for Channel 4's coverage of last summer's Ashes series. "Before I joined Channel 4 I played for a team that won f*** all for 15 years," he quipped to the audience. Less than 24 hours later, Nasser Hussain was asked on air how to bowl to Muttiah Muralitharan, who was at time gleefully smacking England's bowlers around Trent Bridge. "You've got to make it tough," Hussain answered. "No freebies ... target him. Break a finger if you want. That'll stop him getting ten wickets."