Last night I was sure the rain was appropriately declaring a rest day in the cricket to honour Lance Armstrong’s final ride in the maillot jeune and his 7th straight le tour victory. Undistracted coverage for sbs would have been fine, Australia had given themselves plenty of time. The Australian’s wouldn’t have begrudged Lance his day. The two greatnesses have coincided for many years, the Australians are not strangers to the problems of yellow, the respect is huge and mutual – the Australians gathered together on the balcony to pay tribute to Lance, who earlier had toasted Glenn McGrath’s performance from the comfort of his bike. As it turned out the weather didn’t quite come through for Lance – his final ride was a wet one into Paris and the cricket started up just in time to conflict with the final few kilometres of le tour. Australia did their best to minimise the impact, it took them only 40 mins of game time to finish off the last 5 wkts. McGrath was doing that thing he does late at night where the wkts just keep replaying themsleves. In the end, over the course of the test match, McGrath dismissed every single English player, except the great KP. One day le P will be the saviour of English cricket, one day he will win the Ashes for his team (not this year though).

(Do those cute little stubbie holders the Australian’s keep their celebratory vino‘s warm in have their names on the back?)