This is the Friends Vistory Debating Society.

I'm John Bachelorette, Jeremy Sackas, my guide, my teacher, on cricket.

I'm beginning to understand a little bit, although the jargon escapes me.

However, I can understand miracles.

Jeremy informed me some 24 hours ago that Australia was playing New Zealand tonight, meaning

his night, and that it was going to be a close game.

In Australia, it was down in the standings, but still doing representatively well for

the World Championship.

I couldn't bear to look up the score.

It...

Jeremy and I are more than 12 hours apart, so I looked at the London papers.

I saw that New Zealand had won the World Championship Rugby.

Congratulations!

And I just wasn't going any further, because I didn't want to hear how Australia lost.

That meant when I was talking to Jeremy later, he'd be mute, because he...

Because Australia lost.

Then I contacted Jeremy, and I said, tell me who won.

Jeremy, who won?

Well, John against all odds, we won.

Australia won against New Zealand.

And when I say won, we barely won by the skin of our teeth.

And this is another fantastic part of cricket in so far as we had two closely matched teams

...