The Cricket World Cup is a collection of anti-stories. Its coverage has concerned all the stuff that is not happening: the scintillating world-class cricket that hasn’t taken place, that isn’t being witnessed by crowds, that haven’t shown up to occupy arenas, that aren’t finished. Plus, of course, the apparent murder that hasn’t been solved.

Even the Anglican church on the way to the Sydney Cricket Ground got into the act. The End Game is the sermon promised for Sunday. ”Ashes to Ashes. Are You Ready for the Final Test?” Facing their cricket mortalities, Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath were as ready as they could be: all they needed was a bit of help from the superintending deity that Warne refers to as the ”scriptwriter”.

Recent Australian teams sometimes seem to have no more summits to scale, and to breathe permanently rarefied air. The Australian vintage of 2006/07 has routed England in all five Tests of an Ashes series, a feat which stood previously to the credit of only Warwick Armstrong’s Australians of 1920/21.