Wheels come off Australia's wagon after a bit of a lie-in

TV View: A very strange sporting week, the strangeness peaking, perhaps, when Aftab Ahmed levelled the scores in Cardiff on Saturday afternoon by hitting a six off Jason Gillespie.

"Bangladesh, YOU'RE HOME," shrieked Sky Sport's David Lloyd, very nearly falling out of his commentary box from the shock of it all.

And then the team which lost to Canada in the last cricket World Cup got the run that beat Australia. Surreal.

Lloydie struggled to find the words to describe what was the biggest shock in the history of cricket since the previous biggest shock in the history of cricket, but eventually came up with: "What an upset! On the Richter Scale it's OFF the scale! The wheels are OFF! Four wheels on the wagon! Three wheels on the wagon! Two wheels on the wagon! They're ALL OFF!"

That summed it up quite well, we thought. Mind-boggling.

Indeed, the only sporting happening that could have matched that bombshell was if the world number 818 had found himself in contention at the US Open with a mere round to go.

Well, well: hello Jason Gore.

While most of those ranked the odd 700 or 800 places above him were being made to look comically human, by what the experts told us were rather challenging pin placements at Pinehurst No 2, Jason just got on with the job.

Colin Montgomerie, for example, went 37 holes without a birdie. Even Bangladesh won a Test match at their 35th attempt.

"It's brutal out there," Lee Westwood told Sky Sports after his third round, "if you hit a bad shot you got punished."

"And what if you hit a good shot?" he was asked.

"You got punished as well."

Lee departed giggling, but commentator Ewen Murray failed to see the funny side of it all. Livid, he was.

"The 13th hole is like something from Disneyland, but this is what happens when you have amateurs setting up a course for professional golfers." Oooooh.

Down the road in Clones, Benny Tierney, the Armagh goalkeeping coach, was much more diplomatic in his criticism of the refereeing of the game between Armagh and Donegal.

"I don't want to get involved in a libel case or anything like that there," he said when Marty Morrissey asked him for his half-time view of the official's display.

"But I don't think he's deliberately being bad," he added, "he's just being poor for both sides."

Back in the studio, Joe Brolly paid a similar tribute to the referee's impartiality, noting that "he's a bit like Pat Spillane, he just annoys everybody".

Fair enough, then.

But by full-time Brolly was marginally less complimentary, warning the viewers that if the referee was "coming to a venue near you: be afraid, be very afraid".

On to yesterday's games, when Colm O'Rourke joined Brolly and Michael Lyster.

Roscommon v Mayo.

"It's hardly the clash of the Titans, people probably won't be trembling in anticipation," said O'Rourke.

"Mayo are a more organised side than Roscommon," noted Lyster.

"You couldn't be less organised," said Brolly.

Viewers whipped in to a frenzy of expectation, then.

Meanwhile, the heat was getting to the panel, eg, O'Rourke tipped Roscommon.

O'Rourke: "Roscommon remind me a bit of that film The Dirty Dozen, where they're all let loose and they go off and create carnage."

(Brolly: "And not necessarily on the field.")

Lyster: "They remind me more of Blazing Saddles."

As it proved, Roscommon were more Blazing Saddles. As Samson Posey said in The Dirty Dozen, "I reckon the folks'd be a sight happier if I died like a soldier - can't say I would."

Roscommon are still alive, though, but they'll have to find a way of squeezing their bayonets through the back door.

Perhaps what they need is a little of the Lions' guile. As the Otago captain, Craig Newby, put it after Saturday's game, "they cheated like buggery and got away with it, so good on them". Indeed.

We're actually in no position to pass judgment on this allegation, largely because we only woke as Sky Sports' Simon Lazenby was waving goodbye. A fortnight ago he advised us to sleep in our Lions shirt, "it's one less thing to worry about when your alarm goes off".

We followed his advice, opting for Gavin Henson's shirt, but if you hit that snooze button often enough . . . well, you rise just in time to see Bangladesh leaving Australia's wagon wheel-less.