I was watching the death throes of the World Cup (renamed the Steven Bradbury Demolition Derby) and twitching like a corpse that had been subjected to too much of a bad thing.

I numbly felt the onset of rugby rigor mortis, after a seeming seven-week ice age of on-field boredom, booted home to me once again by Jonny Wilkinson’s over-rated bunch of drop kicks.

Suddenly, the air raid sirens sounded and an ashen-faced television sports anchor wearing a flak jacket cut into the broadcast:

“We now interrupt this forlorn conclusion to bring you an important message from the prime minister of Australia.”

John Winston Howard, dressed in combat fatigues with a portrait of Robert Menzies and Winston Churchill either side of him, began:

“My beloved battlers who have never had it so good, may I say that as of today, and in the lead up to the November 8 First Test against Sri Lanka, we are at war with the entire Asian sub-continent for crimes against Australian cricket.

“Do not for a minute let the propagandists out there fool you into thinking that we are planning our first pre-emptive strike against Colombo because of concerns of a certain decision pending on November 24 by the world’s only independent umpire, other than Darrell Hair.

“That is you … the infallible, if somewhat ungrateful, fully-employed, over-taxed, Australian cricketing public.

“My detractors, and that is far too many ingrates of late, might falsely claim that sending in our Super Hornets – once they finally arrive in 2010, $20 billion over the Defence Department’s non-core budget promise – may wish to paint this attack on the International Cricket Council insurgents, as a poll-driven diversion.

“But the truth, which is as straight as the Don’s bat, is that the Pakistanis, the Indians and the Sri Lankans have been preparing WMDs – wickets of much disgust – since I first started reading Boys Own Annuals.

“And we all know Sri Lanka’s match-winning wicket-taker is a blight on the Free World and once he oversteps the mark in this country, I will personally ensure he is subject to a nice rendition – not of Advance ‘Australia Fair’ or ‘Beneath the Southern Cross I Stand’ – but Drifter’s hit, thoughtfully reworked by the CIA, as ‘You Can Be Beaten (and Tortured)’.”

Suddenly the PM was elbowed aside by an ex-bureaucrat with a plasma halo and a Kevin 07 T-shirt.

“I, a lowly Sunshine Coast boy made good, interrupt this politically bankrupt government to say that I endorse the outgoing, outmoded PM’s War on Red Hot Spinners. That is why Alexander Downer, Abbot and Costello, who play me like Gatting facing Warnie’s ball of the century, will be consigned to carrying the loser’s drinks after 11/24.

“While Mr Howard may target a fellow old has-been in Murali, I am also going after our future cricketing threats. I hereby declare war on India – or more precisely frontline bowler Shankthakumaran Sreesanth. Why do I do this, I might ask?

“A good question. I point out to all Aussie loyalists that he has hurt the feelings of that true-hearted Queenslander, Roy Symonds, with this withering sledge after a dismissal, that almost brought the flint-hard, fun boy undone: ‘Hard luck you’re going to lose’.”

“Shanka, which rhymes with you know what, did so after dismissing Our Roy. Later Roy’s feelings were further savaged by comparisons to a certain animal that had a nasty ethnic edge to it. Let me say this to you good fanatics out there drinking a skinful from plastic cups this summer: we will decide what bunnies we allow in this country to sledge and make monkeys of!”