Spirit of Cricket is Ground Into Dust By Ricky Ponting and Andrew Strauss

A lingering smell of enmity hangs over the Ashes now, the likes of which we haven't had since ... well, 2005.

It is an enduring myth – perpetrated by the famous picture of Andrew Flintoff crouching down to console Brett Lee after victory at Edgbaston – that the series four years ago was bathed in 24-hour-a-day mutual goodwill.

The bookend to that memory was the one of Ricky Ponting scowling up at a grinning Duncan Fletcher on the Trent Bridge players' balcony after being run out by the substitute fielder Gary Pratt. There were a host of other confrontations, as there always were and always will be.

No Australian team – especially one that contains such combative characters as Ponting, Matthew Hayden, Justin Langer and Glenn McGrath – comes to England for a garden party. It would be daft to expect it. This series, though, is being soured by two men we were led to believe had it in their gift to ensure the old enemies might at least reach an acceptable level of maturity for once: Ponting and Andrew Strauss.

Ponting (perhaps grinding his teeth at the time) brought with him in his back pocket another Spirit of Cricket manifesto, promising no more sledging, no more questioning of the umpires' decisions and a determination to play hard but fair. To say it might make useful toilet paper would not be much of an exaggeration.

England's Minister for Niceness was to be Strauss, an ex-public schoolboy of calm demeanor and, seemingly, a man with no known enemies inside or outside the game. Captaincy, however, seems to have revealed another side to him, and Ponting has been quick to identify in Strauss someone with whom he can have a decent argument.

After contretemps at Cardiff and the catch at Lord's that maybe wasn't, they ought to be ashamed of themselves for acting like a pair of kids. But they won't be.

The grass-level finger scoop by Strauss in the slips on the fourth morning of the second Test and which did for Phillip Hughes as Australia contemplated the awful prospect of losing their first game at Lord's since 1934, was more than a foreshortened TV replay illusion. It looked to be – in super slo-mo – the temporary corruption under pressure of one man's better instincts, which in turn induced his counterpart's hot-wired surrender to temper.

Hughes was the only player in the drama to emerge with credit. A country boy new to the big time, he nicked and walked; Ponting, once a country boy but gnarled after years on the frontline, called him back and checked with Strauss. The England captain, ex-Radley, said he caught it. The Australian captain huffily had to believe him – regretting, no doubt, passing up the opportunity offered before the start of the tour to refer such incidents to trial by replay.

Hughes kept walking, and the moment passed without further incident, save the agonising of the commentariat. Here's some more.

Anyone who has played the game and taken a catch such as this knows the sensation of the turf easing the force of the ball in the hand. It is spookily feather-like, considerably softer than a full-on smack of leather on bone.

If Strauss was certain he caught it, there should be no row and Ponting should accept his word. If there was the slightest doubt in Strauss's mind about the legitimacy of the catch, he owed it to his team, the opposition and the game to say so. We are all now left in the position of believing him, even though the technology suggests he was wrong, and that leaves an unfortunate taste in the mouth.

Ponting, as a visiting long-time villain, is an obvious target for the British media especially after his first indiscretion, at Cardiff. It was forgotten in the concluding drama of Monty's Drift, but Ponting's bogus silly point shout for a bat-pad catch off Paul Collingwood that wasn't plainly contradicted the S of C, and was compounded by his "spit the dummy" tantrum that followed.

Let's not revisit the England time-wasting fiasco, but that didn't cool matters either. The volume had been turned up, and it remains stuck on 10. These are men behaving like boys – but not the boys they once were.Old dogs Lyle and Monty just can't stop barking

While we're on cheating (or not), the most entertaining by-play at Turnberry the past week or so has been that between Sandy Lyle and Colin Montgomerie, two Scots who couldn't sound more like Wentworth green keepers if they lived on the course.

Lyle dredged up allegations about Monty's moved ball in Jakarta and thereafter couldn't put a sock in it. This, naturally, got up Monty's nose. He said it put him off his game, a claim clearly sustained by his dreadful golf.

The tiff briefly amused golf writers whose lot it is to tip-toe around the egos of these and other players, knowing that the sensitive issue of cheating is the game's dark secret, but who could hardly ignore the issue when Sandy and Monty kept rushing to the nearest microphone.

Curtis Strange once told a young Tiger Woods: "Golf doesn't shout, it whispers."

Right.

Hatton hanging on for one final payday

It is not the shock of the week that Ricky Hatton hasn't decided yet whether to stick or twist with what is left of his boxing career, but the question needs asking: what's taking him so long? It's been a couple of months now since Manny Pacquiao rattled his teeth in Las Vegas. Perhaps Amir Khan's win over Andreas Kotelnik on Saturday clinched it. Expect an end-of-year all-British mega showdown for Amir's world light-welterweight title. Khan is out of contract with Frank Warren. Hatton fell out with Warren. Draw the picture.

No one likes the Bambi killer. And why should we?

Spare a thought for Stewart Cink. He is the Open champion nobody wanted, the man who killed Bambi, albeit an old one. It is hard to recall a winner who more completely spoilt the party in a major sporting event than Cink did when he beat Tom Watson in the play-off.

Should we feel sorry for him, this redeemed battler who pick-pocketed the biggest prize in golf from Major Tom?

Anyone who uses his acceptance speech to thank his wife for introducing him to the Almighty so fits the stereotype of boring American God-bothering Republican-supporting lime-green-hat-and-shirt and cream-trouser wearing golfer he deserves all the indifference he gets.